Hersh: Obama finally ‘taking control’ on Afghanistan

In the wake of an AP report on Wednesday that President Barack Obama is not satisfied with any of the options on Afghanistan he has received from his national security team and is demanding revisions, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow turned to veteran investigative journalist Seymour Hersh for insight.

"It could be huge," Hersh told Maddow, "simply that the president's finally saying, 'I'm taking control.'"

Karl Rove's buddy resigns post as WH Counsel

Greg Craig has finally been pushed out as White House Counsel. But we can thank him for all of his efforts in crafting what has come to be known as the "deal with the devil" - the deal between Karl Rove and the House Judiciary Committee.

Here are some snips from an article I did on the deal:

A deal brokered by the Obama White House to obtain Karl Rove’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee contains a number of unusual provisions, prominent legal scholars say.

Rove testified before the Judiciary Committee on July 7 concerning his alleged involvement in the December 2006 firings of seven US Attorneys and the prosecution of Don Siegelman. The Committee is being extremely tight-mouthed about the result, and Rove himself has also declined to comment.

The Lies They Told

By JACOB HEILBRUNN

Published: November 12, 2009

When Sept. 11, 2001, dawned, the Northeast Air Defense Sector in Rome, N.Y., went on full alert — to prepare for a training exercise that envisioned a sneak attack by Russian planes flying over the North Pole to bomb the United States, a prospect that Defense Secretary Robert McNamara had dismissed as outdated in 1966. Later that morning, after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 had hit the World Trade Center and American Airlines Flight 77 the Pentagon, three F-16 fighter jets were scrambled from Langley Air Force Base to form a combat air patrol over Washington. But degraded radio transmission quality meant that the pilots were left clueless about the nature of their mission. On seeing the Pentagon in flames, the lead fighter pilot later explained, “I reverted to the Russian threat. . . . I’m thinking cruise missile threat from the sea. You know, you look down and see the Pentagon burning, and I thought the bastards snuck one by us. . . . You couldn’t see any airplanes, and no one told us anything.”

The NS Interview: Robert Skidelsky

You lived in Keynes's house for 20 years. Has he always loomed large in your life?
He started to loom large when I was working on my thesis, which became Politicians and the Slump. He seemed to have very good answers to the slump that were never adopted.

What has driven the current financial crisis?
Faith in risk-management models, and the belief that you could reduce all uncertainty to risk. In risk, you have numbers; in uncertainty, you don't. The bankers believed you could work out the odds on anything, like a game of dice or roulette. The pervasiveness of uncertainty seems to be Keynes's central point: those wedded to the efficient market don't take sufficient account of it. It's right at the root of his economics. He rejected probability as a statistical concept and thought of it instead as a logical concept. This was key. If you have probabilities without numbers, you open the barrier to uncertainty: you have knowledge, but it's not precise.

Climate Rage

The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they've done - or face the consequences

by Naomi Klein

One last chance to save the world - for months, that's how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for "that old comic-book sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening the Earth," said Todd Stern, President Obama's chief envoy on climate issues. "It's not a meteor or a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community, to our children and their children will be just as great."

That was back in March. Since then, the endless battle over health care reform has robbed much of the president's momentum on climate change. With Copenhagen now likely to begin before Congress has passed even a weak-ass climate bill co-authored by the coal lobby, U.S. politicians have dropped the superhero metaphors and are scrambling to lower expectations for achieving a serious deal at the climate summit. It's just one meeting, says U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, not "the be-all and end-all."

The Only Anchor

by Juan Cole

Attorney General Eric Holder announced Friday that some top al-Qaeda 9/11 conspirators will be tried by jury in New York not far from the scenes of devastation that they had wrought.

This decision by the Obama administration demonstrates faith in the American way of life, and a conviction that even the worst mass murderers can be dealt justice by democratic institutions.

It's Baaaack: The Catfood Commission

By Digby

Created 11/13/2009 - 8:42am

Not that it ever went away. The catfood commission [1] is the Zombie that has been clawing at the door since Obama was elected:

Senators from both parties on Tuesday put new pressure on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to turn the power to trim entitlement benefits over to an independent commission.

Seven members of the Senate Budget Committee threatened during a Tuesday hearing to withhold their support for critical legislation to raise the debt ceiling if the bill calling for the creation of a bipartisan fiscal reform commission were not attached. Six others had previously made such threats, bringing the total to 13 senators drawing a hard line on the committee legislation.

