How kangaroo burgers could save the planet

COWS, sheep and goats may seem like innocent victims of humanity's appetite for meat, but when it comes to climate change they have a dark secret. Forget cars, planes or even power stations, some of the world's worst greenhouse gas emitters wander idly across rolling pastures chewing the cud, oblivious to the fact that their continuous belching (and to a lesser degree, farting) is warming the planet.

Take New Zealand, where 34.2 million sheep, 9.7 million cattle, 1.4 million deer and 155,000 goats emit 48 per cent of the country's greenhouse gases in the form of methane and nitrous oxide. Worldwide, livestock burps are responsible for 18 per cent of greenhouse gas emissions - more than produced from all forms of transport combined. Methane accounts for the bulk of ruminant green house gas emissions, one tonne of the gas has 25 times the global warming potential of the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide.

Obama to Inherit Legacy of Free Market Free Fall

by Adrianne Appel

BOSTON - Despite hundreds of billions of dollars thrown at banks large and small, the U.S. economy is in a free fall, just weeks before President-elect Barack Obama takes office, analysts say.

"Most measures of economic and financial activity look like they fell off a cliff in September and October, and have been deteriorating at an alarming rate ever since," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist at IHS Global Insight.

The bank bailout, which now stands at 335 billion dollars, was supposed to ease credit lending, and jumpstart the economy. But U.S. businesses and individuals report that they are still unable to get loans from banks, and new reports show the economy in very bad shape.

Red Family, Blue Family

Right after the election, I heard the same words over and over: “The country has gone crazy.”

You may have heard something different. I run in liberal circles - east coast, urban, educated, liberal circles, to be more precise. My friends are the kind of people who watch PBS and read The New Yorker for more than just the cartoons. They are accustomed to having explanations for things, and get agitated when they don’t. They can’t just shrug and let mysteries be mysteries.

And that, more than anything, was what had them pulling their hair out last November. Not that we had lost. (Deep down, most of us had expected to lose, even when the early exit polls said otherwise.) But that we could not understand it. The thinking of more than half the country seemed unfathomable. Like Butch Cassidy, we kept looking over our shoulders and asking: “Who are those guys?”

Fighting for Our Families

By Sara Robinson

Created 12/26/2008 - 11:16am

Last month's piece on how to talk to your conservative relatives over the holidays [1] was apparently welcome and necessary. Not only was it one of the biggest hits at ourfuture.org this year; several hundred other sites also picked it up, and I've gotten a steady flow of thank-you notes from people who were finally grateful to have some options besides mumbling into their mashed potatoes or packing up and leaving early.

Even more interesting was the reaction from a dozen or so conservative sites, most of whom objected -- no surprise there -- finding my generalizations about how conservatives think either infuriating or laughable. Also not a surprise: bullies never like it when somebody comes along and teaches their victims how to fight back.

Some of my letter-writers said they've noticed an increasing boldness among progressives over the course of this year. Conflict-averse we may be, but we're finally fighting back. Conservative failure is now an inarguable fact of American discourse; and the election emboldened people who've been intimidated into silence every since 9/11 to recover their voices and shoot back with a crisp, "We told you so."

Health reform a joint mission

Obama to solicit Congress at start; Looks to heed lessons from '90s

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff | December 26, 2008

WASHINGTON - President-elect Barack Obama and his team have signaled that they plan to work jointly with Congress to overhaul the healthcare system, rather than produce a separate White House bill that would be sent to Capitol Hill, according to people involved in healthcare strategy discussions.

The Obama team is determined to avoid the mistakes of the early 1990s, when the Clinton White House created a healthcare policy team that had more than 500 members and spent months secretly developing a 1,342-page proposal with minimal input from Congress. A lack of investment among congressional leaders helped doom the bill, which never even went to a vote.

Top Ten Myths about Iraq, 2008

1. Iraqis are safer because of Bush's War. In fact, conditions of insecurity have helped created both an internal and external refugee problem:

' At least 4.2 million Iraqis were displaced. These included 2.2 million who were displaced within Iraq and some 2 million refugees, mostly in Syria (around 1.4 million) and Jordan (around half a million). In the last months of the year both these neighbouring states, struggling to meet the health, education and other needs of the Iraqi refugees already present, introduced visa requirements that impeded the entry of Iraqis seeking refuge. Within Iraq, most governorates barred entry to Iraqis fleeing sectarian violence elsewhere.'

