Observations on current events

Housing:

Patricia Williams: Predatory Scapegoating
"Some three weeks before New York Governor Eliot Spitzer was forced to resign his office in disgrace (sex! scandal! floozies!), he published an op-ed in the Washington Post. Titled 'Predatory Lenders' Partner in Crime: How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers,' the piece expressed Spitzer's concern that for several years there had been a marked increase in predatory lending practices, including distortion of terms, surprise balloon payments, hidden fees and deceptive 'teaser' rates. These practices, he wrote, were having a 'devastating effect on home buyers.' In addition, the sheer number of such transactions, 'if left unchecked, threaten...our financial markets,'..."


How Did We Get Here:

William Greider: Establishment Disorder
"Who rigged Wall Street? The question absorbed people for years after the crash of 1929 and the Great Depression that followed. Now it is before us again. The financial crisis that has swept away great wealth and important banking firms was not an accident of nature. The ingredients for disaster were engineered by human architects seeking greater fortunes and authorized by political actors in both parties...
...Our crisis might not get a Pecora investigation, not one that digs out the whole truth, for this reason: this time, the dirty details of who rigged what involve many incumbent politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, and the deals they worked out with their financial patrons on Wall Street. A close accounting would reveal how both parties collaborated for more than two decades in repealing or gutting the prudent safeguards put in place by the New Deal reformers. Congress still has some bulldog investigators, like Representatives Henry Waxman and John Conyers, but their colleagues will have very little appetite for 'naming names' or exploring the money connections between Washington and Wall Street..."

Economics:

Paul Krugman: The Lame-Duck Economy
"...How much should we worry about what looks like two months of policy drift? At minimum, the next two months will inflict serious pain on hundreds of thousands of Americans, who will lose their jobs, their homes, or both. What’s really troubling, however, is the possibility that some of the damage being done right now will be irreversible. I’m concerned, in particular, about the two D’s: deflation and Detroit.
About deflation: Japan’s 'lost decade' in the 1990s taught economists that it’s very hard to get the economy moving once expectations of inflation get too low (it doesn’t matter whether people literally expect prices to fall). Yet there’s clear deflationary pressure on the U.S. economy right now, and every month that passes without signs of recovery increases the odds that we’ll find ourselves stuck in a Japan-type trap for years.
About Detroit: There’s now a real risk that, in the absence of quick federal aid, the Big Three automakers and their network of suppliers will be forced into liquidation — that is, forced to shut down, lay off all their workers and sell off their assets. And if that happens, it will be very hard to bring them back..."


Obama's Cabinet Choices?

Jeremy Scahill: This is Change? 20 Hawks, Clintonites and Neocons to Watch for in Obama's White House
"...The prospect of Obama's foreign policy being, at least in part, an extension of the Clinton Doctrine is real. Even more disturbing, several of the individuals at the center of Obama's transition and emerging foreign policy teams were top players in creating and implementing foreign policies that would pave the way for projects eventually carried out under the Bush/Cheney administration. With their assistance, Obama has already charted out several hawkish stances. Among them:

-- His plan to escalate the war in Afghanistan;

-- An Iraq plan that could turn into a downsized and rebranded occupation that keeps U.S. forces in Iraq for the foreseeable future;

-- His labeling of Iran's Revolutionary Guard as a 'terrorist organization;'

-- His pledge to use unilateral force inside of Pakistan to defend U.S. interests;

-- His position, presented before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), that Jerusalem 'must remain undivided' -- a remark that infuriated Palestinian officials and which he later attempted to reframe;

-- His plan to continue the War on Drugs, a backdoor U.S. counterinsurgency campaign in Central and Latin America;

-- His refusal to 'rule out' using Blackwater and other armed private forces in U.S. war zones, despite previously introducing legislation to regulate these companies and bring them under U.S. law.

