Fred's Footprint: The best solution to climate change

What's the best way to fix climate change, to stamp out the emissions that are warming our planet? I don't mean what technology. That's actually coming along quite nicely. I mean what are the international legal and financial levers that can pulled to get the technology, on the scale needed, from the test rigs to the national grids?

Later this month, in Accra, Ghana, the UN's lumbering Kyoto negotiations will have another stab at what to do after 2012. They will come up against the familiar stand-off. On the one hand, is the rich world's reluctance to accept emissions limits that will add to the cost of doing business unless developing countries subscribe to emissions controls. On the other, developing countries utter their familiar (and not unreasonable) cry: "You caused the problem; you fix it."

Green Roofs Differ in Building Cooling, Water Handling Capabilities

July 28, 2008

AUSTIN, Texas — The first study to compare the performance of different types of green roofs has been completed by the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center at The University of Texas at Austin and suggests that buyers shouldn't assume these roofs are created equal.

Interest in vegetated roofs has increased as water and energy conservation becomes more important to property owners. Yet the study of six different manufacturers' products found the green roofs varied greatly in capabilities such as how much they cooled down a building's interior and how much rainwater they captured during downpours.

Measuring the "Colbert Bump"

Do Politicians Raise More Funds After Appearing on The Colbert Report Comedy Show?

Washington, DC—Democratic politicians receive a 40% increase in contributions in the 30 days after appearing on the comedy cable show The Colbert Report. In contrast, their Republican counterparts essentially gain nothing. These findings appear to validate anecdotal evidence regarding the political impact of the program, such as the assertions by host Stephen Colbert that appearing on his program provides candidates with a “Colbert bump” or a rise in support for their election campaigns.

This analysis of one of America’s most well-known pop icons of recent years is conducted by political scientist James H. Fowler (University of California, San Diego), who is also a self-identified fan of the show. The research appears in the July issue of PS: Political Science and Politics, a journal of the American Political Science Association. It is online at /imgtest/PSJuly08Fowler.pdf.

Thomas Frank: The Audacity of Nope

It sounds very nice to say, as Barack Obama has done perhaps too much, that the upcoming election is about "hope" and "change." But those anodyne words conceal what I think is the public's true desire: Negation.

Come November, voters will have a chance to rid themselves of a political order that they have come to hate. Sen. Obama's task is to help them heave it overboard.

It seems hard to believe after all the happy Republican talk a few years ago about a "permanent majority," but the public is now more unified in its antipathy toward the GOP than it has been in a long time -- maybe since Watergate, maybe since the Hoover administration.

Why My Family Quit Using Plastic

By James Glave, The Tyee
Posted on August 13, 2008, Printed on August 13, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/94849/

I said goodbye to a few old friends this morning.

I dropped Sabrina and Duncan at day camp and continued on down the road to my community's recycling depot. There, I walked up to the big green "mixed plastics" bin and tossed in my FridgeSmart stackables, Ziploc Twist n' Locs and, perhaps most painful of all, my beloved half-cup-size Rubbermaid Servin' Savers -- indispensable snack-stashers that fit perfectly inside my kids' lunch boxes.

The pension-plan cookie thief

By The Mogambo Guru

To show you that the level of disgusting corruption at the end of long booms created by an excess of money and credit extends beyond the obvious slimeballs at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Congress, the Federal Reserve, the banks, and damned near everywhere else you look, a headline in last Monday's Wall Street Journal adds to the total tonnage of crud with the page one headline "Companies Tap Pension Plans To Fund Executive Benefits", which let companies use the pension plans of the regular employees to "pay for executives' supplemental benefits and compensation."

Now, I will note for the record that every time I try that crap with the employee pension plan or the petty cash account at work, everybody starts running around screaming about what a thieving, lying, despicable crook I am, and then everybody else starts adding to the accusatory din by saying how I'm probably the one who stole the cookies out of their stupid sack lunches, too, which weren't all that good (and kind of stale, too), so I don't know what all the fuss is about.

The Lies About Obama

By Brent Budowsky
August 12, 2008

Editor’s Note: Despite the conventional wisdom that the U.S. news media is “in the tank” for Barack Obama, something close to the opposite seems to be true, as many political reporters repeat scurrilous attacks on the Democrat without fact-checking or grill him in interviews to show how tough they can be.

For instance, Big Media acted almost as a surrogate for John McCain in pounding Obama over the Iraq War “surge” and in misrepresenting his comments to a closed Democratic caucus. In this guest essay, Brent Budowsky also recalls the silence of the press when McCain lied about Obama’s canceled visit to a U.S. troop hospital:

What is the responsibility of reporters, editors and publishers when a candidate for high office is the target of a campaign of attack and personal destruction employing the systematic use of lies, smears, innuendo and character assassination?

Gas And The Suburbs

by Ryan Avent

Will expensive gas kill the suburbs? Journalists can't stop asking the question, and an increasing number of suburb defenders are rising in protest. The easy answer is: it depends. It depends on what happens to gas prices, and it depends on how we respond. But the best way to think about how American urban geography will change in response to expensive gas is to break the question down into smaller parts. I'm going to try to do that today.

Smaller part one is this: will expensive gas lead to rejuvenated center cities? One thing that often gets neglected in news stories on this question is the extent to which center cities were resurgent before gas prices really took off. Central areas in both older cities and Sunbelt boomtowns began seeing new waves of investment beginning in the late 1990s. There were three main reasons for this. A big one was the rapid decline in urban crime that had plagued cities in the late 80s and early 90s.

Auditors question Blackwater contracts

By Elizabeth Olson

Tuesday, August 12, 2008

WASHINGTON: Blackwater Worldwide, the contractor whose provision of private security in Iraq has been under scrutiny, and its affiliated companies may have improperly obtained more than $100 million in contracts meant for small businesses, according to federal auditors.

A report by the Small Business Administration's inspector general, issued in July, found that Blackwater and its affiliates, including Presidential Airways, won 39 contracts in the fiscal years 2005, 2006 and 2007 despite indications that the companies employed more than the number specified by the U.S. government. In some cases, the report said, the companies also had higher revenues than allowed for a small business.

Changes in Work Force, not Pay, Narrowing the Gender Wage Gap

Are working women treated more fairly in today’s labor market than they were 30 years ago? Absolutely not, according to groundbreaking new research by Brown University economist Yona Rubinstein and Casey Mulligan of the University of Chicago. Disputing decades of economic literature, the economists show that the apparent narrowing of the wage gap between working men and women is actually due to the type of women who are now working — not how much they’re being paid. The findings are published in The Quarterly Journal of Economics.

Thomas Frank's 'The Wrecking Crew' Explains the Right's All-Out Assault on Good Government

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Mon, 08/11/2008 - 2:01pm. Interviews A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

I think that what we're seeing now -- no-bid contracts -- is disgusting. ... That's the closest thing that you're ever going to get to government-backed business. At the end of the day, that's really what it's about. It's not about free market utopianism. It's about government by business.

-- Thomas Frank, author of The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule

* * *

One election cycle back, Thomas Frank's What's the Matter with Kansas? helped Democrats understand the problem they had holding on to their erstwhile base of working middle America. Now in his latest book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, Frank nails the conservatives who have outsourced, privatized, shrunk, and absolved government of any impulse it might have to hold itself accountable to citizens.

As reviewer James Warren of the Chicago Tribune sums up Frank's expose of the conservatives now in charge of government: "Its leaders laugh off the idea of the public interest as airy-fairy nonsense; they caution against bringing top-notch talent into government service; they declare war on public workers. They have made a cult of outsourcing and privatizing, they have wrecked established federal operations because they disagree with them, and they have deliberately piled up an Everest of debt in order to force the government into crisis. The ruination they have wrought has been thorough; it has been a professional job."

Downsizing of finance underway

By Martin Hutchinson

A committee led by Gerald Corrigan, former vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, produced a report that promises to revolutionize finance. It proposes to place severe limits on derivatives, bringing them under the ambit of regulators and protecting retail investors from their more egregious products.
His report met with a favorable reception from the major international banks; not surprising as it shuts the stable door after horses have bolted to the extent of about US$500 billion of losses and counting. For investor and market protection, it doesn't go far enough. However it does represent the first institutional step towards a goal that all non-financiers should welcome: the downsizing of finance in the US and global economy.

