Occupy Banksters & Crony Capitalism & GREED

Is There a Revolution Coming? Americans Finally Realize Global Capitalism Is a Murderous Sham
AlterNet | Chris Hedges | 10/30/13

Popular revulsion for the ruling elite is nearly universal. Are we going to see an uprising?

"Did you ever ask yourself how it happens that government and capitalism continue to exist in spite of all the evil and trouble they are causing in the world?"

Berkman was right. As long as most citizens believe in the ideas that justify global capitalism, the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. ... Read more

Report: NSA Is Intercepting Traffic From Yahoo, Google Data Centers
Wired Magazine | Kim Zetter | 10/30/13

Not satisfied with the bulk data it collects through court orders from internet giants Google and Yahoo, the National Security Agency reportedly vacuumed up traffic from communication links between the companies' data centers, according to documents leaked by Edward Snowden.

The taps of the data links allow the spy agency to collect data on millions of users, including Americans, without cooperation from the two companies and without oversight from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to the Washington Post, which broke the story. An NSA slide obtained by the Post even shows where the NSA has presumably exploited a weakness in Google's encryption to siphon the data.

The NSA project, codenamed MUSCULAR, is operated jointly with the UK spy agency GCHQ. Both agencies copy entire data flows that pass through fiber-optic cables linking one Google data center to another. It does the same with Yahoo, at times sucking down so much information that analysts complained about the quantity. ... Read more

The Lies That Will Kill America
AlterNet | Bill Moyers | 10/25/13

Ideology and self-interest trump the facts or even caring about the facts, whether it's banking, Obamacare or global warming.

Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn't miss it -- the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar's mask. "UNCLE SCAM," the headline shouted. "US robs bank of $13 billion."

Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch's minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country's biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors -- those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. ... Read more

The 5 Best Green Smoothie Videos on YouTube

Nobody Should Shed a Tear for JP Morgan Chase
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi |10/25/13

The general consensus from most observers in the finance sector is that this superficially high-dollar settlement -- worth about half a year's profits for Chase -- is an unconscionable Marxist appropriation. It's been called a "robbery" and a "shakedown," in which red Obama and his evil henchman Eric Holder confiscated cash from a successful bank, as The Wall Street Journal wrote, "for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies."

So let's not forget that -- that even this $13 billion settlement, which is actually a $9 billion settlement (see below), came very close to never happening. But now it is happening, and the business press is going nuts about how unfair it all is.   In fact, this deal is actually quite a gift to Chase. It sounds like a lot of money, but there are myriad deceptions behind the sensational headline. ... Read more

The Fed's Choice: A Balance Sheet That Is $4.5 Trillion Or $5 Trillion... Or Much More
ZeroHedge | author | 10/31/13

Now that an October taper is out of the question, bored investors, in a world in which fundamentals no longer matter, are looking forward to the next possible FOMC meetings and potential taper announcement dates, with three specific dates sticking out: December/January, which are really one cluster, and June, as possible announcement dates. ... Read more

Dick Cheney is a One-man Zombie Apocalypse
AlterNet | The Guardian | 10/31/13

The former VP has returned from the shadows -- weirdly, to court the Tea Party for daughter Liz's Senate run. Happy Halloween!

... He is a survivor, it's true -- but to turn to Cheney for advice about longevity is like interviewing the lone recovered castaway for tips on sea travel: you can ask him for his recipes but don't look too closely at the bones on the bottom of the boat. Put it another way: Cheney is approximately 1,000 years old and made up of spare parts; he thinks the GOP needs new blood. Be careful, guys, Cheney usually means that literally. ... Read more

The NSA's Secret Spy Hub in Berlin
spiegel.de | Marc Pitzke | 10/xx/13

Jon Stewart knows how to twist the knife. "So you guys are all upset we're spying on you," America's most popular TV satirist told an imaginary European audience. "But I just have one question: Have you met us? Meddling in your affairs for our national self-interest is kind of our thing." ... Read more
SCS Cyber Advantage - Zoom
This "top secret" NSA document outlines the SCS unit's capabilities

NSA chief says NATO allies shared phone records with the U.S. spy agency
Washington Post | Ellen Nakashima | 10/29/13

The director of the National Security Agency on Tuesday dismissed as "completely false" reports that his agency swept up millions of phone records of European citizens, and he revealed that data collected by NATO allies were shared with the United States.

Gen. Keith Alexander said foreign intelligence services collected phone records in war zones and other areas outside their borders and provided them to the spy agency -- an operation that was misunderstood by French and Spanish newspapers that reported that the NSA was conducting surveillance in their countries. ... Read more

Waste Lands America's forgotten nuclear legacy
WSJ | Jeremy Singer-Vine | 10/30/13/span>

During the build-up to the Cold War, the U.S. government called upon hundreds of factories and research centers to help develop nuclear weapons and other forms of atomic energy. At many sites, this work left behind residual radioactive contamination requiring government cleanups, some of which are still going on. ... Read more
Waste Lands - America's forgotten Nuclear Sites - Zoom

What to Watch for From the Fed
WSJ | Victoria McGrane | 10/29/13

The Federal Reserve concludes its two-day policy meeting Wednesday, and while no policy changes are expected, officials are likely to debate what to do next and when to do it. The official Fed statement, to be released at 2 p.m. EDT, may contain elements that bear close watching: ... Read more

*Face the Nation | Bob Woodward talkes about the "secret government." (10/27/13) [2:22]

The NSA's Secret Spy Hub in Berlin
spiegel.de | Spiegel Staff | 10/27/13

Among the politically decisive questions is whether the spying was authorized from the top: from the US president. If the data is accurate, the operation was authorized under former President George W. Bush and his NSA chief, Michael Hayden. But it would have had to be repeatedly approved, including after Obama took office and up to the present time. Is it conceivable that the NSA made the German chancellor a surveillance target without the president's knowledge?

The White House and the US intelligence agencies periodically put together a list of priorities. Listed by country and theme, the result is a matrix of global surveillance: What are the intelligence targets in various countries? How important is this reconnaissance? The list is called the "National Intelligence Priorities Framework" and is "presidentially approved."

One category in this list is "Leadership Intentions," the goals and objectives of a country's political leadership. The intentions of China's leadership are of high interest to the US government. They are marked with a "1" on a scale of 1 to 5. Mexico and Brazil each receive a "3" in this category. ... Read more

The Lies That Will Kill America
AlterNet | Bill Moyers | 10/25/13

Ideology and self-interest trump the facts or even caring about the facts, whether it's banking, Obamacare or global warming.

Here in Manhattan the other day, you couldn't miss it -- the big bold headline across the front page of the tabloid New York Post, screaming one of those sick, slick lies that are a trademark of Rupert Murdoch's right-wing media empire. There was Uncle Sam, brandishing a revolver and wearing a burglar's mask. "UNCLE SCAM," the headline shouted. "US robs bank of $13 billion."

