Ted Rall: Logic Bomb-As Usual, Pakistan About to Explode

WAGAH BORDER CROSSING, PAKISTAN/INDIA--The first indication that Pakistan is a mass of internal contradictions occurs at the airport. In the arrivals area there are two passport lines--one for men, the other for "unaccompanied women and children." Appalling at first glance, but women love this manifestation of gender segregation. "The women's line moves a lot faster," an American woman who lives in Pakistan told me.

Moving fast was a good idea. Islamist leaders of the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) and its affiliated Jamia Hafsa madrassah were locked in a Branch Davidian-type standoff with Pakistani security forces. After months of Taliban-style vigilantism, including the kidnapping of 10 Chinese nationals they accused of working in a bordello masquerading as a massage parlor and seizing control of a children's library, government troops had surrounded the complex.

Katha Pollitt: Pardon Whom?

[from the July 30, 2007 issue]

Dear George W. Bush,

I know you're getting a lot of flak for commuting Scooter Libby's sentence, but I say, Stick to your guns. The man has definitely suffered enough, what with everyone making fun of his nickname and comparing him to Paris Hilton. Besides, as you pointed out, Libby's reputation has been "forever damaged" and what is a public servant without his reputation? He'll have to join that other neocon convict Elliott Abrams, whom your dad pardoned in 1992, in sweeping the floors at Denny's. Oh, I forgot. Abrams isn't pushing a broom, he's your deputy national security adviser. I guess reputation isn't all it used to be, and if David Brooks can't figure out how to blame that on liberals, feminism and divorce he's not the man I take him for.

Harvard's Humanitarian Hawks

by TOM HAYDEN

[posted online on July 14, 2007]

Should a human rights center at the nation's most prestigious university be collaborating with the top US general in Iraq in designing the counter-insurgency doctrine behind the current military surge?

Led by Gen. David Petraeus, the so-called surge--an escalation of over 25,000 American troops--is resulting in hundreds of killings, mass roundups, door-to-door break-ins, and military offensives in Baghdad, Al-Anbar and Diyala provinces, on the side of a deeply-sectarian Baghdad regime which, according to the White House benchmarks report, still compiles official lists of Sunni Arabs targeted for detention or death. The counter-insurgency campaign is explained as a military way to create "space" for Iraqis to reach a political solution without violent interference.

Healthcare vs. the Profit Principle

by BARBARA EHRENREICH

[posted online on July 12, 2007]

It's always nice to see the President take a principled stand on something. The man formerly known as "43"--and now perhaps better named "29" for his record-breaking low approval rating--is promising to battle any expansion of government health insurance for children, and not because he hates children or refuses to cough up the funds. No, this is a battle over principle: private healthcare vs. government-provided healthcare. Speaking in Cleveland recently, Bush boldly asserted:

I strongly object to the government providing incentives for people to leave private medicine, private health care to the public sector. And I think it's wrong and I think it's a mistake. And therefore, I will resist Congress's attempt ... to federalize medicine....In my judgment that would be--it would lead to not better medicine, but worse medicine. It would lead to not more innovation, but less innovation.

The Foreclosing of America (Part 3): Chainsaw Jim

By Rick Perlstein on July 13, 2007 - 3:21pm.

[We pick up our story as our hard-working but underemployed young couple, fearing of their precarious financial position but confident of their future income potential, and inspired by their president's exhortation that "the more ownership there is in America, the more people have a vital stake in their country," signs a NINJA - "No Income, No Job, No Assets" - mortgage. Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.]

Shaker Heights: the place you were intimidated just to visit back in high school. Shaker Heights. How the very name once made your heart sing with joy - you, a hard-scrabble kid from Cleveland, who managed to work your way through college and a master's degree in computer science, even if the accomplishment left you with twenty thousand dollars in debt. You remember, that fall day in 2004 - Election Day! - as the happiest in your life. That day, you turned the key to your very own home: Shaker Heights.

TPMmuckraker on Blackstone/IRS arrangements

Today's Must Read
By Laura McGann - July 13, 2007, 10:20 AM

Unless Congress treads lightly on delicate private equity and buyout firms like The Blackstone Group, we could see an end to entrepreneurship as we know it, the Bush administration warned this week. But under current tax law it could take Blackstone a mere 15 years to get back all the taxes it paid -- plus pocketing an extra $200 million -- on the $4.75 billion it made from going public on June 22.