Riddle of the burst bubble

Commentary and market watch by Doug Noland

Here's how I see it. Many are celebrating the bursting of the energy/commodities bubble. Rapidly declining oil and resource prices are now expected to alleviate inflationary pressures while bolstering household purchasing power. There'll be no pressure on the US Federal Reserve to raise rates, while their global central bank compatriots can soon begin cutting. The consensus view is that this is bullish for the US economy and stock market and, if nothing else, market action did take attention away from troubling financial and economic news.

Oil in troubled mountains

By Robert M Cutler

MONTREAL - The armed conflict between Russian and Georgia has further exposed the fragile position of the energy links running through the smaller country from the Caspian Sea to developed market economies.

Russian forces are placed to disrupt oil flows through the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipeline, which has carried Caspian Sea oil from Azerbaijan across Georgia to Turkey since 2006, and the Baku-Tbilisi-Erzerum pipeline, which opened last year and exports gas to Turkey, as well as the older Baku-Supsa "early oil" line that runs to the Georgian Black Sea coast.

Bush could weaken Endangered Species Act

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Parts of the Endangered Species Act may soon be extinct.

The Bush administration wants federal agencies to decide for themselves whether highways, dams, mines and other construction projects might harm endangered animals and plants.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft first obtained by The Associated Press.

Most companies in US avoid federal income taxes

By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer
Tue Aug 12, 6:31 AM ET

Two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no federal income taxes between 1998 and 2005, according to a new report from Congress.

The study by the Government Accountability Office, expected to be released Tuesday, said about 68 percent of foreign companies doing business in the U.S. avoided corporate taxes over the same period.

Collectively, the companies reported trillions of dollars in sales, according to GAO's estimate.

"It's shameful that so many corporations make big profits and pay nothing to support our country," said Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., who asked for the GAO study with Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich.

Signs of Alzheimer's disease may be present decades before diagnosis

Tampa, FL (August 11, 2008) — Scientists from the University of South Florida and the University of Kentucky report that people who develop Alzheimer’s disease may show signs of the neurodegenerative illness many decades earlier in life — including compromised educational achievement. Their research is published online this month in the journal Alzheimer’s Disease and Associated Disorders.

What Is The Predator State?

By James K. Galbraith - August 11, 2008, 11:32AM

For those who are interested in reviews, The Predator State has so far garnered three: Pedro da Costa in Reuters, Roger Gathman in the Austin American-Statesman, and Randall Wray in the Journal of Economic Issues. Kevin Horrigan of the St Louis Post-Dispatch also devoted a column to it, and Tom Frank gave it a mention in the Wall Street Journal. Last Friday and Saturday, it was the top seller on Amazon under "Economic Policy". All of this is not too bad, for a book published less than a week ago.

Gathman takes note of something important. The book originated, in part, as a challenge from my father, delivered in our last conversation, on Wednesday, April 26, 2006 in his room at Mount Auburn hospital. Dad seemed, at the time, to be recovering (slightly) from a bout of pneumonia, and had the energy to ask what I was working on. I told him of some recent lectures on predation. "You should write a short book on corporate predation," he said. "It will make you the leading economic voice of your generation." And then he added his typically modest, typically paternal touch, "If I could do it, I would put you in the shade."

Iraq to revive oil deal with China

By SINAN SALAHEDDIN, Associated Press Writer
Sun Aug 10, 3:26 PM ET

Iraq and China are set to revive a $1.2 billion oil deal that was canceled after the 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the Iraq's oil ministry said Sunday.

An initial agreement with China is expected to be signed at the end of August to develop the billion-barrel Ahdab oil field south of Baghdad, the ministry said in a statement.

Bill Moyers: The Poverty Business

BILL MOYERS:There's always been money to be made from people who have no money. That's because low income families turn to fast, easy, and pre-approved credit to make ends meet. But once they've signed on the dotted line, they often find their troubles have just begun. According to the Federal Reserve, the amount of money owed by households earning $30,000 or less between 1989 and 2004, soared to $691 billion — that's an increase of nearly 250%.

These households are what one entrepreneur describes as "low-hanging fruit" — just waiting to be plucked. Nothing new about this.

Loan sharks have been around to prey on the poor for centuries, but now the sharks are trying to spiff up their image, relocating from back alleyways to friendly-looking storefronts.

The Next Bubble Is on the Way: Credit Card Debt

Why Are We All Complicit in Our Own Economic Servitude?

by Danny Schechter

Let me try a few words out on you: “Charge It,” “Swipe It” and “Priceless.”

You know exactly what I am talking about. We all have credit and debit cards. We all use them, and many of us keep our lives going because of them.

That is, until the bill becomes due.

Paul Krugman: Can It Happen Here?

The draft Democratic Party platform that was sent out last week puts health care reform front and center. “If one thing came through in the platform hearings,” says the document, “it was that Democrats are united around a commitment to provide every American access to affordable, comprehensive health care.”

Can Democrats deliver on that commitment? In principle, it should be easy. In practice, supporters of health care reform, myself included, will be hanging on by their fingernails until legislation is actually passed.

Ivins' Strain Of Anthrax Was Not So Rare After All

By Andrew Tilghman - August 8, 2008, 4:29PM

Remember, at the beginning of the week, when the New York Times reported that "at least 10 people" had access to that critical flask of anthrax linking Dr. Bruce Ivins to the 2001 anthrax attacks?

At the time, we thought that was really significant. Ten people? How did the FBI eliminate the other nine people as suspects to know Ivins was the guilty one?

Tomgram: Mike Davis, Welcome to the Next Epoch

For those who didn't happen to notice, perhaps because it wasn't exactly front-page news in most of the country, NASA's James Hansen, the man who first alerted Congress to the dangers of global warming 20 years ago, returned to testify before the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming this week. This time around, he was essentially offering a final warning on the subject. Unless the U.S. begins to act soon, he pointed out, "it will become impractical to constrain atmospheric carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas produced in burning fossil fuels, to a level that prevents the climate system from passing tipping points that lead to disastrous climate changes that spiral dynamically out of humanity's control."

For the "elements of a 'perfect storm,' a global cataclysm" being assembled, he placed special blame on the "CEOs of fossil energy companies [who] know what they are doing and are aware of [the] long-term consequences of continued business as usual." He added that they should, in his opinion, "be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature… I anticipate testifying against relevant CEOs in future public trials." That's a novel thought in our nation's capital. Oh, and while he was at it, he probably should have thrown in George W., Dick C., and crew. What they haven't done (and what they've blocked from being done) over these last eight years may turn out to be their greatest crime of all. Talk about smoking guns... or is it melting ice?

Election Advice From Michael Moore

Here's the problem:

Beginning with their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in American history, Richard Nixon, and continuing through their stunning inability to defeat the most detested politician in the world, George II, the Democrats are the masters of blowing it. And they don't just simply "blow it" - they blow it especially when the electorate seems desperate to give it to them.

In his new book, Mike's Election Guide 2008, Michael Moore explains what Barack Obama can to do to lose the presidency again.

Michael Kinsley: Learning to Read Democrat

Seattle

THE purpose of a party platform is pandering, but it is pandering of a particular sort. The Democratic Party’s platform committee has produced its 2008 edition, and now this draft awaits approval at the Democratic National Convention later this month. Like all platforms, it is not an outreach document. It is aimed at the faithful, under the assumption that only they will read it.

The platform is Democrats’ assurance that the party still loves them, their reward for supporting a candidate who may not have been their first choice and their consolation for betrayals yet to come. Much of it is written in code, lest it fall into the wrong hands.

Translating the document is no simple task. First, an alarmist note. Democrats favor “tough, practical and humane immigration reform.” And, “We will provide immediate relief to working people who have lost their jobs, families who have lost their homes and people who have lost their way.” It’s not clear what that third item refers to. Tax credits for G.P.S. devices? Presumably, “people who have lost their way” doesn’t mean illegal immigrants trying to find the border.

WPost Admits Bungling Obama Quote

By Robert Parry
August 10, 2008

The Washington Post’s ombudsman says the newspaper’s original source for a quote that was used to portray Barack Obama as a megalomaniac now disputes the Post’s negative interpretation that has spread across cable TV, the Internet and even into a John McCain attack ad.

