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Lee's Link |
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3/31/10 The Yes Men call O’Keefe, Breitbart ’sad and pathetic’ for targeting ACORN The Yes Men seek to comfort the afflicted by actively afflicting the comforted. And that's the opposite of what anti-ACORN activists are doing, Bonanno purported. "By targeting ACORN, they're targeting people who are victims of a very nasty power dynamic. So, I think it's a mean thing to do." Sahil Kapur |
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3/30/10 German Firm Wins Right to Make Beer Called 'Fucking Hell' The European Union trademarks authority has permitted a German firm to register the brand name "Fucking Hell" for a new beer, much to the irritation of the Austrian village of Fucking. |
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3/29/10 Celebrating (Mourning) a Culture of Lies March 29th marks the thirty-seventh anniversary of America's withdrawal from Vietnam. You won't hear it celebrated in any mainstream media, though it should be. Or more precisely, it should be mourned. Vietnam is the first war America ever lost. Robert Freeman |
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3/28/10 Skeptic challenges guru to kill him live on TV When a famous tantric guru boasted on television that he could kill another man using only his mystical powers, most viewers either gasped in awe or merely nodded unquestioningly. Sanal Edamaruku’s response was different. “Go on then — kill me,” he said.
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3/27/10 India deploys world's hottest chilli to fight terrorism Ever since the Trojan Horse – and probably long before – men have bent their minds to developing the ultimate secret weapon. Now, at last, the Indian army just might have discovered it: the world's hottest chilli pepper. Stephen Bates |
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3/26/10 Netanyahu did one thing right in the Jerusalem debacle A revelation has come forth in Jerusalem: Most of it is a settlement. After decades in which we lied ourselves to pieces and rendered kosher that which was not - only to ourselves, not to any other country - the truth has been revealed. It has been revealed after years in which no one thought to call the residents of these giant neighborhoods settlers. Years in which Teddy Kollek, a Labor Party man and a man of peace, of course, was considered a "builder" and not the greatest of settlers. He settled more Jews in occupied areas than any settler leader. Years in which doubting the settlement enterprise was tantamount to heresy and treason. So of all people, this right-winger, Netanyahu, proponent of the Greater Land of Israel, has lifted the veil. Gideon Levy |
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3/25/10 Disputed Bay of Bengal island 'vanishes' A tiny island claimed for years by India and Bangladesh in the Bay of Bengal has disappeared beneath the rising seas, scientists in India say. |
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3/24/10 Urine Containers, 'Space Boots' and Artifacts Aren't Just Junk, Argue Archaeologists California has named the remains of the Apollo 11 mission a state historical resource -- to the delight of the young profession of space archaeologists. They fear that the trash and equipment left behind by the United States' journeys to the moon could someday wind up for sale on eBay if they aren't protected. Philip Bethge |
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3/23/10 German Satellite to Help Detect Threats to Earth With a new satellite project, Germany's space agency is hoping to create an early warning system for potential asteroid strikes against the Earth. An asteroid impact may have contributed to the death of the dinosaurs, and scientists would like to be able to predict the next Earth-bound collosus before it hits. Christoph Seidler |
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3/22/10 There's no denying Obama's race plays a role in protests In the pre-dawn hours of last Nov. 5, while much of the nation celebrated Barack Obama's election as the nation's first black president, three white men in Springfield, Mass., doused the partially completed Macedonia Church of God in Christ with gasoline and burned it to the ground. Tony Pugh |
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3/21/10 I'm Not the Messiah, Says Food Activist... but His Many Worshippers Do Not Believe Him The trouble started when Raj Patel appeared on American TV to plug his latest book, an analysis of the financial crisis called The Value of Nothing. Bobbie Johnson |
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3/20/10 The Growing Movement for Publicly Owned Banks We the people have given away our sovereign money-creating power to private, for-profit lending institutions, which have used it to siphon wealth from the productive economy. Some states are moving to take that power back. Ellen Brown |
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3/19/10 The FBI Could Be Watching You on Facebook Social-networking sites have driven a seemingly insatiable need to share all sorts of information about ourselves in a very public way -- and law enforcement has caught on. Daniela Perdoma |
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3/18/10 Tampon-makers can't mention the V-word. Period. For years, advertising for tampons and "sanitary products" have been shrouded in nebulous euphemism. So what happens when a US tampon-maker drops the coy messaging and goes straight for the jugular (so to speak)? Its ad gets banned by the major US television networks for mentioning the word vagina. Richard Adams |
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3/17/10 Dog recovers after operation to remove football Bracken the labrador ended up with the deflated ball stuck next to his heart after munching it while out of sight of his owner John Grant and would have died without surgery. David Gunn |
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3/16/10 Zebra puts head in hippopotamus's mouth A zebra at Zurich Zoo appeared to be staring into the jaws of death when visitors saw it nose to nose with an open-mouthed hippopotamus. |
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3/15/10 Drones Are Lynchpin of Obama's War on Terror CIA drones are killing terrorists -- and civilians -- in Pakistan almost every day. The unmanned aircraft are becoming the weapon of choice in the fight against al-Qaida and its allies. But the political, military and moral consequences are incalculable. SPIEGEL ONLINE has investigated Barack Obama's remote-controlled campaign against terrorism. Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan |
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3/14/10 Why 'Life Had To Have Been Designed' Is a Terrible Justification for God's Existence A lot of arguments for religion are very bad indeed. A lot of arguments for religion aren't even arguments: they're deflections, excuses for why the believer isn't making an argument, bigoted insults, expressions of wishful thinking, complaints that atheists are mean bad people to even ask for an argument, heartfelt wishes that atheists would just shut up. Greta Christina |
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3/13/10 Let's Not Fire the Teachers When Students Don't Learn -- Let's Fire the Parents Yes, America has found its new boogeyman to blame for our crumbling educational system. It's just too easy to blame the teachers, what with their cushy teachers' lounges, their fat-cat salaries, and their absolute authority in deciding who gets a hall pass. We all remember high school - canning the entire faculty is a nationwide revenge fantasy. Take that, Mrs. Crabtree! And guess what? We're chewing gum and no, we didn't bring enough for everybody. Bill Maher |
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3/13/10 McDonald's Demands Franchise Applicants Reveal Intimate Details Those wanting to own a McDonald's or Subway franchise in Germany must be prepared to offer up intimate personal details, including health information. One German official says the questionnaires violate the law. |
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3/12/10 The sleepy town of Hardin, Mont., began its foray into the private prison industry in 2004, an adventure that would eventually saddle it with millions in debt and an empty, 464-bed prison collecting dust at the edge of town. Beau Hodai |
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3/11/10 Knut Should be Castrated, Animal Rights Group Says As if Berlin Zoo's polar bear star Knut hasn't had enough upheaval in his life, animal rights group PETA demanded on Tuesday that he should be castrated to avoid him inbreeding with his girlfriend Giovanna. The two apparently share the same grandfather. The demand is likely to outrage his many fans. David Crossland |
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3/10/10 I'm going to vomit if I hear the word "bipartisanship" one more time I am angry. I'm tired of pundits and know-nothing, media gasbags. I'm tired of snarky "inside politics" programming. I am sick of the bigotry and hatred of "birthers" and faux patriotic cranks and their GOP puppet masters. And I'm really pissed at the Democratic Party that confuses having a plate of limp noodles with having a spine. John Cory |
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3/9/10 Three films that would make Einstein blush An American physicist is calling for Hollywood producers to tone down the fanciful science in movies - and restrict themselves to just one scientific flaw per film. But which are the worst offenders when it comes to bad science films? Elizabeth Diffin |
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3/8/10 Always lost? It may be in your genes When it comes to navigation skills, some of us are homing pigeons. Others are mice in a maze. The sharp navigators are those who can figure out which way they need to go in an unfamiliar setting to get to their destination. No GPS needed to find their way around town. No always stopping for directions. Some folks, meanwhile, are hopelessly disoriented — the type that gets lost in a paper bag. Kavita Varma-White |
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3/7/10 Do Kinder People Have an Evolutionary Advantage? Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, are challenging long-held beliefs that human beings are wired to be selfish. In a wide range of studies, social scientists are amassing a growing body of evidence to show we are evolving to become more compassionate and collaborative in our quest to survive and thrive. Yasmin Anwar |
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3/6/10 The Superconductor: SF Symphony's Michael Tilson Thomas The National Medal of Arts winner talks about James Brown, movie music, and how to get your kids to love practicing piano. Clara Jeffrey |
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3/5/10 Health Reform Truth Oozes Out: And It Is Not Just "Everything there is to say about healthcare has been said and just about everyone has said it," Obama said. "So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform healthcare so that it works, not just for the insurance companies, but for America's families and businesses." Not just... Donna Smith |
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3/4/10 Ever since deregulation caused a worldwide economic meltdown in September '09 and everyone became a Keynesian again, it hasn't been easy to be a fanatical fan of the late economist Milton Friedman. So widely discredited is his brand of free-market fundamentalism that his followers have become increasingly desperate to claim ideological victories, however far-fetched. Naomi Klein |
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3/3/10 Ryan Bingham, the character played with debonair finish by George Clooney in Up in the Air, is a perfect mirror of modern business and social trends: an airport nomad who travels all over the country firing people for a living. Bingham has no desire for a wife, kids, or permanent address. Instead he embraces a devil-may-care ethics of personal freedom. Emily Bauman |
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3/2/10 Former Prom King Now Living Anonymously Among Commoners GRESHAM, OR—Sean Fowler, the man once revered throughout the halls of Barlow High School as prom's one true king, has for the past several years lived a meager existence among the very peasants who used to tremble at the mere mention of his name, sources reported Monday. the ONION |
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3/1/10 Treasure Trove in World's E-Waste This week the United Nations released a report on the problems surrounding the recycling of electronic scrap, known as e-waste. Millions of tons of old computers and phones on the scrap heaps of the world contain more gold and silver than the average mine. What is needed is better and safer recycling. Axel Bojanowski |
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2/28/10 Commentators should not be dismissive of Pat Robertson when he says bad things that happen to others are because of their alliances with the Devil. There are few men of the cloth, with the exception of some Irish priests, who are more qualified to identify what acts are inspired by the Devil and his surrogates than Pat Robertson. Christopher Brauchli |
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2/27/10 6 Insane Coincidences You Won't Believe Actually Happened We're not going to bullshit you. Look hard enough, and you can find "amazing" coincidences anywhere. With a whole universe to work with, sometimes the stars are going to align just right. Jacopo della Quercia |
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2/26/10 Facts just don't mean what they used to mean To listen to talk radio, to watch TV pundits, to read a newspaper's online message board, is to realize that increasingly, we are a people estranged from critical thinking, divorced from logic, alienated from even objective truth. We admit no ideas that do not confirm us, hear no voices that do not echo us, sift out all information that does not validate what we wish to believe. Leonard Pitts, Jr. |
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2/25/10 Since the early 1990s, much of the media have come to overrepresent women as having made it—completely—in the professions, as having gained sexual equality with men, and having achieved a level of financial success and comfort enjoyed primarily by the Tiffany’s-encrusted doyennes of Laguna Beach. At the same time, there has been a resurgence of dreck clogging our cultural arteries—The Man Show, Maxim, Girls Gone Wild. But even this fare was presented as empowering, because while the scantily clad or bare-breasted women may have seemed to be objectified, they were really on top, because now they had chosen to be sex objects and men were supposedly nothing more than their helpless, ogling, crotch-driven slaves. Susan J Douglas |