“You rarely do have the leverage to make a fundamental change,” said Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), who said he hasn’t ruled out offering the independent commission legislation as an amendment to the healthcare reform bill.

The panel, which has been championed by Conrad and ranking member Judd Gregg (R-N.H), would be tasked with stemming the unsustainable rise in debt.

Among its chief responsibilities would be closing the gap between tax revenue coming in and the larger cost of paying for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits. The Government Accountability Office recently reported the gap is on pace to reach an “unsustainable” $63 trillion in 2083.

You'll recall that during the transition period Obama was all for this commission (it was part of the Grand Bargain [2]) and put it off [3] until after health care reform was passed once people raised a fuss shortly after the inauguration [3]:

McConnell said that when Obama and his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, had previously spoken to Republicans, they struck a tone that indicated a willingness to work on Social Security. "That was the place that I hoped, based on what both he and the chief of staff had said earlier, we'd be able to move on a bipartisan basis. He kind of brushed over that issue" in his speech, said McConnell.

Katha Pollitt: The Democratic Party: Whose Team Is It, Anyway?

By Katha Pollitt, The Nation
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143931/

You know what I don't want to hear right now about the Stupak-Pitts amendment banning abortion coverage from federally subsidized health insurance policies? That it's the price of reform, and prochoice women should shut up and take one for the team. "If you want to rebuild the American welfare state," Peter Beinart writes in the Daily Beast, "there is no alternative" than for Democrats to abandon "cultural" issues like gender and racial equality. Hey, Peter, Representative Stupak and your sixty-four Democratic supporters, Jim Wallis and other antichoice "progressive" Christians, men: why don't you take one for the team for a change and see how you like it?

For example, budget hawks in Congress say they'll vote against the bill because it's too expensive. Maybe you could win them over if you volunteered to cut out funding for male-exclusive stuff, like prostate cancer, Viagra, male infertility, vasectomies, growth-hormone shots for short little boys, long-term care for macho guys who won't wear motorcycle helmets and, I dunno, psychotherapy for pedophile priests. Men could always pay in advance for an insurance policy rider, as women are blithely told they can do if Stupak becomes part of the final bill.

Did Big Oil Win the War in Iraq?

By Antonia Juhasz, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143879/

Last week, ExxonMobil became the first U.S. oil company in 35 years to sign an oil-production contract with the government of Iraq.

As I write, several other contracts with the world’s largest oil companies are being finalized, and more are expected when a new negotiating round kicks off in Baghdad on Dec. 11.

Do these contracts represent a "victory" for Big Oil in Iraq? Yes, but not one as big as the companies had hoped for (at least, not yet).

Don't You Think It's Time to Reinstate the Laws That Would Have Prevented the Financial Crash?

By Nomi Prins, AlterNet
Posted on November 14, 2009, Printed on November 14, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143942/

This week marks the tenth year anniversary of the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley or Financial Services Modernization Act, marking the moment when we were royally screwed by the banking system. Thank you to all those involved.

It's amazing how downright ebullient, President Bill Clinton was at that signing ceremony on November 12, 1999. an event introduced by then Treasury Secretary (now Obama advisor) Larry Summers, successor to Robert Rubin. Those restricting, anti-competitive Depression era, laws were finally behind us. Awesome.

Japan: A new battle over Okinawa

United States President Barack Obama's visit to Japan comes as rifts deepen between Washington and the new government in Tokyo over US troops in Okinawa. Tokyo still sees the US's strike capabilities as crucial for ensuring Japan's security, but it is gradually shifting its axis of cooperation towards Asian nations.

Paul Krugman: Free to Lose

Consider, for a moment, a tale of two countries. Both have suffered a severe recession and lost jobs as a result — but not on the same scale. In Country A, employment has fallen more than 5 percent, and the unemployment rate has more than doubled. In Country B, employment has fallen only half a percent, and unemployment is only slightly higher than it was before the crisis.

Don’t you think Country A might have something to learn from Country B?

This story isn’t hypothetical. Country A is the United States, where stocks are up, G.D.P. is rising, but the terrible employment situation just keeps getting worse. Country B is Germany, which took a hit to its G.D.P. when world trade collapsed, but has been remarkably successful at avoiding mass job losses. Germany’s jobs miracle hasn’t received much attention in this country — but it’s real, it’s striking, and it raises serious questions about whether the U.S. government is doing the right things to fight unemployment.