Call it triumph of the good will.

According to a story in New York Times, Blackstone will pay a tax bill of $553 million on its earnings from a going public, a nice deal in itself, but over time will get back $750 million.

Abramoff-Funded CREA VP Admits To Tax Fraud

By Laura McGann - July 13, 2007, 6:12 PM

Another Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy employee has pleaded guilty to tax evasion as part of the Jack Abramoff corruption scandal.

Some history of the issues--Dictynna

'Totally anathema to a democratic society'

The estimable Bill Moyers explored the "I" word on PBS last night, discussing George W. Bush's "unique" approach to the presidency with conservative attorney Bruce Fein, Associate Deputy Attorney General under President Reagan, and The Nation's John Nichols.

White House, Pentagon cite executive privilege to hold up documents on friendly fire victim Tillman

07/13/2007 @ 1:21 pm

Filed by Michael Roston

Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) revealed on Friday afternoon that the White House and Pentagon were holding up a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee investigation into the friendly fire death of former professional football player and Army Corporal Patrick Tillman.

"[T]he Committee wrote to White House Counsel Fred Fielding seeking 'all documents received or generated by any official in the Executive Office of the President' relating to Corporal Tillman's death," noted a press release from the Committee.

Democrats may be hurt by antiwar divisions in 2008

Cooperation between diverse antiwar groups helped the Democratic Party in the 2006 congressional elections. However, the changing relationship between the Democratic Party and the antiwar activists could hurt the Democrats in the upcoming 2008 presidential election, according to research published in the current issue of American Politics Research from SAGE.

Robert Fisk: TE Lawrence had it right about Iraq

'Rebellions can be made by 2 per cent active and 98 per cent passively sympathetic'

Published: 14 July 2007

Back in 1929, Lawrence of Arabia wrote the entry for "Guerrilla" in the 14th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. It is a chilling read - and here I thank one of my favourite readers, Peter Metcalfe of Stevenage, for sending me TE's remarkable article - because it contains so ghastly a message to the American armies in Iraq.

Writing of the Arab resistance to Turkish occupation in the 1914-18 war, he asks of the insurgents (in Iraq and elsewhere): "... suppose they were an influence, a thing invulnerable, intangible, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile as a whole, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. The Arabs might be a vapour..."

Firing by Bush rejected by boundary official

By David Bowermaster
Seattle Times staff reporter

A dispute over a backyard wall in Whatcom County has reached all the way to the White House, with President Bush firing International Boundary Commissioner Dennis Schornack over his handling of the matter.

But on Wednesday Schornack rejected his dismissal by the commander-in-chief.

House OKs cuts to student loan rates

By NANCY ZUCKERBROD, AP Education Writer
Wed Jul 11, 7:44 PM ET

Legislation to lower interest rates on student loans and increase aid to poor people who want to go to college won House approval on Wednesday.

To pay for the proposal, lawmakers would cut roughly $19 billion in federal subsidies to banks that issue government-backed student loans.

Budget rules require nearly $1 billion of that savings to go toward reducing the federal deficit, but the rest would go to student benefits.

Rove Strategy Paper Found in Nixon Archive

By SHERYL GAY STOLBERG

Published: July 14, 2007

WASHINGTON, July 13 — The year was 1973, and Karl Rove was looking for help — from the Nixon White House.

Tucked away inside 78,000 pages of documents from the Nixon administration, released by the National Archives earlier this week, is a little gem: a strategy memorandum from the man who would go on to become the architect of President Bush’s rise to political power.

PAUL KRUGMAN: An Unjustified Privilege

During the 2000 presidential campaign, Ralph Nader mocked politicians of both parties as “Republicrats,” equally subservient to corporations and the wealthy. It was nonsense, of course: the modern G.O.P. is so devoted to the cause of making the rich richer that it makes even the most business-friendly Democrats look like F.D.R.

But right now, as I watch Senate Democrats waffle over what should be a clear issue of justice and sound tax policy — namely, whether managers of private equity funds and hedge funds should be subject to the same taxes as ordinary working Americans — I’m starting to feel that Mr. Nader wasn’t all wrong.

