A snow-filled glimpse of America's future

We all know that American politics is dominated by money. The U.S. Senate is a millionaires' club, and the politicians who aren't personally rich are typically bankrolled by corporate interests. Billionaire Mayor Bloomberg personifies this plutocratic order - and his declaration that "the city is going fine" during the blizzard because "Broadway shows were full" demonstrates what plutocracy means in practice. It means that when an emergency does not hurt the Blooombergs of the world, our government does not see any emergency at all.

Yes, as long as the Bloombergs' streets are plowed (as the mayor's was), as long as the all-important rich are enjoying their theater engagements, the plutocrats think everything is A-OK. They don't care that, say, an outer-borough newborn died because EMTs couldn't get to the baby's home for nine hours. They don't care that another outer-borough woman had to wait 30 hours for an ambulance after breaking her ankle. And those plutocrats certainly aren't about to change the conservative economic policies that help make these crises so horrific for the non-rich.

Again, this triple threat of climate change, economic conservatism and plutocracy is not limited to New York. It's the new ubiquitous normal in America, which is why the Big Apple's blizzard experience is so significant.

A real-time counter to demagogues' more sensational predictions of our doomsday, New York's winter trouble presents the nation's gloomy future in more banal - but equally troubling - terms. The blizzard suggests that America's decline will not look like an Armageddon-ish explosion in Washington. It will look like a traffic-snarling snowdrift in Queens.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/30/EDDO1H1SI3.DTL#ixzz19iE2h6Tp

Military tensions remain high on Korean peninsula

As tensions escalate, South Korea’s JoongAng Daily reported on Wednesday that Pyongyang had conducted unusually extensive winter air drills, despite severe fuel shortages. The number of North Korean military exercises in December increased 150 percent compared to the same period in 2009. A military source told the newspaper: “It shows that the North Korean military has been very tense after the attack on Yeonpyong Island.”

North Korea has admitted this week that five of its soldiers were killed during the artillery exchange with South Korea on November 23. Two South Korean marines and two civilians on Yeonpyong Island were also killed.

The US has further stoked tensions by dispatching at least one additional aircraft carrier group to the region. CNN reported on December 25 that the USS Carl Vinson had arrived in Guam. The carrier is to replace the USS George Washington which has over the past month conducted major exercises with the South Korean and Japanese navies. The USS Ronald Reagan is also on its way to an unspecified location in the Western Pacific and due to arrive by about January 20. The USS George Washington will remain in the region—for maintenance at Yokohama in Japan.

The presence of potentially three US aircraft carrier groups has provoked concern in Chinese military circles. Major General Luo Yuan, a prominent Chinese military analyst, told the China Daily on Monday that the naval build up was “a signal” that the US was “preparing for war” against North Korea. Luo warned that Washington might be trying to provoke North Korea into a military confrontation, “then the US can perform a surgical strike on the DPRK.”

Another military analyst, Liang Yongchun, told China National Radio that the three carrier groups, plus the US forces in South Korea and Japan, would have 400 warplanes in East Asia, enough to carry out large-scale air strikes on North Korea’s nuclear and military facilities.
Chinese vice foreign minister Cheng Guoping travelled to Moscow and held talks with his counterpart Alexei Borodavkin on Tuesday. According to the Xinhua News Agency, they issued a joint statement warning that the outbreak of a military conflict between the Koreas could trigger “a wider war”. Amid these tensions Chinese President Hu Jintao is scheduled to visit the US on January 19.

However, the Obama administration has shown no sign of backing away from the intense political and military pressure it is applying to North Korea. The stand-off on the Peninsula is being exploited by the US to strengthen its military relations with South Korea and Japan and undermine Chinese influence in East Asia as part of broader American efforts to isolate China throughout the region.

HERE

Corporate America Robbing American Workers

Along with the staggering theft in broad daylight of Americans’ assets that has occurred in the course of the ongoing financial crisis, as taxpayers funded multi-trillion bank bailouts and banks stole homes through foreclosures with the help of fraudulent paperwork, American companies have also been picking the pockets of workers more directly.

This second round of paycheck theft has come in the form of stolen productivity gains.