2. Large numbers of Iraqis in exile abroad have returned. In fact, no great number have returned, and more Iraqis may still be leaving to Syria than returning.

No Furnaces but Heat Aplenty in ‘Passive Houses’

By ELISABETH ROSENTHAL

DARMSTADT, Germany — From the outside, there is nothing unusual about the stylish new gray and orange row houses in the Kranichstein District, with wreaths on the doors and Christmas lights twinkling through a freezing drizzle. But these houses are part of a revolution in building design: There are no drafts, no cold tile floors, no snuggling under blankets until the furnace kicks in. There is, in fact, no furnace.

In Berthold Kaufmann’s home, there is, to be fair, one radiator for emergency backup in the living room — but it is not in use. Even on the coldest nights in central Germany, Mr. Kaufmann’s new “passive house” and others of this design get all the heat and hot water they need from the amount of energy that would be needed to run a hair dryer.

Bush a catalyst in America's declining influence

The president oversaw a period of eroding economic and political power, in which the rise of China, India and others was a major factor, but assisted by an aversion to him and his policies.

By Paul Richter
December 25, 2008

Reporting from Washington -- First in a series of occasional reports on President Bush's legacy.

As President Bush's term comes to a close, the United States has the world's largest economy and its most powerful military. Yet its global influence is in decline.

The United States emerged from the Cold War a solitary superpower whose political and economic leverage often enabled it to impose its will on others. Now, America usually needs to build alliances -- and often finds that other powers aren't willing to go along.

Archive Publishes Treasure Trove of Kissinger Telephone Conversations

Washington, D.C., December 23, 2008 - Amidst a massive bombing campaign over North Vietnam, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon candidly shared their evident satisfaction at the “shock treatment” of American B 52s, according to a declassified transcript of their telephone conversation published for the first time today by the National Security Archive. “They dropped a million pounds of bombs,” Kissinger briefed Nixon. “A million pounds of bombs,” Nixon exclaimed. “Goddamn, that must have been a good strike.” The conversation, secretly recorded by both Kissinger and Nixon without the other’s knowledge, reveals that the President and his national security advisor shared a belief in 1972 that the war could still be won. “That shock treatment [is] cracking them,” Nixon declared. “I tell you the thing to do is pour it in there every place we can…just bomb the hell out of them.” Kissinger optimistically predicted that, if the South Vietnamese government didn’t collapse, the U.S. would eventually prevail: “I mean if as a country we keep our nerves, we are going to make it.”

Stop Being Stupid

By BOB HERBERT

I’ve got a new year’s resolution and a new slogan for the country.

The resolution may be difficult, but it’s essential. Americans must resolve to be smarter going forward than we have been for the past several years.

Look around you. We have behaved in ways that were incredibly, astonishingly and embarrassingly stupid for much too long. We’ve wrecked the economy and mortgaged the future of generations yet unborn. We don’t even know if we’ll have an automobile industry in the coming years. It’s time to stop the self-destruction.

Financial Meltdown 101

By Arun Gupta, Indypendent
Posted on October 13, 2008, Printed on December 27, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/102672/

AlterNet is resurfacing some of the best and most popular articles published in 2008 as the year comes to a close. In this piece published this fall, Arun Gupta helps makes sense of these confusing economic times.

From 1982 to 2000, the U.S. stock market went on the longest bull run ever, as share prices rose to dizzying heights. In the late 1990s, a combination of factors, which included the Federal Reserve lowering interest rates, created a huge price bubble in Internet stocks. A speculative bubble occurs when price far outstrips the fundamental worth of the asset. Bubbles have occurred in everything from real estate, stocks and railroads to tulips, beanie babies and comic books. As with all bubbles, it took more and more money to make a return*. This led to the Internet bubble popping in March 2000.

During this time of market mania, the Fed guts the Glass-Steagall Act, which was enacted during the Great Depression to prevent the type of banking activity that led to the 1929 stock market crash. In 1996, the Fed allows regular banks to become heavily involved in investment banking, which opens the door to conflicts of interest in banks pushing sketchy financial products on customers who poorly understood the risks. In 1999, under intense pressure from financial firms, Congress overturns Glass-Steagall, allowing banks to engage in any sort of activity from underwriting insurance to investment banking to commercial banking (such as holding deposits).

We Finally Have a Strategy for Afghanistan

Unfortunately, that may not be enough.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008, at 6:53 PM ET

---

It's time to start getting nervous about Afghanistan.

