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Source: The Nation Author: Kai Wright Posted on 12.07.10 by Steve Trinward “The distance between reality and Capitol Hill has rarely felt so large as it does this week. It reaches about as far as the unemployment lines that are stretching across cities and states, where everyone from governors to college kids await congressional leadership on jobs. That’s a gulf of 15 million people, 2 million of whom will lose their jobless benefits by the New Year if Republicans don’t get their deficit-building tax cut for the richest Americans. … Republicans and conservative Democrats have said they’re being responsible adults. Jobless benefits and stimulus efforts have to be paid for. The government, like most families, must balance its books. ‘I agree that they need help,’ Massachusetts Republican Scott Brown insisted on the Senate floor last week. ‘But I look at it as: Are we going to do it from the bank account, or are we going to put it on the credit card?’” [editor’s note: This piece is just here for “balance” against the charges that I lean too far to anarchy most of the time - SAT] (12/07/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156860/defense-government Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Libertarian Enterprise Author: L. Neil Smith Posted on 12.07.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “As if individual liberty were not sufficiently under assault already, a runaway government agency, whose very existence is not sanctioned by Article 1, Section 8 of the United States Constitution — which lists those few activities in which government is legally permitted to engage — is trying to carry off a fascist coup d’etat against the First Amendment freedoms afforded to Americans by the Internet.” (12/05/10) Link: http://www.ncc-1776.org/tle2010/tle598-20101205-07.html Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: HDS Greenway Posted on 12.07.10 by Steve Trinward “Unlike other wars this country has fought, there is no commonly held agreement among friends or foes on what the war in Afghanistan is all about. Even among Americans there is confusion. President Obama, who will soon conduct yet another Afghan review, once called it a war to ‘disrupt, dismantle and defeat’ Al Qaeda. But with Al Qaeda to be found more in Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia these days, and with terrorists to be found in the Connecticut suburbs, as in the case of the failed New York City car bombing, Obama told American troops last week that the purpose was not to allow Afghanistan ‘to become a safe haven for terrorists’ again.” (12/07/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2akdncr Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Reason Author: Steve Chapman Posted on 12.06.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Familiarity, in this case, doesn’t breed contempt. It breeds acceptance. Heterosexuals have always lived and worked with gays, but without knowing it. Once they find out, most learn they have more similarities than differences. If the military’s ban on open gays is repealed, a lot of people in uniform will soon come to the same realization. Many already have.” (12/06/10) Link: http://reason.com/archives/2010/12/06/up-from-homophobia Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Paul Craig Ropberts Posted on 12.06.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “WikiLeaks’ critics could not make it clearer that they do not believe in accountable government. And to make certain that the government is not held accountable, WikiLeaks’ critics are calling for every possible police state measure, including extra-judicial murder, to stamp out anyone who makes information available that enables the citizenry to hold government accountable.” (12/06/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/roberts12062010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Center for a Stateless Society Author: David D'Amato Posted on 12.06.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “When finalized, the [US-South Korea trade] pact will be the most expansive U.S. trade agreement since the North American Free Trade Agreement (’NAFTA’), a deal that forged the linkage networking the corporatist systems of the U.S., Canada and Mexico. And contrary to their libertarian namesake, that’s all governments’ ‘free trade agreements’ do — spread the same system of state-corporate nexus over a broader area for the benefit of a coterie of companies that already dominate our lives.” (12/05/10) Link: http://c4ss.org/content/5231 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: San Francisco Chronicle Author: Deepak Chopra Posted on 12.06.10 by Steve Trinward “Sometimes it helps to step back and view a whole nation as if it were a person. Right now we are told that America is in crisis, and solutions are being offered from every quarter. When a person is in crisis, the search for a solution runs into conflict and confusion. The worst scenarios run through one’s imagination. Reason wars with emotion. We see the same in America today…. Congress… expresses the country’s refusal to accept that a crisis exists, since for all its hot air, Congress is dedicated to doing the same thing it has always done. Yet people do get out of crises and so do countries. They do so by discovering that they are stronger, better, and more resilient than they ever thought they were. The first rule is that when they fall, souls bounce, they don’t break.” [editor’s note: As usual, Deepak has some sage advice - SAT] (12/06/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2e3an8f Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Liberty For All Author: Larken Rose Posted on 12.06.10 by R. Lee Wrights “Sometimes very simple questions can cause profound cognitive dissonance. Here is a series of very simple questions I like to pose to people at random, especially if I want to make their heads explode. (For the record, my head was long ago exploded by these simple concepts, so I’m not claiming superiority here.) 1) Can you delegate to someone else a right which you don’t have?” (12/06/10) Link: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=5169 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Huffington Post Author: Marty Kaplan Posted on 12.06.10 by Steve Trinward “I think I’ve figured out how to get the White House to pay attention. Clearly, being a Democrat doesn’t do the trick. I can clamor all I want about bankers’ bonuses, carbon emissions, Net Neutrality — you know, the kind of promises that candidate Obama ran on. But if I’m a Democrat, I’m just part of the base, the third of the country he’ll pretty much take for granted when he tries to assemble a majority in 2012.” (12/06/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2dcfj2c Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Paul Starr Posted on 12.06.10 by Steve Trinward “One reason the electoral map turned red in November was that the electorate turned gray. Older Americans went to the polls in droves to vote Republican, while young people stayed home. And one big question about 2012 is whether the elderly will still vote Republican if the GOP can be forced to spell out the implications of its political agenda for Medicare and Social Security. … Because it’s piggybacked on Social Security, Medicare invites the elderly to believe they have earned