Byron Dorgan's Financial Plan: Common Sense From The Senator Who Saw This Coming

First Posted: 11-12-09 02:02 PM | Updated: 11-12-09 03:37 PM

He got it right last time.

Senator Byron Dorgan, Democrat of North Dakota, was one of eight senators who stood up to oppose the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act in 1999. That repeal, which was signed into law by President Clinton exactly 10 years ago today, broke down the barriers between commercial banking and investment banking, and led to the growth of behemoth financial firms that were able to take enormous risks with impunity, because they were "too big to fail."

How 7.4% of Americans can block humanity’s efforts to save itself

A couple weeks ago I wrote a piece on what’s really killing climate legislation: the absurd procedural chokepoints in the U.S. Senate, coupled with an unprincipled minority devoted to obstruction. I’m happy to report there’s been an uptick lately in people trying to draw attention to this problem. From the last week or two:

• Univ. of Miami professor Greg Koger, who has a book coming out on filibusters, has a series of five posts offering history and analysis of the filibuster. See esp. The Rise of the 60-Vote Senate.
• Chris Bowers: If GOP wins 3 Senate seats, and Dems don’t destroy filibuster, then Dems can’t govern after 2010—Bowers advocates Dems using the “nuclear option” to get rid of the filibuster.
• The Nation‘s politics editor Chris Hayes: What Ails the Senate.

15 Awful Things Republicans Would Do If They Had the Chance

By Dennis Rahkonen, The Smirking Chimp
Posted on November 13, 2009, Printed on November 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143917/

Always the political instrument of moneyed elites, and a retrograde societal force, the GOP today is more negatively impactful than ever. Its agenda, if fully implemented, would prove catastrophic. Here's what an unfettered Republican Party would do "for" America:

1) Greatly reduce or entirely eliminate taxes on the rich, thereby forcing hard-pressed working families to painfully make up resulting revenue shortfalls.

2) Bust labor unions, cruelly preventing the collective bargaining that's the key reason why US workers ever won decent wages and benefits.

How Right-Wing Cult Leader Sun Myung Moon Bought Washington

By Rory O'Connor, RoryOConnor.org
Posted on November 13, 2009, Printed on November 13, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143914/

With money, media and promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon became a frequent guest at the White House.

“Moon looked on the media as almost the nervous system for a global empire. Moon was the brain, and the media are to be, or were to be, the communications vehicle for his body politic surrounding the globe.”

In January 1992, PBS Frontline broadcast a film I directed that documented the amazing rise, fall and subsequent resurrection of Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church movement. The documentary showed how, through an adroit combination of money, media and the consistent promotion of a conservative political agenda, a self-styled Messiah and convicted felon had rapidly reinvented himself and was soon hailed at the White House.

At the time, few Americans paid much attention to Reverend Moon – and those that did had bizarre recollections of him and the “Moonies,” as his followers once called themselves: mass weddings of complete strangers, flower-peddling in the street, and repeated allegations of mind control and brainwashing.

New solar panel promises cheaper power

By Jim Downing
jdowning@sacbee.com

Published: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 8B
Last Modified: Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009 - 11:00 am

The roof of a North Sacramento plastics factory will host the biggest West Coast installation of a new type of solar panel.

The technology, built by Fremont's Solyndra Inc., uses racks of solar cells roughly the size and shape of long fluorescent light tubes. The shape allows the panels to harvest sunlight from any angle, including what's reflected from the white rooftops common on large commercial buildings.

The technology promises to cut the cost of solar power.

Obama urged to turn successful state job program national

By Tony Pugh | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — As job losses continue to slow the nation's economic recovery, labor experts and economists are urging Congress and the Obama administration to boost funding for a little-known program that 17 states are using to avert layoffs and keep workers in their jobs.

Mass layoffs of 50 or more employees claimed 278,000 jobs in the third quarter alone, according to new government data. All the laid-off workers were idled for at least a month and only one-third of their employers expected any of them to be recalled.

Six Smart Progressive Complaints About House Health Bill

posted by John Nichols on 11/09/2009 @ 10:23am

The Affordable Health Care for America Act was approved by the U.S. House Saturday night with overwhelming support from progressive Democrats who serve in the chamber and from a president who was nominated and elected with the enthusiastic support of progressive voters.

But that does not mean that informed and engaged progressives are entirely enthusiastic about the measure.