E. coli conservatism (21): a tour d'horizon

By Rick Perlstein on July 12, 2007 - 4:32pm.

David Goldstein of the Horse's Ass blog, the nation's premier professor of E.-coli-conservative-ology, offers up an outstanding synthesis of where we are now in the food safety crisis, and what it all means.

In November 2006, America's dogs and cats started dying painful, mysterious and sometimes gruesome deaths--canaries in the coal mine of a food safety system on the verge of collapse. Previously healthy pets would suddenly vomit blood and bile, produce bloody diarrhea and lose control of bladder and bowel. Some animals displayed unquenchable thirst, while others refused to eat or drink at all. Victims became lethargic and withdrawn, their limbs wobbly, eyes cloudy and stomachs painfully distended. Then the seizures set in.

The Ploy That Dare Not Say Its Name

By Josh Marshall

Here we have a headline from the New York Times ...

Senate Narrowly Backs Bush in Rejecting Debate on Increasing Time Between Deployments

Well, no, I'm sorry. That's not right. The vote was 56 to 41. A solid majority of senators supported increasing time between deployments.

Republicans blocked a vote on the bill. Say it again: They blocked a vote. They filibustered it.

Nation's poor hit by housing crunch

Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 13, 2007 03:49:56 PM

WASHINGTON — Growing numbers of the nation's poorest households are using more than half their earnings for rent while waiting years for federal housing assistance that may never come.

The phenomenon is largely playing out in urban and suburban locales, but has exploded recently in rural areas as coveted rental assistance becomes harder to get due to high demand and scant funding from Congress.

The lack of affordable homes for poor families is the nation's No. 1 housing problem and undermines the stability and security of families and communities nationwide.

In Baghdad, even babies quickly learn to duck snipers

Mike Drummond and Hussein Khalifa | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 12, 2007 05:10:50 PM

BAGHDAD — Nawal Na'eem Karim was surprised this week to hear her toddler tell her, "Talaq inana! Talaq inana!" — "Bullets here! Bullets here!"

He was warning her to step cautiously past the windows. Their house is in a kill zone. At 18 months, her baby already had learned counterinsurgency survival. He still wears a diaper.

Tax Loopholes Sweeten a Deal for Blackstone

By DAVID CAY JOHNSTON

Published: July 13, 2007

The Blackstone Group, the big buyout firm, has devised a way for its partners to effectively avoid paying taxes on $3.7 billion, the bulk of what it raised last month from selling shares to the public.

Although they will initially pay $553 million in taxes, the partners will get that back, and about $200 million more, from the government over the long term.

You Call That Progress?

The outrageous White House report on Iraq.
By Fred Kaplan
Posted Thursday, July 12, 2007, at 5:47 PM ET

The White House report released today, on how far Iraq has progressed toward 18 political and military benchmarks, is a sham.

According to the report, which was required by Congress, progress has been "satisfactory" on eight of the benchmarks, "unsatisfactory" on another eight, and mixed on two. At his press conference this morning, President Bush, seeing the glass half full, pronounced the report "a cause for optimism"—and for staying on course.

Planet Pentagon: How the Department of Defense Came to Own the Earth, Seas and Skies

By Nick Turse, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on July 13, 2007, Printed on July 13, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56633/

Recently, the Wall Street Journal reported on a proposal, championed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, to reduce the number of U.S. troops in Iraq in exchange for bipartisan Congressional support for the long-term (read: more or less permanent) garrisoning of that country. The troops are to be tucked away on "large bases far from Iraq's major cities." This plan sounded suspiciously similar to one revealed by Thom Shanker and Eric Schmitt in the New York Times on April 19, 2003, just as U.S. troops were preparing to enter Baghdad. Headlined "Pentagon Expects Long-Term Access to Four Key Bases in Iraq," it laid out a U.S. plan for:

a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to.... perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.

Retail Sales Suffer Steep Decline

Friday July 13, 5:14 pm ET
By Martin Crutsinger, AP Economics Writer Retail Sales Take Sharp Plunge, With Weakness in Autos, Furniture and Building Supplies WASHINGTON (AP) -- Consumers put away their wallets in June, sending retail sales plunging by the sharpest amount in nearly two years. Sales of autos, furniture and building supplies all fell, highlighting the economy's weak spots.