Post ombudsman Deborah Howell also acknowledges that neither Post reporter who relied on the misleading quote spoke directly with the source, checked out its accuracy, or made any independent effort to determine the context of the remark, which was made to a closed Democratic caucus meeting on Capitol Hill on July 29.

In her column, “The Anger Over an Obama Quote,” Howell adds that she has been contacted by about 160 people, including congressional officials, who said the Post twisted the meaning of the quote by taking it out of context. But the newspaper still refuses to run a full-scale correction or a clarification or even print a letter protesting the distortion.

Leaks in Patch for Web Security Hole

By JOHN MARKOFF

SAN FRANCISCO — Faced with the discovery of a serious flaw in the Internet’s workings, computer network administrators around the world have been rushing to fix their systems with a cobbled-together patch. Now it appears that the patch has some gaping holes.

On Friday, a Russian physicist demonstrated that the emergency fix to the basic Internet address system, known as the Domain Name System, is vulnerable and will almost certainly be exploited by criminals.

Thomas Frank to Colbert: The argument of my book is that conservatives suck

By: SilentPatriot on Saturday, August 9th, 2008 at 6:45 AM - PDT

Thomas Frank appeared on “The Colbert Report” last night to promote his new book, The Wrecking Crew: How Conservatives Rule, and succinctly explained the thesis of his latest work thusly: Conservatives may be good at winning elections, but they suck when it comes to governing.

“Once you start treating it as a business, you know once you start turning over government operations to the market you’re not talking about democracy any more. What you’re talking about is plutocracy. Rule by the wealthy. Rule by the market.”

Energy Fictions

A toxic combination of $4 gasoline, voter anxiety and presidential ambition is making it impossible for this country to have the grown-up conversation it needs about energy.

The latest evidence comes from Senator Barack Obama, who in less than a week has reversed his stance on tapping the Strategic Petroleum Reserve, softened his opposition to offshore drilling and unveiled an out-of-nowhere proposal to impose a windfall profits tax on the oil companies and funnel the money to consumers in the form of a $1,000 tax rebate.

Pentagon Papers figure Anthony Russo dies at 71

Anthony J. Russo, a researcher who helped leak the Vietnam-era Pentagon Papers to the media and prompted wider public questioning of the war, has died, police said.

Russo, 71, died in his native Suffolk on Wednesday, police records technician Susan Hart said Sunday. The cause of death was not immediately made public.

The case that became known as the Pentagon Papers helped put the Vietnam War on trial.

It began when Daniel Ellsberg, a top military analyst disillusioned with American policy, decided to release a top-secret, 47-volume Defense Department study of the U.S. role in Indochina over three decades. Russo helped him reproduce and distribute copies of the study.

Postmodern John McCain: the presidential candidate some Arizonans know — and loathe

By Amy Silverman
published: August 07, 2008

I once stood in John McCain's kitchen and watched Cindy cook eggs for their kids. It was still dark outside when I arrived at the McCains' north-central Phoenix house on a winter day in early 1994. I remember terra cotta tile and overstuffed plaid couches and wondering whether Mrs. McCain regularly got up before dawn to make breakfast.

I was following her husband around for the day, for a story I was working on about his role in Arizona Republican politics. I'd been gathering examples of McCain's strong-arming, and I needed some face-time with the senator, to ask about that and also to describe his personality. That day, we drove to Tucson so McCain could sit in as guest host on a local talk-radio show.

Democracy Now: The Wrecking Crew: Thomas Frank on How Conservatives Rule

Columnist and author Thomas Frank joins us to talk about his latest book, The Wrecking Crew. Frank writes, “Fantastic misgovernment of the kind we have seen is not an accident, nor is it the work of a few bad individuals. It is the consequence of triumph by a particular philosophy of government, by a movement that understands the liberal state as a perversion and considers the market the ideal nexus of human society. This movement is friendly to industry not just by force of campaign contributions but by conviction.” [includes rush transcript]

Big Business Is Making Sure It Wins the Presidency

By Matt Taibbi, RollingStone.com
Posted on August 9, 2008, Printed on August 9, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/94334/

Remember the total, hideous, inexcusable absence of oversight that has been the great hallmark of George Bush's America for almost eight years now? Well, now we're getting to see that same regulatory malfeasance applied to yet another cornerstone of our political system. The Federal Election Commission -- the body that supposedly enforces campaign-finance laws in this country -- has been out of business for more than six months. That's because Congress was dragging its feet over confirmation hearings for new FEC commissioners, leaving the agency without a quorum. The commission just started work again for the first time on July 10th under its new chairman, Donald McGahn, a classic Republican Party yahoo whose chief qualifications include representing Tom DeLay, the corrupt ex-speaker of the House, in matters of campaign finance.

Apart from the obvious absurdity of not having a functioning election-policing mechanism in an election year in the world's richest democracy, the late start by the FEC makes it almost impossible for the agency to do its job. The commission has a long-standing reluctance to take action in the last months before a vote, a policy designed to help prevent federal regulators from influencing election outcomes. Normally, the FEC tries to root out infractions and loopholes -- fining campaigns for incomplete reporting, or for taking shortcuts around spending limits -- in the early months of a campaign season. But that ship sailed way too long ago to take the stink off the 2008 race.

Murray Waas: U.S. Attorney Scandal Probe Enters White House Circle

The Justice Department investigation into the firings of nine U.S. attorneys has been extended to encompass allegations that senior White House officials played a role in providing false and misleading information to Congress, according to numerous sources involved in the inquiry.

The widened scope raises the possibility that investigators will pursue criminal charges against some administration officials, and recommend appointment of a special prosecutor if there is evidence of criminal misconduct.

Extreme appeal: voters trust extreme positions more than moderate ones, study finds

Appealing to middle not best political strategy

Trying to appear moderate is not always the best strategy for capturing votes during an election, reveals a new study. Extreme positions can build trust among an electorate, who value ideological commitment in times of uncertainty.

"The current political advantage of the Republican Party stems from the ability of its candidates to develop 'signature ideas.' This strategy is rewarded even when the electorate has ideological reservations," says University of Southern California economist Juan Carrillo, adding that this poses a challenge for the Democrats.

In the current issue of The Economic Journal, Carrillo and Micael Castanheira of the Université Libre de Bruxelles (Belgium), show that voters who are unsure about the quality of a policy can be swayed by indications of trustworthiness.

Sara Robinson: Why We Don't Shoot Back

By Sara Robinson

August 5th, 2008 - 6:44pm ET

---

Drew Westen and Mike Lux both have cogent and persuasive posts up that deftly explain — and raise the alarm about — the timidity that's recently settled into Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign. Sen. John McCain's shooting live rounds now; and, as usual, the Democrats are refusing to fire back. If that doesn't change — this week, before the Olympics starts — this could all too easily turn into Dukakis-all-over-again.

Progressives have been picking at the whys and wherefores of this pattern ever since Adlai Stevenson lost to Eisenhower. (One of my favorite explanations came from Paul Rosenberg, who dug into the psychology of both sides in this excellent series last year at Open Left.) But there's one fairly simple and glaring factor that I'm increasingly convinced plays at least some role in this — and since I've never seen it discussed anywhere else, I'm going to propose it here.

Paul Krugman: Know-Nothing Politics

So the G.O.P. has found its issue for the 2008 election. For the next three months the party plans to keep chanting: “Drill here! Drill now! Drill here! Drill now! Four legs good, two legs bad!” O.K., I added that last part.

And the debate on energy policy has helped me find the words for something I’ve been thinking about for a while. Republicans, once hailed as the “party of ideas,” have become the party of stupid.

Now, I don’t mean that G.O.P. politicians are, on average, any dumber than their Democratic counterparts. And I certainly don’t mean to question the often frightening smarts of Republican political operatives.

Corporate America Prepares for Battle Against Worker Campaign to Roll Back Assault on the Middle Class

By Joshua Holland, AlterNet
Posted on August 8, 2008, Printed on August 8, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/94004/

There is nothing more terrifying to corporate America than the prospect of dealing with its workforce on an even playing field, and, along with allies on the Right, it's pulling out all the stops to keep that from happening. At stake is much more than the usual tax breaks, trade deals and relentless deregulation; corporations are gearing up for a fight to preserve a status quo in which the largest share of America's national income goes to profits and the smallest share to wages since the Great Depression -- in fact, since the government started tracking those figures.