The Economist The Obama Administration Should Have Listened To

Eight months ago, the Obama administration launched a plan to help troubled homeowners avoid foreclosure by providing $75 billion in taxpayer funds to banks and mortgage servicers. The money was intended to help three to four million homeowners by lowering their monthly payments, largely by cutting their interest rates.

The next day, a Yale economist and a colleague penned a New York Times op-ed arguing for a different approach.

Rachel Maddow: Corporations Are "Child Labor-Endorsing, Pro-Slavery Freaks" for Trying to Skirt Trade Laws

By , AlterNet
Posted on November 11, 2009, Printed on November 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143891/

The following is excerpted from the Nov 10 Transcript of the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC.

Rachel Maddow: The new rules for Wall Street and the banks will also create a consumer financial protection agency. So in the same way that regulation keeps off the market things that, when used as directed, have a good chance of killing you, things like long darts, or cars with the fuel tank right next to the bumper.

A consumer financial protection agency would keep off the markets, say, really bad mortgages that, when used as directed, are likely to blow up in your face as well. Are these bills from Barney Frank and Chris Dodd the end-all, be-all for Wall Street rules? Will these prevent the shunting of all the financial risk on to the public while those doing the shunting never personally risk anything more than drowning in their own bonus money?

FOX News' Hannity Sort of Apologizes for Falsified Rally Report

By Adele Stan, AlterNet
Posted on November 12, 2009, Printed on November 12, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/143905/

Caught (dare we say it?) red-handed -- by those pinkos at The Daily Show -- falsifying a Hannity show report about last week's Tea Party rally on Capitol Hill, FOX News host Sean Hannity issued a grudging apology last night.

On the November 5 edition of his show, Hannity interviewed Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., who had convened a Capitol Hill rally of Tea Party activists to rail against health care and hate on the president that very day. I was there, and would estimate crowd to have been about 5,000. Not bad for a Thursday afternoon.

Americans may be settling into spending less

By ANNE D'INNOCENZIO, AP Retail Writer – Thu Nov 12, 10:34 am ET

NEW YORK – Americans spent about the same amount in October as in August and September, according to figures released Thursday by a key data service, and they may be settling into new low-spending habits.

Including everything from toys to food, but not cars or gasoline, U.S. retail sales rose slightly in October — 1.5 percent — from a year earlier even as consumers grappled with rising unemployment and tight credit.

The Lost Decade

Why the last 10 years have been an economic disappointment for most Americans.

By Daniel Gross
Posted Wednesday, Nov. 11, 2009, at 3:36 PM ET

---

As we dig out from the rubble of the financial sector's collapse, it's common to hear analysts fret that the United States may now be facing a Japan-style "lost decade." Throughout the 1990s, after its real estate and stock bubble burst, Japan struggled with low growth for more than 10 years. It emerged from the decade shrunken and sapped of confidence, with very little to show for a large amount of government spending and near-zero interest rates.

I'm not particularly concerned that the United States is in for a lost decade. Our political and financial leadership reacted much more quickly than Japan's did, and the U.S. system, for all its faults, processes failure quickly.

More importantly, we've already had our lost decade. When 2010 dawns in several weeks, it will bring down the curtain on a decade—the oughts—in which a great deal and not much at all happened, economically and financially speaking. In fact, a startling number of contemporary indicators are at or below the levels at which they stood 10 years ago.

The $900 billion mistake

Barack Obama has not given much in the way of specifics for health-care reform. Few policies have been nonnegotiable and virtually none have been dictated. The exception is a number that was neither nonnegotiable nor dictated, but was received on the Hill as if it was both, and has come to dominate the health-care reform process: $900 billion.

The number sprang from Obama's September speech laying out his own plan on health-care reform. "Add it all up," he said before a joint session of Congress, "and the plan I'm proposing will cost around $900 billion over 10 years." The plan he proposed, however, did not mention the price tag, and the president did not include any specifics about how that price tag was reached. Nor did the president's language actually set a hard ceiling. "Around $900 billion," when you're talking about internal modeling for a plan that the Congressional Budget Office hasn't seen, is not the same thing as a $900 billion limit.

Critics: Financial oversight council tough only on paper

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A plan by congressional Democrats and the White House to curb future bad behavior on Wall Street would fail to resolve the bureaucratic infighting that helped bring about the global financial crisis, critics warn.

Congress this week begins considering legislation designed to ensure that never again are federal bank regulators asleep at the switch, as they were before the 2008 financial meltdown. To that end, the bill before the House Financial Services Committee would create a Council of Regulators, headed by the Treasury secretary.