its benefits …. In fact, the value of Medicare coverage far exceeds what seniors have earned through payroll taxes, but many nonetheless do not see themselves as being implicated in the evils of dependency on big government.” [editor’s note: And as long as “healthcare” continues to be predicated on aftercare and medication, rather than on maintaining wellness, this conflict will not disappear - SAT] (12/06/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2arqr3c Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Andrew Oxford Posted on 12.06.10 by Steve Trinward “Persistent high unemployment, rising poverty and shrinking state budgets have made insecurity the norm for America’s working class. Sociologist Lisa Dodson, who teaches at Boston College, has spent years studying the struggles of the growing ranks of underpaid and overworked Americans desperately trying to make ends meet. To understand how fair-minded people survive in an unfair economy, Dodson interviewed hundreds of low-wage workers and their employers across the country, examining what she terms the ‘economic disobedience’ now pervasive in the low-wage sector.” (12/06/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2dxlz2j Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: John Nichols Posted on 12.06.10 by Steve Trinward “Time magazine readers, voting in a poll on potential ‘Person of the Year’ candidates, have placed WikiLeaks founder and frontman Julian Assange in the top tier — along with Jon Stewar[t] and Stephen Colbert. Sarah Palin, the queen of all media, is far behind in 10th place. What to do? Palin wants Assange hunted down as a terrorist.” (12/04/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156789/sarah-palin-versus-julian-assange Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: AlterNet Author: Alfred W. McCoy Posted on 12.06.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “A soft landing for America 40 years from now? Don’t bet on it. The demise of the United States as the global superpower could come far more quickly than anyone imagines.” (12/05/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3yy7dsm Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 12.06.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The U.S. and its ‘friends’ in the Western and business worlds are more than able and happy to severely punish anyone they want without the slightest basis in ‘law.’ That’s what the lawless, Wild Western World is: political leaders punishing whomever they want without any limits, certainly without regard to bothersome concepts of ‘law.’ Anyone who doubts that should just look at what has been done to Wikileaks and Assange over the last week.” (12/06/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ah28em Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Orange County Register Author: Steven Greenhut Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “Clearly, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has done our nation a service by publishing at-times embarrassing accounts of how the U.S. government conducts its foreign policy. This is a government that claims to be of the people, by the people and for the people, and which has grand pretenses about projecting freedom worldwide, yet it wants to be able to keep most of the details of its actions away from the prying eyes of the public. There’s no evidence that any information released will endanger anyone, and the U.S. government reportedly refused Assange’s request to work with him to scrub any names that could be compromised.” (12/03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/24tu8mk Filed under: CANDi Commentary and LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Joanna Weiss Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “The notion of a female mogul isn’t shocking. It’s practically routine. Which makes it hard, for anyone who didn’t live it, to imagine how the world looked in the early 1960s, when female power was hard to come by and Gloria Steinem started fighting for women’s rights.” (12/05/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2fhs8lo Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Adam Serwer Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “A plot to bomb the D.C. subway system. An attack on American troops at Fort Dix, New Jersey. An attempt to kill Americans holding a Christmas tree-lighting ceremony in Portland, Oregon. All of these potential terrorist attacks sound frightening, but not a single one was ever in danger of actually happening. They were all part of a series of elaborate sting operations orchestrated by the government in its attempt to be proactive about preventing domestic terrorism.” (12/03/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=trial_by_entrapment Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Jordan Stancil Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “The more I think about the WikiLeaks episode, the less I know what to say about it. Unfortunately, too much commentary, right and left, has tried to inject certitude where ambivalence should be. … We have heard endless appeals to ‘common sense’ about the need for secrecy on these grounds. But common sense also tells us that people are more likely to lie, exaggerate and distort when they know they won’t be held accountable for what they said, and that people like to say what their interlocutors want to hear.” (12/03/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2a7p2cp Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Robert Borosage Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “Politics is not rocket science. Karl Rove and the political witch doctors like to pretend they can concoct mysterious potions to steal elections, but that’s just con man puffery. Politics really is mostly common sense. Democrats just got ’shellacked’ in an election. The reason was simple. We had the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. Democrats were in power. They had neither a successful economic agenda, nor a compelling economic message. They lost. Not more complicated than that.” (12/04/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/39353m6 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Eve Ewing Posted on 12.05.10 by Steve Trinward “I invited a few friends and family members to spend the twilight hours at the public park near where I live on the south side of Chicago. … We brought a picnic dinner and sat on stone benches encircling a fire pit, where we built a small fire and enjoyed the warmth, light and camaraderie offered by the makeshift hearth. Fires were a catalytic invention in human evolution. Not only did they allow us the physiological benefits of cooked food, but they also brought us together in a shared reliance on common resources, laying the foundation for cooperative social structures.” [editor’s note: Those of us who bemoan “the tragedy of the commons” will probably chuckle at this one, but we must keep in mind how strong this perspective is in so many folks — and how easily it might be embraced … if we just add the “choice” factor to the mix! - SAT] (12/03/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6648/in_defense_of_the_public Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPress Author: Alexander Cockburn Posted on 12.05.