Bold and Daring: The Way Progressive News Should Be
|
|
| If you have a problem reading this email, please click here to see the web page version You received this email because you signed up for it at OpEdNews. Unsubscribe instructions are at the bottom of this email.   Daily Headlines
The congressional Republican are on crack. Their euphoria, paranoia, and general craziness is florid. The Democrats forgot their job, helping the people, which is the only reason the republicans get away with this craziness.
as the government continues to let the fossil fuel industry ravage the planet, the future will increasingly be one of open conflict. This battle against the corporate state, right now, is primarily about infrastructure. We need an infrastructure to build revolt. The corporate state is determined to deny us one.
President Nicolás Maduro announced on Monday the expulsion of the top US diplomat in Venezuela and two other embassy employees for allegedly conspiring with "the extreme right" to sabotage the economy and power grid. The US embassy said it had not yet received notification and called the accusations unfounded. Maduro made the announcement during a live TV appearance and said they had 48 hours to leave the country. "Out of Venezuela," the leader shouted, then added in English: "Yankees go home!"
NPR's On the Media just reported that one of its journalists, Sarah Abdurrahman, was detained with her family at the U.S. border in Niagara Falls for six hours without explanation.
We don't repeal laws by holding hostage the entire US government. The bullies are a faction inside the Republican Party--extremists who are threatening more reasonable Republicans with primary challenges if they don't go along. And where are the Tea Party extremists getting their dough? From even bigger bullies--a handful of hugely wealthy Americans who are sinking hundreds of millions of dollars into this extortion racket.
The only long-term solution to America's healthcare crisis is a single-payer national healthcare program. A large-scale single-payer system already exists in the US and its enrollees love it. It is Medicare. Open to all Americans over 65 years of age, the program has been a resounding success since its introduction 48 years ago. Medicare should be expanded to cover all Americans.
New NSA documents leaked by former intelligence contractor Edward Snowden suggest the NSA is collecting information on the Internet habits of millions of innocent Americans never suspected of criminal involvement, without issuing search warrants or opening investigations into people. The information is obtained using a program codenamed Marina.
By Andrew Schmookler
Fruit of the Same Tree: How to Understand the Tea Party The Tea Party is not some alien thing grafted onto today's Republican Party. Sure there's a battle going on within that Party. But, more fundamentally, the nihilism and the craziness and the destructiveness that we see going on with the "extremists" within the Party represents a fuller flowering of what the Republican Party establishment sowed and cultivated.
By Donna Smith
On the Eve of Obamacare: Too Smart to Really Fix Our Health Care System, So We Count the Dead 
Ever listen to the late William F. Buckley, Jr., speak for long periods of time? The drone of his uber-intellectualism was certainly filled with facts we might all have needed to know, but I often feel a similar pallor wash over my brain when the uber-smart of single-payerdom begin their soliloquies.
By Tom Engelhardt
Tomgram: Dilip Hiro, The Mystery of Washington's Waning Global Power Among the curious spectacles of our moment, the strangeness of the Obama presidency hasn't gotten its full due. After decades in which "the imperial presidency" was increasingly in the spotlight, after two terms of George W. Bush in which a literal cult of executive power -- or to use the term of that moment, "the unitary executive" -- took hold in the White House...
By Jose Cornejo
After 40 years in solitary confinement, Herman Wallace is dying and might be innocent On Andrew Cohen's new piece questioning Herman Wallace's conviction and the 40+ years he spent in solitary confinement as a result.
By Steve Consilvio
11. Big History, The Anatomy of Ideas, from Alternative Economics 101 - TAX Your Imagination! 
Chapter 11 deals with how different people are able to see the same event differently. What is the basic structure of how we understand the world? How and why do different ideas interact?
The time may have come for Obama to display his inner pissed-off president. It's up to Obama now to point out to American voters that the Republicans are not merely wrong. They are bonkers. But in the cluttered, cacophonous environs of today's media, his calm, steely manner of conveying this message doesn't pop. This current silly crisis could end up perfectly fine for the president: The GOPers refuse to yield, the government comes to a grinding halt, and the public blames Boehner and his not-so-merry band for the damage done. But avoiding a shutdown (now and weeks from now when the debt ceiling is reached) would be the best outcome, and to have a shot at that, Obama must isolate the House Republicans. A good-sized majority of the nation needs to view the Republicans as tantrum-throwing political terrorists.