Reducing Greenhouse Gases May Not Be Enough to Slow Climate Change

Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone publishes a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.

Thomas Frank: The Real Danger of 'One Big Regulator'

What if those in control don't believe in oversight?

By THOMAS FRANK

Financial regulation is the next item on the political horizon, and it doesn't have to be the deathly dull wonk-battle that it sounds like. In fact, if the Democrats do their job, it can just as easily become a platform for addressing the greatest issues of them all.

Our current way of regulating the financial system is dysfunctional. Oversight is dispersed among numerous confusing bodies that at times have seemed to be racing each other to the bottom. Setting up One Big Regulator would end that problem.

The Obama administration's plan is to have the Federal Reserve regulate banks that might pose a "systemic risk" if they were to fail. Critics suggest the Fed is too close to the banks that it would be charged with cracking down on. What's more, the Fed's main task is monetary policy, so regulating banks would never receive the attention it deserves.

Tampa police: Marine reservist attacked Greek priest he mistook for terrorist

TAMPA — A Marine reservist armed with a tire iron beat and chased a man he thought was an Arab terrorist and even called 911 to say he was detaining the man, police said.

But the man he assaulted was actually a Greek Orthodox priest visiting from overseas who spoke limited English, police said.

Making Wall Street pay

Wall Street's irresponsible bankers caused this economic crisis. It's only fair that they pay to clean up their mess

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 9 November 2009 19.00 GMT

The deficit hawk crew, famous for missing the $8tn housing bubble that wrecked the economy, is now on the warpath, pressing the case for a big, new, national sales tax. They claim that the United States badly needs additional revenue to address projected budget shortfalls.

While we may need additional revenue at some point, it makes far more sense to impose a financial transactions tax, which would primarily hit the Wall Street banks that gave us this disaster, than to tax the consumption of ordinary working families. We can raise large amounts of money by taxing the speculation of the Wall Street high-flyers while barely affecting the sort of financial dealings that most of us do in our daily lives.

Afghanistan’s Sham Army

Posted on Nov 9, 2009

By Chris Hedges

Success in Afghanistan is measured in Washington by the ability to create an indigenous army that will battle the Taliban, provide security and stability for Afghan civilians and remain loyal to the puppet government of Hamid Karzai. A similar task eluded the Red Army, although the Soviets spent a decade attempting to pacify the country. It eluded the British a century earlier. And the United States, too, will fail.

American military advisers who work with the Afghan National Army, or ANA, speak of poorly trained and unmotivated Afghan soldiers who have little stomach for military discipline and even less for fighting. They describe many ANA units as being filled with brigands who terrorize local populations, exacting payments and engaging in intimidation, rape and theft. They contend that the ANA is riddled with Taliban sympathizers. And when there are combined American and Afghan operations against the Taliban insurgents, ANA soldiers are fickle and unreliable combatants, the U.S. advisers say.

How to Create Good Jobs Now

A bold proposal for meeting human needs through a permanent U.S. employment program.

By Sidney Hollander

This article was written by Ron Baiman, Bill Barclay, Sidney Hollander, Joe Persky, Elce Redmond, Mel Rothenberg.

For the last three decades, U.S. public policy makers have operated on the theory that individual entrepreneurial freedoms are essential to the creation of wealth and thus to the well-being of individuals and society as a whole. One of the great failures this “neo-liberal” approach to economics has been its inability to create enough jobs to keep pace with population growth.

Between 2001 and 2007, the working-age population in the United States outpaced job creation by 10 million individuals. Projections indicate that the shortfall will include another 17 million persons by 2016, making a 16-year total of 27 million missing jobs — 27 million people, in other words, who will have been pushed out of the labor force.

Sustainable Salads

Which fruits, vegetables, and other crops have the smallest environmental footprints?

By Brendan Borrell
Posted Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009, at 9:54 AM ET

---

I know you can buy local or buy organic, but I've heard that some crops are simply more resource-intensive than others, regardless of how or where they are grown. So what's the key to picking foods that have the smallest environmental footprint?