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “The American airwaves quiver with the screams of parlor assassins howling for Julian Assange’s head. … Assange can survive these theatrical blusters. A tougher question is how he will fare at the hands of the US government …. [US Attorney General Eric] Holder said, ‘Let me be clear. This is not saber-rattling,’ and vowed ‘to swiftly close the gaps in current US legislation …’ In other words the espionage statute is being rewritten to target Assange, and in short order, if not already, President Obama — who as a candidate pledged ‘transparency’ in government — will sign an order okaying the seizing of Assange and his transport into the US jurisdiction. Render first, fight the habeas corpus lawsuits later.” (12/05/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/cockburn12032010.html Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The New Republic Author: Barry Gewen Posted on 12.05.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In truth, on both immigration and trade, the Tea Partiers are in favor of more government, not less, putting them at odds with Republican Party laissez-faire instincts. However they may feel about the evil of deficits, Tea Partiers are not libertarians. By majorities of almost two-to-one, they support Social Security and Medicare. … But it’s on questions of America’s role in the world that the divisions between Tea Partiers and standard-issue Republicans begin to look like chasms. The key figures here are the Pauls, Ron and Rand, longtime congressman and recently elected senator, father and son.” (12/04/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2bl548x Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Paul Craig Roberts Posted on 12.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The reaction to WikiLeaks and its founder, Julian Assange tells us all we need to know about the total corruption of our ‘modern’ world, which in fact is a throwback to the Dark Ages.” Link: http://counterpunch.org/roberts12022010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Joshua Green Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “[T]he Federal Reserve announced last month that it would purchase $600 billion of long-term government debt … an emergency measure known as quantitative easing. Because it did something similar to halt last year’s financial crisis, this latest round is being called QE2. Mere anticipation of it produced exactly the intended effect: Mortgage interest rates hit record lows in October, once it became clear that the Fed was going to act. But two weeks ago, a group of Republican economists, lawmakers, and political operatives launched a coordinated attack on the Fed’s chairman, Ben Bernanke, for pursuing QE2.” [editor’s note: My guess is no, even with Ron Paul leading the way, as his own fellow GOPers in bo0th houses drag their feet - SAT] (12/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/242rx4c Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Judith Levine Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “I haven’t flown since the initiation of the new Transportation Security Administration scanner/pat-down regime, but I will have to soon. Protection from the 1-in-9.3 million chance of dying in a terrorist attack requires that I allow a TSA agent to inspect my body. Lucky me, I get to choose: a shower of radiation from the screening machine or fondling by a human hand. Reflecting on these options, I conclude: I’d rather be gazed at than groped.” [editor’s note: This “Hobson’s choice” is no choice at all, not in an allegedly “free country” - SAT] (12/02/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=screening_for_gender Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Noam Chomsky Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “Washington’s pathetic capitulation to Israel while pleading for a meaningless three-month freeze on settlement expansion — excluding Arab East Jerusalem — should go down as one of the most humiliating moments in U.S. diplomatic history. In September the last settlement freeze ended, leading the Palestinians to cease direct talks with Israel. Now the Obama administration, desperate to lure Israel into a new freeze and thus revive the talks, is grasping at invisible straws — and lavishing gifts on a far-right Israeli government. The gifts include $3 billion for fighter jets.” (12/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ar6acg Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Robert Borosage Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “‘The era of deficit denial is over,’ crowed former Sen. Alan Simpson, the garrulous co-chair of President Barack Obama’s deficit reduction commission. But the debate about what is to be done has just begun. Simpson likes to describe his position as the center against ideological extremes, reason against the ‘greediest generation.’ Matt Bai in The New York Times Wednesday says Obama must choose between ‘centrist reformers’ and the ‘traditional liberals,’ who resist change. But the choice is better described as between a developing Beltway establishment consensus and the vast majority of the Americans.” (12/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2843k86 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Blog Author: Jeremy Scahill Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “Despite sustained denials by US officials spanning more than a year, US military Special Operations Forces have been conducting offensive operations inside Pakistan, helping direct US drone strikes and conducting joint operations with Pakistani forces against Al Qaeda and Taliban forces in north and south Waziristan and elsewhere in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, according to secret cables released as part of the Wikileaks document dump. According to an October 9, 2009 cable classified by Anne Patterson, the US ambassador to Pakistan, the operations were ‘almost certainly [conducted] with the personal consent of [Pakistan’s] Chief of Army Staff General Kayani.’” (12/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/36mr39d Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Huffington Post Author: Arianna Huffington Posted on 12.02.10 by Steve Trinward “Let’s start with what the U.S. embassy cables released by WikiLeaks this weekend are not. They are not, as Hillary Clinton claimed, ‘an attack on America’s foreign policy interests’ that have endangered ‘innocent people.’ And they are not, as Robert Gibbs put it, a ‘reckless and dangerous action’ that puts at risk ‘the cause of human rights.’ And they do not amount to what the Italian foreign minister, in one of the sorrier moments in the history of hyperbole (or is it hysteria?), deemed the ‘September 11 of world diplomacy.’” (12/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/36s3tdy Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Liberty Unbound Author: Gary Jason Posted on 12.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Frantically focused special interest groups have a habit of defeating their own goals, hurting their own self-interest by an excessive pursuit of it. Labor unions are a classic instance: they have often been so greedily intent on exacting every concession from the companies they are bargaining with that they put the companies out of business, and their own members out of work. Environmentalist groups are another classic case.” (12/02/10) Link: http://libertyunbound.com/node/402 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Poli-Tea Author: d.eris Posted on 12.