How Barack Obama is giving Tickle Me Elmo a run for its money this Christmas

By Mail Foreign Service

This Barack Obama action figure has become the unlikely Christmas toy hit among kids, say American retailers. 

The cartoon-like toy, which stands six-inches tall, is giving the likes of the popular Tickle Me Elmo doll a run for its money.

And some New York stores report selling out of the likeness of the President-elect in the run up to Xmas.

An action figure we can believe in: This Barack Obama toy has become the unlikely Christmas hit among kids, say American retailers

Tickle Me Elmo was a runaway hit among children - until the launch of the Obama doll

"They are literally flying off the shelves," said one worker at the Scholastic Store in Manhattan's SoHo area.

"The kids see Obama, and they just want to grab him."

Store manager Denys Ramos said they have sold more than 200 of the $12.95 figurines, which features the future White House resident with oversized ears and fingers, since the beginning of the month.

And it has proved significantly more popular than a doll of Obama's defeated Presidential rival, Senator John McCain.

"This holiday season Barack Obama has been our Tickle Me Elmo," Ramos told the New York Daily News. 

"We did have the John McCain figure but we had to discount it."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1094947/How-Barack-Obama-giving-Tickle-Me-Elmo-run-money-Christmas.html

 

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If Gov. Rod Blagojevich deserves impeachment, so did Pres. Bush

by MaryMacElveen

Yes, I am blistered like many concerning the corruption that surrounds the Illinois Governor, Rod Blagojevich as I suspect many Americans are since they despise their elected officials acting badly. Not to support the governor in any way shape or form, one would think he committed acts of treason with the wall-to-wall coverage of this corruption case.

In listening to the coverage of this "Sad and sobering" event as expressed by President-elect Barack Obama, I did hear that the Illinois state legislature may begin impeachment proceedings against him. They are allegedly doing so to wrest the power from Blagojevich so he cannot appoint someone to the senate seat recently vacated by President-elect Obama.

As the media covered this event and where impeachment was brought up, I did not hear any laughs or negative comments made of those state officials, as was done when others brought up any impeachment process directed at President Bush. Both Cynthia McKinney and Congressman Dennis Kucinich have been marginalized in calling for Bush's impeachment. I guess everyone is on board when it comes to impeaching Blagojevich instead of Bush.

As I listened to U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald and others express their outrage directed at this governor, you would have thought his acts of corruption caused the deaths of American soldiers and innocent Iraqi victims.

As Fitzgerald bleeped out the precise words coming from Blagojevich because it would offend a sensitive listener, one must ask: Why isn't the media showing images of our dead soldiers and innocent Iraqis? They act as if foul language coming from an elected official is an assault upon us all instead of a war of lies that cost the lives of human beings.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/19131

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Flying Shoes Create a Hero In Arab World

 

By Sudarsan Raghavan

BAGHDAD, Dec. 15 -- In hurling footwear and insults at President Bush, Muntadar al-Zaidi expressed what relatives said were his own frustrations with American policy in Iraq and made himself into an overnight celebrity in the Arab world.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, Zaidi was distraught over the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. He interviewed widows and orphans in his work as a journalist, once telling an editor that he hoped to meet Bush "and hit him with my shoes." Earlier this year, Zaidi was arrested during an American raid in his neighborhood and released a day later. And in March he covered a U.S. airstrike in which children were trapped under the rubble.

"This incident made him very angry against the American forces," recalled Maithan al-Zaidi, 28, his brother.

On Monday, people across the Middle East applauded Zaidi for expressing their anger at the Bush administration. In cafes and online chat rooms, people joked about the incident with glee, releasing years of frustration with U.S. policies. Thousands of Iraqis demonstrated in the streets demanding his release from Iraqi custody.

Iraqi authorities have not charged Zaidi, but they have arrested him for "his aggressive actions against an official and a visitor of the Iraqi government," Yaseen Majeed, a top media adviser to Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, said in a statement. Majeed called Zaidi "a disgrace to journalism" and said he would be handed over to the Iraqi justice system for punishment.

Munqeth al-Faroon, an Iraqi court official, said Zaidi could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison for insulting the nation's leader. On Sunday, at a news conference held by Maliki and Bush, Zaidi threw his shoes, one after the other, at the U.S. president, shouting, "This is a farewell kiss!" As Iraqi security guards converged on Zaidi, he yelled: "Dog! Dog!"

U.S. officials said they would leave it to the Iraqi government to prosecute Zaidi.

The shoe assault turned Bush's trip to Iraq into a public relations fiasco, overshadowing the White House's message of impending victory in a long and unpopular war. The incident served as a bookend to Bush's flamboyant 2003 arrival aboard an aircraft carrier decorated with a banner reading "Mission Accomplished," which was meant as a declaration of victory but soon became a symbol of U.S. hubris as the war continued.