The 0.9 percent drop in retail sales was the biggest decline since August 2005, the Commerce Department reported Friday. It was a far bigger setback than the flat reading that had been forecast.

Three men in jail over bomb at church

By MARTHA DELLER
Star-Telegram staff writer

Three Burleson men who belong to a "radical Christian activist group" were in the Johnson County Jail on Friday night after a church deacon caught two of them attempting to ignite an explosive device on Independence Day at a church under construction in north Burleson, authorities said Friday.

Christian Right Activists Disrupt Hindu Chaplain In The Senate

By Eric Kleefeld | bio

Today was a historic first for religion in America's civic life: For the very first time, a Hindu delivered the morning invocation in the Senate chamber — only to find the ceremony disrupted by three Christian right activists.

We have video of the astonishing scene, and we'll be sharing it with you shortly.

Florida may be hit hard on Medicare payments

South Florida Business Journal - 5:30 PM EDT Monday, July 9, 2007

Impending cuts to Medicare's home oxygen benefit will hit Florida harder than any other state, shows a data analysis.

A study by Avalere Health LLC found about 19,700 Florida residents would be impacted by the change. Texas is the next hardest-hit state, with 17,400 residents affected, the study found.

The Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 and the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 are responsible for the pending reductions in the reimbursement rate for the home oxygen benefit, said the Council for Quality Respiratory Care, a Washington, D.C.-based group of home oxygen therapy providers and manufacturers.

Felony

By Josh Marshall

Hmmm. A very knowledgeable emailer says it's a felony ...

Invoking a privilege is one thing, but telling a person not to show up in response to a subpoena -- if only to actually invoke the privilege -- is quite another. It's not just worse, it's a felony under federal criminal law. See for yourself.

Bush on Plame: Who Cares?

By Josh Marshall

A very revealing moment. For the first time the president was asked, now that all the legal stuff is over and there's nothing more pending, whether he was disappointed in the fact that a number of his top advisors were responsible for revealing the name of a covert CIA operative.

Newly released tapes shed light on Nixon era

Suzanne Goldenberg
Thursday July 12, 2007

Guardian

The voice on the tape is eerie. It is the final stretch of the 1972 elections, and in the White House, Richard Nixon is poring over the news from the campaign trail with his aide, Chuck Colson, and weighing up his prospects for re-election.

"What did he say about Watergate?" Nixon's voice is heard asking. Then, when he hears that voters are far more concerned with Vietnam than the details of a break-in at the Democratic campaign headquarters in the Watergate hotel, Nixon says with evident relief: "It's mainly a Republican problem, you know."

EPA foregoes opportunity to improve nanotechnology oversight

Action needed urgently to ensure public and market confidence in safety

WASHINGTON, DC—The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released its current thinking on whether a nanoscale material is a “new” or “existing” chemical substance under the Toxic Substances Control Act (TSCA). In the document, TSCA Inventory Status of Nanoscale Substances—General Approach, EPA states that it will maintain its practice of determining whether nanoscale substances qualify as new chemicals under TSCA on a case-by-case basis.

According to former EPA official and Project on Emerging Nanotechnologies (PEN) senior advisor J. Clarence Davies, “The agency’s current practice is inadequate to deal with nanotechnology. It is essential that EPA move quickly to recognize the novel biological and ecological characteristics of nanoscale materials. It can do this only by using the ‘new uses’ provisions of TSCA, a subject not mentioned in the EPA’s inventory document. With the approach outlined by EPA and because of the weaknesses in the law, the agency is not even able to identify which substances are nanomaterials, much less determine whether they pose a hazard.”

Neocon Bill Kristol expects Bush to attack Pakistan

07/12/2007 @ 8:54 am

Filed by David Edwards and Muriel Kane

Fox News on Thursday asked Neoconservative Bill Kristol to comment on the interim progress report on Iraq, which is about to be released and is expected to show an even split between benchmarks which show progress and those which do not.

Opposition to American Oil Grab is Unifying Iraqis

By Ben Lando, UPI
Posted on July 12, 2007, Printed on July 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56513/

U.S. President Bush may be right: Iraq's oil law, although highly controversial, could be a "benchmark for reconciliation."

