National Intelligence Council Report: Sun Setting on The American Century

by Tim Reid

WASHINGTON _ The next two decades will see a world living with the daily threat of nuclear war, environmental catastrophe and the decline of America as the dominant global power, according to a frighteningly bleak assessment by the US intelligence community.

"The world of the near future will be subject to an increased likelihood of conflict over resources, including food and water, and will be haunted by the persistence of rogue states and terrorist groups with greater access to nuclear weapons," said the report by the National Intelligence Council, a body of analysts from across the US intelligence community.

The analysts said that the report had been prepared in time for Barack Obama's entry into the Oval office on January 20, where he will be faced with some of the greatest challenges of any newly elected US president.

Down At The Mall, The Shopping Spree is Over

By Sara Robinson

Created 11/21/2008 - 4:13pm

There's an e-mail making the rounds this week:

STORE CLOSINGS AND LAYOFFS:

By the end of Dec. 2008 as announced Circuit City Filed Bankruptcy, they promised to keep all stores open for the holiday season, but afterwards, they plan on closing 155 stores nationwide.

Ann Taylor closing 117 stores nationwide. A company spokeswoman said the company hasn't revealed which stores will be shuttered. It will let the stores that will close this fiscal year know over the next month

Eddie Bauer to close more stores. Eddie Bauer has already closed 27 shops in the first quarter and plans to close up to two more outlet stores by the end of the year.

Everyday New Yorkers hurt most

By AMY TRAUB
First published in print: Friday, November 21, 2008

New York can cut after-school programs, jam more kids into crowded classrooms and lay off teachers.

The state can eliminate drug treatment for addicts on parole even if it's been shown to reduce recidivism.

We can hike transit fares, raise college tuition, and tell charitable organizations that they're responsible for the vulnerable New Yorkers now receiving state assistance.

But asking those residents who benefited most from the boom years to contribute a little more?

Paul Krugman: The Lame-Duck Economy

Everyone’s talking about a new New Deal, for obvious reasons. In 2008, as in 1932, a long era of Republican political dominance came to an end in the face of an economic and financial crisis that, in voters’ minds, both discredited the G.O.P.’s free-market ideology and undermined its claims of competence. And for those on the progressive side of the political spectrum, these are hopeful times.

There is, however, another and more disturbing parallel between 2008 and 1932 — namely, the emergence of a power vacuum at the height of the crisis. The interregnum of 1932-1933, the long stretch between the election and the actual transfer of power, was disastrous for the U.S. economy, at least in part because the outgoing administration had no credibility, the incoming administration had no authority and the ideological chasm between the two sides was too great to allow concerted action. And the same thing is happening now.

America in Free Fall

By Robert L. Borosage, Campaign for America's Future
Posted on November 21, 2008, Printed on November 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107997/

Free fall. The U.S. has lost private sector jobs for 10 straight months. One quarter of all businesses in the U.S. plan to cut payroll over the next year. Retail sales fell in October by the largest monthly drop on record. Auto sales have collapsed, driving the auto companies towards the precipice. Unemployment is up to 6.1 percent, with most analysts predicting it will soar past 8 percent over the next year. (That translates into unemployment among young minority men at rates of 50 percent or more). States are now facing $100 billion in deficits in operating budgets for the next fiscal year. Twelve million homes are "under water," worth less than their mortgages. The U.S. has joined Germany and Japan in what is becoming a global recession.

"The era of big government is over" is over. In the crisis, we are, as Richard Nixon once said, "all Keynesians now." Former Clinton Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Lawrence Summers, until recently notable deficit hawks, now call for substantial fiscal stimulus -- deficit-funded federal spending -- to get the economy going.

Research finds way to double rice crops in drought-stricken areas

University of Alberta research has yielded a way to double the output of rice crops in some of the world's poorest, most distressed areas.

Jerome Bernier, a PhD student in the U of A Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science, has found a group of genes in rice that enables a yield of up to 100 per cent more in severe drought conditions.

Plumbing the oceans could bring limitless clean energy

FOR a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe.

It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil.

Guest Columnist: Bailing Out Detroit

By Madison Powers

A chorus of politicians from Michigan and elsewhere are warning that another economic catastrophe looms if something is not done, this time for the “Big Three” Detroit automakers. In the last eight years the Big Three have lost 90 percent of market capitalization, a third of its employees and much of its market share.