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2/24/10 Death of the corner shop as we know it REMOVING the display of sweets in shops and restricting the sale of high-calorie food near schools are among radical government proposals to make Scotland the first country in the world to successfully tackle obesity. Craig Brown |
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2/23/10 Man Indicted for Breaking Into Prison Prison walls were no obstacle for a man in western Germany who was being separated from his love. But breaking into her cell every night turned out to be a very bad decision. |
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2/22/10 No miracle as brain-damaged patient proved unable to communicate It seemed to be a medical miracle: the car crash victim assumed for 23 years to be in a coma who was suddenly found to be conscious and able to communicate by tapping on a computer. Denis Campbell |
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2/21/10 One Photographer's Look at Social Dislocation He was looking for adventure. But when the young Dane Jacob Holdt arrived in the US in the 1970s, he found a country deeply divided -- and spent the next five years photographing that divergence. His photos, now on display in Braunschweig, show a haunting America. Christoph Gunkel |
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2/20/10 Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up - and have you achieved it? A study run over the past 50 years has tested what helps childhood aspirations become reality. Sue Mitchell |
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2/19/10 Did the New Star of German Literature Steal from a Blogger? Bestselling 17-year-old German writer Helene Hegemann is being accused of plagiarism after it was revealed that her debut novel contains passages lifted from a blog about sex and drugs in Berlin's techno scene. She denies she did anything wrong. Tobias Rapp |
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2/18/10 Wall St. Sets Its Greedy Eyes on Shaking the Silver out of Hollywood If you thought the mortgage-backed securities and other complex financial instruments that crashed the economy were risky, you’ll love Wall Street’s latest brainwave: a new financial market in which players can gamble on whether upcoming Hollywood movies will be blockbusters or bombs. Nick Baumann |
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2/17/10 Claire Danes As Temple Grandin Claire Danes is revelatory as Temple Grandin animal behaviorist, best-selling author, autistic and expert in autism. This is a fascinating movie and I learned so much about this woman and about autism. Temple did not speak until she was four and if not for her mother would have probably ended up spending her life in an institution. What a loss that would have been. Melissa Silverstein |
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2/16/10 Texas Education Board Infusing Schoolbooks with Ultraconservative Ideology "The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation," McLeroy said, jabbing his finger in the air for emphasis. "But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan -- he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes." Mariah Blake |
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2/15/10 When the historian and political activist Howard Zinn died recently of a heart attack at 87, National Public Radio's All Things Considered ran a short obituary consisting of snippets of interviews from three people: the linguist Noam Chomsky, the civil rights leader Julian Bond and the radical right-wing provocateur David Horowitz. Eric Alterman |
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2/14/10 Our Founders were NOT Fundamentalists God forbid our children should know of American Christians who embraced the Sermon on the Mount and renounced the Book of Revelations...or natives who established democracy on American soil long before they saw the first European...or actual Founders who got drunk, high and laid on their way to writing the Constitution. Harvey Wasserman |
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2/13/10 Men At Work lose plagiarism case in Australia Larrikin Music had claimed the flute riff was stolen from Kookaburra Sits in the Old Gum Tree, written by Marion Sinclair in 1934. |
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2/12/10 One thing that governors and mayors absolutely love to do is win a prize in the national game called "Corporate Welfare Roulette." It's a simple casino-style game in which politicos put down a big stack of taxpayers' money on an out-of-state corporation as an "incentive," hoping that their bet outbids other states and cities trying to lure that same corporation to move to their area and hire some people. Jim Hightower |
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2/11/10 Wal-Mart Cuts Over 13,000 Of What It Calls Jobs "Obviously, it is a sad day whenever we have to let go of any of the people we have dehumanized so thoroughly that we can barely muster the will to describe them as employees," Wal-Mart CEO Mike Duke told reporters. "However, this is a business, and we must do what we can to stay competitive while still paying our existing workforce what we actually refer to with a straight face as wages." the ONION |
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2/10/10 Phishing Scam Cripples European Emissions Trading Sneaky cyber-thieves have made millions by fraudulently obtaining European greenhouse gas emissions allowances and reselling them. The scam has hampered trading of the credits, which are seen as an important tool in curbing climate change, in several European countries. |
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2/9/10 On Nov. 5, Rep. John Boehner of Ohio, the House minority leader, took the podium at a Republican rally, waved a document defiantly and declared: "This is my copy of the Constitution, and I'm going to stand here with the Founding Fathers who wrote in the Preamble, We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Christopher Dreisbach |
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2/3/10 While reflecting upon the “have a nice day” patter of the pundits who were heaping praise on Prop. 13, I recalled something that Albert Einstein had said: “There are only two things in this world that I’m fairly sure about. That E=mc2, and man’s capacity for folly. And I’m not that certain about the first.” Indeed, Prop. 13 was to become California’s Folly. Arthur Blaurstein |
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2/2/10 Al Jazeera: The Most Hated Name in News? In less than three years, Al Jazeera English has emerged as the dominant channel covering the developing world. As the first worldwide news station to be based in the "global South," it has an audacious mandate: to reverse the information flow that has traditionally moved from the wealthy countries of the North to the poorer countries south of the equator, and to be the "voice of the voiceless," delivering in-depth journalism from under-reported regions around the world. Deborah Campbell |
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2/1/10 Oregon Vote Shows Public Is Ready to Raise Taxes on Corporations and the Rich Conservatives have been crowing loudly about their victory in last week’s special election in Massachusetts, but voters in Oregon also “sent a message,” when approving two measures that imposed progressive taxes on earners making more than $250,000 per year and on large corporations. Joshua Holland |
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1/31/10 Pope John Paul II regularly whipped himself Pope John Paul II self-flagellated regularly to imitate Christ's suffering and signed a secret document saying he would resign instead of ruling for life if he became incurably ill, a book claims. |
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1/30/10 Reporter goes undercover after claims city is 'too tolerant' of beggars Taking up my spot outside the Balmoral, with nothing more than a flattened cardboard box for a seat, I adopted my downtrodden persona. I kept my head down, lest people guess that I was in fact well fed, well rested and pampered by the luxuries of a roof and a bed. Mark McLaughlin |
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1/29/10 As long as the wired Internet is dependent upon 13 closely guarded root servers it is politically controllable just as any other communications hub is. These servers are operated by the Pentagon and NASA as well as by private, mainly American corporations. Michael Naumann |
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1/28/10 An Auschwitz Survivor and Her New Rap Band "It is certainly a bit different from what we normally do," the diminutive, 85-year-old Bejarano told SPIEGEL ONLINE, referring to her group Coincidence, which includes her daughter Edna and son Joram and normally plays Jewish and anti-fascist songs. "But I know this hip hop stuff is popular among the youth. I thought if we worked together, then young people could learn more about what happened back then." Charles Hawley in Hamburg |
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1/27/10 McDonald's 'wrong' to fire worker over cheese slice The waitress was fired last March after she sold a hamburger to a co-worker who then asked for cheese, which she added. |
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1/26/10 Revisiting The Shock Doctrine in the Wake of Haiti Disaster Dozens of coastal villages were flattened by the wave, but unlike in Sri Lanka, many Thai settlements were successfully rebuilt within months. The difference did not come from the government. Thailand's politicians were just as eager as those elsewhere to use the storm as an excuse to evict fishing people and hand over land tenure to large resorts. Yet what set Thailand apart was that villagers approached all government promises with intense skepticism and refused to wait patiently in camps for an official reconstruction plan. Instead, within weeks, hundreds of villagers engaged in what they called land "reinvasions." Naomi Klein |
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1/25/10 Hawk hired to scare off Holyrood pigeons flies away for good Tweed, a Harris hawk, who was drafted in at a cost of Ł44,000 to scare pigeons away from the Holyrood building, has gone AWOL. David Maddox |
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1/24/10 Historic Bentley snowflake photos for sale in US Ten of the pioneering photos of snowflake crystals US farmer Wilson A Bentley began taking more than a century ago are to be sold in New York. |
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1/23/10 The Secrets of Looking Good on the Dance Floor Why do some clubbers shake it like a Polaroid picture while others prefer to perch on a bar stool? British psychologist Peter Lovatt, who has conducted rigorous field work in nightclubs, believes he can explain why some booty shaking is hot -- and some is not. It's all about your hormones. Birger Menke |
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1/22/10 New Basketball League For White Only A new professional basketball league called the All-American Basketball Alliance (AABA) sent out a press release on Sunday saying that it intends to start its inaugural season in June, with teams in 12 U.S. cities. However, the AABA is different from other sports leagues because only players who are “natural born United States citizens with both parents of Caucasian race are eligible to play in the league.” AABA commissioner Don “Moose” Lewis insists that he’s not racist, but he just wants to get away from the “street-ball” played by “people of color” and back to “fundamental basketball.” Amanda Terkel |
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1/21/10 World's 'most expensive' ham leg on sale in London The leg of Iberico ham, which costs Ł1,800, went on sale at the food hall in the retailer's flagship store in Oxford Street, central London. |
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1/20/10 It takes a strange frame of mind to believe that demolishing a wooded encampment of homeless immigrant men and evicting them onto the streets during one of the coldest weeks of winter can be an act of prudence and compassion. But that is how the town of Huntington, in Suffolk County on Long Island, describes it. |
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1/19/10 Can CO2 Catchers Combat Climate Change? While nations bicker about who should cut greenhouse gas emissions and by how much, scientists are dreaming up their own solutions to global warming. A German professor has created a filter which extracts more than a thousand times more carbon dioxide from the air than a tree. Samiha Shafy |
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1/18/10 A fourth novel that continues Mervyn Peake's classic fantasy series Gormenghast has been discovered. It was written by Peake's widow, the late Maeve Gilmore, and recounts the further adventures of Titus, the 77th Earl of Groan. Sebastian Peake |
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1/17/10 The State of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Dream in 2010 Over 40 years after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination, his words still speak to the social conditions that so many Americans face. Our unemployment rate is hovering at 10 percent, and the wealthiest 10 percent of us control over 70 percent of the nation's wealth. Economic inequality remains a barrier to greater racial equality. The national commemoration of King's birthday, therefore, is more for reflection than celebration. Dedrick Muhammad |
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1/16/10 Interview: Lemony Snicket - A fortunate event NO-ONE in Scotland has ever seen Lemony Snicket. If you're a truly obsessive fan (as most of his are), you might have seen a photo of him on the odd website or the very occasional newspaper interview, but they only ever show the back of his head, not his face. David Robinson |
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1/15/10 Moral Bankruptcy: Why Are We Letting Wall Street Off So Easy? We have created a society in which materialism overwhelms moral commitment, in which the rapid growth that we have achieved is not sustainable environmentally or socially, in which we do not act together to address our common needs. Market fundamentalism has eroded any sense of community and has led to rampant exploitation of unwary and unprotected individuals. There has been an erosion of trust-and not just in our financial institutions. It is not too late to close these fissures. Joseph Stiglitz |
