Firedoglake: FISA: Turning Up The Pressure

By: Christy Hardin Smith
Monday June 23, 2008 8:56 am

There has always been a tension between individual liberty and governmental power. National security issues are a natural fault line, given the difficulty of protecting the nation while simultaneously upholding the values of freedom and liberty. And politicians, bless their hearts, always try to find ways to consolidate their power while pretending to do so in the public interest -- and not their own and that of their cronies who benefit in some way from their decisions.

They miscalculated this time regarding how many people in America are paying attention to civil liberties concerns these days. And it is our job to make certain that they learn just how badly they have misjudged this.

Glenn Greenwald: The New Republic syndrome

The number one problem facing the Democratic Party is that, as events of the last week demonstrate, it continues to be plagued by The New Republic Syndrome, one of the most fatal political afflictions that exist. In 2002 and 2003, The New Republic was one of the leading crusaders for an attack on Iraq, railing against what it called "the intellectual incoherence of the liberal war critics." In a February 2003 Editorial, they decreed that "the United States must disarm Iraq by force" and declared war opponents guilty of "abject pacifism."

TNR's Jonathan Chait appeared at events with Ken Pollack in 2002 to advocate the so-called "liberal case for war." On March 10, 2003, Chait appeared on Hardball, said the imminent attack was a "just war," and proclaimed: "I don't think you can argue that a regime change in Iraq won't demonstrably and almost immediately improve the living conditions of the Iraqi people." Peter Beinart was the media's designated Democrat to rail against weak, subversive liberals who refused to accept the imperatives of the Bush administration's case for war.

FISA Overhaul Set to Clear Senate

Monday 23 June 2008
by: Tim Starks, Congressional Quarterly

Despite a deep divide among Democrats, the Senate is expected to clear legislation this week overhauling electronic surveillance rules that would grant President Bush much of what he has sought in a lengthy struggle with Congress.

With no senators threatening to hold up the bill (HR 6304), one of the last hopes for opponents faded June 20 when Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois announced he would vote for the legislation. Some civil liberties groups that oppose the measure had called on Obama to use his position in the party to derail it.

The Hedonists of Power

By Chris Hedges

Washington has become Versailles. We are ruled, entertained and informed by courtiers. The popular media are courtiers. The Democrats, like the Republicans, are courtiers. Our pundits and experts are courtiers. We are captivated by the hollow stagecraft of political theater as we are ruthlessly stripped of power. It is smoke and mirrors, tricks and con games. We are being had.

The past week was a good one if you were a courtier. We were instructed by the high priests on television over the past few days to mourn a Sunday morning talk show host, who made $5 million a year and who gave a platform to the powerful and the famous so they could spin, equivocate and lie to the nation. We were repeatedly told by these television courtiers, people like Tom Brokaw and Wolf Blitzer, that this talk show host was one of our nation’s greatest journalists, as if sitting in a studio, putting on makeup and chatting with Dick Cheney or George W. Bush have much to do with journalism.

IMF warns on US economy

By Krishna Guha in Washington
Published: June 21 2008 03:00 | Last updated: June 21 2008 03:00

The International Monetary Fund yesterday warned that the US economy was likely to stagnate in the second half of this year, pouring cold water on hopes that recovery could soon be under way.

It said that continued economic weakness would result in inflation risk going down, not up, in the coming months, and urged the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates on hold for the time being. The statement challenges market expectations that rate increases will soon be required.

Waxman Says U.S. Embassy in Albania Concealed Info About Arms Shipment

By Andrew Tilghman - June 23, 2008, 1:03PM

Was the State Department involved in a shoddy and potentially illegal ammo shipment that led to the arrest of a 22-year-old Miami arms dealer last week?

That's what Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) now says. The House oversight committee says it has evidence that the U.S. embassy in Albania helped Albanian officials keep the allegedly illegal shipment of Chinese-made ammunition to Afghanistan under wraps and then failed to disclose that information when Waxman's committee asked about it.

Frank Rich: Now That We’ve ‘Won,’ Let’s Come Home

THE Iraq war’s defenders like to bash the press for pushing the bad news and ignoring the good. Maybe they’ll be happy to hear that the bad news doesn’t rate anymore. When a bomb killed at least 51 Iraqis at a Baghdad market on Tuesday, ending an extended run of relative calm, only one of the three network newscasts (NBC’s) even bothered to mention it.

The only problem is that no news from Iraq isn’t good news — it’s no news. The night of the Baghdad bombing the CBS war correspondent Lara Logan appeared as Jon Stewart’s guest on “The Daily Show” to lament the vanishing television coverage and the even steeper falloff in viewer interest. “Tell me the last time you saw the body of a dead American soldier,” she said. After pointing out that more soldiers died in Afghanistan than Iraq last month, she asked, “Who’s paying attention to that?”

Paul Krugman: Home Not-So-Sweet Home

“Owning a home lies at the heart of the American dream.” So declared President Bush in 2002, introducing his “Homeownership Challenge” — a set of policy initiatives that were supposed to sharply increase homeownership, especially for minority groups.

Oops. While homeownership rose as the housing bubble inflated, temporarily giving Mr. Bush something to boast about, it plunged — especially for African-Americans — when the bubble popped. Today, the percentage of American families owning their own homes is no higher than it was six years ago, and it’s a good bet that by the time Mr. Bush leaves the White House homeownership will be lower than it was when he moved in.

No Blood for… Er… Um…

The Oil Majors Take a Little Sip of the Ol’ Patrimony

by Tom Engelhardt

More than five years after the invasion of Iraq — just in case you were still waiting — the oil giants finally hit the front page…

Last Thursday, the New York Times led with this headline: “Deals with Iraq Are Set to Bring Oil Giants Back.” (Subhead: “Rare No-bid Contracts, A Foothold for Western Companies Seeking Future Rewards.”) And who were these four giants? ExxonMobil, Shell, the French company Total and BP (formerly British Petroleum). What these firms got were mere “service contracts” — as in servicing Iraq’s oil fields — not the sort of “production sharing agreements” that President Bush’s representatives in Baghdad once dreamed of, and that would have left them in charge of those fields. Still, it was clearly a start. The Times reporter, Andrew E. Kramer, added this little detail: “[The contracts] include a provision that could allow the companies to reap large profits at today’s prices: the [Iraqi oil] ministry and companies are negotiating payment in oil rather than cash.” And here’s the curious thing, exactly these four giants “lost their concessions in Iraq” back in 1972 when that country’s oil was nationalized. Hmmm.

Surveillance Bill: The Worst of All Worlds

By Aziz Huq

June 20, 2008

Months of troubled negotiations over new surveillance legislation ended in the House of Representatives today, with the approval of the so-called FISA Amendments Act of 2008. Hailed in some quarters as a " compromise" after the capitulation of the Protect America Act of 2006, the new surveillance bill is nothing of the kind: on core issues of privacy and accountability, there is no compromise, since little in the measure honors those two values.

Since the New York Times's revelation of massive illegal surveillance by the NSA, electronic privacy has been a battlefield for claims of executive power and civil liberties. In 2006, the Administration used the shadow of midterm Congressional elections to stampede both Houses into temporary authorization of sweeping new powers in the Protect America Act (PAA). The measure's grants of new authority had sunset clauses, which expire either immediately before or after the 2008 elections.

How a Shady Citigroup Subsidiary Secretly Makes Billions in the Oil Market

By Pam Martens, CounterPunch
Posted on June 23, 2008, Printed on June 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/88995/

If you want to flush out market manipulation, don't turn to the sleuths in Congress. They've been probing trading of the oil markets for two years and completely missed a company at the center of the action. During that period, a barrel of crude oil has risen from $50 to $140, leaving a wide swath of Americans facing a choice this coming winter of buying food or paying their heating bill.

The company that Congress overlooked should have been an easy suspect. It launched the oil trading career of the infamous fugitive Marc Rich, pardoned by President Bill Clinton in the final hours of his presidency. It was at one time the largest oil and metals trader in the world.

Conservative Government Destroys Atlanta Like Gen. Sherman Never Could

By Rick Perlstein, Blog for Our Future
Posted on June 23, 2008, Printed on June 23, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/89018/

Most our media have been far too busy following the news of what kind of fist bumps terrorists favor, and Luke Russert's exceptional poise under pressure, to notice -- well, much of anything. Least of all, the Biblically proportioned drought in one of our nation's fastest growing regions, which is only getting worse, and more civilizationally consequential, by the day.

Atlanta magazine could no longer ignore it. The cover of their "The Water Issue," which I picked up on a recent swing thorugh Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, is graced by a water glass that's one-quarter full -- scratch that, three-quarters empty.

Pruning Shears: House FISA Yes Votes

The following people solemnly swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. Yesterday’s vote gutted the Fourth Amendment; can any of them explain how their actions did not actively damage the Constitution?

One Final Solid For Big Oil

By Bill Scher

Created 06/19/2008 - 6:36pm

Summary:

The Bush administration appears to be trying lock in whatever goodies it can for Big Oil before it exits, stage far right.

If Washington conservatives are worried about the upcoming federal elections, then you can bet Big Oil is worried too.

Secret Pentagon Funding Near All-Time High

By Sharon Weinberger
June 20, 2008 | 11:50:16 AM

The latest Pentagon budget request contains a near record high level of money for classified, or "black" programs, reports the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. Fiscal year 2009 includes a whopping $34 billion to fund classified weapons purchases and development, though it is not the highest level ever.

Those crazy senators from Missouri and Nebraska

By David Goldstein | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Puck wears a power suit.

An unrepentant prankster, Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., once convinced some of Nebraska’s good citizens that he wanted to change the name of the state.

That was when he was governor. Now in Washington, he has a whole new crowd on which to pull his "gotchas."

Which brings us to Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who has been "punk’d" and has "punk’d" back.

War survey points to millions more dead

Study triples estimated number of violent war deaths since 1955.

Daniel Cressey

A new study on violent deaths shows that we may have seriously underestimated the number of war deaths in the past half-century.

Meet the New Dr. Strangelove

by Tom Hayden

In the depths of the Cold War, Stanley Kubrick created a notoriously-mad scientist character, Dr. Strangelove, whose passion was for dropping atomic bombs. Now there is a rising media and Beltway fascination with a new Dr. Strangelove, whose passion is imposing a mad science of counterinsurgency on Iraq.

His name is David Kilcullen, an Australian academic and military veteran whom the Washington Post’s Thomas Ricks once described as Gen. David Petraeus’ “chief adviser” on the counterinsurgency doctrine underlying the surge in Iraq.

Kilcullen advocated a “global Phoenix program” in an obscure military journal, Small Wars, in 2004. For the ahistorical or uninitiated, Phoenix was a largely off-the-books detention, torture and assassination program aimed at tens of thousands of South Vietnamese who were identified by informants as the Vietcong’s “civilian infrastructure.” The venture was so discredited that the US Congress denounced and disbanded it after hearings in the 1970s.

Former AG Accused of Playing Politics with Justice

Exclusive: Critic of Torture Policy Assured Job as US Attorney

By JAN CRAWFORD GREENBURG and ARIANE DE VOGUE
June 19, 2008

Former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, now under investigation for allegedly politicizing the Justice Department, ousted a top lawyer for failing to adopt the administration's position on torture and then promised him a position as a U.S. attorney to placate him, highly placed sources tell ABC News.

Gonzales, who was just taking over as attorney general, asked Justice Department lawyer Daniel Levin to leave in early 2005, shortly after Levin wrote a legal opinion that declared "torture is abhorrent" and limited the administration's use of harsh interrogation techniques.

Glenn Greenwald: George Bush's latest powers, courtesy of the Democratic Congress

CQ reports (sub. req.) that "a final deal has been reached" on FISA and telecom amnesty and "the House is likely to take up the legislation Friday." I've now just read a copy of the final "compromise" bill. It's even worse than expected. When you read it, it's actually hard to believe that the Congress is about to make this into our law. Then again, this is the same Congress that abolished habeas corpus with the Military Commissions Act, and legalized George Bush's warrantless eavesdropping program with the "Protect America Act," so it shouldn't be hard to believe at all. Seeing the words in print, though, adds a new dimension to appreciating just how corrupt and repugnant this is:

The provision granting amnesty to lawbreaking telecoms, Title VIII, has the exact Orwellian title it should have: "Protection of Persons Assisting the Government." Section 802(a)

Jeb Bush And His Cronies Have Big Plans for Govt.-Funded Religious Schools in Florida

By Joseph L. Conn, Church & State Magazine
Posted on June 21, 2008, Printed on June 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/88949/

Dade County, Fla., is home to almost 200 religious schools.

According to the Florida Department of Education’s data from the 2006-2007 school year, an array of denominations and faith perspectives is represented. Forty-five schools are affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, but many other spiritual traditions answered the state roll call.

All Angels Academy is Episcopalian, Christ Fellowship Academy is Baptist, Clara Mohammed School of Miami is Islamic, Greater Miami Hebrew Academy is Jewish, World Mission of Jesus Christ Christian is non-denominational, New Testament Church of Transfiguration School is Pentecostal and Glory of God Christian School is affiliated with the Assemblies of God.

Democrats Have Legalized Bush's War Crimes

By Robert Parry, Media Consortium
Posted on June 21, 2008, Printed on June 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/88950/

Editor's note: You can read more about Obama backing a FISA "compromise" here.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi claims that a key positive feature of the new wiretap "compromise" is that the bill reaffirms that the President must follow the law, even though the same bill virtually assures that no one will be held accountable for George W. Bush's violation of the earlier spying law. Share this article

In other words, in the guise of rejecting Bush's theories of an all-powerful presidency that is above the law, the Democratic leadership cleared the way for the President and his collaborators to evade punishment for defying the law.

The murder of US manufacturing

By Martin Hutchinson

GE's announcement a week ago that it would accept offers for its appliances business marked the death-knell of yet another US manufacturing business, one among so many in US manufacturing's long and seemingly unstoppable downtrend since 1980.

