The New CIA: From Spying To Assassinating

The New CIA: From Spying To Assassinating 

 

The Way of the Knife: NYT’s Mark Mazzetti on the CIA’s Post-9/11 Move from Spying to Assassinations In his new book, “The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth,” Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times reporter Mark Mazzetti tracks the transformation of the CIA and U.S. special operations forces into man-hunting and killing machines in the world’s dark spaces: the new American way of war.

Continue Reading This Article

Frances Perkins and the Birth of Social Security

Frances Perkins and FDR

 

Frances Perkins and the Birth of Social Security

 Tommy Douglas, the former Premier of Saskatchewan from 1944 to 1961, is considered by many Canadians to be the father of the Canadian universal healthcare system and a true Canadian hero.

Canada now has one of the foremost healthcare systems in the world at an affordable price. It truly is a remarkable accomplishment for a country, with just over 30 million people, that is so closely joined at the hip economically with the US.

Continue Reading This Article

Climate Change Is As Complicated As Why Skeptics Cheer Research Failure and Boo Success

Climate Change Is As Complicated As Why Skeptics Cheer Research Failure and Boo Success

As the planet warms there is one thing for sure. Climate scientists will continue to get some of the global warming negative and positive forecasts wrong.

Not to remix all the hot water with the cold every time the bath water is not just right, as most global warming skeptics do, the question “will warming mean lights out for mankind and how much will we suffer” needs to stay in focus.

Continue Reading This Article

Danger Of Free Markets And Free Money

Danger Of Free Markets And Free Money

When questioned closely, as Jon Stewart does in this interview, David Stockman expands on his libertarian leanings. A common sense explanation of the necessary blend between government intervention and allowing economies to expand and innovate, is revealed.

The Great Deformation author David Stockman explains why the bailout premise was fatally flawed, and how the economy can get away from “too big to fail.”

Continue Reading This Article

An Over-Populated Polluted Planet Only Leads To Heartbreak

An Over-Populated Polluted Planet Only Leads To Heartbreak

A declining population would in fact be good news for a planet stretched to the limit for natural resources. What we are not using up at a furious pace we are spoiling with piggy, self-centered, and greedy environmental practices.The big dog in the room of course is global warming. Now that really is crapping in our own nest.

The best analogy I have ever heard for global warming is that the earth has a fever and the bug sickening it this time around is mankind itself. We are the virus!

Continue Reading This Article

Impaled by The Spirit of Economic Ingratiation

Impaled by The Spirit of Economic Ingratiation 

 

One of the biggest failures of governments worldwide, and in particular the US, is the way governments have handled declining home values. This has wiped out much of the savings of many folks just nearing retirement who have little time to make up ground.

It has put young people in a lifetime earnings hole which will be difficult to dig out of. And most of all, it has robbed from the diligent well-behaved savers and given that money and then some to the banks.

Continue Reading This Article

The Stealth Sequester

The Stealth Sequester

So far, the much-dreaded “sequester” – some $85 billion in federal spending cuts between March and September 30 – hasn’t been evident to most Americans.

The dire warnings that had issued from the White beforehand – threatening that Social Security checks would be delayed, airport security checks would be clogged, and other federal facilities closed – seem to have been overblown.

Continue Reading This Article

Big Shot Corporations Not Too Big To Flail

Big Shot Corporations Not Too Big To Flail 

 

How Big Corporations Are Unpatriotic 

Many giant profitable U.S. corporations are increasingly abandoning America while draining it at the same time.

General Electric, for example, has paid no federal income taxes for a decade while becoming a net job exporter and fighting its hard-pressed workers who want collective bargaining through unions like the United Electrical Workers Union (UE). GE’s boss, Jeffrey Immelt, makes about $12,400 an hour on an 8-hour day, plus benefits and perks, presiding over this global corporate empire.

Continue Reading This Article

Slow Moving Andes’ Glaciers Moving Fast In Wrong Direction

Slow Moving Andes’ Glaciers Moving Fast In Wrong Direction 

 

Andes’ Tropical Glaciers Going Fast 

Within the last three decades the glaciers of the tropical Andes have receded by between nearly a third and a half, scientists say – with the warming of the Pacific to blame.

The glaciers of the tropical Andes have shrunk by between 30 and 50% in 30 years and many will soon disappear altogether, cutting off the summer water supply for millions of people, according to scientists studying the region’s climate.