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1/14/10 The Further Adventures of The Edge in Malibu My last dispatch from The Bu involved a dust-up on the mountain above Surfrider Beach just outside city limits, where the U2 guitarist known as The Edge wants to build not one, two, three, or four, but FIVE houses the size of aircraft carriers. And he's calling the project -- I'm not kidding here, by the way -- Leaves in the Wind. Steve Lopez |
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1/13/10 Having a big bum, hips and thighs 'is healthy' Carrying extra weight on your hips, bum and thighs is good for your health, protecting against heart and metabolic problems, UK experts have said. |
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1/12/10 Research finds Neanderthals enjoyed makeup For decades, our low-browed Neanderthal cousins have been portrayed as dim savages whose idea of seduction was a whispered "ug" and a blow to the cranium. Sam Jones |
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1/11/10 Amazon explorers uncover signs of a real El Dorado Spanning 155 miles, the circles, squares and other geometric shapes form a network of avenues, ditches and enclosures built long before Christopher Columbus set foot in the new world. Some date to as early as 200 AD, others to 1283. Rory Carroll |
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1/10/10 Absurd development in the national capital of reckless abandon: County officials in Las Vegas are putting their foot down about some nipples featured in a painted mural decorating the Erotic Heritage Museum. Evan James |
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1/9/10 The Ultimate Eco-Friendly Ride Carbon fiber and aluminum are so 2009. This year's best bicycling model is made out of bamboo and hemp. A new generation of manufacturers are coming up with some of the most environmentally friendly transport yet. Lighter, stronger, more comfortable and these bikes have also got a much smaller carbon footprint. Andrea Reidl |
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1/8/10 Plate weighing device 'can curb childhood obesity' A talking, computerised weighing device that tracks how quickly food is gobbled off the plate could be a solution to childhood obesity, researchers say. BBC |
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1/7/10 German Women's Magazine Ditches Professional Models German women's magazine Brigitte has declared it will no longer use professional models in its fashion shoots. But reaction to the first all-amateur issue has been mixed, with observers criticizing the magazine for not going far enough to fight anorexia. David Gordon Smith |
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1/6/10 'Avatar' arouses conservatives' ire To say that the film has evoked a storm of ire on the right would be an understatement. Big Hollywood's John Nolte, one of my favorite outspoken right-wing film essayists, blasted the film, calling it "a sanctimonious thud of a movie so infested with one-dimensional characters and PC cliches that not a single plot turn, large or small, surprises. . . . Think of 'Avatar' as 'Death Wish' for leftists, a simplistic, revisionist revenge fantasy where if you . . . hate the bad guys (America) you're able to forgive the by-the-numbers predictability of it all." Patrick Goldstein |
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1/5/10 Economists are often cheapskates Academic economists gather in Atlanta this weekend for their annual meetings, always held the first weekend after New Year's Day. That's not only because it coincides with holidays at most universities. A post-holiday lull in business travel also puts hotel rates near the lowest point of the year. Justin Lahart |
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1/4/10 How a puppy tamed my teenage boys Michael, my middle son, who is nearly 13, is so cruel that it's hard to bear, but he must be suffering too. His face is full of blocked anger and tears as he tells me I am not his mother, he wants another mother. He wants a proper house, not one joined to other houses, and proper clothes, not ones from chain stores and a proper car, not a tin can stuck out the front so that he's too embarrassed to bring his friends round. Sara Markham |
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1/3/10 Walls Never Work: In the Middle East or in Ireland The differences, of course, are legion. Protestantism, in its various Irish forms, aimed to convert or ethnically cleanse the Catholic Gaels. Judaism does not attempt to proselytise - quite the contrary - and Israel's illegal claim to West Bank Arab land is based on holy texts, not on a king's fiat. Robert Fisk |
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1/2/10 There’s something funny about the inherent excess of hosting a diamond extravaganza while Rome, in a manner of speaking, burns. The arts, however, go on flaunting sparkly objects in spite of Wall Street’s accountability deficit. Evan James |
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1/1/10 Good Riddance to Decade That Began With Theft of the Presidency The original sin of the good-riddance decade came in December of 2000, when the United States Supreme Court intervened to stop a complete recount of the votes in Florida and then declared George Bush to be the president. John Nichols |
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12/31/09 The Toilet Than Can Help Solve Our Water and Energy Problems Upwards of 3 million people die annually from diarrhea, dysentery, and parasitic diseases -- all for the want of clean water. Meanwhile, each year in the water-rich United States, 2.1 billion gallons of the world's most precious liquid are used, not to water thirsty crops or slake parched throats, but to flush human waste from home toilets to municipal sewers. While harvesting rainwater and recycling graywater are fine strategies, it's time to get to the seat of the problem. We need a Toilet Revolution. Gar Smith |
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12/30/09 Announcing the 2009 P.U.-Litzer Prizes WASHINGTON - December 22 - For 17 years our colleagues Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon have worked with FAIR to present the P.U.-Litzers, a year-end review of some of the stinkiest examples of corporate media malfeasance, spin and just plain outrageousness. FAIR |
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12/29/09 What Happens When We Can’t Trust the Verifiers? In 2008, the New York Times’ David Barstow reported that 75 retired military officers regularly appearing on television “have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.” David Sirota |
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12/28/09 Today, half the law students and medical students are female. But only 15 of the Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs. We had the first serious female candidate run for president ... and lose. We had a mother of five, a governor and a Title IX baby run for vice president ... as a conservative. Ellen Goodman |
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12/27/09 Sumerians Look On In Confusion As God Creates World According to recently excavated clay tablets inscribed with cuneiform script, thousands of Sumerians—the first humans to establish systems of writing, agriculture, and government—were working on their sophisticated irrigation systems when the Father of All Creation reached down from the ether and blew the divine spirit of life into their thriving civilization. the ONION |
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12/26/09 The Nevada gambler, al-Qaida, the CIA and the mother of all cons The intelligence reports fitted the suspicions of the time: al-Qaida sleeper agents were scattered across the US awaiting orders that were broadcast in secret codes over the al-Jazeera television network. Chris McGreal |
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12/25/09 Vonnegut recounts for us his trials after capture by the Germans during their last great counter-offensive, in the chaos of the Battle of the Bulge just before Christmas 1944. Through the tragicomic alter-ego “Billy Pilgrim,” we learn about Vonnegut’s six months as an object deprived of free will. Gregory Sumner |
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12/24/09 The New World Order 'Is Already Underway' In a SPIEGEL interview, London banker and lay preacher Stephen Green, group chairman of HSBC, discusses the divide between his Christian faith and the pursuit of profit, the morality of being involved in the subprime mortgage business and whether he and his fellow bankers have learned anything from the financial crisis. Interview: Thomas Tuma & Beat Balzli, translated by Christopher Sultan |
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12/23/09 Kim Peek, the real Rain Man whose almost unimaginable powers of memory were coupled with severe disabilities and who inspired the Oscar-winning film role played by Dustin Hoffman, has died of a heart attack in his home town of Salt Lake City, aged 58. Ed Pilkington |
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12/22/09 Nader’s Utopia: The World According to Ralph Ralph Nader's new novel, "Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us," is a window into the world the consumer advocate and independent presidential candidate wishes he could create. It is a world where the corporate state is dismantled, citizens are restored to power and the inequities and injustices meted out to the poor and the working classes are reversed. Nader describes his book as a "practical utopia." Chris Hedges |
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12/21/09 CSPAN footage of McCain blacked out When Senator Al Franken (D-MN) this week denied Senator Joe Lieberman's (I-CT) request for more time to make his points on health care reform, he was blasted by Fox news who called him an "angry comedian" and berated him for mistreating the "kind" senator from Connecticut. Conservative blogger Ann Althouse called it a "dick move," and columnist and Fox News correspondent Michelle Malkin railed against "Franken's little snit fit." Diana Sweet |
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12/20/09 Stephen King Meets the Estate Tax Imagine a story about tax policy created by horror writer Stephen King. A fictional Congress, divided between anti-tax ideology and fiscal responsibility, amends the inheritance tax on the very wealthy so that it disappears entirely one year and then returns at steeper rates the following year. Over the "zero year," death rates skyrocket in the nation's most affluent ZIP codes. Seemingly robust and healthy billionaires perish in mysterious accidents. Lexus wheels fall off from Bloomfield Hills to Scarsdale to Beverly Hills. Sailboats and yachts inexplicably crash in calm coastal and Caribbean waters. Tainted champagne wipes out clusters of prosperous alumni at class reunions from dozens of elite prep schools from Groton to Choate. Bill Gates Sr. & Chuck Collins |
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12/19/09 Octopus snatches coconut and runs Underwater footage reveals that the creatures scoop up halved coconut shells before scampering away with them so they can later use them as shelters. Rebecca Morelle |
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12/18/09 Has dark matter finally been detected? For 80 years, it has eluded the finest minds in science. But tonight it appeared that the hunt may be over for dark matter, the mysterious and invisible substance that accounts for three-quarters of the mass of the universe. Ian Sample |
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12/17/09 Chinese Nutcrackers Threaten Germany's Christmas Tradition Low-cost imports of nutcrackers pose a risk to the age-old woodcraft of eastern Germany's Erzgebirge region, famous for its Christmas ornaments. The Chinese-made replicas may increasingly look like the real thing -- but don't try cracking a nut with them, warns Germany's chief woodcarver. David Crossland |
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12/16/09 Joe Lieberman and the Health Care Train Wreck When last we heard from Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, he was throwing sand into the gears of the Democratic push for health care reform by declaring he would filibuster any legislation containing the so-called public option. "I feel so strongly about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement," said the senator back in November. "The government going into the health insurance business - I think it's such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to stop a final vote." William Rivers Pitt |
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12/15/09 Bush birth control policies helped fuel Africa's baby boom SIRAKANO, Uganda — At age 45, after giving birth to 13 children in her village of thatch roofs and bare feet, Beatrice Adongo made a discovery that startled her: birth control. Shashank Bengali |
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12/14/09 Ken Loach wins lifetime achievement honour at European film awards Grit, not glamour, proved the order of the day at the 22nd annual European film awards, which took place inside a former power station in Germany's industrial heartland, and handed a lifetime achievement award to the director Ken Loach. The leading light of social-realist British cinema seemed to relish his trip to the Ruhr region, a landscape dominated by smokestacks and coal-mines. "It reminds me that we used to have an industrial heartland in my country too," he enthused. "Until Margaret Thatcher stuck a dagger through it." Xan Brooks |
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12/13/09 The Religious Right's Potty Paranoia The next big culture war battle is about to be waged in an unlikely place: the restroom. After many years, Congress may finally have the votes to pass the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The measure, which the Obama administration views as key to advancing gay rights, would ban workplace discrimination against gays, lesbians, and transgendered people. But Christian right groups are fighting the legislation -- on the grounds that it would force businesses to allow transgendered and "transitioning" men and women to use opposite-sex restrooms or face lawsuits from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Stephanie Menciner |
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12/12/09 The Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now (ACORN) doesn't show a pattern of intentional and illegal behavior in undercover videos that conservatives shot of ACORN staffers. That's according to an independent, two-month review of ACORN released Monday. Mary Susan Littlepage |
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12/11/09 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. On the subject of pay, he said: “Has there been one financial leader to say this is really excessive? Wake up, gentlemen. Your response, I can only say, has been inadequate.”