That decline may seem an inevitable historical trend, and Wall Street's analysts would claim that the US economy can prosper just fine without it. Yet impartial analysts of the putrefying corpse of US manufacturing capability are forced into an inescapable question: did it die of natural causes or was it murdered?

Guns blight US energy choices

By Jonathan Rynn

When New York City wanted to make the biggest purchase of subway cars in US history in the late 1990s, more than US$3 billion worth, the only companies that were able to bid on the contract were foreign. The same problem applies to high-speed rail today: only European or Japanese companies could build any of the proposed rail networks in the United States.

The US has also ceded the high ground to Europe and Japan in a broad range of other sustainable technologies. For instance, 11 companies produce 96% of medium to large wind turbines; only one, GE, is based in the United States, with a 16% share of the global market. The differences in market penetration come down to two factors: European and Japanese companies have become more competent producers for these markets, and their governments have helped them to develop both this competence and the markets themselves.

Democrats Cave on Telecom Immunity

By Mike Lillis 06/20/2008

In February, as the law authorizing the Bush administration's controversial warrantless wiretapping program was set to lapse, House Democrats brushed aside GOP threats and let the clock run out. Politically, the move was a gamble: White House officials had claimed the law -- including retroactive legal immunity for the phone companies that participated -- was necessary to protect the country from terrorist attacks. The administration pushed its message relentlessly.

[...]

Four months later, a very different scenario is playing out on Capitol Hill, where congressional leaders on Thursday unveiled a new agreement to expand the administration's domestic wiretapping capabilities under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA. The bill would effectively lead to the dismissal of the roughly 40 civil suits currently pending against the telecom companies for allegedly violating the civil liberties of their customers.

Trading Away America

THE POLITICS

Today, Sen. John McCain will travel to Canada to celebrate the North American Free Trade Agreement and pledge to pursue more of the same corporate trade agreements. He will criticize Sen. Barack Obama for calling for renegotiating NAFTA and similar agreements. This echoes the position of President Bush and most Republicans in Congress.

Americans, however, overwhelmingly believe that current trade policies have "subjected American companies and employees to unfair competition and cheap labor" [Rasmussen Reports; NBC News/Wall Street Journal Poll]. They are looking for a different course. This is a golden opportunity for progressives to speak out against the unfair trade policies of Bush, McCain and their congressional enablers, and to lay out a progressive trade strategy that works for working people.

THE FACTS

America has lost millions of jobs due to trade policies designed for multinationals, not for the nation.

Author: Rove 'helped arrange' Swiftboat attacks on Kerry

Karl Rove may have left the Bush administration last summer, but he is never very far from the political spotlight, especially with former press secretary Scott McClellan due to testify today on Rove's role in the outing of Valerie Plame.

MSNBC's Morning Joe welcomed Paul Alexander, the author of Machiavelli's Shadow: The Rise and Fall of Karl Rove, to dig through Rove's legacy of scandal.

Paul Krugman: Driller Instinct

Blaming environmentalists for high energy prices, never mind the evidence, has been a hallmark of the Bush administration.

Thus, in 2001 Dick Cheney attributed the California electricity crisis to environmental regulations that, he claimed, were blocking power-plant construction. He completely missed the real story, which was that energy companies — probably some of the same companies that participated in his secret task force, which was supposed to be drawing up a national energy strategy — were driving up prices by deliberately withholding electricity from the market.

Global quandary: How to feed a growing planet

By Jack Chang | McClatchy Newspapers

In the lakeside capital of the central African country of Burundi, 40-year-old Lucie Nahimana on Thursday fed her family of six "black flour," a low-quality cassava root that many here have resorted to eating because they can't afford anything else.

Thousands of miles away, in the port city of Tianjin, China, physician Ning Aimin scanned the shelves of her supermarket for yogurt, a food that was practically unheard-of here a decade ago but has become a favorite of many of China's newly affluent.

New report available on ecosystems and climate change

(Washington, D.C. – June 20, 2008) The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has released a report that can help reduce the potential impact of climate change on estuaries, forests, wetlands, coral reefs, and other sensitive ecosystems. The report, entitled Preliminary Review of Adaptation Options for Climate-Sensitive Ecosystems and Resources, identifies strategies to protect the environment as these changes occur.

"People always say 'Don't just tell us what will happen – tell us what we can do about it,'" said Dr. George Gray, assistant administrator for EPA's Office of Research and Development. "By using the strategies outlined in this document, we can help managers protect our parks, rivers, and forests from possible future impacts of a changing climate."

Here're the savings from Arctic drilling — 75 cents a barrel

By Erika Bolstad | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — If Congress were to open up the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to drilling, crude oil prices would probably drop by an average of only 75 cents a barrel, according to Department of Energy projections issued Thursday.

The report, which was requested in December by Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, found that oil production in the refuge "is not projected to have a large impact on world oil prices."

Anatomy of a Price Surge

By Michael T. Klare

As the pain induced by higher oil prices spreads to an ever growing share of the American (and world) population, pundits and politicians have been quick to blame assorted villains--greedy oil companies, heartless commodity speculators and OPEC. It's true that each of these parties has contributed to and benefited from the steep run-up. But the sharp growth in petroleum costs is due far more to a combination of soaring international demand and slackening supply--compounded by the ruinous policies of the Bush Administration--than to the behavior of those other actors.

Most, if not all, the damage was avoidable. Shortly after taking office, George W. Bush undertook a sweeping review of US energy policy aimed at expanding the nation's supply of vital fuels. The "reality is the nation has got a real problem when it comes to energy," he declared on March 14, 2001. "We need more sources of energy." At that time many of the problems evident today were already visible. Energy demand in mature industrial nations was continuing to grow as the rising economic dynamos of Asia, especially China, were beginning to make an impact. By 2002 the Energy Department was predicting that China would soon overtake Japan, becoming the world's second-largest petroleum consumer, and that developing Asia as a whole would account for about one-fourth of global consumption by 2020. Also evident was an unmistakable slowdown in the growth of world production, the telltale sign of an imminent "peaking" in global output [see Klare, "Beyond the Age of Petroleum," November 12, 2007].

Katha Pollitt: Feminists for McCain? Not So Much

Are there feminist Hillary supporters who hate Obama so much they'll vote for McCain just to show the Democratic Party how ticked off they are? Yes, and I get e-mails from all five of them. Seriously, I'm sure there are female Hillary Clinton voters who will go for John McCain in the general election, but I don't think too many of them will be feminists. Because to vote for McCain, a feminist would have to be insane. Let me rephrase that: she would have to believe that the chief--indeed the only--goal of the women's movement is to elect Clinton, not to promote women's rights. A vote for McCain would be the ultimate face-spiting nose-cutoff. Take that, women's equality!

Not that the media will help women get it. As Eric Alterman and George Zornick exhaustively document elsewhere in this issue, the mainstream press is doing its best to persuade us that McCain is a moderate--barely distinguishable from Barack Obama--even on abortion rights, one of the brighter dividing lines between the parties.

Is Congress the Problem with Health Care?

By Ezra Klein, The American Prospect
Posted on June 20, 2008, Printed on June 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/88374/

The first thing you notice when you sit down with Tom Daschle is that he's got some really funky glasses. Like, surprisingly funky. Fire-engine red with odd edges and varied trim, the sort of eyeglasses you'd see perched on the nose of an art dealer, not a former Senate majority leader.

But despite the incongruent accessorizing, Daschle is a former Senate majority leader, through and through. After losing his South Dakota Senate seat to John Thune in 2004, he halfheartedly attempted to return to private life, joining a law firm and taking some teaching gigs. But soon enough, he was pulled back into public policy by the Center for American Progress, which convinced him to become a senior fellow. Soon after that, he began working with well-regarded health-policy researchers Scott Greenberger and Jeanne Lambrew on a book about the health-care system.

What Happens When a School Board of Religious Zealots Will 'Lie for Jesus'?

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet
Posted on June 20, 2008, Printed on June 21, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87876/

The intelligent design case in Dover, Penn., was the stuff of tabloid dreams: a community divided when a school board led by religious fundamentalists tried to bring creationism into the local biology curriculum. But look beneath the surface, and it was hardly the two-dimensional "science versus religion" narrative favored by the press. As Lauri Lebo, a local reporter who covered the trial, writes, the "'Darwinism'-spouting teachers were preachers' kids; the 'atheist' plaintiffs taught Sunday school; the 'activist' judge was a Bush-appointed Republican; and the journalists labeled 'liars' were willing to go to jail for the truth."

Sarcasm Seen as Evolutionary Survival Skill

Meredith F. Small
Fri Jun 20, 9:45 AM ET

Humans are fundamentally social animals. Our social nature means that we interact with each other in positive, friendly ways, and it also means we know how to manipulate others in a very negative way.

Neurophysiologist Katherine Rankin at the University of California, San Francisco, has also recently discovered that sarcasm, which is both positively funny and negatively nasty, plays an important part in human social interaction.

Why Iraq won't be South Korea

By Pepe Escobar

The United States invasion of Iraq then takes on an even broader meaning. Not only does it constitute an attempt to control the global oil spigot and hence the global economy though domination over the Middle East. It also constitutes a powerful US military bridgehead on the Eurasian land mass which ... yields it a powerful geostrategic position in Eurasia with at least the potentiality to disrupt any consolidation of an Eurasian power that could indeed be the next step in that endless accumulation of political power that must always accompany the equally endless accumulation of capital.
- David Harvey, The New Imperialism, 2003

WASHINGTON - Everyone remembers the George W Bush "Mission Accomplished" victory speech on board of an aircraft carrier off the San Diego coast in the spring of 2003. Over five years - and a trillion dollars - later, Bush's last stand is to force a neo-colonial Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) under Iraqi throats by the end of July, acquire the right to go on "war on terror" mode in Iraq forever, declare victory and thus win - finally - his war, now opposed by a striking majority of Americans.

Call it "occupation forever". But there's one glitch: Iraqis are not falling for it.

Bill Ackman Was Right: MBIA, Ambac on `Ratings Cliff'

By Christine Richard

June 18 (Bloomberg) -- Bill Ackman was right: the world's largest bond insurers aren't worthy of a AAA credit rating and may be headed for the bottom of the scale.

Ackman, the 42-year-old hedge fund manager who says he stands to make hundreds of millions of dollars betting against MBIA Inc. and Ambac Financial Group Inc. if they go bankrupt, will tell investors at a conference in New York today that losses posted by bond insurers may threaten to breach the capital limits allowed by regulators, making them insolvent.

Beck inflated estimated ANWR oil production by nearly 7,000 percent

Summary: Glenn Beck falsely claimed that "drilling in ANWR alone would yield 100 million barrels a day." In fact, according to Energy Department researchers, if the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is opened for drilling for oil in 2008, the estimated peak production would yield, at most, 1.45 million barrels a day in 2028.

General who probed Abu Ghraib says Bush officials committed war crimes

By Warren P. Strobel | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Army general who led the investigation into prisoner abuse at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison accused the Bush administration Wednesday of committing "war crimes" and called for those responsible to be held to account.

The remarks by Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who's now retired, came in a new report that found that U.S. personnel tortured and abused detainees in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, using beatings, electrical shocks, sexual humiliation and other cruel practices.

Karl Rove's Trojan Horse among the SMU Mustangs

To obtain the George W. Bush presidential library, Southern Methodist University has been required to accept an autonomous partisan institute on campus. Karl Rove is in the middle of the planning of and fund-raising for this Trojan horse project. The institute will give Rove the resources he needs to try to re-write the narrative of the Bush presidency, as well promoting his larger vision -- the domination of the right-wing of the Republican Party in American politics. In July the United Methodist Church, which owns SMU "lock stock and barrel," has one last chance to stop Rove.

Bear Stearns ex-managers charged

Two former managers at investment bank Bear Stearns have been charged with fraud related to two hedge funds which collapsed in June last year.

Ralph Cioffi and Matthew Tannin, who managed the funds, were arrested in New York and later granted bail.

Thomas Frank: Lord, Make Me Conservative, But Not Yet

June 18, 2008; Page A13

The Republican Party is in tatters, but conservatism shares no portion of the blame. Or so former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay wrote in a cheering column a few weeks ago.

The movement's ideals of "reform" and "justice" did not fail, intoned this towering figure of virtue; conservatism just never got a proper shot in the first place. "To paraphrase G.K. Chesterton," Mr. DeLay wrote, "conservatism has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."

Army Overseer Tells of Ouster Over KBR Stir

By JAMES RISEN

Published: June 17, 2008

WASHINGTON — The Army official who managed the Pentagon’s largest contract in Iraq says he was ousted from his job when he refused to approve paying more than $1 billion in questionable charges to KBR, the Houston-based company that has provided food, housing and other services to American troops.

The official, Charles M. Smith, was the senior civilian overseeing the multibillion-dollar contract with KBR during the first two years of the war. Speaking out for the first time, Mr. Smith said that he was forced from his job in 2004 after informing KBR officials that the Army would impose escalating financial penalties if they failed to improve their chaotic Iraqi operations.

Economists: Health Cost Crisis Coming

Experts Say Congress Must Change Spending on Health Care

By Mike Lillis 06/17/2008

In what is fast becoming a repetitive exercise, some of Washington's top economists warned lawmakers Tuesday that health-care spending threatens to devour the nation's economy unless Congress steps in with sweeping reforms.

The message is hardly news on Capitol Hill, where some policy-makers have sounded a similar alarm for years. But forecasting a fiscal doomsday is easier than convincing a divided Congress to prevent it. Indeed, despite the urgency of the health spending warnings, lawmakers agree that no major reforms are coming this election year.