We've already been over the environmental benefits of choosing poultry over beefanchovies over haddock. But you're right to suggest that the same sort of logic can apply to picking vegetarian foodstuffs. Certain crops require loads of phosphate fertilizer, for example, which is mined from the ground and can eventually cause stream-choking algal growth. Other fruits and veggies are grown with heavy doses of pesticides, fungicides, and other chemicals that can pollute waterways and cause reproductive problems in animals. So how do you know which crops are best to eat? Here's the Lantern's rule of thumb: Try to keep your more extravagant fruit cravings in check, but don't sweat the low-impact calories that come with your carbs.

Unemployment to dog US economy for years: Fed

US unemployment, now in the double digits, may remain "high" for several years and dampen economy recovery from a brutal recession, a regional central bank official warned Tuesday.

The United States had experienced so-called jobless recoveries following the previous two recessions in 1991 and 2001, when job creation remained weak for several years following the business cycle trough.

Koalas 'could face extinction'

Australia's koalas could be wiped out within 30 years unless urgent action is taken to halt a decline in population, according to researchers.

They say development, climate change and bushfires have all combined to send the numbers of wild koalas plummeting.

The Australian Koala Foundation said a recent survey showed the population could have dropped by more than half in the past six years.

Stalling Justice

Editorial

November 4, 2009

In Texas and Illinois, recent controversies have exposed our broken criminal justice system. Mounting evidence indicates that Texas Governor Rick Perry ordered the wrongful execution of Cameron Todd Willingham in 2004 and has subsequently tried to cover up the details of the case, recently dismissing three experts on the state's Forensic Science Commission forty-eight hours before they were set to examine the evidence. Willingham's case has rightly generated national headlines, and another case of prosecutorial overreach is unfolding in Illinois.

On the evening of September 15, 1978, a white security guard named Donald Lundahl was murdered in a robbery gone awry in a racially fraught southern suburb of Chicago. Police fingered Anthony McKinney, an 18-year-old African-American with no criminal record, as the killer. The prosecution sought death by lethal injection; the judge sentenced McKinney to life in prison.

Study Claims Even the Most Sophisticated News Readers Can Be Manipulated

By Melinda Burns, Miller-McCune.com
Posted on November 9, 2009, Printed on November 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143831/

There's nobody more cynical about the media than your average European.

Only 12 percent of Europeans claim to trust the media, compared to 15 percent of North Americans, 29 percent of Pacific Asians and 48 percent of Africans, the BBC has found.

Yet new research out of the London School of Economics and Political Science suggests that even the most hardened Europeans may succumb to media manipulation and change their political views if they are bombarded long enough with biased news.

Focus on the Family's Insurance Plan Covers Abortion (And Other Ironies of The Latest Assault on Choice)

By Eyal Press, TheNation.com
Posted on November 9, 2009, Printed on November 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://www.thenation.com/143852/

As is now widely known, added to the health care reform bill just passed by the House of Representatives was a provision barring access to abortion called the Stupak-Pitts Amendment. Passed with the support of sixty-four Democrats, Stupak-Pitts doesn't merely prohibit coverage of abortion in a public option. It also forbids women who receive a federal subsidy from purchasing any health insurance plan that covers the procedure, even if the abortion is paid out of a separate pool of private premium dollars (for all the background and details, see my colleague Emily Douglas' post).

If this highly regressive amendment makes its way into the legislation that Barack Obama eventually signs, millions of less affluent women who obtain access to affordable health insurance will thus join the ranks of low-income women on Medicaid, most of whom live in states that don't cover abortion procedures. The two-tiered system that dictates who in America has "choice" (more privileged women do, less affluent women do not) will be further entrenched.

Oil floats high on easy money

Survey after survey shows that history bores to tears young people the world over, yet it invariably continues to be taught in the same mindlessly tedious fashion.

Maybe this can change. Consider a new way to teach of the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 BC. According to William Shakespeare, prior to the nefarious deed, the soothsayer Artemidorus tried to warn the would-be dictator.

Defending the Arsenal

In an unstable Pakistan, can nuclear warheads be kept safe?

by Seymour M. Hersh
November 16, 2009

In the tumultuous days leading up to the Pakistan Army’s ground offensive in the tribal area of South Waziristan, which began on October 17th, the Pakistani Taliban attacked what should have been some of the country’s best-guarded targets. In the most brazen strike, ten gunmen penetrated the Army’s main headquarters, in Rawalpindi, instigating a twenty-two-hour standoff that left twenty-three dead and the military thoroughly embarrassed. The terrorists had been dressed in Army uniforms. There were also attacks on police installations in Peshawar and Lahore, and, once the offensive began, an Army general was shot dead by gunmen on motorcycles on the streets of Islamabad, the capital. The assassins clearly had advance knowledge of the general’s route, indicating that they had contacts and allies inside the security forces.

