Progressive News Digest - Dec 17, 2007
stri...@comcast.net
Date: Mon, December 17, 2007
PROGRESSIVE NEWS DIGEST
The latest news, commentary & event listings
(from slightly left of center)
updated daily on the web at
http://rationalreview.com/pnd
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Published Mondays
Supported by the generous donations of our readersit
The web version updates continuously. Forward freely.
To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit:
http://groups.google.com/group/progressive-news
----------------------------------------------------------------------
For more news stories and commentaries, or to donate, visit:
http://rationalreview.com/pnd
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume IV, Issue #28 Monday, Dec. 17, 2007
Welcome to another edition of Progressive News Digest, still rolling along in
its fourth year (just over the halfway-mark of Year 4, BTW, and with rare
exception this has appeared every week at some point). (Hey - it's still
Monday, after all
Meanwhile, over at the "parent company" (Rational Review News DIgest),
we're engaged in our quarterly fundraising effort, aiming for $5,000 in total
this time (Dec. 23st will mark our FIFTH year overall in operation, without
missing a SINGLE non-holiday day in that span!). We are a little less than
20% of the way to that goal ... STILL
If the impulse strikes you, we could sure use donations, both here and at the
parent-site:
http://www.rationalreview.com/content/38515
We appreciate your support, in any amount … but subscribing contributors really
do it for us. To support RRND/FND (and by extension, PND) with regular
monthly payment of $2.50, $5.00, $10 or $20, point your browser at:
www.rationalreview.com/rrnd-subscribing-contributor-options/ "
* * * * * * *
This week, the Commentaries lead off with one of my own, a personal account
my dealings with that "ailment" that has spawned a whole new Pharma
industry ,,, and some alternative wisdom on the subject.
Here you go ... enjoy and see you next week! Check the site for constant
updates each day:
=====
News
01 - Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran
02 - Border Patrol fires tear gas into Mexico
03 - Judge: White House logs are public
04 - Leno, Conan heading back to work
05 - High-tech brings rural towns back to life
06 - CT: Taxpayer group raises questions on discretionary funds
07 - Google’s encyclopedia with ads could challenge Wikipedia
08 - TX: Troubled times for peyote harvesters
09 - CA: Porn prince wants to build kinky condos
10 - WWII vet gets back pay, six decades later
11 - Pakistan: As emergency rule lifts, Musharraf eyes next step
12 - NH: Dem chair wants GOP to slam Savage
13 - LA: Housing demolition protests gear up
14 - Israeli official: US not doing enough on Iran nukes
15 - Gitmo feds caught in Wikipedia, Digg disinfo plays
16 - Shoemakers push to repeal tax
17 - MA: $2.5. million for unnecessary HIV treatments
18 - Algeria bombing: Can Al Qaeda spread across North Africa?
19 - MA: Charlestown unites to combat heroin
20 - SCOTUS reverses conviction in drugs-for-gun case
21 - AZ: Business groups file new suit vs. Know-Nothing law
22 - TN: Police roll out “bait” to catch car thieves
23 - SCOTUS gives leeway in crack sentencing
24 - Stress makes us depressed, fat, sick — and we do it to ourselves
25 - US, Halliburton/KBR gang rape cover-up alleged
Commentary
26 - ED is for everybody … or is it?
27 - Putting the humanity in philanthropy
28 - Democrats: less whine, more work
29 - Patent reform goes into the final rounds
30 - Campaign “issues” prove it: World has gone nuts
31 - Libya doesn’t deserve the red carpet
32 - The politics of religion in America
33 - Too funny to be president?
34 - The apostles of Ron Paul
35 - The biggest global warming crime in history
36 - The Ron Paul problem
37 - No taxes for war
38 - Come on Cosby, stop hatin
39 - Democrats and the politics of failure
40 - Why are the wheels coming off the Clinton bandwagon?
41 - A myth about consumer spending
42 - The truth about honesty
43 - Strangling Gaza
44 - Resistance among the ruins
45 - The lawless surveillance state
46 - The flap over Obama’s drug use
47 - Don’t stop believing: Romney’s swan song?
48 - Are you going to pay for Bush’s wars?
49 - Harry Reid’s FISA games
50 - Heckuva job, Bernanke!
