Obama’s Delusion

David Bromwich

Long before he became president, there were signs in Barack Obama of a tendency to promise things easily and compromise often. He broke a campaign vow to filibuster a bill that immunised telecom outfits against prosecution for the assistance they gave to domestic spying. He kept his promise from October 2007 until July 2008, then voted for the compromise that spared the telecoms. As president, he has continued to support their amnesty. It was always clear that Obama, a moderate by temperament, would move to the middle once elected. But there was something odd about the quickness with which his website mounted a slogan to the effect that his administration would look to the future and not the past. We all do. Then again, we don’t: the past is part of the present. Reduced to a practice, the slogan meant that Obama would rather not bring to light many illegal actions of the Bush administration. The value of conciliation outweighed the imperative of truth. He stood for ‘the things that unite not divide us’. An unpleasant righting of wrongs could be portrayed as retribution, and Obama would not allow such a misunderstanding to get in the way of his ecumenical goals.

New Lie On Bank Reform

Dave Johnson
December 11, 2009 - 2:30pm ET

Opponents of financial reform, after huddling with banking lobbyists, are now circulating a story that the reform bills are nothing more than more bailouts for the big banks. In fact the bills do the opposite, and have a mechanism for shutting banks down instead of bailing them out in the future.

But the bank lobbyists and their paid-for allies in the Congress understand that the public just hates the bailouts, so they are trying to direct that hatred to try to kill a bill that would ... prevent bailouts.

Senate Tweaks Away Your Healthcare

by Donna Smith

As my grandmother used to say, "I was born on a weekend but not last weekend." The latest insult to Americans hungry for a bit of healthcare justice for all comes from the news that the Senate health bill now allows insurance companies to place annual limits on payments for some catastrophic illnesses, like cancer.

Surprise, surprise, surprise. Another day. Another lie uncovered in the process. Another piece of this reform bill that favors the for-profit health insurance industry.

What Is Living and What Is Dead in Social Democracy?

By Tony Judt

The following is adapted from a lecture given at New York University on October 19, 2009.

Americans would like things to be better. According to public opinion surveys in recent years, everyone would like their child to have improved life chances at birth. They would prefer it if their wife or daughter had the same odds of surviving maternity as women in other advanced countries. They would appreciate full medical coverage at lower cost, longer life expectancy, better public services, and less crime.

When told that these things are available in Austria, Scandinavia, or the Netherlands, but that they come with higher taxes and an "interventionary" state, many of those same Americans respond: "But that is socialism! We do not want the state interfering in our affairs. And above all, we do not wish to pay more taxes."

Health care loophole would allow coverage limits

By RICARDO ALONSO-ZALDIVAR, Associated Press Writer
Fri Dec 11, 10:12 am ET

WASHINGTON – A loophole in the Senate health care bill would let insurers place annual dollar limits on medical care for people struggling with costly illnesses such as cancer, prompting a rebuke from patient advocates.

The legislation that originally passed the Senate health committee last summer would have banned such limits, but a tweak to that provision weakened it in the bill now moving toward a Senate vote.

Paul Krugman: Bernanke’s Unfinished Mission

Ben Bernanke, the Federal Reserve chairman, recently had some downbeat things to say about our economic prospects. The economy, he warned, “confronts some formidable headwinds.” All we can expect, he said, is “modest economic growth next year — sufficient to bring down the unemployment rate, but at a pace slower than we would like.”

Actually, he may have been too optimistic: There’s a good chance that unemployment will rise, not fall, over the next year. But even if it does inch down, one has to ask: Why isn’t the Fed trying to bring it down faster?

Fox Nation, right-wing blogs seize on heavily edited anti-abortion video to smear Planned Parenthood

December 10, 2009 4:49 pm ET — 69 Comments

Right-wing blogs have seized on yet another heavily edited undercover video to attack a progressive organization, this time Planned Parenthood. However, the activists behind the video criticized Planned Parenthood employees for referring to a 10-week-old fetus as a "fetus" and for saying that abortion at that stage of pregnancy is safer than giving birth -- both of which are accurate statements.