Pending in the lame-duck session of Congress are proposals to divert some of the $700 billion bailout fund from the financial sector to help the automakers through the middle of 2009 when they are projected to run out of operating cash

Stocks Are Hurt by Latest Fear: Declining Prices

By VIKAS BAJAJ

After gyrating wildly for weeks, the stock market lurched lower on Wednesday, falling to its lowest point in nearly six years, as concern spread that the economy might be facing a chronic and debilitating decline in prices.

The Dow Jones industrial average closed below 8,000 for the first time since early 2003 after new reports painted a grim picture of the economy and raised the specter of deflation, which would put more strain on hard-pressed businesses and workers.

TARP flip-flop true to form

By Julian Delasantellis

I would never say this to my students, but I can't tell you the amount of class time I missed, from both college and secondary school, attending thoroughbred racing investment parlors when I was young.

I can't say that I ever won a whole lot in these visits; before I was licensed to drive, I was happy to have won back the bus fare it cost to get me there. But I did receive a priceless early education in applied statistics (in the final analysis, I realized that a conditional probability is the same thing as a bet, called a perfecta in North America, that calls for two horses to finish in a specific order) and I learned to read the racing form.

US consumer prices in record fall

US consumer prices dropped by a record 1% in October compared with the previous month, as fuel costs fell for a third month in a row.

The news sent Wall Street down more than 5%, while European markets closed with losses of more than 4%.

Thomas Frank: It's Time to Give Voters the Liberalism They Want

Don't believe pundits who say there's a centrist mandate.

By THOMAS FRANK

It is possible, I suppose, that the pundits are right and the public didn't really mean it when it elected a liberal Democrat president and gave Democrats even larger majorities in both houses of Congress. Maybe America really wants the same nice, reassuring, centrist thing as always.

But it is also possible that, for once, the public weighed the big issues and gave a clear verdict on the great economic questions of the last few decades. It is likely that we really do want universal health care and some measure of wealth-spreading, and even would like to see it become easier to organize a union in the workplace, however misguided such ideas may seem to the nation's institutions of higher carping.

How to Stop the Looming Depression Without Lining Fat-Cat CEOs' Pockets

By Mike Davis, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on November 19, 2008, Printed on November 19, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107662/

No one should be shocked to discover that, in his transition to the presidency, the "inexperienced" former senator from Chicago has turned to the last Democratic administration that had experience in Washington. It seems, however, that the Obama team is doing so big time. Looking at lists of early appointees for the transition period and the administration to come, from Rahm Emanuel on down, you might be forgiven for concluding that Hillary had been elected president in 2008. Clintonistas are just piling up in the prospective corridors of power.

Iraq bids farewell to US arms

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The text of the United States-Iraq Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed by US ambassador Ryan Crocker and Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari on Monday closes the door to a further US military presence beyond 2011 even more tightly than the previous draft and locks in a swift end to Iraqi dependence on the US military that appears to be irreversible.

The agreement ends the George W Bush administration's aspiration for a long-term military presence, aimed both at projecting power in the region from bases in Iraq and at maintaining that Iraqi military dependence on US training, advice and support.

Clinton to accept offer of secretary of state job

Ewen MacAskill in Washington
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday November 18 2008 00.01 GMT
The Guardian, Tuesday November 18 2008

Hillary Clinton plans to accept the job of secretary of state offered by Barack Obama, who is reaching out to former rivals to build a broad coalition administration, the Guardian has learned.

Obama's advisers have begun looking into Bill Clinton's foundation, which distributes millions of dollars to Africa to help with development, to ensure there is no conflict of interest. But Democrats believe the vetting will be straightforward.

Water vapor confirmed as major player in climate change

Water vapor is known to be Earth's most abundant greenhouse gas, but the extent of its contribution to global warming has been debated. Using recent NASA satellite data, researchers have estimated more precisely than ever the heat-trapping effect of water in the air, validating the role of the gas as a critical component of climate change.

Andrew Dessler and colleagues from Texas A&M University in College Station confirmed that the heat-amplifying effect of water vapor is potent enough to double the climate warming caused by increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

Net Neutrality Advocates In Charge Of Obama Team Review of FCC

By Sarah Lai Stirland
November 14, 2008 | 5:35:25 PM

The Obama-Biden transition team on Friday named two long-time net neutrality advocates to head up its Federal Communications Commission Review team.