Say what? Pure whitewash, and Murdoch's minions know it. That $13 billion dollars is the settlement JPMorgan Chase, the country's biggest bank, is negotiating with the government to settle its own rip-off of American homeowners and investors -- those shady practices that five years ago helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. ... Read more

Spain summons US ambassador over claim NSA tracked 60m calls a month
TheGuardian | Paul Hamilos | 10/28/13

The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has summoned the US ambassador to explain the latest revelations to emerge from the files leaked by Edward Snowden, which suggest the National Security Agency tracked more than 60m phone calls in Spain in the space of a month. ... Read more

Santelli Stunned As Nobel Winner Fama Explains Fed Unwind "Is No Big Deal"
ZeroHedge | author | 10/29/13

If ever there was a few minutes of television to confirm the deep-seated disconnect between reality and the ivory-tower academics pulling the levers behind the curtain, CNBC's Rick Santelli just exposed it. For once, simple questions were enough to allow none other than Nobel-Prize-winning economist Eugene Fama to show Santelli (who did his best not to explode in incredulity) that the "smartest people in the room" just don't get it (just as they didn't get it in 2007). Santelli was gracious and polite as he asked what the great professor's thoughts were on QE... (and the entire brief clip is worth watching in its entirety) but his conclusion is perhaps the most stunning (and left Santelli almost silent)... when asked the impact of the Fed 'Tapering' or even selling down its $4 trillion in assets, Fama calmly says "it's basically a neutral event... It's No Big Deal!" ... "What the Fed is doing now... is kind of a nothing activity." [4:29]

Jury Finds Bank of America Liable in Mortgage Case
NYTimes | Landon Thomas | 10/23/13

Bank of America, one of the nation’s largest banks, was found liable on Wednesday of having sold defective mortgages, a jury decision that will be seen as a victory for the government in its aggressive effort to hold banks accountable for their role in the housing crisis.

Moreover, the jury also found a top manager at Bank of America’s Countrywide Financial unit liable, pinning some -- if not all -- of the responsibility for the bad acts on an individual. ... Read more

Meet 3 Master Manipulators of America’s Oligarchy
AlterNet | author | date

Financiers Stanley Druckenmiller, Pete Peterson and John Arnold form a trifecta of treachery.

Ideas are costly, especially bogus ones. And a growing class of billionaires is more than willing to pay.  Whether they’re ginning up deficit hysteria to cut Social Security or blaming teachers and firefighters for state budget crises, these 1 percenters pose as defenders of your interests while arranging things so that they can plunder America and leave hard-working people with scraps. They fully understand mechanisms of manipulating public opinion, and they can pay off pundits and politicians to subscribe to whatever ideas best justify their greed and abuse.

It’s not enough that we now have the widest divide between rich and poor in living memory. These men are determined to crack open that gulf even wider. ...

U.S. charges Briton with hacking into military, other networks
Reuters | author | 10/28/13

U.S. authorities have charged a hacker in England with breaching thousands of computer systems, including U.S. military networks, to steal massive amounts of confidential data.

Lauri Love, 28, was charged with one count of accessing a U.S. department or agency computer without permission, and one count of conspiracy, U.S. Attorney Paul Fishman in New Jersey said.

U.S. prosecutors said that between October 2012 and October 2013, Love and co-conspirators placed hidden "shells" or "back doors" within the hacked networks, allowing them to return later to steal data. ... Read more

Worst Storm of Decade Hits London Commute, Severs Power
Bloomberg | Kari Lundgren | 10/28/13

Millions of U.K. commuters were told to stay at home and more than 220,000 properties lost power as southern England’s worst storm since 2008 blocked rail tracks, severed electricity cables and closed a nuclear power plant.

Winds peaked at 99 miles per hour at 6 a.m. today on the Isle of Wight, according to the Met Office, which issued amber weather warnings, the second-highest level, for regions spanning Wales to the North Sea. London’s Heathrow airport scrapped 130 flights and the Environment Agency posted 190 flood alerts. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, October 28 [10:51]

Abandoned Dog Named Shrek Gets A Fairytale Ending
HP | author | 1028/13

Photos

GOP Precinct Captain Gives Shockingly Racist 'Daily Show' Interview About Voter ID Laws
HP | Ross Luippold | 10/25/13

If you're being interviewed on camera by a national TV show, it's probably a good idea to keep your racist thoughts inside.   Especially if that show is "The Daily Show." And especially if you're a Republican spokesman in North Carolina talking about your state's voter ID laws.

Aasif Mandvi sat down with Don Yelton, a North Carolinian precinct captain who apparently missed the "don't be racist" memo. In the interview, he copped to loving portrayals of President Obama as a witch doctor, claimed that one of his best friends is black, and even used both the phrase "lazy blacks" and the N-word while defending the state's voter ID laws. ... Read more
*Jon Stewart | Suppressing the Vote - Aasif Mandvi investigates non-racist fallout from the Supreme Court's destruction of the Voting Rights Act (10/23/13) [5:32]

Contractors describe scant pre-launch testing of U.S. healthcare site
Reuter | David Morgan | 10/24/13

The Obama administration launched its troubled healthcare insurance website after only a minimum of crucial system-wide testing, despite contractors warning officials repeatedly about performance risks, a congressional panel heard on Thursday.

Witnesses said the administration did not conduct end-to-end testing of the system's technology backbone until just the two weeks before one of the lynchpins of President Barack Obama's landmark healthcare policy opened to consumers on October 1.   At a U.S. House of Representatives oversight committee hearing, contractors also blamed the administration for a last-minute design change that has been identified as a flaw responsible for leading millions of visitors into system bottlenecks.   Julie Bataille, a spokeswoman for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agency implementing the online marketplace, acknowledged the contractors' testimony. Read more

Inside former NSA chief Michael Hayden's 'interview' with an Amtrak live-tweeter
Washington Post | Brian Fung | 10/24/13

Here's What Would Happen if the US Listened to Sheldon Adelson and Bombed the Iranian Desert
MotherJones | Molly Redden | 10/25/13

GOP megadonor and casino tycoon Sheldon Adelson announced on Tuesday that he's hit upon a foolproof idea for deterring Iran's nuclear weapons program: nuke the Iranian desert.

"You pick up your cell phone, and you call somewhere in Nebraska and you say, 'OK, let it go,'" he said to a group of Yeshiva University students. "So there's an atomic weapon, goes over, ballistic missiles, the middle of the desert, that doesn't hurt a soul. Maybe a couple of rattlesnakes, and scorpions, or whatever. And then you say, 'See! The next one is in the middle of Tehran.'" ... Read more
TYT | Use Nuclear Weapon Against Iran, Says Top GOP Donor Sheldon Adelson (10/24/13) [4:05]
Or here

Here's What Happens When Wall Street Builds A Rental Empire
HP | Ben Hallman | 10/25/13

There's no escaping the stench of raw sewage in Mindy Culpepper's Atlanta-area rental home. The odor greets her before she turns into her driveway each evening as she returns from work. It's there when she prepares dinner, and only diminishes when she and her husband hunker down in their bedroom, where they now eat their meals.

For the $1,225 a month she pays for the three-bedroom house in the quiet suburb of Lilburn, Culpepper thinks it isn't too much to expect that her landlord, Colony American Homes, make the necessary plumbing repairs to eliminate the smell. But her complaints have gone unanswered, she said. Short of buying a plane ticket to visit the company's office in Scottsdale, Ariz., she is out of ideas.   "You can not get in touch with them, you can't get them on the phone, you can't get them to respond to an email," said Culpepper, whose family has lived with the problem since the day they moved in five months ago. "My certified letters, they don't get answered." ... Read more

Every Yemen Drone Strike Creates 40 To 60 New Enemies, Former U.S. Official Says
HP | Matt Sledge | 10/23/13

A former State Department official in Yemen says every U.S. drone killing there of an al Qaeda operative creates 40 to 60 new enemies of America.

