Digby: Moving The Ball

The media have been talking up Tom Tancredo's new ad, asking whether it crosses the line. It is a doozy:

There are consequences to open borders beyond the 20 million aliens who have come to take our jobs. Islamic terrorists now freely roam U.S. soil, Jihadists who froth with hate here to do as they have in London, Spain, Russia.

The price we pay for spineless politicians who refuse to defend our borders against those who come to kill.

It is such an extreme ad that you wouldn't think anyone who wanted to make a serious case would create such a thing.

To Know Us Is To Love Us

Slate readers on how to improve America's image in the world.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 14, 2007, at 6:55 PM ET

Last week, in a column inspired in part by Karen Hughes' departure as the State Department's public diplomat and in part by Tom Stoppard's new play, Rock 'n' Roll, I asked readers for ideas on how to improve America's image in the world.

During the Cold War, our freewheeling jazz, rock, and movies appealed to millions of people behind the Iron Curtain. Today, the vast phenomenon of anti-Americanism stems mainly from our government's policies. But if the next president changed some of those policies, is there anything in our culture that might restore our luster, or at least make us less hateful, not just to Arabs and Muslims, but also to the Asians and Europeans who were once our closest friends?

Dew-harvesting 'web' conjures water out of thin air

A portable dew-harvesting kit inspired by a spider's web is being developed by Israeli architects for use in areas where clean and safe water is scarce.

In February 2007, UK engineering firm Arup and charity WaterAid held a competition aimed at finding new technologies to help people gain access to clean water in areas where it is scarce. This is a problem for about 1 billion people worldwide.

Senator: U.S. has become haven for war criminals

Renee Schoof | McClatchy Newspapers

last updated: November 14, 2007 07:45:55 PM

WASHINGTON — More than 1,000 people from 85 countries who are accused of such crimes as rape, killings, torture and genocide are living in the United States, according to Department of Homeland Security figures.

America has become a haven for the world's war criminals because it lacks the laws needed to prosecute them, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., said Wednesday. There's been only one U.S. indictment of someone suspected of a serious human-rights abuse. Durbin said torture was the only serious human-rights violation that was a crime under American law when committed outside the United States by a non-American national.

Living arrangements of low-income children may not play a key role in their well-being

The living arrangements of low-income children do not significantly predict their well-being, regardless of their race or ethnicity. That’s the finding of a new study that has implications for policy and practice.

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill and the University of Chicago, is published in the November/December 2007 issue of the journal Child Development.

Using data on approximately 2,000 low-income families, the researchers sought to compare the development of children living only with their mothers with children in other arrangements (those living with their biological fathers, in blended families, and in multigenerational households) to determine the effect of living arrangements on the children’s cognitive achievement and emotional adjustment.

Worldwide atmospheric measurements will determine the role of atmospheric fine particles

The Finnish Meteorological Institute in Helsinki, Finland, will host the first annual meeting of the European Integrated Project on Aerosol Cloud Climate and Air Quality Interactions, EUCAARI, headed by Academy Professor Markku Kulmala, on 19–22 November 2007. The purpose of EUCAARI is to significantly improve current knowledge of the impact of fine particles in the atmosphere on climate and air quality. The first year of the project was dedicated to developing state-of-the-art aerosol measuring equipment, establishing a global network of measuring stations, and planning. The measuring period, beginning next spring, will collect data on European air through both ground-based and airborne measurements simultaneously.

During the past year, this EU-wide research project has developed an extremely sensitive measuring device for aerosols, allowing for reliable measurements of particles less than 3 nanometres across. Such a development in measuring technology will play a key role when solving the physical and chemical questions of aerosol generation and formation, and has already enabled significant, recently-published new observations on the quantity of particles less than 3 nm in size.

Are Antimicrobial Soaps Breeding Tougher Bugs?

Some Experts Say Risks Outweigh Benefits

By Ranit Mishori

Special to The Washington Post
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page HE01

If cleanliness is next to godliness, modern America is the land of the faithful -- fighting the good fight against today's so-called superbugs with sparkling countertops and well-washed hands.