Continue Reading This Article

Democracy Under Assault By The unDemocratic Party

Democracy Under Assault By The unDemocratic Party

Denying people the right to vote is as old as democracy itself. And cries of voting suppression are equally as old and sometimes exaggerated. However, now, there is little doubt in the veracity of voting rights advocates’ claims that voting rights are being trampled on once again by conservative interests.

There is no doubt that the Republican party is out to make our elections as undemocratic as they can to gain the upper hand that their policies can’t deliver. Recently their efforts have become blatant and flagrant.

Continue Reading This Article

All Eyes Are Watching As Gag Laws Evolve

All Eyes Are Watching As Gag Laws Evolve

In the desirability of factory farming debate, regardless of which side you come down on, the idea of criminalizing whistle-blowing and reporting of illegal activities is a dangerous precedent.

Particularly disturbing is the fact that the group ALEC — which brought us the crazed “stand your ground gun laws” and other pro-big-corporate legislation — are again backing anti-people and anti-whistle-blowing laws.

Continue Reading This Article

The Hijacking of Human Rights

The Hijacking of Human Rights

The appointment of Suzanne Nossel, a former State Department official and longtime government apparatchik, as executive director of PEN American Center is part of a campaign to turn U.S. human rights organizations into propagandists for pre-emptive war and apologists for empire.

Nossel’s appointment led me to resign from PEN as well as withdraw from speaking at the PEN World Voices Festival in May.

Continue Reading This Article

The Big Stall

The Big Stall

Bad news on the economy. It added only 88,000 jobs in March – the slowest pace of job growth in nine months.

While the jobless rate fell to 7.6 percent, much of the drop was due to the labor force shrinking by almost a half million people. If you’re not looking for work, you’re not counted as unemployed.
That means the percentage of working-age Americans either with a job or looking for one dropped to 63.3 percent — its lowest level since 1979.

Continue Reading This Article

The Fool’s Gold of Current Climate

The Fool’s Gold of Current Climate

A frequent argument made by climate contrarians is that global warming hasn’t yet resulted in unbearable climate change consequences, and therefore we have nothing to worry about.

In a talk recorded by ReasonTV,Matt Ridley offers up several different examples of this line of thinking, arguing that climate change thus far has had some positive consequences and that fossil fuels are just great, implying that we should continue to consume them without worry.

Continue Reading This Article

Here Comes the Sun…..Power!

Here Comes the Sun…..Power!

The sun is a powerful source of energy and its like the Energizer Bunny, it just keeps on giving. Except that unlike the Energizer batteries, the sun is free and doesn’t need to be replaced regularly.
These solar initiatives worldwide are definitely encouraging for sun worshipers.

Continue Reading This Article

Climate Groundhog Day - Week Ending April 13th

 Climate Groundhog Day - Week Ending April 13th

Phil Conners wakes up everyday to even more frequent floods and droughts, devastated forestland, and rampant weed growth.  But, before he and “Phil The Groundhog” tell everyone to give up and go home, they check the latest climate change news here.

This page is updated during the week and then it starts over again anew. What else? It’s groundhog day!

Continue Reading This Article

Propaganda and Cool March Cools Public Concern

Propaganda and Cool March Cools Public Concern

Spring is finally here. So what’s all this about climate. After a very warm March last year, this year was a different story and with the falling temperatures the public’s concern for global warming has waned a bit. (New Climate Change Pew Poll)

The public’s opinion and thus its pressure on officials to act is hampered by their misunderstanding of the relationship between weather and climate.

Continue Reading This Article

The Need to Cheat No Child Left Behind

 The Need to Cheat No Child Left Behind

The roots of Atlanta’s school testing cheating scandal has its roots in the Bush Administration’s “No Child Left Behind” policy. It was a policy destined to fail and was even also forecasted to lead to cheating.

What is important here is why this crazy policy was stuffed down the educational community and American people’s throat in the first place. What was the real motivation for adopting this time and effort wasting policy? It could easily have been to generate profits for the school testing and test preparation industry.

Continue Reading This Article

Texas and The West Better Pray For Rain As Many Deny Global Warming

Texas and The West Better Pray For Rain As Many Deny Global Warming

Another Summer of Drought Looms for Texas and West. The outlook for the western half of the U.S. continued to be bleak on Thursday, as forecasters said drought conditions are expected to expand and intensify all across the West and Southwest. 

And Texas, which has been in the throes of drought for the better part of two years, may be hardest hit as its bone-dry conditions are expected to continue into summer, leading to shortages of drinking water. 