Obama did not arrive at these positions in a vacuum. They were carefully crafted in consultation with his foreign policy team. While the verdict is still out on a few people, many members of his inner foreign policy circle -- including some who have received or are bound to receive Cabinet posts -- supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Some promoted the myth that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. A few have worked with the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, whose radical agenda was adopted by the Bush/Cheney administration. And most have proven track records of supporting or implementing militaristic, offensive U.S. foreign policy. 'After a masterful campaign, Barack Obama seems headed toward some fateful mistakes as he assembles his administration by heeding the advice of Washington's Democratic insider community, a collective group that represents little 'change you can believe in,'' notes veteran journalist Robert Parry, the former Associated Press and Newsweek reporter who broke many of the stories in the Iran-Contra scandal in the 1980s.
As news breaks and speculation abounds about cabinet appointments, here are 20 people to watch as Obama builds the team who will shape U.S. foreign policy for at least four years..."


Afghanistan:

Robert Fisk: Kabul 30 Years Ago, and Kabul Today. Have We Learned Nothing?

Ray McGovern: Gates and the Urge to Surge
"...Our Secretary of Defense is insisting that U.S. troops have not lost one pitched battle with the Taliban or al-Qaeda. Engagements like the one on July 13, 2008, in which 'insurgents' attacked an outpost in Konar province, killing nine U.S. soldiers and wounding 15 others, apparently do not qualify as 'contact,' but are merely 'incidents.'
Gates ought to read up on Vietnam, for his words evoke a similarly benighted comment by U.S. Army Col. Harry Summers after that war had been lost. In 1974, Summers was sent to Hanoi to try to resolve the status of Americans still listed as missing. To his North Vietnamese counterpart, Col. Tu, Summers made the mistake of bragging, 'You know, you never beat us on the battlefield.' Colonel Tu responded, 'That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.'
As Vietnamese Communist forces converged on Saigon in April 1975, the U.S. withdrew all remaining personnel. Summers was on the last Marine helicopter to fly off the roof of the American Embassy at 5:30 a.m. on April 30. As he later recalled, 'I was the second-to-the-last Army guy out of Vietnam -- quite a searing experience.'

More Vietnams?

Why is this relevant? Because if Obama repeats the mistakes of Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, and Gerald Ford, U.S. Marine choppers may be plucking folks not only off the U.S. embassy roof in Baghdad, but also from the mountains and valleys of Afghanistan. No ignoramus, Gates knows that his comments about the Taliban losing 'every time' that there is contact with coalition forces is as irrelevant as those of Col. Summers 34 years ago.
Yet, it would be folly to expect Gates to give advice to a superior that challenges the policies that Gates thinks his superior favors. Gates has been the consummate career careerist, going back to his days as head of analysis at CIA in the 1980s when he fashioned intelligence reports that gave the policymakers what they wanted to hear. Instead of the old-fashioned 'bark-on' intelligence, the Gates variety was 'apple-polished' intelligence..."

The Fourth Estate:

The Yes Men: A Spoof Of The New York Times
Last Wednesday, hundreds of thousands of copies of a fake edition of the New York Times were handed out in New York and Los Angeles.
It represents a humorous look at how the world might look if, in part, journalists did their job. Some of the fake corporate ads (GM, Exxon, DeBeers) are priceless.
'The Fine Print' link offers some details.


Civil Service 'Burrowing':

Washington Post: Administration Protects Bush Appointees by Converting Positions to Career Civil Service Jobs
"Just weeks before leaving office, the Interior Department's top lawyer has shifted half a dozen key deputies -- including two former political appointees who have been involved in controversial environmental decisions -- into senior civil service posts.
The transfer of political appointees into permanent federal positions, called 'burrowing' by career officials, creates security for those employees, and at least initially will deprive the incoming Obama administration of the chance to install its preferred appointees in some key jobs..."


Permanent War:

Chris Hedges: America's Wars of Self-Destruction
"War is a poison. It is a poison that nations and groups must at times ingest to ensure their survival. But, like any poison, it can kill you just as surely as the disease it is meant to eradicate. The poison of war courses unchecked through the body politic of the United States. We believe that because we have the capacity to wage war we have the right to wage war. We embrace the dangerous self-delusion that we are on a providential mission to save the rest of the world from itself, to implant our virtues-which we see as superior to all other virtues-on others, and that we have a right to do this by force. This belief has corrupted Republicans and Democrats alike. And if Barack Obama drinks, as it appears he will, the dark elixir of war and imperial power offered to him by the national security state, he will accelerate the downward spiral of the American empire..."