Bush responded to the shoe-throwing by quipping that the shoes were "size 10" and joking to reporters, "I didn't know what the guy said, but I saw his sole."

He rejected suggestions that the incident symbolized wider Iraqi displeasure with his administration and the conduct of the war. "I don't think you can take one guy throwing shoes and say this represents a broad movement in Iraq," Bush told reporters aboard Air Force One after leaving Baghdad. "You can try to do that if you want to. I don't think it would be accurate."

But many people are doing that -- in the blogosphere, on television, in editorials. Users of the Facebook networking Web site created groups in support of Zaidi, including one called "I'm a fan of the great hero who hit Bush with his shoes in Baghdad" that had more than 9,000 members Monday night.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/15/AR2008121500161.html?hpid=topnews

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World condemns man for missing Bush's face

The Stupid Times

Stupid news for stupid time

Just a few of the shoes that world leaders would like to throw at Bush

International leaders and commentators have called for the "harshest possible punishment" to be used against the man who failed to hit George W Bush in the fucking face with his shoes.

At a press conference with Iraqi PM Nouri Maliki, an Iraqi journalist was wrestled to the floor by security guards after he called Mr Bush "a dog" and threw his footwear, just missing the president.

Politicians around the world have expressed shock and awe that he missed the president's grinning face, and insisted that if they had been there, there would have smashed the bastard's nose right in.

Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain broke off from talks with union leaders to speak of his regret that Bush wasn't twatted in the chops. His Australian counterpart Kevin Rudd released a statement condemning the journalist for missing Bush's eyes and called for him to be tried at the Hague for "pissing away a perfect set up. "

http://thestupidtimes.blogspot.com/2008/12/world-condemns-man-for-missing-bushs.html

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Twelve days of EFF

Learn more about this video and support EFF!

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Military Entangled in 'Extreme Missionary' Christian Reality TV Show

By Jason Leopold

 

The Pentagon has once again come under fire by a military watchdog organization for its involvement in the production of two cable programs, one that featured two so-called "extreme" missionaries embedded with a U.S. Army unit in Afghanistan trying to convert Muslims to Christianity.

 

The popular reality series, "Travel the Road," aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and featured Will Decker and Tim Scott, two so-called "extreme" missionaries who travel the globe to "preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission."

The other cable program green-lit by the Pentagon is "God's Soldier," which aired in September on the Military Channel, and was filmed at Forward Operating Base McHenry in Hawijah, Iraq. It features an Army chaplain openly promoting fundamentalist Christianity to active-duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq in violation of the U.S. Constitution.

The Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF), a watchdog organization, first disclosed details about the cable programs in the group's weekly newsletter on Friday. The group plans to amend a federal lawsuit it filed against the Department of Defense earlier this year, currently in federal District Court in Kansas City, Kansas to "include these despicable unconstitutional promotions of fundamentalist Christianity in the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan," said MRFF founder and president Mikey Weinstein.

http://www.pubrecord.org/religion/565-military-entangled-in-extreme-missionary-christian-reality-tv-show.html

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'Killing a Brown'

  
New Evidence of Extremists in the Military
By David Holthouse

The racist skinhead logged on with exciting news: He'd just enlisted in the United States Army.

"Sieg Heil, I will do us proud," he wrote. It was a June 3 post to AryanWear Forum 14, a neo-Nazi online forum to which "Sobibor's SS," who identified himself as a skinhead living in Plantersville, Ala., had belonged since early 2004. (Sobibor was a Nazi death camp in Poland during World War II).

About a month after he announced his enlistment, Sobibor's SS bragged in another post to Forum 14 that he'd specifically requested and been assigned to MOS, or Military Occupational Specialty, 98D.

MOS98D soldiers are in high demand right now. That's because they're specially trained in disarming Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), the infamous roadside bombs that are killing and maiming so many U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Presumably, part of learning how to disarm an IED is learning how one is made.

"I have my own reasons for wanting this training but in fear of the government tracing me and me loosing [sic] my clearance I can't share them here," Sobibor's SS informed his fellow neo-Nazis.

One of his earlier posts indicated his reasons serve a darker purpose than defending America: "Once all the Jews are gone the world will start fixing itself."

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=971

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George W. Bush's Nightmare Before Christmas

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Bush Administration created executive pay loophole

by John Byrne

The Bush Administration inserted an eleventh-hour provision into the $750 billion bailout bill to protect executive bonuses, a single sentence that will torpedo efforts to reduce bonuses even as companies slash tens of thousands of jobs and use taxpayer money to gobble up other companies at fire-sale prices.

Pressured by constituents who worried that companies would take government aid and continue to pay their executives eye-popping bonuses, Congress inserted a provision that would penalize companies who took taxpayer money and shelled out outsized bonuses.

But at the last minute, Bush officials insisted on a one-sentence provision that stopped the measure in its tracks, according to congressional aides who spoke to the Washington Post.