There will be many heated legislative battles if 2008 shakes out with larger Congressional majorities for Democrats and an Obama White House -- fights over war and peace, energy policy, health care reform and immigration. But it may be a bill that many Americans have never heard of that sparks the most pitched battle Washington has seen since the Civil Rights Act. It's called the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) -- a measure that would go a long way toward guaranteeing working people the right to join a union if they so choose -- and it has the potential to reverse more than three decades of painful stagflation, with prices rising and paychecks flat, for America's middle class and working poor.

Conflict of Interests

Does the wrangling of interest groups corrupt politics—or constitute it?

Nicholas Lemann
August 11, 2008

Pundits like Thomas Frank deplore the role of interest-group lobbying, but aren’t we all part of some interest group or other?

In a year saturated with political conversation, can there be any topic that has not yet been discussed? Well, here’s one: 2008 is the centenary of a curious and mesmerizing book that was long considered the most important study of politics and society ever produced by an American—“The Process of Government: A Study of Social Pressures,” by Arthur Fisher Bentley. The reason its big anniversary hasn’t been celebrated is that “The Process of Government” is an ex-classic, now sunk into obscurity. The reason it should be celebrated is not just that it deserved its former place in the canon but also that it is uncannily relevant to this Presidential election.

Arthur Bentley was the son of a Midwestern banker. He was born in 1870 in Freeport, Illinois, graduated from high school in Grand Island, Nebraska, and, after working briefly for his father, attended Johns Hopkins, which was then making itself into one of the first American research universities, on the German model. After graduation, he went to the University of Berlin and studied with Georg Simmel and other late-nineteenth-century giants of political theory. The work he did there became the basis for a Ph.D. from Hopkins.

Berwyn Heights mayor asks for investigation into raid

By Doug Donovan
Sun reporter
4:44 PM EDT, August 7, 2008

Berwyn Heights' mayor today asked federal officials to investigate possible civil rights violations stemming from last week's raid of his Prince George's County home by police officers who shot and killed his two dogs, his attorney said.

Mayor Cheye Calvo and his wife, Trinity Tomsic, asked for a U.S. Department of Justice inquiry during a 2 p.m. news conference today outside their Berwyn Heights home, said Timothy Maloney, their attorney.

The Forgotten War

Four-star General Calls Afghanistan Conflict "Generational"

By Spencer Ackerman 08/07/2008

As U.S. military casualties mount in Afghanistan, a retired four-star Army general, who just returned from reviewing the six-plus-year war effort, said the country "is in misery" and describes the war as "a 25-year campaign."

In a memo written for the Social Sciences Dept. at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on July 30, Barry McCaffrey, a division commander during the 1991 Gulf War and drug czar under President Bill Clinton, writes that there is "no unity of command" -- either among U.S. and foreign coalition troops, or even among U.S. troops. Political and economic contributions to nation-building efforts are an additional source of disunity. Unity of command, in which all forces report to a single commander, is a basic principle of military strategy, without which military campaigns are rarely successful. McCaffrey writes that U.S. forces have two regional commands: European Command, which is also the NATO military command, and Central Command, which directs U.S. forces in the Middle East and South Asia.

After suicide, prosecutors reveal circumstantial anthrax case

By Marisa Taylor and Greg Gordon | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — A top Justice Department official said Wednesday that investigators are confident that government scientist Bruce Ivins, who behaved erratically and was treated for mental illness before committing suicide last week, "was the only person involved" in the 2001 anthrax letter attacks that killed five people and terrorized the nation.

With the public disclosure of hundreds of pages of documents, the FBI and the Justice Department hoped to quell a week of media speculation about whether Ivins, 62, a former microbiologist at the U.S. Army's biological weapons research center at Fort Detrick, Md., was the culprit and whether they had sufficient evidence to prove it.

The Hamdan Case: Don’t Shoot the Driver

How the Bush administration botched the 'war on terror' by overreaching.

Michael Hirsh
Newsweek Web Exclusive
Updated: 4:46 PM ET Aug 6, 2008

The Bush administration needed a big win in the Salim Hamdan case at Guantánamo. It didn't get one. By convicting Osama bin Laden's former driver—the first "terrorist" to be tried under the first U.S. war-crimes tribunal since World War II—only of "material" support for terrorism, and absolving him of conspiracy to commit terrorism, the military judges provoked questions about what Hamdan was doing there in the first place. Is driving a car a war crime? The appeals court may decide not—in which case even this meager verdict could be thrown out.

"I would be very surprised if any of this conviction stands at the end of the day," says Scott Horton, a law professor specializing in human rights at Columbia University. "He was convicted of things that are not war crimes by a tribunal that has the power only to prosecute war crimes."

A Drilling Plan Full of Holes

by Joe Conason | August 5, 2008

Touring America’s oil rigs and nuclear plants, John McCain sometimes sounds as if he will produce enough wind to power the nation all by himself. So strongly does his current rhetoric smell of methane, the gas emanating from manure, that he might even qualify for a renewable energy tax incentive.

The former straight talker, who could not help telling the truth, has found the voice of the demagogue within him. As Senator McCain seeks to exploit public anger over the price of gasoline, first with his dubious “gas tax holiday” and now with his campaign for offshore oil drilling, the thoughtful legislator who defied his own party on issues such as global warming and Alaskan oil leasing has been replaced by that much more familiar Congressional figure—a rented mouthpiece for the energy industry.

Vote for Bush? Pay up

Did you help put America's worst prez into power? Time to make amends

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Sure, you could start with an open-palmed apology, a profoundly contrite on-your-knees sort of thing, maybe an open letter in your local paper or a heartfelt speech at your next dinner party whereby you stumble though some sort of "I don't know what the hell I was thinking" or "I must've been blind" or "Wow, that mescaline sure was potent" type of defense for your unfortunate and reprehensible choices.

But the fact is, that's not really gonna cut it.

Pepe Escobar: Old Wrinkly's Roverian cancer

NEW YORK - How mud-wallowingly deep may a multi-millionaire US presidential campaign go? Way deep - deeper and deeper. And this is only early August.

Republican Senator John McCain's presidential campaign's strategic decision is now all too obvious. Swift-boating Democratic Senator Barack Obama is the only way to go.

The McCain-painted Obama is emerging as a US-hating, terrorist-friendly, deeply suspicious, radical, vapid black celeb - Puff Daddy with a Harvard degree. This "new bogeyman" picture travels well in those vast swathes of flyover US territory where urban hipness not only evokes envy and contempt but is regarded as a mortal sin.

Syria Succeeds by Doing Nothing

By Robert Fisk

Originally printed in The Independent.

President Bashar al-Assad is once more one of the “triple pillars” of the Middle East. We may not like that. George Bush may curse the day his invasion of Iraq helped to shore up the power of the Caliph of Damascus. But Mr Assad’s latest trip to Tehran—just three weeks after he helped to toast the overthrow of the King of France beside President Nicolas Sarkozy—seals his place in history. Without a shot being fired, Mr Assad has ensured anyone who wants anything in the Middle East has got to talk to Syria. He’s done nothing—and he’s won.

The Europeans like to think—or, at least, M. Sarkozy likes to think—Mr Assad was in Tehran to persuade President Ahmadinejad not to go nuclear. Even Sana, the official Syrian news agency, was almost frank about it. The purpose of the Assad visit was “to consult on the nuclear issue and the right of states to peaceful enrichment” and “exchange ideas aimed at clarifying Iran’s commitment to all international agreements”. Mr Assad was M. Sarkozy’s point-man.

Americans Demand Action on the Economy

The Politics

“We’re in a recession, and Washington is doing nothing about it.” According to recent survey research, that’s one of the most powerful arguments progressives can make right now. The White House says “we have avoided a recession.” [Market Watch] But Americans overwhelmingly disagree. They describe the economy as in recession and support an economic growth package—for good reason.

The Facts

America is rapidly losing jobs. The U.S. Labor Department reported that employers cut 51,000 jobs in July, the seventh straight month in which more jobs were lost than created. Our country has lost 463,000 payroll jobs so far this year. The unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent, the worst jobless rate in four years. Nearly 9 million Americans are now unemployed; 1.6 million lost their jobs in the last 12 months. [Bureau of Labor Statistics]

FBI said to have stalked Ivins' family

Diane Sweet
Published: Wednesday August 6, 2008

Did FBI cross the line in anthrax probe?