Historically, the relatively high and rising standard of living of American workers--both blue and white-collar--which once gave the US one of the highest standards of living in the world, has come courtesy of rising productivity, which has allowed US companies to produce more goods with less labor, and to then pass some of the enhanced profits on to workers in the form of higher wages, without having to raise prices. That has been important because, when higher wages are financed by higher prices, it tends to be a kind of zero-sum game: higher wages cancelled out by inflation.

But beginning in 2000, the old system already creaky, broke down. (It must be noted that this system was never the result of the capitalists' largesse, but rather was because of a tighter labor market and, critically, a powerful labor movement.)

The corporate onslaught against trade unions and against the minimum wage, which began with the Nixon administration in 1968, combined with so-called “free-trade” deals that allowed US companies to shift production overseas and then to freely import the products of their overseas production facilities back for sale to Americans at home, by weakening the power of workers to demand higher wages, has led to a situation where companies can just pocket all the profits from productivity gains, leaving wages stagnant, or even driving them down.

The recession that began in late 2007 has only made matters worse, giving owners and managers to opportunity to really hammer employees. With real unemployment and underemployment now running at close to 20%, employees are in no position to press for higher wages, even as those who are still working are putting in extra effort to keep their jobs, thus pushing productivity gains even higher.

HERE

The rights of Texians to drink contaminat­ed water must be preserved at all costs.

A main point of contention has been the state's flexible permit program, which sets a general limit on how much air pollution an entire facility can release. The issue exploded under the EPA leadership appointed by President Barack Obama, which formally disapproved Texas' flexible permits, saying they were too lenient. The state challenged the move in court, and the EPA began working directly with some companies on new permits.

The EPA accuses Texas' flexible permits of allowing Shell's Deer Park refinery to emit nearly double the amount of sulfur dioxide than would be permissible if it had a federally acceptable permit. ExxonMobil in Baytown emits double the levels of volatile organic compounds, such as benzene, than a federal permit would allow, according to the EPA.

Texas and the companies deny the allegations, insisting the companies comply with the emission limits set in their permits and are in line with federal guidelines.

The EPA and Texas have also been at odds over water permits. The EPA this month demanded in an unusual public statement that Texas work to reissue 80 expired permits designed to ensure wastewater plants and industrial facilities remove toxins before dumping water. The state says it has submitted much of the paperwork to the federal agency, which says they are not strict enough.

"These permits that EPA has not approved would have more stringent requirements," Shaw said. "The delay is reducing our ability to continue to make the environmental progress we've been making in the past years."

Earlier this month, the EPA also took on the Railroad Commission, the Texas agency that regulates the oil and gas industry, and accused it of not moving fast enough after having found evidence that methane had leaked into residential water wells. The federal agency ordered the gas driller to provide affected families with clean drinking water and determine how to stop the problem.

THE WHOLE ENCHILADA IS HERE.

Wall Street Execs Whine To Politico About Their Hurt Feelings

This morning's Politico features another piece ("Obama and Wall St.: Still Venus and Mars") in a continuing series that present Wall Street people whining about all those times White House higher-ups have ever-so-mildly allowed certain language to slip from their larynxes that makes the financial industry out to be some kind of villain for that time its over-leveraged, incompetent speculation led to the near-collapse of the entire economy and required taxpayers to shovel untold billions of dollars at too-big-to-fail banks so that they could survive. They are sad, you see, and the record-setting profits they have made are no comfort to them, because hey, maybe The Huffington Post will say something really mean! That is literally a thing that appeared in a newspaper, today!

HERE

Well BOO HOO!!!!!

IRAQ WANTS US OUT!!!!

Hell, I want us out too!

A majority of Iraqis—and some Iraqi and U.S. officials—have assumed the U.S. troop presence would eventually be extended, especially after the long government limbo. But Mr. Maliki was eager to draw a line in his most definitive remarks on the subject. "The last American soldier will leave Iraq" as agreed, he said, speaking at his office in a leafy section of Baghdad's protected Green Zone. "This agreement is not subject to extension, not subject to alteration. It is sealed."

He also said that even as Iraq bids farewell to U.S. troops, he wouldn't allow his nation to be pulled into alignment with Iran, despite voices supporting such an alliance within his government.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204685004576045700275218580.html?mod=WSJ_hp_LEFTTopStories

Trashcanistan Solution!

Tell it, Dilbert:
If you were wondering when I would apply my vast lack of knowledge to the Afghanistan situation, today is the day.