Susan Crawford, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School, and Kevin Werbach, a former FCC staffer, organizer of the annual tech conference Supernova, and a Wharton professor, will lead the Obama-Biden transition team's review of the FCC.

Papers Offer Close-Up of Rehnquist and the Court

By ADAM LIPTAK and JONATHAN D. GLATER

STANFORD, Calif. — Not long after he arrived at the Supreme Court in 1972 after three years in the Nixon administration, Justice William H. Rehnquist faced stinging criticism for participating in a decision dismissing a challenge to Army surveillance of domestic political groups in the Vietnam War era.

He had voted with the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, issued that June, after giving Senate testimony as a Justice Department official defending the spying and criticizing the suit.

That summer, Justice Rehnquist struggled with whether he should publicly explain his decision to remain on the case. The materials on the surveillance suit, filled with emotion, calculation and even anguish, were released on Monday by the Hoover Institution, along with court files covering Justice Rehnquist’s first three years on the court and other materials.

Clash over $700bn bank bail-out

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has clashed with members of Congress over the $700bn US financial bail-out plan.

Mr Paulson told a Congressional committee that injecting cash into banks was the most effective way to stabilise the financial system.

However critics on the committee said that more of the money should be used to help struggling homeowners avoid losing their homes.

Having a 'Better' Economist in Obama's Treasury Won't Cut It

By Rebekah and Stephen Hren, Huffington Post
Posted on November 17, 2008, Printed on November 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107455/

Something fundamental is wrong with our system of political economy, and we need to fix it. It's not just that we're spending more than we make in terms of money, it's that we've been consuming more than we produce on an ecological level as well. The overall long-term results are not surprising: we are using everything up and ruining whatever's left, including not just fossil fuels, topsoil, forests, water. and minerals, but many species and even our own climate. Having been bequeathed perhaps the most fabulous paradise in the entire universe, we are taking a giant crap on it and trying to figure out where to move to next. Maybe those folks making all those crazy crop circles can tell us where to go.

It needn't be this way, not at all. We humans have some amazing things going for us, things like intelligence, empathy, and opposable thumbs. Of course we're a little self-centered and prone to believing irrational things like it would be fun to be famous or that we can have an economy based on debt and never-ending growth on our tiny, little abused orb. Fortunately, with a few adjustments, we don't have to shove the whole thing in the disposal and depend on NASA to ship us off to greener pastures (a quaint little bubble on the moon, perhaps).

Japan economists call for 'Obama bonds'

By Kosuke Takahashi

TOKYO - Japanese economists, increasingly concerned that the United States might seek to pay its enormous and growing debt obligations in a weakened US dollar, are looking to the possibility of US Treasuries being issued in yen.

The US government needs to borrow at least US$1 trillion in the coming year, excluding the US Treasury's $700 billion plan to bail out the financial and other industries, said Kazuo Mizuno, chief economist in Tokyo at Mitsubishi UFJ Securities Co, a unit of Japan's largest publicly traded lender by assets. That amount is likely to grow as the US government continues to rescue failed parts of the economy and has to raise more debt - that is, issue government bonds, or Treasuries - to fund such rescues.

Deregulator Looks Back, Unswayed

By ERIC LIPTON and STEPHEN LABATON

WASHINGTON — Back in 1950 in Columbus, Ga., a young nurse working double shifts to support her three children and disabled husband managed to buy a modest bungalow on a street called Dogwood Avenue.

Phil Gramm, the former United States senator, often told that story of how his mother acquired his childhood home. Considered something of a risk, she took out a mortgage with relatively high interest rates that he likened to today’s subprime loans.

A fierce opponent of government intervention in the marketplace, Mr. Gramm, a Republican from Texas, recalled the episode during a 2001 Senate debate over a measure to curb predatory lending. What some view as exploitive, he argued, others see as a gift.

Gulf War illness is real, new federal report says

By Alan Silverleib
CNN

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- An extensive federal report released Monday concludes that roughly one in four of the 697,000 U.S. veterans of the 1990-91 Gulf War suffer from Gulf War illness.

That illness is a condition now identified as the likely consequence of exposure to toxic chemicals, including pesticides and a drug administered to protect troops against nerve gas.