In an article for the Cairo Review posted Wednesday, Nabeel Khoury, the deputy chief of mission in Yemen from 2004 to 2007, writes, "Drone strikes take out a few bad guys to be sure, but they also kill a large number of innocent civilians. Given Yemen's tribal structure, the U.S. generates roughly forty to sixty new enemies for every AQAP [al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula] operative killed by drones." ... Read more

Secret memos reveal explicit nature of U.S., Pakistan agreement on drones
Washington Post |Greg Miller | 10/24/13

Despite repeatedly denouncing the CIA's drone campaign, top officials in Pakistan's government have for years secretly endorsed the program and routinely received classified briefings on strikes and casualty counts, according to top-secret CIA documents and Pakistani diplomatic memos obtained by The Washington Post.

The files describe dozens of drone attacks in Pakistan's tribal region and include maps as well as before-and-after aerial photos of targeted compounds over a four-year stretch from late 2007 to late 2011 in which the campaign intensified dramatically. ... Read more
Drone Strikes 2004-2013 - Click to zoom

Sales drop, but defense contractors cut costs to keep profits high
Washington Post | Marjorie Censer | 10/23/13

General Dynamics and Northrop Grumman, two of the country's largest defense contractors, reported improved profits in the most recent quarter on Wednesday, despite sales declines that they attributed to slowing government spending.

Still, executives at the large weapons makers expressed concern about the recent government shutdown and automatic spending cuts known as sequestration, warning that they expect a tougher 2014. ... Read more

*John Perkins | Confessions of an Economic Hitman (2009) [24:02]

TYT | Obamacare Myths Busted (10/23/13) [12:59]

TYT | Obamacare Part Of 'Socialist-Communist Vision', Says Bill O'Reilly (10/23/13) [6:25]

TYT | Rand Paul: Liberals Don't Understand Capitalism (10/23/13) [7:46]

TYT | Shockingly Honest Admission By Conservative Talk Show Host (10/22/13) [5:38]

*TYT | Civilian Deaths in Drone Strikes - Devastating Report (10/22/13) [8:30]

Swiss Initiative Would Give $2,800 a Month to Everyone--No Strings Attached
Bloomberg | Peter Coy | 10/18/13

A movement to give every person an "unconditional basic income"--no work required--is gathering speed in Europe. In its biggest victory to date, earlier this month supporters in Switzerland garnered more than 100,000 signatures on a petition and managed to get an initiative onto the national ballot. ... Read more

Ex-SEC chief now helps companies navigate post-meltdown reforms
publicintegrity.org | Lauren Kyger | 09/12/13

On March 11, 2008, Christopher Cox, former chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, said he was comfortable with the amount of capital that Bear Stearns and the other publicly traded Wall Street investment banks had on hand.

Days later, Bear was gone, becoming the first investment bank to disappear in 2008 under the watch of Cox's SEC. By the end of the year, all five banks supervised by the SEC were either bankrupt, bought or converted to bank holding companies.

Cox took his Washington expertise to the private sector, helping banks and other companies navigate the new regulatory landscape that the crisis spawned. Other former top regulators -- like Hank Paulson, Timothy Geithner and Sheila Bair -- have written books based on their experience and joined the lecture circuit. ... Read more

Jon Stewart | Extreme Takeover: Tea Party Edition - The Tea Party vs. Karl Rove (10/22/13) [5:55]

Prisoners Of Profit
HP | Chris Kirkham | 10/22/13

From a glance at his background, one might assume that James F. Slattery would have a difficult time convincing any state in America to entrust him with the supervision of its lawbreaking youth.

Over the past quarter century, Slattery's for-profit prison enterprises have run afoul of the Justice Department and authorities in New York, Florida, Maryland, Nevada and Texas for alleged offenses ranging from condoning abuse of inmates to plying politicians with undisclosed gifts while seeking to secure state contracts.

In 2001, an 18-year-old committed to a Texas boot camp operated by one of Slattery's previous companies, Correctional Services Corp., came down with pneumonia and pleaded to see a doctor as he struggled to breathe. Guards accused the teen of faking it and forced him to do pushups in his own vomit, according to Texas law enforcement reports. After nine days of medical neglect, he died. ... Read more

China Is Now The World's Largest Importer Of Oil - What Next?
ZeroHedge | author | 10/21/13

Last month the world witnessed a paradigm shift: China surpassed the United States as the world's largest consumer of foreign oil, importing 6.3 million barrels per day compared to the United States' 6.24 million. This trend is likely to continue and this gap is likely to grow, according to the EIA's October short-term energy outlook.

... Derek Scissors wrote last week that this shift might usher in a world where oil is priced in RMB as opposed to solely in USD. This transition could only occur, however, if the RMB was made fully convertible and Beijing steps back from its current policy of exchange rate manipulation. Earlier this year, HSBC predicted that the RMB would be fully convertible by 2017, a reality that is surely hastened by its position as the single largest purchaser of foreign oil. A fully convertible RMB would be a "key step in pushing it as a reserve currency and enhancing its use in global trade, said Sacha Tihanyi, a strategist at Scotia Capital. ... Read more

Wall Street Profit May Drop 37% Bitten by Laws, Congress
Bloomberg|Freeman Klopott | 10/22/13

Wall Street's profit may fall 37 percent this year, hurt during the second half by rising interest rates, legal costs and budget turmoil in Washington, New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli said. ... Read more

When a C.I.A. Director Had Scores of Affairs
NYTimes | Stephen Kinzer | 11/10/12

WALKING through the lobby of the Central Intelligence Agency headquarters in Langley, Va., after handing in his resignation on Friday, David H. Petraeus passed a bas-relief sculpture of Allen Dulles, who led the agency in the 1950s and early '60s. Below it is the motto, "His Monument Is Around Us."

But private life for a C.I.A. director today is apparently quite different from what it was in the Dulles era. Mr. Petraeus resigned after admitting to a single affair; Allen Dulles had, as his sister, Eleanor, wrote later, "at least a hundred." ... Read more

NSA France: U.S. Conducted Large-Scale Spying On French Citizens: Report
HP | Lori Hinnant | 10/21/13

The U.S. National Security Agency swept up 70.3 million French telephone records in a 30-day period, according to a newspaper report that offered new details of the massive scope of a surveillance operation that has angered some of the country's closest allies. The French government on Monday summoned the U.S. ambassador for an explanation. ... Read more

PMorgan in tentative $13 billion deal with U.S. Justice Department
Reuter | Aruna Viswanatha | 10/19/13

The tentative deal does not release the bank from criminal liability for some of the mortgages it packaged into bonds and sold to investors, a factor that had been a major sticking point in the discussions, the source said.

... The deal is being hammered out by some of the most senior officials at the Department of Justice and the largest U.S. bank. Attorney General Eric Holder and JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon spoke on the phone on Friday night to finalize the broad outlines of the broad deal, the first source said. ... Read more

JPMorgan Chase's $13 Billion Fine Pales Next To Profits From Crisis Deals
HP | Mark Gongloff | 10/21/13

If JPMorgan Chase is a scapegoat, it is an extremely well-paid scapegoat: The crisis-era mergers that are costing the bank a small fortune in fines probably have racked up an even bigger fortune in profits.

Many on Wall Street, including the Wall Street Journal editorial page, are in a fit of rage over the news that JPMorgan has struck a tentative deal to pay $13 billion to settle federal charges that it sold bad mortgage securities to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ahead of the crisis.

The source of the rage is the fact that most of these securities were sold by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual, two banks that JPMorgan bought in 2008 to help calm the financial crisis. ... Read more

China May Own UK's Nuclear Stations
TruthDig | Paul Brown | 10/18/13

The Chinese are to help finance and build a new generation of nuclear power stations in the United Kingdom, helping out the French giant EDF which can no longer afford the £14 billion cost of the first station on its own.

