Wisconsin High Court Seems To Be Against 1849 Abortion Ban
59 minutes ago
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 31 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Analyzing The Failures Of 'Government' - Mexico... The 'Failed State' Next Door [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 36:47 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
War Memorial Day is not actually a day to pray for U.S. troops who died in action but rather a day set aside by Congress to pray for peace. The 1950 Joint Resolution of Congress which created Memorial Day says: 'Requesting the President to issue a proclamation designating May 30, Memorial Day, as a day for a Nation-wide prayer for peace.' (64 Stat.158). Reference, Quote source, or search Google» The Memorial Day weekend is over and Congress is ready to get back to what they've been doing ....Nothing. Today they will vote on raising the debt limit and it will fail thanks to the Republicans and a couple of renegade democrats. That will set the stage for an economic crisis not just in the US, but for rest of the industrialized world as well. More on how this crisis WILL ENRICH THE WEALTHY even as it impoverishes the rest of us below the fold in the Other News.
BUSINESS AS USUALWhich is:
Economic crises are not natural disasters. They are brought about by the actions of bankers, officials, and developers, not to mention ordinary folks struggling to get by in a world we didn't choose. They appear beyond our control, but they are not inescapable facts of life.
For all the talk of collapse, capitalism itself is as healthy as ever. The fundamental relationships remain unchanged: employers and employees, politicians and voters, police and policed. Our masters may loan us cars or houses to pacify us, but we still lack control over our own lives.
Crises like this are part of the protection racket that keeps them in business... [More @ Adbusters]
Why the Rich Love Unemployment
by Mark Provost
Naked Capitalism (May 25 2011)
Christina Romer, former member of President Obama's Council of Economic Advisors, accuses the administration of "shamefully ignoring" the unemployed. Paul Krugman echoes her concerns, observing that Washington has lost interest in "the forgotten millions". America's unemployed have been ignored and forgotten, but they are far from superfluous. Over the last two years, out-of-work Americans have played a critical role in helping the richest one percent recover trillions in financial wealth.
Obama's advisers often congratulate themselves for avoiding another Great Depression - an assertion not amenable to serious analysis or debate. A better way to evaluate their claims is to compare the US economy to other rich countries over the last few years.
On the basis of sustaining economic growth, the United States is doing better than nearly all advanced economies. From the first quarter of 2008 to the end of 2010, US gross domestic product (GDP) growth outperformed every G-7 country except Canada {1}.
But when it comes to jobs, US policymakers fall short of their rosy self-evaluations. Despite the second-highest economic growth, Paul Wiseman of the Associated Press (AP) reports {2}: "the US job market remains the group's weakest. US employment bottomed and started growing again a year ago, but there are still 5.4 percent fewer American jobs than in December 2007. That's a much sharper drop than in any other G-7 country." According to an important study by Andrew Sum and Joseph McLaughlin, the US boasted one of the lowest unemployment rates in the rich world before the housing crash - now, it's the highest. {3}
The gap between economic growth and job creation reflects three separate but mutually reinforcing factors: US corporate governance, Obama's economic policies and the deregulation of US labor markets.
Old economic models assume that companies merely react to external changes in demand - lacking independent agency or power. While executives must adapt to falling demand, they retain a fair amount of discretion in how they will respond and who will bear the brunt of the pain. Corporate culture and organization vary from country to country.
In the boardrooms of corporate America, profits aren't everything - they are the only thing. A JPMorgan research report {4} concludes that the current corporate profit recovery is more dependent on falling unit-labor costs than during any previous expansion... [More @ Naked Capitalism]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 27 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Memorial Day... Decoration Day... Whatever You Call It It's Is The American 'Day Of The Dead' [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 22:33 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
It's the eve of the Memorial Day weekend. Defense Secretary Robert Gates is on his pre-retirement "farewell tour" and the U.S. House of Representatives spent the week deep in its annual debate on the Pentagon budget.
NPP brings you three essential resources to help you assess the numbers behind the rhetoric around military spending.
U.S. Security Spending Since 9/11 provides detailed information on the $7.6 billion our nation has spent on security over the last decade. The analysis includes previously uncompiled figures on the amounts spent on "homeland security." Did you know that homeland security funding has totaled $636 billion since 9/11?
NPP's Cost of War website has been updated with the latest funding figures approved by Congress. Did you know that the total costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will reach $1.26 trillion by the end of the current fiscal year on September 30, 2011?