A Chicago commuter train that was parked in a service yard somehow moved onto a rail line and smashed into an oncoming train early Monday, injuring dozens of people. A central question: whether anyone had climbed on board the empty train and set it in motion. "In order for a train to move, it has to be energized," said Ronald Ester, vice president of CTA Rail Operations.
By Elayne Clift
Is the Pope Really Ready to Address the "Woman Question"? Pope Francis is popular, humble, and genuinely likeable. But will he do what is right for women?
The climate movement is focused on Keystone XL, but the outcome of events in Seattle, where multiple fights converge, also holds implications for the movement's future and strategy. Seattle could emerge as the center of a climate showdown between the residents of Washington state and powerful, moneyed, fossil-fuel interests.
I have spent the last several days in a Breaking Bad fever dream, asking myself, "Who is the Walter White/Heisenberg of the sports world?" I am very aware that I couldn't come up with a hackier First Take--style question unless I was asking what sports commissioner is most like Miley Cyrus.
As we enter Fall in the northern hemisphere, we enter into the darkness of Winter, when we band together to survive. We are in a symbolic Winter, where we have to brave the dark to rediscover the light in the world. It's time to balance our own needs with the needs of everyone else. Libra can teach us how to be not only balanced, but also fair!
If you want to grasp why Repubs are careening toward a potential federal government shutdown,and possibly toward provoking a sovereign debt crisis after that, you need to understand that this is the inevitable product of a conscious party strategy. Just as Repubs responded to their 2008 defeat by moving farther right, they responded to the 2012 defeat by moving right yet again.Since they had begun from a position of total opposition to the entire Obama agenda, the newer rightward lurch took the form of trying to wrest concessions from Obama by provoking a series of crises.The history is important because much of the news coverage ¢rist commentary has leaned heavily on the idea that the crises in DC have come about because of some nebulous failure of bipartisanship.you want to take a stance against crisis governance,you need to be honest about the fact that one party is pursuing this
The great shutdown drama of 2013 should be a slam-dunk win for Democrats. The Republican extremism grows nuttier and more unrealistic by the day. The one other time Republicans tried this stunt, under House Speaker Newt Gingrich in 1995-96, Republicans got their clocks cleaned by President Clinton. Government reopened, and Clinton did not give away the store. And not until the arrival of Tea Party control of the House in 2011 did any party try to make legislative or ideological gains by threating to repudiate America's national debt. This time, however, Republicans have sown just enough confusion that they may suffer only temporary losses in their popularity in exchange for legislative gains.
The recent Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on methane gas released by the fracking process of natural-gas extraction was narrow in scope and the conclusions it offered that have subsequently been used in support of fracking as less harmful in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than other carbon fuels are erroneous and irrelevant.
The commandant of the Marine Corps on Monday took the extraordinary step of firing two generals for not adequately protecting a giant base in southern Afghanistan that Taliban fighters stormed last year, resulting in the deaths of two Marines and the destruction of a half a dozen U.S. fighter jets. The commandant, Gen. James F. Amos, said the two generals did not deploy enough troops to guard the base and take other measures to prepare for a ground attack by the Taliban. The two, Maj. Gen. Charles M. Gurganus, the top Marine commander in southern Afghanistan at the time, and Maj. Gen. Gregg A. Sturdevant, the senior Marine aviation officer in the area, "failed to exercise the level of judgment expected of commanders of their rank," Amos said.
There was actually important news in the CBO projections that went unmentioned in the New York Times and Washington Post. CBO lowered its projections for healthcare cost growth, meaning that Medicare, Medicaid, and other government healthcare programs are now projected to cost less in the decades ahead than had been assumed in prior years.