When Iraq's council of ministers last week suddenly approved the law, critics of various stripes united in opposition. Shiite and Sunni political parties alike denounced it, vowed to defeat it, even threatened to ensure Parliament can't take it up. It is seen by some as weakening the central government and giving too much to foreign companies.

Water World: Slipping Toward Climate Catastrophe

By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
Posted on July 12, 2007, Printed on July 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56125/

Editor's Note: George Monbiot is a British journalist and author whose expertise is on climate change and other environmental issues. Monbiot's article reveals that government ineptitude in the face of increasingly frightening scientific data on climate change is not limited to the United States: The UK government is dangerously negligent on energy and climate issues even though it knows better.

Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team led by James Hansen at NASA, it suggests that the grim reports issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic.

The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59 centimeters this century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 2-3 degrees Celsius above today's level 3.5 million years ago, sea levels rose not by 59 cm but by 25 meters. The ice responded immediately to changes in temperature.

While Europeans Vacation, Americans Toil

By Marie Cocco, Truthdig
Posted on July 12, 2007, Printed on July 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56523/

If you're reading this while on vacation, great for you. If you're reading this at work, having recently finished a vacation or a five-day weekend cobbled together around last week's celebration of Independence Day, I hope the time off was as spectacular as the fireworks.

If you won't get another day off work until December's holiday season, you're not alone. Americans and vacations just don't mix.

Novak's Limited Plame-gate Hang-Out

By Robert Parry
July 10, 2007

Right-wing columnist Robert Novak has played a complex game in advancing the Bush administration’s “Plame-gate” cover-up. Novak was the one who first published the identity of CIA officer Valerie Plame; he then answered a few questions before going silent; now, he is making a series of misleading arguments via his columns.

Novak’s deceptions and the complicity of major news organization that publish his column without demanding clarifications may be unprecedented in the history of U.S. journalism. Theoretically at least, news organizations are expected to ferret out government wrongdoing, not act as accomplices in the crime and then abettors of the cover-up.

Yet pieced together, Novak’s hedged disclosures and other evidence, including facts from the trial of former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, shed light on the dark underbelly of this extraordinary scandal, albeit sometimes unintentionally.

The Other War: Iraq Vets Bear Witness

by CHRIS HEDGES & LAILA AL-ARIAN

[from the July 30, 2007 issue]

Over the past several months The Nation has interviewed fifty combat veterans of the Iraq War from around the United States in an effort to investigate the effects of the four-year-old occupation on average Iraqi civilians. These combat veterans, some of whom bear deep emotional and physical scars, and many of whom have come to oppose the occupation, gave vivid, on-the-record accounts. They described a brutal side of the war rarely seen on television screens or chronicled in newspaper accounts.

Their stories, recorded and typed into thousands of pages of transcripts, reveal disturbing patterns of behavior by American troops in Iraq. Dozens of those interviewed witnessed Iraqi civilians, including children, dying from American firepower. Some participated in such killings; others treated or investigated civilian casualties after the fact. Many also heard such stories, in detail, from members of their unit. The soldiers, sailors and marines emphasized that not all troops took part in indiscriminate killings. Many said that these acts were perpetrated by a minority. But they nevertheless described such acts as common and said they often go unreported--and almost always go unpunished.

Bush again links al-Qaida in Iraq, 9/11

By Jonathan S. Landay - McClatchy Washington Bureau

Published 12:00 am PDT Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Story appeared in MAIN NEWS section, Page A11

WASHINGTON -- Struggling to stem growing opposition to his Iraq policy even among Republicans, President Bush contended anew Tuesday that the perpetrators of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States are the same as al-Qaida in Iraq, a violent insurgent group that didn't exist until after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion.

It was the second time in two weeks that Bush has made the link in an apparent attempt to transform lingering fear of another terrorist attack in the United States into backing for the buildup of U.S. troops in Iraq.

Dingell Playing Troublemaker?

Submitted by Bill Scher on July 9, 2007 - 7:28pm.

As I've reported twice before, Rep. John Dingell, chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and longtime ally of automakers, has been sending mixed messages about his intentions on global warming. It's been unclear if that's because his views were evolving in a positive direction, or he's trying to keep enviromental critics off-balance.

His latest gambit indicates the latter.