What's at Stake? offers 50 state-level briefs focused on the local impact of war spending. It includes valuable information on funding gap analysis and spending tradeoffs unique to each state. Did you know that Michigan has 71,862 Head Start-eligible children, more than twice the number of Head Start places? For Michigan's share of this year's Afghan War costs, the state could fund Head Start places for all eligible children for 11.8 years. [Much More @ The National Priorities Project]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 26 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Class Warrior Has A Child - Thoughts On Arnold Schwarzenegger And The Upstairs Maid [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 12:17 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
"If you've sold your soul to the devil, in effect, it's profoundly human to talk yourself into believing that what you got in exchange was worth the price."The Tyranny of the Temporary
by John Michael Greer
The Archdruid Report (May 18 2011)
For just short of a year now, my posts here have focused on exploring one extensive set of options for dealing with the crisis of industrial civilization - the toolkit that came to maturity in the organic gardening and appropriate technology movements of the Seventies, and has been more or less sitting on a shelf since that time, being roundly ignored even by those people who thought they were pursuing every available response to peak oil. The process of hauling those tools down off the shelf and handing them out isn't quite finished yet, but before we go on to the last round of unpacking, I want to talk about another side of the social process that put them on the shelf in the first place.
That dimension of our predicament was pointed up by a commenter who responded to part of last week's post by suggesting, among other things, that people would still be getting their food from supermarkets for long enough that anyone alive today doesn't need to worry about other options. It's not an example that gets brought up often; still, the same assumption that current ways of doing things will remain in place indefinitely is an important reason why so many otherwise prudent and intelligent people to ignore the signs that their lifestyle is getting ready to terminate itself with extreme prejudice. A hard look at the logic behind it is certainly in order.
Supermarkets, as it happens, make a good example. The first supermarket in America, Ralphs Grocery Store, opened for business in 1929 in Los Angeles, California. Until the boomtime that followed the Second World War, supermarkets were found only in a very few urban centers; most Americans bought meat from a nearby butcher shop, had milk delivered by a neighborhood dairy, and parceled out the rest of their food and sundries budget among other local shops, most of them independently owned and nearly all of them getting the bulk of their supplies from local and regional producers.
It took billions of barrels of cheap petroleum, the massive suburbanization of postwar America, the building of the National Defense Highway System, federal policies that tilted the playing field in favor of big producers and long-haul trucking firms, and decades of highly aggressive and dubiously legal monopolistic practices on the part of national chains, among other things, to steamroller the once diverse landscape of American food production and turn supermarkets selling national brands into the only option that's still available to most Americans on grocery day... [Read On]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 25 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The 5,446 Tons Solution - To Never Hear The Republicans Whine About The National Debt Again, Priceless [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 16:49 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
After an hour in which Ms. Warren repeatedly parried efforts by Mr. McHenry and other Republicans to nail her down with yes or no answers to questions concerning her testimony in March and about the bureau's powers and responsibilities, Mr. McHenry moved to temporarily recess the hearing to allow members to travel to the House floor for a vote on an unrelated matter.
Ms. Warren objected, saying that she had juggled her schedule as the committee repeatedly changed the time of the hearing in recent days and had agreed to be present for only an hour.
A vigorous back-and-forth ensued.Congressman, you are causing problems, Ms. Warren said. We had an agreement.The argument, an unraveling of the decorum that usually characterizes discussions among even the most fervent opponents during Congressional hearings, demonstrated the level of frustration that some Republicans apparently feel over the consumer agency, which was established as part of the Dodd-Frank Act that followed the financial and mortgage crisis.
You're making this up, Mr. McHenry replied. This is not the case.
The hearing Tuesday was intended to address the oversight that Congress should require for the agency.
Republicans have introduced bills in the House and Senate to eliminate some of the agency's independence, which include its not being subject to Congressional appropriations... [More ugly here]
The summary of the bill does not go into the constitutional issues that arise with several of the measures. [source link]Another media outlet had this to say:
The problem for many is that it would result in censorship without the right to due process as it allows the DOJ and copyright holders to obtain court orders before accused sites have had a chance to defend themselves in court. [More]HackrKidz... Whatareyagonnado?
...yet there IS "Resistance in Obama Time"... by Bill Quigley, professor of law at Loyola University New Orleans, Associate Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights."Since President Obama was inaugurated, there have been over two thousand six hundred arrests of activists protesting in the US."
