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them.ws

No more feeds
No more feeds. Download the soruce code here http://them.ws/stuff/tmp/feeds.zip

You'll need to create a database table for this to work properly. The required SQL commands are in themws_rss.sql. Open that in a text editor and and copy the command and run it in PhpMyAdmin in a database. Then in config.php edit the three variables $usr, $pwd and $db with the MySQL username, MySQL user password and the MySQL database where you created the rssfeeds table.

The Nation: All Weblogs

The Notion: George Will-ful Blushes
by The Nation
2 Dec 2009 at 3:25pm

Ever since Barack Obama's inauguration, progressives have been able to point to one segment of the traditional media that consistently bears witness to the depth of change implied by the Democratic landslide: the chastened demeanor of George Will on ABC's 'This Week with George Stephanopoulos'. Particularly obvious whenever Nobel Prize-winning economist and 'New York Times' columnist Paul Krugman is on hand to call Will on his donnish prevarications, the change has nonetheless been unmistakable over time and provided the show's real "Sunday Funnies" for lots of us, as this clip from Stephen Colbert last month makes clear:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cGeorge Will's Long Tiewww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorU.S. Speedskating

Of course, chipping away at Will's certitude is intrinsically funny because of his magisterial, always unsmiling manner--it's like teasing a pinched and grumpy-looking hedgehog with a sharp stick.

The official unemployment rate of 10.2 percent is the worst in a quarter century.

The real unemployment rate of 17.5 percent -- the Department of Labor figure that includes the long-term unemployed and the seriously under-employed -- is edging toward Depression-era levels.

In several regions of the United States -- Michigan, parts of Ohio and Indiana, stretches of New England and the rural south, historically depressed urban areas -- the jobless figures are so acute that they have become the definitional social, economic and political concern.

Is he lying to us? When President Obama talks about withdrawing US forces from Afghanistan in July, 2011, does he mean it? Or is that a clever ruse in order to blunt criticism from the left, and from congressional Democrats, of his decision to escalate the war?

Personally, I'm willing to take him at his word. Why? Because Obama is doing in Afghanistan exactly what he said he'd do during the campaign, after his election, and after taking office. And I don't think he's doing it primarily for political reasons, either. Having had lengthy discussions with many, perhaps most, of Obama's advisers on Afghanistan and Pakistan over the past two years, it's clear to me that those adivsers believe passionately that vital US interests are at stake in that conflict. It's no surprise that they've convinced Obama, too.

That's not to say that Obama, before last night's speech, wasn't under intense political pressure to jack up the war. The generals, especially David Petraeus, the Centcom commander, and Stanley McChrystal, the commander in Afghanistan, made no bones about what they wanted, and it was clear that Petraeus and McChrystal weren't shy about making common cause with the Republicans and the neoconservatives. And plenty of hawkish Democrats, including the ever-reliable Representative Ike Skelton, felt the same way. It's tempting to argue that Obama could have faced all of them down had he decided to draw down US forces, but that he lacked the political courage. After reviewing all of the evidence, I don't agree that the president was acting out of a lack of courage. I think that his decision to surge US forces in Afghanistan reflects a mature, considered decision on his part to do what he thinks is the right thing. (Unfortunately, it's wrong.)

President Obama delivered a carefully-constructed and nuanced call Tuesday night for the extension of the U.S. occupation of Afghanistan. Obama came to the wrong conclusion about a military adventure that should be coming to a conclusion, rather than ramping up. But Obama's attempt to find a middle ground between anti-war forces and supporters of a Iraq-style occupation at least recognized that the debate over Afghanistan has many sides and many players.

At times, Obama seemed so tortured in his attempt to placate both those who want to send more troops (he's dispatching an additional 30,000) and those who want a bring-the-troops-home exit strategy (he says they will start coming home in 2011) that his speech had the ring of Greek tragedy – or, perhaps, "fall of the Roman Empire" history.

Unfortunately, there has been nothing artful about the media coverage of Obama's speech.

I was in a pew at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, Illinois, on September 16, 2001. Although I was never a member of this now infamous congregation, I did attend Trinity regularly during the seven years I lived and worked in Chicago.

September 16, 2001 was the first Sunday after the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York City and Washington, DC. On that Sunday Reverend Jeremiah Wright preached a sermon whose often-distorted excerpts became fodder for attack on candidate Barack Obama. Most people in America remember it as the "Chickens Coming Home to Roost" sermon.

For me, Wright's sermon on that Sunday will always be the sermon of Psalm 137.

When Barack Obama gave his victory speech on election night last November, he picked Chicago's Grant Park – the legendary site of the battle between anti-war demonstrators and Chicago cops during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. According to campaign manager David Axelrod, Obama chose Grant Park to "symbolically overcome the damage done to American idealism forty years before."

In 1968, Grant Park had dramatized the fratricidal split between Democrats over Vietnam. On the night of Nov. 4, 2008, Obama was suggesting all that had come to an end. The party was united and victorious.

But Obama's speech tonight at West Point, announcing the escalation of the American war in Afghanistan, raised anew the specter of Grant Park in 1968. Once again a Democratic president is making a deeper commitment to an unwinnable war.

In advance of the president's jobs summit, economist Paul Krugman is finally calling for government job-creation.