Before killing himself last week, Army scientist Bruce Ivins told friends that government agents had stalked him and his family for months, offered his son $2.5 million to rat him out and tried to turn his hospitalized daughter against him with photographs of dead anthrax victims.

The pressure on Ivins was extreme, a high-risk strategy that has failed the FBI before. The government was determined to find the villain in the 2001 anthrax attacks; it was too many years without a solution to the case that shocked and terrified a post-9/11 nation.

Kansas politician who crusaded against abortion loses big

By Diane Carroll | Kansas City Star

For the second time in two years, voters in Kansas have handed a stinging defeat to Phill Kline, an anti-abortion crusader who made his reputation by attempting to prosecute the state's abortion providers, first as state attorney general, and then, after he lost re-election to that post, as a district attorney in suburban Kansas City.

With all of the vote counted, Steve Howe trounced Kline by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent in unofficial returns to select the Republican candidate for district attorney in Johnson County, Kan., a well-off suburb of Kansas City. Howe garnered 33,260 votes to Kline’s 22,188, according to final unofficial returns.

The lies of Hiroshima live on, props in the war crimes of the 20th century

The 1945 attack was murder on an epic scale. In its victims' names, we must not allow a nuclear repeat in the Middle East

John Pilger
The Guardian Wednesday August 6 2008

When I first went to Hiroshima in 1967, the shadow on the steps was still there. It was an almost perfect impression of a human being at ease: legs splayed, back bent, one hand by her side as she sat waiting for a bank to open. At a quarter past eight on the morning of August 6, 1945, she and her silhouette were burned into the granite. I stared at the shadow for an hour or more, then walked down to the river and met a man called Yukio, whose chest was still etched with the pattern of the shirt he was wearing when the atomic bomb was dropped.

He and his family still lived in a shack thrown up in the dust of an atomic desert. He described a huge flash over the city, "a bluish light, something like an electrical short", after which wind blew like a tornado and black rain fell. "I was thrown on the ground and noticed only the stalks of my flowers were left. Everything was still and quiet, and when I got up, there were people naked, not saying anything. Some of them had no skin or hair. I was certain I was dead." Nine years later, when I returned to look for him, he was dead from leukaemia.

Scientists a step closer to producing fuel from bacteria

Scientists at the University of Sheffield have shown how bacteria could be used as a future fuel. The research, published in the journal Bioinformatics, could have significant implications for the environment and the way we produce sustainable fuels in the future.

Like all living creatures, bacteria sustain themselves through their metabolism, a huge sequence of chemical reactions that transform nutrients into energy and waste.

Defining Obama 24/7

Conservatives try to make presidential race about Democratic nominee, painting him as unreliable

As Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama trekked toward the final Democratic primaries, and it looked inevitable that Obama would be the Democratic Party's presidential nominee, conservative pundits and cable television talk-show hosts, a host of blogs, and a number of newly formed organizations began intensifying their attacks on Obama, embarking on the early stages of one of Karl Rove's most effective political strategies: Directly attack the opponent's strengths. In the case of Obama, this means turning his very popularity into a negative, defining him as effete and more interested in celebrity before the Democrat can introduce and define himself to the larger nation.

Doubts Remain About Anthrax Story

By Stephen Kiehl, The Baltimore Sun
Posted on August 6, 2008, Printed on August 6, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/94043/

Survivors of the 2001 anthrax attacks and relatives of those killed by the deadly powder said yesterday that they want a full accounting from the FBI of its investigation to date, and they are not yet convinced that Bruce Ivins, the government scientist who killed himself last week, was responsible. Federal authorities are expected to meet this week with the victims' families in Washington to discuss their investigation, after which the FBI could close its nearly seven-year-old anthrax case and publicly release its findings. But with reports emerging that the case against Ivins is largely circumstantial, some wonder if real closure will ever come.

"I don't know whether this is the right person or not," said Maureen Stevens, the widow of Robert Stevens, a photo editor at the Sun, a supermarket tabloid, who was the first killed in the fall 2001 attacks. Stevens said she has gone to Washington twice before for meetings, but nothing came of them. She said she received an e-mail from the FBI informing her of this week's meeting.

Thomas Frank: Captives of the Meatpacking Archipelago

History records that Paul Weyrich, one of the founders of the Moral Majority, the Heritage Foundation and other conservative groups, used to present himself as a soul-brother to the American worker. In his heyday he railed against the "elitist upper class" and established his bona fides by saying, "I come from a poor district of working-class people."

Writing in the Washington Times last week, Mr. Weyrich was back in his old rhetorical neighborhood. The subject was Labor Secretary Elaine Chao, and Mr. Weyrich was writing to celebrate "the best record of accomplishment of anyone in the Bush administration." Read closely, and you get the impression that Ms. Chao's the best secretary of Labor ever. After all, as Mr. Weyrich notes, she has applied stricter regulations to labor unions and has held the line against card-check unionization, which would allow workers to organize a union by signing cards instead of casting ballots.

Katha Pollitt: Stealth Assault on Reproductive Rights

When pro-choicers accuse anti-choicers of being anti-contraception they're often taken as crying wolf -- even though no anti-choice organization explicitly endorses birth control and despite the prominent anti-choice role of the Catholic Church, which explicitly bans contraception. After all, goes the complacent point of view, most women, and most couples, use some form of birth control. Opposition to it seems like something out of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale, a novel whose futuristic vision of women's subjection to rightwing Christian patriarchs no less a shrewd social critic than Mary McCarthy found preposterous when she reviewed it in the New York Times Book Review in 1986.

The Bush Administration seems bent on giving Atwood material for a sequel. Last month, Health and Human Services issued a draft of new regulations which would require health-care providers who receive federal funds to accept as employees nurses and other workers who object to abortion and even to most kinds of birth control. This rule would cover some 500,000 hospitals, clinics, and other medical facilities-- including family planning clinics, which would, absurdly, legally be bound to hire people who will obstruct their very mission. To refuse to hire them, or to fire them, would be to lose funds for discriminating against people who object to abortion for religious or --get this -- moral beliefs.

The Perils of Privatization

Social Security Privatization Cuts Lifetime Benefits; Makes Senior Citizens Vulnerable to Poverty

By Eric Lotke, Institute for America's Future
August 04th, 2008

An idea to radically change Social Security that has already been soundly rejected by the American people—privatization—is being resurrected. If its proponents succeed, 8.6 million older Americans would lose a safety net that keeps them from falling into poverty, according to research released by the Institute for America's Future.

Three years ago, President Bush declared that Social Security faced a financial crisis, and his solution was privatization — taking payroll taxes we all pay into the system and investing a portion of those funds in private stock market accounts.

Deleted photo sparks fears DEA hiring mercenaries

When a California medical marijuana dispensary, Organica Collective, was raided last Thursday by agents of the Federal Drug Enforcement Agency and local police, the Los Angeles Times ran a dramatic story on the incident, accompanied by a set of photographs showing the raid and its aftermath.

[...]

However, one particular photograph from the Times story has drawn more attention than anything else. That picture, which has now been widely reproduced at blogs, shows a long-haired man, wearing a Blackwater tshirt and with a pistol at his belt, passing a box marked "DEA Evidence" to other agents participating in the raid.

Enron setbacks could hurt other white-collar prosecutions

By Marisa Taylor | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — Almost seven years after the energy giant Enron collapsed, a series of court decisions has opened the door to new trials for some of the convicted corporate executives and threatened to hobble the Justice Department's efforts to pursue future corporate-fraud cases.

In the wake of the scandal, prosecutors pursued executives for covering up the company's financial bleeding and unloading millions of dollars in stock. The Bush administration was under pressure to hold the company's executives accountable for what at the time represented the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history. More than 4,000 Enron employees lost their jobs, and investors lost billions.

Anthrax Mystery: Questions Raised over Whether Government Is Framing Dead Army Scientist for 2001 Attacks

The FBI’s prime suspect in the October 2001 anthrax letters case died last week in an apparent suicide. Bruce Ivins was an elite government scientist at the biodefense research lab in Fort Detrick, Maryland. He was among the nation’s top experts on the military use of anthrax. But many of his colleagues have expressed deep skepticism over the FBI’s claims. We speak to anthrax expert Dr. Meryl Nass and blogger Glenn Greenwald.