Pakistan has been a nuclear power for two decades, and has an estimated eighty to a hundred warheads, scattered in facilities around the country. The success of the latest attacks raised an obvious question: Are the bombs safe? Asked this question the day after the Rawalpindi raid, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, “We have confidence in the Pakistani government and the military’s control over nuclear weapons.” Clinton—whose own visit to Pakistan, two weeks later, would be disrupted by more terrorist bombs—added that, despite the attacks by the Taliban, “we see no evidence that they are going to take over the state.”

EPA demands attorneys remove video critical of cap-and-trade

Laurie Williams and Allan Zabel are EPA attorneys who have taken up advocating against cap-and-trade on behalf of rebated carbon taxes, most recently in a Washington Post op-ed. They also posted a video to YouTube making many of the same arguments at somewhat greater length. Now the EPA has instructed them to take the video down by the close of business today, at pain of disciplinary action from EPA ethics officials, and to submit any future drafts to EPA officials before posting.

Paul Krugman: Paranoia Strikes Deep

Last Thursday there was a rally outside the U.S. Capitol to protest pending health care legislation, featuring the kinds of things we’ve grown accustomed to, including large signs showing piles of bodies at Dachau with the caption “National Socialist Healthcare.” It was grotesque — and it was also ominous. For what we may be seeing is America starting to be Californiafied.

The key thing to understand about that rally is that it wasn’t a fringe event. It was sponsored by the House Republican leadership — in fact, it was officially billed as a G.O.P. press conference. Senior lawmakers were in attendance, and apparently had no problem with the tone of the proceedings.

True, Eric Cantor, the second-ranking House Republican, offered some mild criticism after the fact. But the operative word is “mild.” The signs were “inappropriate,” said his spokesman, and the use of Hitler comparisons by such people as Rush Limbaugh, said Mr. Cantor, “conjures up images that frankly are not, I think, very helpful.”

Rachel Maddow: The Healthcare Bill Contains a Poison Pill for Progressives

Rachel Maddow was on Meet The Press today talking about the healthcare bill that the House recently passed. Maddow said that language restricting access to abortion in the bill is a poison pill for liberals and progressives that could end up costing Democratic candidates votes with pro-choice women. Maddow called it the biggest restriction on abortion in a generation.

Oklahomans rally at State Capitol to protest anti-choice law that would post abortion details online.

Oklahoma recently passed a law (HR 1595) that will collect personal details about every single abortion performed in the state and post them on a public website. Critics of the legislation worry that the information could be used to identify individuals. Portions of the law were supposed to take effect on Nov. 1, but a judge delayed activation pending the outcome of a legal challenge.

Despite Censorship By Beef Magnate, Michael Pollan Spreads Message About the Real Price of Cheap Food

By , AlterNet
Posted on November 9, 2009, Printed on November 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/143718/

Award-winning food journalist Michael Pollan was invited to speak on October 15 at California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo but after pressure from a university donor who is chairman of the Harris Ranch Beef Co., the university changed his speech to a panel discussion.

Pollan, whose works include The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto is the Knight Professor of Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley. He's also no stranger to attacks from Big Ag.

Failure written into 'too big' policy

By Henry C K Liu

The potential failure of banks deemed too big to fail (TBTF) presents unsolvable challenges for policymakers. The unacceptability of the systemic impact of such failures on the financial, economic and social order necessitates government intervention in a market crisis.

Thus far, the official response to the TBTF threat has been focused on unlimited government protection of big bank creditors from losses they otherwise would face from big bank failures. Yet creditor expectation of TBTF protection actually encourages big banks to take more risk, thus pushing them closer to the cliff of failure, resulting in significant recurring net costs to the economy and society.

The less optimistic view of Treasury’s handling of the crisis

By Edward Harrison of Credit Writedowns

The Obama Administration is captured. To understand why it has acted as it has, one doesn’t have to take the view that its efforts to save the baking industry were a deliberate attempt to line bankers’ pockets by transferring money from taxpayers to the banking industry. One need merely read the last post I wrote on this topic.

In their wildly optimistic view, the banking industry is solvent and always has been. All that was needed to ‘solve’ than banking crisis was a lot of liquidity, government backstops and, most importantly, time. This blinkered view sees a looting of taxpayer money to bailout the banking industry as necessary to save banks whose credit is the ‘lifeblood of our economy.’