"It's time for at least a small-scale version of the New Deal's Works Progress Administration" writes Krugman. He says it "would offer relatively low-paying (but much better than nothing) public-service employment."

That's probably not what the Obama administration has in mind. They and Congress seem set instead on relying on the private sector and re-asserting Democrats' fiscal conservative bona fides before next year's vote.

White House officials announced yesterday that President Obama has decided to deploy 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan within the next six months, nearly tripling the American military presence in Afghanistan that the president inherited when he took office. Obama will explain his decision in a much-hyped address at West Point tonight.

This seems crazy to me. Can't see how it can possibly end well. To cite Malalai Joya, the youngest woman elected to the Afghan Parliament , writing recently in 'The Guardian', "by installing warlords and drug traffickers in power in Kabul, the US and Nato have pushed us from the frying pan to the fire. Now Obama is pouring fuel on these flames, and this week's announcement of upwards of 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan will have tragic consequences."

If you agree with Joya, as I do, there are a range of groups trying to build peace and security in Afghanistan. .

AlterNet Blogs: Speakeasy

41 Senators Support Public Option Amid Wacky Washington Antics
by Tikkun Daily
11 Mar 2010 at 9:22pm
By Lauren Reichelt. Crossposted from Tikkun Daily. The delightfully wacky HCR (Health Care Reform) circus caravan rolls on. As of March 11, 41 Senators had either signed or issued statements of support for a letter to Harry Reid initiated by Alan Grayson and the PCCC urging passage of the Public Option through reconciliation. For [...]
Does Fighting Obesity Also Mean Fighting Corporations? So it Seems
by Marion Nestle
11 Mar 2010 at 7:57pm
This post first appeared on Food Politics. Corporations go to a lot of trouble to neutralize potential critics.   Recent examples: two co-optations (McDonald?s alliance with Weight Watchers and PepsiCo?s with the Yale School of Medicine) and one aggression (Disney?s forced expulsion of the Center for Commercial-Free Childhood from Harvard). Co-optation is the winning over or neutralization of [...]
President Meets With Pro-Reform Advocates On Immigration
by Douglas Rivlin
11 Mar 2010 at 7:00pm
The first of the President?s three meetings today on immigration is in the books, and this one was a little unexpected. This afternoon at the White House, a group of pro-reform immigrant advocates were slated to meet with senior White House staff regarding the need for immigration reform, but the President showed up to [...]
Grayson Piles Up Another 40 Co-Sponsors for Medicare Buy-In Bill
by chrisbowers
11 Mar 2010 at 5:50pm
This post was originally published on Open Left. In just two days, Alan Grayson has piled up 50 co-sponsors to his Medicare buy-in bill, which is designed as a stand-alone bill rather than as an amendment to the health reform bill.  Here is the complete list of 50 co-sponsors: 50 CURRENT COSPONSORS : Bob Filner, Jan Schakowsky, [...]
Glenn Beck Thinks Jesus Was a Nazi Communist?
by Tana Ganeva
11 Mar 2010 at 3:55pm
Last week, Glenn Beck introduced his listeners to a previously overlooked menace: nazi, communist Christians. You know, the ones who’ve forsaken all the worthwhile parts of religion, like sexual shaming, violence and prejudice, and embraced its most pernicious aspect: helping the needy. “I beg you, look for the words ’social justice’ or ‘economic justice’ on your [...]
Bernie Sanders to Introduce Public Option Amendment
by Daniela Perdomo
11 Mar 2010 at 3:39pm
My man Bernie Sanders, the “Socialist” from Vermont, has committed himself to doing what no other senator on the Hill will do. Sanders confirmed today that he will introduce a public option amendment during the health care bill reconciliation debate. Greg Sargent at the Plum Line blog, who spoke directly to the senator, explains why this could [...]
Latest Conservative B.S.: Immigration?s Bad for the Environment
by RaceWire
11 Mar 2010 at 2:23pm
Originally posted on RaceWire By Jamilah King As the immigration reform debate heats up on Capitol Hill, right wing opponents are uping the ante with sensationalist and factually inaccurate claims. The latest? Immigration increases the country?s ecological footprint. This latest claim came as part of a new report released by Progressives for Immigration Reform (PFIR), an alleged front [...]
Job Creation Begins at Home
by greenforall
11 Mar 2010 at 2:19pm
By Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins, CEO, Green For All Originally published on TheRoot.com Today the Senate Energy Committee will begin debating a weatherization bill known as Home Star that aims to make American homes more energy efficient, while creating thousands of American jobs in the process. Home Star has the potential to significantly reduce residential energy consumption, saving consumers [...]

Democracy Now!