The 452-page report states that "scientific evidence leaves no question that Gulf War illness is a real condition with real causes and serious consequences for affected veterans."

Consumers close their wallets

Retail sales plunge a record 2.8 percent in October, suggesting a dismal outlook for holiday spending.

By Ron Scherer | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor
from the November 17, 2008 edition

The consumer is in no mood to spend.

With only a few weeks to go before the holiday season officially kicks off, retailers are saying this is the worst consumer environment since World War II. Big box retailers are fighting for survival, department stores are preparing massive promotions, and some stores are asking manufacturers to take back their products even before Thanksgiving.

Why the Economy Grows Like Crazy Amid High Taxes

By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet
Posted on November 17, 2008, Printed on November 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/106979/

The real-world effects of tax policy are counterintuitive.

They run exactly opposite the conventional wisdom. They defy what the Heritage Foundation calls common sense and what the American Enterprise Institute calls logic.

Reality laughs at the Laffer curve, calls Ronald Reagan wrong and says George W. Bush is a loon.

$2 Trillion Handed out by Paulson and Bernanke, But Who Got It, Nobody Knows

By Nicholas von Hoffman, The Nation
Posted on November 17, 2008, Printed on November 17, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/107340/

With his latest policy switch to buying stock in banks and other companies, Henry Paulson has more zigs and zags to his credit than a fox trying to escape a pack of hounds.

The fox and the hounds, of course, have a clear idea of what they want to do and how they want to do it, which is more than you can say of Paulson. Sums of incalculable size are being spent or pledged by Paulson and his playmate, Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, and nobody outside their organizations, or maybe inside them either, knows who got what, how much they got, and under what conditions they got it.

US again misfires on Iranian arms in Iraq

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Last April, top George W Bush administration officials, desperate to exploit any possible crack in the close relationship between Iraq's Nuri al-Maliki government and Iran, launched a new round of charges that Iran had stepped up covert arms assistance to Shi'ite militias.

Secretary of Defense Robert M Gates suggested there was "some sense of an increased level of [Iranian] supply of weapons and support to these groups". And Washington Post reporter Karen DeYoung was told by military officials that the "plentiful, high quality weaponry" the militias were then using in Basra was "recently manufactured in Iran".

Pepe Escobar: A Pact With The Devil

WASHINGTON - The big bang is not that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's majority Shi'ite/Kurdish 37-member cabinet in Baghdad has approved the draft of a security pact with the George W Bush (and Barack Obama) administrations allowing the US military to stay in Iraq for three more years; it's that the 30-strong Sadrist bloc will move heaven and Earth - including massive nationwide protests - to bloc the pact in the Iraqi National Assembly.

The proposed Status of Forces Agreement not only sets a date for American troop withdrawal - 2011 - but also puts new restrictions on US combat operations in Iraq starting on January 1 and requires a military pullback from urban areas by June 30. The pact goes before parliament in a week or so.

Moon's money - the billions that moved America right and theocrati

by moonboots

Wed Aug 09, 2006 at 10:05:13 AM PST

John Gorenfeld has posted a video clip of Sun Myung Moon appearing before the Judiciary Committee on June 26, 1984. In the clip, Moon acknowledges that by then he had already poured hundreds of millions of dollars into America from overseas.

Quoting Moon from Gorenfeld's clip:

Several hundred million dollars have been poured into America because this nation will decide the destiny of the world. These contributions are primarily coming from overseas.

That quote was from 1984. As of today the amount Moon has "poured" into America has reached well into the billions. Stay with me on the flop and I will interpret the Mooneeze in that quote and tell you where billions Moon used to bring the right to power in America originated...

Good news from the Dems on bailout oversight: Elizabeth Warren named to panel

Submitted by lambert on Sat, 2008-11-15 18:34.

Here’s the announcement:

Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard University, where her research areas include bankruptcy and commercial law and financially distressed companies. She serves on the FDIC’s Advisory Committee on Economic Inclusion and previously served as Vice President of the American Law Institute and as an advisor to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission.

(The other guys are Richard Neiman, New York State’s Superintendent of Banks, and Damon Silvers, of the AFL-CIO.) Looks like Leader Nance did something right, for once.

The Anatomy of Conservative Self-Deception

By Ed Kilgore - November 13, 2008, 9:15AM

Note: this item is cross-posted from The Democratic Strategist.