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12/10/09 10 Signs the Failed Drug War Is Finally Ending 2009 will go down as the beginning of the end of the United States drug war. I have worked at the Drug Policy Alliance promoting alternatives to the war on drugs for 10 years, and I can say without a doubt that there was more debate and movement toward sensible drug policies this year than in the last 9 years combined! Here are 10 stories that contributed to the unprecedented momentum to end America's longest running war. Tony Newman |
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12/9/09 Copenhagen Climate Summit in Disarray after 'Danish Text' Leak 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. John Vidal |
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12/8/09 When an Anti-Choice Catholic Woman Needed an Abortion at Dr. Tiller's Clinic The Andersons were devastated to learn their unborn child wouldn't live. Dr. Tiller showed them the compassion they so badly wished they had from their friends. Amanda Mueller |
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12/7/09 Why welfare reform fails its recession test When President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law, he didn't just end welfare as we knew it. For all practical purposes, it turned out, he brought an end to cash help of any kind for families with children in much of the country. While welfare reform was long ago declared a success in some quarters, it was deeply flawed from the beginning. The recession has shown how seriously unprepared it left us for hard times. Peter Edelman and Barbara Ehrenreich |
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12/6/09 They Don’t Check Facts Like They Used To 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. Ellen Goodman |
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12/5/09 Investigators Still Piecing Together Weird-Ass Clues In Fucked-Up Tiger Woods Crash WINDERMERE, FL—A spokesman for the Windermere Police Department told reporters Thursday that investigators have gathered enough weird-ass evidence to officially classify Tiger Woods' recent car accident as pretty fucking strange. the ONION |
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12/4/09 What the FBI's Murder of a Black Panther Can Teach Us 40 Years Later December 4 marks the fortieth anniversary of the raid on a Black Panther apartment in which Chicago police shot and killed Fred Hampton in his bed. Hampton was the charismatic young chairman of the Chicago Black Panther Party, and under his leadership the party's membership and influence had increased dramatically. The party had instituted a popular and expanding Breakfast for Children Program and a police accountability project. At the age of 21, Hampton was able to reach and influence gang members and welfare mothers as well as college and law students. Under his tutelage, the Panthers formed a coalition with Puerto Rican and white activists. Jeffrey Haas |
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12/3/09 Tiger, don't say anything. Not another word. The future of civilization - such as it is - depends on it. Ruth Marcus |
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12/2/09 Corporate Scrooge Has Change of Heart This is a story about 1,200 workers in Honduras who were fired by their American corporate factory owner because they unionized. Then, something remarkable happened. They got their jobs back. Robyn Blumner |
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12/1/09 In 70 Predator strikes so far in Pakistan, 600-odd people have been killed, including 17 in the al-Qaeda high command. Turn it around the other way and imagine that Pakistan conducted similar strikes within the sovereign boundaries of the United States, causing a 600 to 17 ratio of what we callously call "collateral" damage. Our outrage quotient would quickly equal and surpass what we felt after 9/11. War would be declared on Pakistan so fast it would make our heads spin. Winslow Myers |
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11/30/09 Our Lives Are Filled With Worthless Crap That's Destroying the Earth As the middle-class daughter of a refugee mother and a Depression-era father, I grew up straddling two worlds. My parents could afford much more than they were willing to buy. Most things that broke could be and were repaired. My German grandmother’s aphorisms lingered in the air: “Waste not, want not,” “A penny saved is a penny earned,” “A stitch in time saves nine.” Sharon Bloyd-Peshkin |
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11/29/09 The Ethical Dilemma in Your Holiday Stocking This holiday season most Americans will spare little thought for the faraway factories, sprawling transportation networks and faceless workers that churn out many of the gifts we'll give and get this year. Thomas Mucha |
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11/28/09 Well, I suppose I had an advantage over most Americans in that many people who visited our apartment weren’t Americans. So, I was never likely to grow up as a narrowly nationalistic person, or as someone who believed that only Americans were worthy of respect. Robert Hirschfield |
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11/27/09 Santa Anita racetrack played a role in WWII internment A plaque near the entrance on the sprawling grounds of the Santa Anita racetrack is the sole reminder of the track's place in World War II history as the nation's largest assembly center for Japanese Americans on their way to internment camps. Alison Bell |
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11/26/09 Drink Some Booze, Smoke a Joint and Relax: How to Have a Hedonistic Thanksgiving You might not know this, but Thanksgiving is the best holiday of the year. You don't have to buy a gift for your most annoying family member or send your boss a cheese log. You don't have to pretend that the ten-year-old girl dressed up as Britney Spears is appropriate or deserving of a mini Snickers bar. You really don't have to fast. No, this is a holiday about three simple things: eating, drinking, and merriment. Ben Reininga |
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11/25/09 It’s the end of the world as we know it … again A brief history of socialist plots to end the American way of life. Matt Wuerker |
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11/24/09 Why Do Conservatives Love Sarah Palin? Because She Never Stops Whining At the end of this decade what we call “politics” has devolved into a kind of ongoing, brainless soap opera about dueling cultural resentments and the really cool thing about it, if you’re a TV news producer or a talk radio host, is that you can build the next day’s news cycle meme around pretty much anything at all, no matter how irrelevant — like who’s wearing a flag lapel pin and who isn’t, who spent $150K worth of campaign funds on clothes and who didn’t, who wore a t-shirt calling someone a cunt and who didn’t, and who put a picture of a former Vice Presidential candidate in jogging shorts on his magazine cover (and who didn’t). Matt Taibbi |
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11/23/09 The emergency room bill is enough to make you sick As a physician, he's well aware that emergency room treatment is very expensive. But knowing the true cost of the limited supplies and labor required to treat such a minor wound, he found the experience more than a little disturbing. Steve Lopez |
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11/22/09 C Street House No Longer Tax Exempt Previously, the house -- despite being home to numerous lawmakers -- had been tax exempt, because it was classified as a church. That arrangement had allowed the building's owner, the secretive international Christian organization The Family, to charge significantly below market rents to its residents. In recent year, Senators John Ensign (R-NV), Tom Coburn (R-OK), Sam Brownback (R-KS) and Jim DeMint (R-SC), and Reps. Zach Wamp (R-TN), Bart Stupak (D-MI) and Mike Doyle (D-PA) have all reportedly called C Street home. Zachary Roth |
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11/21/09 The word "Revenge" is scrawled in Hebrew on a Palestinian school in Hebron. The windows are covered with screens and the play yard obstructed with more screens tipped with barbed wire, to obstruct the stones regularly pelted down by Jewish settlers. The space between the school and the neighboring building is blocked off with large, wooden slabs, to ensure that Palestinian school children do not encroach into settler territory. Nearby checkpoints and cameras placed on rooftops serve as constant reminder that these kids' every movement is monitored and contained. Sarah Lazare & Clare Bayard |
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11/20/09 As the Senate takes up health care reform, we’re sure to be treated to yet more scenes of our elected officials bending over backwards to kiss the gold-plated butts of the pharmaceutical and insurance industries. So far, just about every new turn in the health care battle is confirming what many have known for some time: The US health care system is run largely for the benefit of these corporate giants, rather than for the American people, and no piece of legislation is likely to change that fact. James Ridgeway |
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11/19/09 The Worthiness of Banker Charity Far from investing capital (including the trillions of dollars they took from us taxpayers) in companies and jobs, these financial whizzes continue to throw it into the global craps game of debt swaps and other speculative nonsense. The game enriches them and their super-wealthy clients, but it creates nothing whatsoever of social value. Jim Hightower |
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11/18/09 The collapse of the Palestinian Authority, the result of Israel's 42-year refusal to implement a two-state solution, leaves the Palestinians no option but to unilaterally declare an independent state. Israel acted unilaterally when it announced independence in 1948. It is the Palestinians' turn. It worked in Kosovo. It worked in Georgia. And it will work in Palestine. There are 192 member states in the United Nations and as many as 150 would recognize the state of Palestine, creating a diplomatic nightmare for Israel and its lonely ally the United States. Israel will face worldwide censure if it attempts to crush the independent state by force and very likely be subjected to the kind of divestment campaigns and boycotts that brought down the apartheid government of South Africa. Chris Hedges |
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11/17/09 The Fate of Cesar Chavez’s Dream In the midst of a searing heat wave in the summer of 2005, three Mexican-born California farmworkers succumbed to the relentless sun within a few weeks of each other. Outraged local community groups, some with roots in but no longer affiliated with the legendary United Farm Workers union, organized a protest march and rally in the gritty town of Arvin, in California’s Central Valley. Marc Cooper |
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11/16/09 The atomic bomb ended nothing, but led to an almost half-century-long nuclear superpower standoff/nightmare, to nuclear proliferation, and so to the possibility that, someday, even terrorists might possess such weapons. The electronic battlefield was incapable of staving off defeat in Vietnam. That impermeable anti-missile shield never came even faintly close to making it into our skies. Those "smart bombs" of the Gulf War proved remarkably dumb, while the 50 "decapitation" strikes the Bush administration launched against Saddam Hussein's regime on the first day of the 2003 invasion of Iraq took out not a single Iraqi leader, but "dozens" of civilians. And the history of the netcentric military in Iraq is well known. Its "success" sent Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld into retirement and ignominy. Tom Engelhardt |
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11/15/09 Area Man Passionate Defender Of What He Imagines Constitution To Be "Our very way of life is under siege," said Mortensen, whose understanding of the Constitution derives not from a close reading of the document but from talk-show pundits, books by television personalities, and the limitless expanse of his own colorful imagination. "It's time for true Americans to stand up and protect the values that make us who we are." the ONION |
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11/14/09 Lies About Marijuana Drive People to a Much More Harmful Drug -- Booze In 1970, Congress established the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse to study marijuana and make recommendations about how to control its use. The Commission’s final report suggested removal of criminal penalties, noting, “The actual and potential harm of use of the drug is not great enough to justify intrusion by the criminal law into private behavior.” President Nixon ignored the Commission’s findings and launched and all-out war on marijuana users. Steve Fox |
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11/13/09 The Sleazy Advocacy of a Leading 'Liberal Hawk' The New York Times today details the unbelievably sleazy story of Peter Galbraith, one of the Democratic Party's leading so-called "liberal hawks" and a generally revered Wise Man of America's Foreign Policy Community. He was Ambassador to Croatia under the Clinton administration in the mid-1990s and, in March, 2009, the Obama administration (specifically, Richard Holbrooke, Galbraith's mentor) successfully pressured the U.N. to name Galbraith as the second-in-command in Afghanistan. In essence, this highly Serious man has corruptly concealed vast financial stakes in the very policies and positions he has spent years advocating while pretending to be an independent expert. Glenn Greenwald |