Legal Scholar Michelle Alexander on "The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in ...
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
11 Mar 2010 at 8:47am
A new book by legal scholar and civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander argues that although Jim Crow laws have been eliminated, the racial caste system it set up was not eradicated. It's simply been redesigned, and now racial control functions through the criminal justice system. [includes rush transcript]
Doris "Granny D" Haddock (1910-2010): Remembering Legendary Campaign Finance ...
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
11 Mar 2010 at 8:36am
Doris "Granny D" Haddock, one of the leading fighters for campaign finance reform in the United States, died on Tuesday at the age of 100. In 1999, just shy of her ninetieth birthday, Granny D walked 3,200 miles across the country to promote campaign finance reform. She is widely credited for galvanizing the public support that helped pass the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform Act in 2002. We replay an excerpt of a 2004 interview with Granny D in the midst of her campaign for the US Senate against New Hampshire incumbent Judd Gregg. [includes rush transcript]
Rep. Dennis Kucinich Takes on Democratic Leaders with Insistence on Public Op...
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
11 Mar 2010 at 8:13am
Democratic Rep. Dennis Kucinich joins us to discuss two House debates in which he's played a central role this week. The Ohio Democrat is threatening to vote against his party's healthcare reform package because it does not contain a robust public option. Meanwhile, Kucinich's bill to force the withdrawal of all US troops from Afghanistan was taken up on Wednesday. After a rare three-and-a-half-hour debate on the war, the majority of House Democrats joined with Republicans to defeat the measure. [includes rush transcript]
Headlines for March 11, 2010
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
11 Mar 2010 at 8:00am
PA Rejects Talks with Israel in Settlement Row, Report: Israel Plans 50,000 New Units in West Bank, Civil Trial Begins over Israeli Army Killing of Rachel Corrie, Gates Pledges Weapons Aid to Saudi Arabia, Préval: US Lawmakers Rejecting Direct Aid to Haitian Gov't, Burma Bars Political Opponents from Elections, Labor Dept: Unemployment Increases in 30 States, Senate OKs $138B Jobs Measure, Proposed Consumer Agency Won't Regulate Major Lenders, White House Faces Opposition to Overhauling Student Loans, Dems to Bar Federal Earmarks for Corporations, Judge Instructs Fed Agencies to Resume ACORN Funding, Kansas City Announces Major School Closures, Layoffs, UN Rapporteur: Obama Admin Should Probe Torture, State Dept. Awards 10 with International Women of Courage Award
7 Years After Killing, Family of Slain US Peace Activist Rachel Corrie Heads ...
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
10 Mar 2010 at 8:10am
Rachel Corrie, a twenty-three-year-old student from Evergreen College in Olympia, Washington, was crushed to death by an Israeli army bulldozer in Gaza seven years ago as she stood before a Palestinian home facing demolition. Today, a trial opens in Israel in a lawsuit brought by Corrie's family against the Israeli government. The eyewitness testimony is expected to challenge Israel's version of events with evidence that she was clearly visible to the soldiers, standing before the bulldozer in her florescent orange jacket. We spend the hour with Rachel Corrie's family: her father Craig, her mother Cindy, and her sister Sarah. [includes rush transcript]
Headlines for March 10, 2010
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
10 Mar 2010 at 8:00am
Israel Announces Major Settlement Expansion Amid Biden Visit, NY Activists Protest Israeli Military Chief, Préval in US Ahead of Aid Request, EU: Climate Proposals Could Increase Emissions, India Advances Historic Measure on Women Lawmakers, Ex-UK Intel Chief: US Misled Allies on Treatment of Prisoners, Thousands Protest Insurers in DC , Utah Gov. Signs Anti-Abortion Measure, Study: Number of US Millionaires Increased 16% in 2009, Bank of America to End Overdraft Fees on Debit Purchases, 1st Gay Marriages Performed in DC, Veteran Activist Doris "Granny D" Haddock Dies at 100
105,000 Tattoos: Iraqi Artist Wafaa Bilal Turns His Own Body into a Canvas to...
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
9 Mar 2010 at 8:37am
The official death toll from the war is 100,000, but it is widely estimated to be much higher, perhaps even as high as one million. In his latest piece of artwork, Iraqi American artist Wafaa Bilal tries to grapple with the enormity of these numbers. It's a twenty-four-hour live tattooing performance called "...and Counting" that began at the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts gallery in New York Monday night. By tonight Bilal's back will be tattooed with the names of Iraqi cities, 5,000 red dots representing dead American soldiers and 100,000 dots in invisible ink representing the official death toll for Iraqis. The dots representing the Iraqi death toll will only be visible under ultraviolet light. [includes rush transcript]
The Real Climategate: Conservation Groups Align with World's Worst Polluters
by mail@democracynow.org (Democracy Now!)
9 Mar 2010 at 8:12am
Major environmental groups are coming under criticism from within their own ranks for taking positions that some say are antithetical to their stated missions of saving the planet. In the latest issue of The Nation magazine, the British journalist Johann Hari writes, "As we confront the biggest ecological crisis in human history, many of the green organizations meant to be leading the fight are busy shoveling up hard cash from the world's worst polluters -- and burying science-based environmentalism in return?In the middle of a swirl of bogus climate scandals trumped up by deniers, here is the real Climategate." [includes rush transcript]

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MoJo Articles | Mother Jones

Brodner's Cartoon du Jour: Who?s Afraid of Liz and Dick?
by Steve Brodner
11 Mar 2010 at 2:28pm

Even staunch conservatives lately have been calling Liz Cheney out for going too far: calling the DOJ the "Department of Jihad" for having the poor judgment to provide legal defense to Gitmo prisoners. (So much easier to just drown them.) Ken Starr and Lindsay Graham have been trying to distance themselves from the Cheneys, explaining that legal representation is an essential part of the US criminal justice system. I remember Liz and Dick in that brilliant film version of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" They played a twisted, foul-mouthed couple in a spectacular insult marathon. You can't look...and you can't look away.