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “As has been observed by others in recent days, the response to this week’s Wikileaks diplomatic document dump is almost as revealing as the content of the cables themselves, but it also demonstrates the schizophrenic character of the ideology that underpins the Democratic-Republican party’s national security police state.” (12/02/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/24y9xu5 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: David Corn Posted on 12.02.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “In its first months in office, the Obama administration sought to protect Bush administration officials facing criminal investigation overseas for their involvement in establishing policies the that governed interrogations of detained terrorist suspects. A ‘confidential’ April 17, 2009, cable sent from the US embassy in Madrid to the State Department — one of the 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks — details how the Obama administration, working with Republicans, leaned on Spain to derail this potential prosecution.” (12/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3yeb9mn Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Sheldon Richman Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “First it was a video of a helicopter gunship killing and injuring unarmed Iraqi civilians, including two children, and two newsmen as they walked down a street in Baghdad. Then in two separate document dumps, hundreds of thousands of classified military field reports from Iraq and Afghanistan were released to the public. Now more than a quarter-million State Department cables … have been released without authorization. The US government’s problems with WikiLeaks continues, and the Obama administration ‘condemn[ed] in the strongest terms the unauthorized disclosure of classified documents and sensitive national security information.’” (11/29/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/39bwtxv Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Blog Author: Laura Flanders Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “Corporate profits are up, especially in finance, and yet hiring and wages aren’t. No matter how much productivity spikes, wages stay stagnant. They haven’t budged. That means workers doing more work for less pay. So what’s a Democratic administration to do? Freeze federal workers’ wages! That’s what. President Obama on Monday announced a two year pay freeze for civilian federal workers. … A brave move to take on those overpriced slackers on the federal dime … Right?” [editor’s note: I know her answer is going to be 180 degrees from my own to this one, but at least she posed the question - SAT] (11/30/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156754/why-tax-when-you-can-freeze Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Dave Johnson Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “‘Economic growth comes from lower taxes.’ You may have heard this before. In fact, you may not have been able to avoid hearing this, repeated over and over, until you are running in circles with your hands over your ears. You can’t get away from it. In the Congress, Republicans and some conservative Democrats are demanding that the special Bush-era extra tax cut for the wealthy be extended, repeating (over and over and over and over and over) that you must not raise taxes in a recession, because it will hurt growth.” [editor’s note: As usual, a pretty cogent analysis of the problem, with the same old big government solutions - SAT] (12/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ar4hcb Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Huffington Post Author: Robert B. Reich Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “Quiz: What’s responsible for the lousy economy most Americans continue to wallow in? A. Big government, bureaucrats, and the cultural and intellectual elites who back them. B. Big business, Wall Street, and the powerful and privileged who represent them. These are the two competing stories Americans are telling one another. Yes, I know: It’s more complicated than this. In reality, the lousy economy is due to insufficient demand — the result of the nation’s almost unprecedented concentration of income at the top. … So B is closer to the truth. But A is the story Republicans and right-wingers tell. ” (12/01/10) Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-reich/post_1362_b_790614.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Tim Fernholz Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “Today, 800,000 people lost their unemployment-insurance benefits. Almost 2 million more will lose theirs in January if the government does nothing. … Unemployment insurance doesn’t provide lavish benefits. On average, an unemployed person collects $310 a week. … Yet opponents of the extension believe that the safety net is a disincentive to finding work — people would rather scrape by on government payments than earn a living wage, an idea that’s hard to reconcile with the realities the jobless experience.” (12/01/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=workless Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Eric Weltman Posted on 12.01.10 by Steve Trinward “When BP’s Deepwater Horizon rig exploded on April 20, killing 11 workers, the ensuing environmental crisis could have been a transformative moment for our nation’s energy policy. It was not. In the midst of widespread public outrage against the oil industry, years of effort by environmental organizations culminated in the Senate’s failure to vote on a bill to combat climate change and spark a transition to renewable energy. Nor did the Senate approve needed reforms to the Oil Pollution Act that would eliminate the liability cap on oil companies.” ((12/01/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6655/a_wasted_crisis Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Mother Jones Author: Stephanie Mencimer Posted on 12.01.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Despite opposition from conservative activists, including the professional lobbyists at FreedomWorks, the Senate passed a landmark food safety bill 73 to 25 on Tuesday that would give the federal government broad new powers to police the food system. The vote, a rare display of bipartisanship, virtually assures that President Obama will be able to sign the bill before Americans carve up their Christmas goose. Not too much should be read into any one political act, but the failure of the tea party to derail the legislation is significant—perhaps a sign that the movement has been given too much credit as a political powerbroker.” (12/01/10) Link: http://motherjones.com/mojo/2010/11/how-powerful-is-the-tea-party Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: David Weigel Posted on 12.01.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[US Rep. Peter King, R-NY] was specific: He wants WikiLeaks classified as a terrorist organization. As Republicans come into power, they’re going to explore what can be done. They can’t do much. But let’s be honest. The quest to find some way to define Assange’s group as terrorists is not about fighting terrorism. It’s about indulging the fantasy, well put by Cornell law professor William Jacobson, of Assange being hunted down like a Robert Ludlum villain and possibly ‘killed while resisting arrest.’” (11/30/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2276310/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Newsweek Author: Ruchir Sharma Posted on 11.30.