The change stipulated that the sanction would only apply to firms that sold mortgage backed securities to the government at auction, which the Bush Treasury Department said would be the method they'd use to infuse troubled companies with bailout cash.

"Now, however, the small change looks more like a giant loophole, according to lawmakers and legal experts" who spoke to Post reporter Amit Paley. "In a reversal, the Bush administration has not used auctions for any of the $335 billion committed so far from the rescue package, nor does it plan to use them in the future. Lawmakers and legal experts say the change has effectively repealed the only enforcement mechanism in the law dealing with lavish pay for top executives."

http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Bush_Administration_created_executive_pay_loophole_1215.html

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Repubs waste $50 bn. in Iraq, but stiff Detroit

Informed Comment

Thoughts on the Middle East, History, and Religion

by Juan Cole

You know how the Republicans in the Senate refused to spend $30 billion to bring the US auto industry back from the brink?

It turns out that they were prefectly happy to waste $50 billion in taxpayer money on reconstruction boondoggles in Iraq on explicity partisan grounds. A veteran Republican lobbyist, says the NYT, explicitly appealed to the then head of the Office of Management and Budget:

"To delay getting our funds would be a political disaster for the President . . . His election will hang for a large part on show of progress in Iraq and without the funding this year, progress will grind to a halt."

So "a show of progress" in Iraq was just so Bush could get reelected in 2004?

 

http://www.juancole.com/2008/12/repubs-waste-100-bn-in-iraq-but-stiff.html

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Reality

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OBAMA SET TO SQUEEZE ISRAEL

Netanyahu's grand coalition 

Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

The "international community" is eagerly anticipating the incoming Obama administration's policy toward Israel. It is widely assumed that as soon as he comes into office, US President-elect Barack Obama will move quickly to place massive pressure on the next Israeli government to withdraw from Judea, Samaria, Jerusalem and the Golan Heights in the interests of advancing a "peace process" with the Palestinians and the Syrians.

Giving voice to these expectations this week was this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Martti Ahtisaari. The former Finnish prime minister used his prize ceremony to call on Obama to make contending with the Palestinian conflict with Israel his chief focus during his first year in office. This is the same Ahtisaari who recently demanded that the West recognize Hamas as a legitimate political movement.

People who have been in close contact with Obama's foreign policy transition team have privately acknowledged that the widespread belief that Obama will move swiftly to put the screws on Israel is fully justified. According to one source who has spent a great deal of time with the transition team since last month's US elections, Obama's people are "scope-locked" on Israel.

The source reports that Gen. Jim Jones, Obama's designated national security adviser, is Israel's most outspoken critic. The source, who held a two and a half hour meeting with Jones, told his associates that Jones is keen to deploy NATO forces, perhaps including US troops, to Judea and Samaria.

caroline@carolineglick.com

 

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Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter

 

Mark Twain, Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter by James E. Caron

University of Missouri Press

 

reviewed by Brian Burnes

Even in 1860s Nevada Territory, newspaper readers had expectations and didn't always appreciate being trifled with.  That's something young Sam Clemens learned the hard way, and it's the principal story told in Mark Twain: Unsanctified Newspaper Reporter, by James E. Caron, an English professor at the University of Hawaii.

The book details just what mischief the young newspaper reporter was up to when, while representing the Virginia City Territorial Enterprise beginning in 1862, he decided to bend or disregard the usual rules of journalism. Unsuspecting readers making their way through long columns of solemn legislature resolutions or mining claims would come upon sudden appearances of drunken dialect, or whoppers so ridiculous that readers found themselves dared to call the author's bluff.

Some did. When Clemens left Virginia City two years later, he was fleeing possible arrest for violating an anti-dueling statute, having challenged a rival editor. Clemens had been accused of "unmanly public journalism", which he considered to be fighting words.

But what might have looked like one more failed mineral prospector leaving the Comstock Lode district was, in fact, a young man who had struck it rich in a very specific way.  He had discovered a literary alter-ego whose articles assumed the straight-faced appearance of traditional newspaper journalism yet somehow detailed highly unlikely frontier curiosities—petrified men, or bloody massacres committed by settlers holding worthless mining stocks.

Such stories were not that far removed from later tales, told by the same author, one of which involved a jumping frog.

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/review/66459-mark-twain-unsanctified-newspaper-reporter-by-james-e-caron/

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A Fifth Grader's Plan To Take Over The World

 

http://www.foundmagazine.com/comments/3786

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Criminals

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Bush's Final F.U.

The administration is rushing to enact a host of last-minute regulations that will screw America for years to come

by TIM DICKINSONPosted Dec 25, 2008 11:55 AM

With president-elect Barack Obama already taking command of the financial crisis, it's tempting to think that regime change in America is a done deal. But if George Bush has his way, the country will be ruled by his slash-and-burn ideology for a long time to come.