This cartoon requires Macromedia's Flash Player. If you don't see the cartoon above, download the player here.

Mark Fiore is an editorial cartoonist and animator whose work has appeared in the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Examiner, and dozens of other publications. He is an active member of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists, and has a web site featuring his work.

On the afternoon of September 24, 2009, Pennsylvania State Troopers, their guns drawn, broke down the door of room 238 of the CareFree Inn on the outskirts of Pittsburgh. The troopers were acting on a search warrant related to protests planned for the G20 summit—a meeting of the heads of state of the world's major economies. Thousands of protesters had descended on the city, presenting demands ranging from curbs on carbon emissions to the outright abolition of capitalism.

Anticipating hordes of black-masked, Starbucks-smashing anarchists, the Pittsburgh police and the Secret Service coordinated nearly 4,000 law enforcement officers, outfitting them with the latest in riot-dispersal technology. Crowds marching on the summit were met with pepper spray, stun grenades, and—for the first time on US soil—acoustic cannons that blast painful sounds as far as 1,000 feet. But the protesters had their own crowd-control methods, and that's what had brought the state troopers to the CareFree Inn.

What they found when they broke down the door were a couple of middle-aged housemates from Queens, New York. Elliott Madison sat at a desk with a laptop and a cell phone. A police scanner lay nearby. Michael Wallschlaeger was at the minifridge grabbing some hummus when the police rushed in. According to the criminal complaint filed against them, the two men had been "communicating with various protestors, and protest groups...[via] internet based communications, more commonly known as 'Twitter'. The observed 'Twitter' communications were noted to be relevant to the direction of the movement of the Protestors...in order to avoid apprehension..."

Continue Reading »

This story first appeared on the ProPublica website.

The Supreme Court recently freed corporations to spend more money on aggressive election ads. But if businesses take advantage of this new freedom, the public probably won't know it, because it's easy for them to legally hide their political spending.

Under current disclosure laws for federal elections, it's virtually impossible for the public to track how much a business spends, what it's spending on, or who ultimately benefits. Experts say the transparency problem extends to state and local races as well.

"There is no good way to gauge" how much any given company spends on elections, said Karl Sandstrom, a former vice chairman of the Federal Election Commission and counsel to the Center for Political Accountability. "There's no central collection of the information, no monitoring."

Companies invest in politics to win favorable regulations or block those "that could choke off their business model," said Robert Kelner, chairman of Covington & Burling's Washington, D.C., political law group. But they'd rather hide these political activities, he said, because they fear backlash from customers or shareholders.

Continue Reading »

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Hubris? We're bigger than that! 

We've now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years. Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad. And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded? In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better. In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us. After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they've done best in recent years: cut one another's throats?

Modesty in Washington? Humility? The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience? None of the above is evidently appropriate for "the indispensable nation," as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to "see further into the future." None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington's weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

Continue Reading »

The Justice Department report released last month on the crafting of the so-called torture memos contained a number of eyebrow-raising revelations—but none perhaps as intriguing as the disclosure that many of John Yoo's emails had been irretrievably destroyed. Given that the former Justice Department political appointee played a key role in composing the legal rationale for the Bush administration's use of brutal interrogation tactics, this seemed suspicious, and Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and others have pressed the agency to investigate. But Yoo has brushed aside concerns about his emails, and he has criticized those raising questions about the lost messages—including Leahy and Justice Department investigators—for their weak grasp on the "basics of intelligence." Yoo's own explanation for the missing emails, though, doesn't add up, and experts on government archiving and recordkeeping practices say his comments are misleading, if not "nonsensical."

Continue Reading »

In early March, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) dropped some surprising news: The effort to tackle global warming via a cap-and-trade scheme is officially "dead." Graham, John Kerry (D-Mass.), and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) will soon release details of an alternative plan for a bill to curb carbon emissions, which is expected to cobble together policy proposals from various lawmakers in the hopes of picking up a filibuster-proof 60 supporters. So, where does that leave the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade legislation that squeaked through the House last summer by a single vote after months of convoluted dealmaking? No one really knows—and some House Democrats are none too happy about the Senate's change of direction.

For almost a decade, cap and trade has been viewed as the approach with the best shot of making it into law. The idea is that the government imposes a cap on polluters, and those companies who emit too much can buy permits from companies that produce less than their limit. Nearly a year ago, Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) introduced legislation to the House that sought to enact such a system. Months of torturous negotiations followed, in which major energy interests scrambled to grab a piece of the pie.

Continue Reading »

This story first appeared on the TomDispatch website.

Ever since Barack Obama lifted his right hand and took his oath of office, pledging to serve the United States as its 44th president, ordinary people and their leaders around the globe have been celebrating our nation's "triumph over race." Obama's election has been touted as the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow, the bookend placed on the history of racial caste in America.