Taylor Used Off-The-Record Email to Be "Efficient"

By Paul Kiel - July 11, 2007, 11:20 AM

Karl Rove and his aides at the White House have regularly used email accounts provided by the Republican National Committee to send and receive emails that should have been sent and received on the official White House system under the Presidential Records Act. When Sen. Leahy asked Taylor about this, she said that the email system had been created in order to avoid violations of the Hatch Act, which prohibits the use of government resources for political means.

Fickle winds, clouded sun pose problems for renewable energy

Robert S. Boyd | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 11, 2007 08:24:37 AM

WASHINGTON — Scientists and engineers are struggling to find ways around a major obstacle to the growth of renewable energy: the fact that inexhaustible sources of energy, such as the sun and the wind, are undependable.

Solar power doesn't work at night or on cloudy days. Wind is notoriously fickle, often dying down in the late afternoon just as electricity demand is peaking.

This on-and-off variability is a serious problem, since many people who worry about global warming hope that clean, nonpolluting renewables will reduce the demand for fossil fuels such as coal and oil. More than 20 states have passed laws requiring utilities to generate 15 to 20 percent or more of their electricity from nonfossil fuel sources in the next decade or two. Congress is considering similar proposals.

Organic farming can feed the world, U-M study shows

ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Organic farming can yield up to three times as much food on individual farms in developing countries, as low-intensive methods on the same land—according to new findings which refute the long-standing claim that organic farming methods cannot produce enough food to feed the global population.

Researchers from the University of Michigan found that in developed countries, yields were almost equal on organic and conventional farms. In developing countries, food production could double or triple using organic methods, said Ivette Perfecto, professor at U-M's School of Natural Resources and Environment, and one the study's principal investigators. Catherine Badgley, research scientist in the Museum of Paleontology, is a co-author of the paper along with several current and former graduate and undergraduate students from U-M.

Tobacco industry efforts to derail effective anti-smoking campaigns

Anti-smoking ads that reveal the tobacco industry’s deceptive practices have been aggressively quashed through various methods found Temple University Assistant Professor Jennifer K. Ibrahim, co-author of an analysis in the August issue of the American Journal of Public Health.

In the article, Ibrahim tracks the rise and fall of state and national efforts to curb smoking for the past 40 years. She chronicles industry strategies to prevent a campaign’s creation, steer messages to smaller audiences, limit the content of the message, limit or eliminate the campaign’s funding, and pursue litigation against the campaign. Ibrahim looks at campaigns in Minnesota, California, Arizona, Oregon, Florida, and a national campaign from the American Legacy Foundation.

Searching for love in all the Right's places

While Giuliani and McCain register 'morally repugnant' on the religious right's traditional-values meter, Romney has a bigger problem: many conservative Christian evangelical leaders don't believe his religion measures up

For more than two decades social and economic conservatives have artfully put aside their differences and forged a powerful coalition -- under the umbrella of the Republican Party -- that has won five of the last seven presidential elections and, until this past November, controlled Congress for more than a decade. Ken Connor, the Chairman of the Center for a Just Society, described it in a recent column titled "Base to GOP: Hasta la Vista, Baby!" as "One of the most successful coalitions in modern political history."

FBI Would Skirt the Law With Proposed Phone Record Program, Experts Say

July 10, 2007 1:12 PM

Justin Rood Reports:

A proposed new FBI program would skirt federal laws by paying private companies to hold millions of phone and Internet records which the bureau is barred from keeping itself, experts say.

The $5 million project would apparently pay private firms to store at least two years' worth of telephone and Internet activity by millions of Americans, few of whom would ever be considered a suspect in any terrorism, intelligence or criminal matter.

BLM Gets OK for New North Slope Drilling

July 10, 2007 — By Associated Press

FAIRBANKS, Alaska -- The Bureau of Land Management could go ahead with plans to allow drilling in a sensitive area near Teshekpuk Lake on the North Slope, an agency spokeswoman said.

The BLM added to its environmental impact assessment of drilling in the area and that information is now being reviewed, said spokeswoman Sharon Wilson. The results of the review should be completed soon, she said.

The Best Health Care Is Reserved for Congress

By Don Sloan, Caveat Press
Posted on July 11, 2007, Printed on July 11, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56439/

The following is excerpted from Chapter 2 of Practicing Medicine Without a License! The Corporate Takeover of Healthcare in America.