The agreement, announced in China by George Osborne, the British Chancellor of the Exchequer [Finance Minister] at the end of a visit, is bound to be controversial. Initially the Chinese will take only about a 30% interest in this first station, but in future reactor building programmes they will be allowed to own a majority stake. ... Read more

Canada Spy Agency CSEC Uses "OLYMPIA" Program to Infiltrate Brazil Energy Ministry
LeakSource | author | 10/07/13

Five Eyes, Britain, Canada CSEC, United States NSA, Austrailia, New Zealand

Canada, as well as the US, infiltrated and spied on the Brazilian Energy Ministry, a new leak by Edward Snowden has revealed. The leaked documents show how the data gleaned through espionage was shared with international spy network the 'Five Eyes.'

Newly-released documents handed over to Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald by former CIA employee Edward Snowden describe in detail how Canadian intelligence infiltrated Brazil's Energy and Mines Ministry. ... Read more

America Is Not a Christian Nation and Never Has Been: Why Is the Right Obsessed With Pushing a Revisionist History?
AlterNet | Amanda Marcotte | 10/16/13

It's common to hear conservatives say things like Paul Ryan did during the campaign: "Our rights come from nature and God, not from government." Liberals shrug most of the time when they hear such rhetoric. It sounds like an empty platitude, much like praising the troops or waving the flag, that makes audiences feel good but doesn't actually have any real-world importance. What liberals don't understand, however, is that what sounds like an empty platitude actually signifies an elaborate, paranoid theory on the right about sneaky liberals trying to destroy America, a theory that is being used to justify all manner of incursions against religious freedom and separation of church and state.

The Christian right theory goes something like this: Once upon a time, a bunch of deeply religious Christian men revolted against the king of England and started a new nation with a Constitution based on the Bible. Being deeply religious fundamentalist Christians, they intended for their new society to reflect Christian values and the idea that rights come from God. But then a bunch of evil liberals with a secularist agenda decided to deny that our country is a Christian nation. Insisting that rights come from the government/the social contract/rational thinking, these secularists set out to dismantle our Christian nation and replace it with an unholy secularist democracy with atheists running amok and women getting abortions and gays getting married and civilization collapse. For some reason, the theory always ends with civilization collapse. The moral of the story is that we better get right with God and agree that he totally gave us our rights before the world ends. Insert dramatic music here. ... Read more

Thom Hartmann | Jesse Ventura, "They Killed Our President" (10/03/13) [6:23]

Thom Hartmann | There is No Tea Party Only a Collection of Billionaires (10/03/13) [6:58]

Thom Hartmann | The Shutdown...Brought To You By Citizens United (10/03/13) [4:53]

Thom Hartmann | Rep. Grayson, "Boehner doesn't want to do anything - just wants to be somebody" (10/03/13, older but good) [6:17]

Thom Hartmann | Time to Throw Crony Banksters in Jail (07/26/13) [8:29]

Thom Hartmann | Republicans ran up the debt & now they don't want to pay for it (07/08/13) [6:01]

Thom Hartmann | Corporations are the new kings - and their agenda is to radically remake America [4:47]

Thom Hartmann | The story of the 5 Kings who rule America [9:40]

Thom Hartmann | Corporate CEOs have a secret they don't want you to know about... [4:54]

Thom Hartmann | Secrets the Rich don't Want You to Know [10:25]

Thom Hartmann | Ronald Reagan Killed the American Dream [7:21]

Thom Hartmann | "Atlas Shrugged" based on the 1957 novel by Ayn Rand.- bizarre philosophy at work [10:03]

*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

*Glenn Greenwald to join media venture backed by eBay founder Omidyar
CNN.com | Laura Smith-Spark | 10/16/13

Pierre Omidyar, founder of online auction site eBay, said Wednesday he is teaming up with journalist Glenn Greenwald, who has led reporting on secret U.S. surveillance programs, to create a new online mass media venture.

Greenwald announced late Tuesday that he was quitting The Guardian for "a once-in-a-career dream journalistic opportunity" but said he was not ready to give more details.   Now Omidyar has confirmed to CNN's Christiane Amanpour that he is behind the new media venture, which includes Greenwald and others -- and that he will personally fund it. ... Read more

*Fast-Food Giants Make Billions While Their Workers Use Billions In Welfare Benefits
AlterNet | Steven Rosenfeld | 10/15/13

... "The median wage for these workers is $8.65 an hour," Jacobs said Tuesday. "Only 13 percent have health benefits through their employer. The combination of low wages, meager benefits and often part-time hours means that many of the families of fast-food workers must rely on taxpayer-funded safety net programs to make ends meet." ...

... The 10 biggest chains earned $7.44 billion in profits in 2012, National Employment Law Project (NELP) found. The 10 chains, with 2.25 million workers, account for "nearly 60 percent, or $3.8 billion, of the almost $7 billion in public costs associated with their low-wage, no-benefit business model," it said. These corporate-run franchises granted "more than $53 million in compensation to their highest-paid executives and an additional $7.7 billion in dividends and buybacks to shareholders."

The 10 largest fast-food chains are McDonald's, Yum Brands (Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC), Subway, Burger King, Wendy's, Dunkin' Donuts, Dairy Queen, Little Cesar's, Sonic, and Domino's. Read more

*The right's hidden victory: Ideologues win -- even if GOP loses!
Salon | David Sirota | 10/14/13

A new NBC/Wall Street Journal poll tells us what most of us already know: from an electoral perspective, the Republican Party's meticulously planned partial government shutdown has been a disaster. The poll results have -- quite predictably -- prompted much gloating and taunting in the Democratic Party's corner of the twittersphere and cable news universe. But lost in the red-versus-blue prognostication are two concrete -- and lamentable -- facts.

First and foremost, the trends documented by the new survey are hardly a huge problem for most of the Republican Party's powerbrokers. That's because the GOP is now a largely regional party that has effectively gerrymandered itself a separate country - one that is politically insulated from national public opinion.

Second, and as important, regardless of the partisan implications of the shutdown, the government shutdown and budget standoff are huge ideological victories for the conservative movement, because they have so successfully yanked the political discourse even farther to the right. ... Read more

"They're fools -- and work for fools!": Grayson on GOP staffers (and much more)
Salom | Josh Eidelson | 10/16/13

... In an interview late Tuesday afternoon, Grayson accused Republicans of pushing "health suppression" and measures "torturing" congressional staffers, and repeatedly "dragging America into heavy traffic." The Florida Democrat also defended the effectiveness of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, predicted the demise of any "Great Betrayal" targeting Social Security or Medicare, and said voters will soon send the Republican Party "to the ash heap of history." A condensed version of our conversation follows. ... Read more

A Simple Reform Could Save America From Wall Street and Boost the Economy: What's Washington Waiting For?
AlterNet | Lynn Stuart Parramore |10/14/13

It's a simple tweak that would reign in an out-of-control financial sector, stimulate jobs, generate billions of revenue, and possibly prevent another heart-wrenching crisis. Nobel Prize-winning economists like Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman want it. Billionaires like Warren Buffett and Bill Gates want it. Polls show the majority of Americans want it. Even the Pope wants it.

We're talking about a financial transaction tax (FTT) -- a tiny tax of, say, less than half a percent: maybe 3 cents per $100 -- on Wall Street trading. It's simple, more than fair, widely supported by the public, and long overdue.