51 - Mike Huckabee’s fair tax fallacies
52 - Big Coal’s dirty plans for our energy future
53 - The USA’s human rights daze
54 - Putin’s hold on Russia
55 - The Plutocrats vs. the Theocrats
News
01 - Russia delivers nuclear fuel to Iran
Source: Los Angeles Times
“After years of delay, Russia today delivered nuclear fuel to power a reactor in southern Iran, a move that the U.S. says it could support. Reza Aghazadeh, chief of Iran’s Atomic Energy Agency, told state television that long-promised nuclear fuel rods to power a plant being built in the southern port city of Bushehr by Russia’s state-owned Atomstroyexport Corp. arrived this morning.” [editor’s note: Oh great … Now Shrubbo and Darth will claim they have reason to bomb Moscow - SAT] (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/28uej4
=====
02 - Border Patrol fires tear gas into Mexico
Source: Raw Story
“The U.S. Border Patrol says its agents were attacked nearly 1,000 times during a one-year period along the Mexican border, typically by assailants hurling rocks, bottles and bricks. Now the agency is responding with tear gas and powerful, pepper-spray weapons, including firing into Mexico. The counteroffensive has drawn complaints that innocent families are being caught in the crossfire. ‘A neighbor shouted, “Stop it! There are children living here,”‘ said Esther Arias Medina, 41, who on Wednesday fled her Tijuana, Mexico, shanty with her 3-week-old grandson after the infant began coughing from smoke that seeped through the walls. A helmeted agent on the U.S. side said nothing as he stood with a rifle on top of a 10-foot border fence next to the three-room home that Arias shares with six others.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/38vc7g
=====
03 - Judge: White House logs are public
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
“White House visitor logs are public documents, a federal judge ruled Monday, rejecting a legal strategy that the Bush administration had hoped would get around public records laws and let them keep their guests a secret. The ruling is a blow to the Bush administration, which has fought the release of records showing visits by prominent religious conservatives. Visitor records are created by the Secret Service, which is subject to the Freedom of Information Act. But the Bush administration has ordered the data turned over to the White House, where they are treated as presidential records outside the scope of the public records law. But U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth ruled logs from the White House and Vice President Dick Cheney’s residence remain Secret Service documents and are subject to public records requests.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2gpu22
=====
04 - Leno, Conan heading back to work
Source: Fox News
“Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien will return to late-night TV with fresh episodes on Jan. 2, two months after the writers’ strike sent them into repeats, the network said Monday. The Tonight show and Late Night will return without writers supplying jokes. NBC said the decision was similar to what happened in 1988, when Johnny Carson brought back the Tonight show two months into a writers’ strike. A similar return — with writers — appears in the works for David Letterman. … The strike left the nation bereft of fresh late-night laughs for two months as the presidential race heated up. Jon Stewart’s The Daily Show on Comedy Central has also been shut down during the strike.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317102,00.html
=====
05 - High-tech brings rural towns back to life
Source: Christian Science Monitor
“Across the street from the Po’ Boy Opry, Web designer Jannis Paulk, a ‘refugee’ from Atlanta, is helping everyone from rural real estate agents to dog breeders expand their markets via the Internet. ‘I’m a unique breed,’ says Ms. Paulk from her cluttered desk in the back of a downtown clothing consignment shop. It’s a scene that offers a none-too-subtle symbol of the dot-com world merging with small-town Americana. Paulk is among the high-tech pioneers who are helping locales including Fitzgerald become bright spots in rural America. ‘It’s not just about historical preservation or farming, but also the Mayberry mentality — that ultimately people do enjoy these small towns,’ says Chad Adams, director of the Center for Local Innovation in Raleigh, N.C. ‘It’s a golden opportunity for small-town America.’” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1218/p03s01-ussc.html
=====
06 - CT: Taxpayer group raises questions on discretionary funds
Source: Boston Globe
“A watchdog group is raising questions about millions of dollars in discretionary funds controlled by Governor M. Jodi Rell and leaders of the state Senate and House of Representatives. The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations asked state Auditor Robert Jaekle this month to review the accounts in which Rell, state House Speaker James Amann and state Senate President Donald Williams Jr. each control $2 million. Those discretionary accounts, which are in the state budget through 2009, contain money that each leader can disperse as he or she sees fit without a public hearing. Susan Kniep, a former East Hartford mayor and president of the statewide taxpayer organizations group, said its members learned about the accounts last week and consider them little more than slush funds. ‘This is outrageously bad,’ she said. ‘This is unbeknownst to the public.’” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/33d6tn
=====
07 - Google’s encyclopedia with ads could challenge Wikipedia
Source: Arizona Republic
“Google Inc. is working on a new Internet encyclopedia that will consist of material submitted by people who want to be identified as experts and possibly profit from their knowledge. The concept, outlined late last week in a posting on Google’s Web site, poses a potential challenge to the non-profit Wikipedia, which has drawn upon the collective wisdom of unpaid, anonymous contributors to emerge as a widely used reference tool. Google is calling its alternative ‘knol’ — the Mountain View-based company’s shorthand for a ‘unit of knowledge.’ For now, submissions are by invitation only as Google fine-tunes the system, but the Internet search leader said it will eventually publish articles by all comers.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3adq5k
=====
08 - TX: Troubled times for peyote harvesters
Source: Reuters
“Mauro Morales has chickens in his yard, deer antlers hanging from the fence and a shed full of peyote behind his house. A slight, balding man in his 60s, Morales is one of just three ‘peyoteros’ in the country licensed by the government to sell the small green cactus that contains the hallucinogen mescaline. His profession is an old one that used to be more common along the Rio Grande, the only place where peyote grows in the United States. Now it is threatened by the forces of modernity. His customers are the 250,000 to 400,000 members of the Native American Church, the only people in the United States for whom peyote is legal. The government warily allows them to buy it because it has been part of indigenous religious ceremonies for centuries.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2hmlsj
=====
09 - CA: Porn prince wants to build kinky condos
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
“Porn producer Peter Acworth, who bought the 93-year-old [San Francisco] Mission Armory and turned it into a porn video studio, has approached the city Planning Department with the idea of converting some of the building into kinky condos — complete with Webcams for all the world to see. Internet voyeurs would be able to dial into the doings in the dwellings, for a fee. ‘And if it happens to include bondage, that’s what they are paying for,’ said city Zoning Administrator Larry Badiner. It’s not exactly the kind of housing the neighborhood might like — but, as Badiner explained, there may not be a lot the city can do about it.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/24vogx