Roadmap to Torture

Testimony Reveals How Torture Resistance Training, 'SERE,' Became Pentagon's 'Enhanced' Interrogations

By Spencer Ackerman 06/18/2008

In August 2004, a Defense Dept. panel convened to investigate detainee abuse after the Abu Ghraib scandal issued its much-anticipated report. Interrogation techniques designed for use at Guantanamo Bay, which President George W. Bush had decreed outside the scope of the Geneva Conventions, had "migrated" to Iraq, which Bush recognized was under Geneva, concluded panel chairman James Schlesinger, a former defense secretary. Schlesinger's panel, however, did not explain which officials ordered the abusive techniques to transfer across continents -- or how and why they became Pentagon policy in the first place.

The Real Cause of the Mortgage Crisis: Conservative Opposition to Sensible Financial Standards

THE POLITICS

Home prices are falling and foreclosures rising across the country. With one in six mortgaged homes now worth less than the loan balance, our entire economy is at risk. Few Americans are aware that the housing bubble was the natural result of reckless Bush administration policies. Let’s place blame where it’s due and outline a series of progressive solutions to the problem.

THE ISSUE

One of every 11 mortgage holders in America faces major loan problems. During the first quarter of 2008, nearly 9 percent of all mortgage holders were delinquent or in foreclosure, the highest rate since recordkeeping began in 1979 [The New York Times [23]]. Foreclosure filings more than doubled from 2007 to 2008 [RealtyTrac [24]].

The Taliban Are Back. What Now?

The long road to fixing Afghanistan winds through Pakistan.

By Fred Kaplan
Posted Tuesday, June 17, 2008, at 6:26 PM ET

What is going on in Afghanistan?

In the past week, Taliban fighters staged a prison raid and freed at least 1,000 of their brethren. Soon after, they mounted offensives on seven villages and are moving in on the southern stronghold of Kandahar. One of the fiercest Taliban leaders, Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani, a major U.S. ally during the days of resistance to Soviet occupiers, is bringing in foreign jihadists from all over the region to help his cause.

Mr. Bush v. the Bill of Rights

In the waning months of his tenure, President Bush and his allies are once again trying to scare Congress into expanding the president’s powers to spy on Americans without a court order.

This week, the White House and Democratic and Republican leaders on Capitol Hill hope to announce a “compromise” on a domestic spying bill. If they do, it will be presented as an indispensable tool for protecting the nation’s security that still safeguards our civil liberties. The White House will paint opponents as weak-kneed liberals who do not understand and cannot stand up to the threat of terrorism.

Can the U.S. Thrive as Other Powers Rise?

By Terrence McNally, AlterNet
Posted on June 18, 2008, Printed on June 18, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/88453/

Looking beyond U.S. borders, this is a rare moment. Not one of the world's powers is an enemy. The threats to our security do not come from rival nation states. With some threats like climate change -- as Walt Kelly put it via Pogo -- the enemy is us. Even the greatest external violent threats have roots not in powerful nations, but in instability, in states at risk of failure. Our ability to solve all major global problems is compromised or blocked by tribal conflicts, the failure of national institutions, and the resulting breakdown of authority and accountability.

A new book, The Next American Century: How the U.S. Can Thrive as Other Powers Rise by Nina Hachigian and Mona Sutphen, argues that it's good for us that other pivotal nations grow wealthier and stronger. We need them on our side so that together we can solve global problems of peace, climate, health, and justice.

Comfortable retirement a fading dream for many

(06-15) 17:35 PDT -- Ruth Britton enjoys her part-time work as a college instructor. But, at 69, there are plenty of other things the Greenbrae resident would like to do - volunteer, write, take classes, travel.

The problem is, with the cost of living rising and the value of her investments falling, Britton can't do without the money she gets from teaching. She's already put off retirement several years. Now, she says she may have to stay on the job four or five years more.

Tomgram: John Feffer, Are We All North Koreans Now?

It's been a curious experience, each evening recently, turning on the NBC or ABC nightly news, with historic levels of flooding in Iowa as the lead story. ("Uncharted territory," National Weather Service meteorologist Brian Pierce called these floods.) After all, there are those stunning images of Cedar Rapids, a small city now simply in the water. The National Weather Service has already termed what's happened to the city an "historic hydrologic event," with the Cedar River topping its banks at, or above, half-millennium highs. (That's an every 500 year "event"!)

But here's the special strangeness of this TV moment: Network news loves weather disasters, and yet, as with historic droughts in the Southeast or Southwest, as with the hordes of tornadoes coursing through the center of the country, as with so many other extreme weather phenomena of recent times, including flooding in Southern China and the Burmese cyclone, when it comes to the Midwestern floods, night after night no TV talking head seems ever to mention the possibility that climate change/global warming might somehow be involved. (Nor, by the way, are our major newspapers any better on the subject.) As an omission, it's kinda staggering, really, for an event already being labeled "a Midwestern Katrina."

Glenn Greenwald: John Yoo's ongoing falsehoods in service of limitless government power

One of the most reliable methods for knowing that a position is unsustainable is that its advocates must employ outright falsehoods in order to support it. In a Wall St. Journal Op-Ed today, John Yoo defends the right of the Bush administration to imprison people at Guantanamo indefinitely with no judicial review and condemns last week's Supreme Court habeas corpus ruling as "judicial imperialism of the highest order." To do so, Yoo asserts what have become the now-standard though still-blatant falsehoods on this issue.

Myth-makers caught short in oil speculation

By R M Cutler

BRUSSELS - As in military science there is the danger of "fighting the last war", so in economic science there is the danger of puncturing the last bubble. This is especially hazardous when what one has is not, in fact, a bubble. Then, the myths of such a bubble are what need puncturing. So it is today with oil prices, which this week hit a record US$139.89 a barrel.

Is demand actually decreasing in India and China? No, demand is still rising; it is the rate of increase of demand that is declining, and also not by much. Or, perhaps, is oil a hedge against dollar weakness? "The dollar," said Canadian Finance Minister Jim Flaherty at the Group of Eight (G-8)meeting of his colleagues last weekend in Osaka, "is a market currency." And "one does not interfere with a market currency".

Scarcity in an Age of Plenty

As food and fuel prices continue to increase the world must look to new patterns of consumption and production

by Joseph Stiglitz

Around the world, protests against soaring food and fuel prices are mounting. The poor — and even the middle classes — are seeing their incomes squeezed as the global economy enters a slowdown. Politicians want to respond to their constituents’ legitimate concerns, but do not know what to do.

In the United States, both Hillary Clinton and John McCain took the easy way out, and supported a suspension of the gasoline tax, at least for the summer. Only Barack Obama stood his ground and rejected the proposal, which would have merely increased demand for gasoline — and thereby offset the effect of the tax cut.

Izzy Stone, Patron Saint of Bloggers

by Jeff Cohen

It was nineteen years ago this week that I.F. (Izzy) Stone died. The legendary blogger was 81.

Confused? You say he died years before web blogs were invented?

Well, yeah, but when I think of today’s blunt, fact-based online hell-raisers, my mind quickly flashes on Izzy Stone. You may think of Josh Marshall or Glenn Greenwald or Arianna Huffington. I think of Izzy.

Before there was an Internet, Izzy Stone was doing the work we associate with today’s best bloggers. Like them, he was obsessed with citing original documents and texts. But before search engines, Izzy had to consume ten newspapers per day — and physically visit government archives and press offices, and personally pore over thousands of words in the Congressional Record. That’s how he repeatedly scooped the gullible, faux-objective MSM of his day in exposing government deceit, like that propelling the Vietnam War.

Matt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain

Evening, June 3rd, in a muggy, dragonfly-beswarmed place called the Pontchartrain Center, just outside New Orleans. Half a continent away, amid yet another legacy-smashing fusillade of unsolicited invective from Bill Clinton, the excruciating Obama-Hillary mess is finally wrapping up, in a pair of anticlimactic primaries somewhere over the darkened plains of Montana and South Dakota. But here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy — who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans?

Army's $100 Million Housing From Hell: Alaska’s Taku Gardens

For Immediate Release: June 12, 2008
Contact: Carol Goldberg (202) 265-7337

ARMY’S $100 MILLION HOUSING FROM HELL: ALASKA’S TAKU GARDENS — Responsibility Evaded for Uninhabitable Base Family Housing atop Weapons Dump

Washington, DC — For more then three years, the U.S. Army has hemorrhaged money into an Alaskan housing complex that will likely never be occupied, according to agency documents released today by Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER). After a damning internal investigation, the Army ordered a new review which excused any misconduct as a failure to communicate, conceding only that “this was not an organization optimally aligned for success.”

Under intense pressure to provide housing at booming Fort Wainwright, in 2005 base officials authorized building 128 units on a 54-acre site, called Taku Gardens but with only cursory environmental assessment. Unfortunately, that site was an old weapons and equipment dump, profoundly contaminated with munitions (some holding chemical agent), dioxin, PCBs, tons of drums and equipment (including an entire locomotive and a forklift). By the time construction was halted, 79 units had been built but will likely have to be torn down.

The Contraception Failure

Nearly all American women will use contraception at some point in their lives. Birth control is the most effective way to lower the unintended pregnancy rate, and the best way to decrease the abortion rate. But in an increasingly polarized political debate about abortion rights, anti-contraception sentiments have crept in. Sometimes they are blatant -- earlier this June for example, anti-choice groups sponsored a national day of protest against the birth control pill. But usually, they are more insidious and come in the form of systematically and routinely denying women access to contraception. The grounds of the reproductive rights debate are shifting -- and most Americans don't seem to know it.

Tomgram: Why We Can't See America's Ziggurats in Iraq

The Greatest Story Never Told

Finally, the U.S. Mega-Bases in Iraq Make the News

By Tom Engelhardt

It's just a $5,812,353 contract -- chump change for the Pentagon -- and not even one of those notorious "no-bid" contracts either. Ninety-eight bids were solicited by the Army Corps of Engineers and 12 were received before the contract was awarded this May 28th to Wintara, Inc. of Fort Washington, Maryland, for "replacement facilities for Forward Operating Base Speicher, Iraq." According to a Department of Defense press release, the work on those "facilities" to be replaced at the base near Saddam Hussein's hometown, Tikrit, is expected to be completed by January 31, 2009, a mere 11 days after a new president enters the Oval Office. It is but one modest reminder that, when the next administration hits Washington, American bases in Iraq, large and small, will still be undergoing the sort of repair and upgrading that has been ongoing for years.

Flux in ocean levels drove mass extinctions: study

Mass extinctions that wiped out up to 90 percent of Earth's flora and fauna were driven in large part by shifting ocean levels, according to a study published in Nature.

Understanding what made many of the planet's living organism rapidly die out at least five times over the last half billion years remains one of the great challenges in paleontology and biology.

Lehman and the liars

By Chan Akya

The travails at one of the smaller investment banks in the world, Lehman Brothers, this week helped to increase investor focus on the phalanx of lies that underpin valuations across financial markets. Since I last alluded to the potential problems of this firm (Cheap talk, pricey banks, Asia Times Online, June 5, 2008), events have moved rather quickly; its share price is down from around US$31 to Thursday's close of $22.70.

The reason for the share price decline wasn't so much the article of course, but rather the company's announcement on Monday (June 9) that it expected a $2.8 billion loss for the quarter ended May 31, and that it would also raise $6 billion in new capital, a part of which would come from Asian investors, in particular an unnamed South Korean financial institution.

Deal, deal, deal with Iran

WASHINGTON - The assumption that the United States should exploit its military dominance to exert pressure on adversaries has long dominated the thinking of the US national security and political elite. But this central tenet of conventional security doctrine was sharply rejected last week by a senior practitioner of crisis diplomacy at the debut of a major new centrist foreign policy think-tank.

At the first conference of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS), ambassador James Dobbins, who was former president Bill Clinton special envoy for Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia and Kosovo and the George W Bush administration's first special envoy to Afghanistan, sharply rejected the well-established concept of coercive diplomacy.

Oil hits new record, then reverses on worries

Monday June 16, 4:23 pm ET
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer Oil futures hit record near $140 a barrel, then fall, as traders weigh Saudi production offer NEW YORK (AP) -- Crude oil futures swung wildly on Monday, rising to a record and then tumbling as investors wrestled with whether they should put stock in Saudi Arabia's promise to boost production. Retail gas prices rose to a record $4.08 a gallon.

Human trafficking of Indian guest workers alleged in Mississippi shipyard; Contractor defends 290-man camp

Paid $18.50 an hour, but living twenty to a trailer and fighting for spoons

A month ago Monday, a group of guest workers from India placed a frantic 3:00 am phone call to Saket Soni, lead organizer for the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice. The workers said that armed security guards were holding some workers prisoner in the TV room of the Signal International Shipyard in Pascagoula, Mississippi, where the company's 290 welders and pipe fitters live.

The men told Soni that Signal International – a sub-contractor for mammoth defense contractor Northrop Grumman – had staged a pre-dawn raid and that six Indian workers had been detained in the “TV room,” flanked by security guards, one of whom carried a gun. About 200 other Indian employees at Signal were standing outside the room.

Justice Isn't Justice If It Only Applies to Your Friends

On Thursday July 12, the Supreme Court restored habeas corpus to the accused persons detained by President Bush at Guantanamo. In doing so it set American laws again on the track of constitutional self-respect. But it also opened the grounds for a debate which is sure to be long and fierce, in which the American opponents of liberty, eager for the domestic regime that in 2002 seemed almost in their grasp, will spare no reproach against the Court and will speak openly of the "lack of realism" of the U.S. Constitution.

Two previous decisions, and two bad remedies by a servile Republican Congress and its Democratic enablers, led to Thursday's decision. The Supreme Court in Rasul v. Bush, in June 2004, recognized that the Guantanamo prisoners had statutory habeas rights. The response by Congress was the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which specified the harsher rules to which they were subject. In Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, in June 2006, the Court held that Guantanamo trials by military commissions were in violation of both the Uniform Code of Military Justice and the Geneva Conventions. Congress then offered up, and the president signed into law in October 2006, the Military Commissions Act, which gave legislative sanction to the Guantanamo commissions and stripped the prisoners of habeas corpus.