Over the last weeks, Americans have been kept from going to work and the fragile economy has been strained as members of Congress wrangled over another phony budget crisis, even as the deficit is shrinking. Meanwhile, Wall Street has been raking in billions of dollars in profits from financial transactions. And they pay not a penny in taxes on most of them. ... Read more

Would GMO Labeling Jack Up Food Prices?
magazine | author | date

The push to require labels for genetically modified food, which flared up in California before drowning under a flood of industry cash last year, is now underway in Washington state. Predictably, agrichemical and organic interests are pouring money into, respectively, defeating and supporting a ballot initiative called I-522, which would require foods containing GMO ingredients to bear labels. Just as predictably, the agribusiness interests are garnering much more money to kill the effort than their organic peers are in supporting it--outspending them $17.1 million to $4.6 million ... Read more

3 Ways Regular Americans Will Be Hurt by a Debt Ceiling Default
AlterNet | Adam Levin | 10/15/13

Many Americans this week may be asking themselves: Why should I care about the debt ceiling, or the -- barring Congressional action -- coming default? You've heard about it in the news but, much like the sequester or the shutdown, you're not quite sure how it'll affect your daily life.

*Chomsky: For Almost 70 Years the U.S. Has Been the World Leader in Spreading Destruction and Misery Across the Planet
AlterNet | Noam Chomsky | 10/07/13

... One extreme was vigorously defended by President Obama in his Sept. 10 address to the nation: "What makes America different," he declared, "what makes us exceptional," is that we are dedicated to act, "with humility, but with resolve," when we detect violations somewhere.   "For nearly seven decades the United States has been the anchor of global security," a role that "has meant more than forging international agreements; it has meant enforcing them." ...

... The competing doctrine, isolationism, holds that we can no longer afford to carry out the noble mission of racing to put out the fires lit by others. It takes seriously a cautionary note sounded 20 years ago by the New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman that "granting idealism a near exclusive hold on our foreign policy" may lead us to neglect our own interests in our devotion to the needs of others. ...

... At the fringes, some observers reject the shared assumptions, bringing up the historical record: for example, the fact that "for nearly seven decades" the United States has led the world in aggression and subversion - overthrowing elected governments and imposing vicious dictatorships, supporting horrendous crimes, undermining international agreements and leaving trails of blood, destruction and misery. ... Read more

FOUR HORSEMEN is an independent feature documentary which lifts the lid on how the world really works. [1:38:54]

Four Horsemen website

Touched by a Wild Mountain Gorilla (2011) [5:52]

Congressman Deutch Spins the GOP Wheel of Misfortune (2011) [11:11]

Good News on Salmonella Outbreak: CDC Is Back on the Job. Bad News: The Strain Is Antibiotic-Resistant.
MotherJones | Tom Philpott | 10/09/13

Nothing like a big, multi-state salmonella outbreak to focus the mind of a federal government partially shut down by a political crisis. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), which gathers and analyzes data on such outbreaks and helps bring them under control, was effectively crippled in that capacity by the shutdown fiasco heading into this week, as Wired's Maryn McKenna reported. ... Read more

The Ten Hardline Conservatives Pulling the Strings of the GOP Shutdown
Bill Moyers | Staff | 10/11/13

Much of the coverage of the government showdown has focused on a relatively small group of hardline conservatives within the Republican caucus who have backed their party's leaders into a fight they didn't want.

As Ryan Lizza noted in The New Yorker, these lawmakers mostly represent very safe, heavily Republican and disproportionately white districts that don't look much like the rest of the country. Many of those on the front lines are recent arrivals to Capitol Hill, and they're pushing a leadership they see as having been too willing to compromise with Democrats in the past. ... Read more

Where The GOP's Suicide Caucus Lives
New Yorker | Ryan Lizza | 09/26/13

On August 21st, Congressman Mark Meadows sent a letter to John Boehner. Meadows is a former restaurant owner and Sunday-school Bible teacher from North Carolina. He's been in Congress for eight months. Boehner, who has served in Congress for twenty-two years, is the Speaker of the House and second in the line of succession if anything happened to the President.

Meadows was not pleased with how Boehner and his fellow Republican leaders in the House were approaching the September fight over spending. The annual appropriations to fund the government were scheduled to run out on October 1st, and much of it would stop operating unless Congress passed a new law. Meadows wanted Boehner to use the threat of a government shutdown to defund Obamacare, a course Boehner had publicly ruled out. ... Read more

U.S. Stocks Decline as Lawmakers Race to Reach Debt Deal
Bloomberg | Nick Taborek | 10/15/13

U.S. stocks declined, after a four-day rally in the Standard & Poor's 500 Index, as Congressional leaders worked on competing deals to raise the federal debt ceiling two days before the deadline. ... Read more

Machines Trading $400 Billion of Bonds as Humans Retreat
Bloomberg | Lisa Abramowicz | 10/15/13

A record share of U.S. corporate-bond trading has moved to computers as buyers who traditionally transacted over the phone seek faster ways to buy and sell in a market where Wall Street's human traders are retreating.

Investment-grade volumes on MarketAxess Holdings Inc.'s electronic system are on pace to exceed $400 billion in 2013 after surging 45 percent to $44 billion in September from a year earlier, according to data from the company, which estimates it captures about 90 percent of electronic trades among the dollar-denominated notes. That's equal to 14.3 percent of all market activity, including business done over the phone, up from 12.2 percent a year earlier. ... Read more

Robots That Hunt Down Jellyfish and Destroy Them
MotherJones | Maggie Severns | 10/03/13

Over the weekend the world's largest boiling-water nuclear reactor, Sweden's Oskarshamn plant, was paralyzed after a bloom of moon jellyfish clogged plant's cooling systems, forcing it to shut down. According to the New York Times, the jellyfish had been cleared out of the plant's pipes by Tuesday, and engineers are preparing to restart the reactor. Odd as it sounds, this is actually a pretty common problem ... Read more

Worlds Deadliest Jellyfish [43:44]

How Christian Delusions Are Driving the GOP Insane
AlterNet | Amanda Marcotte | 10/09/13

Why aren't Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn't really fooling the voters: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, Republican threats rely on believing they don't care about the consequences, while Democrats do.

So why aren't they more afraid? Businessweek, hardly a liberal news organization, said the price of default would be "a financial apocalypse" that would cause a worldwide economic depression. This is the sort of thing that affects everyone. Having a right wing ideology doesn't magically protect your investments from crashing alongside the rest of the stock market. ... Read more

You Think You Knew Crazy? Think Again. 10 Shockers from the Increasingly Unhinged Right Wing
AlterNet | Janet Allon | 10/12/13

How Private Tech Companies Are Collecting Data on You and Selling Them to the Feds for Huge Profits
AlterNet | Pratap Chatterjee | 10/08/13

Big Bro is watching you. Inside your mobile phone and hidden behind your web browser are little known software products marketed by contractors to the government that can follow you around anywhere. No longer the wide-eyed fantasies of conspiracy theorists, these technologies are routinely installed in all of our data devices by companies that sell them to Washington for a profit.

That's not how they're marketing them to us, of course. No, the message is much more seductive: Data, Silicon Valley is fond of saying, is the new oil. And the Valley's message is clear enough: we can turn your digital information into fuel for pleasure and profits -- if you just give us access to your location, your correspondence, your history, and the entertainment that you like. ... Read more

Will the Highways of the Future Primarily Benefit the Rich?
AlterNet | Ellen Dannin | 10/11/13

It could be said that Robert Poole, the Searle Freedom Trust Transportation fellow and director of transportation policy at the Libertarian Reason Foundation, has never seen a toll road - or, more precisely, a privatized toll road - he didn't like. Exhibit A: his newly released Interstate 2.0: Modernizing the Interstate Highway System via Toll Finance.