=====
10 - WWII vet gets back pay, six decades later
Source: Fox News
“A World War II veteran finally received $725 in back pay for combat service performed 63 years ago, MyFoxOrlando.com reported. Eighty-three-year-old Leesburg resident Samuel Snow received his money after the Army overturned the vet’s conviction of a case that resulted in the death of an Italian prisoner of war, MyFoxOrlando.com reported. In 1944, Snow and twenty-seven other black soldiers were accused of contributing to the lynching of the Italian soldier. They were convicted and dishonorably discharged, MyFoxOrlando reported. Snow denies he was involved, and in October, the Army’s Board of Corrections of Military records granted a petition by him and three other families.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317007,00.html
=====
11 - Pakistan: As emergency rule lifts, Musharraf eyes next step
Source: Christian Science Monitor
“When Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf declared emergency rule six weeks ago, it was a decision fraught with peril -– the opposition was threatening mass protests, and he seemed in imminent danger of being overthrown. In lifting the emergency Saturday, however, Mr. Musharraf can be confident that his gambit has worked as well as he could have hoped. In six weeks, he has packed the courts with loyal judges, amended the Constitution to protect him from legal challenges, and eviscerated the media’s powers. And his political opposition is weaker and more fractured than before. With parliamentary elections still ahead in January, he has not yet won. But he has pulled back from the brink of disaster, and significantly upped his chances of survival.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1217/p04s01-wosc.html
=====
12 - NH: Dem chair wants GOP to slam Savage
Source: Boston Globe
“New Hampshire Democratic Party ChairRay Buckley is challenging his Republican counterparts to join him in criticizing comments of talk show host Michael Savage who called Granite State voters a ‘bunch of yokels’ and ‘drunks.’ … ‘Why are we still running elections like it’s the 19th Century, where New Hampshire determines the election? A bunch of yokels in New Hampshire are going to determine the election as much as my dog is going to determine the election,’ Savage, a conservative, said on his show. New Hampshire politicians are protective of the state’s first-in-the-nation primary status. ‘Michael Savage needs to hear from the Republican presidential candidates that this type of insulting and ignorant attack on our democratic process will not be tolerated,’ Buckley said.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ya28m
=====
13 - LA: Housing demolition protests gear up
Source: Associated Press
“In normal times, redevelopment of public housing to make way for mixed-income neighborhoods might have gone largely unopposed. But passions are high in hurricane-ravaged New Orleans, where residents are desperate for cheap housing. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to demolish about 4,500 public housing units at four of the city’s largest complexes and replace them with mixed-income neighborhoods. Protesters have marched on Mayor Ray Nagin’s home and disrupted City Council proceedings with chants. At least two protesters apparently occupied one of the buildings scheduled to be bulldozed, draping two handmade banners from he side Thursday. One read, ‘Reopen now,’ and the other, ‘No demolition.’ Protesters kept up the pressure with a march at the HUD offices in Washington.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ynn9ky
=====
14 - Israeli official: US not doing enough on Iran nukes
Source: Haaretz [Israel]
“A senior Israeli official has fiercely criticized U.S. President George Bush’s administration for the way it has dealt with the Iranian nuclear issue. The official said that the administration was not doing what was required of it to create an international coalition and wide agreement to pressure Iran over its nuclear program. Criticism from senior members of Israel’s political echelon with regard to U.S. policy on the matter is rare. The official mainly spoke out against Bush’s failure to enlist support from China, Russia and, to a certain extent, India, for increasing pressure on Iran and North Korea. According to the official, the Bush administration has insisted on stressing matters such as human rights in China and its policy on Taiwan, and as a result, has neglected to gain its support in the struggle against Iran.” [editor’s note: Well, pardon the hell out of the US for momentarily forgetting that the goal of its foreign policy is to appease Tel Aviv - TLK] (12/13/07)
Link: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/934049.html
=====
15 - Gitmo feds caught in Wikipedia, Digg disinfo plays
Source: Wikileaks
“The US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has been caught conducting covert propaganda attacks on the internet. The attacks, exposed this week in a report by the government transparency group Wikileaks, include deleting detainee ID numbers from Wikipedia last month, the systematic posting of unattributed ’self praise’ comments on news organization web sites in response to negative press, boosting pro-Guantanamo stories on the internet news site Digg and even modifying Fidel Castro’s encyclopedia article to describe the Cuban president as ‘an admitted transexual’ [sic].” (12/13/07)
Link: http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Wikileaks_busts_Gitmo_propaganda_team/
=====
16 - Shoemakers push to repeal tax
Source: Tennessean
“Footwear makers and retailers are trying to stomp out a Depression-era U.S. government shoe tax, a move they say could save American consumers hundreds of millions of dollars annually and kick-start relatively flat footwear sales. Trade associations and their members, such as Payless ShoeSource, Nike Inc. and Columbia Sportswear Co., have been lobbying U.S. lawmakers weekly since the summer to get them to exempt certain categories of footwear — including all children’s shoes — from the import tariffs that can run as high as 67.5 percent a pair. The groups created a website — EndtheShoeTax.org — to raise awareness and encourage constituents to tell their lawmakers, via an e-mail prompt on the site, to pass the Affordable Footwear Act of 2007.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2f69qj
=====
17 - MA: $2.5. million for unnecessary HIV treatments
Source: Fox News
“A jury awarded $2.5 million in damages Wednesday to a woman who received HIV treatments for almost nine years before discovering she never actually had the virus that causes AIDS. In her lawsuit against a doctor who treated her, Audrey Serrano said the powerful combination of drugs she took triggered a string of ailments, including depression, chronic fatigue, loss of weight and appetite and inflammation of the intestine. Serrano, 45, said she cried after hearing the verdict in Worcester Superior Court and was gratified that the jury believed her. … Serrano’s attorney, David Angueira, said Dr. Kwan Lai, who treated his client at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in Worcester’s HIV clinic, repeatedly failed to order definitive tests even after monitoring of Serrano’s treatment did not show the presence of HIV in her blood.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316657,00.html
=====
18 - Algeria bombing: Can Al Qaeda spread across North Africa?