Susan Faludi: Think the Gender War Is Over? Think Again

San Francisco

FOR months, our political punditry foresaw one, and only one, prospective gender contest looming in the general election: between the first serious female presidential candidate and the Republican male “warrior.” But those who were dreading a plebiscite on sexual politics shouldn’t celebrate just yet. Hillary Clinton may be out of the race, but a Barack Obama versus John McCain match-up still has the makings of an epic American gender showdown.

The reason is a gender ethic that has guided American politics since the age of Andrew Jackson. The sentiment was succinctly expressed in a massive marble statue that stood on the steps of the United States Capitol from 1853 to 1958. Named “The Rescue,” but more commonly known as “Daniel Boone Protects His Family,” the monument featured a gigantic white pioneer in a buckskin coat holding a nearly naked Indian in a death’s grip, while off to the side a frail white woman crouched over her infant.

Frank Rich: Angry Clinton Women ♥ McCain?

TEN years ago John McCain had to apologize for regaling a Republican audience with a crude sexual joke about Hillary and Chelsea Clinton and Janet Reno. Last year he had to explain why he didn’t so much as flinch when a supporter asked him on camera, “How do we beat the bitch?” But these days Mr. McCain just loves the women.

In his televised address on Barack Obama’s victory night of June 3, he dismissed Mr. Obama in a single patronizing line but devoted four fulsome sentences to praising Mrs. Clinton for “inspiring millions of women.” The McCain Web site is showcasing a new blogger who crooned of the “genuine affection” for Mrs. Clinton “here at McCain HQ” after she lost. One of the few visible women in the McCain campaign hierarchy, Carly Fiorina, has declared herself “enormously proud” of Mrs. Clinton and is barnstorming to win over Democratic women to her guy’s cause.

America's prison for terrorists often held the wrong men

By Tom Lasseter | McClatchy Newspapers

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — The militants crept up behind Mohammed Akhtiar as he squatted at the spigot to wash his hands before evening prayers at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp.

They shouted "Allahu Akbar" — God is great — as one of them hefted a metal mop squeezer into the air, slammed it into Akhtiar's head and sent thick streams of blood running down his face.

Amy Goodman: Citing Iraq War, Renowned Attorney Vincent Bugliosi Seeks “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder”

Vincent Bugliosi is one of the most successful prosecutors in this country, with a record including twenty-one murder convictions without a single loss. With a new book, he outlines his case for the prosecution of George W. Bush for murder.

Thomas Frank: Mister Maverick, Meet Da Machine

I always knew that the 2008 election would become another battle in the culture wars; the only mystery was the particular form the conflict would take this time around.

The answer surprises even cynical me: Barack Obama's neighborhood. Republicans are preparing to court the blue-collar vote by casting the election as a referendum on Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood, which Mr. Obama represented in the Illinois Senate and where the prestigious University of Chicago is situated.

Drop That Spoon!

How did it all begin? It was one of those things that crept up on us and we still can't quite believe happened. Looking back, we'd been in denial for some time. Then a friend who hadn't seen the family for a while blurted out the bald truth. "God, Dodi's got rather fat. In fact, you know, I think that might count as obese."

Once said, it had to be admitted. If you looked at Dodi from behind when he was sitting down, you could see a substantial spare tyre around his 13-year-old middle. It bulged out from his hips and flopped down like a muffin rising out over its baking case. He had become quite lazy, too, preferring to lounge in front of the fire rather than play in the garden as he used to. His excess weight was slowing him down. His joints seemed stiff as he climbed the stairs.

Graham: Amend Constitution to overturn court's ruling

By James Rosen | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A dejected Sen. Lindsey Graham blasted the Supreme Court's ruling Thursday on Guantanamo Bay detainees, calling it "dangerous and irresponsible."

The South Carolina Republican, who's also a military lawyer and a colonel in the Air Force Reserve, helped craft the Military Commissions Act and had confidently predicted that it would pass high court muster.

Glenn Greenwald: Conservatism vs. Authoritarianism: The British vs. The US Right

In Britain, the Labour Party, led by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, is attempting to enact legislation empowering the Government to detain terrorist suspects for 42 days without bothering to charge them with any crime (as a result of post-9/11 legislation, the British Government may do so now for 28 days). Much of the opposition to this expansion of the Government’s detention power comes from the British Right, which sees it as an intolerable expansion of unchecked government power and a severe erosion of core Western liberties. Factions within the British Left are opposed to the legislation for the same reason.

The official position of the British Conservative Party is to oppose the legislation, and former Tory Prime Minister John Major — who himself was the target of a 1991 bombing-assassination plot by the IRA — wrote an Op-Ed in the Times Online emphatically opposing these increased detention powers and also opposing new DNA and other domestic surveillance programs.

AP Goes After Bloggers Under DMCA

By Liza Sabater, Culture Kitchen
Posted on June 13, 2008, Printed on June 14, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://culturekitchen.com//88096/

Rogers Cadenhead, founder and publisher of The Drudge Retort, has been Cease and Desisted by AP News for publishing fragments of their syndicated news articles and reports.

Yes, fragments, not the whole articles.

FEMA gives away $85 million of supplies for Katrina victims

NEW ORLEANS, Louisiana (CNN) -- FEMA gave away about $85 million in household goods meant for Hurricane Katrina victims, a CNN investigation has found.

The material, from basic kitchen goods to sleeping necessities, sat in warehouses for two years before the Federal Emergency Management Agency's giveaway to federal and state agencies this year.

Obama's Chicago Boys

Barack Obama waited just three days after Hillary Clinton pulled out of the race to declare, on CNBC, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market."

Demonstrating that this is no mere spring fling, he has appointed 37-year-old Jason Furman to head his economic policy team. Furman is one of Wal-Mart's most prominent defenders, anointing the company a "progressive success story." On the campaign trail, Obama blasted Clinton for sitting on the Wal-Mart board and pledged, "I won't shop there." For Furman, however, it's Wal-Mart's critics who are the real threat: the "efforts to get Wal-Mart to raise its wages and benefits" are creating "collateral damage" that is "way too enormous and damaging to working people and the economy more broadly for me to sit by idly and sing 'Kum-Ba-Ya' in the interests of progressive harmony."

Our Gilded Age

By Doug Henwood

It has become a cliché to say that we live in a new Gilded Age. True enough, up to a point. Money, mostly new money, rules politics and culture. Corporations merge into ever larger corporations. You have to go back to before World War I to match today's levels of income and wealth inequality.

In some ways, the second Gilded Age is worse than the first. Sure, we live longer now, more of us can read and you don't have to be a white man to be able to vote. But to prove my point, consider two big parties, thrown 110 years apart.

Today's Must Read

By Andrew Tilghman - June 13, 2008, 9:35AM

If the special-rate Countrywide loan that led to Jim Johnson's resignation from Barack Obama's VP screening team was shady, then there's a few other Washington insiders who may have some explaining to do.

A new article from Portfolio rattles off a list of top Washington officials, current and former, who also received discounted loans because they were personally approved by Countywide Financial's top exec Angelo Mozilo.

TPM: McCain Signs on For More Bush Bamboozlement!

For those of you who remember President Bush's 2005 crusade to phase out Social Security by privatizing the program and converting it into a system of private investment accounts, you know that one of the biggest lines of bamboozlement was the White House's attempt to take the word for Social Security privatization -- i.e., 'privatization' -- and pretend that it was a word Democrats had come up with and one that was unfair for any members of the press to use.

This Land Is Their Land

I took a little vacation recently--nine hours in Sun Valley, Idaho, before an evening speaking engagement. The sky was deep blue, the air crystalline, the hills green and not yet on fire. Strolling out of the Sun Valley Lodge, I found a tiny tourist village, complete with Swiss-style bakery, multistar restaurant and "opera house." What luck--the boutiques were displaying outdoor racks of summer clothing on sale! Nature and commerce were conspiring to make this the perfect micro-vacation.

So Much For Free Speech

By Mary Kane 06/13/2008 12:13PM

A funny thing happened to University of Illinois law professor Robert Lawless on his way to a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing this week. Lawless, an expert on credit and bankruptcy, was set to testify before the Committee on how the U.S. Supreme Court decisions affect people in their everyday lives. Lawless said he was looking forward to talking about how the high court's decisions in the financial services area sometimes take away state protections against deceptive lending practices. Lawless cited the way Jon Stewart once described a regulatory development - "Yes, it's boring. That's how they get away with it" - to explain how he hoped the hearing would shed light on seemingly arcane rulings that have major impacts on people's lives.

Data on Housing Relief Questioned

By David Cho and Renae Merle
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, June 13, 2008; D01

Banks and mortgage firms are providing questionable information about the number of subprime mortgage borrowers they are helping and the rate at which homeowners are falling into foreclosure, according to the top regulator for the nation's largest banks.

Those details are crucial for regulators to gauge the severity of the housing crisis and evaluate the effectiveness of the steps lenders are taking to address the problems.

Paul Krugman: Bad Cow Disease

“Mary had a little lamb / And when she saw it sicken / She shipped it off to Packingtown / And now it’s labeled chicken.”

That little ditty famously summarized the message of “The Jungle,” Upton Sinclair’s 1906 exposé of conditions in America’s meat-packing industry. Sinclair’s muckraking helped Theodore Roosevelt pass the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act — and for most of the next century, Americans trusted government inspectors to keep their food safe.

Tomgram: Michael Klare, The Pentagon as Energy Insecurity Inc.

If you thought things were bad, with a barrel of crude oil at $136 and the oil heartlands of our planet verging on chaos, don't be surprised, but you may still have something to look forward to. Alexei Miller, chairman of Russia's vast state-owned energy monopoly, Gazprom, just suggested that, within 18 months, that same barrel could be selling for a nifty $250. Put that in your tank and… well, don't drive it. It will be far too valuable.

Underweight babies hit highest rate, aided by poverty

Mississippi, South Carolina, Louisiana among the worst

By STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
Published on: 06/12/08

The percentage of underweight babies born in the United States has increased to its highest rate in 40 years, with Georgia ranking seventh from the bottom in delivering healthy infants, according to a new report that also documents a recent rise in the number of children living in poverty.

The data on low birth weights is troubling because such babies — those born at less than 5.5 pounds — are at greater risk of dying in infancy or experiencing long-term disabilities.

Emulate Japan to cope with oil shocks

By Dilip Hiro

With the price of oil rocketing to the unprecedented level of US$130 a barrel and more, there is a talk of another oil shock. Unlike past instances, this one is unlikely to subside and may indeed keep intensifying. The only way out is for Western nations, the gluttonous users of petroleum, to cut their consumption and emulate Japan in its consistent drive for energy efficiency and alternate sources.

The present explosion in oil prices, the fourth of its kind, is different from the previous ones in 1973-74, 1980 and 1990-91. The earlier oil shocks were caused by interruption of supplies from the Middle East, respectively due to the war between the Arabs and Israel, the Iranian revolution, and Iraq's invasion and occupation of Kuwait. Once peace returned, the new order became established or the invader was expelled, supplies returned to normal.

On the Economy Debate, The Gloves Come Off

By Robert Borosage
June 11th, 2008 - 9:17am ET

Monday in Raleigh, North Carolina, Illinois Sen. Barack Obama opened the general election fight, taking the gloves off against the "tired and misguided [economic] philosophy that has dominated Washington for too long," and offering a clear challenge to the Bush-McCain economic misrule. In Washington before the National Federation of Independent Business, McCain counterpunched, suggesting the choice was between low taxes and "the largest tax increase since World War II."

This argument will be the big kahuna in this election. Despite ritual boosterism, soothing rhetoric and quiet prayers by Wall Street pundits, the economy is foul and likely to get much worse. We've lost jobs for five months in a row. Gas, food, health care costs are soaring. For workers, the mess is worse than the stagflation of the 1970s. Then, growth was stagnant while prices and wages were spiraling up. Now we've got stagflation squared; growth and wages are stagnant and prices on basics are soaring, while the value of homes, the largest investment Americans have, is plummeting.

Glenn Greenwald: NYT circulates fear-mongering claims on FISA debate

The White House and Congress prepare to tell Americans: If you want to stay safe, you must give the president the power to spy on you without warrants, and immunize telecoms from the consequences of lawbreaking.

Glenn Greenwald

Jun. 10, 2008 | (updated below)

The New York Times' Eric Lichtblau has a long, prominent article today on the pending debate over FISA and telecom amnesty -- headlined: "Return to Old Spy Rules Is Seen as Deadline Nears" -- that features (and endorses) virtually every blatant falsehood that has distorted these spying issues from the beginning, and which is built on every shoddy journalistic practice that has made clear debate over these issues almost impossible. The article strongly suggests that a so-called "compromise" is imminent, a "compromise" which will deliver to the President virtually everything he seeks in the way of new warrantless eavesdropping powers and telecom amnesty.

One paragraph after the next in Lichtblau's article features shrill warnings, mostly from unnamed "officials," about all the scary things that will happen if Congressional Democrats do not quickly pass a new FISA bill that is similar to the Rockefeller/Cheney Senate bill and that is agreeable to the President. If a "compromise" isn't reached, reports the article, then we'll all have to live under the so-called "old" FISA law -- meaning the law used by the U.S. to defend itself from 1978 until August, 2007 and then again from February, 2008 until the present. Moreover, the one-year surveillance orders obtained last August under the now-expired Protect America Act are set to expire in August, 2008.

Do we really expect the Bushies to go quietly?

By Dan Froomkin

As we enter the twilight of the Bush era, with the distinct possibility of a Democrat moving into the White House next January, it’s reasonable to suppose that top administration officials are spending a lot of their energy trying to make it as difficult as possible for their successors to roll back their policies.

What are the Bushies doing to lock in their current course – even if it’s Barack Obama in the Oval Office on inauguration day? What agreements and contracts are they committing the country to? What rules, line-items, and executive orders will live on beyond their creators? What Trojan horses, landmines and Manchurian Candidates have they put in place throughout government?