Nothing happens in a political vacuum. Nothing. The toe bone is connected to the head bone. Healthcare's place in a country agenda is but a microcosm of where a nation ranks its social consciousness. It reveals the quality of our purpose, our economy, our priorities and where they are placed on the chain of command. Along with education, healthcare tells all about a government and its people.

The Foreclosing of America (Part 2): Freddie Gets Rich

By Rick Perlstein on July 10, 2007 - 12:37pm.

[Read Part 1 here.]

Let's say you're a young professional couple from Cleveland, eager to pop out some kids. It's 2004. You want to do what young professional couples eager to pop out children have done at least since World War II: own your own house in the suburbs. It's the American Dream.

Okay, you're not quite a young professional couple - more like an aspiring professional couple. Neither of you have been able to get a remunerative job in your chosen field yet, but you're getting by, and you think your prospects are good. You've been ambivalent, thinking about renting a few more years until you can get up on more solid financial footing. Then the president helps you push away your fears. You hear his exhortation, in June of 2004: "The more ownership there is in America, the more people have a vital stake in the future of this country." You put aside your doubts. For you deeply admire President Bush, deeply trust him.

Despite warnings, oil usage expected to increase

By James Kanter
Published: July 9, 2007

PARIS: Despite four years of high prices and increasingly dire warnings about climate change, a new report Monday predicted that world oil demand would rise faster than previously expected over the next five years while production slips, threatening a supply crunch.

"Demand is growing and as people become accustomed to higher prices they are starting to return to their previous trends of high consumption," said Lawrence Eagles, the head of oil markets analysis at the Paris-based International Energy Agency. "It's important that we have more investment and a greater emphasis on energy efficiency."

'No sun link' to climate change

By Richard Black
BBC Environment Correspondent

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun's output cannot be causing modern-day climate change.

It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun's output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen.

It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun's effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

Women's Rights are Human Rights, Iranian Edition

Via Feministing comes awful news from Iran. For participating in a banned rally for women's rights in June,2006, twenty-four year old Delaram Ali has been sentenced to 34 months in prison and ten lashes.

Treasurys Boosted by Housing Market Woes

Tuesday July 10, 5:32 pm ET NEW YORK (AP) -- U.S. Treasury bond prices fell Tuesday as investors focused on problems in the housing market and forgot their concerns about rising inflation even as the Federal Reserve chief sought to address them.

Michael Moore Rips Wolf Blitzer on CNN: "Why Don't You Tell the American People the Truth"

By Adam Howard
Posted on July 9, 2007, Printed on July 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers//56446/

I have always noticed that Michael Moore only receives one kind of coverage from the mainstream media: the bad kind. Every time one of his films comes out, from Bowling for Columbine, to Fahrenheit 9/11 and now Sicko, they have been on a quest to "debunk" them. Why? Because one of the themes that has run consistently throughout Moore's films is a contempt for the mainstream media's laziness and complicit role they have many American atrocities and problems.

Home-Front Ecology: What Our Grandparents Can Teach Us About Saving the World

By Mike Davis, Sierra Magazine
Posted on July 10, 2007, Printed on July 10, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/55925/

Does this generation of Americans have the "right stuff" to meet the epic challenges of sustaining life on a rapidly warming planet? Sure, the mainstream media are full of talk about carbon credits, hybrid cars, and smart urbanism -- but even so, our environmental footprints are actually growing larger, not smaller.

The typical new U.S. home, for instance, is 40 percent larger than that of 25 years ago, even though the average household has fewer people. In that same period, dinosaur-like SUVs (now 50 percent of all private vehicles) have taken over the freeways, while the amount of retail space per capita (an indirect but reliable measure of consumption) has quadrupled.

Right Wing Launches Dishonest, Misinformed Attacks Against Live Earth

Right now, the Live Earth concert series is ongoing in each of the seven continents. Spearheaded by Vice President Al Gore, the event “marks the beginning of a multi-year campaign…to drive individuals, corporations and governments to take action to solve global warming.”

With more than 2 billion people in 100 countries across the globe expected to tune in, the concerts are “an unprecedented opportunity to ask for the world’s attention long enough to deliver an SOS and then to begin delivering information about the solutions to every single person,” says Gore.