Economics:

I might support an auto industry bailout if they were to be managed differently, if they would start making small, efficient (50+mpg) cars, and if they would transition part of their operations to build mass-transit infrastructure (buses, trains, trams). If none of these occur, we'd be throwing good money away.
The really sad thing is how even the UAW, over the last 20-years, failed to dig in their heels when it came to commitments toward making more environmentally-friendly vehicles. The Big Three, while fuel was 'cheap' always kept saying: 'Let the market decide what people want to buy' - but when it went towards $3.50+/gal. and people rejected 5,000 lb. (read: old, yet high profit) SUVs, they were 'surprised' to be unable to sell enough of the vehicles they stubbornly made an operative assumption of their business model.

Harvey Wasserman: GM Must Remake the Mass Transit System It Murdered
"Bail out General Motors? The people who murdered our mass transit system?
First let them remake what they destroyed.
GM responded to the 1970s gas crisis by handing over the American market to energy-efficient Toyota and Honda.
GM met the rise of the hybrids with 'light trucks.'
GM built a small electric car, leased a pilot fleet to consumers who loved it, and then forcibly confiscated and trashed them all..."

David Korten: Beyond the Bailout: Agenda for a New Economy
"The financial crisis has put to rest the myths that our economic institutions are sound and markets work best when deregulated. Our economic institutions have failed, not only financially, but also socially and environmentally. This, combined with the election of a new president with a mandate for change, creates an opportune moment to rethink and redesign.
President-elect Obama has promised to grow the economy from the bottom up. That would be a substantial improvement over growing the top at the expense of the bottom. The real need, however, is a bottom-up transformation of our economic values and institutions to align with the imperatives and opportunities of the 21st century. It involves a five part agenda: clean up Wall Street, play by market rules, self-finance the real economy, measure what we really want, and convert to debt-free money.
The recent market meltdown and the resulting bailout commitments of more than a trillion dollars have focused the nation’s attention on the devastating consequences of Wall Street deregulation. This is but the tip of the iceberg of a failed economy in serious need of basic redesign.
Our economy is wildly out of balance with human needs and the natural environment. The result is disaster for both. Wages are falling in the face of soaring food and energy prices. Consumer debt and housing foreclosures are setting historic records. The middle class is shrinking. The unconscionable and growing worldwide gap between rich and poor with its related social alienation is producing social collapse, which in turn produces crime, terrorism, and genocide.
At the same time, excessive consumption is pushing Earth’s ecosystem into collapse. Scientists are in almost universal agreement that human activity bears substantial responsibility for climate change and the related increase in droughts, floods, and wildfires.
We face a monumental economic challenge that goes far beyond anything being discussed in the U.S. Congress. The hardships imposed by temporarily frozen credit markets pale by comparison..."

Dean Baker: Stopping Foreclosures With the Right to Rent: One More Time
"...The number of foreclosure filings (there are typically two or more filing for every actual foreclosure) is now approaching 300,000 per month.
For those not offended by simplicity, there is an easy solution. Congress can temporarily modify the rules on foreclosure to give families facing foreclosure the right to rent their homes at the market rate for a substantial period of time. Rep. Raul Grijalva proposed such a change in the Saving Family Homes Act, which would allow homeowners the option to remain as renters for up to 20 years following a foreclosure.
This bill would immediately give families security in their home, so that if they like the home, the neighborhood, the school for their kids, they would have the option to stay in the house for a substantial period of time. This also has the great benefit for the neighborhood that homes will remain occupied..."

The Obama Team:

Democracy Now! - Ex-CIA Officials Tied to Rendition Program and Faulty Iraq Intel Tapped to Head Obama's Intelligence Transition Team
"...MELVIN GOODMAN: OK. John Brennan was deputy executive secretary to George Tenet during the worst violations during the CIA period in the run-up to the Iraq war, so he sat there at Tenet’s knee when they passed judgment on torture and abuse, on extraordinary renditions, on black sites, on secret prisons. He was part of all of that decision making.