This may be the way the world ends -- not with a bang but with a temper tantrum. A temporary government shutdown wouldn't be the end of the world. But a U.S. government default, which will happen unless Congress raises the debt ceiling soon, might cause financial catastrophe. Unfortunately, many Republicans either don't understand this or don't care. The craziness, ultimately, resides not in the situation but in the minds of our politicians and the people who vote for them. Default is not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Ultimately, this crisis within a crisis provides a reminder of the absurd circumstance of the District of Columbia. Residents of Washington are taxed. They are subject to federal laws. They serve in America's wars. Yet, they have limited control over their own affairs and--despite Norton's best efforts--a constrained voice in Congress. The remedy is not complicated. The District of Columbia should become an American state.
At the top of the federal government, even a brief shutdown of "core NSA operations" is unthinkable. But at the grassroots, a permanent shutdown of the NSA should be more than thinkable; we should strive to make it achievable.
Stuck in the here and now, we can only judge Bibi Netanyahu as the nightmare man he plays on television. His latest drama is to push Washington to demand that the Iranians give up enrichment and most other elements of even a peaceful nuclear program. Call it chutzpah on steroids.
It's a dangerous game of chicken our elected leaders are playing. The Neocons in Congress are doing double duty: working their best manipulative mojo on the mainstream media to blame Harry Reid for a possible shutdown while simultaneously working to raise co2 levels when they should be focused on raising the debt ceiling.
By Jesselyn Radack
Disappearing the Whistleblower: We Would Not Be Talking About NSA Without Edward Snowden 
Daily Kos: Disappearing the Whistleblower: We Would Not Be Talking About NSA Without Edward Snowden
By David Swanson
This Way This article by Kathy Kelly is the foreword to David Swanson's new book, War No More: The Case for Abolition. Latest Articles
Growing In and Out of Autism
I suppose this article will be seen as inflammatory, but I just can't keep what I am seeing a secret anymore. Often times, a rush for early diagnosis, the newness of parents, and the push for well behaved nursery school children all combine and lead to diagnosis that in my opinion (I am NOT a diagnostician, just an experienced mom and clinician) create a disorder. To change that, we need to remember to play.
(Sacrifice of Women) When Love Fades
The unbelievable incident has brought bad luck in her life. "One is bound to bear luck. Everything depends on luck. If you were lucky, the husband wouldn't betray his wife," she said.  Best News Links from the Web
The Constitution requires the president to spend what Congress has instructed him to spend, to raise only those taxes Congress has authorized him to impose and to borrow no more than Congress authorizes. If President Obama spends what the law orders him to spend and collects the taxes Congress has authorized him to collect, then he must borrow more than Congress has authorized him to borrow. If the debt ceiling is not raised, he will have to violate one of these constitutional imperatives. Which should he choose?
Speaking to reporters with less than seven hours to go before a midnight deadline to avoid the first government shutdown in nearly two decades, Obama outlined the impact of such a development, noting that it would affect hundreds of thousands of federal employees and the businesses across the country that depend on them. He said his Affordable Care Act, widely known as Obamacare, is already benefiting millions of Americans and will allow tens of millions to begin shopping for health insurance starting Tuesday. "The Affordable Care Act is moving forward," and its funding is already in place, he said. "You can't shut it down."
Reinventing Fire
IMO, the brain of Amory Lovins may well be our country's greatest resource. An issue you should of course decide for yourself. BUT if you are not familiar with him or his work at Rocky Mountain Institute, here is one of a few hundred good places to start. If you understand that fossil fuels, and who controls them, is at the heart of civilization as we know it, my humble prediction is that you will resonate with this little article. DG
Israeli prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, used a visit to the White House on Monday to urge the US president to maintain or even increase sanctions against Iran, despite the promise of progress over Tehran's nuclear program. "If diplomacy is to work, those pressures must be kept in place," Netanyahu said of the sanctions, which have proved economically crippling in Iran.
The Washington region, home to the largest concentration of federal workers and contractors in the nation, could lose an estimated $200"-million a day and could see more than 700,000 jobs take a financial hit if the federal government shuts down Monday night, according to Stephen Fuller, director of George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis. "This is serious," Fuller said. "The national economy may not notice a shutdown much unless it lasts three or four weeks. But for the Washington area, this is a tsunami."
|