Source: Christian Science Monitor
“When two formerly convicted Algerian Islamic militants blew themselves up in Algiers this week, killing at least 34 people at United Nations offices and a government building, they succeeded in one likely aspect of their mission — getting attention. Tuesday’s twin truck bombings was the latest strike from a longtime insurgent group, which recently allied itself with Osama bin Laden’s network and changed its name to Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). Government forces had appeared to be gaining the upper hand against the militants after it had killed or captured scores of insurgents over the past few months. But while the bombing has shown that AQIM, formerly known as the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, still poses a serious threat, analysts say this new Al Qaeda affiliate in North Africa is far from reaching its goal of building a potent force across the entire region or even striking Europe, as it says is part of its overall goal.” (12/14/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1214/p07s02-wome.html
=====
19 - MA: Charlestown unites to combat heroin
Source: Boston Globe
“At first, there were only whispers. Mourners would gather in Charlestown’s churches for funerals of the young, nodding solemnly — and knowingly — when told the family had a history of heart problems. In truth, it was another death by heroin. As the drug seeped across the neighborhood, it caused dozens of overdoses, devastating hundreds of families. Starting in 2003, the signs of crisis were everywhere — the neighborhood parks that addicts colonized, the fast-food restaurants that locked their bathroom doors after finding discarded needles, and on one raw afternoon, the pizza parlor where Michael Charbonnier took his children. As the family settled into a booth, two men at another table pulled out a stash of heroin and prepared to shoot up. ‘This wasn’t a seedy bar,’ said Charbonnier, a Charlestown native and Boston police officer who tossed the men out. ‘This was a family restaurant at 2 o’clock in the afternoon on a Sunday. And I said: ‘What has it come to here?”” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ysnvbf
=====
20 - SCOTUS reverses conviction in drugs-for-gun case
Source: Christian Science Monitor
“The US Supreme Court has reversed the conviction of a Louisiana man who was charged with ‘using’ a gun during a drug deal after an agent handed the man the gun in a swap for drugs during an undercover sting operation. In a unanimous decision announced Monday, the high court said the federal gun law is designed to prevent criminals from ‘using’ their own guns during crimes. When federal agents introduce unloaded firearms into an undercover investigation, the suspect should not be held criminally liable for the presence of the gun at the scene of a crime, the court ruled. The Supreme Court’s primary authority for its decision was the English language. Writing for the court, Justice David Souter says the government’s defense of its reading of the law ‘would trump ordinary English. The government may say that a person ‘uses’ a firearm simply by receiving it in a barter transaction, but no one else would,’ Justice Souter writes.” (12/11/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1210/p25s10-usju.htmlch
=====
21 - AZ: Business groups file new suit vs. Know-Nothing law
Source: Arizona Republic
“The fight about Arizona’s employer-sanctions law is back in federal court with allegations that businesses are being investigated or threatened by Maricopa County law-enforcement officials before the law goes into effect. The new complaint alleges that Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas is investigating at least one business and that Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s office threatened another business owner who hired an undocumented worker. Both county officials deny the claims. The new lawsuit was filed Monday by a dozen business groups challenging the Legal Arizona Workers Act, scheduled to take effect three weeks from today.” (12/11/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2nuw9d
=====
22 - TN: Police roll out “bait” to catch car thieves
Source: Nashville City Paper
“Police officials said an increase in theft of all kinds is typical during the holiday season, but the department’s auto theft unit is using a special tactic to thwart potential car thieves this month. The department is using what officers like to call ‘bait cars’ around shopping malls and markets throughout the Nashville area. ‘It’s just one of the ways we can go out and do proactive work in a certain area,’ said Sgt. Billy Smith of Metro’s Auto Theft Unit. The cars have no outstanding features, but are typically models popular with thieves — a Honda or General Motors vehicle.” (12/11/07)
Link: http://www.nashvillecitypaper.com/news.php?viewStory=58235
=====
23 - SCOTUS gives leeway in crack sentencing
Source: Christian Science Monitor
“Federal judges have discretion to sentence individuals to prison terms that substantially depart from the punishment range established in the federal sentencing guidelines. In a pair of 7-to-2 decisions announced Monday, the US Supreme Court offered important guidance to federal judges who have been struggling to mete out sentences after the high court’s 2005 ruling that said the sentencing guidelines established by Congress are no longer mandatory, but are now only advisory. How much sentencing flexibility does the Supreme Court say such advisory guidelines permit? In the two cases decided Monday, the justices overturned appeals courts that had invalidated sentences substantially below the range of sentences suggested under the guidelines.” (12/11/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1211/p02s01-usju.html
=====
24 - Stress makes us depressed, fat, sick — and we do it to ourselves
Source: San Francisco Chronicle
“A sensible person might argue that at 74, Connie Berto should be enjoying the quiet luxuries of retirement, like afternoon naps and baking pies. But like most Americans, Berto has picked the rush of an active, nonstop lifestyle over peace and quiet. ‘I’m always on the go, go, go,’ said Berto, who lives in the Sleepy Hollow community in Marin County. ‘My husband and I have a lot of interests and volunteer work and grandchildren — 2-year-old twins that I babysit all the time. I have two horses in the backyard, and I do all the cleaning and the cooking myself.’ … There’s no doubt, Berto said, that Americans are more stressed out than ever before. Doctors agree. In fact, they say, Americans are so riddled with stress these days that it’s making them sick.” (12/10/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2bl6do
=====
25 - US, Halliburton/KBR gang rape cover-up alleged
Source: ABC News
“A Houston, Texas woman says she was gang-raped by Halliburton/KBR coworkers in Baghdad, and the company and the U.S. government are covering up the incident. Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she’d be out of a job. ‘Don’t plan on working back in Iraq. There won’t be a position here, and there won’t be a position in Houston,’ Jones says she was told.” (12/10/07)
Link: http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/story?id=3977702&page=1
=====
Commentary
26 - ED is for everybody … or is it?