Jami Miscik was the Deputy Director for Intelligence during the run-up to the Iraq war. So she went along with the phony intelligence estimate of October 2002, the phony white paper that was prepared by Paul Pillar in October 2002. She helped with the drafting of the speech that Colin Powell gave to the United Nations—[inaudible] 2003, which made the phony case for war to the international community.

So, when George Tenet said, 'slam dunk, we can provide all the intelligence you need,' [inaudible] to the President in December of 2002, it was people like Jami Miscik and John Brennan who were part of the team who provided that phony intelligence. So what I think people at the CIA are worried about—and I’ve talked to many of them over the weekend—is that there will never be any accountability for these violations and some of the unconscionable acts committed at the CIA, which essentially amount to war crimes, when you’re talking about torture and abuse and secret prisons. So, where are we, in terms of change? This sounds like more continuity...

...MELVIN GOODMAN: ...All of the operational people I’ve talked to know that the people who were turned over to the Arab intelligence services—and remember, this is Egypt, this is Syria, this is Jordan, this is Saudi Arabia—that all of these foreign intelligence services commit torture and abuse. Now, if any of these suspects had anything to say to us that was of any utility, we would have kept them. We would have controlled these people. They would have become our sources and our assets. When we turned them over, we were turning over people who we felt had very little to offer, and we were turning over them to them, to the Arab liaison services for torture and abuse.

John Brennan has defended the warrantless eavesdropping. John Brennan has basically defended all of the violations that were committed at the CIA in the run-up to the war and in the postwar period. So the signal this sends to CIA employees who tried to get it right—and there were a few who tried to get it right—is the worst kind of signal. And if this is Obama’s judgment about a national security team, it’s very reminiscent of what Bill Clinton did in 1993, when he appointed people such as Jim Woolsey and Les Aspin and Warren Christopher and Tony Lake to the national security positions, and all of them had to be removed before the first term was over. So this is very disquieting, what we’re learning now..."

Food Safety:

James E. McWilliams: Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem
"...sure, let’s keep the heat on China. And, yes, let’s take with a big dose of skepticism the Chinese government’s assurances that they’re improving the food supply.
At the same time, though, instead of delivering righteous condemnation, the United States should seize upon the melamine scandal as an opportunity to pass federal fertilizer standards backed by consistent testing for this compound, which could very well be hidden in plain sight."

Private Security Profiteers in Iraq:

ABC News: New Blackwater Iraq Scandal: Guns, Silencers and Dog Food
"Ex-employees tell ABC News the firm used dog food sacks to smuggle unauthorized weapons to Iraq..."


The (Shockingly Unsupervised) Bankster Bailout:

We see that the U.S. corporations relish government help (socialism), while insisting on the harshest of capitalism (freedom to fail) for ordinary people.

Naomi Klein: The Bailout: Bush's Final Pillage
"In the final days of the election, many Republicans seem to have given up the fight for power. But that doesn't mean they are relaxing. If you want to see real Republican elbow grease, check out the energy going into chucking great chunks of the $700 billion bailout out the door..."

Naomi Klein: The New Trough
"The Wall Street bailout looks a lot like Iraq — a 'free-fraud zone' where private contractors cash in on the mess they helped create..."

Bush, Still Pushing Deregulation:

Democracy Now! - Bush Admin Pushes Through Last-Minute Deregulation that May Be Hard to Undo
"The Bush administration is quietly trying to push through a wide array of federal regulations before President Bush leaves office in January. Up to ninety proposed regulations could be finalized, many of which would weaken government rules aimed at protecting consumers and the environment. We speak to Matthew Madia of the watchdog group OMB Watch...

MATTHEW MADIA: The rules really cover a broad array of topics. One rule could make it harder for employees to claim leave when they’re sick or when a family member is sick. A lot of the rules would affect the environment. One makes it easier for mining companies to dump the waste for mountaintop mining into rivers and streams. Some of the rules affect traffic safety. One would allow truck drivers to drive for longer, for longer consecutive hours, and that puts both the truck driver at risk and the motorists at risk.