Continue Reading This Article

The Shame of America’s Gulag

The Shame of America’s Gulag

If, as Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote, “the degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons” then we are a nation of barbarians. Our vast network of federal and state prisons, with some 2.3 million inmates, rivals the gulags of totalitarian states.

Continue Reading This Article

Climate Groundhog Day - Week Ending April 6th

Climate Groundhog Day - Week Ending April 6th

Phil Conners wakes up everyday to hotter temperatures, higher seas, and rampant apathy.  But, before he and “Phil The Groundhog” barrel over the quarry pit cliff, they check the latest climate change news first here.
This page is updated during the week and then it starts over again anew. What else? It’s groundhog day!

Continue To Climate Groundhog Day

Feeding The Prison Industrial Complex

Feeding The Prison Industrial Complex

The American judicial system has completely broken down and the average American has yet to fully comprehend that fact. A Republican “get tough on crime” political wedge issue from decades past that Democrats signed on to or trembled to denounce, has spawned a prison-industrial complex that is beginning to bust state treasuries. In the past 50 years, it has filled the jails with millions that were guilty of anything barely threatening to society.

Continue Reading This Article

Cost of Insurance Soon To Be Out of Control

Cost of Insurance Soon To Be Out of Control

In the near future people may have to turn to self-insurance, if they can, as insurance cost will skyrocket in the face of losses because of global warming. Already the industry has shifted coverage for floods to the Federal Government.
Unlike healthcare and educational costs that have spiraled out of control, most people have no choice to opt out of insurance coverage when that coverage is a prerequisite to getting and keeping a real estate loan.

Continue To Read This Article

Wal-mart To Explore The Final Frontier of Worker Abuse

Wal-mart To Explore The Final Frontier of Worker Abuse

Wal-mart is a company often accused of abusing its lowest paid employees. Their hourly rate for sales associates sets the standard for a retail industry known for meagerness.
Workers often work less than full-time and thus fall below the poverty line and thus are able to qualify for government assistance and in particularly food stamps. Presumably many of these same people shop at Wal-mart where food stamps make up about 4% of sales.
Continue Reading This Article

Shirking Prudence At Hell’s Front Door

  
Shirking Prudence At Hell’s Front Door

David Stockman, former Reagan budget director caused quite a stir this weekend with an op-ed blast of recent-times economic policy in the New York Times. Stockman’s credibility comes from his close ties to the Reagan Administration and the “invention” of the term “trickle down economics”.
To be fair the term is supply-side but the concept “the powerful taking from the unsuspecting” really is as old as there have been managed economies — which of course dates from the beginning of civilization.
Continue Reading This Article

You Are Losing Your Diet Choices

You Are Losing Your Diet Choices 

Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America from Monsanto to Wal-Mart Wenonah Hauter, the executive director of Food & Water Watch, joins us to discuss her new book, “Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America.” Hauter tackles the corporations behind the meat, vegetables, grains and milk consumed by millions every day — including some of the most popular organic brands.
Continue Reading This Article

What Immigration Reform Could Mean for American Workers, and Why the AFL-CIO Is Embracing It

What Immigration Reform Could Mean for American Workers, and Why the AFL-CIO Is Embracing It 
Their agreement is very preliminary and hasn’t yet even been blessed by the so-called Gang of Eight Senators working on immigration reform, but the mere fact that AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka and Chamber of Commerce President Thomas J. Donohue agreed on anything is remarkable.
The question is whether it’s a good deal for American workers. It is, and I’ll explain why in a moment.
Continue Reading This Article

Gay Community Can Thank Bush and Rove For Fast Tracking Same Sex Marriage

Gay Community Can Thank Bush and Rove For Fast Tracking Same Sex Marriage

The gay community can essentially thank President George W. Bush as well as Karl Rove, the political adviser who engineered Bush 43rd’s unlikely reelection. Why thank them? The gay rights issue was brought to the public’s attention, and out of the closet for discussion, when it was put on state ballots as a wedge issue to encourage evangelicals and other anti-gay supporters to head to the polls in 2004.

It was this despicable “ballot stuffing” that brought the plight of gays to an expanding demographic that found little harm in allowing equal rights, once again, to another large portion of American society that was blocked by Conservative’s bigotry.