In recent days, Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has talked about doubling the number of U.S. troops in the country from 30,000 to 60,000—way more than the three brigades (roughly 12,000 extra troops) that Barack Obama endorsed on the campaign trail.

A case could be made that reinforcements are needed. But it's not clear—to anyone, including many officers—whether this will mark the pivotal boost or the start of a quagmire.

Seasonal forgiveness has a limit. Bush and his cronies must face a reckoning

Heinous crimes are now synonymous with this US administration. If it isn't held to account, what does that say about us?

'Tis the night before Christmas and the season of goodwill. The mood is forgiving. Our faces warm with mulled wine, our tummies full, we're meant to slump in the armchair, look back on the year just gone and count our blessings - woozily agreeing to put our troubles behind us.

As in families, so in the realm of public and international affairs. And this December that feels especially true. The "war on terror" that dominated much of the decade seems to be heading towards a kind of conclusion. George Bush will leave office in a matter of weeks and British troops will leave Iraq a few months later. The first, defining phase of the conflict that began on 9/11 - the war of Bush, Tony Blair and Osama bin Laden - is about to slip from the present to the past tense. Bush and Blair will be gone, with only Bin Laden still in post. The urge to move on is palpable.

Fox News: "Historians Pretty Much Agree" That FDR Prolonged the Great Depression

I appeared on Fox News to discuss both the Blagojevich flap and the imminent economic recovery package from the Obama administration. You can watch the clip here. As you'll see, on that latter issue, Fox News is starting its campaign to stop Obama's big spending plan by stating - as assumed fact - that "historians pretty much agree" that Franklin Roosevelt prolonged the Great Depression, and that therefore, Obama shouldn't try another New Deal.

When I say Fox News' assertion about historians is patently false, they literally laugh at me as if I've said something so clearly untrue, something Americans supposedly assume is so obviously stupid, that it's worthy of ridicule.

Glenn Greenwald: Torture ambivalence masquerading as moral and intellectual superiority

Behold the now-solidified Smart, Reasonable American Consensus on torture: the agreed-upon method for dismissing away -- mitigating and even justifying -- the fact that our leaders, more or less out in the open, instituted a systematic torture regime with the consent of our key elite institutions and a huge bulk of the American citizenry, engaging in behaviors which, for decades, we insisted were inexcusable war crimes when engaged in by others:

Sure, it was wrong. OK, we "crossed some lines." Yeah, we probably shouldn't have done it, etc. etc. etc. (yawn). But . . . . when American leaders did it, it was different -- fundamentally different -- than when those evil/foreign/dictator actual-war-criminals did it. Our leaders had good reasons for doing it. They were kind and magnanimous torturers. They committed war crimes with a pure heart. They tortured because they were scared, because they felt guilty that they failed to protect their citizens on 9/11, because they were eager -- granted: perhaps too eager -- to keep us, their loyal subjects, safe from The Murderous Terrorists.

Paul Krugman: Barack Be Good

Times have changed. In 1996, President Bill Clinton, under siege from the right, declared that “the era of big government is over.” But President-elect Barack Obama, riding a wave of revulsion over what conservatism has wrought, has said that he wants to “make government cool again.”

Before Mr. Obama can make government cool, however, he has to make it good. Indeed, he has to be a goo-goo.

Goo-goo, in case you’re wondering, is a century-old term for “good government” types, reformers opposed to corruption and patronage. Franklin Roosevelt was a goo-goo extraordinaire. He simultaneously made government much bigger and much cleaner. Mr. Obama needs to do the same thing.

The US Has 761 Military Bases Across the Planet, and We Simply Never Talk About It

By Tom Engelhardt, Tomdispatch.com
Posted on September 8, 2008, Printed on December 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/97913/

AlterNet is resurfacing some of the best and most popular articles published in 2008 as the year comes to a close. First, Tom Engelhardt's essay on the spread of American military bases and global empire, published this September.

Here it is, as simply as I can put it: In the course of any year, there must be relatively few countries on this planet on which U.S. soldiers do not set foot, whether with guns blazing, humanitarian aid in hand, or just for a friendly visit. In startling numbers of countries, our soldiers not only arrive, but stay interminably, if not indefinitely. Sometimes they live on military bases built to the tune of billions of dollars that amount to sizeable American towns (with accompanying amenities), sometimes on stripped down forward operating bases that may not even have showers. When those troops don't stay, often American equipment does -- carefully stored for further use at tiny "cooperative security locations," known informally as "lily pads" (from which U.S. troops, like so many frogs, could assumedly leap quickly into a region in crisis).