So, we see a lot of rules mostly rolling back existing requirements on industry, not in the name of job creation or in the name of increased competitiveness, just sort of to remove that government oversight, to widen the gap between government and business. And it could allow businesses to pollute more or to infringe upon their employees’ rights.

As you said, this is not unusual. The Clinton administration did do—we did see this kind of flurry of activity. But what’s different is what we talked about earlier, that the Bush administration really wants to get all this through by the end of November so that the Obama administration can’t undo it..."

Our (Fleeting) Constitutional Rights:

Amy Goodman & David Goodman: America's Most Dangerous Librarians
"They looked like they had walked off a film set, the two men standing at the door of the Library Connection in Windsor, Connecticut, as they flashed FBI badges and asked to speak to the boss. Director George Christian courteously shepherded them into the office. By the hum of the Xerox machine, one agent explained to Christian that the bureau was demanding 'any and all subscriber information, billing information and access logs of any person or entity' that had used computers between 4 p.m. and 4:45 p.m. on February 15, 2005, in any of the 27 libraries whose computer systems were managed by the Library Connection, a nonprofit co-op of library databases. He handed Christian a document called a National Security Letter (NSL); it said the information was being sought 'to protect against international terrorism,'...
...'I believe this is unconstitutional,' said Christian politely. In response he got a threatening scowl, a business card, and instructions to have his lawyer call the FBI.
Christian did call his lawyer as soon as the agents were gone—and then he called Peter Chase, another library director and member of the Library Connection's executive committee. 'Where is the court order?' Chase asked.
'There is none,' replied Christian. 'They said they didn't need one,'...
...In September 2007, a federal court ruled in the case of John Doe New York that the entire National Security Letter provision of the Patriot Act was unconstitutional. US District Judge Victor Marrero said that secretive NSLs are 'the legislative equivalent of breaking and entering, with an ominous free pass to the hijacking of constitutional values.' The Bush administration has appealed the decision, and John Doe New York remains gagged. But in San Francisco, another librarian has managed to beat an NSL: In May, the FBI withdrew a letter issued to the Internet Archive, a digital library, after a legal challenge brought by the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. 'A miscarriage of justice was prevented here,' EFF staff attorney Marcia Hofmann said at the time. 'The big question is, how many other improper NSLs have been issued by the FBI and never challenged?'"

Economics:

Senator Bernie Sanders: The Road to Economic Recovery
"...If we can commit more than $1 trillion to rescue bankers and insurance companies from their reckless and irresponsible behavior, we certainly should be investing in millions of good-paying jobs that rebuild our nation and improve its economy.

In my view, the size of this economic recovery plan should be, at a minimum, $300 billion.

This economic recovery package should first improve our crumbling infrastructure by improving our roads, bridges and public transportation. We need to bring our water and sewer systems into the 21st century. We need to make certain that high-quality Internet service is available in every community in America. Not only are these investments desperately needed, every billion dollars that we put into these initiatives will create up to 47,000 new jobs.

We also need to make a major financial commitment to energy efficiency and sustainable energy. With a major investment, we can stop importing foreign oil in 10 years, produce all of our electricity from sustainable energy within a decade, and substantially cut greenhouse gas emissions. We can also make the United States the world leader in the construction of solar, wind, bio-fuel and geothermal facilities for energy production, as well as create a significant number of jobs by making our homes, offices, schools and factories far more energy efficient.

In these harsh economic times, we should also make sure that, at the very least, all Americans have access to primary health care and dental care, which we can do by substantially increasing funding for the highly-effective community health center program. We should extend unemployment benefits, so that more than 1 million Americans do not run out of their benefits by the end of this year. We should assure that no one in America, in these hard times, goes hungry or homeless.

Finally, with towns and states like Vermont facing deep deficits, we must make a major, immediate financial commitment to states and municipalities. Their crisis will only grow worse as homes are foreclosed, as incomes decline, and as fees on sales of homes and motor vehicles diminish. For too long, unfunded federal mandates have drained the budgets of states and communities. The strength and vitality of our communities must be restored."