For those Democrats who were settling down with a bag of popcorn to watch an orgy of ideological strife among Republicans, it's beginning to become apparent that the war may be over before it began. Sure, there's plenty of finger-pointing and personal recriminations over tactics and strategy, some of it focused on the McCain-Palin campaign, and some looking back to the errors of the Bush administration. There's clearly no consensus on who might lead Republicans in 2010 or 2012. But on the ideological front, for all the talk about "movement conservatives" or "traditionalists" at odds with "reformers," it's a pretty one-sided fight. And one prominent "reformer," the columnist David Brooks, pretty much declared defeat yesterday:

Frank Rich: The Moose Stops Here

ELECTION junkies in acute withdrawal need suffer no longer. Though the exciting Obama-McCain race is over, the cockfight among the losers has only just begun. The conservative crackup may be ugly, but as entertainment, it’s two thumbs up!

Over at Fox News, Greta Van Susteren has been trashing the credibility of her own network’s chief political correspondent, Carl Cameron, for his report on Sarah Palin’s inability to identify Africa as a continent, while Bill O’Reilly valiantly defends Cameron’s honor. At Slate, a post-mortem of conservative intellectuals descended into name-calling, with the writer Ross Douthat of The Atlantic labeling the legal scholar Douglas Kmiec a “useful idiot.”

In an exuberant class by himself is Michael Barone, a ubiquitous conservative commentator who last week said that journalists who trash Palin (more than a few of them conservatives) do so because “she did not abort her Down syndrome baby.” He was being “humorous,” he subsequently explained to Politico, though the joke may be on him. Barone writes for U.S. News & World Report, where his 2008 analyses included keepers like “Just Call Her Sarah ‘Delano’ Palin.” Just call it coincidence, but on Election Day, word spread that the once-weekly U.S. News was downsizing to a monthly — a step closer to the fate of Literary Digest, the weekly magazine that vanished two years after its straw poll predicted an Alf Landon landslide over Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936.

Where That 'Recycled' E-Waste Really Goes

by Stephen Leahy

UXBRIDGE, Canada - Is your old TV poisoning a child in China? Or your old computer contaminating a river in Nigeria?

A small group of people have now allied with a few responsible recyclers to ensure e-waste can be treated responsibly by creating an e-Stewards certification programme. Announced this week, e-Stewards are electronics waste recyclers that are fully accredited and certified by an independent third party.

Such accreditation is crucial in an industry that often makes fraudulent claims. Currently even when e-waste (electronic trash) goes to a "green" recycler, the chances are high that toxic stuff from the developed world ended up in a huge pile in the middle of some village.

Obama to use Web videos for presidential address

This isn't your grandfather's fireside chat.

President-elect Barack Obama plans to tape a weekly address not just for radio listeners, as presidents have for years, but for YouTube Internet viewers, too.

Well, what else would you expect from a president born at the tail end of the baby boom?

Connecting the White House hearth to the American home, Franklin Roosevelt talked to the people through the radio, with crackling broadcasts delivered near a crackling fire. John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan mastered television. For Obama, who built a big part of his campaign on the Internet, it's YouTube.

Maliki tells Bush he now backs new U.S. troop deal

BAGHDAD — BAGHDAD — After months of tough negotiations and multiple revisions, Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki has decided to back the controversial U.S.-Iraq security agreement that calls for the complete withdrawal of American troops by the end of 2011, Iraqi and U.S. officials said Friday.

Maliki informed President George W. Bush in the last 24 hours that he's "satisfied" with what Iraqi officials now are calling the "withdrawal agreement," a Bush administration official said in Washington. Earlier, Maliki informed the Iraqi Presidency Council that he'd back it, Sami al Askari, a Shiite Muslim legislator who's close to the premier, said Friday.

Rahm Emanuel Roasts Stephen Colbert

White House chief of staff-designate Rahm Emanuel took some time off from the transition Friday night to hurl barbs at his longtime pseudo-nemesis Stephen Colbert (as well as Joe Biden, Sarah Palin, Joe Lieberman, et al...)

Colbert was roasted as part of a charity event for the Spina Bifida Association, organized every year by Judy Woodruff and Al Hunt. (Click here to donate to the cause.)

We've posted some text highlights from Emanuel and Colbert below, and videographer/journalist Liz Glover was kind enough to pass along video of the event (note: the first minute or so is choppy)