Truthout Headlines: 14-02-11

Monday 14 February 2011

Bill Moyers: "Facts Still Matter ..."
Bill Moyers, Truthout: "While 'most of us like to believe that our opinions have been formed over time by careful, rational consideration of facts and ideas and that the decisions based on those opinions, therefore, have the ring of soundness and intelligence,' the research found that actually 'we often base our opinions on our beliefs ... and rather than facts driving beliefs, our beliefs can dictate the facts we chose to accept. They can cause us to twist facts so they fit better with our preconceived notions.' These studies help to explain why America seems more and more unable to deal with reality. So many people inhabit a closed belief system on whose door they have hung the 'Do Not Disturb' sign, that they pick and choose only those facts that will serve as building blocks for walling them off from uncomfortable truths."
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Dean Baker | The President as Storyteller in Chief
Dean Baker, Truthout: "The celebrations surrounding the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth overlooked an important part of Reagan's success: his ability to craft an image to serve as the focus of his political argument. When he was running for president in 1980, Reagan invented two great tales that highlighted the worldview he was selling to his supporters. One of these tales was the story of the welfare queen."
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Obama Budget Pivots From Stimulus to Deficit Cuts
Jackie Calmes, The New York Times News Service: "President Obama, pivoting at midterm from costly economic stimulus measures to deficit reduction, on Monday released a fiscal year 2012 budget that projects an annual deficit of more than $1 trillion before government shortfalls decline to 'sustainable' levels for the rest of the decade. Still, annual deficits through fiscal year 2021 will add a combined $7.2 trillion to the federal debt, Mr. Obama's budget shows - after allowing for $1.1 trillion in deficit-reducing spending cuts and tax increases that the president proposes over the 10-year period. As he acknowledges, after 2021, an aging population and rising medical costs will drive deficits again to unsustainable heights."
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Nine Pictures of the Extreme Income/Wealth Gap
Dave Johnson, Campaign for America's Future: "Many people don't understand our country's problem of concentration of income and wealth because they don't see it. People just don't understand how much wealth there is at the top now. The wealth at the top is so extreme that it is beyond most people's ability to comprehend. If people understood just how concentrated wealth has become in our country and the effect is has on our politics, our democracy and our people, they would demand our politicians do something about it."
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Chris Hedges | Fight for a World Without Coal
Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "The writer and philosopher Wendell Berry, armed with little more than a copy of William Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' and his conscience, has been camped out for three days with a handful of other activists in the governor's outer office in Frankfurt, Kentucky. Berry, who is 76 and the author of a number of important books including the 'Unsettling of America' and 'Life Is a Miracle,' has been sleeping on the floor of Gov. Steve Beshear's reception area since Friday night with 13 others to protest the continued blasting of mountaintops in eastern Kentucky and the poisoning of watersheds, soil and air by coal companies."
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Egypt Insider: Mubarak's Fall Was Years in the Making
Hannah Allam, McClatchy Newspapers: "'To the palace!' chanted the thousands of protesters who'd already besieged state television offices in Cairo and were beginning a perilous march on the presidential residence in the final hours of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Mohammed Abdellah, 64, one of the last living founders of the former president's National Democratic Party, found himself just yards away from the seething crowds as he returned from an appointment downtown. He rushed home and swallowed a Xanax, terrified at the possibility that Mubarak could order his elite guard force to open fire on the protesters. 'When they moved to the presidential palace, he had two options: leave, or let the Republican Guards clash and have a real massacre. I don't think he wanted to go down in history as a president with so much blood on his hands,' Abdellah said late Saturday in a three-hour interview that offered one of the first inside looks on the collapse of the regime."
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Jim Hightower | Our Corporate Courts
Jim Hightower, OtherWords: "When corporate executives needed a political favor, they used to run to Congress. Now they can also run to the courthouse. Over the years, corporate chieftains and their political henchmen have steadily ensconced reliable laissez-faire ideologues in hundreds of federal judgeships, quietly creating a corporate-friendly path for moving their litigation all the way from the district level through the Supreme Court."
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Deferring to Petraeus, NIE Failed to Register Taliban Growth
Gareth Porter, Inter Press Service: "Despite evidence that the Taliban insurgency had grown significantly in 2010, the U.S. intelligence community failed to revise its estimate for Taliban forces as part of a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Afghanistan in December. That unusual decision was in deference to Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S.-NATO forces in Afghanistan, who did not want any official estimate of the insurgency's strength that would contradict his claims of success by Special Operations Forces in reducing the capabilities of the Taliban in 2010."
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News in Brief: Labor Protests Grow in Egypt, and More ...
Labor protests grow in Egypt; President Obama announced a $3.7 budget for 2012 on Monday; Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas) won the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) straw poll Saturday as the top choice for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination; Egypt's revolution has led protesters around the Middle East to begin calling aggressively for political freedom in their own countries.
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Christian Flag Folding Ceremony Reveals Official Sanction of Church-State Violations in the Military
Valerie Tarico, Away Point: "When American soldiers come forward with tales of divisive evangelism run amuck in the military - for example, proselytizing by commanding officers, coerced attendance at revival meetings, distribution of Bibles to Afghanis or Jesus coins to Iraqis - one problem they face is that people find the stories too outrageous to be credible. A combat soldier being forced to pick hairs out of a latrine because he wouldn't pray? Another being told he's responsible if any of his buddies die? An Iraqi child post-IED given a tract that shows dead Iraqis going to hell and Americans (aka Christians) going to heaven? Some folks have accused the Military Religious Freedom Foundation of making this stuff up. Military officials insist that each event was the isolated actions of individual soldiers and lacked official sanction. One recent scandal left little room for such framing."
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Love and Violence: For Too Many American Women, Life Is Not a Bed of Roses
Karen Czapanskiy, RH Reality Check: "What can we do to protect women from abuse? On Valentine's Day, lucky American women will receive roses as a show of affection. But for too many, violence, intimidation, and abuse are the norm. In 2007, as in 1993, more than three-quarters of people killed by an intimate partner were women. During 2010, 15 women were murdered as a result of intimate partner violence just in the state of Minnesota. One in three Native American women is raped during her lifetime, and three in five are physically assaulted. Women soldiers who are sexually assaulted by someone else in the military are four times more likely to talk about the crime to their families than to their military command. Women in prison face not only the deprivation of their liberty and the threat of sexual assault, but also the loss of parental rights."
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From an Israeli Prison to Tahrir Square: One Palestinian's Odyssey in a Middle East Ablaze
Jen Marlowe, TomDispatch: "As pro-democracy demonstrations sweep across the Middle East, ousting dictators in Tunisia and Egypt, many in the West have expressed surprise that such a strong, sophisticated vision of a democratic future is being articulated by ordinary citizens and grassroots movements in the Arab world. I have not been surprised. Sophisticated organizing for democratic reform and justice has a rich legacy in the region. In fact, watching anti-Mubarak demonstrators taking to the streets en masse to demand true democracy, freedom from repression, and the right to be stakeholders in their own political and civil systems caused me to reflect on my friend Sami Al Jundi, a Palestinian from the Old City of Jerusalem who has spent the last two decades working for peace and a nonviolent end to Israeli occupation. He is, in many ways, a product of that legacy."
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Liberal Fallacies: Protecting Social Security From Its "Friends"
L. Randall Wray, new deal 2.0: "Liberal attacks on Social Security are the unkindest cut of all. The Center for American Progress's Matt Miller has argued that liberals can learn a valuable lesson from NY Governor Andrew Cuomo's proposed budget. With his state facing a fiscal crisis, the Governor has proposed to cap growth of state spending on the Medicaid program. Miller has argued that we should follow his example and apply a similar cap to Social Security spending."
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Richard D. Wolff: "Austerity" Comes to America (Video)
Professor Richard D. Wolff discusses the cause of the budget-cut fever that's sweeping Washington, DC: "Austerity is the last thing that should be done in this situation. And it should be resisted by all people with even an elementary sense of fairness."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