Justice Department Official Awards $500,000 Grant to Golf Group

Former Staffer Tells ABC News Anti-Crime Funds Given to Programs With The "Right" Connections.

By BRIAN ROSS, ANNA SCHECTER, and MURRAY WAAS

June 9, 2008 —

A senior Justice Department official says a $500,000 federal grant to the World Golf Foundation is an appropriate use of money designed to deal with juvenile crime in America.

"We need something really attractive to engage the gangs and the street kids, golf is the hook," said J. Robert Flores, the administrator of the Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.

The Justice Department, in a decision by Flores, gave the money to the World Golf Foundation's First Tee program, even though Justice Department staffers had rated the program 47th on a list of 104 applicants. The allegations were first reported earlier this year by the trade journal Youth Today.

Attempted Intimidation of career Justice Department employees

So what happens when career Justice Department employees blow the whistle on their boss and talk to the media and Congress about favoritism and cronyism going on in their office? An internal Justice Department investigation commences.

Why We Need Another Recount

Now that the presidential race is finally under way, a lot of Democrats are giddy with excitement, certain that Barack Obama will demolish John McCain; and those Democrats apparently have every reason to believe that it will happen. On the other hand, there also are some others who aren't quite so sure: others who recall the outcomes of the last two presidential races, both of which resulted in surprising "wins" for yet another dubious far-rightist candidate. Those uneasy types are wondering -- and the Democrats too should be wondering -- if history might yet again repeat itself, despite the rosy way things seem to look right now.

The question is, of course, unpleasant; but it's also necessary. And we might best begin to answer it by taking a close look at Recount, which just ended its first run on HBO (although subscribers can still see it On Demand). For all its strengths, the film is deeply flawed by the same weird denial that has kept the Democrats both in the dark and out of power--and that could keep them there beyond Election Day, regardless of the will of the electorate.

Oil soars on dollar, Energy Department report

Wednesday June 11, 4:02 pm ET
By John Wilen, AP Business Writer Oil soars as high as $138 a barrel as dollar falls and Energy Department reports supply drop NEW YORK (AP) -- Oil prices regained their stunning upward momentum Wednesday, rising as crude's biggest drivers -- a weak dollar and supply concerns -- brought buyers back in force. At the pump, gas prices rose to a new record over $4.05 a gallon.

Oil futures that were falling a week ago on concerns about declining gasoline consumption have dramatically reversed course and appear poised to set new records above $140 a barrel. While the market remains concerned about the effect of high prices on demand, several weeks of falling oil inventories and the dollar's inability to make headway against the euro have combined to turn market sentiment decidedly bullish.

Financial Weapons of Mass Destruction

Credit Default Swaps Are a Valuable Invention, But Largely Unregulated

By Charles R. Morris 06/10/2008 | 1 Comment

Warren Buffet calls credit derivatives "financial weapons of mass destruction." When his company, Berkshire-Hathaway, Inc., took over an insurance company in 2002, it took him four years to unwind its portfolio of credit derivatives -- at a cost of $400 million. Buffet didn’t entirely follow his own advice, however, because in the first quarter this year Berkshire-Hathaway took another $500 million loss on credit derivatives.

Why worry about credit derivatives? One reason is that the "notional value" of the most important credit derivatives, credit default swaps, or CDS, is now $62 trillion. That’s trillion, with a "‘T," and it is more than the whole world’s gross domestic product. Numbers that big automatically make people nervous, especially when they see the canniest investors like Buffet taking losses.

Algae oil promises truly green fuel

THIS is one biofuel that lives up to its green billing in more ways than one. It's an emerald-green crude oil, produced by photosynthesis in algae, which could fuel cars, trucks and aircraft - without consuming crops that can be used as food.

U.S. seeking 58 bases in Iraq, Shiite lawmakers say

U.S. seeking 58 bases in Iraq, Shiite lawmakers say

Leila Fadel | McClatchy Newspapers
last updated: June 09, 2008 08:20:15 PM

BAGHDAD -Iraqi lawmakers say the United States is demanding 58 bases as part of a proposed "status of forces" agreement that will allow U.S. troops to remain in the country indefinitely.

Leading members of the two ruling Shiite parties said in a series of interviews the Iraqi government rejected this proposal along with another U.S. demand that would have effectively handed over to the United States the power to determine if a hostile act from another country is aggression against Iraq. Lawmakers said they fear this power would drag Iraq into a war between the United States and Iran.

President Met Disgraced Lobbyist At Least Six Times

The White House Had Previously Acknowledged Only Two Meetings

By JUSTIN ROOD

June 9, 2008 —

The White House had stronger ties to disgraced superlobbyist Jack Abramoff than it has publicly admitted, according to a draft congressional report released Monday.

President Bush met Abramoff on at least four occasions the White House has yet to acknowledge, according to the draft report by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

And White House officials appeared as comfortable going to Abramoff and his lobbyists seeking tickets to sporting and entertainment events, as they did seeking input on personnel picks for plum jobs, the report found.

BBC uncovers lost Iraq billions

By Jane Corbin
BBC News

A BBC investigation estimates that around $23bn (£11.75bn) may have been lost, stolen or just not properly accounted for in Iraq.

For the first time, the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by the BBC's Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

A US gagging order is preventing discussion of the allegations.

Paul Krugman: It’s a Different Country

Fervent supporters of Barack Obama like to say that putting him in the White House would transform America. With all due respect to the candidate, that gets it backward. Mr. Obama is an impressive speaker who has run a brilliant campaign — but if he wins in November, it will be because our country has already been transformed.

Mr. Obama’s nomination wouldn’t have been possible 20 years ago. It’s possible today only because racial division, which has driven U.S. politics rightward for more than four decades, has lost much of its sting.

Credit crisis expands, hitting all kinds of consumer loans

By Kevin G. Hall | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The credit crisis triggered by bad home loans is spreading to other areas, forcing banks to tighten credit and probably extending the credit crisis that's dragging down the economy well into next year, and perhaps beyond.

That means consumers are going to have an increasingly difficult time getting bank loans for car purchases, credit cards, home equity credit lines, student loans and even commercial real estate, experts say.

Tomgram: Greg Grandin, Is the Monroe Doctrine Really Dead?

Losing Latin America

What Will the Obama Doctrine Be Like?
By Greg Grandin

Google "neglect," "Washington," and "Latin America," and you will be led to thousands of hand-wringing calls from politicians and pundits for Washington to "pay more attention" to the region. True, Richard Nixon once said that "people don't give one shit" about the place. And his National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger quipped that Latin America is a "dagger pointed at the heart of Antarctica." But Kissinger also made that same joke about Chile, Argentina, and New Zealand -- and, of the three countries, only the latter didn't suffer widespread political murder as a result of his policies, a high price to pay for such a reportedly inconsequential place.

Latin America, in fact, has been indispensable in the evolution of U.S. diplomacy. The region is often referred to as America's "backyard," but a better metaphor might be Washington's "strategic reserve," the place where ascendant foreign-policy coalitions regroup and redraw the outlines of U.S. power, following moments of global crisis.

Why It’s Worse Than You Think

For months, economic Pollyannas have looked beyond the dismal headlines and promised a quick recovery in the second half. They're dead wrong.

Daniel Gross

NEWSWEEK

Updated: 3:25 PM ET Jun 7, 2008

The forgettable first half of 2008 is stumbling to a close. On Friday, the Labor Department reported that American employers axed 49,000 jobs in May, the fifth straight month of job losses—an event that signals a recession sure as the glittery ball dropping on Times Square augurs a New Year. The report, which inspired a 394-point decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average Friday, was the latest in a run of bad news. Auto sales, the largest retailing sector in the U.S., were off 10.7 percent in May from the year before. And housing? Ugh. Nationwide, according to the Case-Shiller Index, home prices in the first quarter fell 14 percent.

Yet hope springs eternal that the second half will be better than the first. Economists polled by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia in May believe the economy will grow at an annual rate of 1.7 percent and 1.8 percent in the third and fourth quarters, respectively. Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of Realtors, tells NEWSWEEK that "home sales and prices in most of the country will improve during the second half of 2008." (Yun is the Little Orphan Annie of forecasters. He's always sure the sun will come out tomorrow.) Last month, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said, "We expect to see a faster pace of economic growth before the end of the year."

Records Could Shed Light on Iraq Group

By Walter Pincus
Monday, June 9, 2008; A15

There is an important line in last week's Senate intelligence committee report on the Bush administration's prewar exaggerations of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. It says that the panel did not review "less formal communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch."

More important, there was no effort to obtain White House records or interview President Bush, Vice President Cheney or other administration officials whose speeches were analyzed because, the report says, such steps were considered beyond the scope of the report.

Duffy: ‘White House Lawyers Are Concerned’ McClellan’s Book Will Reignite ‘The Valerie Plame Business’

In his explosive new memoir, former White House press secretary Scott McClellan claims that Karl Rove, Scooter Libby, “and possibly Vice President Cheney” encouraged him to “repeat a lie” to the American people about the administration’s role in the leaking of Valerie Plame’s identity. This assertion, along with others, has led members of Congress, like House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA), to again ask questions about the CIA leak scandal.

Squeezing the American Dream: Workers Face Diminishing Returns

By Nicholas von Hoffman, Truthdig
Posted on June 9, 2008, Printed on June 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87405/

You may be surprised to learn that the pleasant person from FedEx Ground delivering your package owns the truck which he or she has parked in front of your house. FedEx Ground drivers, you will find out in Steven Greenhouse's The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker, are not FedEx employees.

They are what are called independent contractors, although it demands no little effort to discern what about their position is independent. If they do not do what they are told, their contracts are abrogated forthwith. They are required to buy their own truck with 60 monthly installments of $781.12, which comes to $46,867.20. Plus there is a final kicker payment of $8,000, all of which adds up to a grand total of almost $55,000. On top of this, as an independent business person, the driver must bear the costs of insurance, maintenance, fuel, repairs and the fee for the FedEx uniform rental.

Blackwater's Private CIA

By Jeremy Scahill, The Nation
Posted on June 9, 2008, Printed on June 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/87200/

This past September, the secretive mercenary company Blackwater USA found its name splashed across front pages throughout the world after the company's shooters gunned down seventeen Iraqi civilians in Baghdad's Nisour Square. But by early 2008, Blackwater had largely receded from the headlines save for the occasional blip on the media radar sparked by Congressman Henry Waxman's ongoing investigations into its activities. Its forces remained deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, and business continued to pour in. In the two weeks directly following Nisour Square, Blackwater signed more than $144 million in contracts with the State Department for "protective services" in Iraq and Afghanistan alone and, over the following weeks and months, won millions more in contracts with other federal entities like the Coast Guard, the Navy and the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.

Digby

Eye Opener

Clinton has officially suspended her campaign and thrown her support to Obama. I'm sure we'll hear a lot of very nice encomiums over the next few days. The media never loves a Democrat more than immediately after he (or she) concedes.

C&L has the video of Clinton's speech. I thought it was very, very strong --- inspiring, conciliatory, intelligent and respectful of her supporters and her rival. John King and Chris Matthews insist she was "auditioning" for VP. (The implication being, naturally, that she doesn't mean a word of it unless she gets what she wants.) Carl Bernstein said that she made a good start but needs to do much, much more before anyone will believe her. Clearly, the media is going to have a hard time giving up their obsessions.

Bold Assertion

Douglas Holtz-Eakin said the only similarity between McCain's economic plan and Bush's is a commitment to keep taxes low.

``Sadly, it seems that is all President Bush understood in the economy,'' Holtz-Eakin said in an interview to be broadcast this weekend on Bloomberg Television's ``Conversations with Judy Woodruff.'' It is Barack Obama's budget plan, not Senator McCain's, that resembles Bush's policies, he said.

CIC Doesn't Mean What He Thinks It Means

FDL points out that McCain is dissing Bush big time when he says that nobody should romanticize war. After all, the guy who trash talked his way through 2002 through 2004 is the poster boy for childish, armchair warrior bravado. Recently he told the troops in the trenches he wishes he could be there with them, fighting for God and glory:

"I must say, I'm a little envious," Bush said. "If I were slightly younger and not employed here, I think it would be a fantastic experience to be on the front lines of helping this young democracy succeed."

Old News

In another example of angry, vitriolic, hate-filled left wing blogging, a number of us were writing and discussing, oh four years ago, about the Pentagon loons and how they were in cahoots with Iranian and Iraqi kooks in making the Greatest Strategic Blunder in Modern Memory. I believe we were mostly called traitors and deluded conspiracy theorists, although there were many colorful epithets hurled our way. Certainly the mainstream press wasn't interested. They were too busy getting fitted for their Prada safari jackets to pay attention to these stories. (Besides, it just wasn't sexy, you know? No broads, no spicy gossip.)

Who Us?

Can I tell you how incredibly annoying it is when Republicans go on TV and sanctimoniously lecture us about how the American people want all the Democrats to stop being so partisan and sit down and compromise for the good of the nation?

Downturn forces more in U.S. to rely on free food

Thu Jun 5, 2008 9:13pm EDT

By Matthew Bigg and Tim Gaynor

MONROE, Ga./DOUGLAS, Arizona (Reuters) - In the richest nation on earth, a rising number of people line up for free food because they are struggling to put meals on the table at home.

Demand at food banks in the United States is up 15 percent to 20 percent over last year and many food banks are having difficulty coping, according to America's Second Harvest, the largest U.S. food bank provider with 200 in its network.

Food bank networks procure nonperishable and fresh produce from suppliers, then stock it in warehouses before distributing it via a chain of community food banks across the country.

The man who would be king

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy

by Andrew Cockburn

Reviewed by Pepe Escobar

It was four years ago today, Field Marshal von Rumsfeld got his guns to play.