Our culture's cleanliness obsession has been fed by a booming business in household products that promise the virtue of sterility. According to estimates by the Environmental Protection Agency, our antimicrobial crusade has us spending almost $1 billion annually on soaps and detergents, toys and cutting boards, bedsheets and toothbrushes, all of them treated with chemical compounds designed to kill the germs that cling to them. At the forefront of this product niche is the antimicrobial hand wash, commonly fortified with the bug-battling chemical triclosan.

US Economy–Recession, Depression, or Collapse?

by Shepherd Bliss

“For Consumers, the Hits Keep Coming” a recent banner headline in a New York Times-owned daily newspaper here in Northern California reports. The article misses the main points. If we continue to understand ourselves as primarily passive consumers, rather than as active citizens, the US economy will enter at least a recession, probably a depression, and possibly a collapse. Even our republic is at risk.

Rampant consumption, our addiction to growth, and our failure to accept limits to growth damage us. The headline beneath the banner-”Cleanup Response Criticized”-reveals one of the saddest results. We are not adequately cleaning up the San Francisco Bay after a recent oil spill. Many other aspects of our environment need cleaning up. Without a healthy natural environment and climate conducive to humans, no economy can endure. Over-consumption drives the increasingly extreme and chaotic climate.

Think Progress: Secrecy measure hidden in transportation bill.

Last year, Sen. Tom Coburn (R-OK) worked to ensure that “budget justifications” for appropriations bills are made “available to the public at the same time they were made available to appropriators.”

Carnage on Wall Street as loans go bad

By Steve Schifferes
Economics reporter, BBC News, New York

SUB-PRIME CRISIS SERIES Special reports from the USA Next: What can be done?

The scale of the losses that will hit Wall Street banks could approach half a trillion dollars as large numbers of sub-prime home loans go bad.

And the carnage in the financial markets could cause a credit squeeze that will dampen economic growth for years to come.

The US sub-prime crisis is leading to a wave of reposessions across the US that is having a devastating effect on the US housing market, and is likely to lead to the halving of the US economic growth rate in the next six months.

U.S. Falls to No. 15 in Average Worker Income

By David Francis, Christian Science Monitor
Posted on November 13, 2007, Printed on November 15, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67723/

"Comparisons are odious," that is, hateful, according to a popular phrase about seven centuries old. Comparison, however, is one of the tasks assigned to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris, an international body of 30 of the richest countries. It tries to compare its members' economic and social data, a difficult, perhaps even odious, job.

Sometime back it broadened statistically (for comparison purposes) the definition of the average workers in its member nations while trying to examine relative tax burdens. The result was "monumental," reckons Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. The OECD ranked the after-tax income of the average worker in the United States as 15th among its member nations. The richest middle class, if measured in terms of the purchasing power of their income, was Britain.

First-ever 'State of the Carbon Cycle Report' finds troubling imbalance

The first “State of the Carbon Cycle Report” for North America, released online this week by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, finds the continent’s carbon budget increasingly overwhelmed by human-caused emissions. North American sources release nearly 2 billion tons of carbon into the atmosphere each year, mostly as carbon dioxide. Carbon “sinks” such as growing forests may remove up to half this amount, but these current sinks may turn into new sources as climate changes.

“By burning fossil fuel and clearing forests human beings have significantly altered the global carbon cycle,” says Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution’s Department of Global Ecology, one of the report’s lead authors. A result has been the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, but so far this has been partially offset by carbon uptake by the oceans and by plants and soils on land.

Dartmouth researchers show effects of low dose arsenic on development

A team of Dartmouth Medical School (DMS) researchers has determined that low doses of arsenic disrupt the activity of a hormone critical in development. The finding is further evidence that arsenic at low doses (at levels found in U.S. drinking water in some areas) can be harmful. The study appeared in the Oct. 26, 2007, online edition of the journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP), and it will be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal.