In its final days, the administration is rushing to implement a sweeping array of "midnight regulations" — de facto laws issued by the executive branch — designed to lock in Bush's legacy. Under the last- minute rules, which can be extremely difficult to overturn, loaded firearms would be allowed in national parks, uranium mining would be permitted near the Grand Canyon and many injured consumers would no longer be able to sue negligent manufacturers in state courts. Other rules would gut the Endangered Species Act, open millions of acres of wild lands to mining, restrict access to birth control and put local cops to work spying for the federal government.

"It's what we've seen for Bush's whole tenure, only accelerated," says Gary Bass, executive director of the nonpartisan group OMB Watch. "They're using regulation to cement their deregulatory mind-set, which puts corporate interests above public interests."

While every modern president has implemented last-minute regulations, Bush is rolling them out at a record pace — nearly twice as many as Clinton, and five times more than Reagan. "The administration is handing out final favors to its friends," says Véronique de Rugy, a scholar at George Mason University who has tracked six decades of midnight regulations. "They couldn't do it earlier — there would have been too many political repercussions. But with the Republicans having lost seats in Congress and the presidency changing parties, Bush has nothing left to lose."

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/24991066/bushs_final_fu?utm_source=weekly-newsletter&utm_medium=email

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Detroit's Problem: It's Health Care, not the Union

 

 

by Christopher R. Martin

The Senate's failure to pass the bailout of the U.S. auto industry strikes a big blow at one of labor's last stands in manufacturing in the U.S.

What's at stake? According to the bill: 355,000 workers in the U.S. directly employed by the automobile industry; 4,500,000 employed in related industries (the auto industry has the highest job creation multiplier effect of any industry); 1,000,000 retirees (with pensions and health care benefits).

Vice President Dick Cheney, mindful of his administration's economic legacy, reportedly pleaded to fellow Republicans in the Senate, "If we don't do this, we will be known as the party of Herbert Hoover forever."

Welcome to forever, Dick.

It's too late for Cheney, as his party and their think tank associates celebrated the opportunity of Detroit's woes to pin blame on their perennial target, labor unions. In September, the conservative Heritage Foundation, with a barely concealed smirk, was already spreading disinformation:

"There are plenty of auto industry jobs being created every day right here in America - and with no government help. Toyota recently opened a new plant in Texas, and is building another factory in Mississippi. Toyota already produces more than 1.5 million cars in America, and that number is set to soar as more factories like those in Texas and Mississippi come on line. Unlike the Detroit automakers, Toyota has a union-free workforce, which gives the company a huge competitive advantage. Toyota still pays good wages but its workforce is younger, not burdened by seniority rules, and the company has smarter and lower benefit costs."

Two contentions - that foreign automakers in the U.S. have received no government help, and that union workers are grossly overpaid-are either misleading or completely untrue.

First, let's start with government assistance. It's easy to forget that there are government subsidies other than the ones asked for in Congressional hearings. For foreign automakers such as Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Hyundai, Mercedes, and BMW, the better way of wringing out public subsidies is to get Southern states to battle for your plants by offering a bevy of tax abatements, infrastructure projects, and even employee recruitment, screening and training. According to the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Michigan, between 1998 and 2003, the Southern states paid out an average of $87,700 in "government help" per nonunion auto job created-an average of $143 million per facility-compared to $50,180 per job created in the haplessly unionized North.

The second contention - that the unionized autoworkers of the north are grossly overpaid - is misleading. In fact, Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tennessee), one of the opponents of the bailout, encouraged the deception. The Chattanooga Times Free Press reported the Senator "said the automakers pay their rank-and-file employees an average of $70 to $74 an hour, including benefits, while foreign automakers pay an average of $42 to $44 an hour." The quote, repeated nearly everywhere in the news media over the past few weeks, obscures the situation.

Only a very few news organizations - Jonathan Cohn at the New Republic and David Leonhardt at the New York Times, among the few-bothered to break it down. As it turns out, the base wages are fairly close - about $29 an hour for Detroit's three automakers, and about $26 for the foreign automakers in the U.S.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2008/12/13-2

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Dumb and Dumber

by Susan Estrich

Trying to sell a Senate seat is dumb. Not realizing that getting caught means you have to give up your seat as governor is dumber.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich's business-as-usual attitude the day after he was indicted for putting a price on Barack Obama's Senate seat — on tape no less — provides even more evidence, if any more were needed, that the guy is not only corrupt and craven, but dumb as they come. The presumption of innocence may protect the governor when it comes to trial, but it just doesn't apply to public officials caught on tape courting corruption.

Eliot Spitzer couldn't survive and all he did was use his own money to pay a hooker. It was certainly stupid of him to assume his private life would stay private once he became governor of New York (and had taken on half of Wall Street), but he didn't abuse the public trust. Blagojevich did. He not only made a fool of himself, but of the voters of his state.