At the height of the Roman Empire, the Romans had an estimated 37 major military bases scattered around their dominions. At the height of the British Empire, the British had 36 of them planetwide. Depending on just who you listen to and how you count, we have hundreds of bases. According to Pentagon records, in fact, there are 761 active military "sites" abroad.

The Right-Wing Economics That Got Us into This Mess Should Go the Way of Soviet Communism

By Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post
Posted on December 26, 2008, Printed on December 26, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/114999/

The collapse of Communism as a political system sounded the death knell for Marxism as an ideology. But while laissez-faire capitalism has been a monumental failure in practice, and soundly defeated at the polls, the ideology is still alive and kicking.

The only place you can find an American Marxist these days is teaching a college linguistic theory class. But you can find all manner of free market fundamentalists still on the Senate floor or in Governor's mansions or showing up on TV trying to peddle the deregulation snake oil.

Medicare Advantage Plans

[EDITORIAL NOTE: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Saul Friedman writes the bi-monthly Reflections column for Time Goes By in which he comments on news, politics and social issues from his perspective as one of the younger members of the greatest generation. He also publishes a weekly column, Gray Matters, on aging for Newsday.

I don’t wish to alarm you. But did you know that many of people on Medicare - more that 8.6 million of you - are inadvertently helping to kill Medicare? I don’t blame you for not realizing this. I didn’t really recognize the threat early on. But it’s worth remembering.

In 1995, after the right-wing cabal led by new House Speaker Newt Gingrich took over the Congress with its “Contract for America,” I attended a press breakfast with Gingrich’s lieutenant, Richard Armey, of Texas. And during the discussion, Armey told us that among other goals, the new Republican majority intended to “wean our old people away from Medicare.” I did not know exactly what he meant.

Another presidential legacy gets the Orwellian treatment; Reagan got away with it, George W. will not

The jig has been up for some time now for the once revered Bush administration PR machine with the President's job approval rating failing to crack the fortieth percentile in more than two years. In fact, the President's numbers never really rebounded since 2005 following his hugely unpopular attempt to privatize Social Security; the tragic milestone of 2000 fallen U.S. soldiers hit and surpassed in Iraq; and of course, his administration's woefully inept response to Hurricane Katrina.

That year, Katrina's wake washed away whatever credibility remained following the exposure of this Administration's penchant for payola, staged "town hall meetings," disingenuously named initiatives like "Clear Skies" and "Healthy Forests," fabricated news reports praising the President's prescription drug program, gallingly inappropriate stunts like strutting across an aircraft carrier in a flight suit to declare "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq, and even a phony reporter planted in White House press briefings as a lifeline. Such propaganda tactics would make "The Ministry of Truth" from George Orwell's dystopian classic 1984 blush.

Seeing Through Wall Street

Restoring trust to the economy will require bringing transparency to the markets.

By Eliot Spitzer
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008, at 1:02 PM ET

---

There is an odd symmetry to a year that began with a subprime meltdown—initially affecting those at the lower end of the economic spectrum, before it lit the fuse that burned down the entire house—and ended with the Bernard Madoff scandal, an old-fashioned Ponzi scheme whose victims were nominally sophisticated investors. Clearly, nobody has been immune to this now-global plague. Every effort to rebuild an economy in free fall has been one moment too late or one step too short, and the remedies, though expensive, have so far at least failed to address underlying structural issues.

Yet certain truisms have continued to prove their validity. As Justice Brandeis observed, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The transparency that comes with the glare of sunlight is hard for companies and government to deal with—and so is resisted.

They Came, They Saw, They Exonerated

The Obama team's report on the Blagojevich affair says just what they said it would.

By Christopher Beam
Posted Tuesday, Dec. 23, 2008, at 7:40 PM ET

---

The Obama campaign's strategy for dealing with the Blagojevich affair has evolved. It started with dithering, then moved on to momentary cooperation followed by delay. Now, at long last, we have the final strategy: "See ya!"

On Monday, Barack Obama himself lit out for Hawaii, where he has been walking around shirtless. Chief of Staff-to-be Rahm Emanuel, who is the focus of the report, has disappeared on what one transition official called "a long-planned family vacation in Africa."

Jobless claims surge to 26-year high

Wed Dec 24, 8:58 am ET

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of U.S. workers filing new claims for jobless benefits jumped by 30,000 to a 26-year peak last week, government data on Wednesday showed, as the country's year-long recession continued to chill the labor market.

Initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose to a seasonally adjusted 586,000 in the week ended Dec 20 from a revised 556,000 the prior week, the Labor Department said. It was the highest since the week ended November 27, 1982, when initial claims rose 612,000.

Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast 560,000 new claims versus a previously reported count of 554,000 the week before.

A Labor Department official said there were no special factors influencing the data and no noticeable impact from severe winter weather in northern parts of the country.

Exclusive: Cheney’s admissions to the CIA leak prosecutor and FBI

By murrayw Tuesday December 23, 2008 11:14am

Vice President Dick Cheney, according to a still-highly confidential FBI report, admitted to federal investigators that he rewrote talking points for the press in July 2003 that made it much more likely that the role of then-covert CIA-officer Valerie Plame in sending her husband on a CIA-sponsored mission to Africa would come to light.

Cheney conceded during his interview with federal investigators that in drawing attention to Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s Africa trip reporters might also unmask her role as CIA officer.

Cheney denied to the investigators, however, that he had done anything on purpose that would lead to the outing of Plame as a covert CIA operative. But the investigators came away from their interview with Cheney believing that he had not given them a plausible explanation as to how he could focus attention on Plame’s role in arranging her husband’s trip without her CIA status also possibly publicly exposed. At the time, Plame was a covert CIA officer involved in preventing Iran from obtaining weapons of mass destruction, and Cheney’s office played a central role in exposing her and nullifying much of her work.

On Fox, Barnes, Krauthammer echoed conservative claim that CRA played key role in subprime crisis

Summary: On Special Report, Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer echoed other conservatives in claiming that the Community Reinvestment Act and efforts to expand affordable housing are at least in part to blame for the home foreclosure crisis. But as experts have noted, the CRA does not govern the vast majority of subprime lenders.

Sounding a common conservative refrain during the December 22 edition of Fox News' Special Report, Fox News contributors Fred Barnes and Charles Krauthammer each claimed that the Community Reinvestment Act and efforts to expand affordable housing to minorities and low income people are at least in part to blame for the home foreclosure crisis. However, experts have said that approximately 80 percent of subprime loans were offered by financial institutions that are not subject to the CRA, which applies only to depository institutions like banks and savings and loans, and also pointed out that lenders subject to the CRA face stricter regulations than do other lenders.

Irregularity Uncovered at IndyMac

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — Two months before IndyMac Bancorp collapsed in July, at a cost of $8.9 billion to taxpayers, a top federal banking regulator allowed the bank to backdate a capital infusion and gloss over its deepening problems, the Treasury Department’s independent investigator said Monday.

In what industry analysts said was an example of the excessively cozy relations between high-flying subprime lenders and federal bank regulators, the Office of Thrift Supervision’s West Coast director allowed IndyMac’s parent company to backdate an $18 million contribution to preserve its status as a “well-capitalized” institution.

Man Is a Cruel Animal

By Chris Hedges

It was Joseph Conrad I thought of when I read an article in The Nation magazine this month about white vigilante groups that rose up out of the chaos of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans to terrorize and murder blacks. It was Conrad I thought of when I saw the ominous statements by authorities, such as International Monetary Fund Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warning of potential civil unrest in the United States as we funnel staggering sums of public funds upward to our bankrupt elites and leave our poor and working class destitute, hungry, without health care and locked out of their foreclosed homes. We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.

Where'd the bailout money go? Shhhh, it's a secret

By MATT APUZZO, Associated Press Writer
Mon Dec 22, 7:08 am ET

WASHINGTON – It's something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where's the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation's largest banks say they can't track exactly how they're spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

"We've lent some of it. We've not lent some of it. We've not given any accounting of, 'Here's how we're doing it,'" said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. "We have not disclosed that to the public. We're declining to."

Paul Krugman's horror story

Posted December 21, 2008 9:28 AM

by Frank James

Paul Krugman is one of the smartest, most entertaining economists alive which explains why he may the best known too,

The New York Times columnist and Princeton University professor appeared at the National Press Club in Washington Friday, fresh on the heels of receiving his Nobel Prize. And he simultaneously scared the audience out of its wits and left them laughing and wanting more, not a bad achievement for a practitioner of the dismal science.