Obama's mere presence in the Oval Office is offered as proof that "the land of the free" has finally made good on its promise of equality. There's an implicit yet undeniable message embedded in his appearance on the world stage: this is what freedom looks like; this is what democracy can do for you. If you are poor, marginalized, or relegated to an inferior caste, there is hope for you. Trust us. Trust our rules, laws, customs, and wars. You, too, can get to the promised land.

Perhaps greater lies have been told in the past century, but they can be counted on one hand. Racial caste is alive and well in America.

Most people don't like it when I say this. It makes them angry. In the "era of colorblindness" there's a nearly fanatical desire to cling to the myth that we as a nation have "moved beyond" race. Here are a few facts that run counter to that triumphant racial narrative:

Continue Reading »

them.ws

No more feeds
No more feeds. Download the soruce code here http://them.ws/stuff/tmp/feeds.zip

You'll need to create a database table for this to work properly. The required SQL commands are in themws_rss.sql. Open that in a text editor and and copy the command and run it in PhpMyAdmin in a database. Then in config.php edit the three variables $usr, $pwd and $db with the MySQL username, MySQL user password and the MySQL database where you created the rssfeeds table.

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them.ws

No more feeds
No more feeds. Download the soruce code here http://them.ws/stuff/tmp/feeds.zip

You'll need to create a database table for this to work properly. The required SQL commands are in themws_rss.sql. Open that in a text editor and and copy the command and run it in PhpMyAdmin in a database. Then in config.php edit the three variables $usr, $pwd and $db with the MySQL username, MySQL user password and the MySQL database where you created the rssfeeds table.

WorkingForChange

FAQ: Petraeus' testimony
by Will Durst
14 Sep 2007 at 4:00pm
Frequently asked questions about the General's congressional testimony
Republicans gone wild 2!
by Will Durst
31 Aug 2007 at 12:40pm
The most crazed, sexed up elected official footage ever accumulated
Rove bye bye
by Will Durst
23 Aug 2007 at 1:10pm
President's strategist to spend more time lying to his family
Me. Me. Me. Me. Me.
by Will Durst
15 Aug 2007 at 8:05pm
State-sponsored selfishness steals spotlight in Decision '08
Between the fringes
by Will Durst
2 Aug 2007 at 7:00pm
The center's still here, but all anybody hears is right and left
Skooter skates
by Will Durst
13 Jul 2007 at 6:40pm
Dubya deems Libby sentence 'excessive'
Boss Dick
by Will Durst
3 Jul 2007 at 2:50pm
Vice President Cheney reports to no one, and we should be glad
Darting squirters
by Will Durst
20 Jun 2007 at 12:20am
Bush eschews 'quagmire,' but when it rains it pours