Poole calls his project "Interstate 2.0" to signal that Reason's agenda is something that cool, leaning-forward folks will want to support. But the bottom line is that Poole's proposal offers nothing innovative: just another proposition for the kind of relentless privatization that has stricken cities across the country, rolled into a highway-long package. ... Read more

Democracy Now! U.S. and World News Headlines for Monday, October 14 [15:35]

DN | "Edward Snowden Is A Patriot: Ex-NSA CIA, FBI and Justice Whistleblowers Meet Leaker in Moscow (10/14/13) [7:39]

TRNN | Kate Sheppard: Cleanup at 505 Toxic Sites Suspended During Government Shutdown (10/14/13) [4:07]

Chris Hayes | End game of the shutdow (10/11/13) [15:08]

Chris Hayes | The Tea Party disconnect from reality (10/11/13) [7:50]

Chris Hayes | Congress: From unpopular to hated (10/11/13) [6:05]

Chris Hayes | Rep. Trey Radel, hip hop congressman (10/11/13) [3:21]

Chris Hayes | The website for Congress-haters (10/11/13) [6:36]

How to Make a Vegan Omelette
onegreenplanet.org | Emma Pereira | 10/11/13

They say you can't make an omelet without breaking eggs. Wrong! One of my very favorite meals is a spinach and mushroom omelet with lashings of tomato sauce -- with not an egg in sight. And it's delicious.

OK, let's not upset the purists. It's not strictly speaking an omelet if it doesn't contain eggs. But the secret ingredient is gram flour which does the same job, and gram flour does it even better.   Gram flour is quite simply ground dried garbanzos, or chickpeas. ... Read more

How Christian Delusions Are Driving the GOP Insane
AlterNet | Amanda Marcotte | 10/09/13

Why aren't Republicans more afraid? The entire premise of both the government shutdown and the threats to force the government into debt default is that Democrats care more about the consequences of these actions than the Republicans do. Republicans may go on TV and shed crocodile tears about national monuments being shut down, but the act isn't really fooling the voters: The only way to understand these fights is to understand that the GOP is threatening to destroy the government and the world economy in order to get rid of Obamacare (as well as a panoply of other right wing demands). Just as terrorists use the fact that you care more about the lives of the hostages than they do to get leverage, ... Read more

16 Ways Default Will Totally Screw Americans
MotherJones | Dana Liebelson | 10/10/13

Perhaps you've heard that if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling by October 17 the United States will face an unprecedented financial default. The way some Republicans talk about the consequences of passing that threshold, you might think that hitting that limit might not be all that bad (Florida's Ted Yoho, in fact, thinks it would be beneficial). But sober-minded economists are describing the ramifications of a default with terms usually reserved Roland Emmerich flicks--like "apocalypse." The full economic fallout of defaulting are unknown. ...

A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman's Fall
Bloomberg | Yalman Onaran | 10/08/13

Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.

Failure by the world's largest borrower to pay its debt -- unprecedented in modern history -- will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse. ... Read more

If We Are In An Economic Recovery, Why Are Major Corporations Firing Thousands?
ZeroHedge | author | 10/11/13

We already have declining real wages. Small businesses are geting wiped out by taxes, regulations, and Obamacare. These mega-corporations are firing thousands. Retail and restaurant sales are plunging. Consumers are scared straight and are reducing credit card debt. Government spending in states and localities is declining because they are required to balance their budgets. The Boomers are old, with no savings. ...

*Wealth Inequality in America [6:25]

Inside the Republican Suicide Machine
RollingStone | Tim Dickinson | 10/09/13

The day before Congress broke for its August recess, on an afternoon when most of official Washington was tying up loose ends and racing to get out of town, Sen. Ted Cruz was setting the stage for the chaos that has consumed the nation's capital in recent weeks.

The tall Tea Party-backed Texan -- the state's junior senator, with less than a year in office -- worked his mischief in a windowless Capitol basement, where dozens of the most radical members of the House had gathered for a meeting of the Republican Study Committee. Once a marginal group known for elevating anti-government dogma above party loyalty, the RSC now counts among its members 174 of the 232 House Republicans. ... Read more
8 Tea Party Moron - Click to zoom

Green Peace, Kumi Naidoo on the Urgency of Climate Action
Bill Moyers | author | 09/27/13

... Naidoo tells Bill, "If there's injustice in the world, those of us that have the ability to witness it and to record it, document it and tell the world what is happening have a moral responsibility to do that. Then, of course, it's left up to those that are receiving that knowledge to make the moral choice about whether they want to stand up against the injustice or observe it." ... Read more

Hanford: 70 years ago thousands came to remote desert site to work on mysterious project that would change the world
tri-cityherald | author | 10/05/13

But the weapons-grade plutonium produced at Hanford also helped end a war in which 17 million people died in battle and another 18 million civilians were killed by bombs, plague and genocide.

In 30 months, Hanford's construction forces would build 554 buildings, 386 miles of road, 158 miles of railroad, three massive chemical plants and the world's first three production-scale nuclear reactors, starting with B Reactor.

At the start of the year, about 6,700 people lived along the 30-mile stretch of the Columbia River between Hover and While Bluffs. By the end of the year, the construction camp at Hanford was home to 51,000 people, the majority of them past draft age but still young enough to build the huge and mysterious industrial complex. ... Read more

Rep. Broun tells CNN: 'I'm a medical doctor' and Obamacare will 'destroy everything we know'
RawStory | David Edwards | 10/08/13

A Georgia congressman who is running for Senate said on Tuesday that he was fighting to delay, defund and repeal President Barack Obama's health care reform law because it would literally "destroy everything we know as a nation." ...

... "So, you're not demanding any concessions on Obamacare in order to raise the debt ceiling?" Blitzer asked.   "Well, Obamacare must go," Broun replied. "It's destroying America…. Wolf, I want to get the American people the relief that they need from this out-of-control spending, and I'll do everything that I possibly can do to do that." ... Read more

Pension-Fund Looters Get Tax Breaks, Too
RollingStone | Matt Taibbi | 10/04/13

A few weeks ago, I wrote a feature on pension reform in states like Rhode Island for Rolling Stone. Since the piece was sharply critical of alternative investments like hedge funds, I expected a heated response, and got one right away. ... Read more

*$16.394 Trillion Dollars US Debt Ceiling Visualized Stacked in $100 dollar bills (2013) [2:11]

How the GOP's Kamikaze Club Hijacked John Boehner
MotherJones | David Corn | 10/09/13

How did the Republican Party become a kamikaze club guided by a small handful of hostage-taking radicals hell-bent on causing chaos to ruin the presidency of Barack Obama? It wasn't by the design of House Speaker John Boehner and the GOP congressional leadership. This came about because a small number of tea party back-benchers in the House and Senate, assisted by a well-financed network of right-wing organizations (some funded by the billionaire Koch brothers), pushed an issue that was red meat for the GOP's base -- defunding Obamacare -- and managed to hijack the party (even more than the tea party already had). ... Read more

Prescription drug abuse now more deadly than heroin, cocaine combined
Christian Science Monitor | Mark Guarino | 10/07/13

More people are dying in the US from prescription drugs than from heroin and cocaine combined, a new study says, signaling that pill abuse is not just the leading cause of drug overdose deaths, but that it also requires more oversight and training by both doctors and state health agencies.