Readers pick Cokie Roberts' "foreign, exotic" Hawaii comments as Most Inane

In the end, it wasn't close. By an overwhelming margin, criticism by Cokie Roberts, NPR contributing senior news analyst and ABC political commentator, of then-Sen. Barack Obama for choosing Hawaii, the state of his birth, to take his August family vacation was the most popular entry in Media Matters for America's poll for Most Inane Punditry of the 2008 presidential campaign. Readers chose Roberts' comments -- which included her characterizing Hawaii, where Obama vacations regularly, as "foreign, exotic" -- in greater numbers than her two closest competitors combined. Roberts stated: "I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place," adding, "He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time."

It's Official: We're Just a Few Years from Peak Oil

By George Monbiot, Monbiot.com
Posted on December 21, 2008, Printed on December 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/113047/

Can you think of a major threat for which the British government does not prepare? It employs an army of civil servants, spooks and consultants to assess the chances of terrorist attacks, financial collapse, floods, epidemics, even asteroid strikes, and to work out what it should do if they happen. But there is one hazard about which it appears intensely relaxed. It has never conducted its own assessment of the state of global oil supplies and the possibility that one day they might peak and then go into decline.

Katha Pollitt: Rick Warren is an Insulting Choice

Preacher Rick Warren's views are simply too extreme for Obama's supporters.

by Katha Pollitt

To understand how angry and disappointed many Democrats are that Barack Obama has invited evangelical preacher Rick Warren to give the invocation at his inaugural, imagine if a President-elect John McCain had offered this unique honor to the Rev. Al Sharpton -- or the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. I know, it's hard to picture: John McCain would never do that in a million years. Republicans respect their base even when, as in McCain's case, it doesn't really return the favor.

Only Democrats, it seems, reward their most loyal supporters -- feminists, gays, liberals, opponents of the war, members of the reality-based community -- by elbowing them aside to embrace their opponents instead.

Most Americans who've heard of Warren know him as the teddy-bearish, Hawaiian-shirted head of the Saddleback megachurch in Orange County and the author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Perhaps they also know he's the rare right-wing Christian pastor who sometimes talks about poverty and global warming and HIV. His concern for those issues has given him a reputation as a moderate and has made him the darling of Democratic Party think tanks, ever hoping to break the Republican lock on the white evangelical vote.

Ted Rall: LBO No Mo-Stop Speculators From Ruining Strong Companies

JAMAICA, VERMONT--The Crash of '08 offers the incoming Obama Administration a rare chance to rein in the excesses of our economic system. I can think of few better places to start than banning leveraged buyouts.

Leveraged buyouts (LBOs) are Wall Street's solution to American capitalism's dirtiest secret and biggest problem: no one has any money. Really. Working as an investment banker during the 1980s, I was repeatedly astonished when deals would fall apart because would-be buyers of major corporations didn't have enough cash on hand to buy a house in the Hamptons. Many of the wealthiest people in the world, it turned out, have zero or negative net worth. According to The New York Times, for example, one of Donald Trump's biggest sources of income was his job hosting the TV show "The Apprentice." Those buildings with his name on them? He leased his name to developers who liked his brand.

Howard Dean, a Victim of His Own Success?

By Chris Cillizza And Perry Bacon Jr.
Monday, December 22, 2008; A03

Former Vermont governor Howard Dean, the man regarded by many sharp political operatives as the progenitor of President-elect Barack Obama's successful 2008 campaign, finds himself without an obvious next job as his tenure as head of the Democratic National Committee comes to an end.

Those closest to Dean insist that he has any number of job offers and spots on corporate boards at his fingertips, is traveling to Europe three times in early 2009 to advise progressive parties about the lessons learned from the 2008 campaign, and is speaking out on his pet issue -- health care.

GOP consultant killed in plane crash was warned of sabotage: report

John Byrne, David Edwards and Stephen Webster
Published: Monday December 22, 2008

The Republican consultant accused of involvement in alleged vote-rigging in Ohio in 2004 was warned that his plane might be sabotaged before his death in a crash Friday night, according to a Cleveland CBS affiliate.

45-year-old Republican operative Michael Connell was killed when his single-passenger plane crashed Friday into a home in a suburb of Akron, Ohio (PREVIOUS REPORT). The consultant was called to testify in federal court regarding a lawsuit alleging that he took part in tampering with Ohio's voting results in the 2004 election.

Paul Krugman: Life Without Bubbles

Whatever the new administration does, we’re in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Obama’s stimulus plan — O.K., I’m told that the politically correct term is now “economic recovery plan” — begins to gain traction. Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I’m fairly optimistic about 2010.

