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There's something I wanted to tell you, but for the life of me, I can't figure out what it was. You know the feeling? It's right on the tip of your tongue, but you can't spit it out. The thing is, that moment is critically important, and all we want is for it to go away. Well, don't. Not yet, anyway, because that's the key to how anything gets done, how movements are born, and how the world is changed.
The Japanese people are angry that the US is urging the government of Japan to renounce the "No War" article of their constitution so the US will have another financial ally in wars of choice. So far, just as the US pivot to the Middle East 12 years ago destabilized the region, the US pivot to Asia seems to already be having the same dangerous effect.
All of this has hurt the nuclear industry. A long, drawn-out shutdown would have gone further, killing the re-licensing process and the endless flow of rubber-stamped regulatory exceptions on which the industry thrives. An unmanageable accident in the midst of this shorthanded mess would have been another chime in a chorus of death knells.
The government shutdown is over. Let's take stock of the cost and look to the future.
There is another story about how all this gridlock came to be, fronted by the question: "Why didn't the Democrats landslide the cruelest, most ignorant, big-business-indentured Republican Party in its history during the 2010 and 2012 Congressional elections?
By michael payne
Monumental Government Waste: The National Security Budget, The Root Cause Of The National Deficit 
Here we go again; one more crisis involving a government shutdown and a narrowly escaped debt ceiling catastrophe has been averted or, to be more explicit, the problem has been kicked down the road a few months. But the next big dog fight in Congress over the national deficit of nearly $17 trillion looms on the horizon; and then we'll face the next crisis and the next and it will never stop.
By William K. Black, J.D., Ph.D.
Why is The Economist Chortling over the Prospect of Oil Pollution in Ecuador? One of The Economist Magazine's perennial hates is President Rafael Correa of Ecuador. Correa, an economist, has committed the unforgivable offense of succeeding through economic policies that The Economist despises. This is strange because Correa's four foundational policies are expanded health care, expanded education, improved infrastructure, and encouraging entrepreneurs by reducing the time and cost of starting a business
Edward Snowden, the source of National Security Agency leaks, has insisted that he decided to become a whistleblower and flee America because he had no faith in the internal reporting mechanisms of the US government, which he believed would have destroyed him and buried his message for ever.
TheTea Party republcians think they were two-year olds, and screaming would get it attention. All it got them was the people's disgust.
The Teabaggers are relentless. They're like the proverbial cockroach that will infest the planet long after the environment can no longer support higher life forms. The Teabaggers will remain. No amount of RAID will rid us of these pesky bugs. If you think Cruz and his soggy minions are going to skitter into the shadowy corners of their offices and disappear forever, then you don't know anything about cockroaches.
"An Era That Has Gone, the story of a venerable Brooklyn Heights family and the support they lent to an up-and-coming portrait artist.
While Americans can legally sell hair, breast milk and eggs, the sale and purchase of a kidney in the U.S. is against the law. "The fact that people even explore it indicates that there are still a lot of people worried about their financial outlook," said Colas, who tracks off-the-grid economic indicators. "This is very much unlike every other recovery that we've had. It's going to be a slow-grinding, very frustrating recovery."
A spirited defense of his SAHM (with twins!) wife, by a husband who gets it. Sadly, he's defending her against the snide comments of other women.
By Steven Barnes
Why I Stopped Using NLP NLP is a phenomenally powerful set of tools, but as the saying goes, with great power comes great responsibility.
Variety and Movie Industry Analysts Agree China's Movie Box Office heading to $5 -10 billion in 2017
Variety and Movie Industry Analysts Agree China's Movie Box Office heading to $5 -10 billion in 2017, larger than the U.S. market. Already, movies are being written the be China-friendly. Are we losing the culture war?
Two papers revisit the work of a Columbia researcher who conducted invasive surgery on skid row residents in vain hopes of curing cancer. A medical researcher from Columbia University, Dr. Perry Hudson, made the skid row alcoholics in Lower Manhattan an offer: If they agreed to surgical biopsies of their prostates, they would get a clean bed and three square meals for a few days, plus free medical care and treatment if they had prostate cancer.
Darwin's theory of evolution spawned a natural and secular view of creation that has challenged the power of religion to control social change. It has also allowed business to slip its moral bonds, leading to runaway capitalism. Much of today's headlines can be put into perspective by understanding the dynamics of these underlying forces.
What had been my most reluctant secret was now my defining characteristic. In LA, a community activist told me I had become the male face of the domestic violence movement.In Chicago,the wife of a rabbi said I was the Jewish voice for domestic violence awareness. I have convinced myself that what I told Deborah is true: If you are brave enough to tell your story, people will get inspired and help stop the cycle of violence.
Fresh for the debacle over the government shutdown and near credit default, Congress is now acting to sabotage promising negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program, with some right-wing Republicans even raising the specter of war.
First it was Chinese goods; now Chinese banks are moving in on the UK - which mightn't be a bad thing considering the state of western banking. Now we hear that China is to take control of UK's nuclear. This week UK politicos were in Beijing toadying to Chinese bigwigs. Maybe the intention is that it'll help extricate democracy from the Globalist stranglehold. On the other hand, maybe it isn't.
Congratulations are in order. The President vowed not to negotiate over the debt ceiling, and he was as good as his word. He stood up to the closet ideologues of the artificial "center," the ones who unwisely argued that being the "adult in the room" meant surrendering to the tantrums of children.
Our real economic problem continues to be a dearth of good jobs along with widening inequality. Cutting the budget deficit may make both worse, by reducing total demand for goods and services and eliminating programs that lower-income Americans depend on. The President has now scored a significant victory over extremist Republicans. But the fight will continue. He mustn't relinquish ground during the upcoming cease-fire.