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11/12/09 As oceans fall ill, Washington bureaucrats squabble 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. Les Blumenthal |
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11/11/09 In Afghanistan and Iraq, the US and Britain have faced similar dilemmas. These wars were started by President Bush, with Tony Blair trotting along behind, in the expectation that they would be short and cheap. The initial military assaults were wholly successful, but the American and British armies were then caught up in prolonged, bruising, guerrilla wars. By then, too much prestige was at stake and too much blood had been spilt for a withdrawal. The puniness of the armed insurgency in Iraq and Afghanistan, in each case probably a few tens of thousands of fighters, makes the humiliation of retreat all the greater. Patrick Cockburn |
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11/10/09 Who’s Afraid of the Big, Bad Fairness Doctrine? Of all the Big Lies told by the pooh-bahs of talk radio - that our biracial president hates white people, that global warming is a hoax, that a public health care plan to compete with private insurers equals socialism - the most desperate and deluded is this: that the so-called Fairness Doctrine would squash free speech. Steve Almond |
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11/9/09 “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. Max Cleland |
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11/8/09 And the Catholic Bishops Endorse! Thank you, Planned Parenthood and NARAL, from the bottom of my heart, for sitting on your hands and enabling this shit. Hope you have fun at all those Common Purpose meetings, those cocktail parties at the Pelosi's. Jane Hamsher |
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11/7/09 Market-Driven Hysteria and the Politics of Death If we take seriously the ideology, arguments and values now emanating from the right-wing of the Republican Party, there is no room in the United States for a democracy in which the obligations of citizenship, compassion and collective security outweigh the demands of what might be called totalizing market-driven society; that is, a society that is utterly deregulated, privatized, commodified and largely controlled by the ultra-rich and a handful of mega corporations. Henry A. Giroux |
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11/6/09 Enough of this clown. He should be stripped of his Senate chairmanship and sent across the aisle to his boon companions on the right. He should be ignored out of hand on the matter of health care reform, and anything else he decides to address. He has raised being wrong, craven, untrustworthy and useless to the level of high art. Anyone with a full understanding of his record and reputation would know better than to trust him with a job as a crossing guard, and never mind as any kind of a leader on issues of major national and international import. The man is a living, breathing train wreck, and he has no business whatsoever being allowed in the same postal code as the decisions to come that will shape our lives. William Rivers Pitt |
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11/5/09 It's Time to Rebuild Our Passenger Railroad System For the moment, any suggestion that a railroad revival in America might be a good thing is generally greeted as laughable for reasons ranging from the incompetence of Amtrak, to the sprawling layout of our suburbs, to our immense investment in cars, trucks and highways -- motoring culture now overshadowing all other aspects of our national identity. James Howard Kunstler |
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11/4/09 "Restless Vagina Syndrome": Big Pharma's Newest Fake Disease The companies and clinics that narrow the range of sexual normality to porn industry standards suffer their own disease. Symptoms include: a compulsion to concoct illnesses and then develop drugs to treat them, and vice versa. Either way, the syndrome is typically accompanied by a rash of conflicts of interest. Terry J Allen |
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11/3/09 Congress Should Not Reject the Goldstone Report On Tuesday, November 3, Congress is poised to vote on H.Res.867, which calls on the “President and the Secretary of State to oppose unequivocally any endorsement or further consideration of the `Report of the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict' in multilateral fora.’” Michael Ratner |
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11/2/09 Right-Wingers in Congress Love Their Own Gov-Run Health Care, But They Hate Sharing It What these bellicose market-purists hope you don't discover is that they are closet socialists. As members of the congressional elite, they and their families are governmentally blessed with their very own gold-plated, taxpayer-financed, Washington-run health care system. And, they loooove it. Jim Hightower |
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11/1/09 Paul Haggis, the Oscar-winning film-maker, has resigned from the Church of Scientology in an explosive letter that damns what he calls the organization's "hate-filled" and "bigoted" opposition to gay marriage. Guy Adams |
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10/31/09 We Attacked the Bankers, but Took Our Eyes Off the Whole Rotten System Prince Andrew says that bonuses are minute 'in the scheme of things'. He is half-right. We must take the focus off individuals. Gary Younge |
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10/30/09 Phillies Hope To End 364-Day World Series Drought PHILADELPHIA—The last time the Philadelphia Phillies brought a World Series title back to the City of Brotherly Love, the nation's financial sector was in complete ruin, the cost of a gallon of milk was only $2.74, fans watched the Fall Classic while huddled around their slightly-less-streamlined high-definition television sets, and Philadelphia slugger Ryan Howard was just 28 years old. the ONION |
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10/29/09 Publish or Perish Academic Uses Feminism to Justify Fucking a Married Man Written by a feminist academic who had the (dis)pleasure of deliberately being “the other woman” in an ongoing affair, Cheating on the Sisterhood: Infidelity and Feminism explores Lauren Rosewarne’s personal struggles as a willing participant in an illicit relationship that resulted in another woman's devastation, as well as her own. It is a political look at the motivations that fuel situations of betrayal and the justifications one provides oneself from the inside. Mandy Van Deven |
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10/28/09 Anyone who remembers TV cop shows, like “Dragnet” and “Highway Patrol,” recalls dozens of bad guys hauled up “on suspicion” by Sgt. Joe Friday or Chief Dan Matthews. When I was a kid absorbing all this jurisprudence, I had no idea that “suspicion” was not an actual crime that could send you up the river. Even today, I don’t know if “suspicion” was the authentic argot of real cops in those innocent days. David Benjamin |
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10/27/09 Nation's Morons March On Washington State OLYMPIA, WA—With random cries of "Enough is enough," "Do something now," and "Huh?" thousands of the nation's biggest morons descended on Washington State this week, some 3,000 miles from their intended destination of the nation's capital. the ONION |
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10/26/09 The Freaky Science of SuperFreakonomics It is still nearly a week before the follow-up to Freakonomics—the award-winning pop economics tome by journalist Stephen Dubner and University of Chicago economics professor Steven Levitt—hits the shelves. Yet already the book is generating controversy. A chapter on climate change—a new subject for the authors—has attracted the ire of Joe Romm, an outspoken expert on the subject. But with the provocative title SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance, perhaps that's what the authors intended. Corbin Hiar |
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10/25/09 Get Ready for Conservative Bible You may judge Conservapedia's own bias by reading its definition of liberal: ``someone who rejects logical and biblical standards, often for self-centered reasons. There are no coherent liberal standards; often a liberal is merely someone who craves attention, and who uses many words to say nothing.'' Leonard Pitts Jr. |
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10/24/09 A Corporation So Arrogant, It Thought It Owned the Word 'Monster' When the tiny Rock Art Brewery in Vermont decided to name its beer, "The Vermonster," they soon discovered hat a behemoth drinks company was trying to push them around. Jim Hightower |
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10/23/09 Pricey new U.S. Embassy in Iraq has 'multiple' flaws The $736 million new U.S. Embassy in Baghdad, which American diplomats have occupied for 18 months, contains "multiple significant construction deficiencies" and the U.S. government should try to recover more than $130 million from the contractor who built it, according to a report to be released Thursday. Warren P Strobel |
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10/22/09 Wal-Mart and the high cost of 'cheap' Last month, a bevy of Richmond, Va., residents joined with preservationists in filing a legal objection to the proposed construction of a Wal-Mart Supercenter within firing range of the Wilderness Battlefield. About 30,000 American soldiers were injured or killed on that field 145 years ago, and while we hope no blood will be spilled in the eventual outcome of the skirmish, the stakes are still fairly high. Ellen Ruppel Shell |
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10/21/09 We’ve spent the last few decades shoveling money at the rich like there was no tomorrow. We abandoned the poor, put an economic stranglehold on the middle class and all but bankrupted the federal government — while giving the banks and megacorporations and the rest of the swells at the top of the economic pyramid just about everything they’ve wanted. Bob Herbert |
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10/20/09 Mystery Space "Ribbon" Found at Solar System's Edge In a discovery that took astronomers by surprise, the first full-sky map of the solar system's edge—more than 9 billion miles (15 billion kilometers) away—has revealed a bright "ribbon" of atoms called ENAs. Ker Than |
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10/19/09 The changes over the years were imperceptible enough that no one gave them much notice. There’s no way to pinpoint when we became a country that could build the biggest, most garish, most electronically equipped stadiums you could imagine, but almost nothing else. The changes over the years were imperceptible enough that no one gave them much notice. There’s no way to pinpoint when we became a country that could build the biggest, most garish, most electronically equipped stadiums you could imagine, but almost nothing else. Bob Herbert |
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10/18/09 Professor Ellen van Wolde, a respected Old Testament scholar and author, claims the first sentence of Genesis "in the beginning God created the Heaven and the Earth" is not a true translation of the Hebrew. Richard Alleyne |
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10/17/09 How to Have Sex Like a Virgin for Only 30 Bucks Purity has its price: it's $29.90. At least that's how much it costs to obtain the "artificial virginity hymen," a plastic baggie filled with mysterious red crap meant to resemble the chaste secretions of a recently deflowered virgin. Tana Ganeva |
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10/16/09 Back in the spring, Mother Jones published an issue with cover line “Who Ran Away With Your 401(k)?” and a series of articles about America’s broken retirement system. This week Time magazine has a cover story by Stephen Gandel that’s worth reading, even though by now it’s stating the painfully obvious: It’s called “Why It’s Time to Retire the 401(k)”: James Ridgeway |
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10/15/09 My Response to Rush: It's the Racism, Stupid Yesterday I was referred to on air as "scum" by Rush Limbaugh. Limbaugh called me out by name on his radio show because, along with Bryan Burwell of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch and Drew Sharp of the Detroit Free Press, I challenged Limbaugh's efforts to own a NFL team, saying that his history of racial bombast should count against him. Dave Zirin |
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10/14/09 The Stupidity of Zero Tolerance NEWARK, Del. -- Finding character witnesses when you are 6 years old is not easy. But there was Zachary Christie last week at a school disciplinary committee hearing with his karate instructor and his mother's fiancé by his side to vouch for him. Zachary’s offense? Taking a Cub Scout utensil that can serve as a knife, fork and spoon to school. Allison Kilkenny |