It was apparently no secret that the Illinois governor played on the wrong side of the tracks. His own father-in-law, who helped him get elected, was sufficiently disgusted with what he saw once Blagojevich took over that he spoke out against him after his first year in office. Patricia, Rod's wife and partner in political hardball, stopped speaking to her own father. She might have fared better had she kept talking to her dad and told her husband off.

So how does a guy who is transparently crooked, hopelessly arrogant and dumb as a door manage not only to get elected, but re-elected as governor of a major state? Of course, he didn't have very big shoes to fill: Blagojevich's predecessor is currently residing in a correctional facility in Terre Haute. Maybe they'll be roommates. Governors Row.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/susan-estrich/dumb-and-dumber.html

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Exclusive: Pentagon Pro-Troop Group Misspent Millions, Report Says

By Noah Shachtman

While the Pentagon preps for a new administration, a scandal from an earlier era is rearing its head.

A Defense Department project, supposedly designed to support U.S. troops, was used instead to channel millions of dollars to personal friends and allies of its chief. The "America Supports You," or ASY, program was led in a "questionable and unregulated manner," according to a Department of Defense Inspector General report, obtained by Danger Room. At least $9.2 million was "inappropriately transferred" by the project's managers. Much of that money served only to further promote ASY, instead of assisting servicemembers.

In 2004, the office of then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld set up ASY as a six-month effort to showcase the U.S. public's backing for the troops and their families. "If you're serving overseas, and you watch the mainstream media coverage, sometimes you can't tell if America knows you're there," one official overseeing the program says. America Supports You was seen as a way to counteract that sense.

In time, however, the program grew. Pro-troop rallies were organized. Special wristband and dog tags were made. Special-edition comic books were printed up. Processions were held on the National Mall, on the 9/11 anniversary. Sesame Street characters were enlisted to make DVDs that encouraged families with young children to talk about overseas deployments. America Supports You became a kind of umbrella group for all sorts of charity-related work for service members and military families.

Meanwhile, ASY began to spend millions — not to help the troops, the Inspector General says, but to help itself. "Instead of focusing on its primary mission of showcasing and communicating support to the troops and their families, the ASY program focus [turned to] building or soliciting support from the public," the Inspector General's report notes. In 2006 and 2007, for instance, more than $600,000 was spent ginning up support for America Supports You among schoolchildren. Another $165,000 went to a pro-ASY concert aboard the USS Intrepid, docked on Manhattan's west side. And $15,000 went to actor and musician Gary Sinise's "Lt. Dan Band" to play a separate show. The report calls all of these "questionable and unregulated actions."

http://blog.wired.com/defense/2008/12/asy.html

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No bonus

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You get what you pay for ...

 

by Joel Stein:

 

When a columnist doesn't get paid, there's trouble, sort of.

This column may not meet the high levels of quality to which I have made you accustomed. That's because I haven't been getting paid.

News accounts of Tribune Co.'s bankruptcy filing on Monday detailed the $1 billion owed to JP- Morgan Chase and $737.5 million to Deutsche Bank, but the vast sums owed to Steinacopia Inc. were left out. These sums are so vast that my editors don't want me to mention just how much, for fear of making the other columnists jealous. I deeply suspect those other columnists are me.

But the vast amount -- let's just say there are four figures -- was payment for my last two columns, for which the L.A. Times had not yet sent me a check before entering Chapter 11. Apparently, those weren't columns; those were blogs.

But Steinacopia, as anyone who reads Companies With One Employee Created Solely for Tax Purposes Quarterly knows, can play rough right back. I called my accountant, Marty Fox, at Bernstein, Fox, Whitman, Goldman & Blaumbatt LLP, to ask how I can get in line ahead of JPMorgan Chase.

Fox explained that, unlike JPMorgan Chase, I'm not a "secured lender." So I'm automatically placed at the end of the payback line with the other vendors because I didn't ask for collateral when I gave Tribune my loan. I countered that the reason I didn't ask for collateral was that, unlike JPMorgan Chase, I had no idea I was giving a loan. This was clearly another example of the law bailing out big companies and their rich executives while ignoring a small company and its rich executive.

http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/la-oe-stein12-2008dec12,0,6339808.column

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Bush Presidential Library

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The Flypaper Theory

Deep Thought

Why can't the oil companies bail out Chrysler, GM and Ford?

They just went through four years of obscene profits, largely thanks to their friends in Detroit who seriously dialed back fuel efficiency standards across the board, not to mention selling millions of enormous gas guzzlers.

Their profits from the last quarter alone would more than cover what the Big Three have been asking for. So let the oil companies extend them an interest-free loan. Do it for the good of America. Hell, do it for their own good. Because if the American car companies go belly up, it's going to impact Big Oil's bottom line. Big time.

 

http://thepeskyfly.blogspot.com/2008/12/deep-thought.html

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The Legacy Tour!