Source: The Medical Freedom Channel
Author: Steve Trinward
“Back in the day, there used to be a televised Public Service Announcement from some well-intended source called the American Social Health Association about venereal disease, featuring the following jingle (thank you, Google!) …. Considering how much ad-space is currently being taken up with pitches for one remedy or another for ‘erectile dysfunction,’ and how many hit songs from every genre have been turned into ad-jingles (That Elvis rendition of Viva Las Vegas has lost its appeal forever!), it’s perhaps surprising they haven’t grabbed this one yet. … ” (12/14/07)
Link: http://www.isil.org/channels/archives/12431
=====
27 - Putting the humanity in philanthropy
Source: The American Prospect
Author: Courtney E. Martin
“As I ride the subway home, especially this time of year, I inevitably find myself looking up from my book and listening to a homeless woman asking for change to feed her kids or a teenager trying to sell candy bars to ’stay off the streets.’ But I don’t reach into my bag. I have decided — after a lot of personal angst and conversations with my social-worker friends — to save my change and, instead, donate it to outreach programs that do this work in a systematic way. I tell myself that I’m thinking big picture, that I’m committed to efficient social change, that I do what I can. But the problem with my little strategic plan is that I feel demoralized every time I look into another human being’s pleading eyes and then turn back to my book. In that moment, on that train, someone asked me for help, and I turned away. As I drag my feet back to my warm apartment with wireless internet and last night’s leftover Chinese, I feel alienated from my humanity.” [editor’s note: Given the track
-records of many charitable institutions, “private” as well as government-allied (hello, Red Cross), it seems even less valid to pass by the strangers on the street - SAT] (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/3am2eq
=====
28 - Democrats: less whine, more work
Source: St. Petersburg [FL] Times
Author: E.J. Dionne
“Congressional Democrats need a Plan B. Republicans chortle as they block Democratic initiatives — and accuse the majority of being unable to govern. Rank-and-filers are furious their leaders can’t end the Iraq war. President Bush sits back and vetoes at will. Worse, Democrats are starting to blame each other, with those in the House wondering why their Senate colleagues don’t force Republicans to engage in grueling, old-fashioned filibusters. Instead, the GOP kills bills by coming up with just 41 votes. Senators defend themselves by saying that their House colleagues don’t understand how the august ‘upper’ chamber works these days. If Bush’s strategy is to drag Congress down to his low level of public esteem, he is succeeding brilliantly.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2dmoqm
=====
29 - Patent reform goes into the final rounds
Source: Orange County Register
Author: Jan Norman
“Ladies and gentlemen, I draw your attention to the center ring for our feature match up. In this corner wearing red trunks are information technology and software giants, multinational corporations, media conglomerates and the financial service industry. And in the far corner in the blue trunks are the pharmaceutical companies, biotech firms, venture capitalists and individual inventors. Welcome to the 2007 fight over U.S. patent reform. The stakes are high: Intellectual property in this country is worth $5 trillion, about 40 percent our annual gross domestic product.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/28lkqx
=====
30 - Campaign “issues” prove it: World has gone nuts
Source: Fox News
Author: Susan Estrich
“‘Is it the End?’ the headline on the Drudge Report screams, above a picture of the sober Hillary? ‘Is Huckabee the One?’ it might also have asked, given the news just below that he is now leading in South Carolina and Florida, as well as Iowa, and that New Hampshire seems to be coming down to a two-man race between the former Arkansas governor who sermonizes against the tenets of Mormonism and the former Massachusetts governor, Mitt Romney, who has been stuck defending his faith when it should be Huckabee defending his. Has the world gone nuts? Or rather, has the small universe of voters in early states, and political junkie reporters who cover them, smoked something the rest of us don’t have access to?” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,317104,00.html
=====
31 - Libya doesn’t deserve the red carpet
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Author: David Schenker
“Libyan leader Col. Muammar Qaddafi spent five days in France last week meeting with senior officials and signing billions of dollars’ worth of business deals. The trip — Mr. Qaddafi’s first to France since 1973 — marked the full normalization of European relations with the longtime pariah state. It also prompted many French citizens, including high-level officials, to criticize the warm welcome given to a colonel associated with terrorism, torture, and repression. Back in Washington, the resumption of diplomatic ties with Libya is not going as smoothly as the Bush administration had hoped. But just as several French officials neglected to meet with Qaddafi, the US should rethink normalizing relations with Libya: The country continues to behave like a rogue state.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1217/p09s02-coop.html
=====
32 - The politics of religion in America
Source: Boston Globe
Author: James Carroll
“What in the name of God is going on in American politics? Mitt Romney’s Faith in America speech, riddled with mistaken assertions about religion, was itself a warning. But other presidential candidates, debate moderators, pundits, and religious leaders all share a dangerous confusion about questions of faith and citizenship. Here are only a few: Is America’s goodness grounded in God? When Romney and others assert that American virtues, generally summed up in the idea of ‘freedom,’ are based on faith, a cruel fact of history is being ignored. The politics of human rights, like the idea of individual freedom, were born not in religion but in the Enlightenment struggle against it. When Thomas Jefferson located “inalienable rights” in an endowment from the Creator, he was decidedly speaking from outside the mainstream of any denominational faith. Jefferson’s point was not to affirm God, but to deny King George. It is not an accident that ‘God’ does not appear in the Constitution.” (12
/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ypv7ev
=====
33 - Too funny to be president?