Deaths involving prescription pills have quadrupled between 1999 and 2010, according to a report released Monday by Trust for America's Health, a nonprofit organization in Washington that studies health policy. About 6.1 million people abuse prescription pills, and overdose deaths have at least doubled in 29 states, where they now exceed vehicle-related deaths. In 10 of those states, rates tripled; in four of them, they quadrupled. ... Read more

This Supreme Court Case Could Usher In a "System of Legalized Corruption"
MotherJones | author | 10/08/13

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on Tuesday in McCutcheon v. Federal Election Commission, a case that's been dubbed "the next Citizens United." The plaintiff, GOP donor Shaun McCutcheon, and his conservative allies say the case is about getting rid of restrictions on political spending that stifle free speech. Campaign finance watchdogs, meanwhile, fear the case could eviscerate an important piece of what's left of the federal laws governing money in politics. McCutcheon, says Fred Wertheimer, president of Democracy 21, will decide "whether we return to the system of legalized corruption we have had in the past and that has led to some of the worst Washington corruption scandals in the nation's history." ... Read more

Congressional Perks Deemed Essential During Government Shutdown While Public Sacrifices
HP | Amanda Terkel | 10/09/13

Around the country, furloughed federal workers are wondering how they're going to pay their bills while they wait for the government to reopen. Businesses that rely on tourists are taking a hit due to shuttered national parks. And scientists conducting groundbreaking research have had to put the brakes on their work.

Meanwhile, members of Congress continue to pump iron in their exclusive gym, ride on special trolleys so that they don't have to walk a few extra feet and in some cases, protect their entire staff from the furloughs faced by other federal workers. ... Read more

A Corporate Coup in Disguise
AlterNet | Jim Hightower | 10/01/13

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would create a virtually permanent corporate rule over the people.

What if our national leaders told us that communities across America had to eliminate such local programs as Buy Local, Buy American, Buy Green, etc. to allow foreign corporations to have the right to make the sale on any products purchased with our tax dollars? This nullification of our people's right to direct expenditures is just one of the horror stories in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

This is a super-sized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by the entire corporate establishment. NAFTA promised the "glories of globalization": prosperity across our land. Unfortunately, corporations got the gold. We got the shaft -- thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities were shattered.

Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism:... Read more

*TRNN | Lynn Parramore: California memo just latest example of Wall St's attack on workers' pensions (10/08/13) [7:34]

*DN | Matt Taibbi on How Wall Street Hedge Funds Are Looting the Pension Funds of Public Workers (09/26/13) [7:05]

*Matt Taibbi on Wall Street's Campaign to Loot Public Pensions
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 09/30/13

"Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy," writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. "Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions." ... Read more

It's Definitive - We've Reached Peak Jobs
ZeroHedge | author | 10/08/13

There has long been a quasi-magical belief in the U.S. that capitalism's intrinsic dynamic of creative destruction will always create more jobs than it destroys. The evidence is compelling that this belief is no longer reality-based. Read more
Peak Jobs - Click to zoom

Poll Reveals GOP Blamed For Shutdown

HP | Calvin Woodward | 10/08/13

The Associated Press-GfK survey, out Wednesday, affirms expectations by many in Washington -- Republicans among them -- that the GOP may end up taking the biggest hit in public opinion from the fiscal paralysis, just as that party did when much of the government closed 17 years ago. But the situation is fluid nine days into the shutdown and there's plenty of disdain to go around.

Overall, 62 percent mainly blamed Republicans for the shutdown. About half said Obama or the Democrats in Congress bear much responsibility. ... Read more

Japan's Nuclear Refugees, Still Stuck in Limbo
NYTimes | Martin FackleR | 10/02/13

Every month, Hiroko Watabe, 74, returns for a few hours to her abandoned house near the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant to engage in her own small act of defiance against fate. She dons a surgical mask, hangs two radiation-measuring devices around her neck and crouches down to pull weeds. ...

... "In my heart, I know we can never live here again," said Ms. Watabe, who drove here with her husband from Koriyama, the city an hour away where they have lived since the disaster. "But doing this gives us a purpose. We are saying that this is still our home." ... Read more

A Depressed Bank Of America Predicts "Agreement Is Almost Impossible As Long As Obamacare Is On The Table"
ZeroHedge | author | 10/05/13

Bank of America's latest forecast on the resolution, or lack thereof, of the government shutdown, which now seems virtually certain to last at least one week into Monday night, when the House and Senate return to work, is hardly encouraging. The bank's base case now calls for "either a two-week shutdown or for multiple shutdowns." Additional, BofA has now cut its Q3 GDP forecast from 2.0% to 1.7% and from 2.5% to 2.0% for 4Q. It gets worse: "Much worse outcomes are possible. In our view, agreement is almost impossible as long as the Affordable Care Act is on the table." Finally, and what ties it all together, is that as a result of the lack of "government data", BAC now expects the Fed to delay tapering to their January meeting, or later. Which may well have been the much needed alibi all along to delayed tapering until 2014. ... Read more

A U.S. Default Seen as Catastrophe Dwarfing Lehman's Fall
Bloomberg/Businessweek | Yalman Onaran | 10/06/13

Anyone who remembers the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. little more than five years ago knows what a global financial disaster is. A U.S. government default, just weeks away if Congress fails to raise the debt ceiling as it now threatens to do, will be an economic calamity like none the world has ever seen.

Failure by the world's largest borrower to pay its debt -- unprecedented in modern history -- will devastate stock markets from Brazil to Zurich, halt a $5 trillion lending mechanism for investors who rely on Treasuries, blow up borrowing costs for billions of people and companies, ravage the dollar and throw the U.S. and world economies into a recession that probably would become a depression. Among the dozens of money managers, economists, bankers, traders and former government officials interviewed for this story, few view a U.S. default as anything but a financial apocalypse.

The $12 trillion of outstanding government debt is 23 times the $517 billion Lehman owed when it filed for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, 2008. As politicians butt heads over raising the debt ceiling, executives from Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.'s Lloyd C. Blankfein have warned that going over the edge would be catastrophic. ... Read more

A Corporate Coup in Disguise
magazine | author | date

The Trans-Pacific Partnership would create a virtually permanent corporate rule over the people.

What if our national leaders told us that communities across America had to eliminate such local programs as Buy Local, Buy American, Buy Green, etc. to allow foreign corporations to have the right to make the sale on any products purchased with our tax dollars? This nullification of our people's right to direct expenditures is just one of the horror stories in the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

This is a super-sized NAFTA, the 1994 trade scam rammed through Congress by the entire corporate establishment. NAFTA promised the "glories of globalization": prosperity across our land. Unfortunately, corporations got the gold. We got the shaft -- thousands of factories closed, millions of middle-class jobs went south, and the economies of hundreds of towns and cities were shattered.

Twenty years later, the gang that gave us NAFTA is back with the TPP, a "trade deal" that mostly does not deal with trade. Of the 29 chapters in this document, only five cover traditional trade matters! The other chapters amount to a devilish "partnership" for corporate protectionism:... Read more

Government Shutdown? 36 Facts Which Prove That Almost Everything Is Still Running
ZeroHedge & Economic Collapse blog | Michael Snyder | 10/03/13

All of this whining and crying about a "government shutdown" is a total joke. You see, there really is very little reason why this "government shutdown" cannot continue indefinitely because almost everything is still running. 63 percent of all federal workers are still working, and 85 percent of all government activities are still being funded during this "shutdown".