 

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Democrats Must Break With Rangel

by Froma Harrop

Company gives $100,000 to congressman's pet cause. Congressman protects company tax loophole worth tens of millions. Bam! Company gives pet cause another $100,000 check.

Sounds like old times in the Republican Congress of former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. But this is happening in the Democratic Congress of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. What a way to greet the new dawn of the Obama era.

The congressman is Charles B. Rangel, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee. The cause is the future Charles B. Rangel School of Public Service at the City University of New York. And the company is Nabors Industries, an oil driller that has pledged a total of $1 million to the school.

There was nothing subtle here. Nabors CEO Eugene Isenberg reportedly met with Rangel the day the Harlem Democrat's committee marked up the bill of interest. Shortly after the tax shelter was secured, the second check cleared. (Cynics will be happy to learn that there's also an Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, named in the executive's honor.)

And what useful economic activity did Nabors perform to justify this princely tax break? Opening an office in Bermuda and declaring itself foreign.

The loophole will cost the Treasury $1.1 billion in revenues over a decade. This is money that could have gone toward expanded health coverage, restoring the National Parks or whatever.

http://www.creators.com/opinion/froma-harrop/democrats-must-break-with-rangel.html

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The Nature Of And Need For A Massive Workplace Campaign In Ethical Behavior

FOR THE PRESERVATION AND PROMOTION OF CONSTITUTIONAL DEMOCRACY

By Donald B. Ardell

An element of REAL wellness not included in current health promotion is applied ethics.  I think ethics education would add consequence, interest and effectiveness to worksite wellness programming, and benefit most exposed to ethical lessons.  If led by skillful facilitators, ethics awareness would help employees explore common personal and business conflicts in non-controversial ways.  This would show that ethical perspectives often play a subtle role, not a controlling influence, on decisions. Employees would be guided to explore unexamined, unrecognized and unclear assumptions that shape their ideas about right and wrong. In this manner, worksite deliberations on matters of applied ethics would likely prove consequential for both companies and individual employees.  Explorations of applied ethics would make more people aware of ethical gray areas warranting clarification. 

I think ethical matters are more consequential to individual employee and organizational productivity than medical matters related to risk factors, which gets all the attention in corporate health efforts.  Of course, it is not an either/or choice – companies could offer both. 

Applied ethics is likely one of the more fruitful areas of REAL wellness.  The field of health care is rife with ethical quandaries fit for exploration and ripe for new dimensions of wellness programming. The study and testing of right or wrong judgments applied to hypothetical issues would surely generate animated interactions.  Today, worksite wellness is rather boring, and many opt out or participate reluctantly, mainly for the incentives but without whole-hearted embrace of the idea.  The ethical discussions would raise levels of understanding dramatically in a short period of time.  In doing so, worksite wellness would facilitate moral and ethical character building. Nothing in the current agenda of medical management or risk reduction offers any possibility of such an impact.

Ethics are a vital element in the common decencies: Ethics affect human interactions in business and in social discourse.  Consensus on ethical matters are likely to render most communications, agreements and understandings more reliable, trustworthy and successful. 

http://tpjmagazine.us/2008-12-14-ardell

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New School Students Sit-In At Board Of Trustees Meeting

By Next Left Notes

SDS die-in at L3 Corporation
(Photo: Thomas Good / NLN)

NEW YORK (RSU) — On Wednesday The New School's Radical Student Union, along with members of the War Resisters League, held a demonstration to demand university investment disclosure. The students also demanded the implementation of a committee on socially responsible investment and removal of the treasurer of the Board of Trustees, Robert B. Millard. The demonstration started at the headquarters of L-3 Communications, located at 600 3rd Avenue, and ended at the New School's Arnhold Hall at 55 W. 13th Street where the Board of Trustees was having their last meeting of the semester. At about 5 p.m., after the students' request to present their demands to the Board of Trustees was denied, the protest became an impromptu sit-in. Approximately 60 students entered the building and filled the lobby, demanding their requests be met.

Students were protesting the treasurer of the Board of Trustees, Robert B. Millard, because of his position as chairman of the executive committee of the military contractor L-3 Communications. L-3 Communications provides a large percentage of the "intelligence personnel" employed in illegal detention centers in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Guantanamo Bay, and is currently facing four lawsuits from Iraqis tortured at Abu Ghraib. An L-3 subsidiary, Military Professional Resources Incorporated (MPRI), armed and trained both sides during the Bosnian conflict in the 1990s and armed and trained the Georgian army prior to and during their attack on Russia.