Right-wing blogs seize on undercover smear video

Conservative activists release undercover video purporting to show "evidence of counseling abuse at Planned Parenthood." On December 9, Live Action -- an anti-abortion activist group headed by Lila Rose -- released a heavily edited video that the group claimed showed, among other things, Planned Parenthood employees "encouraging the one who is pregnant to obtain an abortion because 'women die having babies.' "

Exxon’s man in Copenhagen

9 Dec 2009 1:30 PM
by Jonathan Hiskes

I tracked down Brian Flannery today. He’s the top climate advisor for ExxonMobil, a veteran of international climate talks, and a bona fide villain in the eyes of environmental groups. That’s largely due to Exxon’s funding of front groups that sow misinformation about the urgency of climate change.

Supreme Court's Ruling Would Allow Bin Laden to Donate to Sarah Palin's Presidential Campaign

By Greg Palast, AlterNet
Posted on December 11, 2009, Printed on December 11, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144502/

I thought that headline would get your attention. And it's true.

I'm biting my nails waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which could come down as early as Tuesday. At issue: whether corporations, as "unnatural persons," can make contributions to political campaigns.

The outcome is foregone: the five GOP appointees to the court are expected to use the case to junk federal laws that now bar corporations from stuffing campaign coffers.

Blackwater Predator missile-load contract ending

By PAMELA HESS and ADAM GOLDMAN, Associated Press Writer
2 hrs 3 mins ago

WASHINGTON – CIA Director Leon Panetta has canceled a contract with the former Blackwater security firm that allowed the company's operatives to load missiles on Predator drones in Pakistan.

Panetta canceled the contract earlier this year and the work is being transitioned to government personnel, a person familiar with the contract said Friday. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the classified program.

Obama's Big Sellout

Barack Obama ran for president as a man of the people, standing up to Wall Street as the global economy melted down in that fateful fall of 2008. He pushed a tax plan to soak the rich, ripped NAFTA for hurting the middle class and tore into John McCain for supporting a bankruptcy bill that sided with wealthy bankers "at the expense of hardworking Americans." Obama may not have run to the left of Samuel Gompers or Cesar Chavez, but it's not like you saw him on the campaign trail flanked by bankers from Citigroup and Goldman Sachs. What inspired supporters who pushed him to his historic win was the sense that a genuine outsider was finally breaking into an exclusive club, that walls were being torn down, that things were, for lack of a better or more specific term, changing.

Digby: Colloquy For Crisis

Milton Friedman:

Only a crisis produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around.

Naomi Klein:

Friedman understood that just as prisoners are softened up for interrogation by the shock of their capture, massive disasters could serve to soften us up for his radical free-market crusade. He advised politicians that immediately after a crisis, they should push through all the painful policies at once, before people could regain their footing. He called this method “economic shock treatment.” I call it “the shock doctrine.” Take a second look at the iconic events of our era, and behind many you will find its logic at work. This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn’t born in freedom and democracy; it was born in shock."

Today, Senators Gregg and Conrad had a colloquy on the floor of the Senate arguing for the Pete Peterson Foundation's pet project, the Bipartisan Committee To Destroy Social Security and Medicare So Wealthy People Don't Ever Have To Pay Higher Taxes (aka "Our Favorite Idea That's Been Lying Around".) And quite an exchange of scary rhetoric it was.

UCLA researchers engineer bacteria to turn carbon dioxide into liquid fuel

Global climate change has prompted efforts to drastically reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas produced by burning fossil fuels. In a new approach, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have genetically modified a cyanobacterium to consume carbon dioxide and produce a liquid fuel precursor to isobutanol, which holds great potential as a gasoline alternative. The reaction is powered directly by energy from sunlight, or photosynthesis.