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “Keynesianism and monetarism are now suffering a similar distortion. Keynes would probably never have supported big government deficits during boom times, such as those that led to our current debt crisis. Likewise, Friedman would probably not have backed the new Fed use of monetary policy as a tool to engineer expansion rather than merely cushion the pain in a downturn. The systematic perversion of Keynes’s and Friedman’s thought is now resulting in a fall in their fortunes, leaving Hayek triumphant, once again.” [editor’s note: I’ll always be grateful to the philosophy prof. who (despite his own state-socialist views) recommended The Constitution of Liberty and The Road to Serfdom to me… back in 1971! - SAT] (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3556lnk Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: AntiWar.Com Author: Justin Raimondo Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[William] Kristol’s prescription perfectly expresses the neoconservative view of power and its proper exercise: the common people who pay for our overseas empire have no right to know about, let alone criticize, our overseas shenanigans. Their role is simply to subsidize the whole mess, and let their betters (i.e. Kristol, various Kagan family members, and the laptop bombardiers at AEI and Heritage) determine policy. How dare the hoi polloi interfere!” (12/01/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2arv67x Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Future of Freedom Foundation Author: Jacob G. Hornberger Posted on 11.30.10 by R. Lee Wrights “One of the benefits of the war on terrorism, from the standpoint of the statists, is that it has served to distract attention from the violations of civil liberties and privacy arising from that other famous federal war — the war on drugs. Last week’s arrest of Willie Nelson on pot charges at a Border Patrol checkpoint in Texas brings the drug war and its forever-growing violations of privacy and civil liberties back into the public spotlight.” (11/30/10) Link: http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2010-11-30.asp Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: LewRockwell.Com Author: Karen Kwiatkowski Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Government propagandists proclaim that people will die from this latest release. Unless they mean die laughing, this is quite an overstatement. Government goons, soldiers and bureaucrats in foreign countries will not face a greater threat to their lives, most especially from these cables. What they will face is snickers, chuckles, and outright laughter. And truly, this is as it should be.” (12/01/10) Link: http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski259.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Center for a Stateless Society Author: David D'Amato Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The new missile shield — like the post-Soviet era shift in the nineties — occasions an opportunity to remind us that, even when states work together to protect one another from other states, they are not working for the benefit of their citizens. When they stand together, they stand for the idea that their matching systems of villainy ought to be preserved. By looking after each other, then, they reinforce their ability to inflict attacks on the rest of us.” (11/30/10) Link: http://c4ss.org/content/5124 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Author: Tom Engelhardt Posted on 11.30.10 by Steve Trinward “It’s finally coming into focus, and it’s not even a difficult equation to grasp. It goes like this: take a country in the grips of an expanding national security state and sooner or later your ’safety’ will mean your humiliation, your degradation. And by the way, it will mean the degradation of your country, too.” [editor’s note: Let’s track the pieces that appear in “the Nation” dealing with TSA atrocities, and see how many it takes to offset the smear-job on the We Won’t Fly folks - SAT] (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3axj5jr Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Paul Waldman Posted on 11.30.10 by Steve Trinward “‘There is no such thing as society,’ Margaret Thatcher memorably said; instead, ‘there are individual men and women and there are families.’ We could cut through a lot of pabulum with our own version: There is no such thing as ‘the American people.’ But don’t tell politicians that. … ‘the American people’ don’t have opinions or beliefs or judgments. Each one of us does, and subsets of us share some things in common, but the idea of a collective national will is a fantasy.” [editor’s note: The restating of monarchy’s paradigm in the title says it all; what we escaped from 2+ centuries ago is embraced with open arms now, by most “Americans” - SAT] (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3yu3hvu Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Huffington Post Author: Carne Ross Posted on 11.30.10 by Steve Trinward “It will take a long time, perhaps many years, for the full impact of the WikiLeaks disclosure of thousands of US diplomatic cables to become known. Make no mistake: this is an event of historic importance — for all governments, and not only the US. As politicians of all sides bellow their condemnation of WikiLeaks, governments are with some desperation trying to pretend that it’s business as usual. But the truth is that something very dramatic in the world of diplomacy has just taken place, and thus indeed in the way that the world runs its business. History may now be dated pre- or post-WikiLeaks.” (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ummyrb Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Richard (RJ) Eskow Posted on 11.30.10 by Steve Trinward “After a strange and bitter press conference this afternoon, the co-chairs of the Presidential Deficit Commission laid out a proposal that literally meets the dictionary definition of extremism. They’ve apparently rewritten the Executive Order creating their Commission, too, so if enough Commission members back their proposal it could become law. That would spell long-term defeat for the Democratic Party. More importantly, it would create misery for generations to come. The only four people who can prevent this disaster are the four Democratic members of the Deficit Commission who have yet to stake a clear position on this proposal …” (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3aax39g Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Pro Libertate Author: Will Grigg Posted on 11.30.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “A few days after bombs ripped apart two apartment buildings Moscow, residents of Ryazan — a town 100 miles southeast of the Capital City — were alarmed to find several suspicious-looking figures loitering near a 13-story apartment complex. After police arrived on the scene the[y] extracted three large sugar sacks from the high-rise. An examination of the sacks found that they contained hexagen — the same high-yield explosive that had been used in the Moscow terrorist bombings just a few days earlier. The police arrested two of the mysterious strangers, who immediately produced credentials issued by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor to the KGB.” (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/34ldq5b Filed under: LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Austro-Athenian Empire Author: Roderick Long Posted on 11.30.