When America's top business organization does its commerce out of a cesspool of dirty tricks and character assassination, it's another sign of the nation's moral corruption at the top of the "trickle down" ladder.

But that is what the Chamber of Commerce was apparently planning to do, in addition to its past dirty tricks. Indeed, ThinkProgress has run a series of investigative pieces exposing the character assassination plans of the Commerce's "subcontractors." In short, the chamber appeared to be planning to use the details of the personal lives of those involved in organizations that challenged it - and to blemish the characters of opponents and their friends and family members.

Brad Friedman of the Brad Blog was one of those whose life and that of his significant other were "investigated," including home address, phone and personal details. There is little question that the chamber was about to embark upon a campaign of personal attack, intimidation and discrediting.

But in a telephone conversation with Friedman this morning, he, for one, was not going to be bullied. He told BuzzFlash:

No matter how powerful the thugs and foes are, it is worth standing up to power and speaking the truth - if not you and me, then who? As I have always said, these are not matters of right and left, but matters of right and wrong.

What we are seeing now cuts across all party lines in being deplorable, and is just plain wrong.

Perhaps if more groups and individuals like those under attack by the chamber would have the fortitude and courage of those who put their lives on the line in Egypt for democracy, we would drive the Chamber of Commerce into retreat.

One positive sign is how fearful the Chamber of Commerce is at being exposed for what it is.

People like Brad Friedman need all of us to stand up to the chamber.

Remember, the chamber can be defeated, but it will take an army of advocates for democracy to hold firm against Nixonian dirty tricks.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

Paul Krugman: The GOP Eats the Future
Read the Article at The New York Times

Comic Relief: Sarah Palin on Egypt
Read the Article at The Nation

Things Don't Go Better With the Koch Brothers
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Obama Budget Strikes at Programs Favored by Democrats, While Increasing Taxes on Wealthy
Read the Article at The Washington Post

GM Workers to Get $189 Million in Profit Sharing
Read the Article at The New York Times

The Tea Party Goes K Street
Read the Article at Mother Jones

NPR Criticizes House Plan to Slash Corporation for Public Broadcasting Funding
Read the Article at The Hollywood Reporter

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