In These Times

The Tax War Goes Online
by David Sirota
12 Mar 2010 at 5:00am
Is the Internet everywhere or is it nowhere? This question will strike many readers as a navel-gazing exercise in post-modern existential inquiry, prompting reflections on the 21st-century meaning of location (is an IP address really an address?) and space (is cyberspace actually "space"?). But thanks to Amazon.com, it's become a question about more concrete and imminent issues like budget deficits and tax fairness. Following a 70 percent earnings increase last quarter, the company this week terminated its business relationships with its Colorado affiliates. The move was a response to new Colorado legislation compelling online retailers to either collect the sales taxes that every other business collects, or at least disclose that customers must pay the levy to the state themselves. The bill was pragmatic, seeking to raise much-needed revenues as Colorado's infrastructure and schools buckle under a $2 billion budget shortfall. But Amazon, indifferent to such emergencies, reacted with punitive petulance, sending a deliberate message to lawmakers in every other state: Make us play by the same tax rules as other businesses, and your state will be punished, too. The company, you see, fears that most capitalist of principles: fair competition. It instead relies on a rigged market. Despite the?
Back Then in Baghdad ... And Now?
by Idious Buguise
10 Mar 2010 at 5:00am
Back then. way before all this bloodshed and carnage and butchery. When there were no sirens and riots and bombs, and the lipsticked, powdered, mascaraed and coiffed women sauntered down pavements on bright red stilettos and the men came up to me, grabbed my elbow and demanded to escort me across busy intersections, I wandered the avenues and alleys and cul de sacs and shopped in the souk and ate late cream- and sugar-heavy breakfasts with the civil servants in brightly lit, music-booming cafes and sat by the Tigris and watched young Iraqis flying kites and old Iraqis reading newspapers and discussing the local and national politics and listened to the "English TV News for Foreigners." Back then. Way before rape and kidnap and sniping were commonplace. Back in 1977 and the world was full of disco and Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Amnesty International won the Nobel Peace Prize and Jimmy Carter pardoned draft evaders and Anwar Sadat visited Jerusalem. It was different. "Alluh Akbar" resounded through the city. This magical, mystical, musical plea called the faithful to prayer. It reminded the unfaithful that there was an order, a schedule that must be obeyed. Baghdad was an?
Sorry, Rove, Bush Did Lie About Iraq
by Robert Parry
9 Mar 2010 at 5:00am
George W. Bush’s political adviser Karl Rove claims “one of the biggest mistakes” of that presidency was not aggressively challenging critics who charged that Bush “lied” to the American people about the reasons for the Iraq War, an accusation that Rove insists was false and unfair. In his forthcoming book, Courage and Consequence, Rove calls the “lie” charge “a poison-tipped dagger aimed at the heart of the Bush presidency” and blames himself for “a weak response” that underestimated “how damaging this assault was.” But the problem with Rove’s account is that not only did Bush oversee the twisting of intelligence to justify invading Iraq in March 2003 but he subsequently lied – and lied repeatedly – about how Iraq had responded to United Nations inspection demands. So, while it may be impossible to say for certain what Bush believed about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction, it can’t be argued that Bush didn’t know that Iraq declared that it had destroyed its WMD stockpiles and let U.N. inspectors in to see for themselves in the months before the invasion. Nevertheless, Bush followed up his false pre-war claims about Iraq’s WMD with a post-invasion insistence that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had?
Arabia Infelix: ‘Unfortunate’ Yemen
by George Kenney
8 Mar 2010 at 11:00am
For those flummoxed by the Middle East's latest perceived hot spot, James Spencer offers a rare blend of knowledge and experience. The director of research and analysis at the British firm Scymitar Consulting, and a retired infantry officer in the British Army, he has extensive experience in all aspects of low-intensity conflict and the wider Middle East/Islamic Africa region as both a practitioner and an analyst. He holds degrees in both Arabic and international relations and has studied and lived in Yemen. He is a member of the British Yemeni Society. There are conflicting views of what is happening in Yemen. Armchair strategists go on about the Shi'a-Sunni divide and the Northern rebels, but former U.S. Ambassador Edmund J. Hull argues that this is not important. Is he right? He's entirely right. The Shi'a in Yemen are called Zaydis. They're not like the Iraqi Shi'a or the Iranian Shi'a. They are very conservative, with a small c, very traditional and sort of dour. I compare them to Highland Scotsmen. The fascinating thing about them is that like the Highlanders, there is not that much money to be made in the Highlands, in the mountains. So many of the second sons?
The Senate’s Lesson About Democracy
by David Sirota
5 Mar 2010 at 11:00am
When you look past the craziness, chaos and confusion of politics these days, you still find roughly two major schools of thought that aim to explain What's Fundamentally Wrong. The first says America is paralyzed by a political system that is too democratic -- too responsive to citizens' whims. This is the religion of almost everyone in the permanent Washington elite, regardless of party. Its canon mixing paeans to noblesse oblige with shrill authoritarianism is most clearly articulated by high priests like The Washington Post's David Broder and The New York Times' Tom Friedman. The former has said democracy threatens to make "official Washington altogether too responsive to public opinion"; the latter dreams of Chinese-style dictatorship. "One-party autocracy certainly has its drawbacks. But when it is led by a reasonably enlightened group of people, as China is today, it can also have great advantages," Friedman recently gushed, adding that the chief ?advantage? is the ability of despots to "just impose" policies at the barrel of a gun. By contrast, most people living outside of Washington (i.e., the Rest of Us) see America harmed by a political system that is too undemocratic -- too controlled by moneyed interests, unaccountable lawmakers and?
The Rainmakers
by Beau Hodai
5 Mar 2010 at 11:00am
The sleepy town of Hardin, Mont., began its foray into the private prison industry in 2004, an adventure that would eventually saddle it with millions in debt and an empty, 464-bed prison collecting dust at the edge of town. It all started when James Parkey, the founder, owner and president of Texas-based Corplan Corrections, met with then-Montana Gov. Judy Martz (R) at Las Vegas McCarran International Airport while Martz was en route to the Western Governors Association meeting in Santa Fe, N.M. Since the 1980s, Parkey's company has developed 33 private jails or detention centers in New Mexico, Texas, Idaho, Louisiana and Colorado. Corplan's fortunes, along with those of private-prison giants Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut), date back to the "tough-on-crime" legislation of the '80s and '90s, when mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines pushed the U.S. prison population up to about 2.5 million--an 800 percent increase over the number of people incarcerated in 1970, the year before the commencement of Nixon's War on Drugs. But with the prison population leveling out and more states facing budgetary crises, lawmakers have questioned the wisdom of stiff sentencing guidelines. Consequently, the private-prison industry has moved onto the greener pastures?
Palestine Revisited
by Kristian Williams
3 Mar 2010 at 10:59am
Joe Sacco has spent his career covering war zones--Palestine, Bosnia, Iraq. But unlike most war correspondents, his dispatches arrive in the form of comics. Sacco uses cartoon renderings of the people he interviews, along with meticulously detailed background scenes, as the vehicle for his striking style of journalism. In his latest book, Footnotes in Gaza, Sacco returns to the Middle East to investigate two incidents that took place decades ago, during the Suez Crisis of 1956. The first incident is a massacre of 275 Palestinian men by Israeli forces at Khan Younis. The story is deceptively straightforward: The soldiers shot the men in their homes or dragged them into the street, lined them up against a wall, and shot them. The second story is far more complex. During an anti-guerilla operation, the Israeli military entered the border town of Rafah and ordered all the men to appear at a nearby school. They held the men there, surrounded by soldiers and concertina wire, and questioned them for the greater part of the day, hoping to identify militants hiding among the population. At the same time, patrols searched the rest of the town, looking for arms or men (presumably enemies) who had?
Corporations are People Too
by Ben Manski and Lisa Graves
2 Mar 2010 at 11:00am
In Citizens United v. FEC, five justices on the U.S. Supreme Court have decided that corporations are free to invest in the outcomes of elections, and that the federal government must shelter them against the will of the people. As far as those five justices are concerned, their decision is final. It is not. There is a higher authority on whose bench every U.S. citizen serves: We the People. The Constitution is our national charter and belongs in our stewardship; the courts, corporations, and all the instruments of government must give way to the American people. The Citizens United majority clothed its decision in the language of our First Amendment: Corporations belong to a class of "disadvantaged persons" entitled to free speech rights. The use of the word "person" could not have been more deliberate. The purpose of our Constitution "is to keep the government off the backs of the people," according to the great 20th century defender of free speech, Justice William O. Douglas. When corporations are accorded the rights as people, they cross into a realm the government may not easily enter. Justice John Paul Stevens took the majority to task for its false revisionism, writing for the?