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10/13/09 Why Conservatives Are Really Afraid of a Black President Ever the statesman, and often candid to a political fault, former President Jimmy Carter said recently that much of the animosity directed toward President Barack Obama is "based on the fact that he is a black man." Jonathan L. Walton |
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10/12/09 The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America When Barbara Ehrenreich went to be treated for breast cancer, she was exhorted to think positively; and when she expressed feelings of fear and anger, she was chided for being negative. Emily Wilson |
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10/11/09 Italian scientist reproduces Shroud of Turin ROME (Reuters) - An Italian scientist says he has reproduced the Shroud of Turin, a feat that he says proves definitively that the linen some Christians revere as Jesus Christ's burial cloth is a medieval fake. Phillip Pullella |
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10/10/09 Senator Franken Wins Bipartisan Support for Amendment In 2005, Jamie Leigh Jones was gang-raped by her co-workers while she was working for Halliburton/KBR in Baghdad. She was detained in a shipping container for at least 24 hours without food, water, or a bed, and “warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job.” (Jones was not an isolated case.) Jones was prevented from bringing charges in court against KBR because her employment contract stipulated that sexual assault allegations would only be heard in private arbitration. Faiz Shakir |
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10/9/09 Demonstrations at CEO Mansions? Ho Hum All that happened was that on Thursday, Oct. 1, a moving van pulled up in front of the largest house in a Main Line neighborhood just outside Philadelphia—the home of H. Edward Hanway, CEO of CIGNA, one of the nation’s largest health insurance companies—and eight demonstrators from Health Care for America Now (HCAN) got out. One was Stacie Ritter, a former CIGNA customer whose twin girls were afflicted with cancer at the age of four. Their treatment left permanent damage. CIGNA refused to pay for the human growth hormones that her doctor prescribed to help her daughters grow properly. When her husband was briefly unemployed, they were bankrupted. Peter Dreier and Todd Gitlin |
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10/8/09 Every once in a while, a statistic just jumps out at you in a way that makes everything else you hear on a subject seem beside the point, if not downright absurd. That was my reaction to the recent statement of the president’s national security adviser, former Marine Gen. James Jones, concerning the size of the terrorist threat from Afghanistan: “The al-Qaida presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.” Robert Scheer |
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10/7/09 Last week, in response to the Defund ACORN Act, which seeks to prohibit federal funds to the community group, Minnesota Democrat Betty McCollum, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, introduced an ACORN act of her own. It is titled the "Against Corporations Organizing to Rip-off the Nation Act of 2009," also referred to simply as the ACORN Act. HR 3679 seeks to "prohibit the Federal Government from awarding contracts, grants, or other agreements to, providing any other Federal funds to, or engaging in activities that promote certain corporations or companies guilty of certain felony convictions." Jeremy Scahill |
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10/6/09 Wall Street Plans to Cash in When People Die The very same greed-fueled bankers who brought us the disaster of 2008's financial crash have created another exotic financial horror to replace their securitized subprime-mortgage packages that exploded all over us. Jim Hightower |
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10/5/09 Reminder: Roman Polanski Raped a Child Let's keep in mind that Roman Polanski gave a 13-year-old girl a Quaalude and champagne, then raped her, before we start discussing whether the victim looked older than her 13 years, or that she now says she'd rather not see him prosecuted because she can't stand the media attention. Before we discuss how awesome his movies are or what the now-deceased judge did wrong at his trial, let's take a moment to recall that according to the victim's grand jury testimony, Roman Polanski instructed her to get into a jacuzzi naked, refused to take her home when she begged to go, began kissing her even though she said no and asked him to stop; performed cunnilingus on her as she said no and asked him to stop; put his penis in her vagina as she said no and asked him to stop; asked if he could penetrate her anally, to which she replied, "No," then he went ahead and did it anyway, until he had an orgasm. Kate Harding |
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10/4/09 The anger of the festering fringe I've had these thoughts for some time, but have been reluctant to express them. Now so many others have voiced them that it's pointless to remain silent. I am frightened by the climate of insane anti-Obama hatred in this country. I'm not referring to traditional conservatives or Republicans. They're part of the process. I'm speaking of the lunatic fringe, the frothers, the extremist rabble who are sweeping up the ignorant and credulous into a bewildering and fearsome tide of reckless rhetoric. Roger Ebert |
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10/3/09 Let us take a trip back into history. Not ancient history. Recent history. It is the winter of 2007. The presidential primaries are approaching. The talk jocks like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and the rest are over the moon about Fred Thompson. They’re weak at the knees at the thought of Mitt Romney. Meanwhile, they are hurling torrents of abuse at the unreliable deviationists: John McCain and Mike Huckabee. David Brooks |
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10/2/09 The Powell Memo and the Teaching Machines of the Right-Wing Extremists The Powell Memo is important because it is the most succinct statement, if not the founding document, for establishing a theoretical framework and political blueprint for the current assault on any vestige of democratic public life that does not subordinate itself to the logic of the alleged free market. Henry A. Giroux |
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10/1/09 Banks Too Big to Fail? Break ’Em Up The Madison-based Center for Media and Democracy recently gave its first-ever "Golden Throne Award" to the president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, Edward Yingling. Dave Zweifel |
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9/30/09 It’s Not Just About Waterboarding Fayiz Al-Kandari is a Kuwaiti citizen detained at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He never possessed information known only to the "worst of terrorists" and he wasn't part of the Jack Bauer ticking time-bomb scenario often used to justify enhanced interrogations. Yet, he was still abused over the course of many years while in US custody. Lt. Col. Barry Wingard |
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9/29/09 Pointless research: top 10 Ig Nobel award winners for silly science The government has unveiled plans to allocate research funding according to how much “impact” the research has. The plans have come under fire from academics, who say that curiosity-driven, speculative research has led to some of the most important breakthroughs in scientific history, including penicillin, relativity theory and the theory of evolution. Tom Chivers |
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9/28/09 Congress Went After ACORN. Big Business Must Be Next! We are the Yes Men, two guys who dress up as powerful businessmen, propose horrible things to audiences of actual powerful businesspeople and film them cheerfully applauding our most outrageous -- and often illegal -- ideas. Jacques Servin and Igor Vamos |
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9/27/09 Kenya's slums attract poverty tourism For about Ł20, tourists are promised a glimpse into the lives of the hundreds of thousands of people crammed into tiny rooms along dirt paths littered with excrement-filled plastic bags known as "flying toilets," as one tour agency explains on its website. Xan Rice |
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9/26/09 He believed in capitalism, but also believed it had almost a genetic weakness. Modern finance, he argued, was far from the stabilizing force that mainstream economics portrayed: rather, it was a system that created the illusion of stability while simultaneously creating the conditions for an inevitable and dramatic collapse. Stephen Mihm |
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9/25/09 Pretty much by definition, a man who can be described as a cad is not a wholly admirable human being. There are, however, cads whose behavior shows a certain panache, an undeniable flair, a sense of humor and a genuine, if deeply flawed, humanity. Former D.C. mayor Marion Barry, I would argue, is one of these "lovable rogue" cads. Eugene Robinson |
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9/24/09 Fighting for the Right to Hang Your Clothes Out to Dry Using a clothes line instead of a dryer saves tons of carbon, yet some communities have banned the practice. Luanne Bradley |
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9/23/09 Outsourcing Housekeeping Creates a Real Mess Recently, housekeepers at three Hyatt hotels in Boston thought they were training new workers for vacationing staff. Managers asked the housekeepers to do this, and why not? They were experts at cleaning up the messes of strangers. So they taught the new workers everything they know. Connie Schultz |
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9/22/09 The inevitability of an American single-payer health system Amidst the ideological back and forth that is the health care reform debate of 2009, recent studies reveal a growing reality that each of us can easily understand, no matter what our ideological point of view. It will not be long until the private health insurance model will no longer work – for anybody. Rich Ungar |
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9/21/09 Sotomayor’s important statement about corporations Last week, Justice Sonia Sotomayor made a “provocative comment” that probed the foundations of corporate law. The case, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, involves whether federal campaign finance laws apply to a critical film about Hillary Clinton intended to be shown in theaters and on-demand to cable subscribers. Allison Kilkenny |
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9/20/09 It was a telling coincidence that two reports were issued on the very same day. The Geneva Initiative, a group of Israeli and Palestinian diplomats and technical experts, released its updated 400-page plan, spelling out the practical details of a reasonable two-state settlement. But Israeli newspapers barely noticed. They were too busy headlining the other report: a UN fact-finding mission's 575 pages of detail on war crimes committed by both Israeli and Palestinian forces during last winter's war in Gaza. Ira Chernus |
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9/19/09 Where was the Tea Party movement when the tax burden was shifted from the high end to the middle? Where were the patriots when Wall Street, backed in Congress by Senator Phil Gramm of Texas, rewrote securities laws so that the wonder boys of Lehman and A.I.G. could reduce home mortgages to poker chips at a trillion-dollar table? Timothy Egan |
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9/18/98 Wall Street has only one prerogative and that is to maintain the illusion that it adds value so that it can charge spectacular sums for its services. It is tough to be an awesome leader when your primary job is to maintain a set of self-serving illusions. Roger Martin |
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9/17/09 Has anyone watched the English-language version of Al Jazeera lately? The Qatar-based Arab TV channel’s eclectic internationalism—a feast of vivid, pathbreaking coverage from all continents—is a rebuke to the dire predictions about the end of foreign news as we know it. Indeed, if Al Jazeera were more widely available in the United States—on nationwide cable, for example, instead of only on the Web and several satellite stations and local cable channels—it would eat steadily into the viewership of The NewsHour With Jim Lehrer. Al Jazeera—not Lehrer—is what the internationally minded elite class really yearns for: a visually stunning, deeply reported description of developments in dozens upon dozens of countries simultaneously. Robert D Kaplan |
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9/16/09 Billionaires Thank Tea-Baggers at Glenn Beck's March on Washington “Health Care for Profit, Not for People!” “Let Them Eat Advil.” "Fear, Lies, Sedition! Pre-Existing-Condition!" Echoing through the streets of Washington on Saturday, the chants of a new political formation are sweeping the nation: The Billionaires for Wealthcare! Chuck Collins |
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9/15/09 Harvard, Heal Thyself (Why Journalism Matters) Harvard Medical School is exactly the kind of private institution on which the public welfare depends. The research and training it conducts have a ripple effect not only throughout this country but in much of the world. With its unmatched prestige and resources, however, come equivalent responsibilities. If the school allows its faculty to be corrupted by greed and payola, then society suffers as well. Eric Alterman |