A fitting way to "celebrate" the bombastic opening of the most astonishing blunder in recent military/geopolitical history would be to read Andrew Cockburn's book. The late US president Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon, a ruthless judge of character himself, already in March 1971 ably described the future Bush administration Pentagon warlord as "a ruthless little bastard". Not only is this the title of one of Cockburn's chapters, it should be the book's epigraph.

Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall and Catastrophic Legacy is a book of no-nonsense reportage to be read in one sitting. Much of what it presents is not new. The kicker is how it connects the dots. The picture emerges of a ruthless opportunist, fueled by a toxic ego and blind ambition, a master of very nasty rudeness who perfected the killer technique of "inflicting hours of rapid and often disconnected questions on the people under him". What for? To win the game - whatever the game might be. Rumsfeld was a shock to the system - the ultimate operative, the ultimate fixer.

Ted Rall: The E-Word--The U.S. Has Rivals and Competitors, Not Enemies

PHILADELPHIA--"A Gallup poll," Libby Quaid wrote for the Associated Press on June 2^nd, "found that two-thirds of [Americans] said they believe it would be a good idea for the president to meet with the leaders of enemy countries."

Who are they referring to? An enemy is a country with whom a nation is at war. "Enemy countries"? We have enemies (hi, Osama). We have critics. We even have competitors. But the United States doesn't have enemy countries.

Fearing Escalation, Pentagon Fought Cheney Plan

by Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Pentagon officials firmly opposed a proposal by Vice President Dick Cheney last summer for airstrikes against Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bases by insisting that the administration would have to make clear decisions about how far the United States would go in escalating the conflict with Iran, according to a former George W. Bush administration official.

J. Scott Carpenter, who was then deputy assistant secretary of state in the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, recalled in an interview that senior Defence Department (DoD) officials and the Joint Chiefs used the escalation issue as the main argument against the Cheney proposal.

Day of economic shocks for the US

Jobless rate, oil prices soar; Dow tumbles

By Robert Gavin, Globe Staff | June 7, 2008

An unexpected surge in the national unemployment rate set off shock waves that washed over financial, currency, and oil markets yesterday and delivered another blow to hopes that the sliding US economy would soon begin to rebound.

The Labor Department reported yesterday that the jobless rate leaped half a percentage point to 5.5 percent in May, the biggest one-month jump since 1986. Employers, meanwhile, cut payrolls for the fifth consecutive month, shedding nearly 50,000 jobs in May.

New forces fraying U.S.-Saudi oil ties

Surging prices, along with a weak dollar and an oil-thirsty Asia, have blunted America's leverage with the key oil producer and helped sour the two nations' relationship.

By Paul Richter
Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
June 8, 2008

WASHINGTON — For decades, Saudi Arabia worked with its dominant customer, the United States, to keep world oil markets stable and advance common political goals.

But the surging price of oil, which soared more than $10 a barrel Friday to a record-high $138.54, has made it plain that those days are over. New forces, including a weak dollar and an oil-thirsty Asia, have blunted the United States' leverage and helped sour the two countries' relationship.

Screeching to a Halt

On mass transit, the nation is falling perilously behind.

Sunday, June 8, 2008; B06

WITH SAN Francisco gas stations already charging $4.50 per gallon of regular and other places not far behind, it's little wonder that the demand for mass transit is surging nationwide. Last year, the 10.3 billion trips taken on U.S. public transportation -- trains, subways, buses -- were the most in 50 years, according to the American Public Transportation Association. And ridership continued to jump in the first three months of 2008, particularly on light rail (streetcars and trolleys) and commuter rail lines.

The rush to mass transit is accentuating what has been plain for years -- that America's investment in its public transportation infrastructure is glaringly, perilously inadequate. The gasoline tax, which provides the main source of transportation and transit revenue, has not been increased since 1993. As a funding source it is being dangerously eroded by inflation and Americans' decreased driving mileage.

Frank Rich: One Historic Night, Two Americas

WHEN Barack Obama achieved his historic victory on Tuesday night, the battle was joined between two Americas. Not John Edwards’s two Americas, divided between rich and poor. Not the Americas split by race, gender, party or ideology. What looms instead is an epic showdown between two wildly different visions of the country, from the ground up.

On one side stands Mr. Obama’s resolutely cheerful embrace of the future. His vision is inseparable from his identity, both as a rookie with a slim Washington résumé and as a black American whose triumph was regarded as improbable by voters of all races only months ago. On the other is John McCain’s promise of a wise warrior’s vigilant conservation of the past. His vision, too, is inseparable from his identity — as a government lifer who has spent his entire career in service, whether in the Navy or Washington.

David Neiwert: Right-wing sugar daddies

One of the questions that always hovers over hate groups and radical-right organizations is: Where do they get their money? We know that what they're able to collect through memberships and fund-raising devices is only a pittance in the context of the kind of cash flow they seem to generate; and there are many questions about the large startup sums they often have. What we've known, in fact, is that many of these groups have wealthy conservatives -- often building-and-development magnates, or ideologues with inherited wealth -- quietly underwriting their work.

One of the more noteworthy of these is a Seattle-area-based rocket scientist named Walter P. Kistler, whose activities in this regard have just been thoroughly exposed in a pull-back-the-covers report from the Southern Poverty Law Center:

An accomplished rocket scientist has become the sole donor to the Pioneer Fund, which is listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The West’s Weapon of Self-Delusion

There are gun battles in Beirut –- and America thinks things are going fine

by Robert Fisk

So they are it again, the great and the good of American democracy, grovelling and fawning to the Israeli lobbyists of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac), repeatedly allying themselves to the cause of another country and one that is continuing to steal Arab land.

Will this ever end? Even Barack Obama — or “Mr Baracka” as an Irish friend of mine innocently and wonderfully described him — found time to tell his Jewish audience that Jerusalem is the one undivided capital of Israel, which is not the view of the rest of the world which continues to regard the annexation of Arab East Jerusalem as illegal. The security of Israel. Say it again a thousand times: the security of Israel — and threaten Iran, for good measure.

Wealthy Americans Under Scrutiny in UBS Case

By LYNNLEY BROWNING

One afternoon in April, six dozen wealthy Americans were entertained at a luncheon party in Midtown Manhattan, along with a special guest from Paris: Henri Loyrette, the director of the Louvre.

The host of the exclusive gathering was the Swiss bank UBS, whose elite private bankers built a lucrative business in recent years by discreetly tending the fortunes of American millionaires and billionaires. As the wine flowed and Mr. Loyrette spoke of the glories of France, UBS bankers courted their affluent guests.

But now, as the federal authorities intensify an investigation into offshore bank accounts, the secrets of this rarefied world are being dragged into the open — and UBS’s privileged clients are running scared.

Government Probes at Least 7 Defense Contracts for Charities

By Robert O'Harrow Jr.
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, June 7, 2008; D01

The federal investigation of contracting arrangements between the Pentagon and tax-exempt defense firms in Pennsylvania includes multiple deals that go as far back as 2002 and involve more money than was previously known, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post.

The FBI and the Pentagon's Defense Criminal Investigative Service issued subpoenas two months ago seeking information about a small intelligence firm called Commonwealth Research Institute, or CRI, and its parent company, Concurrent Technologies. Both firms are registered nonprofit charities based in Johnstown, Pa.

Cristina Page: The fight to stop contraception

Like lawn ornaments in summer, protesters outside the local abortion clinic are fixtures in many places.

Their presence and message have long been so predictable that, without looking or listening, people believe they understand the point. So you might not notice that the protest taking place outside your local clinic has fundamentally changed.

It is no longer about abortion. Saturday, June 7, is the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that granted married people the right to use contraception. To mark the day, anti-abortion groups will take to their normal posts outside clinic entrances not to convince Americans to oppose abortion but rather to stop using contraception.

Glenn Greenwald: David Broder: Embodiment of Beltway values

No matter how many times one sees it, it will never cease to amaze that the exact same media mavens who righteously strutted around demanding that Bill Clinton be impeached or forced to resign because the "honor" of our political system demanded that, continue casually to dismiss every crime of the last seven years as nothing more than a garden-variety, good faith "policy dispute" which only shrill rabble want to see "turned into a criminal or impeachable affair." So the Senate issues a report documenting that the President and Vice President repeatedly made false statements to induce the citizenry to support a war against another country that has left hundreds of thousands of people dead for no reason -- added on to the piles of outright lawbreaking under this administration -- and to David Broder, those are just mere "policy disputes" which (unlike Bill Clinton's grave crimes) merit no punishment.

CNN, Fox News falsely suggested Senate report finding Bush administration "misled Americans" about Iraq-Al Qaeda link was approved only by Dems

Summary: CNN's Carol Costello and Ed Henry, and Fox News' Brit Hume falsely suggested that only the Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the committee's June 5 "Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information." In addition to the committee's Democrats, Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel and Olympia Snowe endorsed the report and stated that it "accomplished its primary objective."

In June 5 reports on CNN's The Situation Room and Fox News' Special Report, CNN correspondent Carol Costello, CNN White House correspondent Ed Henry, and Special Report host Brit Hume falsely suggested that only the Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence approved the committee's June 5 "Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information." In fact, the report had bipartisan support: Republican Sens. Chuck Hagel (NE) and Olympia Snowe (ME) endorsed the report and stated that it "accomplished its primary objective."

Katha Pollitt--Thank You, Hillary, for Opening the Door for Other Women

Hillary Clinton came this close. In fact, as of this writing, she hasn't formally conceded. Nobody really understands why: why she stuck it out this long, given the math, and why she gave such a grudging, graceless version of her stump speech after the South Dakota primary clinched the nomination for Barack Obama. Suggestions I've heard are not very flattering: she hopes to whittle down her multimillion-dollar campaign debt with donations from the deluded die-hards screaming Denver! Denver! She wants the number-two spot. She's a crazy narcissistic rhymes-with-rich. Maybe she's just ticked off because pundits have been trying to hustle her off the stage ever since her third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.

Air Force Chief, Secretary Resign

The Air Force's top civilian and uniformed leaders are being booted out of the Pentagon. Chief of Staff Gen. T. Michael "Buzz" Moseley has resigned. Secretary Michael W. Wynne is next.

The move, initially reported by Inside Defense and Air Force Times, isn't exactly a shocker. The Air Force has come under fire for everything from mishandling nukes to misleading ad campaigns to missing out on the importance of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Most importantly, the Air Force's leadership has been on the brink of open conflict for months with Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Deputy Defense Secretary Gordon England. That's because in the halls of the Air Force's chiefs, the talk has been largely about the threats posed by China and a resurgent Russia. Gates wanted the service to actually focus on the wars at hand, in Iraq and Afghanistan. "For much of the past year I’ve been trying to concentrate the minds and energies of the defense establishment on the current needs and current conflicts," he told the Heritage Foundation. "In short, to ensure that all parts of the Defense Department are, in fact, at war."

Leaked Report: ISP Secretly Added Spy Code To Web Sessions, Crashing Browsers

An internal British Telecom report on a secret trial of an ISP eavesdropping and advertising technology found that the system crashed some unsuspecting users' browsers, and a small percentage of the 18,000 broadband customers under surveillance believed they'd been infected with adware.

The January 2007 report (.pdf) -- published Thursday by the whistle blowing site Wikileaks -- demonstrates the hazards broadband customers face when an ISP tampers with raw internet traffic for its own profit. The leak comes just weeks after U.S. broadband provider Charter Communications told users it would be testing a technology similar to what's described in the BT document.

What Divides the Democrats Now

By Sara Robinson

Created 06/04/2008 - 10:58am

Summary:

As of this election year, the vast and rising tide of Millennials is arriving in numbers big enough to swamp the Boomers and set the whole American conversation on a whole new heading. And it is this, it can be argued, is what the Barack-versus-Hillary showdown was really all about.

It's over, at long last. The Democrats have a nominee.

And now the other hard part begins—the part where Democrats try to patch up the party and try to keep a lot of disappointed Hillary Clinton supporters on board.

On the Presence of the Past

By Rick Perlstein

Created 06/04/2008 - 11:58am

Summary:

"Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements?" I wrote in "Nixonland." "It would be hard to argue they do not." In a review of my book, Elizabeth Drew responded, "Well, I, for one, don't find it so hard." Between the time she wrote those words and the time they were published, Senator Edward M. Kennedy's brain tumor was announced.

This past Sunday I received a review in the Washington Post by Elizabeth Drew [1] which, while kind and thoughtful, contained at least one empirical falsehood (actually, at least two empirical falsehoods: Richard Nixon did buy a townhouse on Fifth Avenue, not 65th Street, after his forced retirement).

The Meaning of Box 722

By Rick Perlstein

Created 06/05/2008 - 9:53am

For at least six months now I've been planning, and putting off, this post. The imminent occasion of the first African American major-party nominee forces my hand. It's time for me to help give a sense of just how far we have come.

When I started researching NIXONLAND [1] I knew the congressional elections of 1966 would form a crucial part of the narrative. They'd never really been examined in-depth before, but by my reckoning they were the crucial hinge that formed the ideological alignment we live in now.

Training Can Increase Fluid Intelligence, Once Thought To Be Fixed At Birth

ScienceDaily (Jun. 6, 2008) — Can human beings rev up their intelligence quotients, or are they stuck with IQs set by their genes at birth? Until recently, nature seemed to be the clear winner over nurture.

But new research, led by Swiss postdoctoral fellows Susanne M. Jaeggi and Martin Buschkuehl, working at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, suggests that at least one aspect of a person's IQ can be improved by training a certain type of memory.

The Truth About the War

It took just a few months after the United States’ invasion of Iraq for the world to find out that Saddam Hussein had long abandoned his nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs. He was not training terrorists or colluding with Al Qaeda. The only real threat he posed was to his own countrymen.

It has taken five years to finally come to a reckoning over how much the Bush administration knowingly twisted and hyped intelligence to justify that invasion. On Thursday — after years of Republican stonewalling — a report by the Senate Intelligence Committee gave us as good a set of answers as we’re likely to get.