The director of the National Security Agency and his deputy are expected to depart in the coming months, US officials said on Wednesday, in a development that could give President Obama a chance to reshape the eavesdropping agency. Army general Keith Alexander's eight-year tenure was rocked this year by revelations contained in documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden about the agency's widespread scooping up of telephone, email and social media data.
A good start toward turning things around would be to take up a call by Greece's Syriza Party for a European debt summit similar to the 1953 London Debt Agreement, That pact allowed Germany to recover from World War II by cutting its debt by 50 percent and spreading payments out over 30 years.
Sens. Ted Cruz, Mike Lee, and House Republicans are already plotting another government shutdown/default crisis in an attempt to stop the ACA. Republican extremists who carried out the first government shutdown were already plotting round two. Rep. John Fleming (R-LA) told The New York Times, "I'll vote against it, but that will get us into Round 2. See, we're going to start this all over again." Sen. Cruz said that, "This is going to be multi-staged extended political battle."
The World Bank report follows a long line of warnings in recent years from international bodies on the dire economic situation facing Palestinians. But, significantly, the World Bank has homed in on the key battleground for an international community still harboring the forlorn hope that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will end in Palestinian statehood.
A doctored photograph of Obama showing him with a Hitler moustache has appeared in Indiana, inviting comparisons between the Nazi dictator and Obama. Amidst howls of indignation from his supporters and many Americans who instinctively recoil from the comparison, there may be a serious point to be made about the state of US society and the conduct of the US, both in the world and at home.
The hype of public relations -- Edward Bernays' euphemism for propaganda -- is now regarded as truth. The medium has become the message. Films from Europe and the rest of the world account for a tiny fraction. Ironically, in the US, quality film-making has absconded to television.
By Bob Burnett
The New Civil War: Who is to Blame? America's continuing budget and debt-limit crises represent more than misguided political tactics. This is a conflict between two different views of who we are, what's important, and where the US is headed. It's a repeat of the ideological clash that resulted in the America's first Civil War. Who started this fight?
By Eugene Elander
Ted Cruzing for a Bruising! The leading role which Texas Senator Ted Cruz played in making the recent government and debt crisis even worse is highlighted in this article, as well as his apparent plans for 2016. Latest Articles
Turkey and Afghanistan peace
Can Turkey play a role in Afghan peace?
Do idealists still tilt at windmills?
Frankly, I was expecting someone really bad to be appointed. There may be a ray of hope with this nomination. Obama may have selected Johnson, who served as the top lawyer-- ie., General Counsel, for the Pentagon, during his first term in office-- as the person who may be able to transition the US from a war on terror to a law enforcement effort against individuals.
The comments come from Malala and the U.N. respectively.
House Republicans got next to nothing from their extortion strategy of taking the government and the economy hostage, but they are sure to continue obstructing programs that could create jobs and start rebuilding the middle class. What they won't recognize is the abject failure of Reaganomics.
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In two parallel projects, researchers have rewritten the genetic code of the bacterium E. coli. In the first study they created a genetically and biochemically novel organism by erasing every example of a single codon from the entire genome. In the second, they tested whether all codons could be swapped to a synonymous codon in 42 separate genes, while eliminating every instance of 13 codons throughout each of those genes.
Congress has only voted in a temporary fix, and we could find ourselves going through it all over again in a few months. You may say that Republicans would be crazy to provoke another confrontation. But they were crazy to provoke this one, so why assume that they've learned their lesson? Things could have been even worse. This week, we managed to avoid driving off a cliff. But we're still on the road to nowhere.
Foley, 84 and a Democratic congressman from Washington state, served as speaker from 1989 to 1995. He had been in ill health in recent months. Foley in 1994 became the first speaker in more than a century to be defeated for reelection to his congressional seat. His defeat after 30 years in Congress was perhaps the biggest GOP victory in that year's "Republican Revolution," which returned Republicans to power and installed Newt Gingrich as speaker. He later served as ambassador to Japan under President Bill Clinton.
For a long time the economics profession has quietly noted that a land value tax is economically efficient but, having sussed out its theoretical benefits, left the subject for more intellectually rewarding pursuits. The result is a frustrating dearth of scholarship on the subject. But the few detailed papers that do exist suggest land taxes can replace most levies on labor and capital which--if true--suggests that the failure to switch to land value taxes is a much bigger deal in practice than most economists realize.
In an interview, Edward J. Snowden responded to accusations by critics, provided insights into why he disclosed secret documents and talked about the debate over surveillance. He said he gave all of the classified documents he had obtained to journalists he met in Hong Kong, before flying to Moscow, and did not keep any copies for himself. He did not take the files to Russia "because it wouldn't serve the public interest," he said.
The GOP's Default Caucus | ThinkProgress
The GOP's Default Caucus -- 18 Republican Senators and 144 House Republicans -- preferred a default that threatened to collapse the entire global economy to allowing millions to get affordable health insurance and re-opening the government at spending levels Republicans themselves proposed.It also cost the economy at least $24 BILLION. Just to give you an idea, here are just a few examples of what else you could get for $24 BILLION: The net cost of to the government from the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP): $24 billion The Department of Agriculture's proposed budget: $22.6 billion NASA's approved budget: $16.6 billion All air transportation programs, including the Federal Aviation Administration, security, research, and other costs: $21.9 billion The Child Tax Credit: $22.1 billion The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program (formally known as welfare): $1
Researchers found that Earth's terrestrial ecosystems have absorbed 186 billion to 192 billion tons of carbon since the mid-20th century, which has significantly contained the global temperature and levels of carbon in the atmosphere. [Extremely important research in saving the planet, it appears to me. DG]
A simple peanut butter sniff test can help researchers confirm Alzheimer's Disease diagnoses.
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