Continue Reading This Article

Why Politicians Are Sensitive to Public Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage, Immigration, and Guns, But Not on the Economy

 

Why Politicians Are Sensitive to Public Opinion on Same-Sex Marriage, Immigration, and Guns, But Not on the Economy

Who says American politics is gridlocked? A tidal wave of politicians from both sides of the aisle who just a few years ago opposed same-sex marriage are now coming around to support it. Even if the Supreme Court were decide to do nothing about California’s Proposition 8 or DOMA, it would seem only matter of time before both were repealed.
A significant number of elected officials who had been against allowing undocumented immigrants to become American citizens is now talking about “charting a path” for them; a bipartisan group of senators is expected to present a draft bill April 8.

Continue Reading This Article

How Much Does That Senator Cost?

How Much Does That Senator Cost?

 While all eyes were on DOMA…the Monsanto Protection Act was signed

While all eyes were on the Supreme Court this week, the corrosive influence of money in politics dealt our country another major blow. On Tuesday - President Obama signed into law H.R 933 - a continuing resolution appropriations bill that had been approved by Congress - both the House and the Senate - just days earlier.
And while the bill sounds fairly innocuous by itself - buried 78 pages into it was a provision that protects GMO and biotech companies like Monsanto from nearly all forms of judicial oversight.

Continue Reading This Article

Fossil Fuel To Our Peril - Solar Power To Our Salvation

Any effort put to fossil fuel R&D and exploration is essentially money down the proverbial “rat hole”. Global warming has rendered fossil fuels’ game over. Renewables and particularly solar is where it’s at and if efforts are concentrated here, preventing devastating climate change may still be possible.
Continue Reading This Article

The Achilles' Heel Of Obamacare

The Achilles' Heel Of Obamacare

The Achilles heel of The Affordable Care Act of 2010 may be that it is not all that affordable. Why? Insurance companies and healthcare providers are falling all over each other raising prices before full implementation of the law....
Continue Reading This Article

Bush Increases In Withholding Information Appears Institutionalized

Bush Increases In Withholding Information Appears Institutionalized

A new report has revealed the U.S. government refused or censored Freedom of Information Act requests from the public more last year than at any other time during the Obama presidency.....
Continue Reading This Report

Drought Continues in the Southwest US

 
Lake Mead Shows The Drought Intensity

Drought Continues in the Southwest US

 The extended drought continues to choke the Western half of the country, with water supply concerns rising in New Mexico and Texas as anxiety about another bone-dry summer is raised. This week, the dryness grew worse in Texas while expanding into
Continue Reading This Article

International Arms Trading - The Hypocrisy of US Gun Control Debates

International Arms Trading - The Hypocrisy of US Gun Control Debates

While the gun control debates in the US rage over 2nd amendment rights, background checks, the need to be able to confront a powerful government with guns, and other blah blah blah rhetoric, the "real agenda" is...
Continue Reading This Article

How Was I Supposed To Know There Would Be Six More Weeks of Winter

How Was I Supposed To Know There Would Be Six More Weeks of Winter

Punxsutawney Phil predicted an early spring - but boy was he wrong! So what's causing these frigid temperatures and winter conditions to stick around across much of the US? Scientists from NOAA and various university climatology departments said that melting Arctic sea ice may be...
Continue Reading This Article

Returning Vets Deserve The Best of Care

Returning Vets Deserve The Best of Care

Americans have been quick to sport bumper stickers that say "Support Our Troops", but talk is cheap and so are bumper stickers. The support for soldiers leaving for war is mostly emotional and moral support. But the litmus test takes place when those same soldiers return from war handicapped in some way --
Continue Reading This Article

Clearing The Air -- It Is Never Too Late!

Clearing The Air -- It Is Never Too Late!

Report writing duo challenges the report that they helped write.  The report has been misused to imply that the amount of global warming to date is essentially irreversible on the timescale of about 1,000 years.
Continue Reading This Article

With Factory Farming The Crap Keeps Piling Up

With Factory Farming The Crap Keeps Piling Up

I used to buy regular old eggs for years. Why did I stop? I saw a video of all those poor birds packed together to standing room only. I now can't pass the egg cooler in the store without visualizing all those poor creatures. Now pigs are next on my list and maybe cows too. However, the food industry is fighting back.
Continue Reading This Article

Time For The Annual Arctic Melt Vigil

Time For The Annual Arctic Melt Vigil

The Arctic sea ice melt vigil has begun. Arctic melt is of great importance because it affects the climate of the planet in general and the weather of the northern latitudes in particular.

 

Of particular interest this season will be just what effect the ice fracturing will have on the rate of melt and thus the overall extent. In the last couple of weeks of February an arctic storm fractured some of the arctic ice.

Read more: Time For The Annual Arctic Melt Vigil