Pakistani police have released an account of this weekend's brazen, 18-hour Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan attack on a naval air base in the southern port city of Karachi, stating that 10 to 12 men were involved, rather than up to six as Pakistani officials originally said (AP, NYT, DT, Independent, Guardian, FT, Dawn, Post, WSJ sources on site). Two of the attackers are now thought to have escaped, rather than being killed. Pakistani interior minister Rehman Malik said yesterday that the attackers, who he stated dressed all in black and resembled "Star Wars characters," entered from a nearby residential district, and suggested without citing evidence that "external elements" may have been involved (Washington Post source on site). [More @ the AfPak Channel]
The Battle for Afghanistan: Negotiations with the Taliban
By Thomas Ruttig
[Thomas Ruttig is the co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network. He speaks Pashtu and Dari.
This paper reflects the situation as of early 2011]
May 23, 2011
The debate about reconciliation between Taliban insurgents and the Afghan government started moving again in 2010. What remains unclear is whether a process of reconciliation has already commenced and meaningful contacts with the insurgents have been established. Substantive talks, however, are clearly not yet underway.
What was really new in these developments in Afghanistan in the last year?
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"NATO confirmed that it has facilitated these talks technically and by implicitly giving security guarantees for interlocutors. At the same, the new U.S. strategy, including a kill-and-capture program targeting Taliban commanders, does not point toward reconciliation; rather, it has given the upper hand to Taliban hardliners who oppose any talks. This could lead to the ascent of a younger, more radicalized generation of Taliban commanders to replace those killed, who were better known and might have included some inclined toward a political solution."
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The fourth new point is that Pakistani authorities have dropped their line of denying all support for and control over the Taliban. For the first time they admitted openly that they are able to 'deliver' Taliban leaders for talks. The arrest of Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, deputy to Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, was a statement of intent: talks with the Afghan Taliban are possible, but not without a key Pakistani role. At the same time, new research asserted that while the Taliban accept Pakistani support, many of their commanders nevertheless do not appreciate Pakistani influence on Afghan politics.[i]
These developments have created a growing fear among important social, political, and ethnic groups in Afghanistan [ie. Power elite, Emphasis mine] that President Hamid Karzai might go for a deal with the Taliban, or certain elements of the movement... [Comprehensive abstract with link to full document]
It's called "shooting yourself in the foot"... Assuming of course that one IS TRULY interested in an end to the conflict, otherwise it could only be termed "endangering our own forces" now, and for the duration of our involvement. Further de-legitimatizing what little legitmacy U.S. efforts have in the region."This could lead to the ascent of a younger, more radicalized generation of Taliban commanders to replace those killed..."
From the Foreign Policy AfPak 'Channel', a dissuasion from thinking that our War On Afghanistan is ANYWHERE near over:Mission Re-Defined
The death of Osama bin Laden will raise the inevitable question: What are we still doing in Afghanistan? The answer, of course, is that the mission in Afghanistan is about something bigger and more ambitious than eliminating Al Qaeda's leaders-most of whom, in any event, are probably living in Pakistan, as bin Laden was when the United States finally tracked him down. No, the mission in Afghanistan isn't about killing Al Qaeda members. It's about stabilizing the country.... [More]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 24 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: Rapture Or Rupture - The Debt Limit And The Christian Capitalist System [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 8:59 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
They Don't Really Care About Us» The Senate has passed a resolution of support for the war on Libya with warmongering senators Kerry and McCain teaming up across the aisle to push the bill... considering the previous war powers resolution expired last Friday making US involvement in Libya... umn... even more problematic that it already was.
The Supreme Court has requested that California reduce its prison population by more than 30,000 inmates. While this may sound like an unforseen victory as a result of the current state budget crisis the reality of "inmate reduction" is quite grim... [In Full]
Americans gathered around the hearth of CBS's 60 Minutes must have been bemused to hear reporter Scott Pelley announce self-importantly that the US Department of Justice is investigating Lance Armstrong's bicycling team for performance-enhancing drug use. Does it really matter if any pro athlete takes drugs? Why not throw Babe Ruth out of the Baseball Hall of Fame for drinking sixteen beers the night before a World Series opener? Or Ditto Mickey Mantle for that, plus smoking two packs of Marlboros in the dugout during every game....And Remember Folks...