More:

More Bad News For The Middle Class

Here's a round up of the bad times ahead for Middle Class America:

This recovery is decidedly anti middle class.
The rest of the economy, on balance, went backwards.
Looking ahead, data are not encouraging.
Businesses need customers and capital to create jobs.
The trade deficit is nearly entirely oil and trade with China.


Peter Morici is a professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland School, and former Chief Economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission.
Middle Class Falls Short on Retirement

http://xtraplan.wordpress.com/2010/12/09/middle-class-falls-short-on-retirement/

The former president of Shell Oil, John Hofmeister, says Americans could be paying $5 for a gallon of gasoline by 2012.

Austerity For Thee, Not Mee!

It's the growing meme throughout the traditional media and newly "fiscally responsible" Republican Party: we must prepare for austerity. In fact, Sen. Tom Coburn is so sure that we must make deep, painful cuts (to the middle and lower classes, naturally) to protect the next generation that he warns of "apocalyptic pain" if we don't.

I told you the other evening that if we didn't take some pain now, we're going to experience apocalyptic pain, and it's going to be out of our control. The idea should be that we control it.[..]
I think you'll see a 15 to 18 percent unemployment rate. I think you will see an 8 to 9 percent decline in GDP. I think you'll see the middle class just destroyed if we don't do this. And the people that it will harm the most will be the poorest of the poor, because we'll print money to try to debase our currency and get out of it and what you will see is hyperinflation. So we don't have a lot of options other than living within our means and sending the signal that creates confidence that we can repay our debt and that we're not going to debase our currency to do it.

Holy Flying Spaghetti Monster on a popsicle stick, what does Coburn think it's like now for the 99ers (who have been forgotten by Congress) and the exponentially growing number of people are on government assistance, more now than ever before? A frickin' picnic? There's a whole lot of pain out there, Senator, exacerbated by you and your party's INSISTENCE that the wealthiest 2% keep paying Bush era tax rates. Talk to me about austerity and pain when EVERYONE in this country feels it as bad as the neediest. C&L commenter Wilbur1 put it astutely in Karoli's earlier post on Tom Friedman's similar calls for austerity:

What he is calling for is generational theft. His parents weren't GIVEN a god damn thing. They fought for what they got and they paid much higher taxes, had far more constricted trade and finance, had more social programs handled by the government and a wider safety net than we do. They were handed a good country and made it better. When it came time to pay for that society they did. Now, Friedman and his generation comes along and when it is time for them to pay, to pass on to the next generation a good educational system, health care system, etc, they refuse. They've destroyed everything with their nihilistic materialism. They refuse to pay higher taxes, allow for inequitable trade, financial and tax deals, allow for economic exploitation and greed to dominate the economy and here we are. They have made every single part of our society worse and are now saying to us that we better not dare hold them accountable. We better not let billionaires who couldn't posisbly "earn" that much money (it isn't possible to earn that much money, you must obtain that money by monopolizing someone else's work in some way or creating debt that adds nothing to the world) pay for money they didn't earn. It's not even let them eat cake. It's denying that cake exists, that he and his parents had plenty of it when he was younger but now he's grown, fat. and its all gone. He's telling them to eat paper.

http://crooksandliars.com/nicole-belle/tom-coburn-preaches-austerity-thee-no

NOWITALL's American Fascism Meter™... Are We There Yet?

Let's take a reading on our potential slide toward fascism.

Fascism (pronounced /ˈfæʃɪzəm/): A radical and authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to organize a nation according to corporatist perspectives, values, and systems, including the political system and the economy.

One common definition of fascism focuses on three groups of ideas:

a) Fascist Negations

Anti-liberalism                CHECK
Anti-communism            CHECK
Anti-conservatism          NOT YET

b) Ideology and goals

Creating a new nationalist, authoritarian state not based on tradition   CHECK
A new kind of regulated, multi-class national economic structure which can transform social relations, whether syndicalist, corporatist or national socialist  CHECK
The goal of empire   DEFINITELY CHECK
An idealist, voluntarist creed, typically to realize a new modern, self-determined secular culture  NOPE

c) Style and organization

Aesthetic structure of meetings, symbols stressing romantic and mystical aspects  CHECK
Mass mobilization with militarization of political relationships and style and the goal of a mass party militia  CHECK
Positive view and use of violence  CHECK (TORTURE, WAR, ETC.)
Extreme stress on the masculine principle  BOOYAH!!
Exaltation of youth   BOOYAH!!
Authoritarian, charismatic personal style of command  CHECK (WORSHIP OF REAGAN, BUSH)

According to NOWITALL's American Fascism Meter™, we're mostly there.