Daily Kos

Open Thread for Night Owls: Afghanistan
by Meteor Blades
12 Mar 2010 at 12:06am

Tom Engelhardt writes Premature Withdrawal: Washington’s Cult of Narcissism and Iraq:

We’ve now been at war with, or in, Iraq for almost 20 years, and intermittently at war in Afghanistan for 30 years.  Think of it as nearly half a century of experience, all bad.  And what is it that Washington seems to have concluded?  In Afghanistan, where one disaster after another has occurred, that we Americans can finally do more of the same, somewhat differently calibrated, and so much better.  In Iraq, where we had, it seemed, decided that enough was enough and we should simply depart, the calls from a familiar crew for us to stay are growing louder by the week.    

The Iraqis, so the argument goes, need us.  After all, who would leave them alone, trusting them not to do what they’ve done best in recent years: cut one another’s throats?    

Modesty in Washington?  Humility?  The ability to draw new lessons from long-term experience?  None of the above is evidently appropriate for "the indispensable nation," as former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright once called the United States, and to whose leaders she attributed the ability to "see further into the future."  None of the above is part of the American arsenal, not when Washington’s weapon of choice, repeatedly consigned to the scrapheap of history and repeatedly rescued, remains a deep conviction that nothing is going to go anything but truly, deeply, madly badly without us, even if, as in Iraq, things have for years gone truly, deeply, madly badly with us.

An expanding crew of Washington-based opiners are now calling for the Obama administration to alter its plans, negotiated in the last months of the Bush administration, for the departure of all American troops from Iraq by the end of 2011.  They seem to have taken Albright’s belief in American foresight -- even prophesy -- to heart and so are basing their arguments on their ability to divine the future.

The problem, it seems, is that, whatever may be happening in the present, Iraq’s future prospects are terrifying, making leaving, if not inconceivable, then as massively irresponsible (as former Washington Post correspondent and bestselling author Tom Ricks wrote recently in a New York Times op-ed) as invading in the first place.  Without the U.S. military on hand, we’re told, the Iraqis will almost certainly deep-six democracy, while devolving into major civil violence and ethnic bloodletting, possibly of the sort that convulsed their country in 2005-2006 when, by the way, the U.S. military was present in force. ...

In Iraq, only one thing is really known: after our invasion and with U.S. and allied troops occupying the country in significant numbers, the Iraqis did descend into the charnel house of history, into a monumental bloodbath.  It happened in our presence, on our watch, and in significant part thanks to us.

But why should the historical record -- the only thing we can, in part, rely on -- be taken into account when our pundits and strategists have such privileged access to an otherwise unknown future?  In the year to come, based on what we’re seeing now, such arguments may intensify.  Terrible prophesies about Iraq’s future without us may multiply.  And make no mistake, terrible things could indeed happen in Iraq.  They could happen while we are there.  They could happen with us gone.  But history delivers its surprises more regularly than we imagine -- even in Iraq.

In the meantime, it’s worth keeping in mind that not even Americans can occupy the future.  It belongs to no one.

• • • • •

At Daily Kos on this date in 2006:

Until recently, Claude Allen was the Assistant to the President of the United States for Domestic Policy. Allen is, or was, one of the darlings of the religious right led by the likes of James Dobson and his Focus on the Family. Allen was a big abstinence only crusader and led several assaults on AIDS service organizations as well. This paragon of moral values was recruited by Karl Rove. A couple of days ago, Claude Allen was arrested in connection with a massive shoplifter and refund operation.

Tonight's Rescue is brought to you by Got a Grip, ItsJessMe, jlms qkw, Shayera, watercarrier4diogenes, and YatPundit, with ybruti editing.

terryhallinan examines a couple of vehicles powered by heaping piles of...various stuff...in Biomass Is Developing A Head of Steam. (YatPundit)

hiphoplawyers outlines how corporate influence has led to a culture of Legal Abandon: How Corporate Tort Reform Trashed the Economy. (Got a Grip)

BorderJumpers tells us about someone who is one of only five opposition voices in a country of thirteen million people, in In Zimbabwe, the Voice of the Worker. (ItsJessMe)

otto shares the joy of identifying what he loves and then doing it in Teaching is my Life and My Job. (Got a Grip)

rturner229 shares A tribute to a middle school principal. (shayera)

MsSpentyouth describes a conversation with a health care consultant, in Q: "Who's your medical provider?" A: Schrödinger's Cat. (ItsJessMe)

veritas curat ponders the cost of our societal bent toward greed and instant gratification as it pertains to Justice and Population Biology. (Got a Grip)

In response to veritas curat's diary, vahana unites some hard realities and their possible solutions in "Justice and Population Biology" and HCR. (jlms qkw)

jotter has High Impact Diaries: March 10, 2010.