Steve Weissman: Obama Won, Greenspan Shrugged, but Capitalists Tool On
"Poor John Galt. Only last year, The New York Times referred to Ayn Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged' as 'one of the most influential business books ever written,' and portrayed Galt, the novel's iconic hero, as a role model for corporate CEOs in their dogged pursuit of self-interest. No wonder, then, the gnashing of teeth in executive suites when Ayn Rand's most famous devotee, former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, admitted that enlightened greed had failed.

'I made a mistake,' he told the House Oversight and Government Reform committee, 'in presuming that the self-interests of organizations, specifically banks and others, were such as that they were best capable of protecting their own shareholders and their equity in the firms.'

For Congressional Democrats, Greenspan's mea culpa pointed the way toward greatly strengthened regulation of our financial markets, which the Fed chair had long opposed. President-elect Barack Obama similarly seems intent on imposing a new regulatory framework, along with higher tax rates on income and capital gains for families making over $250,000.

But please don't gloat yet, as some progressive pundits have done. Most of those at the top of America's corporate tree do not want to be regulated more tightly or taxed at a higher rate, and they are not about to wave the white flag of surrender. For them, the battle is just heating up.

Forbes magazine, which delights in calling itself 'The Capitalist Tool,' led the counterattack with a cover photo of editor-in-chief Steve Forbes and his call to arms, 'How Capitalism Will Save Us.' Twice a Republican presidential hopeful and now an economic adviser to John McCain, Forbes had made his millions the old-fashioned way, inheriting his father and grandfather's publishing empire. And, to borrow from the late Ann Richards, he raised his battle flag with the utter certainty of one born with a silver foot in his mouth..."

A Not-So-Well Read Electorate:

Chris Hedges: America the Illiterate
"We live in two Americas. One America, now the minority, functions in a print-based, literate world. It can cope with complexity and has the intellectual tools to separate illusion from truth. The other America, which constitutes the majority, exists in a non-reality-based belief system. This America, dependent on skillfully manipulated images for information, has severed itself from the literate, print-based culture. It cannot differentiate between lies and truth. It is informed by simplistic, childish narratives and clichés. It is thrown into confusion by ambiguity, nuance and self-reflection. This divide, more than race, class or gender, more than rural or urban, believer or nonbeliever, red state or blue state, has split the country into radically distinct, unbridgeable and antagonistic entities.
There are over 42 million American adults, 20 percent of whom hold high school diplomas, who cannot read, as well as the 50 million who read at a fourth- or fifth-grade level. Nearly a third of the nation’s population is illiterate or barely literate. And their numbers are growing by an estimated 2 million a year. But even those who are supposedly literate retreat in huge numbers into this image-based existence. A third of high school graduates, along with 42 percent of college graduates, never read a book after they finish school. Eighty percent of the families in the United States last year did not buy a book..."


Economics:

Paul Krugman: The Obama Agenda
"Can Barack Obama really usher in a new era of progressive policies? Yes, he can.
Right now, many commentators are urging Mr. Obama to think small. Some make the case on political grounds: America, they say, is still a conservative country, and voters will punish Democrats if they move to the left. Others say that the financial and economic crisis leaves no room for action on, say, health care reform.
Let's hope that Mr. Obama has the good sense to ignore this advice..."


Iraq Was Always About Oil:

Maya Schenwar: In Final Days, Bush Pushes for Iraq's Oil
"As the Bush administration rumbles to an end, it is pushing with increasing urgency for a commitment to a long-term US presence in Iraq. Though the military aspect of this 'commitment' has garnered substantial publicity, the administration is equally invested in the economic aspect: securing US control over Iraqi oil before Bush leaves office, according to experts in the field..."

Economic Favor:

Washington Post: Bush Secretly Gave Banks $140 Billion Tax Windfall
"With attention on bailout debate, Treasury made change to tax policy..."


Campaign 2008:

Progress Now: Alan Franklin: ProgressNow's Election Night 2008 Winners and Losers
"ProgressNowAction's Election Night 2008 Winners and Losers below, in alphabetical order..."