Definitions of Fascism compiled by Wikipedia. NAFM™ readings done by me.

Houston Shuts Down Radioactive Water Well

Foto of Houston's radioactive water well shutting down

HOUSTON -- A radioactive water well that is controlled by the City of Houston, and that serves residents of Jersey Village, is no longer being used, according to the communications director for Houston Mayor Annise Parker.  

On Monday, a KHOU-TV investigation revealed Jersey Village water well #3 was one of 10 water wells identified by recent federal tests as having tested high for a particularly damaging form of radiation called alpha radiation.

http://www.khou.com/news/investigative/I-TEAM-City-of-Houston-shuts-down-two-radioactive-water-wells-112364389.html

Reindeer Get High On Magic Mushrooms

Why should they have all the fun?

Turns out the myth of flying reindeer might not be that far from the truth: According to a piece inPharmaceutical Journal by scientist Andrew Haynes, they (along with other animals) sometimes deliberately eat hallucinogenic fungi in order to amuse themselves during long winters.

The Sun reports:

Haynes believes reindeer deliberately seek out the mushrooms to escape the monotony of dreary long winters.

Writing in the respected Pharmaceutical Journal, Mr Haynes said: "They have a desire to experience altered states of consciousness.

"For humans a common side-effect of mushrooms is the feeling of flying, so it's interesting the legend about Santa's reindeer is they can fly."

In a slightly less appetizing tidbit, Haynes went on to say that herdsmen have been known to drink their own reindeer's urine in an effort to catch a buzz themselves.

Uhh, OK, never mind.

HuffPo

Another Fine Mess We've Created

BAGHDAD — When police came hunting for a 19-year-old woman they believed had been recruited by al-Qaida to be a suicide bomber in a town north of Baghdad, they found she was already dead: Slain by her father, who told police he strangled his daughter out of shame and then cut her throat.

The killing of Shahlaa al-Anbaky, reported by police Friday, appeared to be from an unusual melding of motives – part to defend the family honor, part to prevent her from joining the militants. But how much of each weighed in her father's mind remains unclear, with police still investigating the details.

Al-Qaida has been recruiting women for suicide attacks because they can pass police checkpoints more easily than men by concealing explosives under an abaya, a loose, black cloak that conservative Muslim women wear. Suicide bombers have been al-Qaida's most lethal weapon in Iraq, killing hundreds of civilians and members of Iraq's security forces.

The slaying took place in the town of Mandali, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) northeast of Baghdad in Diyala province, which only a few years ago was one of Iraq's deadliest regions, torn by attacks by al-Qaida and Sunni insurgents and vicious sectarian killings between Sunnis and Shiites.

HuffPo

Ongoing Korean Conflict

Maritime Woes 

(CNN) -- Across the seas and oceans of Asia, islands and the waters around them are frequently a source of dispute and even military confrontation. Japan and Russia squabble over Hokkaido; Japan and China claim sovereignty over islands in the South China Sea (Senkaku to the Japanese; Diaoyu to China). Several nations lay claim to the Spratley Islands. But the coastline of the Yellow Sea -- where North and South Korea meet -- is the most explosive of all.

CNN

Why There Is Tension

(CNN) -- A disputed maritime border. Long-standing tensions. And on Monday, South Korea ordered residents of five border islands -- including one that was shelled by North Korea in November -- to take shelter as it prepared to start military exercises that have raised fears of a new conflict with North Korea.

CNN

China's support of North Korea grounded in centuries of conflict

Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- Having just enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner, the American soldiers were told they would be home by Christmas as they launched their final offensive.

In fact, they were driving into the greatest ambush in modern history.

Twelve miles to their north, 380,000 brilliantly camouflaged enemy fighters lay in wait. In the days that followed, the U.S. Army would suffer its most harrowing ordeal of the past half-century.

Two American regiments were massacred at a pass called Kunu-ri; another was annihilated beside a frozen lake called Chosin.

The time was 60 years ago; the battlefield was North Korea; the enemy was China's People's Liberation Army.