But what comes after that? Right now everyone is talking about, say, two years of economic stimulus — which makes sense as a planning horizon. Too much of the economic commentary I’ve been reading seems to assume, however, that that’s really all we’ll need — that once a burst of deficit spending turns the economy around we can quickly go back to business as usual.

Media cite Japan's "lost decade" to criticize Obama's economic stimulus plan, but economists disagree

Summary: Numerous media figures have cited Japanese fiscal policy during the "lost decade" of the 1990s to criticize President-elect Barack Obama's plan to undertake a large-scale stimulus program. These media figures ignore evidence that, according to prominent economists, economic conditions were improving in Japan before the Japanese government temporarily abandoned stimulus spending in an attempt to reduce the deficit.

In recent weeks, numerous media figures have cited Japanese fiscal policy during the "lost decade" of the 1990s to criticize a plan announced by President-elect Barack Obama to launch a large-scale economic stimulus plan that includes extensive spending for public works. These media figures ignore evidence that, according to prominent economists, economic conditions were improving in Japan before the Japanese government temporarily abandoned stimulus spending in an attempt to reduce the deficit. Nobel laureate and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, for one, points to Japan's fiscal stimulus packages as having "probably prevented a weak economy from plunging into an actual depression."

The Pentagon is muscling in everywhere. It's time to stop the mission creep.

By Thomas A. Schweich
Sunday, December 21, 2008; B01

We no longer have a civilian-led government. It is hard for a lifelong Republican and son of a retired Air Force colonel to say this, but the most unnerving legacy of the Bush administration is the encroachment of the Department of Defense into a striking number of aspects of civilian government. Our Constitution is at risk.

President-elect Barack Obama's selections of James L. Jones, a retired four-star Marine general, to be his national security adviser and, it appears, retired Navy Adm. Dennis C. Blair to be his director of national intelligence present the incoming administration with an important opportunity -- and a major risk. These appointments could pave the way for these respected military officers to reverse the current trend of Pentagon encroachment upon civilian government functions, or they could complete the silent military coup d'etat that has been steadily gaining ground below the radar screen of most Americans and the media.

Obama to tap retired admiral as intelligence czar: US media

WASHINGTON (AFP) — President-elect Barack Obama has tapped retired Navy admiral Dennis Blair as his intelligence czar, US media reported Saturday.

Unnamed government officials familiar with the selection process confirmed the choice to the Los Angeles Times, but the daily added that Obama had yet to conclude his search for a new Central Intelligence Agency chief.

'Karl Rove's IT guru' Mike Connell dies in plane crash

A top level Republican IT consultant who was set to testify in a case alleging GOP election tampering in Ohio died in a plane crash late Friday night.

Michael Connell -- founder of Ohio-based New Media Communications, which created campaign Web sites for George W. Bush and John McCain -- died instantly after his single-prop, private aircraft smashed into a vacant home in suburban Lake Township, Ohio.

Filmmaker's 'Warning' explores consequences of Bush-era abuses

Five iconoclastic authors, one crucial message.

Filmmaker JP Sottile, after years toeing the line among the ranks of mainstream press, has broken away. His new documentary, 'The Warning,' is nothing if not an urgent plea for a return to Constitutional values in an age of rampant abuse.

Comprised of interviews with authors Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. ("Crimes Against Nature"), Naomi Wolf ("The End of America"), Naomi Klein ("The Shock Doctrine"), Chris Hedges ("American Fascists") and Joe Conason ("It Can Happen Here"), 'The Warning' plumbs deep the frightening, totalitarian advances seen in US governance since the appointment of George W. Bush, and the threats these new executive powers pose in the coming years.

Scientists doubt inventor's global cooling idea — but what if it works?

By Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Ron Ace says that his breakthrough moments have come at unexpected times — while he lay in bed, eased his aging Cadillac across the Chesapeake Bay bridge or steered a tractor around his rustic, five-acre property.

In the seclusion of his Maryland home, Ace has spent three years glued to the Internet, studying the Earth's climate cycles and careening from one epiphany to another — a 69-year-old loner with the moxie to try to solve one of the greatest threats to mankind.

Obama cranks up the green revolution

The next US president is reversing Republican policy on global warming by putting leading scientists in key posts. Geoffrey Lean reports

Sunday, 21 December 2008

Barack Obama yesterday promised to end George Bush's "twisting" of science to suit "politics or ideology" in an extraordinarily outspoken address to the nation, and announced that he was putting top climate scientists in key positions in his administration.

The move, which signals perhaps his sharpest break with the outgoing administration, makes it clear that he was going to put climate change and the environment among the most urgent priorities of his presidency.