John Nichols: No More Stolen Elections
"Appearing on the HBO talk show 'Real Time With Bill Maher' a few weeks before Tuesday’s election, actor Tim Robbins urged voters to stand their ground when it came to demanding their right to vote:

'Refuse provisional ballots. They’re throwing those out. They can throw those out. If that’s your last resort, take it, but fight in the polling place to vote. It’s your right as an American. You have every right to vote if you’re registered. And if you’re not on the rolls and something went wrong, document it. Video cameras at polls are going to be an effective way to fight this Election Day.'

In an Orwellian twist on the actual Election Day, Robbins had to take his own advice. When he showed up at the New York City polling place where the politically-active actor has been voting for more than a decade, he was told that his name was not on the list of registered voters. So he refused to leave his polling place in Greenwich Village, even after an election worker suggested that the police might have to be called. Finally informed that he could go downtown to the office of the city’s Board of Elections, Robbins made the trek, got verification that he was properly registered, got a judge to rule that he would be allowed to vote, and headed back to his polling place to finally vote five hours after his Election Day ordeal began.
Robbins had the time, the resources and the information to make sure his vote would be cast and counted. He could overcome the hurdles placed in the way of democracy..."

Energy:

Wired Blog: Rainforest Fungus Naturally Synthesizes Diesel
"A fungus that lives inside trees in the Patagonian rain forest naturally makes a mix of hydrocarbons that bears a striking resemblance to diesel, biologists announced today. And the fungus can grow on cellulose, a major component of tree trunks, blades of grass and stalks that is the most abundant carbon-based plant material on Earth.
'When we looked at the gas analysis, I was flabbergasted,' said Gary Strobel, a plant scientist at Montana State University, and the lead author of a paper in Microbiology describing the find. 'We were looking at the essence of diesel fuel.'
While genetic engineers have been trying a variety of techniques and genes to get microbes to create fuel out of sugars and starches, almost all commercial biofuel production uses the century-old dry mill grain process. Ethanol plants ferment corn ears into alcohol, which is simple, but wastes the vast majority of the biomatter of the corn plant.
Using the cellulose from plants — the stalk instead of the ear, or simply wood from poplars — to make liquid fuel is a long-held dream because it would be more environmentally efficient and cheaper, but is far more difficult..."


Technology & Privacy:

Spiegel Online (DE) - Data Mining You to Death: Does Google Know Too Much?
"Google gathers so much detailed information about its users that one critic says some state intelligence bureaus look 'like child protection services' in comparison. A few German government bodies have mounted a resistance..."

Election 2008:

The BRAD BLOG: What's the Matter with Voting in Philadelphia? Answer: Marge Tartaglione (D)
"...the woman responsible for running elections in Philadelphia is Marge Tartaglione (D) and, as the video suggests, she's a horror. And not only for her indefensible statements against the distribution of paper ballots to the effect of 'long lines are not a problem...Long lines are no justification for any thing but waiting...people wait in long lines overnight for baseball tickets...people wait in line all night for a new Ipod,'..."

Election 2008:

One can reasonably expect the GOP to try every dirty trick in the book today...

Democracy Now! - On Eve of Election Day, Is the Nation's Voting System Ready? Reports of Irregularities Pour in from Across US in Record Early Voting
"...Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media culture and communication at New York University. He is the author of several books, most recently Loser Take All: Election Fraud and the Subversion of Democracy, 2000–2008. His previous book, Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too.
Welcome to Democracy Now!

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Thanks for having me back, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, let’s start where I haven’t seen much mention, and that is this man, Mike Connell, in Ohio, testifying. Who is he? What is his relevance to the big day, to Election Day tomorrow?

MARK CRISPIN MILLER: Yeah, this event in a courtroom in Columbus may be one of the most important things to happen in this whole election and may be one of the most important things to happen in American history. I mean, this sounds hyperbolic, I know, but it is true.

Mike Connell is—has been named as Karl Rove’s computer guru since 2000. The lawyers in the case refer to Connell as a high-IQ Forrest Gump, because he’s been on the scene of every dubious election we’ve had over the last eight years, starting with Florida 2000.