What happened to the George Bush who insisted on honest government?

Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: July 05, 2007 03:13:05 PM

Why is it that the Bush administration, in its dying throes, looks remarkably more like an organized crime ring than one of the arms of the American government? A poorly organized and run crime ring, truly, but a crime ring nonetheless.

Why do I keep remembering the George Bush that I actually once voted for when he first ran for president — the one who talked of bringing in an administration that would look more like the face of America and of giving us a government whose appointees would be honest, upright, fair and moral.

Frank Rich: A Profile in Cowardice

THERE was never any question that President Bush would grant amnesty to Scooter Libby, the man who knows too much about the lies told to sell the war in Iraq. The only questions were when, and how, Mr. Bush would buy Mr. Libby’s silence. Now we have the answers, and they’re at least as incriminating as the act itself. They reveal the continued ferocity of a White House cover-up and expose the true character of a commander in chief whose tough-guy shtick can no longer camouflage his fundamental cowardice.

The timing of the president’s Libby intervention was a surprise. Many assumed he would mimic the sleazy 11th-hour examples of most recent vintage: his father’s pardon of six Iran-contra defendants who might have dragged him into that scandal, and Bill Clinton’s pardon of the tax fugitive Marc Rich, the former husband of a major campaign contributor and the former client of none other than the ubiquitous Mr. Libby.

Outing Valerie Plame aided our enemies

By Bob Ewegen
Denver Post Columnist

Article Last Updated: 07/06/2007 09:57:24 PM MDT

After 44 years in journalism, I don't get angry very often about the dirty tricks that so often besmirch the American political process.

But I am angry about the Valerie Plame affair, a sordid tale that flared anew this week when President George Bush commuted the prison sentence of Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

NYT Editorial: The Road Home

Published: July 8, 2007

It is time for the United States to leave Iraq, without any more delay than the Pentagon needs to organize an orderly exit.

Like many Americans, we have put off that conclusion, waiting for a sign that President Bush was seriously trying to dig the United States out of the disaster he created by invading Iraq without sufficient cause, in the face of global opposition, and without a plan to stabilize the country afterward.

PAUL KRUGMAN: Health Care Terror

These days terrorism is the first refuge of scoundrels. So when British authorities announced that a ring of Muslim doctors working for the National Health Service was behind the recent failed bomb plot, we should have known what was coming.

“National healthcare: Breeding ground for terror?” read the on-screen headline, as the Fox News host Neil Cavuto and the commentator Jerry Bowyer solemnly discussed how universal health care promotes terrorism.

Who Runs the CIA? Outsiders for Hire.

By R.J. Hillhouse

Sunday, July 8, 2007; Page B05

Red alert: Our national security is being outsourced.

The most intriguing secrets of the "war on terror" have nothing to do with al-Qaeda and its fellow travelers. They're about the mammoth private spying industry that all but runs U.S. intelligence operations today.

Surprised? No wonder. In April, Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell was poised to publicize a year-long examination of outsourcing by U.S. intelligence agencies. But the report was inexplicably delayed -- and suddenly classified a national secret. What McConnell doesn't want you to know is that the private spy industry has succeeded where no foreign government has: It has penetrated the CIA and is running the show.

Bush Claims Executive Privilege In Attempt To Block Miers, Taylor Testimony

AP | LAURIE KELLMAN
July 9, 2007 10:37 AM

President Bush invoked executive privilege Monday to deny requests by Congress for testimony from two former aides in connection with the firings of federal prosecutors.

The White House, however, did offer again to make former counsel Harriet Miers and one-time political director Sara Taylor available for private, off-the-record interviews.

Iraqi Oil Workers' Union Founder: U.S.-Backed Oil Law Is "Robbery"

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now!
Posted on July 9, 2007, Printed on July 9, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/56301/

As the Iraqi cabinet approves part of a controversial oil law, we speak with Faleh Abood Umara, the general secretary of the Federation of Oil Unions and a founding member of the oil workers union in Iraq. He calls on Iraqi lawmakers to reject the legislation. We also speak with Hashmeya Muhsin Hussein, president of the Electrical Utility Workers Union and the first woman to head a national union in Iraq.