Yes, the Obama administration has been making a big show of taking down government websites and blocking off the World War II Memorial, but overall business in Washington D.C. is being conducted pretty much as usual. It turns out that the definition of "essential personnel" has expanded so much over the years that almost everyone is considered "essential" at this point. ... ..."The following are 36 facts which prove that almost everything is still running during this government shutdown". Read more

US Banks Stuffing ATMs With 20-30% More Cash In Case Of Panicked Withdrawals
ZeroHedge | author | 10/03/13

The FT reports that "two of the country's 10 biggest banks said they were putting into place a "playbook" used in August 2011 when the government last came close to breaching the debt ceiling. One senior executive said his bank was delivering 20-30 per cent more cash than usual in case panicked customers tried to withdraw funds en masse. ... Read more

This Is What The 'Leave It To Beaver' Cast Looks Like 56 Years Later

It's been 56 years since a cute little munchkin named Theodore entered our lives as "The Beaver" in an all-American show about suburban family life. The first episode of "Leave It To Beaver" aired on October 4, 1957; the last episode was June 20, 1963.

Why Can't We Fix Outrageous CEO Pay?
AlterNet | Christopher Key | 10/01/13

In theory, a new proposal from the Securities and Exchange Commission would require CEOs to disclose not only how much they make, but how that sum compares to the average worker. In practice, however, don't hold your breath.

A total lack of clear methodology in how exactly companies are meant to calculate this figure gives corporations a blank check to come up with any figure they want. What turned a measure meant to increase transparency and accountability into yet one more way for corporations to obscure truth and cast illusions? A deep and abiding concern on the part of the SEC that following this rule not be too expensive for multibillion dollar corporations. Why are we not surprised? ... Read more

Taibbi's Latest Expose: How Teachers, Cops and Firemen Are Getting Their Pensions Fleeced at Lightning Speed
AlterNet | Amy Goodman, Matt Taibbi | 09/26/13

Taibbi in his latest expose revealing that hedge funds are making millions from public pension funds.

Matt Taibbi reports that Wall Street firms are now making millions in profits off of public pension funds nationwide. "Essentially it is a wealth transfer from teachers, cops and firemen to billionaire hedge funders," Taibbi says. "Pension funds are one of the last great, unguarded piles of money in this country and there are going to be all sort of operators that are trying to get their hands on that money." ... Read more
*DN | Matt Taibbi on How Wall Street Hedge Funds Are Looting the Pension Funds of Public Workers (09/26/13) [7:05]

People Across America Are Waking Up to the Effects of 'Disaster Capitalism' -- a Much Better Way of Life Is Possible
AlterNet | Kevin Zeese, Margaret Flowers | 09/28/13

In her book Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, Naomi Klein explains how crises are used by governments to distract and frighten people so that unpopular and exploitative policies can be pushed through.

It seems that now there is a different reaction disaster capitalism. Rather than disasters providing cover for the implementation of dangerous capitalist policies that lower wages and increase the wealth divide, the disasters being caused by these dangerous policies have woken the public and are leading to a more active and empowered people. ... Read more
The Shock Doctrine 2009 [1:18:38]

Why U.S. Health Care Is Obscenely Expensive, In 12 Charts
HP | Katy Hall | 10/03/13

The U.S. leads the world in health care spending, but we don't live very long, and going to the doctor is so expensive that we don't do it very often. So where is the money going?

Not toward obesity-related diseases or unnecessary tests and treatments, as the writer John Green pointed out in a recent video explainer. From Lipitor to childbirth to colonoscopies -- everything just costs a whole lot. ... Read more
Health Care Costs - Click to zoom

*Matt Taibbi on Wall Street's Campaign to Loot Public Pensions
Bill Moyers | Joshua Holland | 09/30/13

"Five years ago this fall, an epidemic of fraud and thievery in the financial-services industry triggered the collapse of our economy," writes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi. "Today, the same Wall Street crowd that caused the crash is not merely rolling in money again but aggressively counterattacking on the public-relations front. The battle increasingly centers around public funds like state and municipal pensions." ... Read more

Fox News Website Trumpets Government 'Slimdown,' Not Shutdown
HP | Jack Mirkinson | 10/01/13

If you were looking at the Fox News website, you might think you were in a different universe than the one where everyone is talking about a government shutdown.   What we have, according to the network, is a "slimdown." The government's not frozen and crippled -- it's just losing a little weight! ... Read more

Interesting news for October 2

How to Kill Goyim and Influence People: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel
AlterNet | Max Blumenthal | 10/01/13

A controversial, racist book sparked a national uproar in Israel.

Upon its publication in 2009, Torat Ha'Melech sparked a national uproar. The controversy began when the Israeli paper, Maariv, panned the book's contents as "230 pages on the laws concerning the killing of non-Jews, a kind of guidebook for anyone who ponders the question of if and when it is permissible to take the life of a non-Jew." The description was absolutely accurate.

According to the authors, Rabbi Yitzhak Shapira and Rabbi Yosef Elitzur, non-Jews are "uncompassionate by nature" and may have been killed in order to "curb their evil inclinations." "If we kill a gentile who has violated one of the seven commandments [of Noah] ... there is nothing wrong with the murder," Shapira and Elitzur insisted. Citing Jewish law as his source. ... Read more

Seymour Hersh: Story About Killing Osama Bin Laden is One Big Lie
AlterNet | Lisa O'Carroll | 09/27/13

Seymour Hersh has got some extreme ideas on how to fix journalism -- close down the news bureaus of NBC and ABC, sack 90% of editors in publishing and get back to the fundamental job of journalists which, he says, is to be an outsider.

It doesn't take much to fire up Hersh, the investigative journalist who has been the nemesis of US presidents since the 1960s and who was once described by the Republican party as "the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist". ... Read more

BP Trial Set To Enter Second Phase
HP | Michael Kunzelman | 09/29/13

Top kill. Junk shot. Cofferdam. Top hat. Capping stack. Those terms -- obscure industry jargon before BP's massive 2010 oil spill -- became familiar buzzwords as the company scrambled to find a way to plug its blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico.

More than three years later, the methods that BP employed during its 86-day struggle to stop the gusher will be the focus of a trial resuming Monday in the high-stakes litigation spawned by the nation's worst offshore oil spill. ... Read more

BP Gulf Oil Spill Maps
thedailygreen.com | author | 06/02/10 older, but good

Maps of the BP Gulf oil leak show the extent of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; fishing closures; the devastation facing bird, turtle and fish habitats; forecasts of how far the oil could travel, the Gulf of Mexico loop current and more.

The BP Gulf Oil Spill, which began with the explosion of the Deepwater Horizon April 20, and which now covers an area about the size of Connecticut, and which is probably already larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, is imperiling birds, fish, turtles, mammals, seafood, fishermen and some of the world's most productive wildlife habitat.   Here's a look at some of the most useful and interesting maps showing the extent of the Gulf Oil Spill. ... Read more
Effects of the BP Spill - Click to zoom

This Is What's Happening To Your Congressman's Paycheck Thanks To The Government Shutdown
HP | Nick Wing |10/01/13

The clock struck 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday with congressional lawmakers incapable of reaching an agreement on a short-term measure to fund the government. The failure led to the first government shutdown since 1996, and stood as another low point for a Congress that's pretty much only had low points.

With the historically unpopular Congress now responsible for losing the paychecks of as many as 800,000 federal workers -- at least until it can come up with an agreement to end the shutdown -- many would think it only fair to expect lawmakers to feel some of the financial pain of their latest embarrassment. Instead, this is happening:

Your representatives will still be getting their paychecks, constitutionally protected at $174,000 a year. For many of the massively wealthy individuals that serve in Congress, this amount may be inconsequential. ... Read more