Now, he has been named by a man named Stephen Spoonamore, S-P-O-O-N-A-M-O-R-E, who’s a very unusual and particularly unimpeachable kind of whistleblower. He’s a conservative Republican; he’s a former McCain supporter. But above all, he is a renowned and highly successful expert at the detection of computer fraud. He works for big banks. He works for foreign governments, the Secret Service. His job is to figure out how computers are used to steal money or information or votes. Well, he’s named a lot of people in the Bush-Cheney election subversion conspiracy. He has worked with them. He knows them personally. And months ago, he named Mike Connell and his company GovTech Solutions as having played a crucial role in the—basically the electronic subversion of the vote in Ohio in 2004. And Spoonamore has actually described the computer architecture that was used to do this.

Now, on the strength of this testimony, the lawyers in the case had the judge issue a subpoena to Mike Connell last week. Connell defied the subpoena; he was in contempt. Late last week, the lawyers filed a motion to compel compliance, and to everyone’s surprise and delight, the judge ordered Connell to appear today and to be deposed for two hours about his role in this longstanding electronic plot, basically, to flip votes towards the Republicans.
Some of this deposition will be sealed, and I have to tell you the part that’ll be sealed. Apparently, Rove has threatened Connell. He told him that if Connell did not take the fall for this whole thing, the Department of Justice would start investigating Connell’s wife Heather for improper lobbying practices..."

The Raw Story: Documents reveal how Ohio routed 2004 voting data through company that hosted external Bush Administration email accounts
"Newly obtained computer schematics provide further detail of how electronic voting data was routed during the 2004 election from Ohio’s Secretary of State’s office through a partisan Tennessee web hosting company.A network security expert with high-level US government clearances, who is also a former McCain delegate, says the documents – server schematics which trace the architecture created for Ohio’s then-Republican Secretary of State and state election chief Kenneth Blackwell – raise troubling questions about the security of electronic voting and the integrity of the 2004 presidential election results.
The flow chart shows how voting information was transferred from Ohio to SmarTech Inc., a Chattanooga Tennessee IT company known for its close association with the Republican Party, before the 2004 election results were displayed online..."

Greg Palast: How McCain Could Win
"How to Steal an Election in Five Easy Steps
Here's how they can pull off the steal. Take out your calculator and add it up..."

Campaign 2008:

Glenn Greenwald: Sarah Palin speaks on the First Amendment
"Somehow, in Sarah Palin's brain, it's a threat to the First Amendment when newspapers criticize her negative attacks on Barack Obama.
This is actually so dumb that it hurts:

In a conservative radio interview that aired in Washington, D.C. Friday morning, Republican vice presidential nominee Gov. Sarah Palin said she fears her First Amendment rights may be threatened by 'attacks' from reporters who suggest she is engaging in a negative campaign against Barack Obama.
Palin told WMAL-AM that her criticism of Obama's associations, like those with 1960s radical Bill Ayers and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, should not be considered negative attacks. Rather, for reporters or columnists to suggest that it is going negative may constitute an attack that threatens a candidate's free speech rights under the Constitution, Palin said.
'If [the media] convince enough voters that that is negative campaigning, for me to call Barack Obama out on his associations,' Palin told host Chris Plante, 'then I don't know what the future of our country would be in terms of First Amendment rights and our ability to ask questions without fear of attacks by the mainstream media,'

Maureen Dowd recently made an equally stupid comment when she complained that her First Amendment rights were being violated by the McCain campaign's refusal to allow her on their campaign plane.
The First Amendment is actually not that complicated. It can be read from start to finish in about 10 seconds. It bars the Government from abridging free speech rights. It doesn't have anything to do with whether you're free to say things without being criticized, or whether you can comment on blogs without being edited, or whether people can bar you from their private planes because they don't like what you've said.
If anything, Palin has this exactly backwards, since one thing that the First Amendment does actually guarantee is a free press. Thus, when the press criticizes a political candidate and a Governor such as Palin, that is a classic example of First Amendment rights being exercised, not abridged..."