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9/14/09 Over 100 Million Americans Have Smoked Marijuana -- And It's Still Illegal? The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has once again released their annual survey on “drug use and health” — you know, the one where representatives of the federal government go door-to-door and ask Americans if they are presently breaking state and federal law by using illicit drugs. The same survey where respondents have historically under reported their usage of alcohol and tobacco — these two legal substances — by as much as 30 to 50 percent, and arguably under report their use of illicit substances by an even greater margin. The same survey that — despite these inherent limitations — “is the primary source of statistical information on the use of illegal drugs by the U.S. population.” Paul Armentano |
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9/13/09 An infrastructure of Jewish terror Since the very beginning of the settlement enterprise, more than four decades ago, Israel has seized West Bank lands via an orchestrated, systematic and violent system. The victims of this process lose their agricultural fields, and thus their ability to lead a normal life. Their source of income is impaired, often leading to the spread of poverty and hardship. Roi Maor and Dror Etkes |
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9/12/09 A French newspaper declared "We Are All Americans" on September 12, but it was all downhill after that. By the first week of October, with a pall of poison smoke still hanging over New York City, Bush declared that, "We have to counteract the shockwave of the evildoer by having individual rate cuts accelerated and by thinking about tax rebates," and the world threw up into its collective mouth. He took us to war; he took us to Hell, and we are still far, far from anything resembling recovery. William Rivers Pitt |
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9/11/09 The same old hawks recruit Palin to pressure Obama on Afghanistan, while ignoring their own past. David Corn |
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9/10/09 No Flies on SF's New Composting Law San Franciscans have six more weeks before they're required to toss their food scraps into green composting bins or face a fine - but apparently all the trash talk coming out of City Hall is already having an effect. Heather Knight |
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9/9/09 Mr. President, It's Time to Fight No one's ever conquered Washington politics by constantly saying "pretty please" to the guys trying to cut your throat. Bill Moyers |
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9/8/09 Afghanistan isn't worth one more American life The debate over our creeping military mission in distant Afghanistan grows ever hotter, and before we march even deeper into trouble, perhaps it’s time to dig out the old Powell Doctrine and answer the eight questions it poses. Joseph L Galloway |
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9/7/09 Gideon Levy, Haaretz’s man on the West Bank since 1982, is a throwback to the days when left-wing journalists put their lives on the line to report on epoch-defining struggles like the Spanish Civil War. He has had his car shot up by Israeli soldiers and U.S. tax dollar-funded weapons turned on him. The son of Holocaust survivors, Levy retaliates with words: “Israel is not asked ‘to give’ anything to the Palestinians. It is only being asked to return—to return their stolen land and restore their trampled self-respect.” Robert Hirschfield |
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9/6/09 The Lies of Texas Are Upon You A friend called to talk about his daughter being caught in the middle of one of the kinds of controversies that only happen in Texas. His daughter's teacher had sent an email that her school was not going to show the president's national address to students in their school. My buddy Marcus is African-American and Native American, holds two degrees, and does not very well countenance stupidity and hypocrisy. James Moore |
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9/5/09 How Did Economists Get It So Wrong? During the golden years, financial economists came to believe that markets were inherently stable — indeed, that stocks and other assets were always priced just right. There was nothing in the prevailing models suggesting the possibility of the kind of collapse that happened last year. Meanwhile, macroeconomists were divided in their views. But the main division was between those who insisted that free-market economies never go astray and those who believed that economies may stray now and then but that any major deviations from the path of prosperity could and would be corrected by the all-powerful Fed. Neither side was prepared to cope with an economy that went off the rails despite the Fed’s best efforts. Paul Krugman |
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9/4/09 Cameron Todd Willingham, who refused to accept a guilty plea that would have spared his life, and who insisted until his last painful breath that he was innocent, had in fact been telling the truth all along. Bob Herbert |
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9/3/09 Seven Points About Dick Cheney and Torture Cheney, clearly knowing that many "journalists" apparently wouldn't bother reading them, was all over the media claiming the documents absolve him and that torture worked. The problem is, they showed nothing of the sort and actually - upon a close read - indicate that techniques that did not involve torture produced better results. Some portions "actually suggest the opposite of Cheney's contention: that non-abusive techniques actually helped elicit some of the most important information the documents cite in defending the value of the CIA's interrogations," as Spencer Ackerman observed in the Washington Independent. Jeremy Scahill |
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9/2/09 Feingold Gets Afghanistan Right Senator Feingold is expressing what many progressives now believe. Overall, 51 percent of Americans say the war is not worth fighting, including 7 in 10 Democrats. Yet too many top Democrats have become part of a poorly reasoned bipartisan consensus that threatens to entrap the US in another costly occupation. In contrast, progressives who want to see President Obama succeed see Afghanistan as a threat to his presidency -- especially to his domestic agenda, as resources, lives and political capital are lost in the "graveyard of Empires." (Much like LBJ's presidency was tarnished and defined by the Vietnam War.) Katrina vanden Heuvel |
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9/1/09 Do you think the wardens will let George Tenet wear his Presidential Medal of Freedom over the orange coverall? Perhaps he and Donald Rumsfeld will end up doing time together in one of the prisons also slated to host what Rumsfeld called "the worst of the worst" from Guantanamo. That would be poetic justice of a most ironic kind. And if the two former leaders do end up in prison they can count themselves fortunate for having dodged execution for their roles in a slew of capital offenses. Ray McGovern |
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8/31/09 The GOP's 40-Year Effort to "Pull the Plug" on Medicare During the health care fight this summer, the GOP has been warning seniors, in ominous tones, of the danger that Democrats might cut Medicare--conveniently forgetting that this has been the Republican party's official position for more than a generation. Brian Beutler |
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8/30/09 Judge: Homeland Security can’t require dependence on God A judge on Wednesday struck down a 2006 state law that required the Kentucky Office of Homeland Security to stress “dependence on Almighty God as being vital to the security of the commonwealth.” John Cheves |
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8/29/09 Whole Foods Looks and Acts More Like Wal-Mart It's a story about how a small, well-intentioned sustainable food company lost its way. It's a story of how that company went from a single natural foods store in Austin, Texas to industry juggernaut, with every intention of dominating the natural foods retail category, in the nearly-identical way its conventional competitors came to dominate their sectors, i.e., achieving massive scale through acquisitions, new stores and eliminating smaller competitors. Rob Smart |
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8/28/09 From dust to bust, America's poor take on a new type of monster The sharpest economic downturn of her 63 years stripped Johnnie Levy of her beloved job as a seamstress and unravelled her world until she found herself sitting in a church hall in the black end of Tulsa waiting to see a nurse with a syringe in one hand and a Bible in the other. Chris McGreal |
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8/27/09 A few years ago, when I was grading papers for a graduate literature course, I became alarmed at the inability of my students to write a clean English sentence. They could manage for about six words and then, almost invariably, the syntax (and everything else) fell apart. I became even more alarmed when I remembered that these same students were instructors in the college’s composition program. What, I wondered, could possibly be going on in their courses? Stanley Fish |
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8/26/09 The Entertainment Value of Snuffing Grandma Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes. Joe Bageant |
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8/25/09 Screwing the Self Employed Out of Health Insurance The self employed are denied insurance on a regular basis due to preexisting conditions. When they're able to get health insurance, they pay more for premiums and their deductibles are higher than any other group. Even after a federal income tax deduction, the cost of health insurance is the equivalent of annual payments for a condominium, at the low end, or a medium sized home, at the top of the cost scale. Michael Collins |
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8/24/09 William Calley apologizes for My Lai massacre “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai,” Calley told members of the Kiwanis Club of Greater Columbus on Wednesday. His voice started to break when he added, “I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.” Dick McMichael |
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8/23/09 Believers Invest in the Gospel of Getting Rich Onstage before thousands of believers weighed down by debt and economic insecurity, Kenneth and Gloria Copeland and their all-star lineup of “prosperity gospel” preachers delighted the crowd with anecdotes about the luxurious lives they had attained by following the Word of God. Private airplanes and boats. A motorcycle sent by an anonymous supporter. Vacations in Hawaii and cruises in Alaska. Designer handbags. A ring of emeralds and diamonds. Laurie Goodstein |
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8/22/09 Seller, beware: Feds cracking down on garage sales If you're planning a garage sale or organizing a church bazaar, you'd best beware: You could be breaking a new federal law. As part of a campaign called Resale Roundup, the federal government is cracking down on the secondhand sales of dangerous and defective products. James Rosen |
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8/21/09 At the time, Robert Novak couldn't have know that, despite a half century of covering Washington, one little line would ignite the scandal that would come to dominate his legacy: "Wilson never worked for the CIA, but his wife, Valerie Plame, is an agency operative on weapons of mass destruction." Following the conservative columnist's death yesterday at the age of 78, mentions of his role in outing the CIA operative were ubiquitous in the numerous obits commemorating his life. Daniel Schulman |
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8/20/09 "Barely Squeaking By On $300,000 A Year" I'm not going to take up text space going off about how absurd this all is, except to say (as I have before) that in a country where the recession is obviously most crushing the middle-class, I'm playing the smallest violin in the world for those making $300,000 a year (ie. the top 5 percent of the country) -- especially those who whine about their plight while refusing to cut back on their nannys and gardeners. David Sirota |
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8/19/09 Burning Questions for the Authors of 'Marijuana Is Safer' Marijuana is safer than alcohol in virtually every way that matters. First, marijuana is far less toxic. Alcohol, quite literally, is a poison. That is why excessive alcohol use often causes vomiting. The body is rejecting the poison. And, as most people know, consuming too much alcohol can result in an overdose death. Marijuana, on the other hand, is virtually non-toxic to healthy cells and major organs. In fact, the active components in marijuana - known as cannabinoids - actually mimic chemicals naturally produced by the body (so-called endocannabinoids) that are necessary for the maintenance of proper health. Paul Armentano and Steve Fox |