Bridge Protest Leaves U.S. Team Vulnerable

Posted on Nov 14, 2007

The bridge world is in an absolute tizzy over a protest by the world champion U.S. women’s team, which held up a sign during its victory celebration in Shanghai last month that read: “We did not vote for Bush.” Some bridge fans have accused the group of treason, and the United States Bridge Federation has decided that its authority trumps free speech, a value some people vaguely remember associating with America.

Republicans call for withdrawal of 'hidden cost of wars' report

Two Republican senators say Democrats can't do math.

Or not exactly. Senior Republicans on Congress' Joint Economic Committee, Sen. Sam Brownback (R-KN) and Rep. James Saxon (R-NJ) are calling on Democrats to retract a staff report alleging the hidden costs of the Iraq war could total more than $1.5 trillion.

Martin’s New Rules Are Corporate Welfare for Big Media

Martin’s New Rules Are Corporate Welfare for Big Media

WASHINGTON — Today, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin released proposed rule changes that would gut the longstanding prohibition on owning a daily newspaper and broadcast stations in the same media market.

F.B.I. Says Guards Killed 14 Iraqis Without Cause

By DAVID JOHNSTON and JOHN M. BRODER

WASHINGTON, Nov. 13 — Federal agents investigating the Sept. 16 episode in which Blackwater security personnel shot and killed 17 Iraqi civilians have found that at least 14 of the shootings were unjustified and violated deadly-force rules in effect for security contractors in Iraq, according to civilian and military officials briefed on the case.

The F.B.I. investigation into the shootings in Baghdad is still under way, but the findings, which indicate that the company’s employees recklessly used lethal force, are already under review by the Justice Department.

Have Democrats Lost Their Liberal Spirit?

By Bruce Miroff, University Press of Kansas
Posted on November 14, 2007, Printed on November 14, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/63470/

Intro written by Colin Greer: The following excerpt is from Bruce Miroff's book on the 1972 McGovern Presidential campaign, The Liberals' Moment. This is the first history of that epochal event in progressive politics. The book is rich in detail and its path takes us to the recognition that, for two or three generations, the leadership of the Democratic party and its guiding centrist message derives from politicos, DLC luminaries including Bill Clinton and John Podesta, who cut their teeth in the McGovern campaign and learned the wrong lessons from it.

In 1972 the American Left, -- and there was then a Left in America -- was destroyed in the same way the Right seemed to be destroyed in 1964. The Goldwater defeat was actually replicated on the Left by the McGovern defeat. The McGovern defeat was so devastating that professional politicians basically cut themselves off from the base of the people who make political life real at the local level and whose needs would push toward progressive policy if the public interest were a public priority.

Envious monkeys can spot a fair deal

Monkeys invest less energy in a task if they see other monkeys receiving better rewards for the same effort, researchers report. They say that their experiment provides new evidence that non-human primates can feel envy. The findings could also help explain why humans have such a keen sense of fairness, according to experts.

Social change relies more on the easily influenced than the highly influential

An important new study appearing in the December issue of the Journal of Consumer Research finds that it is rarely the case that highly influential individuals are responsible for bringing about shifts in public opinion.

Instead, using a number of computer simulations of public opinion change, Duncan J. Watts (Columbia University) and Peter Sheridan Dodds (University of Vermont), find that it is the presence of large numbers of “easily influenced” people who bring about major shifts by influencing other easy-to-influence people.

“Our study demonstrates not so much that the conventional wisdom is wrong . . . but that it is insufficiently specified to be meaningful,” the researchers write. “Under most conditions that we consider, we find that large cascades of influence are driven not by influentials, but by a critical mass of easily influenced individuals.”

The Politics of the Personal: Over the Edge

Submitted by David Neiwert on November 12, 2007 - 11:30am.

Part 3 of a five-part series. Parts 1 and 2.