America Scams You: Allison Barber's Many "No-No's"

by Dianne Farsetta

There's a telling email exchange quoted in the Defense Department Inspector General's report on America Supports You (ASY), a Pentagon program launched in 2004, ostensibly to boost troop morale.

Allison Barber, who founded and led ASY until her recent resignation as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Internal Communications and Public Liaison (and who infamously helped President Bush stage a teleconference with troops in Iraq), asked in a June 2004 email: "Overseas, we make troops [not living on military bases] buy a digital receiver for their televisions so they can see AFRTS," the American Forces Radio and Television Service. "Is there a way for me to make this situation know [sic] to corporate America and offer them the option of 'sponsoring' a receiver? So the receiver might have a sticker on it that says 'brought to you by Sears'."

We WERE Punked

By David Sirota

Created 12/20/2008 - 2:24pm

Hale "Bonddad" Stewart at the Huffington Post [1] counters the argument I made on Rachel Maddow's MSNBC show this week [2] and that I've been making in my columns and blog postings for the better part of the last three months. He says the American people weren't deceived on the Wall Street bailout; implies that handing over a trillion-dollar no-strings-attached blank check to the financial industry was perfectly appropriate; and explicitly states that "to say we were 'punked by Wall Street' flies in the face of every available fact on the crisis."

Oddly, Bonddad then goes on to prove - arguably better than anyone else to date - that we were, in fact, punked.

Bonddad spends most of his post telling us that banking profits are down, noting that "financial stocks are down almost 70% since the summer of 2007." No argument there from me, or anyone else. He creates a straw man by suggesting that many people are claiming there was no "serious problem with the financial system that needed fixing" - nobody, not me, not even the authors of a controversial Minneapolis Fed report, claim there isn't a real financial problem. He then goes on to note that the Federal Reserve Bank's Beige Book has been saying that credit conditions were somewhat tightening before the bailout and - here's the most important part - that "loan demand was decreasing." Again, no argument there from me, or anyone else.

Treasury Has Spent $350 Billion of Bailout Fund

By EDMUND L. ANDREWS

WASHINGTON — The Treasury Department said on Friday that it had used up the first $350 billion that Congress approved for its financial bailout program. But it made no move to ask Congress for the next round of money.

Instead, administration officials signaled that they were unlikely to ask for the money until at least January, when Congress returns with stronger Democratic majorities in both chambers. They may well punt on the issue and leave it for President-elect Barack Obama, who will be sworn in as president on Jan. 20.

UAW's Sacrifices Look to Some Like Surrender

By Peter Whoriskey

Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, December 20, 2008; Page A01

For decades after its founding in 1935, the United Auto Workers stood as a powerful model for the American labor movement, an influential organization that historians credit with uplifting living standards for all working Americans.

But with the announcement of the federal loan deal yesterday, the union found itself being forced into concessions that some described as tantamount to surrender.

Frank Rich: Who Wants to Kick a Millionaire?

DURING the Great Depression, American moviegoers seeking escape could ogle platoons of glamorous chorus girls in “Gold Diggers of 1933.” Our feel-good movie of the year is “Slumdog Millionaire,” a Dickensian tale in which we root for an impoverished orphan from Mumbai’s slums to hit the jackpot on the Indian edition of “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire.”

It’s a virtuoso feast of filmmaking by Danny Boyle, but it’s also the perfect fairy tale for our hard times. The hero labors as a serf in the toilet of globalization: one of those mammoth call centers Westerners reach when ringing an 800 number to, say, check on credit card debt. When he gets his unlikely crack at instant wealth, the whole system is stacked against him, including the corrupt back office of a slick game show too good to be true.

In Need of Cash, More Companies Cut 401(k) Match

By Mary Williams Walsh and Tara Siegel Bernard

Companies eager to conserve cash are trimming their contributions to their workers’ 401(k) retirement plans, putting a new strain on America’s tattered safety net at the very moment when many workers are watching their accounts plummet along with the stock market.

When the FedEx Corporation slimmed down its pension plan last year, it softened the blow by offering workers enriched 401(k) contributions to make up for the pension benefits some would lose. But last week, with Americans sending fewer parcels and FedEx’s revenue growth at a standstill, the company said it would suspend all of its contributions for at least a year.

IMF urges spending to spur growth

More spending by governments will be needed to stimulate worldwide economic growth, the head of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has told the BBC.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said he feared measures announced by the Group of 20 nations last month would not be enough.