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8/18/09 Dear President Obama: A Modest Medicare Proposal I understand you're thinking of dumping your "public option" because of all the demagoguery by Sarah Palin and Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich and their crowd on right-wing radio and Fox. Fine. Good idea, in fact. Instead, let's make it simple. Please let us buy into Medicare. Thom Hartmann |
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8/17/09 The Brutal Truth About America’s Healthcare They came in their thousands, queuing through the night to secure one of the coveted wristbands offering entry into a strange parallel universe where medical care is a free and basic right and not an expensive luxury. Some of these Americans had walked miles simply to have their blood pressure checked, some had slept in their cars in the hope of getting an eye-test or a mammogram, others had brought their children for immunisations that could end up saving their life. Guy Adams |
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8/16/09 Billionaire Jewish philanthropist Charles Bronfman is worried that Israel's conflict with the Palestinians is hurting the country's relationship with young Jews in the Diaspora. "We turned from David to Goliath in 1982, with the invasion into Lebanon, and the Arabs became David," he told the Israeli daily Ha'aretz last week. "Now everybody's worried about the Palestinians. Now we're occupiers, oppressors, who live by the sword. That's what you see in the media, and it festers and has effects on the general population and on Jews as well." Peace, he said, was crucial to maintaining the bond between Israel and the broader Jewish world. Michelle Goldberg |
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8/15/09 Yale Press Bans Images of Muhammad in New Book So Yale University and Yale University Press consulted two dozen authorities, including diplomats and experts on Islam and counterterrorism, and the recommendation was unanimous: The book, “The Cartoons That Shook the World,” should not include the 12 Danish drawings that originally appeared in September 2005. What’s more, they suggested that the Yale press also refrain from publishing any other illustrations of the prophet that were to be included, specifically, a drawing for a children’s book; an Ottoman print; and a sketch by the 19th-century artist Gustave Doré of Muhammad being tormented in Hell, an episode from Dante’s “Inferno” that has been depicted by Botticelli, Blake, Rodin and Dalí. Patricia Cohen |
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8/14/09 John Mackey is a right wing libertarian. He’s a union buster. He believes that corporations should not be criminally prosecuted for their crimes. He has just launched a campaign to defeat a single payer national health insurance system. And he’s the CEO of Whole Foods. Russell Mokhiber |
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8/13/09 Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans? The city of New Orleans will be on the minds of many in the coming days and weeks. The four-year anniversary of the worst civil catastrophe in American history - one of the worst such catastrophes in all of human history - will soon be upon us. It was four years ago, the length of one presidential term, that a storm came, and the seas rose, and the levees fell and a city was, for all practical purposes, murdered right before our eyes. William Rivers Pitt |
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8/12/09 President Obama’s late mother, Ann Dunham Soetoro, was famous for the good cheer and optimism that she preserved in the face of a complex and challenging world. Her personality went hand-in-hand with her career as an anthropologist in Indonesia and Pakistan, where she studied and worked with village craftsmen, slum-dwellers and countless others. I knew Dr. Soetoro as a friend and colleague for many years before her death from cancer in 1995. Though I only met her son once, briefly at her memorial service, I’ve watched him as he’s taken on the hardest job in the world, and often found myself wondering how her worldview might have shaped him. Michael R. Dove |
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8/11/09 The Hidden Truth Behind Drug Company Profits This is the story of one of the great unspoken scandals of our times. Today, the people across the world who most need life-saving medicine are being prevented from producing it. Here's the latest example: factories across the poor world are desperate to start producing their own cheaper Tamiflu to protect their populations - but they are being sternly told not to. Why? So rich drug companies can protect their patents - and profits. There is an alternative to this sick system, but we are choosing to ignore it. Johann Hari |
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8/10/09 A McClatchy reporter reflects on what war brought to Iraq We called it a good day when only 10 died, but then there were the bad days. The day a friend died. The day when more than 300 lives were taken in minutes. The day a mother wept in my arms about her lost son, who'd been killed by a militia member, and his widow curled up in a corner of the empty room they'd shared. Leila Fadel |
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8/9/09 Sodini's final read: a book by sexist Fundamentalist Media analysis has so far ignored or glossed over Sodini's religious affiliations but the shooter's Internet diary suggest his last readings were the Bible and a book by a Texas evangelist, R.B. Thieme, Jr. who has written that husbands own their wives, as literal property and promoted an odd teaching that for each man on Earth there exists only one correct "right woman" in all creation. Bruce Wilson |
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8/8/09 Scientists doubt inventor's global cooling idea - but what if it works? 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. Greg Gordon |
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8/7/09 Health insurance is a weird industry. Healthcare itself is provided by doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, hospices, and device makers. Insurance companies do none of this. They don't do research, they don't perform surgeries, they don't change bedpans, and they don't make diagnoses. They're just middlemen. All they do is pay the bills after marking them up 30%. They don't do anything at all to make healthcare better or more efficient. Kevin Drum |
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8/6/09 On Aug. 6, 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped on my hometown, Hiroshima. I was there, and only 7 years old. When I close my eyes, I still see things no one should ever experience: a bright red light, the black cloud soon after, people running in every direction trying desperately to escape — I remember it all. Within three years, my mother died from radiation exposure. Issey Miyake |
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8/5/09 Blackwater Founder Implicated in Murder A former Blackwater employee and an ex-U.S. Marine who has worked as a security operative for the company have made a series of explosive allegations in sworn statements filed on August 3 in federal court in Virginia. The two men claim that the company's owner, Erik Prince, may have murdered or facilitated the murder of individuals who were cooperating with federal authorities investigating the company. The former employee also alleges that Prince "views himself as a Christian crusader tasked with eliminating Muslims and the Islamic faith from the globe," and that Prince's companies "encouraged and rewarded the destruction of Iraqi life." Jeremy Scahill |
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8/4/09 The Electricity in Your Garbage Although the term biomass has several definitions, here it is used to mean piles or containers of organic matter that can be tapped for energy. The list of biomass materials is long—agricultural and food waste, wood chips, yard clippings, microorganisms, animal byproducts and many other things. T.L. Caswell |
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8/3/09 Bonner & Associates Has Long History of Shady Tactics A DC-based consulting firm has been exposed for forging letters in opposition to the American Clean Energy and Security Act. The letters, replete with letterhead and made-up identities, purported to be from Virginian minority organizations including the NAACP. Rep. Tom Periello (D-VA) received multiple letters pressuring him to vote against clean energy reform. According to Daily Progress, Periello staffers discovered that the letters were actually forged by Bonner & Associates. Going through past correspondence regarding ACES, staffers found at least six forged letters purporting to be from Cruciendo Juntos, a nonprofit hispanic group, and the NAACP. Victor Zapanta |
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8/2/09 Those polled were white non-Hispanic Catholics, white Evangelicals, and white mainline Protestants. A majority (54 percent) of those who attend church regularly said torture could be "justified," while a majority of those not attending church regularly responded that torture was rarely or never justified. Ray McGovern |
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8/1/09 How Leonard Peltier could leave prison by August 18 The relationship between Peltier and those who have followed his case over the decades can be intensely personal. His imprisonment has come to stand not only for five centuries of unjust violence waged against Native Americans, but also for the inhumane theft of the life of a man who has handled his 33 years in jail with epic dignity, effectiveness and grace. Harvey Wasserman |
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7/31/09 Wall Street's Private Judicial System Exposed as a Fraud Today, everything from Wall Street brokerage accounts, employment contracts, credit cards, mortgages, even cell phone contracts have routinely removed the individual's constitutional right to file a claim in court to seek redress of a grievance or fraudulent action. Instead, the individual's claim is forced into one of the privately run arbitration organizations where conflicts are rampant, discovery is limited, and the right to appeal is typically impossible because the arbitrators are not required to explain the rationale for their decisions in writing. Pam Martens |
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7/30/09 Will Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap Continue to Defy Selling Out to Corporate Culture? You can use it in a river. You can use it in the shower. You can lather up outside, and it doesn't hurt a flower! Yes, you got it. It's Dr. Bronner's magical soap. Richard Seireeni |
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7/29/09 Ain't Nothing Centrist About Them At this moment -- when 72 percent of the nation supports a public plan option and 14,000 people lose their healthcare every day -- the House Blue Dogs and conservative Democratic Senators are doing just about everything they can to cripple real health care reform. Katrina vanden Heuvel |
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7/28/09 Profiling CEOs and Their Sociopathic Paychecks Today's modern transnational corporate CEOs - who live in a private-jet-and-limousine world entirely apart from the rest of us - are remnants from the times of kings, queens, and lords. They reflect the dysfunctional cultural (and Calvinist/Darwinian) belief that wealth is proof of goodness, and that that goodness then justifies taking more of the wealth. Thom Hartmann |
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7/27/09 Sir Isaiah Berlin, political philosopher and historian of ideas, observed in his classic essay "The Fox and the Hedgehog" that a fundamental difference that may divide human thinking is that some people think like foxes, those cunning creatures who know many things, while others think like headstrong hedgehogs, those persistent critters who know one big thing. John W Dean |
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7/26/09 Palin's Faith, Instant Forgiveness and God-Ordained Prosperity From a Senate investigation of prosperity ministers to Sarah Palin’s New Apostolic Reformation movement connections, Pentecostalism and its progeny (Charismatic, Third Wave, Full Gospel and non-denominational churches) have multiplied rapidly, making it is difficult to discern what the original movement is and where the offshoots are. Anthea Butler |
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7/25/09 Not everything in American has to make a profit In the U.S. today, three giant for-profit conglomerates own close to 600 hospitals and other health care facilities. They're not hospitals anymore; they're Jiffy Lubes with bedpans. America's largest hospital chain, HCA, was founded by the family of Bill Frist, who perfectly represents the Republican attitude toward health care: it's not a right, it's a racket. Bill Maher |
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7/24/09 If the Taliban decide Bergdahl has information they want, they can waterboard him until he talks. They can compress his body and cover him with insects, they can rob him of sleep and deny him food, they can beat him and slather his body with his own waste, they can shove sticks into his rectum, they can rape him, and they can murder him. They can hand him over to representatives of another government and have him whisked away to some far-flung dungeon where "enhanced interrogation" has an even darker and more savage definition. For sure, they can deny him due process of any kind and never, ever, ever, ever let him go home again. William Rivers Pitt |
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