Media Matters reviews of anti-Obama books

Unfit for Publication: Corsi's The Obama Nation filled with falsehoods

Summary: In its preface, Jerome Corsi compares his new book, The Obama Nation, to his 2004 book Unfit for Command. The comparison seems apt: Just as Unfit for Command contains false attacks on Sen. John Kerry's military service, a Media Matters review finds that The Obama Nation similarly contains numerous falsehoods about Sen. Barack Obama.

Misinformation in Freddoso's anti-Obama book comes early

Summary: The introduction and first few pages of David Freddoso's forthcoming book, The Case Against Barack Obama, are marked by false and misleading assertions about Obama, accompanied by dubious citations.

Big Coal's Campaign of Lies

While its fuel cooks the planet, the coal industry uses its clout to dupe consumers and delay change

JEFF GOODELL
Posted Aug 07, 2008 11:08 AM

It took Congress more than three decades to consider a major initiative to ward off global warming, but only a few days to kill it. In June, the Senate rejected the Climate Security Act, which would have put America on track to slash greenhouse-gas emissions by 71 percent by 2050. The bill was specifically crafted to soften the blow to the nation's coal industry — coal generates more than a third of all carbon-dioxide pollution — by providing coal-burning power companies with $300 billion in subsidies and outright giveaways. But the lavish incentives did nothing to prevent Big Coal from going all out to defeat the measure; one industry-funded TV ad implied that if Congress passed the bill, "we may have to say goodbye to the American way of life." In the end, virtually every senator from a state where coal is mined or burned voted against the measure.

US distractions let in 'foes'

By Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON - More than five years after invading Iraq as a first step towards "transforming" the Middle East, the administration of US President George W Bush seems to have lost its footing - let alone its unquestioned domination - throughout the region.

The talk of "democratizing" the region has almost entirely disappeared from the administration's rhetoric as Washington has had to sacrifice whatever pressure it had been willing exert on "friendly authoritarians" among Arab states to bolstering their rule against popular sentiment that has become considerably more hostile toward the US than before the invasion.

Freddie Mac chief disregarded warning signs: report

Tue Aug 5, 4:17 AM ET

U.S. mortgage market giant Freddie Mac's chief executive dismissed internal warnings that could have protected the company from some of the financial problems now engulfing it, the New York Times said, citing more than two dozen current and former high-ranking executives and others.

In 2004, Chief Executive Richard Syron received a memo from Freddie Mac's chief risk officer warning him that the firm was financing questionable loans that threatened its financial health, the paper said.

Though the current housing crisis would have undoubtedly caused problems at both companies, Freddie Mac insiders say Syron heightened those perils by ignoring repeated recommendations, the NY Times said.

Book says White House ordered forgery

Mike Allen
Tue Aug 5, 12:23 AM ET

A new book by the author Ron Suskind claims that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a back-dated, handwritten letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein.

Suskind writes in “The Way of the World,” to be published Tuesday, that the alleged forgery – adamantly denied by the White House – was designed to portray a false link between Hussein’s regime and al Qaeda as a justification for the Iraq war.

The author also claims that the Bush administration had information from a top Iraqi intelligence official “that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

Digby: The Jackie Robinson Rules

It turns out that a majority of Americans think that Obama was racist for saying what he said but McCain's ads weren't. It would seem that the most recognizable form of racism for most people is from those who "play the race card from the bottom of the deck." I suppose that's progress of a weird sort.

Sixty-nine percent (69%) of the nation’s voters say they’ve seen news coverage of the McCain campaign commercial that includes images of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton and suggests that Barack Obama is a celebrity just like them. Of those, just 22% say the ad was racist while 63% say it was not.

Digby: David Broder Sets The Table

I've said it before and I'll say it again: for the past fifteen years we've seen the Republicans act like a bunch of crazed Visigoths sacking Rome and David Broder uttered nary a peep of protest. Now that they've worn themselves out and are fat and tired from slurping at the public trough, the Democrats are called in to clean up their mess. And still, although they suddenly decry "ideological extremism" it's quite clear that for people like David Broder, the marauding VisiGOP is far less terrifying than the prospect of a progressive majority:

Twists and Turns in the Anthrax Case

by dday

There is a very coordinated push to leak details about the late Bruce Ivins to certify that he is the "lone nut" anthrax killer, details which don't entirely hold up upon scrutiny. There's definitely a desire on the part of the government to make this an open and shut case seven years after the fact, but it doesn't completely hold together. In fact, the media reports are almost all contradictory.

The LA Times is claiming that Ivins stood to make money off of an anthrax panic, because he invented some bioterror vaccines, but inside the article it's made clear that we're talking about not much more than $10,000. A social worker who worked as a therapist with Ivins was reportedly scared to death of him and claimed that he tried to poison people in the past, but the social worker, Jean Duley, has her own checkered past, with a long rap sheet, and apparently knew about the grand jury investigation, as it's in her restraining order against Ivins:

Ted Rall: News Does Not Want To Be Free--Three Cures for Ailing Newspapers

PORTLAND--"I feel I'm being catapulted into another world, a world I don't really understand," Denis Finley told the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism. Finley, editor of the Virginian-Pilot, isn't the only newspaper executive who can't come up with a plan for the future. "Only 5 percent of [newspaper editors and publishers]," finds Pew's latest analysis of the nation's 1217 daily newspapers, "said they were very confident of their ability to predict what their newsrooms would look like five years from now."

Newspapers are in trouble. More people read them than ever, but most of them read them online, for free. Unfortunately online advertising rates are too low to make up for declining print circulation. A reader of The New York Times' print edition generates about 170 times as much revenue as someone who surfs NYTimes.com. (This is because print readers spend 47 minutes with the paper. Online browsers visit the paper's website a mere seven minutes--some of which they might not even be sitting in front of their computers.)

The Battle for a Country's Soul

By Jane Mayer

A lady asked Dr. [Benjamin] Franklin, "Well Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?"
"A republic," replied the Doctor, "if you can keep it."

—Papers of Dr. James McHenry, describing the scene as they left the Federal Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia

Seven years after al-Qaeda's attacks on America, as the Bush administration slips into history, it is clear that what began on September 11, 2001, as a battle for America's security became, and continues to be, a battle for the country's soul.

In looking back, one of the most remarkable features of this struggle is that almost from the start, and at almost every turn along the way, the Bush administration was warned that whatever the short-term benefits of its extralegal approach to fighting terrorism, it would have tragically destructive long-term consequences both for the rule of law and America's interests in the world. These warnings came not just from political opponents, but also from experienced allies, including the British Intelligence Service, the experts in the traditionally conservative military and the FBI, and, perhaps most surprisingly, from a series of loyal Republican lawyers inside the administration itself. The number of patriotic critics inside the administration and out who threw themselves into trying to head off what they saw as a terrible departure from America's ideals, often at an enormous price to their own careers, is both humbling and reassuring.

The Democrats & National Security

By Samantha Power

Us vs. Them: How a Half Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America’s Security
by J. Peter Scoblic, Viking, 350 pp., $25.95

Heads in the Sand: How the Republicans Screw Up Foreign Policy and Foreign Policy Screws Up the Democrats
by Matthew Yglesias, Wiley, 251 pp., $25.95

1.

Since the Vietnam War the Republican Party has developed a reputation for having a superior approach to national security. Americans have long trusted the views of Democrats on the environment, the economy, education, and health care, but national security is the one matter about which Republicans have maintained what political scientists call "issue ownership."

Partly, this is for particular historical reasons. President Eisenhower initiated US involvement in Vietnam, and President Nixon escalated the war in 1969 and kept US troops on the ground in a manifestly unwinnable mission until 1975. But John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson were tagged as the primary culprits. President Carter was widely seen as having bungled the Iran hostage rescue mission and having responded ineffectually to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Although he substantially increased US military spending, he was never forgiven for his claim that Americans had "an inordinate fear of communism."