One of the other things about growing up in a place like Idaho is that, yes Virginia, there are racists. Neo-Nazis. White supremacists. Conspiracy-mongering survivalists. Militiamen.

You name it, we’ve got ‘em. Not very many of ‘em, mind you. Their numbers are really quite small, but they’ve been coming in numbers (mostly from California and Arizona) large enough to shift the political demographics in the state. And they come because the nearly all-white cultural landscape is a comfortable one.

Middle-Class Dream Eludes African American Families

Many Blacks Worse off Than Their Parents, Study Says

By Michael A. Fletcher

Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, November 13, 2007; Page A01

Nearly half of African Americans born to middle-income parents in the late 1960s plunged into poverty or near-poverty as adults, according to a new study -- a perplexing finding that analysts say highlights the fragile nature of middle-class life for many African Americans.

Overall, family incomes have risen for both blacks and whites over the past three decades. But in a society where the privileges of class and income most often perpetuate themselves from generation to generation, black Americans have had more difficulty than whites in transmitting those benefits to their children.

All We Want for Christmas is a Good Economy

By Marie Cocco, Washington Post Writers Group
Posted on November 13, 2007, Printed on November 13, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67653/

Sometime before the average price of gas topped the $3-a-gallon mark, just as Wall Street was getting jumpy about its year-end bonuses -- the cache is expected to dip by 10 percent this year, down from last year's record haul of $23.9 billion -- an inevitable moment arrived. The economy beat Iraq as the issue of most concern to Americans, according to a Newsweek poll.

It's hard to fret over whether Manhattan financiers will be buying summer estates in the Hamptons next year, or merely renovating that waterfront cottage with so much potential. Still and all, in an economy where for years the greatest rewards have trickled up, it gives me the jitters to think that the rich might suddenly become more like the rest of us: suffering the fallout from the too-often-ignored scandals and the utter neglect of nagging problems that are distinguishing characteristics of American economic policy.

Digby

It's Just Like "Hell Week"

... or maybe they just wanted to blow off some steam. And anyway, "bad guys always lie" so you have to torture them.

FOREMAN: On Friday, Michael Mukasey became attorney general of the United States despite his refusal to define an interrogation practice known as waterboarding, essentially convincing a person that he is drowning as torture. In a world where terrorists really are out there trying to kill us, where is the bright line between what must be done and what should be done? Retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Charlie Swift teaches, now teaches at Emery Law School in Atlanta and still represents one of the Guantanamo detainees. And with me in Washington, David Rivkin, an official at the Justice Department in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administration. Professor, let me start with you. Where do we stand in this debate now. It seems now that we've gone through months of trying to decide what we think torture and what is not.

Media Solidarity

Atrios and Matt Stoller make a good point about how the press is covering the WGA strike. And it just proves how corporate values rule the media. After all, the strikers in this case are fellow members of the media themselves, and yet they're getting hostile coverage. And likewise, many of the news people who are covering them are in unions too. There can be no reasons other than corporate pressure to explain the hostility or the fact the strike is being virtually blacked out in the local press despite stars and political activists showing up to picket along with ordinary Americans.


Telling It Straight

Intel Official: Say Goodbye to Privacy

A top intelligence official says it is time people in the United States changed their definition of privacy.

Privacy no longer can mean anonymity, says Donald Kerr, the principal deputy director of national intelligence. Instead, it should mean that government and businesses properly safeguards people's private communications and financial information.

Trust 'em?

TAU Professor Finds Global Warming Is Melting Soft Coral

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Coral extinction could mean a worldwide catastrophe impacting all marine and terrestrial life

Tel Aviv University Professor (and alumnus) Hudi Benayahu, head of TAU's Porter School of Environmental Studies, has found that soft corals, an integral and important part of reef environments, are simply melting and wasting away. And Prof. Benayahu believes this could mean a global marine catastrophe.

Environmental stress, says Benayahu, is damaging the symbiotic relationship between soft corals and the microscopic symbiotic algae living in their tissues. There is no doubt that global warming is to blame, warns the marine biologist, explaining that this symbiotic relationship is key for the survival of most soft corals.