‘Wake up, gentlemen’, world’s top bankers warned by former Fed chairman Volcker

One of the most senior figures in the financial world surprised a conference of high-level bankers yesterday when he criticised them for failing to grasp the magnitude of the financial crisis and belittled their suggested reforms.

Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the US Federal Reserve, berated the bankers for their failure to acknowledge a problem with personal rewards and questioned their claims for financial innovation.

New Report Highlights Medicare Advantage Insurers’ Higher Administrative Spending

Today Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry A. Waxman and Oversight and Investigations Subcommittee Chairman Bart Stupak released a new report which found that 34 Medicare Advantage insurers expend significant sums on profits, marketing, and other corporate expenses. Last year, the insurers spent an average of $1,450 per beneficiary on profits, marketing, and other corporate expenses, nearly ten times as much as traditional Medicare spent on administrative expenses per beneficiary.

Obama Nobel Peace Prize Speech

Below is Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, "A Just and Lasting Peace," as prepared for delivery. Scroll to the bottom for video.

* * * * *

Your Majesties, Your Royal Highnesses, Distinguished Members of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, citizens of America, and citizens of the world:

I receive this honor with deep gratitude and great humility. It is an award that speaks to our highest aspirations - that for all the cruelty and hardship of our world, we are not mere prisoners of fate. Our actions matter, and can bend history in the direction of justice.

US wealth gap gaping wider

By Max Fraad Wolff

The United States has all the makings of a pronounced spike in income and wealth inequality. The major trends of the past eight months suggest that the least wealthy/lower earning 80% of the American population are in increasingly severe pain. The vast majority of Americans live off of labor income and possess only one significant asset: their private home.

More than four out of five of us need strong labor markets and stable or rising home prices. Our standard of living and ability to function economically rests heavily on these two pillars. However, employment is plunging, house prices have tanked and wage growth is stagnant.

What We Don't Know Can Hurt Us

The scariest thing Gen. McChrystal told Congress about Afghanistan.

By Fred KaplanPosted Tuesday, Dec. 8, 2009, at 5:39 PM ET

At an otherwise uneventful hearing before the House Armed Services Committee this morning, Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, said something that should confirm and heighten most people's apprehensions about the war's escalation.

McChrystal noted that he has accumulated several years of command experience in that country since the war began. And yet, he confessed, "There is much in Afghanistan that I do not understand."

The Billionaires Behind The Hate

Billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch are the wealthiest, and perhaps most effective, opponents of President Obama's progressive agenda. They have been looming in the background of every major domestic policy dispute this year. Ranked as the 9th richest men in America, the Koch brothers sit at the helm of Koch Industries, a massive privately owned conglomerate of manufacturing, oil, gas, and timber interests. They are best known for their wealth, as well as for their generous contributions to the arts, cancer research, and the Smithsonian Institute. But David and Charles are also responsible for a vicious attack campaign aimed directly at obstructing and killing progressive reform.

Thomas Frank: The Real Chicago Way

A privatization scheme that's a loser for taxpayers.

By THOMAS FRANK

When the entertainers of the right aren't declaring their disgust with President Obama for groveling before foreign potentates, they're pretending to fear him as a left-wing thug, an exemplar of what they call "the Chicago way." As imagined by the right, the men in the West Wing are like a demonic cross between the antiwar demonstrators who gathered in Grant Park in 1968 and the Chicago cops who cracked their hippie skulls. Tremble, men of commerce, before this infernal combination.

Myths like this are fun to invent. The problem, as ever, is reality.

Billions More in Easy Money for Wall Street -- Are We Too Ignorant About Finance to Stop It?

By William Greider, The Nation
Posted on December 8, 2009, Printed on December 9, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144452/

The sale pitch for financial-reform legislation pending in the House claims it would put an stop to "too big to fail" bailouts for the leading banks. The reality is the opposite. The federal government would instead be granted unlimited authority to spend whatever it takes to prop up the big boys when they get in trouble. Only in the next crisis, Congress won't have to be asked for the money. The financial rescues will be funded by the secretive Federal Reserve, not the Treasury, with money the Fed itself creates.