Katha Pollitt: Flocking to Faith

In the old days politicians would slip preachers some hundreds under the table, and preachers would deliver the flock on election day. It was borderline illegal, but at least it left the Constitution alone. The same could not be said of the Bush Administration's faith-based initiative, a political bribe to the religious right that put a hole in the First Amendment big enough for Christ himself to walk through. Given the dismal results of the initiative--millions wasted, many lawsuits, embarrassments like special Christians-only prison units and Faith Works, which aspired to bring "homeless addicts to Christ"--you would think getting rid of federal handouts to churches for social services would be one change we'd all be ready to believe in. But no. As he announced earlier this summer, Barack Obama plans to open the spigot even wider, beginning with half a billion dollars for summer classes for 1 million poor kids and presumably moving on to help for prisoners, addicts and other unfortunates. Perhaps worn down by years of being bashed as elitists ignorant of the real America, many liberals and progressives seem prepared to go along. Difficult as it is to dissent from the feel-good community spirit in which Obama casts his proposals--who wants to be the curmudgeon while people are in obvious need?--this is a major failure of nerve.

Paul Krugman: A Slow-Mo Meltdown

A year ago, as the outlines of the current financial crisis were just becoming clear, I suggested that this crisis, unlike a superficially similar crisis in 1998, wouldn’t end quickly.

It hasn’t.

The good news, I guess, is that we’ve been experiencing a sort of slow-motion meltdown, lacking in dramatic Black Fridays and such. The gradual way the crisis has unfolded has led to an angels-on-the-head-of-a-pin debate among economists about whether what we’re suffering really deserves to be called a recession.

Housing Lenders Fear Bigger Wave of Loan Defaults

By VIKAS BAJAJ

The first wave of Americans to default on their home mortgages appears to be cresting, but a second, far larger one is quickly building.

Homeowners with good credit are falling behind on their payments in growing numbers, even as the problems with mortgages made to people with weak, or subprime, credit are showing their first, tentative signs of leveling off after two years of spiraling defaults.

The percentage of mortgages in arrears in the category of loans one rung above subprime, so-called alternative-A mortgages, quadrupled to 12 percent in April from a year earlier. Delinquencies among prime loans, which account for most of the $12 trillion market, doubled to 2.7 percent in that time.

Lawyer: Lott ‘Initiated Contact With People Surrounding’ Insurance Fraud Lawsuit

During a deposition last week, Jim Robie, an attorney for State Farm Insurance, alleged that former Mississippi senator Trent Lott had “urged witnesses to give false information in a Hurricane Katrina lawsuit.” Questioning Lott’s nephew, Zach Scruggs, Robie asked if it had been his “custom” to have Lott “contact and encourage witnesses to give false information.” Scruggs refused to answer, invoking the Fifth Amendment.

A Bad Electronic Voting Bill

Congress has stood idly by while states have done the hard work of trying to make electronic voting more reliable. Now the Senate is taking up a dangerous bill introduced by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Robert Bennett, Republican of Utah, that would make things worse in the name of reform. If Congress will not pass a strong bill, it should apply the medical maxim: first, do no harm.

Voters cannot trust the totals reported by electronic voting machines; they are too prone to glitches and too easy to hack. In the last few years, concerned citizens have persuaded states to pass bills requiring electronic voting machines to use paper ballots or produce voter-verifiable paper records of every vote. More than half of the states now have such laws.

Digby: Oiled Up And Ready To Go

One of the points I probably failed to adequately make on my Netroots Nation panel with Perlstein, Atrios and Krugman about the media's relationship with the right is the fact that the professional right wing noise machine exists on a number of different levels and is at its most effective when it operates in opposition to power. It's an industry that exists across all communications fields and operates on its own logic. They don't even have to talk to each other. They have a synergy built in, a common worldview and vocabulary that enables them to work in tandem without actual coordination.

Sonar does affect whales, military report confirms

Animals stopped vocalizing and foraging for food during marine exercises.

Daniel Cressey

Whales subjected to military sonar will neither dive nor feed, according to an unpublished 2007 report from the UK military, obtained by Nature after a request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

The impact of sonar on whales has become an increasingly fraught issue in recent years, with submarine exercises being linked to several high-profile mass strandings. The US Navy has admitted concerns over sonar’s effects on marine mammals, although actual evidence for harm has been in short supply.

Commentary: A top general says more troops aren't the answer in Afghanistan

By Joseph L. Galloway | McClatchy Newspapers

There's military slang that seemingly applies to the situation on the ground in Afghanistan today. The operative acronym is FUBAR - Fouled Up Beyond All Recognition. That first letter doesn't really stand for "Fouled," and the R sometimes stands for Repair.

One of the sharper military analysts I know has just returned from a tour of that sorrowful nation, which has been at war continuously since the Soviet Army invaded it in late 1979.

Dockum sit-in resonates

BY CHRISTINA M. WOODS
The Wichita Eagle

Joan S. Williams never talked about the changes that resulted after she sat at Wichita Dockum Drugs store's segregated lunch counter in July 1958. But in those 60 minutes of her life, she helped make history.

Williams said her mother died without knowing that she and other Wichita Branch NAACP youth group members desegregated the Dockum lunch counter and all Rexall drug store lunch counters across Kansas.

To recognize the sit-in's 50th anniversary, national NAACP leaders are planning to come to Wichita on Aug. 9 to march in honor of the event, which is expected to draw national media attention. About 1,500 people are expected to march, according to the local NAACP branch.

Toxic drugs, toxic system: Sociologist predicts drug disasters

Study says harm from prescription drugs growing, cites fatal flaws in drug testing, approval and marketing

BOSTON — Americans are likely to be exposed to unacceptable side effects of FDA-approved drugs such as Vioxx in the future because of fatal flaws in the way new drugs are tested and marketed, according to research to be presented today at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA).

"Drug disasters are literally built into the current system of drug testing and approvals in the United States," said Donald Light, the sociologist who authored the study and a professor of comparative health policy at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. "Recent changes in the system have only increased the proportion of new drugs with serious risks."

Time, Finally, for Real Fuel Economy

The political landscape is littered with squandered opportunities to avert the $4-a-gallon gasoline mess we find ourselves in now. Americans would be using far less gas — and consumers and the automobile industry would be much better off — if Congress had summoned the wisdom and political courage 20, 10, even five years ago to impose tough fuel economy standards on the nation’s transportation fleet.

Another such opportunity is fast approaching, and it would be foolish to miss it. On Monday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration — the federal agency that sets fuel standards — will hold hearings on a timetable that it has proposed for meeting the new fuel economy standards established in the 2007 energy act.

Black Sites

By ALAN BRINKLEY

THE DARK SIDE
The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals.
By Jane Mayer.
Illustrated. 392 pp. Doubleday. $27.50.

Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Dick Cheney in effect took command of the national security operations of the federal government. Quickly and instinctively, he began to act in response to two longstanding beliefs: that the great dangers facing the United States justified almost any response, whether or not legal; and that the presidency needed vastly to enhance its authority, which had been unjustifiably and dangerously weakened in the post-Vietnam, post-Watergate years. George Bush was an eager enabler, but not often an active architect, of the government’s response to terror. His instinct was to be tough and aggressive in response to challenges, and Cheney’s belligerence fit comfortably with the president’s own inclinations.

In fairness, in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks and the anthrax scare that followed, who could not have imagined the worst and contemplated extraordinary efforts to prevent it? But as Jane Mayer, a staff writer for The New Yorker, makes clear in “The Dark Side,” a powerful, brilliantly researched and deeply unsettling book, what almost immediately came to be called the “war on terror” led quickly and inexorably to some of the most harrowing tactics ever contemplated by the United States government. The war in Iraq is the most obvious and familiar result of the heedless “toughness” of the new administration. But Mayer recounts a different, if at least equally chilling, story: the emergence of the widespread use of torture as a central tool in the battle against terrorism; and the fierce, stubborn defense of torture against powerful opposition from within the administration and beyond. It is the story of how a small group of determined men and women thwarted international and American law; fought off powerful challenges from colleagues within the Justice Department, the State Department, the National Security Council and the C.I.A.; ignored or circumvented Supreme Court rulings and Congressional resolutions; and blithely dismissed a growing clamor of outrage and contempt from much of the world — all in the service of preserving their ability to use extreme forms of torture in the search for usable intelligence.

Barren Spring

Author Claire Hope Cummings dishes the dirt on genetically modified food

By Bonnie Azab Powell
01 Aug 2008

One of the most encouraging things about the sustainable-food movement is how effortlessly it crosses traditional political-party, religious, ethnic, and other lines. The right to good, clean, and fair food, to borrow Slow Food's shorthand, seems to unite people who'd never otherwise find themselves chatting at the same party: Home schoolers and dreadlocked hippies, libertarian DIYers and heartland moms.