Source: Slate
Author: John Dickerson
“Huckabee reminds me of Mo Udall, the last great punster and jester on the campaign trail who every candidate wants to quote but not emulate. ‘I’m Mo Udall and I’m running for president,’ the failed Democratic candidate said, walking into a shop. ‘Yeah,’ replied the barber, ‘we were just laughing about that.’ Candidates don’t repeat Udall’s better lines, like his post-election declaration — ‘The voters have spoken. The bastards.’ Or his observation that the difference between a cactus and a caucus is that with a cactus, the pricks are on the outside. There is a limit, though, which the Udall examples thunderously show, to how many jokes a candidate can tell before voters think he’s not serious. As Huckabee takes a commanding lead in the polls in Iowa and South Carolina, his opponents are trying to turn his humor against him.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2180170/
=====
34 - The apostles of Ron Paul
Source: Mother Jones
Author: Josh Harkinson
“By and large, Paul’s acolytes are not the kinds of people you’ll find in a Republican campaign — or any campaign. Having, in many cases, never even voted, they are driven by an unalloyed certitude that Americans will be won over to Paul by the sheer force of his antigovernment ideas (and judicious use of social-networking tools). You could call them techno-publicans. And while their success doesn’t readily translate to the offline world, their passion and organization have made them a force to reckon with. Once Paul is knocked out of the GOP contest, will they dissipate, gravitate toward someone else, or reemerge with a third-party bid? (Libertarians have been spoilers for the gop before; in Montana’s close 2006 Senate race, a Libertarian drew more votes than the entire Democratic margin of victory.) Whichever way the Paulites go, other candidates would be smart to study their movement’s trajectory. It, not Paul, is the real revolution.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2x59wt
=====
35 - The biggest global warming crime in history
Source: AlterNet
Author: Cahal Milmo
“BP, the British oil giant that pledged to move ‘Beyond Petroleum’ by finding cleaner ways to produce fossil fuels, is being accused of abandoning its ‘green sheen’ by investing nearly £1.5bn to extract oil from the Canadian wilderness using methods which environmentalists say are part of the ‘biggest global warming crime’ in history. The multinational oil and gas producer, which last year made a profit of £11bn, is facing a head-on confrontation with the green lobby in the pristine forests of North America after Greenpeace pledged a direct action campaign against BP following its decision to reverse a long-standing policy and invest heavily in extracting so-called ‘oil sands’ that lie beneath the Canadian province of Alberta and form the world’s second-largest proven oil reserves after Saudi Arabia.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/70299/
=====
36 - The Ron Paul problem
Source: Strike the Root
Author: Per Bylund
“The major problem lies in the effect Ron Paul has on the people already identifying with or being part of the libertarian movement. Many libertarians seem to have set their libertarian projects aside in order to work for Ron Paul. They not only work for his presidential campaign, but seem to adopt his views — even anti-libertarian views such as Paul’s stand on abortion and increased border control. Arguing Ron Paul’s case to the general public as well as to the members of the GOP, they take a few steps toward statism (while the opposite would be both better and more honest, considering their libertarian values) — and come to believe in it. The Ron Paul effect is thus not only advertising a libertarian view, it also seems to claim it is possible to make libertarianism a part of the two-party system — and that it should be. And it preaches that the powers of the state can be tamed and even used as a tool to reintroduce liberty in America, and that the Constitution once again can ser
ve as a leash on government’s powers.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.strike-the-root.com/72/bylund/bylund7.html
=====
37 - No taxes for war
Source: The Nation
Author: Katrina vanden Heuvel
“More and more Americans are fed up with watching their tax dollars support the greatest foreign policy disaster of our time. … And despite the recently released NIE report on Iran, the Administration’s saber rattling stunningly continues. That’s why Chris Hedges recently pledged in The Nation, ‘I will not pay my income tax if we go to war with Iran …’ It’s also the reason a coalition of antiwar groups … are using this weekend’s Boston Tea Party anniversary to begin circulating this pledge: ‘When I am joined by 100,000 other US taxpayers, I will join in an act of mass civil disobedience and refuse to pay the portion of my taxes that pays the US military occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan.’” (12/15/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2berda
=====
38 - Come on Cosby, stop hatin
Source: In These Times
Author: Salim Muwakkil
“Deepening class conflict within the black community has produced some interesting symptoms. Every Saturday, black protesters march around the Washington, D.C. home of Black Entertainment Television President and CEO Debra Lee, demanding that the network stop airing what they call demeaning portrayals of African Americans. Their major targets are the rap videos that specialize in sexually objectified or ‘hootchified’ images of black women. But the hip-hop attitude of ‘keeping it real’ and reflecting the ethos of the street is the true focus of their ire. Black, middle-class opposition to hip-hop (or rap) music has accompanied the genre since its birth. But the furor over Don Imus’ ‘nappy-headed ho’ comments last April churned up even more opposition, and it has been strong ever since. Rap is a scapegoat not just for generational reasons, but also because it is a class-bound, cultural product of America’s most criminalized and marginalized population: urban black youth. The genre ha
s a ghettocentric vibe that tends to discomfort many middle-class blacks.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/ys8gm2
=====
39 - Democrats and the politics of failure
Source: The American Prospect
Author: Terence Samuel
“What a difference a year makes. Last year, when Congress adjourned for the holiday break, triumphant Democrats, still basking in the glow of their November victories could not wait to get back to town to take on President Bush. Speaker-designate Nancy Pelosi declared then: ‘Democrats are prepared to govern and ready to lead.’ She suggested that the president would find out very quickly how much the elections had upended his world: ‘He will walk into a new place, where America’s families’ issues will have been addressed even before the State of the Union.’ But despite all the evidence of global warming, this December has not been quite as warm for Democrats as last.” (12/14/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/yp9vya
=====
40 - Why are the wheels coming off the Clinton bandwagon?