David Neiwert: Ron Paul's record in Congress

Sunday, November 11, 2007
-- by Dave

In the comments thread to my previous post on Ron Paul, the indispensable Trefayne compiled a series of posts on Paul's track record as a congressman, particularly those bills he sponsored or co-sponsored.

Here's Trefayne:

What's more, consider Ron Paul's record in Congress. Not that he'll ever occupy the Oval Office, but what would he do after pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq? His past legislative proposals will provide some clues, and they are not friendly to progressive ideas. Here are some bills that Ron Paul has proposed, not merely voted on, but sponsored. And you can see that he tries repeatedly on certain issues, which suggests they are important to him.

This Is Your Brain on Politics

This article was written by Marco Iacoboni, Joshua Freedman and Jonas Kaplan of the University of California, Los Angeles, Semel Institute for Neuroscience; Kathleen Hall Jamieson of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania; and Tom Freedman, Bill Knapp and Kathryn Fitzgerald of FKF Applied Research.

IN anticipation of the 2008 presidential election, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to watch the brains of a group of swing voters as they responded to the leading presidential candidates. Our results reveal some voter impressions on which this election may well turn.

Our 20 subjects — registered voters who stated that they were open to choosing a candidate from either party next November — included 10 men and 10 women. In late summer, we asked them to answer a list of questions about their political preferences, then observed their brain activity for nearly an hour in the scanner at the Ahmanson Lovelace Brain Mapping Center at the University of California, Los Angeles. Afterward, each subject filled out a second questionnaire.

Pakistan Nuclear Security Questioned

Lack of Knowledge About Arsenal May Limit U.S. Options

By Joby Warrick

Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, November 11, 2007; Page A01

When the United States learned in 2001 that Pakistani scientists had shared nuclear secrets with members of al-Qaeda, an alarmed Bush administration responded with tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment such as intrusion detectors and ID systems to safeguard Pakistan's nuclear weapons.

But Pakistan remained suspicious of U.S. aims and declined to give U.S. experts direct access to the half-dozen or so bunkers where the components of its arsenal of about 50 nuclear weapons are stored. For the officials in Washington now monitoring Pakistan's deepening political crisis, the experience offered both reassurance and grounds for concern.

A New Channel for Soft Money Starts Flowing

By JIM RUTENBERG and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

The so-called Wounded Warriors Act, legislation intended to improve health care for veterans, has attracted nearly unanimous, bipartisan support in Congress. So why would the newly formed Foundation for a Secure and Prosperous America begin running a television commercial urging the citizens of South Carolina to tell Congress to pass it?

The answer lies in the commercial’s glowing images of Senator John McCain, the Arizona Republican banking on a South Carolina victory to jump-start his cash-poor Republican primary campaign. The group that paid for the advertisement operates independently of Mr. McCain’s campaign, but was set up and financed by his supporters seeking to help him as much as possible up to the limits of the law.

Glenn Greenwald: Dianne Feinstein -- Bush's key ally in the Senate -- to support telecom amnesty

Two months ago, Dianne Feinstein used her position on the Senate Intelligence Committee to enable passage of Bush's FISA amendments, granting the President vast new warrantless surveillance powers.

Last month, Feinstein used her position on the Senate Judiciary Committee to ensure confirmation of Bush's highly controversial judicial nominee Leslie Southwick, by being the only Committee Democrat to vote for the nomination (The Politico: "Sen. Dianne Feinstein had emerged as a linchpin in the controversial nomination").

Who Exactly Is the Enemy in Iraq?

By Robert Dreyfuss, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 12, 2007, Printed on November 12, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/67573/

Who's the Enemy?

In Iraq, It's Getting Harder to Find Any Bad Guys
By Robert Dreyfuss

Who is the enemy? Who, exactly, are we fighting in Iraq? Why are we there? And what's our objective?