And the emergency lending could be pumped into any financial institution in trouble--not just behemoth commercial banks but investment houses like Goldman Sachs, insurance companies, hedge funds or any other pools of private capital whose failure regulators believe would threaten the system.

The burden of being Summers

By Julian Delasantellis

Sometimes attributed to the early 20th-century Harvard University president, A Lawrence Lowell, is the quote, "There's a Harvard man on the wrong side of every question." He ought to have known, coming down on the bonehead side of a number of noted issues.

In 1916, Lowell opposed president Woodrow Wilson's nomination of Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court, wrongfully accusing the noted jurist of being a Zionist zealot. In 1926, appointed by the Massachusetts governor to lead a fact-finding commission in the matter of Sacco and Vanzetti, two Italian communist immigrant laborers charged with a murder of an armored car guard, Lowell displayed none of the doubt coursing through the community about the fairness of the convictions to enthusiastically recommend their eventual execution.

Hopenhagen's dirty secret

By Pepe Escobar

BEIJING - A November 21 caption on the cover of China Daily read, "Three women seem to dwarf the Bird's Nest [National Stadium] as they enjoy the winter sunshine and the blue sky on Friday. Beijing experienced its 260th blue-sky day in 2009 on Friday, reaching its target 41 days before the end of the year."

One might argue that the Chinese secret for climate control and reaching "targets" is that God is a card-carrying member of the Communist Party - and he has the "targets" of five-year plans to meet, just like anybody else (except "splittists"). God, of course, would not dream of becoming a splittist.

It’s official: Democrats drop public option

Democratic senators say they have a tentative deal to drop a government-run insurance option from health care legislation. No further details were immediately available.

Children's TV has questionable political themes, study shows

Most parents know to screen television shows for sex, violence or other negative messaging—but what about children's shows themselves?

Research by the University of Alberta's Augustana Campus contends that children's programming can carry underlying political themes that may surprise parents. After analyzing 23 episodes of Thomas and Friends, a show about a train, his friends and their adventures on a fictional island, political scientist Shauna Wilton was able to identify themes that didn't seem constructive for youngsters.

The Reason for 15 Million Unemployed: Poor Thinking at the Top

By Dean Baker - December 7, 2009, 3:00PM

The United States has more than 15 million people unemployed. This is not their fault. It is the fault of really bad policy decisions by people who get paid more than almost all of the unemployed ever did or ever will. The failure of economic policymakers to recognize and attack an $8 trillion housing bubble led to the downturn. The continuing failure of economic policymakers to think creatively is why 15 million people remain unemployed.

O'Malley proposes $3,000 tax credit for hiring unemployed

Governor suggests 6,700 Marylanders could be hired in a year

By Jamie Smith Hopkins | jamie.smith.hopkins@baltsun.com

December 8, 2009

Gov. Martin O'Malley, heading into an election year at a time of high unemployment, told a crowd of small-business owners Monday that he will ask the General Assembly to approve a $3,000 tax credit for companies hiring jobless Marylanders.

He said he wants the state to give businesses the tax break for each unemployed resident they put back to work. O'Malley, who unveiled the idea at the Greater Baltimore Committee's small-business summit in Baltimore, sees it as a one-year incentive capped at $20 million - meaning almost 6,700 residents could be hired.

A Greener Way to Get Electricity from Natural Gas

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — A new type of natural-gas electric power plant proposed by MIT researchers could provide electricity with zero carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere, at costs comparable to or less than conventional natural-gas plants, and even to coal-burning plants. But that can only come about if and when a price is set on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases -- a step the U.S. Congress and other governments are considering as a way to halt climate change.

Sea Level Could Rise from 0.75 to 1.9 Meters This Century

ScienceDaily (Dec. 8, 2009) — A new scientific study warns that sea level could rise much faster than previously expected. By the year 2100, global sea level could rise between 75 and 190 centimetres, according to a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Want fresh air? Give your house a nose job…

• 15:16 08 December 2009 by Paul Marks

Central heating may keep your house warm, but it can also make the air stuffy. A new ventilation system that works like the nose of a small desert rat might let your house "breathe", freshening the air while maintaining cosiness.