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “Among libertarians, Rose Wilder Lane is best known as the author of the libertarian classics The Discovery of Freedom and Give Me Liberty. Outside of the libertarian movement, she is known — if at all — as the at least partial ghostwriter of her mother Laura Ingalls Wilder’s popular Little House on the Prairie series of books. (See William Holtz’s Lane biography.) A chapter of Lane’s literary career that is relatively unknown to both groups, though it brought her an enormous readership at the time, is her stint as a weekly columnist, from 1942 to 1945, for the Pittsburgh Courier, the u.s.’s leading black newspaper and a prominent voice for racial equality.” (11/26/10) Link: http://aaeblog.com/2010/11/26/lanes-forgotten-writings-on-race/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: CounterPunch Author: Paul Craig Roberts Posted on 11.30.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “Why does the FBI orchestrate fake terror plots? The latest one snared Osman Mohamud, a Somali-American teenager in Portland, Oregon. The Associated Press report by William Mall and Nedra Pickler (11-27-10) is headlined in Yahoo News: ‘Somali-born teen plotted car-bombing in Oregon.’ This is a misleading headline as the report makes it clear that it was a plot orchestrated by federal agents. Two sentences into the news report we have this: ‘The bomb was an elaborate fake supplied by the [FBI] agents and the public was never in danger, authorities said.’ The teenager was supplied with a fake bomb and a fake detonator.” (11/30/10) Link: http://counterpunch.org/roberts11302010.html Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Reason Author: Ronald Bailey Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “Two of the deep puzzles in human evolution are religion and cooperation between genetically unrelated strangers. In recent years, many researchers have come to believe the two phenomena are intimately linked. If people believe they are being watched and judged by an omnipresent supernatural entity, they may be more willing to perform emotionally binding and costly rituals to signal commitment to a group. The same sense of being watched may also encourage people to be helpful to others — even when there is no obvious reproductive payoff. In other words: Science suggests that God — and His followers — hate free riders.” [editor’s note: This may be one way of seeing “God” and the “charitable impulse”; it is by no means the only one - SAT] (11/30/10) Link: http://reason.com/archives/2010/11/30/the-eleventh-commandment-punis Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Unqualified Offerings Author: Thoreau Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “[A] spy and an investigative journalist (or a muckraking web activist) create fundamentally different situations. A spy seeks an asymmetric situation, where he knows what you said without you knowing what he knows, so that he has an advantage. A journalist seeks a symmetric situation, where all the world knows so nobody has an advantage. Yes, the loss of an advantage is not always a neutral outcome, or at least the change that it creates is not usually neutral, but it is usually more neutral than the situation sought by a spy.” (11/29/10) Link: http://highclearing.com/index.php/archives/2010/11/29/12196 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Slate Author: Jack Shafer Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The leaked cables make it impossible for Hillary Clinton to continue as secretary of state.” (11/29/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2276190/ Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 11.30.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “The WikiLeaks disclosure has revealed not only numerous government secrets, but also the driving mentality of major factions in our political and media class. Simply put, there are few countries in the world with citizenries and especially media outlets more devoted to serving, protecting and venerating government authorities than the U.S. Indeed, I don’t quite recall any entity producing as much bipartisan contempt across the American political spectrum as WikiLeaks has: as usual, for authoritarian minds, those who expose secrets are far more hated than those in power who commit heinous acts using secrecy as their principal weapon.” (11/30/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2c2dd27 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Orange County Register Author: Steve Greenhut Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “Anyone who has dealt with a loved one deeply involved in some destructive behavior understands that there’s only so much you can do until the person hits whatever low point is necessary to spark a commitment to turn things around. I think of my beloved California in the same light. What a great state, but it remains on a collision course with reality. We can’t keep spending money we don’t have, punishing those who pay the bills and ignoring the advice of truth tellers. Californians are known for crafting new realities, but the financial markets are immune to Disney-like fantasies. Eventually, the fiscal self-destruction has to stop — and adults have to step in with an intervention to divert our state from its dangerous path.” (11/26/10) Link: http://www.ocregister.com/opinion/state-277726-california-san.html Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary | |
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Source: Fox News Forum Author: Rodney P. Mock Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “The first President Bush, in that time-honored tradition dating back to the beginning of time, or at least to the very first political campaign, told us quite emphatically to ‘read my lips: no new taxes.’ Well, we didn’t need to take any special course in lip reading to know that his promise was an empty one. Then along came his son George W. Bush, who did indeed reduce taxes for some people. But even those reductions came with a price …. President Obama vowed in his campaign not to raise taxes on families making less than $250,000 annually. Yet, we are already starting to see this promise fall by the wayside. … the promises made of no new taxes — or tax increases — by any individual running for office are as naked as we are during a Transportation Security Administration body scan at our local airport.” [editor’s note: A non-partisan column? On the Fox News site? And NOT written by Stossel? Are we in BizarroWorld? - SAT] (11/29/10) Link: http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2010/11/29/pound-wild-gorilla/ Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: In These Times Author: David Moberg Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “Last March, President Barack Obama appointed Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a progressive Democrat from Chicago’s north lakefront and near north