Bob Kerrey, regarded as an obstacle to Free Inquiry by students
(Photo: Biographical Directory of the U.S. Congress)

Last semester, the RSU brought these demands to the attention of the university's president, Bob Kerrey, when they held a demonstration against L-3 and Millard and attempted to attend a Board of Trustees meeting. At the demonstration they were granted a meeting with Kerrey - it was here where they first brought their research and demands around investment disclosure, Millard, and the Socially Responsible Investment committee (SRI) to the attention of the President. However, Kerrey refused to disclose the university's investments to them or anyone else and made it perfectly clear that he had no intention of ever letting students know what the university is invested in. He also made it clear that he had no intention of ever letting students sit as voting members of the board of trustees. The Radical Student Union believes this denies students an important right to have a say in their own education. Kerrey hosted a conference on "Free Inquiry" and threats to academic freedom in late October. Ironically, many students see him as the biggest obstacle to the free inquiry of students who care about the future of their university.

http://antiauthoritarian.net/NLN/?p=529

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The Silent Winter of Escalation

by Norman Solomon

Soldiers rush for supplies in eastern Afghanistan. (Photo: John Moore / Getty Images)

    Sunday morning, before dawn, I read in The New York Times that "the Pentagon is planning to add more than 20,000 troops to Afghanistan" within the next 18 months - "raising American force levels to about 58,000" in that country. Then, I scraped ice off a windshield and drove to the C-SPAN studios, where a picture window showed a serene daybreak over the Capitol dome.

    While I was on C-SPAN's "Washington Journal" for a live interview, the program aired some rarely seen footage with the voices of two courageous politicians who challenged the warfare state.

    So, on Sunday morning, viewers across the country saw Barbara Lee speaking on the House floor three days after 9/11 - just before she became the only member of Congress to vote against the president's green-light resolution to begin the US military attack on Afghanistan.

    "However difficult this vote may be, some of us must urge the use of restraint," she said. The date was September 14, 2001. Congresswoman Lee continued, "Our country is in a state of mourning. Some of us must say, Let's step back for a moment, let's just pause just for a minute, and think through the implications of our actions today so that this does not spiral out of control."

    And she said, "As we act, let us not become the evil that we deplore."

    The footage of Barbara Lee was an excerpt from the "War Made Easy" documentary film (based on my book of the same name). As she appeared on a TV monitor, I glanced out the picture window. The glowing blue sky and streaky clouds above the Hill looked postcard-serene.

    But the silence now enveloping the political nonresponse to plans for the Afghanistan war is a message of acquiescence that echoes what happened when the escalation of the Vietnam War gathered momentum.

http://www.truthout.org/120908A

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Reducing greenhouse emissions

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Presidential portrait

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Gay-bashing Mormons censor BYU art project, because it was kind of gay

by John Aravosis (DC)

One is gay, the other isn't. And the artist won't tell you which is which. That proved too much for the bigots running the Mormon church, and its Borg incubator, otherwise known as Brigham Young "University" (air-quotes added). Apparently exposing young impressionable Mormons to art, and another point of view, runs too great a risk of damaging their fragile narrow-minded sense of hate and intolerance.

From Dan Savage:

Says the artist...

Apparently the topic of homosexuality is a bit much for the BYU audience and my part of our Fine Art Classes show was taken down today. It seems that censorship is favored over support and love. This really saddens me. I found out because a friend of mine went to the show and said that my peices had been removed and the show had been rearranged.

The show was rearranged so that no one who attended would realize that the works on display had been censored for political/religious reasons. So... shhh. Don't tell anyone.The student artist took pictures of openly gay BYU students—openly gay and openly ballsy—and a companion portrait of a supportive friend or family member. The artist didn't label the portraits; you don't know who in each pair of portraits is the fearsome, terrible, ungodly gay, and who is the tragically deluded enabler of evil—excuse me, "the supporter." You can see the pictures... here. But they deserve a wider viewing—hey, maybe the Salt Lake City Weekly ("We Not All Crazy Bigots Down Here, You Know!") could put them on its cover.

http://www.americablog.com/2008/12/gay-bashing-mormons-censor-byu-art.html

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The 10 Worst Predictions for 2008

 

Prognostication is by far the riskiest form of punditry. The 10 commentators and leaders on this list learned that the hard way when their confident predictions about politics, war, the economy, and even the end of humanity itself completely missed the mark.

1

Scott Gries/Getty Images

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her, then. … Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single Democratic primary. I'll predict that right now." —William Kristol, Fox News Sunday, Dec. 17, 2006

Weekly Standard editor and New York Times columnist William Kristol was hardly alone in thinking that the Democratic primary was Clinton's to lose, but it takes a special kind of self-confidence to make a declaration this sweeping more than a year before the first Iowa caucus was held. After Iowa, Kristol lurched to the other extreme, declaring that Clinton would lose New Hampshire and that "There will be no Clinton Restoration." It's also worth pointing out that this second wildly premature prediction was made in a Times column titled, "President Mike Huckabee?" The Times is currently rumored to be looking for his replacement.