Notice that Scott Pelley did not announce that the US DOJ is investigating Goldman Sachs, or Citi, or Merrill Lynch, or Bank of America or several other so-called banks for looting the American public and influence-peddling in the halls of government. Or the SEC and the CFTC for failing to regulate the trade in frauds and swindles. The window for that sort of action is closing, and with it the reasonable hopes of citizens in the legitimacy of institutions that manage things.
The failures in journalism are now so stupendous that there are only a few possible explanations... [And NONE Of Them Are Good Explanations.]
They hate us for our freedoms
By Glenn Greenwald
May 15, 2011
The New York Times reports today:For the second time in three days, a night raid in eastern Afghanistan by NATO forces resulted in the death of a child, setting off protests on Saturday that turned violent and ended in the death of a second boy. . . .There's nothing much new to say here, but every now and then, it's worth highlighting not only what we're doing, but what the results are. Just imagine the accumulated hatred from having things like this happen day after day, week after week, year after year, for a full decade now, with no end in sight...
"American forces did an operation and mistakenly killed a fourth-grade student; he had gone to sleep in his field and had a shotgun next to him," [the district's governor, Abdul Khalid]. said. "People keep shotguns with them for hunting, not for any other purposes," Mr. Khalid said.
The boy, [15], was the son of an Afghan National Army soldier . . . When morning came, an angry crowd gathered in Narra, the boy's village, and more than 200 people marched with his body to the district center. Some of the men were armed and confronted the police, shouting anti-American slogans . . .
The police opened fire in an effort to push back the crowd to stop its advance to the district center. A 14-year-old boy was killed, and at least one other person was wounded, Mr. Khalid said. . . .
On Thursday, a night raid by international forces in Nangahar Province resulted in the death of a 12-year-old girl and her uncle, who was a member of the Afghan National Police.
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...It's the perfect self-perpetuating cycle:
(1) They hate us and want to attack us because we're over there; therefore,
(2) we have to stay and proliferate ourselves because they hate us and want to attack us;
(3) our staying and proliferating ourselves makes them hate us and want to attack us more; therefore,
(4) we can never leave, because of how much they hate us and want to attack us.
The beauty of this War on Terror -- and, as the last two weeks have demonstrated, War is the bipartisan consensus for what we are and should be doing to address Terrorism -- is that it forever sustains its own ostensible cause...
[In Full, with updates, at Salon]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 23 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The Good News Is - If Pakistan DID Kill Mullah Omar We Have No Reason To Waste Military Money In The Region [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 8:40 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 20 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: The 'Bright Side' Of California's Budget Deficit - Enviro-Orgs My Take Over Control Of Budget Shuttered State Parks [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 13:48 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the White House today, a day after sharply criticizing a major Mideast policy address by President Barack Obama. In Thursday's speech, the president said, "We believe the borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps" of land.» The FBI Wants DNA from Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski in their investigation of his potential involvement in the Chicago Tylenol tampering incident which happened in the early 80s. This occurred as an end result of a petition by Kaczynski to keep his documents from being auctioned off by the federal government. He claims there's proof he didn't tamper with the Tylenol in coded documents the government wants to sell. "...they aren't saying whether there's any reason to believe he might be a match. Chicago FBI spokeswoman Cynthia Yates said the bureau wants DNA from "numerous individuals" including Kaczynski, although she wouldn't provide details about any of the others." More.
Netanyahu called the suggestion "indefensible" with one top Israeli official saying "There is a feeling that Washington does not understand the reality, doesn't understand what we face." Netanyahu reportedly made a furious phone call to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, just hours before the speech, objecting to the language on 1967 borders.
In today's meeting, Netanyahu is expected to demand that the U.S. veto a resolution approving Palestinian Statehood in the U.N. Security Council... [Read On]
The Rapture should begin at 6 pm tomorrow, with the biggest earthquake ever. A couple hundred million graves will then release the good souls, but the billions of other graves are supposed to spew out the remains like a global Heimlich maneuver.
Seriously. That's his prediction. Of course, with all the different time zones on the planet, I don't know which 6 pm he means...
California still leads U.S., including in inequality
By Peter Henderson
Thu May 19, 2011
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Perennial trend-setter California still represents potential aspects of the future of the United States, ranging from wealth and opportunity in Silicon Valley to abject poverty in the agricultural Central Valley.
The Golden State has always seen itself as the best, and it still is for some, but a new study of federal census and state data covering longevity, education and income shows the state is also home to arguably the worst-off parts of the nation.