Despite wide-ranging global changes -- the fall of European communism, the end of the Cold War, China-U.S. rapprochement, the rise of China as economic superpower -- there has been no indication that Beijing has altered its stance toward maintaining the isolated regime in the peninsula's north since it routed U.S.-led United Nations forces in Korea in the winter of 1950.

"China does not want to lose North Korea as a buffer zone vis-a-vis a pro-U.S. country -- South Korea," said Kim Won-ho, dean of the Graduate School of International Studies at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies.

"The last thing China wants to see is U.S.-style democracy in North Korea," added congresswoman Song Sun-young, who sits on the South Korean National Assembly's Defense Committee. "Even if they apply open-door policies to their markets, China wants North Korea to follow the Chinese style."

While it is globally fashionable to view today's China through an economic lens, it is geopolitics, not economics, that lies behind Beijing's continued support of North Korea: The strategic position of the peninsula has not changed for millennia.

"Korea has always been a dagger into Russia, and an invasion and penetration route between Japan and China," said Kim Byung-ki, a security expert at Korea University. "This is why China has always had this important interest in the peninsula."

History seems to prove it. The Mongol rulers of China unleashed two 13th-century assaults on Japan from Korea. Japan launched a 16th-century invasion of Ming China via Korea. The first Sino-Japanese War, from 1894 to 1895, was largely fought in Korea.

In the past century, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905 was over control of the peninsula. Japan used Korea as a springboard to seize Manchuria in 1931, from whence it assaulted China proper in 1937. Finally, the Korean War brought U.S. troops close to the Chinese border in 1950.

Today, the United States has replaced Russia and Japan as China's key regional competitor in Asia, Kim said, and the United States is encircling China with a range of moves and alliances -- with Afghanistan, India, the ASEAN regional forum, South Korea, Japan, and even Russia -- all backed up by the power of the Seventh Fleet.

"China will be a rising power for the next 10-15 years," Kim said. "But it understands it has problems with this encirclement."

In this context, North Korea, in addition to its strategic position on China's doorstep, is a rare voice of support buttressing China's historical role at the heart of Asia.

"In the past, China never accepted Korea or Mongolia or Vietnam as independent countries; they were vassal states, subject to Chinese power," said Lim Jie-hyun, a history professor at Hanyang University. "There is continuity and discontinuity, but (for China) to make a hegemonic block in northeast Asia, it needs other voices, and that voice is represented by North Korea."

Although the bellicose, isolated regime is a massive diplomatic embarrassment for China, Beijing's stance toward it fits with its policy toward other neighbors -- a policy that prioritizes stability.

"Some of the reasons for China's excessively moderate rhetoric is consistent with what it would have to do to maintain stable relations with any regime," said Bob Broadfoot, head of Hong Kong's Political and Economic Risk Consultancy. "China has a policy to maintain smooth relations with countries on its borders; it has more countries on its borders than any other country in the world."

Even so, China is quietly hedging its bets, Lim said, noting that Beijing offered sanctuary to a group of anti-Kim Il-sung North Koreans who fled the state in the 1960s.

"It seems the Chinese government is fostering an alternative political group who could take over power immediately if there was a collapse of North Korea," Lim said.

Broadfoot agreed: "I can see scenarios where the regime is toppled, but I think that any succession in North Korea will involve people China has a relationship with. I don't see insider groups emerging in North Korea who are enemies of China and friends of the United States."

Meanwhile, South Korea's relationship with China is conflicted. While its key political ally remains the United States, its largest trade partner is China: China and South Korea saw bilateral trade of $156 billion in 2009, versus trade of $2.75 billion between North Korea and China in 2008, before the latest round of sanctions were imposed in 2009.

Yet Seoul has been unable, or unwilling, to use its economic clout to influence Beijing in taking a harder line with Pyongyang.

More worrying for South Korea is China's status as both the top investor in, and top subsidizer of, North Korea. This factor has led some members of South Korea's parliament to fret about creeping control, even economic colonization.

"Chinese interest in the peninsula has become stronger, and how they can strengthen their strategic position is not necessarily military, it is economic," said congresswoman Song. "If they can control the economy, they can control politics and strategy; that is why they constantly subsidize North Korea."