suburbs, to his 18-member National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform. … In early November the two co-chairs floated their proposal, much to the surprise of commission members like Schakowsky, a former community organizer (of senior citizens, among others) and part of the House Democratic leadership team. Shortly afterward, amid a flurry of other proposals, Schakowsky presented her own, much different plan.” [editor’s note: At least some of which is pretty shrewd; stay tuned - SAT] (11/29/10) Link: http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/6706/the_progressive_deficit_hawk Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: The Nation Blog Author: John Nichols Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “[T]hose who might want, for reasons of partisanship or ideology, to imagine the end of the Bush-Cheney era ushered in more frank and responsible spokespeople will surely be disabused of that foolish notion by the response of White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs to the latest WikiLeak. On Sunday, Gibbs achieved the rare combination of utter shamelessness and utter shamefulness when he claimed that by releasing classified diplomatic communications ‘WikiLeaks has put at risk … the cause of human rights.’ Reasonable people may debate the way in which WikiLeaks obtains and releases classified documents. But for Gibbs to try and claim that transparency and openness pose broad threats to the cause of human rights — in the face of all of the compromises of US administrations over the past several decades — is intellectually and practically dishonest.” (11/29/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/26zw4c9 Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Christian Science Monitor Author: Michael Laser Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “Without intending to, I’ve indoctrinated my kids. I first realized it a few years ago. Seeing a bumper sticker that read ‘No Hope in Dope,’ my then-8-year-old asked, ‘Is that about Bush?’ It happened in the most natural way. They heard me groaning at every word and deed of that ‘misunderestimated’ president, and absorbed my attitude until they could mimic it perfectly. I’m glad my children share my political orientation, but it bothers me when I hear them unthinkingly mock and dismiss the other side — as when my son recently said, ‘If Republicans want smaller government, they should quit their jobs in Congress.’” (11/29/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/28nghc5 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Our Future Blog Author: Dave Johnson Posted on 11.29.10 by Steve Trinward “In the news: President Obama has proposed to freeze the pay of all federal workers. Demonstrating again his unique negotiating technique of giving concessions before negotiations begin, without asking for reciprocal concessions from the other side (also known as ‘pre-caving’), the President today announced that the pay of all federal employees will be frozen for two years. … The ‘high paid’ federal employees include physicians at veteran’s hospitals, and lawyers working to get Wall Street under control.” (11/29/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2c4rc5l Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Slate Author: Christopher Hitchens Posted on 11.29.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “I did not pay any attention to last week’s feeble-minded attempt at a civilian-sponsored go-slow at airport security checkpoints. When the best that the children of a revolution can do for the defense of their inalienable protection against unwarranted search and seizure is to issue the pathetic moan, ‘Don’t touch my junk,’ a low point of humiliation has been reached. It will soon enough be forgotten, as have the low points that preceded it. And it is destined to be succeeded by even lower and more humbling ones.” (11/29/10) Link: http://www.slate.com/id/2276166/ Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Las Vegas Review-Journal Author: Vin Suprynowicz Posted on 11.28.10 by Mary Lou Seymour “As we were saying last week, most political decisions are based on ‘narratives’ — histories of how we got here, reduced to easy-to-grasp stories a few sentences in length. The problem is, if we get the narrative wrong, bad outcomes grow far more likely, since we’ll be working to solve the wrong problem, or even applying larger doses of the medicine that got us here in the first place.” (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3a5skyx Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Liberty For All Author: John Jay Myers Posted on 11.28.10 by R. Lee Wrights “With all the naked viewing and groping going on, I wonder if this is the United States of America or the back room of an adult video store. We have two major problems here, the TSA and their intrusive unconstitutional invasions of our rights, and the bigger question of why are we turning into a police state.” (11/27/10) Link: http://www.libertyforall.net/?p=5177 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Nation Blog Author: Katrina vanden Heuvel Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “At The Nation.com we make it a point to practice fearless, bold, timely journalism that raises critical issues ignored by the mainstream press. On very rare occasions that ambition leads to mistakes, and when it does, we’re committed to acknowledging them and setting the record straight. Unfortunately, a recent article by Mark Ames and Yasha Levine, ‘TSAstroturf: The Washington Lobbyists and Koch-Funded Libertarians Behind the TSA Scandal,’ was one such moment. … [T]he article wrongly suggested that John Tyner, the libertarian citizen-activist who coined the ‘don’t touch my junk’ protest against the TSA’s security procedures, might be linked to an Astroturf operation.” [editor’s note: One cheer to Ms. KvH for admitting wrong re Tyner; if she follows this with similar apologies to Meg McLain, the We Won’t Fly group, and a few others … and then disavows the fact-free screed the two twits wrote to provoke all this … MAYBE the Nation can remain a potential source of “commentary” for this newsblog - SAT] (11/28/10) Link: http://www.thenation.com/blog/156700/apology-john-tyner Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: Orange County Register Author: Nat Hentoff Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “The premier historian of the Bill of Rights, professor Leonard Levy, explained why our Constitution was not fully operative until the first 10 amendments became part of it: ‘We have a Bill of Rights because the state, even the democratic state, cannot be trusted. A Bill of Rights is a bill of restraint against the state.’ A consensus of polls — and the daily news — reveal a deep distrust of Congress and of this president, as was also true of his predecessor. Accordingly, the state of health of the First Amendment, from which all our individual liberties against the state flow — freedom of speech, press, religion, assembly and persistent petition of government for redress of grievances — is vital to all of us. Our voices need to be heard.” (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/26qwae9 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and LAND Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The American Prospect Author: Tim Fernholz Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “For decades, libertarian [Republican] Rep. Ron Paul has criticized the Federal Reserve Bank, putting him outside both parties: Democrats who hoped the central bank could manage sustainable growth and Republicans whose policy idol was conservative monetary economist Milton Friedman. Now, when Congress reorganizes in January, Paul is likely to be placed in charge of the House panel that oversees the Federal Reserve, and his fellow Republicans, led by Rep. Paul Ryan, are mounting an extensive critique of the Fed’s latest policy, even suggesting it’s time to rewrite the institution’s operating mandate. But Paul is still not exactly on the same page.” [editor’s note: Interesting to see such a well-reasoned explanation of Ron Paul appearing on a “progressive” news site - SAT] (11/27/10) Link: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=ron_in_reserve Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary and Twitter-Worthy | |
