Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Truthout 5/11

William Rivers Pitt | Here We Go Again
William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "I'm beginning to get the sense that, had President Obama chosen a different course in life and decided to be a boxer, he would have fought in the style of James Braddock, whose concept of defense was to lead with his chin and get pounded on until the other guy wore himself out."
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Senate Votes 96-0 to Audit Fed
David Lightman, McClatchy Newspapers: "The Senate voted 96 to 0 Tuesday to open the secretive Federal Reserve Board's emergency lending practices to a congressional audit, as well as require a detailed disclosure of who's getting the funds."
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Anne Elizabeth Moore | Authenticating the Inauthentic
Anne Elizabeth Moore, Truthout: "In recent years, much of our economy - and now, almost the entirety of our media - has come to rest on the public display of authenticity: ads that constantly bemoan the notion of the sales pitch, heartfelt apologies that run on the evening news whenever another perpetrator of a large-scale bank fraud is captured and the very real possibility that our own financial worries will cease when we are made the stars of our own reality television programs."
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Agency That Oversees Offshore Drilling to Be Split by Obama Administration
Erika Bolstad, McClatchy Newspapers: "The troubled federal agency that oversees all aspects of offshore leasing will split in two in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil rig explosion, an Interior official confirmed Tuesday."
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Fannie Mae Wants $8.4 Billion More in Federal Aid
Mark Trumbull, The Christian Science Monitor: "One of America's mortgage-market linchpins, Fannie Mae, announced a deep quarterly loss Monday and sought additional support from the federal government. The loss of $11.5 billion for the first quarter of 2010 is a sign that troubles in the US housing markets continue - and a reminder that Congress still needs to sort out the future of the troubled 'government sponsored enterprises' like Fannie Mae."
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News in Brief: Torture Allegations at Secret US Prison and More ...
Red Cross confirms a secret "second jail" at the US airbase at Bagram in Afghanistan; Pope Benedict XVI issues his most direct condemnation of sexual abuse crisis in the Roman Catholic Church; Iraq's former prime minister warns of sectarian war risk; Russia announced potential plans to help build a nuclear power plant in Syria.
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Afghan Escalation Funding: More War, Fewer Jobs, Poor Excuses
David Swanson, TomDispatch.com: "Isn't it time to call what Congress will soon vote on by its right name: war escalation funding? Early in 2009, President Barack Obama escalated the war in Afghanistan with 21,000 'combat' troops, 13,000 'support' troops, and at least 5,000 mercenaries, without any serious debate in Congress or the corporate media."
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Greco-Romans Welcome in Arizona Schools
Roberto Cintli Rodriguez, Truthout: "In Lak Ech - Tu eres mi otro yo - You are my other self. I am you, and you are me. If I hurt you, I hurt myself. If I hate you, I hate myself. If I love and respect you, I love and respect myself. This is how Maria Federico Brummer's class begins at Tucson High School in Arizona."
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Only $242 Million Spent So Far on Government's $75 Billion Mortgage Modification Program
Paul Kiel, ProPublica: "When the administration launched its foreclosure prevention program, it committed to spend up to $75 billion. By the end of March, more than a year later, only about $242 million had actually been paid out."
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DOE Still Disavows Peak Oil Forecast, Despite New Studies
Julia Harte, SolveClimate: "The U.S. Department of Energy has long disavowed peak oil theory: the notion that annual world oil production will peak, plateau, and then enter a decline. But the agency's stance appears increasingly at odds with the future predicted by many world energy analysts, including the US military."
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Pandora's Oil Well
Jill S. Schneiderman, Truthout: "Technical jargon conceals by confusion. The immense scale of the problem surrounding the sinking of the Transocean drilling rig, Deepwater Horizon, requires that the public stay alert when confronted with slick lingo. So, I'd like to help readers understand from a geologist's viewpoint the sad absurdity of the Gulf of Mexico situation - one that is much more than yet another 'oil spill.'"
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Stock Market Collapse: Another Goldman Market Rigging?
Ellen Brown, Truthout: "Two weeks ago, Goldman Sachs was on the Congressional hot seat, grilled for fraud in its sale of complicated financial products called 'synthetic CDOs.' Last week the heat was off, as all eyes turned to the attack of the shorts (bets that a stock will decline in value) on Greek sovereign debt and the dire threat of a sovereign Greek default. By Thursday, Goldman's fraud had slipped from the headlines and Congress had been cowed into throwing in the towel on its campaign to break up the too-big-to-fail banks. On Friday, Goldman was in settlement talks with the SEC."
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Eugene Robinson | Lena Horne: A Glamorous Revolutionary
Eugene Robinson: "'Lena Horne is coming on!' When I was growing up, those words were the signal to drop everything and rush to the family room, where Ed Sullivan or Perry Como or Dean Martin had just announced the next performer. At the time, I didn't understand why it was unthinkable to miss one of Horne's appearances. I didn't yet realize that she was one of one of the most significant American entertainers of the 20th century - and certainly didn't realize how burdened she was by her trailblazing success."
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Coming Soon to a School Near You: Big Ed
Marion Brady, Truthout: "Deeply embedded in the conventional wisdom is the idea that educating is mostly about making a living rather than making a life. Given that assumption, education reforms that promise to 'make America competitive in the global marketplace' or 'prepare learners for productive work' are an easy sell. There's broad agreement that what industry wants, industry should get."
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Fixing Scott Brown's Dilemma
Mary L. Wentworth, Truthout: "During his campaign for Ted Kennedy's well-worn Senate seat, Scott Brown carried on about Democrats' 'wasteful spending' of our tax dollars. Senators customarily bring home the bacon by attaching an appropriation to a budget bill."
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Money for Nothing
James Howard Kunstler, Truthout: "The European Union came up with a trillion dollar bail-out for itself at the dawn's early light. It already goosed the Euro back above $1.30 - just when they hoped a lower Euro would help them move a few more export goods off the shelves. I expect that Mrs Merkel is already catching an earful. A few hours earlier, her coalition of Christian Democrats and free Democrats got their joint ass kicked in a North Rhine - Westphalia local election..."
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Why Are So Many Americans Scared of Undocumented Immigrants?
Ira Chernus, AlterNet: "As long as our national life revolves around unrealistic, hyped-up fears of 'foreign invaders' and 'illegal aliens,' we all lose. 'The overwhelming majority of Americans think the country's immigration policies need to be seriously overhauled.' And most Americans support Arizona's stringent new immigration enforcement law, 'even though they say it may lead to racial profiling.' That's the finding of the latest New York Times / CBS News poll, according to the Times article summarizing the poll."
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Wall Street Goes to the Movies
Zach Carter, The Media Consortium: "Last week, the U.S. Senate rejected a plan that would have broken up the nation's six largest banks firms into firms that could fail without wreaking havoc on the economy. Even though the defeat reinforces Wall Street's political dominance, there is still room for a handful of other useful reforms, like banning banks from gambling with taxpayer money and protecting consumers from banker abuses. After looting our houses, banks are now pushing for the ability to bet on movie box-office receipts, and will keep trying to financialize anything they can unless Congress acts."
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Paul Loeb: What It Means to Be a Citizen
Rose Aguilar, Your Call: "Paul Loeb has spent decades exploring and writing about community involvement and citizen activism. In 1999, he wrote the book, 'Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging Times.' It didn't take off at first, but through word of mouth, its popularity spread to activists, teachers, and students. Today there are over 100,000 copies in print."
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