So claims Steven Vogel of Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. Like some other desert creatures, the bipedal kangaroo rat, he says, helps maintain its body temperature using a clever nasal architecture.

Investigation confirms: No evidence of illegal actions by ACORN in videographer scam

December 08, 2009 9:33 am ET — 16 Comments

After media outlets and figures have repeatedly claimed that videos released by conservative activists James O'Keefe and Hannah Giles revealed a pattern of ACORN aiding efforts to evade taxes on a fictitious child-prostitution ring, an investigation by former Massachusetts Attorney General Scott Harshbarger (D) found that "there is no evidence that action, illegal or otherwise, was taken by any ACORN employee on behalf of the videographers." Indeed, an analysis of those incidents by Media Matters for America indicates that in at least six of the eight videos released, ACORN employees at those offices either were not clearly informed that underage prostitutes were involved, refused to help, appeared to deliberately respond with wildly over-the-top statements, or contacted the police after Giles and O'Keefe had left; moreover, ACORN employees at at least two of the offices advised Giles to file tax returns.

On job creation, Obama faces competing ideas

By Diana Stafford and Mark Davis | The Kansas City Star

Responding to estimates that it could take more than a decade to restore jobs lost in the recession, President Barack Obama will outline his job-creation priorities today.

He faces a plethora of competing ideas about what to do and what role government should have in stimulating employment.

Copenhagen climate summit in disarray after 'Danish text' leak

Developing countries react furiously to leaked draft agreement that would hand more power to rich nations, sideline the UN's negotiating role and abandon the Kyoto protocol

John Vidal in Copenhagen
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 14.09 GMT

The UN Copenhagen climate talks are in disarray today after developing countries reacted furiously to leaked documents that show world leaders will next week be asked to sign an agreement that hands more power to rich countries and sidelines the UN's role in all future climate change negotiations.

The document is also being interpreted by developing countries as setting unequal limits on per capita carbon emissions for developed and developing countries in 2050; meaning that people in rich countries would be permitted to emit nearly twice as much under the proposals.

Senate blocks tough abortion limits in health bill

By DAVID ESPO, AP Special Correspondent
1 hr 27 mins ago

WASHINGTON – Abortion opponents failed to inject tougher restrictions into sweeping Senate health care legislation Tuesday, and Democratic leaders labored to make sure fallout from the controversy wouldn't hinder the drive to pass President Barack Obama's top domestic priority.

The public clash over abortion took place as Democrats, in daylong private talks in the Capitol, appeared ready to scuttle plans for a government-run insurance option that liberals have long sought.

Right-Wing Billionaire David Koch Funding SwiftBoat Campaign Against Global Warming Science

Right-wing billionaire David Koch, who along with his brother Charles owns the oil and gas empire Koch Industries, constantly presents himself as a champion of science. Next year, a wing of the Smithsonian will be named after him because of his generous donations. Indeed, in accepting Koch’s donations, the Smithsonian Human Origins Program director Rick Potts attempted to whitewash Koch’s philanthropist history:

POTTS: What we find in David Koch is a person who’s committed to doing things for the American public that has no relationship to politics

Paul Krugman: An Affordable Truth

Maybe I’m naïve, but I’m feeling optimistic about the climate talks starting in Copenhagen on Monday. President Obama now plans to address the conference on its last day, which suggests that the White House expects real progress. It’s also encouraging to see developing countries — including China, the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide — agreeing, at least in principle, that they need to be part of the solution.

Of course, if things go well in Copenhagen, the usual suspects will go wild. We’ll hear cries that the whole notion of global warming is a hoax perpetrated by a vast scientific conspiracy, as demonstrated by stolen e-mail messages that show — well, actually all they show is that scientists are human, but never mind. We’ll also, however, hear cries that climate-change policies will destroy jobs and growth.