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Source: The Guardian [UK] Author: Simon Jenkins Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “Is it justified? Should a newspaper disclose virtually all a nation’s secret diplomatic communication, illegally downloaded by one of its citizens? The reporting in the Guardian of the first of a selection of 250,000 US state department cables marks a recasting of modern diplomacy. Clearly, there is no longer such a thing as a safe electronic archive, whatever computing’s snake-oil salesmen claim. No organization can treat digitized communication as confidential. An electronic secret is a contradiction in terms. Anything said or done in the name of a democracy is, prima facie, of public interest. When that democracy purports to be ‘world policeman’ — an assumption that runs ghostlike through these cables — that interest is global.” (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/37yal4l Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: San Francisco Chronicle Author: Debra J. Saunders Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “In 2005, after Canada legalized same-sex marriage, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin commissioned a $150,000 study by three law professors to debunk any notion that legalizing same-sex marriage would lead to polygamy. Big mistake. The study recommended that Canada repeal its anti-polygamy law. While they recognized ‘the strong association between polygamy and gender inequality,’ the authors determined it wasn’t fair to discriminate, for example, against a Kuwaiti second wife who would be barred from immigrating to Canada with their husband and another wife.” (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/29tcmn2 Filed under: CANDi Commentary and PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Michael Atkinson Posted on 11.28.10 by Steve Trinward “’Death to the machines!’ The cry goes out once again as the longest-ever restored form of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927) now lands on DVD, as dense and crazy and maddening as ever. So much of our culture has its fungal roots in Lang’s dystopian landmark — including any film or comic doped on visions of future cityscapes and humanoid automatons, including the entire Star Wars virus — that for many of us, it may seem as though we’ve seen the movie without actually having seen it. It was the first dystopian movie and a box office catastrophe, at a time when German expressionist cinema ruled the world aesthetically.” (11/25/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2enafap Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: Salon Author: Glenn Greenwald Posted on 11.28.10 by Thomas L. Knapp “It may very well be that the FBI successfully and within legal limits arrested a dangerous criminal intent on carrying out a serious Terrorist plot that would have killed many innocent people, in which case they deserve praise. Court-approved surveillance and use of undercover agents to infiltrate terrorist plots are legitimate tactics when used in accordance with the law. But it may also just as easily be the case that the FBI — as they’ve done many times in the past — found some very young, impressionable, disaffected, hapless, aimless, inept loner; created a plot it then persuaded/manipulated/entrapped him to join, essentially turning him into a Terrorist; and then patted itself on the back once it arrested him for having thwarted a ‘Terrorist plot’ which, from start to finish, was entirely the FBI’s own concoction.” (11/28/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/3agrg3o Filed under: PND Commentary | |
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Source: In These Times Author: Slavoj Zizek Posted on 11.23.10 by Steve Trinward “The recent expulsion of illegal Roma (’Gypsies’) from France back to Romania sparked protests across Europe from both the liberal media and top politicians — and not only those on the Left. The expulsions, however, proceeded — and they are the tip of a much larger iceberg of European politics. … Until recently, the political space of European countries was dominated by two main parties that addressed the entire electoral body — a right-of-center party and a left-of-center party. The latest electoral results in the West, as well as in the East, signal the gradual emergence of a different polarity.” [editor’s note: Mr Zizek’s analysis is unfortunately quite sound, since voices of reason (and liberty, or “choice?”) have been suppressed in both European and American societies, by BOTH of those polarizing, knowitall, autocratic forces - SAT] (11/23/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/22l9aov Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Women's Media Center Author: Valerie Plame Posted on 11.23.10 by Steve Trinward “I remain passionate about the issue of preventing rogue states and terrorist organizations from ever procuring a nuclear weapon. Since resigning from the [Central Intelligence] agency however, I realize that much of what I had been doing may only have served to delay the inevitable. My thinking on proliferation has therefore evolved considerably, and I now believe that the best way to ensure our national security for the long term is to move to achieve the goal of total, global elimination of nuclear weapons.” (11/23/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/2ej3fsz Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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Source: Boston Globe Author: Robert Kuttner Posted on 11.23.10 by Steve Trinward “The unemployment rate remains stuck at close to 10 percent. … Mortgage foreclosures keep rising and real estate values falling. And with the federal stimulus petering out, state budgets anticipate more service cuts and layoffs. Yet to read the newspapers and watch TV news and talk shows, you would think the top menace facing the country is the projected federal budget deficit in 2020. … Economic masochism has become the national fad, when the real issue is restoring economic growth.” [editor’s note: Mr. Kuttner is correct about the “real issue;” unfortunately his answer to it is increased growth of GOVERNMENT (and even its war budget?), not incentives for actual productivity - SAT] (11/23/10) Link: http://tinyurl.com/22wbdy6 Filed under: PND Commentary and RRND Commentary | |
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