2

CNBC

"Peter writes: 'Should I be worried about Bear Stearns in terms of liquidity and get my money out of there?' No! No! No! Bear Stearns is fine! Do not take your money out. … Bear Stearns is not in trouble. I mean, if anything they're more likely to be taken over. Don't move your money from Bear! That's just being silly! Don't be silly!" —Jim Cramer, responding to a viewer's e-mail on CNBC's Mad Money, March 11, 2008

Hopefully, Peter got a second opinion. Six days after the volatile CNBC host made his emphatic pronouncement, Bear Stearns faced the modern equivalent of an old-fashioned bank run. Amid widespread speculation on Wall Street about the bank's massive exposure to subprime mortgages, Bear's shares lost 90 percent of their value and the investment bank was sold for a pittance to JPMorgan Chase, with a last-minute assist from the U.S. Federal Reserve.

3

ERIC CABANIS/Getty Images

"[In] reality the risks to maritime flows of oil are far smaller than is commonly assumed. First, tankers are much less vulnerable than conventional wisdom holds. Second, limited regional conflicts would be unlikely to seriously upset traffic, and terrorist attacks against shipping would have even less of an economic effect. Third, only a naval power of the United States' strength could seriously disrupt oil shipments." —Dennis Blair and Kenneth Lieberthal, Foreign Affairs, May/June 2007

On Nov. 15, 2008 a group of Somali pirates in inflatable rafts hijacked a Saudi oil tanker carrying 2 million barrels of crude in the Indian Ocean. The daring raid was part of a rash of attacks by Somali pirates, which have primarily occurred in the Gulf of Aden. Pirates operating in the waterway have hijacked more than 50 ships this year, up from only 13 in all of last year, according to the Piracy Reporting Center. The Gulf of Aden, where nearly 4 percent of the world's oil demand passes every day, was not on the list of strategic "chokepoints" where oil shipments could potentially be disrupted that Blair and Lieberthal included in their essay, "Smooth Sailing: The World's Shipping Lanes Are Safe." Hopefully, Blair will show a bit more foresight if, as some expect, he is selected as Barack Obama's director of national intelligence.

4

Spencer Platt/Getty Images

"[A]nyone who says we're in a recession, or heading into one—especially the worst one since the Great Depression—is making up his own private definition of 'recession.'" —Donald Luskin, The Washington Post, Sept. 14, 2008

The day after Luskin's op-ed, "Quit Doling Out That Bad-Economy Line," appeared in the Post, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the rest is history. Liberal bloggers had long ago dubbed the Trend Macrolytics chief investment officer and informal McCain advisor "the Stupidest Man Alive." This time, they had some particularly damning evidence.

5

YASUYOSHI CHIBA/AFP/Getty Images

"For all its flaws, an example to others." —The Economist on Kenya's presidential election, Dec. 19, 2007

The week before Kenya's presidential election, the erudite British newsweekly ran an ill-conceived editorial praising the quality of the country's democracy and predicting it might "set an example" for the rest of the continent. If only. The ensuing election was rife with examples of voter fraud and ballot-stuffing. What followed was a month of rioting and ethnic bloodshed that left more than 800 dead and 200,000 displaced. The carnage ended in a messy power-sharing agreement between President Mwai Kibaki and his challenger Raila Odinga, leaving the country deeply divided and its government delegitimized.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/story/cms.php?story_id=4569&page=0

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Turning reality, truth inside out

OUR OPINION: With exit in view, Bush, Rice push revisionist history

It's to be expected that an outgoing administration, whether it is the government or a private business, will attempt to put its achievements in the most favorable light possible. This is not true of the Bush administration. As eight years of the Bush presidency comes to an end, the president and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice are going beyond sprinkling pixie dust on the administration's failed policies. Some of their remarks have been wholly disconnected with either reality or truth.

In a speech last week, Mr. Bush said the Middle East is a freer, more hopeful place today than when he took office in 2001. He said the threat from terrorist groups like al Qaeda has been curtailed and that Iran faces greater pressure from the international community than ever before. Mr. Bush described his Mideast policies as ``ambitious in vision, bold in action and firm in purpose.''

Burnishing record

Picking up on this theme, Ms. Rice made the rounds of the Sunday-morning news shows, blaming ''flawed intelligence'' for the administration's decision to invade Iraq in search of weapons of mass destruction. ''I would give anything to be able to go back and to know precisely what we were going to find when we were there,'' Ms. Rice said.

These attempts at revisionist history ignore the reams of data and evidence gathered in the intervening years that thoroughly disprove these rosy views of administration policies.

The invasion of Iraq nullified that country's influence as a counter-balance to Iran's ambitions. Neutralizing Iraq greatly increased Iran's power in the region and seriously undermined U.S. Middle East peace initiatives. The war diverted America's attention and resources away from al Qaeda stongholds in Afghanistan -- and the consequences have been disastrous. Al Qaeda remains a menace, and Osama bin Laden remains on the loose.

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/story/805162.html

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