Paul Krugman: Bits, Bands and Books

Do you remember what it was like back in the old days when we had a New Economy? In the 1990s, jobs were abundant, oil was cheap and information technology was about to change everything.

Then the technology bubble popped. Many highly touted New Economy companies, it turned out, were better at promoting their images than at making money — although some of them did pioneer new forms of accounting fraud. After that came the oil shock and the food shock, grim reminders that we’re still living in a material world.

So much, then, for the digital revolution? Not so fast. The predictions of ’90s technology gurus are coming true more slowly than enthusiasts expected — but the future they envisioned is still on the march.

Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps

By CHARLIE SAVAGE

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Fitzgerald indicates he may be ready to testify on Rove’s efforts to push him out.»

In the past, Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has refused to answer questions about whether officials such as Karl Rove tried to push him out during his investigation into the leak of Valerie Plame’s CIA identity. He cited a “trial ongoing in the Northern District of Illinois.

Vote on climate bill is blocked in Senate

By H. JOSEF HEBERT, Associated Press Writer
Fri Jun 6, 2:40 PM ET

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, pushing debate over the world's biggest environmental concern to next year for a new Congress and president.

Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote, prompting Majority Leader Harry Reid to pull the legislation from consideration.

Biggest jobless jump since '86 — Wall Street sinks

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
Fri Jun 6, 4:17 PM ET

Pink slips piled up and jobs disappeared into thin air in May as the nation's unemployment rate zoomed to 5.5 percent in the biggest one-month jump in decades. Wall Street swooned, and the White House said President Bush was considering new proposals to revive the economy.

Help-wanted signs are vanishing along with jobs, so the unemployment rate is likely to keep climbing, a government report indicated, underscoring the toll the housing and credit crises are taking on jobseekers, employers and the economy as a whole.

Adding to the pain, oil prices soared to a new record high, while the value of the dollar fell.

Oil surges $11 to record $138

Crude skyrockets on a sliding dollar, geopolitics and a Wall Street report predicting $150-a-barrel oil.

By Catherine Clifford and Ben Rooney, CNNMoney.com staff writers
Last Updated: June 6, 2008: 4:41 PM EDT

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Oil prices shot up nearly $11 a barrel and settled Friday at a record $138.54 on geopolitical jitters, a dollar decline and a forecast that oil would hit $150 by July 4.

Friday's spike in the July contract for light crude on the New York Mercantile Exchange marks the largest singe-day increase in oil prices on record. The contract hit an intraday record of $139.12, breaking the previous trading record of $135.09.

Did Iranian agents dupe Pentagon officials?

By John Walcott | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Defense Department counterintelligence investigators suspected that a small group of Pentagon officials who'd collected dubious intelligence on Iraq and Iran from Iranian exiles might have "been used as agents of a foreign intelligence service . . . to reach into and influence the highest levels of the U.S. government," a Senate Intelligence Committee report said Thursday.

A top aide to then-secretary of defense Donald H. Rumsfeld, however, shut down the 2003 investigation into the group's activities after only a month, and Pentagon officials never followed up on investigators' recommendation for a more thorough investigation, the Senate report said.

The toxic 'wonder plant' that split world food summit

By Peter Popham in Rome
Thursday, 5 June 2008

It's no beauty queen – the stems are long, scrawny and leafless and the pods dangle from the twigs like scorched testicles. Untreated, the seeds are so poisonous that as few as three can kill, while even a small amount induces nausea – hence the jatropha plant's nickname, "black vomit nut".

Despite its unprepossessing appearance, jatropha, whose pods contain inflammable oil, is one of a range of plants being intensively cultivated as biofuels. As it can grow in impoverished soil, requires little water and is inedible, its supporters claim that it cannot be said to be taking the place of food crops.

But now all biofuels, even the humble jatropha, are in the firing line. At the UN's world food summit in Rome yesterday it became clear that the responsibility of biofuels for soaring food costs that have sparked riots in 40 countries is the biggest point of contention. The US, which subsidises farmers to grow corn for ethanol production, claims biofuels account for less than 3 per cent of the 43 per cent rise in food costs over the past year. But the International Food Policy Research Institute said that they contributed 30 per cent to the rise between 2000 and 2007, while the International Monetary Fund says the figure is between 15 and 30 per cent.

Revealed: Secret plan to keep Iraq under US control

Bush wants 50 military bases, control of Iraqi airspace and legal immunity for all American soldiers and contractors

By Patrick Cockburn
Thursday, 5 June 2008

A secret deal being negotiated in Baghdad would perpetuate the American military occupation of Iraq indefinitely, regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election in November.

The terms of the impending deal, details of which have been leaked to The Independent, are likely to have an explosive political effect in Iraq. Iraqi officials fear that the accord, under which US troops would occupy permanent bases, conduct military operations, arrest Iraqis and enjoy immunity from Iraqi law, will destabilise Iraq's position in the Middle East and lay the basis for unending conflict in their country.

Gates ousts Air Force leaders in historic shake-up

By ROBERT BURNS, AP Military Writer
16 minutes ago

Defense Secretary Robert Gates ousted the Air Force's top military and civilian leaders Thursday, holding them to account in a historic Pentagon shake-up after embarrassing nuclear mix-ups.

Gates announced at a news conference that he had accepted the resignations of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Michael Moseley and Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne — a highly unusual double firing.

Gates said his decision was based mainly on the damning conclusions of an internal report on the mistaken shipment to Taiwan of four Air Force electrical fuses for ballistic missile warheads. And he linked the underlying causes of that slip-up to another startling incident: the flight last August of a B-52 bomber that was mistakenly armed with six nuclear-tipped cruise missiles.

Olbermann: 'McCain's top guy on the economy made it easier for bin Laden'

Last week, MSNBC's Keith Olbermann revealed that the co-chair of Senator John McCain's presidential campaign, the fiercely pro-deregulation Phil Gramm, had been lobbying for a Swiss bank this spring to head off relief for victims of the mortgage crisis at the same time that he was acting as a leading McCain economic advisor.

Excerpt by 'The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule'

By Thomas Frank

Introduction: Follow This Dime

Washington is the city where the scandals happen. Every American knows this, but we also believe, if only vaguely, that the really monumental scandals are a thing of the past; that the golden age of misgovernment-for-profit ended with the cavalry charge and the robber barons, at about the same time presidents stopped wearing beards.

I moved to Washington in 2003, just in time for the comeback, for the hundred-year flood. At first it was only a trickle in the basement, a little stream released accidentally by the president's friends at Enron. Before long, though, the levees were failing all over town, and the city was inundated with a muddy torrent of graft.

How are we to dissect a deluge like this one? We might begin by categorizing the earmarks handed out by Congress, sorting the foolish earmarks from the costly earmarks from the earmarks made strictly on a cash basis. We could try a similar approach to government contracting: the no-bid contracts, the no-oversight contracts, the no-experience contracts, the contracts handed out to friends of the vice president. We might consider the shoplifting career of one of the president's former domestic policy advisers or the habitual plagiarism of the president's liaison to the Christian right. And we would certainly have to find some way to parse the extraordinary incompetence of the executive branch, incompetence so fulsome and steady and reliable that at some point Americans stopped being surprised and began simply to count on it, to think of incompetence as the way government works.

Thomas Frank: Obama Needs a Better Reading List

June 4, 2008; Page A19

Whether by accident or as a signal to voters of a certain intellectual attainment, Sen. Barack Obama allowed himself to be photographed a few weeks ago carrying a copy of "The Post-American World" by Fareed Zakaria. By the looks of it, Mr. Obama is taking this celebrated young author seriously – in the photo he appears to be marking his place about a third of the way through. Mr. Obama was in Montana that day, and you got the idea he was going to kiss a few babies, deliver the usual bromides about "change," and then get back to plumbing Deep Thoughts about our troubling Global Situation.

Collateral Damage

What It Really Means When America Goes to War

by Chris Hedges

Troops, when they battle insurgent forces, as in Iraq, or Gaza or Vietnam, are placed in “atrocity producing situations.” Being surrounded by a hostile population makes simple acts, such as going to a store to buy a can of Coke, dangerous. The fear and stress push troops to view everyone around them as the enemy. The hostility is compounded when the enemy, as in Iraq, is elusive, shadowy and hard to find. The rage soldiers feel after a roadside bomb explodes, killing or maiming their comrades, is one that is easily directed, over time, to innocent civilians who are seen to support the insurgents.

Civilians and combatants, in the eyes of the beleaguered troops, merge into one entity. These civilians, who rarely interact with soldiers or Marines, are to most of the occupation troops in Iraq nameless, faceless, and easily turned into abstractions of hate. They are dismissed as less than human. It is a short psychological leap, but a massive moral leap. It is a leap from killing — the shooting of someone who has the capacity to do you harm — to murder — the deadly assault against someone who cannot harm you.

New satellite photos show Amazon rainforest shrinking

New satellite photographs show that the destruction of Brazil's fragile Amazon rainforest has exploded this year, fueling fears that the government's efforts to stop deforestation have been fruitless. That's raised red flags among environmentalists, who say that soybean farming, cattle production and illegal logging are destroying the world's largest rainforest.

Newest McCain official: President has "near dictatorial powers"

Bill Kristol today proudly announces that one of his Weekly Standard staff members, Michael Goldfarb, was just named the Deputy Communications Director of the McCain campaign. Last April, this newest McCain official participated in a conference call with former Senator George Mitchell, during which Mitchell advocated a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq. Afterwards, this is what Goldfarb wrote about what he thinks are the powers the President possesses in our country:

Mitchell's less than persuasive answer [to whether withdrawal timetables "somehow infringe on the president's powers as commander in chief?"]: "Congress is a coequal branch of government...the framers did not want to have one branch in charge of the government."

True enough, but they sought an energetic executive with near dictatorial power in pursuing foreign policy and war. So no, the Constitution does not put Congress on an equal footing with the executive in matters of national security.

Webb's Vision for Defense

By Spencer Ackerman 06/02/2008 | 5 Comments

Everywhere Sen. Jim Webb goes, someone's asking him if he wants to be vice president.

The freshman Virginia senator's appearances on "Meet The Press" typically end with an attempt by the host Tim Russert to elicit a categorical statement of whether or not he'd like to be Sen. Barack Obama's running mate on the Democratic ticket. Webb usually tries his best to demure. "I've never had a conversation with Barack about any of this, so it’s really out of line to speculate," he told Deborah Solomon in The New York Times Magazine on Sunday.

Paul Krugman: A Return of That ’70s Show?

Which decade is it, anyway?

Not long ago it seemed as if everyone watching the carnage in financial markets was drawing scary parallels with the 1930s.

This time, however, Ben Bernanke and his colleagues at the Federal Reserve did what their predecessors failed to do during the banking crisis of 1930-31: they acted forcefully to avert a collapse of the financial system. And their efforts seem, provisionally, to have worked. While things are far from normal in the financial markets, over the last few months the sense of panic has been gradually subsiding.

House Launches "Fighting Contracting Abuse" Caucus

CongressDaily is reporting ($) that a few members of the House of Representatives are forming the "Smart Contracting Caucus" to pursue what Rep. Tom Davis (R-VA) called "thoughtful federal procurement reform." But Dan Friedman at CongressDaily isn't buying the spin:

Davis was a contracting lawyer and is the House's top backer of government contractors concentrated in his suburban Virginia district.

Going Their Own Way in The Mideast

By David Ignatius
Sunday, June 1, 2008; B07

What happens when a superpower becomes preoccupied by a costly war and loses some of its ability to coerce friends and enemies toward the outcomes it favors? We're seeing a demonstration of that change now in the Middle East, as Arabs and even Israel reckon with the limits of American power -- and begin to cut their own deals.

The new power dynamic is clear in two developments over the past several weeks -- the Lebanon peace deal brokered by Qatar on May 21 and the Israel-Syria peace talks, with Turkish mediation, that were announced the same day. Both negotiations could help stabilize the region, albeit not on the terms the United States might prefer.

Manufacturing a Food Crisis

By Walden Bello
May 15, 2008

When tens of thousands of people staged demonstrations in Mexico last year to protest a 60 percent increase in the price of tortillas, many analysts pointed to biofuel as the culprit. Because of US government subsidies, American farmers were devoting more and more acreage to corn for ethanol than for food, which sparked a steep rise in corn prices. The diversion of corn from tortillas to biofuel was certainly one cause of skyrocketing prices, though speculation on biofuel demand by transnational middlemen may have played a bigger role. However, an intriguing question escaped many observers: how on earth did Mexicans, who live in the land where corn was domesticated, become dependent on US imports in the first place?

Presidential Bloodlust

The Movie-Made War World of George W. Bush
By Tom Engelhardt

Here's a memory for you. I was probably five or six and sitting with my father in a movie house off New York's Times Square -- one of the slightly seedy theaters of that dawn of the 1950s moment that tended to show double or triple feature B-westerns or war movies. We were catching some old oater which, as I recall, began with a stagecoach careening dramatically down the main street of a cow town. A wounded man is slumped in the driver's seat, the horses running wild. Suddenly -- perhaps from the town's newspaper office -- a cowboy dressed in white and in a white Stetson rushes out, leaps on the team of horses, stops the stagecoach, and says to the driver: "Sam, Sam, who dun it to ya?" (or the equivalent). At just that moment, the camera catches a man, dressed all in black in a black hat -- and undoubtedly mustachioed -- skulking into the saloon.

My dad promptly turns to me and whispers: "He's the one. He did it."

Stocks down after tepid economic data, bank woes

By MADLEN READ, AP Business Writer

2 hours, 56 minutes ago

Wall Street retreated Monday on more signs of economic weakness and executive shake-ups at two major banks — reminders of the ongoing fallout from the credit crisis. The Dow Jones industrial average fell more than 130 points.