IrishPatti has tonight's Top Comments Attack of Insomnia Edition.

Please join us in this open thread by suggesting your own favorite diaries from today and sharing the latest news.

Disgusting:

Glaad reports that sponsors have “refused to allow” American figure skater Johnny Weir to join the Stars on Ice Tour because they deemed him “not family friendly.” While Weir — a three-time national champion — has never “officially announced his sexual orientation, he has garnered a significant amount of LGBT fans” and is also known for his flashy costumes. Weir won an online poll that asked fans who they wanted to see in the tour, but Stars on Ice seems to have barred him because of his “perceived sexual orientation”.

And as is so often the case, bigoted homophobes wouldn't know family-friendly if it bit them on the ass:

To say that Weir is “not family friendly” would be a clear jab at his perceived sexual orientation. Weir is extremely involved with his family. He is putting his younger brother through college, and supports the family financially because his father’s disability prohibits him from working. Weir’s dedication to his family can be clearly documented in the Sundance series, Be Good Johnny Weir, which follows him and his family and friends through his life and career as a championship skater.

In case you missed it, the Bunning travesty of last week ended relatively happily yesterday, at least in the big picture of Senate battles.

The Senate approved $140 billion in extended tax breaks and unemployment benefits on Wednesday in a largely partisan vote.

The bill was approved on a 62-36 vote, with six Republicans joining most Democrats in backing it....

Most of the cost in the bill approved by the Senate goes toward prolonging increased levels of federal unemployment aid and COBRA healthcare benefits for the jobless through the end of December. The cost of those extensions is about $80 billion.

The House has some issues with this bill, namely that it doesn't include the infrastructure spending and aid to states and localities that were included in the $154 billion bill passed last December by the House, and that it relies heavily on tax cuts. Reid says he will bring up a jobs bill that includes those measures eventually, but given the pace of the Senate, the House seems skeptical.

As for the bill the Senate just passed, "Rep. Sandy Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, said it’s “an open question” whether House members will force a conference to resolve differences between the two chambers." But what the forward movement on this bill shows is that, at least on jobs, Republican obstruction can be broken.

Greg Sargent gets the results of MoveOn's survey of its membership on whether MoveOn should support passing President Obama's health care reform plan:

Should MoveOn support or oppose the final health care bill if it looks like the plan recently proposed by President Obama?

Support - 83%
Oppose - 17%

That's about as emphatic an endorsement as you're going to see. Now it's up to the House and the Senate to finish up their work and get this thing passed into law.

It looks like the F.B.I.'s criminal probe of John Ensign (R-NV) is bearing some fruit:

Previously undisclosed e-mail messages turned over to the F.B.I. and Senate ethics investigators provide new evidence about Senator John Ensign’s efforts to steer lobbying work to the embittered husband of his former mistress and could deepen his legal and political troubles.

Mr. Ensign, Republican of Nevada, suggested that a Las Vegas development firm hire the husband, Douglas Hampton, after it had sought the senator’s help on several energy projects in 2008, according to e-mail messages and interviews with company executives.

The messages are the first written records from Mr. Ensign documenting his efforts to find clients for Mr. Hampton, a top aide and close friend, after the senator had an affair with his wife, Cynthia Hampton. They appear to undercut the senator’s assertion that he did not know the work might involve Congressional lobbying, which could violate a federal ban on such activities by staff members for a year after leaving government.

According to Ensign's spokeswoman:

Senator Ensign has consistently acted in an ethical manner to avoid even the appearance of impropriety.

No word on whether Mrs. Ensign agrees.

And for more on John Ensign's woes, check out Steve Benen's excellent article on the traditional media's double standard when it comes to Republican sex scandals.

In the best news all day category, House leadership has washed their hands of Stupak. There really wasn't any way around it, since he refused to budge. But it also suggests that leadership doesn't think the 12 supporters Stupak has claimed are firm in their support of him.

Democratic Rep. Henry Waxman of California, chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said the leadership will press ahead without reworking the abortion provision adopted by the Senate. Abortion opponents say the provision falls short in restricting taxpayer dollars for abortion coverage.

Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., has been pushing for stricter provisions and says he and a dozen or so abortion opponents would vote against the health care bill if the Senate's version is retained. Leaders will try to peel off some of those lawmakers and make up for any remaining deficit with Democrats who opposed the health care legislation on the first round, when it passed 220-215.

"Many of the pro-life members are going to support passage of the health care bill," Waxman predicted. "They're either satisfied enough with the Senate provision, or they decide that that's as much as they're going to get and they don't want to defeat health care."

Dday has been keeping a whip count and has the current numbers at 189 yes, 202 no. With Massa's resignation, the magic number in the House is 216.