Its diversity, continued attraction to immigrants, and a fast-changing economy that is still the world's eighth largest make it a harbinger for the globe as well as the nation, according to the study released this week.
"Some Californians are actually enjoying the highest levels of well-being in the world, where the rest of the world won't be for another half-century," said Kristen Lewis, one of the authors of "A Portrait of California."
But the report by the American Human Development Project, which uses United Nations-based indicators of health, wealth and education rolled into a Human Development Index score, also sheds light on less fortunate parts of the state. (here)
The Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts, which exploded in riots in 1965, only now scores at levels enjoyed by the rest of the county that year, while a companion study found the nation's worst-off congressional district to be in Fresno, California -- not the Mississippi Delta or Appalachia as researchers had expected... [More @ Reuters]
"All The News You Never Knew You Needed To Know ...Until Now." May 19 2011 Travus T. Hipp Morning News & Commentary: There's Always 'Welfare' - The Pinata Of Generational Wealth Transfer Has Been Broken And There's Very Little 'Candy' Left [Pop Out Player? Click Here] Prefer An MP3 Playlist? It's Here: [128Kbps MP3 13:14 Minutes] Other Audio Formats Available [ Here ] Razer Raygun Says: ♥ Sharing IS Caring! ♥ |
What if the U.S. Actually Attempted to Seize Pakistan's Nukes?
By Russ Wellen, May 12, 2011
Yesterday I posted that Pakistani fear of the United States attempting to seize its nuclear-weapons arsenal is at an all-time high. As Yochi Dreazen wrote at the National Journal, "the ease with which elite U.S. forces jammed Pakistan's advanced air defense systems and mounted a precision operation deep inside Pakistani territory is eroding the Pakistani military's standing in the eyes of its own people and raising new questions there about whether the U.S. could one day mount a similar push to grab Pakistan's nuclear weapons."
As I mentioned, one obstacle to that course of action is thatThe West doesn't know all the locations of Iran's (however peaceful thus far) nuclear program, thus rendering preemptive bombing inevitably incomplete. Neither does the West know the location of all of Pakistan's nuclear weapons, thus making it impossible to take complete control of its program.I also cited an article I wrote for Asia Times Online in 2009 titled Keeping Pakistan's nukes extremist-free. I had contacted veteran British reporter Brian Coughley, South Asian defense analyst for Jane's, who also wrote War, Coups and Terror: Pakistan's Army in Years of Turmoil (Skyhorse Publishing, 2009). As recently as April of this year he wrote an article on Pakistan's nuclear security for Jane's Intelligence Review (requires paying a -- steep -- subscription fee). In my ATimes piece I wrote:Cloughley's extensive experience with the Pakistani military has left him with respect for its professionalism and much less concern for the security of its nuclear weapons than Washington expresses.Besides, British columnist Johann Hari wrote:Every time the US military has war-gamed sending in troops . . . it has ended in a horrific bloodbath -- and the weapons still eluding their control.Cloughley agreed.It would, indeed, be a bloodbath if any attempt were made to insert special forces. How anyone in their right mind could even suggest such a scenario is beyond me.Nevertheless, at my request, he provided one... [More @ FPIF]
Freedom's Just Another Word for Blowing Shit UpYou know it's true! Read it... There's proof!
In the Theater of the Absurd: US-NATO Support "Al Qaeda in Libya""We are fighting nothing other than al-Qaeda in what they call the Islamic Maghreb. It's an armed group that is fighting from Libya to Mauritania and through Algeria and Mali. If you had found them taking over American cities by the force of arms, tell me what you would do?" From a letter sent by the Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi to the US president Barack Obama.In the Theatre of the Absurd, anything is possible. However, this latest scenario in Libya has taken absurdity to a whole new dimension.
A rag-tag bunch of armed, al-Qaeda affiliated tribesmen, being referred to as a 'pro-democracy movement' by British State TV (BBC) and other mainstream media outlets, are now being openly armed and trained by the French, British and American governments. This same Coalition of Crusaders, with the support of the Arab League, is fighting alongside the rebels, launching continual bombing raids on targets in Tripoli and beyond, including Muammar Qadhafi's compound, in a brazen attempt to assassinate the man and re-colonise Libya.
And what is the support inside Libya for this so-called 'Libyan pro-democracy movement'? The answer is less than 2% of the entire Libyan population... Full Article at Global Research (h/t: Times of India)
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