They are wrong. The banks did not need to bailed out. The banking industry industry needed to made solvent again. There is a big difference between those two sentences: banks versus banking industry and liquidity versus solvency that goes to the core of the captured and politically damaging world view we have seen on display by the Obama Administration.

The Forever War of the Mind

By MAX CLELAND

“EVERY day I was in Vietnam, I thought about home. And, every day I’ve been home, I’ve thought about Vietnam.” So said one of the millions of soldiers who fought there as I did. Change the name of the battlefield and it could have been said by one of the American servicemen coming home from Iraq or Afghanistan today. Wars are not over when the shooting stops. They live on in the lives of those who fight them. That is the curse of the soldier. He never forgets.

While the authorities say they cannot yet tell us why an Army psychiatrist would go on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood in Texas, we do know the sorts of stories he had been dealing with as he tried to help those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan readjust to life outside the war zone. A soldier’s mind can be just as dangerous to himself, and to those around him, as wars fought on traditional battlefields.

Frank Rich: The Night They Drove the Tea Partiers Down

FOR all cable news’s efforts to inflate Election 2009 into a cliffhanger as riveting as Balloon Boy, ratings at MSNBC and CNN were flat Tuesday night. But not at Fox News, where the audience nearly doubled its usual prime-time average. That’s what happens when you have a thrilling story to tell, and what could be more thrilling than a revolution playing out in real time?

As Fox kept insisting, all eyes were glued on Doug Hoffman, the insurgent tea party candidate in New York’s 23rd Congressional District. A “tidal wave” was on its way, said Sean Hannity, and the right would soon “take back the Republican Party.” The race was not “even close,” Bill O’Reilly suggested to the pollster Scott Rasmussen, who didn’t disagree. When returns showed Hoffman trailing, the network’s resident genius, Karl Rove, knowingly reassured viewers that victory was in the bag, even if we’d have to stay up all night waiting for some slacker towns to tally their votes.

As oceans fall ill, Washington bureaucrats squabble

By Les Blumenthal | McClatchy Newspapers

Off the coast of Washington state, mysterious algae mixed with sea foam have killed more than 8,000 seabirds, puzzling scientists. A thousand miles off California, researchers have discovered the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, a swirling vortex roughly twice the size of Texas filled with tiny bits of plastic and other debris.

Why fundamentalism will fail

A seemingly unstoppable force is being undone from the inside

By Harvey Cox | November 8, 2009

IN 1910, A COHORT of ultra-conservative American Protestants drew up a list of non-negotiable beliefs they insisted any genuine Christian must subscribe to. They published these “fundamentals” in a series of widely distributed pamphlets over the next five years. Their catalog featured doctrines such as the virgin birth, the physical resurrection of Christ, and his imminent second coming. The cornerstone, though, was a belief in the literal inerrancy of every syllable of the Bible, including in matters of geology, paleontology, and secular history. They called these beliefs fundamentals, and proudly styled themselves “fundamentalists” - true believers who feared that liberal movements like the social gospel and openness to other faiths were eroding the foundation of their religion.

Protestant fundamentalism was not an isolated impulse. The same tendency had already appeared in Catholicism; beginning with Pius IX, who issued his famous “Syllabus of Errors” in 1864, most popes severely condemned all liberal Catholic efforts. Muslims hate having the word “fundamentalist” applied to them, considering it a foreign term. Nonetheless, when some 19th-century Koran scholars sought to rethink their faith in the light of science and democracy, an angry opposition resisted these new ideas. Then, as European colonial powers tightened their grip on the region, other thinkers, like the Egyptian Sayyed Qutb, scorned any such reform efforts as imperialist pollution.

Jobless Recovery

Published: November 7, 2009

If you are looking for an economic recovery you can believe in, the October employment report is not for you.

After contracting for a year and a half, the economy grew in the quarter that ended in September, driven largely by federal stimulus. But government spending, as large and as necessary as it has been, has not been enough to revive hiring.

Tough road ahead in Senate for health care bill

By ERICA WERNER, Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON – The Democratic-controlled House narrowly passed far-reaching health care legislation, handing President Barack Obama a hard-won victory on his chief domestic priority though the road ahead in the Senate promises to be rocky.

The 220-215 vote late Saturday cleared the way for the Senate to begin a long-delayed debate on the issue that has come to overshadow all others in Congress.