Source: Fox News
Author: Dick Morris & Eileen McGann
“In Iowa and New Hampshire — the first two tests for the presidential nominating process — Hillary Clinton is faltering badly. When you average all the polls in Iowa, her lead has dwindled and is now eradicated. … And, Hillary has suffered an even greater slippage in New Hampshire, where the last poll, by Rasmussen, has Obama ahead by three points. … Hillary Clinton is tanking and Obama is surging in New Hampshire, gaining a net of 17 points. In Iowa, Hillary is dropping and Obama is also moving up, gaining a net of nine points. But nationally, there is almost no change since November 1. Throughout the country, Obama has gained only five points in three months.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,316905,00.html
=====
41 - A myth about consumer spending
Source: Christian Science Monitor
Author: Mark Skousen
“Every year, and especially during holiday-shopping season, we hear the familiar refrain: ‘What the consumer does is the most important thing.’ … ‘If shoppers stop spending, we’re in big trouble.’ … ‘Consumer spending accounts for 70 percent of the economy.’ … These Keynesian principles have become ingrained conventional myths. But they’re not true. Many factors are far more significant than consumer spending in stimulating the economy: business spending on capital goods, tax cuts, lower interest rates, and productivity.” (12/17/07)
Link: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1217/p09s01-coop.html
=====
42 - The truth about honesty
Source: Boston Globe
Author: Joan Vennochi
“Maybe American voters are ready for the truth. Maybe they finally understand if they don’t get it from a presidential candidate about their personal life, they are unlikely to get it from a president about anything. George W. Bush, presidential candidate, refused to answer specific questions about his early years. ‘When I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible,’ he famously said. Candidate Bush acknowledged being a heavy drinker in the past, but declined to answer questions about whether he ever used marijuana or cocaine. … Is it any coincidence that Bush’s White House tenure is marked by a refusal to confront the truth, or tell it to the American people on a host of issues, most notably the invasion of Iraq and ongoing conflict there?” (12/16/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/35rafh
=====
43 - Strangling Gaza
Source: Common Dreams
Author: César Chelala
“It could, rightfully, be a cause of shame to the world. But the world, besieged by violence and injustice, hardly notices it. The people of Gaza, 1.4 million of them, are slowly and purposely being deprived of basic foods and medicines by the so called civilized countries in the West and there is hardly a protest. And all this happens because the people in Gaza want to be free and independent. Never mind that in the process children and innocent civilians are killed or families dispossessed.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/14/5844/
=====
44 - Resistance among the ruins
Source: CounterPunch
Author: Missy Beattie
“Almost daily, I sign an online petition. ‘Impeach Cheney.’ ‘Impeach Bush.’ ‘Act now to save the environment.’ ‘End torture.’ ‘Help hold contractors accountable.’ … Some weeks ago after hearing that Nancy Pelosi stated that she would put impeachment on the table if she received 10,000 letters via snail mail in support of impeachment, I wrote a note and deposited it at the post office. I also made calls to encourage friends and family to do the same. I later learned that Pelosi didn’t make this statement. … In the months before the invasion of Iraq, I marched in every antiwar parade in New York City. … I tried to talk my nephew out of joining the military. His father, my brother Mark, was devastated when Chase signed. Marine Lance Cpl. Chase Johnson Comley deployed in March of 2005 and was killed in August, two months before he was to return home. … I ask myself what it will take to stop George Bush and Dick Cheney from ruining the world. I must be naive. They’ve already done it. An
d those of us who keep signing petitions are small boats against the current.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://counterpunch.org/beattie12152007.html
=====
45 - The lawless surveillance state
Source: Salon
Author: Glenn Greenwald
“There are several vital points raised by the new revelations in The New York Times that ‘the N.S.A.’s reliance on telecommunications companies is broader and deeper than ever before’ and includes both pre-9/11 efforts to tap without warrants into the nation’s domestic communications network as well as the collection of vast telephone records of American citizens in the name of the War on Drugs. The Executive Branch and the largest telecommunications companies work in virtually complete secrecy — with no oversight and no notion of legal limits — to spy on Americans, on our own soil, at will. More than anything else, what these revelations highlight — yet again — is that the U.S. has become precisely the kind of surveillance state that we were always told was the hallmark of tyrannical societies, with literally no limits on the government’s ability or willingness to spy on its own citizens and to maintain vast dossiers on those activities.” (12/16/07)
Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/16/telecoms/index.html
=====
46 - The flap over Obama’s drug use
Source: Slate
Author: John Dickerson
“But wait, won’t voters blanch when they think of Obama using drugs? For some older voters, it might be an issue, and for rural Iowans, it might make Obama seem more distant from their way of life, but I think most Democratic voters won’t care. Plus, the underlying story about Obama’s drug use is one in which he looks candid and thoughtful — both in his book and when he talked about his childhood indiscretions a few weeks ago. That’s more contrast with Clinton’s trouble with voters on questions of honesty. Rudy Giuliani, no patsy when it comes to breaking the law, praised Obama for speaking so forthrightly. This serves to undermine, for now, Shaheen’s case that the GOP will some day savage Obama for his past. Perhaps the biggest benefit Obama gets from this episode is that he emerges the winner in another big public fight. Combat skills matter because Clinton has been arguing that only she can handle the GOP onslaught in the general election.” (12/15/07)
Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2180066/
=====
47 - Don’t stop believing: Romney’s swan song?
Source: Mother Jones
Author: Jonathan Stein
“Romney has bled supporters to Huckabee as the dynamics of the race have shifted. Almost completely absent from Romney’s crowds Friday were the values voters who earlier flocked to his events in admiration of his strongly conservative positions on marriage (not for gays!), family (not for single parents!), and abortion (not for anybody!). The people who remain are occasionally disdainful of those religiously oriented voters and are impressed primarily by two things: Romney’s long history of success in the private sector and his tougher-than-thou stance on illegal immigration.” (12/15/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/26fw8e
=====
48 - Are you going to pay for Bush’s wars?
Source: AlterNet
Author: Jodie Evans
“How much of your tax payment this year would you like to allocate for waterboarding in Iraq or an invasion of Iran? Around the world, people are puzzled as to why the U.S. public allows the Bush administration to wage illegal wars and usurp our power. Why do we tolerate it and continue to pay for it? Over the past year, millions of U.S. citizens have voted, lobbied, marched and taken direct action to end the war in Iraq. Courageous soldiers, such as members of Iraq Veterans Against the War, have taken the risk to speak out. Yet Congress continues to appropriate billions of dollars for the war. How do we up the ante of resistance? It is time for taxpayers who oppose this war to join together in nonviolent civil disobedience and show Congress how to cut off the funds for this war and redirect resources to the pressing needs of people.”
Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/70713/
=====
49 - Harry Reid’s FISA games
Source: Salon
Author: Glenn Greenwald
“The Senate is going to take up debate today on the new FISA bill — including the provisions for telecom amnesty and presidential surveillance powers — and Harry Reid is apparently bringing the bill to the floor (a) in precisely the way designed to help the administration’s goal of ensuring there is telecom amnesty and fewer surveillance oversight protections and (b) contrary to the way his office has been assuring everyone concerned that it would be done.” (12/14/07)
Link: http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/12/14/reid/index.html
=====
50 - Heckuva job, Bernanke!
Source: Slate
Author: Daniel Gross
“The Federal Reserve and the Federal Emergency Management Agency seem to have very little in common. One is a respected professional organization, led by highly credentialed economists, that is charged with promoting price stability and full employment. The Fed enjoyed a justly deserved reputation for responding well to man-made financial disasters in the 1990s. The other is an agency that had a reputation for responding well to natural disasters in the 1990s, but which devolved quickly into a Bush-era parking ground for third-tier political hacks. The former was led by the legendary Alan Greenspan, who bestrode the financial world of the 1990s like a colossus. The latter was led by Michael Brown, who would become legendary for bestriding the crisis-management world the way President George W. Bush rides a Segway. And yet, in seeing how the two agencies have responded to the biggest challenge they have faced in recent years — the subprime mortgage debacle for the Fed, and Hurricane
Katrina for FEMA — there seem to be certain commonalities.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2179937/
=====
51 - Mike Huckabee’s fair tax fallacies
Source: Mother Jones
Author: Niko Karvounis
“Huckabee’s IRS killer is the ‘fair tax,’ a policy idea originally thought up in the mid-1990s by the Texas-based Americans for Fair Taxation. The concept behind the fair tax is simple: abolish all federal income taxes and replace them with a national consumption (a.k.a. sales) tax that states will collect and forward to the federal government. According to Huckabee and other fair tax supporters, this setup would ensure a fair, progressive, and fiscally sustainable tax system that would foster economic growth — all while letting Americans take home 100 percent of their paychecks. These are bold promises. But behind the rhetoric, the fair tax is an uneven policy built on a slew of hidden equivocations.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2gj34y
=====
52 - Big Coal’s dirty plans for our energy future
Source: AlterNet
Author: Antrim Caskey
“Just as the American people and the world are beginning to recognize the necessity of shifting to renewable energies, Big Coal, in collusion with an out-of-step administration, is pushing their dirty fossil fuel as the solution to our nation’s energy crisis. Big Coal and its cohorts envision a ‘clean coal technology’ future fueled by liquifying and gasifying coal, capturing the carbon emissions and injecting them underground. By 2030 the West Virginia Division of Energy — a nascent state agency formed in July, 2007 — wants to oust oil and exalt coal by displacing the 1.3 billion gallons of foreign oil the state currently imports every year. … But scientists and environmentalists say ‘clean coal’ does not exist; it is a misnomer and an oxymoron.” (12/14/07)
Link: http://www.alternet.org/story/70475/
=====
53 - The USA’s human rights daze
Source: Common Dreams
Author: Norman Solomon
“The chances are slim that you saw much news coverage of Human Rights Day when it blew past the media radar — as usual — on Dec. 10. Human rights may be touted as a treasured principle in the United States, but the assessed value in medialand is apt to fluctuate widely on the basis of double standards and narrow definitions.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/12/13/5796/
=====
54 - Putin’s hold on Russia
Source: Boston Globe
Author: Cathy Young
“For American liberals who like to compare the rise of authoritarianism in Vladimir Putin’s Russia to the ‘imperial presidency’ of George W. Bush, this month’s political events in Russia — the rigged ‘elections’ in a de facto one-party system, and the emergence of Putin’s handpicked heir, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, as the next president with Putin himself the likely prime minister — should serve as a reality check. And yet Russia remains a land of paradox; amidst bleak news of democracy’s last rites, one sees small signs of hope. Even the ruling party’s landslide victory with 64 percent of the vote seems less than overwhelming, considering how unequal the contest was. United Russia hogged close to 100 percent of the media coverage and the campaign publicity. Most of the opposition parties were kept off the ballot through the manipulation of election laws; the ones permitted to run were barely allowed to campaign.” (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2x4xfo
=====
55 - The Plutocrats vs. the Theocrats
Source: The American Prospect
Author: Paul Waldman
“After months of tedium and mindless chest-thumping, the race for the Republican presidential nomination finally got interesting over the last couple of weeks. And the way it did so highlights the fundamental rift threatening the future of the GOP: It’s the plutocrats versus the theocrats, and at the moment it’s hard to tell who’s going to win. Try to imagine the combination of pain and dread now covering the Mitt Romney campaign like a wet wool blanket. After all the work, after all the enthusiastic pandering, after outspending his opponents by millions, after the months in which he was the only candidate airing ads in Iowa, his support there turned out to be a mile wide and an inch deep. At the first opportunity, the social conservatives whose feet he had kissed with such commitment wandered away from his gleaming campaign and over to that smooth-talking preacher setting up folding chairs in his bare-bones storefront.” [editor’s note: Fascinating how Mr. Waldman manages, once aga
in, to draw his lines between two essentially similar “wings” (both autocratic) of the GOP … while not even giving a passing thought to the only exception to either one. Hard to believe it’s unintentional - SAT] (12/13/07)
Link: http://tinyurl.com/2mmbaa
Until next week ...
Peace, Love and Liberty
Steve Trinward, Editor