Two key economic reports indicated that the economy is still struggling. As expected, the Institute for Supply Management's manufacturing index for May showed its fourth straight monthly decline, while the Commerce Department said construction spending dipped in April for the sixth time in seven months due to a drop in home building.

Key to All Optical Illusions Discovered

Jeanna Bryner
Senior Writer
LiveScience.com

Mon Jun 2, 9:50 AM ET

Humans can see into the future, says a cognitive scientist. It's nothing like the alleged predictive powers of Nostradamus, but we do get a glimpse of events one-tenth of a second before they occur.

And the mechanism behind that can also explain why we are tricked by optical illusions.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the world.

Payrolls Probably Fell for Fifth Month: U.S. Economy Preview

By Shobhana Chandra

June 1 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. lost jobs for a fifth month in May and manufacturing contracted, signaling the economy is stagnating, economists said before reports this week.

Payrolls probably dropped by 60,000 workers, according to the median estimate of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News before the Labor Department's June 6 report. Figures tomorrow may show the Institute for Supply Management's factory index fell to 48.5 in May.

US accused of holding terror suspects on prison ships

The United States is operating "floating prisons" to house those arrested in its war on terror, according to human rights lawyers, who claim there has been an attempt to conceal the numbers and whereabouts of detainees.

Details of ships where detainees have been held and sites allegedly being used in countries across the world have been compiled as the debate over detention without trial intensifies on both sides of the Atlantic. The US government was yesterday urged to list the names and whereabouts of all those detained.

Indefensible Spending

by Robert Scheer

What should be the most important issue in this election is one that is rarely, if ever, addressed: Why is U.S. military spending at the highest point, in inflation-adjusted dollars, than at any time since the end of World War II? Why, without a sophisticated military opponent in sight, is the United States spending trillions of dollars on the development of high-tech weapons systems that lost their purpose with the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago?

You wouldn’t know it from the most-exhausting-ever presidential primary campaigns, but the 2009 defense budget commits the United States to spending more (again, in real dollars) to defeat a ragtag band of terrorists than it spent at the height of the Cold War fighting the Soviet superpower and what we alleged were its surrogates in the Korean and Vietnam wars.

Frank Rich: McCain’s McClellan Nightmare

THEY thought they were being so slick. When the McCain campaign abruptly moved last Tuesday’s fund-raiser with President Bush from the Phoenix Convention Center to a private home, it was the next best thing to sending the loathed lame duck into the witness protection program. John McCain and Mr. Bush were caught on camera together for a mere 26 seconds, and at 9 p.m. Eastern time, safely after the networks’ evening newscasts. The two men’s furtive encounter on the Phoenix airport tarmac, as captured by a shaky, inaudible long shot on FoxNews.com, could have been culled from a surveillance video.

But for the McCain campaign, any “Mission Accomplished” high-fives had to be put on hold. That same evening Politico.com broke the news of Scott McClellan’s memoir, and it was soon All Bush All the Time in the mediasphere. Or more to the point: All Iraq All the Time, for the deceitful origins of the war in Iraq are the major focus of the former press secretary’s tell-all.

Robert Fisk: So al-Qa'ida's defeated, eh? Go tell it to the marines

Last week the head of the CIA claimed it was winning the battle. Nonsense, argues Robert Fisk. The extremists in the Middle East are growing stronger

Sunday, 1 June 2008

So al-Qa'ida is "almost defeated", is it? Major gains against al-Qa'ida. Essentially defeated. "On balance, we are doing pretty well," the CIA's boss, Michael Hayden, tells The Washington Post. "Near strategic defeat of al-Qa'ida in Iraq. Near strategic defeat for al-Qa'ida in Saudi Arabia. Significant setbacks for al-Qa'ida globally – and here I'm going to use the word 'ideologically' – as a lot of the Islamic world pushes back on their form of Islam." Well, you could have fooled me.

Six thousand dead in Afghanistan, tens of thousands dead in Iraq, a suicide bombing a day in Mesopotamia, the highest level of suicides ever in the US military – the Arab press wisely ran this story head to head with Hayden's boasts – and permanent US bases in Iraq after 31 December. And we've won?

McClatchy Boys Take Scotty, the White House and the "Liberal Media" to the Woodshed...

Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel, my good friends and the few reporters who actually did their job during the Iraq war build-up, are pissed and I am fully backing their anger. Here is what the McClatchy boys (as I call them) have to say to the "Liberal Press" and the White House with regard to Scotty's revelations:

Until now, we've resisted the temptation to post on former White House press secretary Scott McClellan's new book, which accuses the Bush White House of launching a propaganda campaign to sell the war in Iraq.

Why? It's not news. At least not to some of us who've covered the story from the start.

You Might Be a Progressive If …

by Michael Schwalbe

In the propaganda wars that surround elections, political labels often become detached from reality. The leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination, Barack Obama, has been called a “leftist” by Republican flacks and a “progressive” by some of his supporters. Others see Obama as a moderate Democrat only slightly less friendly to corporate capital and to the military-industrial complex than the Republican John McCain. It would be no surprise, then, if many people were wondering, Just who is a progressive?

No one, of course, has the authority to decide who is a progressive and who isn’t. Yet if the label “progressive” has meaning at all, it is only because of some shared criteria we have in mind when we use it. So it might be worthwhile to put these criteria on the table, not to draw boundaries and hand out membership badges, but to spark a conversation about the common ground of ideas and values on which progressives stand, and to underscore the point that the center is not the left.

Glenn Greenwald: The Right-Wing Politico Cesspool

Politico reporter Mike Allen, formerly of The Washington Post and Time, appeared yesterday on the show of right-wing radio host Mike Gallagher. The two of them guffawed together at how absurd are Scott McCellan’s claims that the media was “deferential” to the Bush administration and then Allen said this:

ALLEN: And indeed, Scott does adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric of the left wing haters. Can you believe it in here he says the White House press corps was too deferential to the administration?

Think Progress has the audio, which makes even clearer how eager Mike Allen was “to adopt the vocabulary, rhetoric” of the right-wing operatives which Politico exists to serve.

Is Water Becoming ‘The New Oil’?

Population, pollution, and climate put the squeeze on potable supplies – and private companies smell a profit. Others ask: Should water be a human right?

by Marc Clayton

Public fountains are dry in Barcelona, Spain, a city so parched there’s a €9,000 ($13,000) fine if you’re caught watering your flowers. A tanker ship docked there this month carrying 5 million gallons of precious fresh water - and officials are scrambling to line up more such shipments to slake public thirst.

Tell the Media To Stop Ignoring a Major Cause of All-Time High Gas Prices: the Bush-McCain Energy Policy

THE POLITICS

Americans are angry about gasoline prices. Gas prices have become a "financial hardship," 71 percent of respondents said in a recent poll, and 78 percent believe the price increases will be permanent. Meanwhile, 83 percent think "oil companies as a whole are making too much profit."

At the same time, the media is giving a free pass to the Bush administration and its conservative allies. Yes, there has been a totally predictable increase in demand for oil from China and India. But while news stories blame higher gasoline costs on this increased demand, as well as commodities traders and "global unrest," they completely ignore the conservative energy policies that led America to this point. The run-up to Memorial Day is the perfect time to link pain at the pump to right-wing energy policies.

Flying High

By Rick Perlstein

May 29th, 2008 - 3:05pm ET

---

Two vignettes from my brief tenure as a limousine liberal.

Tooling around the West and East Coasts lo these last few weeks on my book tour, I took a lot of rides in chauffeured sedans. The publishing industry is woefully archaic; if it worked for Maxwell Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald in the 1920s, no reason to stop doing it exactly the same way in 2008, even if the promotional budget could be much better spent on, say, blog ads. David Sirota definitely has the right idea; he's renting an RV.

I Hardly Know Me Anymore

The Scott McClellan story.

By Michael Kinsley
Posted Thursday, May 29, 2008, at 12:17 PM ET

It's sad. It's just sad. In all my years of public service, I am one of the finest people I have ever had the privilege to know and work with. I cannot imagine why I have chosen this moment to turn against everything I have always stood for—lies, deception, secrets, double talk—unless it was for a six-figure book advance. But the me I knew believed that some things, such as duty, are more important than money. That me saw misleading the public as the highest of missions. That me would never betray me the way this me has done. Frankly, it's a puzzle. But I will be talking with me later this afternoon, on Oprah, and maybe then I will get some answers. Until then, all I can say is that it's just very, very sad.

Let's Stop Pretending that Pensions Don't Matter

Thomas J. Mackell, Jr.

Posted May 29, 2008| 04:47 PM (EST)

Over the last 30 years or so, it has gradually become an article of faith that pensions are bound to go the way of the dinosaur. Waves upon waves of mergers and layoffs across corporate America have convinced us that employers no longer have an obligation to the long-term welfare of their employees. And we have been told time and again that 401(k)s are the best answer to individual retirement.

Americans will soon be rethinking these notions.

Auditor: Supervisors Covered Up Risky Loans

Morning Edition, May 27, 2008 · Now that millions of people are facing foreclosure because they got into loans that never should have been approved, everybody's looking for someone to blame. Borrowers, or their brokers, lied on loan applications. Others got high interest rates they couldn't afford.

A big unanswered question is whether the Wall Street investment banks that were packaging these mortgages knew they were selling garbage loans to investors. A wave of litigation is starting against these firms. One former worker whose job was to catch bad loans says her supervisors covered them up.

U.S. Economy: The Worst is Yet to Come

By Mark Weisbrot, Huffington Post
Posted on May 29, 2008, Printed on May 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86681/

Since the U.S. economy showed positive growth for the last quarter, some commentators in the business press are saying that we are not necessarily going to have a recession, or that if there is one it will be mild. This is a bit like the proverbial story of the man who jumped out of a window 60 floors up, and then said "so far, so good," as he passed the 30th floor.

The United States accumulated a massive, $8 trillion housing bubble during the decade from 1996-2006. Only about 40 percent of that bubble has now deflated. House prices are still falling at a 20 percent annual rate (over the last quarter). This means that the worst is yet to come, including another wave of mortgage defaults and write-downs. Even homeowners who are not in trouble will borrow increasingly less against their homes, reducing their spending.

Raytheon's Pain Ray: Coming to a Protest Near You?

By Michael Dickinson, CounterPunch
Posted on May 29, 2008, Printed on May 30, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/86692/

Coming soon, from the folks who brought you the microwave -- Raytheon! After more than ten years in the making and at a cost of over 40 million dollars, 'Silent Guardian', or Active Denial System, (ADS, in it's formal mood), is almost ready for public release!

Yes, Raytheon -- manufacturer of the 100 bunker buster bombs kindly flown by America to Israel at the height of their bombardment of Lebanon, and supplier of electronic equipment for the apartheid wall built on Palestinian land; -- Raytheon -- with its 73,000 employees worldwide and annual revenues of 20 billion dollars has gone and done it again!

Glenn Greenwald: Network news anchors praise the job they did in the run-up to the war

I was going to add this as an update to my prior post on Scott McClellan's extraordinary description of the media as "deferential, complicit enablers" of Bush administration "propaganda," but it should really stand on its own. Here is an absolutely amazing link to a video where the three network news anchors appeared jointly on The Today Show this morning and were forced by McClellan's book to address whether the media failed in its duties in the run-up to the war -- the first time, to my knowledge, that this topic has ever been broached by network news journalists (h/t Kitt). The fact that television news has blacked-out the whole issue until now is, by itself, rather amazing.

Top US Scientists and Economists Call for Swift, Deep Cuts in Global Warming Pollution

More Than 1,700 Say Early Reductions Can Benefit Economy

WASHINGTON, DC - May 29 - More than 1,700 of the nation's most prominent scientists and economists today released a joint statement calling on policymakers to require immediate, deep reductions in heat-trapping emissions that cause global warming. Issued just days before the Senate begins debate on the Lieberman-Warner climate bill, the statement marks the first time leading U.S. scientists and economists have joined together to make such an appeal. (For the statement and the list of signatories, go to: www.ucsusa.org/climateletter.)

The statement stresses that implementing policies to achieve swift and substantial cuts is both economically sound and necessary to limit the worst consequences of climate change.

Where Is the Outrage?

By Robert Scheer

Are we Americans truly savages or merely tone-deaf in matters of morality, and therefore more guilty of terminal indifference than venality? It’s a question demanding an answer in response to the publication of the detailed 370-page report on U.S. complicity in torture, issued last week by the Justice Department’s inspector general.

Because the report was widely cited in the media and easily accessed as a pdf file on the Internet, it is fair to assume that those of our citizens who remain ignorant of the extent of their government’s commitment to torture as an official policy have made a choice not to be informed. A less appealing conclusion would be that they are aware of the heinous acts fully authorized by our president but conclude that such barbarism is not inconsistent with that American way of life that we celebrate.

In Wake of McClellan Charges: A Revealing Look Back at How the Press Bought the War

By Greg Mitchell

Published: May 29, 2008 11:30 AM ET
NEW YORK Debate continues today over charges by former White House spokesman Scott McClellan, in a new book and on TV, that his former boss "hoodwinked" the media, and the public, into going along with the U.S. attack on Iraq in 2003. Today, a CNN correspondent, Jessica Yellin, revealed that the ABC network, where she once worked, had discouraged negative pieces at the behest of the White House.

Other reporters are actively defending their performance.

Foreclosure Phil

Years before Phil Gramm was a McCain campaign adviser and a lobbyist for a Swiss bank at the center of the housing credit crisis, he pulled a sly maneuver in the Senate that helped create today's subprime meltdown.

David Corn
May 28 , 2008

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Pentagon Shill Returns to CNN to Talk About Iran

By Andrew Tilghman - May 27, 2008, 12:49PM

Brig. Gen. David L. Grange doesn't wear a star on his shoulder much since his retirement in 1999. But he's on the list of retired officers the Pentagon has cultivated in an effort to influence domestic news coverage of military matters.

In fact, Grange, a CNN analyst, was tagged as the most visible shill for the Pentagon since 2002.