But there are little pockets of polarization where brawls can break out. One of them is the so-called elitism of such food. The biggest hot-button issue by far, though, is that of transgenic crops. The food movement's Christian wing opposes it for religious reasons, the Berkeley brigade for dogmatic ones, the moms out of health fears. Those with science or technology backgrounds, however, tend to see genetically modified organisms as just another tool in the how-we-are-going-to-feed-the-world toolbox -- and tend to get pretty impatient with those who fear them.

America's house price time bomb

By Michael Robinson
BBC World Service

With the American housing market in its worst crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Bush is authorising new legislation to pave the way for massive new government intervention designed to slow the slide.

The intervention would come as a little known quirk of US law threatens to drive down house prices even faster.

Want High-Quality Universal Health Coverage? Fix Medicare First and Use It as a Model

By Maggie Mahar, Health Beat
Posted on August 2, 2008, Printed on August 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93357/

This article originally appeared on Health Beat.

Thanks to the unbridled rise in health care prices, Medicare is going broke. As I mentioned in a recent post, four years ago the Medicare trust fund that pays for hospital stays started to run out of money. In 2004 the fund began paying out more than it takes in through payroll taxes.

"Since then, the balance in the fund, combined with interest income on that balance, has kept the fund solvent. But in just 11 years, it will be exhausted," the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPac) reported in March. "Revenues from payroll taxes collected in that year will cover only 79 percent of projected benefit expenditures." And each year after 2019, the shortfall will grow larger.

Electric Cars Are the Key to Energy Independence

By David Morris, AlterNet
Posted on August 2, 2008, Printed on August 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93609/

Al Gore's heroic speech challenging us to make our electrical system 100 percent renewable promised it would simultaneously address three major crises: the weak economy, catastrophic climate change and the dire national security problems inherent in our dependence on imported oil.

He got two out of three right. A crash renewable electricity initiative would provide an immediate boost to our economy and could slow climate change, since electricity accounts for about a third of our overall greenhouse gas emissions.

One Million Homes Lost and Counting: How to End the Foreclosure Crisis Now

By Fred Moseley, Dollars and Sense
Posted on August 2, 2008, Printed on August 3, 2008
http://www.alternet.org/story/93055/

Over one million U.S. homeowners have already lost their homes due to foreclosures since the mortgage crisis began last summer. Another one million homeowners are 90 days past due on their mortgages (foreclosure notices usually go out after 90 days) and two million more are 30 days past due, so three million more households may face foreclosure in the months ahead. If current policies do not change, it is estimated that up to five million homeowners would lose their homes due to foreclosure over the next few years. Five million is roughly 10% of the total number of homes with mortgages. This is clearly the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, and will wreck havoc in the lives of millions of families unless something is done. A high foreclosure rate also has a deteriorating effect on surrounding neighborhoods, further depressing housing prices and quality of life.

Tarnished 'truth': The New Paradigm for Financial Markets by George Soros

Reviewed by Nicholas Kiersey

"Wall Street got drunk," or so says President George W Bush. But blaming America's recent credit crisis on Wall Street and its "fancy financial instruments" is a little too simplistic. For it is an analysis that speaks neither to the radically neo-liberal regulative framework that permitted such instruments to develop nor the insurmountable challenges now facing America's homeowners.

Ironically, for this sort of analysis, we could do worse than turn to George Soros's new book, The New Paradigm for Financial Markets: the Credit Crisis of 2008 and What it Means. A financial speculator, Soros has made and lost more money than most can. He writes, too, and is a sometimes philosopher.

Pakistanis Aided Attack in Kabul, U.S. Officials Say

By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON — American intelligence agencies have concluded that members of Pakistan’s powerful spy service helped plan the deadly July 7 bombing of India’s embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan, according to United States government officials.

The conclusion was based on intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack, the officials said, providing the clearest evidence to date that Pakistani intelligence officers are actively undermining American efforts to combat militants in the region.

Dan Froomkin: Waiting for Rove

Joby Warrick writes in The Washington Post: "The Bush administration unveiled new operating guidelines for the nation's intelligence community yesterday in a move that boosted the authority of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) while triggering protests from lawmakers who complained that they weren't properly consulted. . .

Glenn Greenwald: Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News

The FBI's lead suspect in the September, 2001 anthrax attacks -- Bruce E. Ivins -- died Tuesday night, apparently by suicide, just as the Justice Department was about to charge him with responsibility for the attacks. For the last 18 years, Ivins was a top anthrax researcher at the U.S. Government's biological weapons research laboratories at Ft. Detrick, Maryland, where he was one of the most elite government anthrax scientists on the research team at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Disease (USAMRIID).

The Real Story of the 110th Congress: The Right-Wing Block-And-Blame Game

A record-breaking campaign of obstruction was waged by the Republican minority in Congress during the 110th Congress to keep the Democratic majority from enacting legislation sought by the American people. Their strategy of "block and blame" has driven the perception of a "do-nothing Congress."

Wal-Mart warns managers about labor bill

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wal-Mart Stores Inc said on Friday it has warned U.S. store managers in recent weeks about the possible consequences of a labor-friendly bill backed by Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama that would make it easier for workers to form unions.

But the retailer, which has kept its U.S. stores free of unions, stressed it was not telling employees how to vote.

Watchdog: Bush turning intelligence agencies on Americans

Filed by Nick Juliano
07/31/2008 @ 1:06 pm

President Bush seems to be slowly turning the nation's massive surveillance apparatus upon its citizens, and some worry that administration assurances to protect civil liberties are nothing but empty promises.

With his update to a decades-old executive order governing the Intelligence Community, Bush is giving the Director of National Intelligence and the 16 agencies of the US Intelligence Community more power to access and share sensitive information on Americans with little to no independent oversight. The update to Executive Order 12333, first issued by former President Ronald Reagan, introduces a more prominent role for the Attorney General in approving intelligence gathering methods, calls for collaboration with local law enforcement agencies, eases limits on how information can be shared and urges cooperation between the IC and private companies.

Paul Krugman: Can This Planet Be Saved?

Recently the Web site The Politico asked Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, why she was blocking attempts to tack offshore drilling amendments onto appropriations bills. “I’m trying to save the planet; I’m trying to save the planet,” she replied.

I’m glad to hear it. But I’m still worried about the planet’s prospects.

True, Ms. Pelosi’s remark was a happy reminder that environmental policy is no longer in the hands of crazy people. Remember, less than two years ago Senator James Inhofe — a conspiracy theorist who insists that global warming is a “gigantic hoax” perpetrated by the scientific community — was the chairman of the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee.

Ties to War-dead Are a Predictor of Likely Presidential Disapproval

Research published in the American Sociological Review shows presidential approval ratings influenced by personal links to victims of Iraq War, September 11

DAVIS, CALIF. — Those who know someone who died in the Iraq War or 9/11 terrorist attacks are less likely to approve of President Bush’s performance in office than people who have no such connections, according to new research from the University of California, Davis. The pattern holds true for Republicans as well as Democrats, conservatives as well as liberals, and across all races, ages, education levels and incomes.

The research appears in the August issue of the American Sociological Review, the flagship journal of the American Sociological Association.

Oil prices end higher on Iran nuclear worries

By STEVENSON JACOBS, AP Business Writer
2 hours, 47 minutes ago

Oil prices ended slightly higher Friday, pushing back above $125 a barrel as the threat of a conflict with Iran rattled energy markets after a week of wild swings.

The gains, however, were limited by lingering beliefs that fuel prices are still too high for cash-strapped Americans who are already cutting back on driving to save money.

In another sign of waning demand for gasoline, U.S. filling stations hungry for business lowered the price of a gallon of regular overnight by just over a penny on average to $3.898, according to auto club AAA, Oil Price Information Service and Wright Express. Gas is down 5.2 percent from record high of $4.114 a gallon reached July 17.

Jobless rate climbs as 51,000 jobs vanish

By JEANNINE AVERSA, AP Economics Writer
2 hours, 19 minutes ago

Stores, factories and other businesses large and small showed workers the door last month, sending unemployment to its highest rate in four years and adding to the evidence an economic recovery remains far off.

Employers clamped down on hiring and cut 51,000 jobs in July, the Labor Department said Friday. The economy has shed jobs each month this year — 463,000 in all.

The unemployment rate rose to 5.7 percent, up from 5.5 percent in June.