The truth, however, is that cutting greenhouse gas emissions is affordable as well as essential. Serious studies say that we can achieve sharp reductions in emissions with only a small impact on the economy’s growth. And the depressed economy is no reason to wait — on the contrary, an agreement in Copenhagen would probably help the economy recover.

Entitled to Their Own Facts

Sunday 06 December 2009

by: Ellen Goodman, Op-Ed

Boston - If you ever wondered why God invented the delete button, let me pass along the e-mail that arrived on the wings of various listservs directed at the Mainstream Media.

"How much do we love you?" the author asked the MSM. "Let me count the ways: You lie, omit, distort and skew what otherwise should be unbiased accounts of ALL news, not just what furthers the interests of the 'fringe left.'"

Black in the Age of Obama

By CHARLES M. BLOW

A hundred and fifty years ago, Charles Dickens opened “A Tale of Two Cities” with the now-famous phrase: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. ...”

Those words resonated with me recently while contemplating the impact of the Obama presidency on blacks in America. So far, it’s been mixed. Blacks are living a tale of two Americas — one of the ascension of the first black president with the cultural capital that accrues; the other of a collapsing quality of life and amplified racial tensions, while supporting a president who is loath to even acknowledge their pain, let alone commiserate in it.

Last year, blacks dared to dream anew, envisioning a future in which Obama’s election would be the catalyst for an era of prosperity and more racial harmony. Now that the election’s afterglow has nearly faded, the hysteria of hope is being ground against the hard stone of reality. Things have not gotten better. In many ways, they’ve gotten worse.

We're Doing a Heckuva Job Helping Those Devastated by the Economic Meltdown

By Karen Dolan and Diana Pearce, AlterNet
Posted on December 7, 2009, Printed on December 7, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/144392/

The levees failed residents of New Orleans when Katrina battered their city. The safety net is failing Americans battered by the most recent Category 5 storm—the "Great Recession" of 2008-2009.

Category 5 storms are catastrophic: communities are ravaged; security is stolen; lives are lost. For millions of Americans, the Great Recession is just such a storm.

Unemployment is in the double digits; poverty and hunger are at record-high levels; foreclosures and homelessness are still climbing. The middle class is shrinking and many blacks, Latinos, single mothers and children are experiencing a full-blown economic depression. With such devastating conditions, our nation once again finds itself unprepared to face the ravages of an unnatural disaster.

Abandoning California's commitment to education

Budget cuts have left the state's once-proud higher education system in shambles.

By Tim Rutten

December 5, 2009

In 1960, a committee of educators working under the leadership of the visionary University of California President Clark Kerr handed Pat Brown, an equally farsighted governor, something he'd long hoped for: a master plan for higher education in California.

Brown and Kerr shared a desire to create a system that would simultaneously encourage academic excellence and equality of opportunity for students of every class and background. They succeeded beyond even their expansive dreams and, in the process, created not simply a network of world-class academic institutions but also a great engine of social progress and prosperity for the California economy.

Sunshine, sewage to power cities of the future

LILLE, France (Reuters) - "These are the three giant stomachs of Lille."

Amid the hum of machinery and warm odor of putrefying autumn leaves, official Pierre Hirtzberger is explaining how three giant fermenters can convert household food waste, trimmings from parks and gardens and the slops from school and hospital canteens into enough methane gas to power about a third of the buses in the French city.

"The process is exactly the same as in the stomach of a cow," he said, gesturing toward three biodigesters which each hold 20,000 cubic meters of rotting liquefied waste.

"The objective is to fuel 100 of Lille's buses on this biogas, out of a total fleet of 350," Hirtzberger, head of the city's urban waste research and development, told Reuters.

Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke “Complicit” in Financial Crisis and Should Go

In an extended interview, we speak with former New York governor Eliot Spitzer about the financial crisis and how it was handled by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. Bernanke and Geithner “actually built and participated in creating the structure that now has collapsed,” Spitzer says and calls on them to be replaced. Spitzer also talks about the scandal that erupted last year that forced him to resign as governor. “I have no doubt that there were many people who were opposed to me, very powerful forces, who were happy to see me go,” Spitzer says. “Whether they participated, I’ll let others figure that out. I resigned because of what I did.”

Amazon is best site for forest carbon investments

Forest Carbon Index maps climate opportunities.

Anjali Nayar

Amazon nations will be the early winners in a future market for forest carbon credits, which could grow to US$20 billion annually by 2020, according to a new report.

It is estimated that deforestation accounts for around 12% of the greenhouse-gas emissions that cause climate change and there is general agreement that the next global climate deal – under negotiation next week in Copenhagen – should include a forest protection plan.

Frank Rich: Obama’s Logic Is No Match for Afghanistan

AFTER the dramatic three-month buildup, you’d think that Barack Obama’s speech announcing his policy for Afghanistan would be the most significant news story of the moment. History may take a different view. When we look back at this turning point in America’s longest war, we may discover that a relatively trivial White House incident, the gate-crashing by a couple of fame-seeking bozos, was the more telling omen of what was to come.

Obama’s speech, for all its thoughtfulness and sporadic eloquence, was a failure at its central mission. On its own terms, as both policy and rhetoric, it didn’t make the case for escalating our involvement in Afghanistan. It’s doubtful that the president’s words moved the needle of public opinion wildly in any direction for a country that has tuned out Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq alike while panicking about where the next job is coming from.

You can think the speech failed without questioning Obama’s motives. I don’t buy the criticism that he contrived a cynical political potpourri to pander to every side in the debate over the war. Nor was his decision to escalate mandated by his campaign stand positing Afghanistan as a just war in contrast to the folly of Iraq. Nor was he intimidated by received Beltway opinion, which, echoing Dick Cheney, accused him of dithering. (“The urgent necessity is to make a decision — whether or not it is right,” wrote the Dean of D.C. punditry, David Broder.)

Jared Diamond: Will Big Business Save the Earth?

Los Angeles

THERE is a widespread view, particularly among environmentalists and liberals, that big businesses are environmentally destructive, greedy, evil and driven by short-term profits. I know — because I used to share that view.

But today I have more nuanced feelings. Over the years I’ve joined the boards of two environmental groups, the World Wildlife Fund and Conservation International, serving alongside many business executives.

As part of my board work, I have been asked to assess the environments in oil fields, and have had frank discussions with oil company employees at all levels. I’ve also worked with executives of mining, retail, logging and financial services companies. I’ve discovered that while some businesses are indeed as destructive as many suspect, others are among the world’s strongest positive forces for environmental sustainability.

Destroyed US town a model of eco-living as it rebuilds

by Emmanuel Dunand Emmanuel Dunand – Sat Dec 5, 12:56 pm ET

GREENSBURG, Kansas (AFP) – With all eyes on US efforts to combat climate changeCopenhagen, one Kansas town is going green in a big way -- and setting an example for American communities. at next week's UN summit in

On the evening of May 4, 2007, a category-five tornado swept through the rural midwestern town of Greensburg, killing nine people and obliterating 95 percent of the urban landscape, including the school, the hospital and more than 900 houses.

But this community of 1,400 is rebuilding stronger than ever, in a remarkable comeback billed by Greensburg GreenTown -- a grassroots organization involving town residents, local officials and business owners -- as a "model for sustainable building and green living."

Senators seek to put OPM in charge of health care public option

By Anna Edney CongressDaily December 5, 2009

Ten moderate and liberal Senate Democrats meeting on a public option for the healthcare overhaul bill closed in on an agreement Saturday night to hand the Office of Personnel Management responsibility for administering a national non-profit public option instead of the Health and Human Services Department.

"Yeah, there's sort of a, sort of a kind of a general agreement on where we're headed on this thing," Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, said. "There's still some details, right, the devil's in the details."

"I think we're pretty well set on OPM," Harkin said.