Nearly five years into the war, the answers to basic questions like these ought to be obvious. In the Alice in Wonderland-like wilderness of mirrors that is Iraq, though, they're anything but.

Why, Barack, why?

The great Social Security debate of 2005 was a seminal moment for American progressives. Conventional fiscal wisdom in the Beltway was that the aging population is THE big problem — when the truth is that grim long-run fiscal projections mainly reflect projected health care costs. And conventional political wisdom was that the Bush administration’s fear-mongering on the issue would work.

But a determined defense by progressives in the media, on the blogs, and in Congress beat back one spurious argument after another, while the American people made it clear that they really want a program that guarantees a basic retirement income that doesn’t depend on the Dow. And Social Security survived.

Krugman 1, Brooks 0

It's rather unusual for high-profile columnists at the same newspaper to engage in a public quarrel, but the NYT's Paul Krugman and David Brooks have been subtly going at it for days.

In a recent column about race and politics, Krugman noted the Republican Party's use of the Southern Strategy to pit whites and blacks against one another. It's an argument Krugman also emphasized in "The Conscience of a Liberal."

Blaming the wrong president for an overstretched military

Of all of Bush's misstatements from the 2000 presidential election, one of the most obviously-false attacks was on military readiness. Indeed, then-Gov. Bush blamed Clinton and Gore directly for "hollowing out" the military. "If called on by the commander-in-chief today, two entire divisions of the Army would have to report, 'Not ready for duty, sir.'" BC00 campaign aides later acknowledged it was a bogus charge, but that didn't stop Bush from repeating it. A lot.

Presto! CNN Edits Pelosi's Quote To Make Her Say Dem Congress "Hasn't Done Anything"

November 9, 2007 -- 6:59 PM EST // //

I'm not sure anyone could outdo this one in terms of, shall we say, "creative" editing of quotes.

CNN ran a report this afternoon with the headline: "Record Anger At Congress." The network quoted Nancy Pelosi agreeing with this thesis, saying:

"I know that Congress has low approval ratings. I don't approve of Congress because we haven't done anything."

Gloom envelops world markets

By Saskia Scholtes and Michael Mackenzie in New York

updated 3:12 a.m. ET, Sat., Nov. 10, 2007

Stock markets on both sides of the Atlantic concluded their worst week in months on Friday as deepening economic gloom raised expectations that the US Federal Reserve would be forced to cut rates again in the face of mounting credit losses.

The S&P 500 was down 3 per cent for the week. In London, the FTSE 100 fell 3.7 per cent on the week, while the FTSE Eurofirst 300 was down 3.1 per cent, their worst performances since the credit squeeze took hold at the end of July.

Politics - Parallel Party Pushes Democrats

After President Bush vetoed an expansion of a children's health program on October 3, Democratic leaders ramped up pressure on Republicans to override his rejection. A loose-knit army of online bloggers sprang into action -- but with a different focus. They targeted five wayward House Democrats who had not promised to vote with their party. After a flurry of telephone calls and newspaper advertisements, three of the five Democrats backed the override.

"We felt there was a little bit of hypocrisy in the Democrats' tactics," activist Howie Klein told McClatchy News Service. "Here they were with this expensive campaign to draw attention to Republicans who voted against the bill, but no one was saying anything about the Democrats who voted against it."

Frank Rich: The Coup at Home

AS Gen. Pervez Musharraf arrested judges, lawyers and human-rights activists in Pakistan last week, our Senate was busy demonstrating its own civic mettle. Chuck Schumer and Dianne Feinstein, liberal Democrats from America’s two most highly populated blue states, gave the thumbs up to Michael B. Mukasey, ensuring his confirmation as attorney general.

So what if America’s chief law enforcement official won’t say that waterboarding is illegal? A state of emergency is a state of emergency. You’re either willing to sacrifice principles to head off the next ticking bomb, or you’re with the terrorists. Constitutional corners were cut in Washington in impressive synchronicity with General Musharraf’s crackdown in Islamabad.