Hence, even amid acute military tensions, Seoul is reluctant to shut down the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the South Korean-funded and -managed industrial park that employs some 40,000 North Korean workers in more than 100 southern-run factories. To do so would case the south to lose the only significant bridgehead it has in the north's economy.

Not everyone is convinced that even the stout diplomatic umbrella and economic purse that Beijing offers Pyongyang translates into significant leverage over one of the world's most recalcitrant regimes.

"If China came out strongly against North Korea, it could embarrass China and show that it does not have influence," said risk analyst Broadfoot.

There may also be resistance in Beijing to do anything that could drive the strategically positioned regime on its doorstep into the arms of a competing power.

"If China put on too much pressure, North Korea might fall into the arms of Russia, or even improve relations with Japan or the United States," said Korea University's Kim, noting that North Korea could play China and Russia against each other as Vietnam did.

Now, as a U.S. carrier battle group steams toward the Yellow Sea for exercises with its South Korean ally, it looks set to antagonize Beijing, further tightening the China-North Korea "blood forged" partnership.

"Any kind of conflict around China would be a threat to their political stability," said Hankuk University's Kim. "And in the long term, they will never want to have a border with any pro-U.S. country."

Six decades after China crossed the Yalu River to fight in Korea, the competing alliances borne of that conflict -- the world's last remaining Cold War battlefront -- remain firmly in place.

South Korea orders residents to take shelter in anticipation of drills

(CNN) -- While the United Nations' Security Council wrangled over growing tensions in the Korean peninsula, South Korea ordered thousands to find shelter in preparation for the South's planned live-fire military exercises, which could take place within hours, the military announced.

In South Korea, an approximate 8,000 residents have been ordered to take cover in Yeonpyeong, Baengnyeong, Daecheong, Socheong and Udo as the hours draw closer to South Korea's military drill, scheduled to take place at 11 p.m. EST Sunday, 1 p.m. Monday local time.

North Korea said over the weekend that the planned exercises were designed to violate the armistice that ended the Korean War in 1953 and "ignite war at any cost."

At the United Nations, nearly eight hours of emergency Security Council talks on the standoff ended Sunday without a unified statement.

Susan Rice, the U.S. Ambassador to the United States said Sunday that council members still cannot bridge any difference over North Korea's November 23rd attack on Yeonpyeong island. Four South Koreans were killed in the attack. The United States has publicly condemned the attacks by the Communist north and insists on South Korea's right to conduct its scheduled military drill.

"The planned exercises are fully consistent with South Korea's legal right to self-defense," Rice said.

"It has been done and notified transparently, responsibly, and will not occur in a fashion that we believe gives North Korea any excuse to respond in the fashion that it has threatened to do."

Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin -- who called for the emergency session over the weekend to defuse the crisis -- warned darkly that the world could be faced with a "serious conflict" within hours, and that the international community has "no game plan on the diplomatic side."

"Within hours there may be a serious aggravation of tension -- a serious conflict, for that matter," he said.

Churkin told reporters that Moscow continues to call for restraint on both sides, but said the Security Council had been "not entirely successful" in reaching consensus among its 15 members. He disclosed few details of the session, but said members disagreed over whether to include a condemnation of the North Korean shelling, which left four dead.

Across the Demilitarized Zone, the heavily fortified border set up by the 1953 armistice, South Korean workers were being barred from entering the Kaesong Industrial Complex, the country's Unification Ministry reported. The factory district is the last remnant of South Korea's "Sunshine Policy" of encouraging links with the communist North.

Bill Richardson, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Monday he was "extremely worried" that North Korea will respond militarily to the exercises.

Richardson has been meeting with high-level officials on an unofficial, four-day trip to North Korea.

Russia requested Sunday's emergency Security Council meeting and proposed a draft statement, proposing amendments which Western nations said would place more of the blame on North Korea, diplomats said. But they said the major holdout was China, the North's closest ally, which refuses to agree on any statement that even mentions the Yeonpyeong shelling.

Russia and China, both permanent Security Council members, have asked South Korea to reconsider its planned drills. Sunday's closed-door session was held with representatives of both North and South Korea present and speaking.

Earlier, a South Korean military official told the country's state-run Yonhap news agency that Seoul would not be deterred by threats from the North.

"The planned firing drill is part of the usual exercises conducted by our troops based on Yeonpyeong Island. The drill can be justifiable, as it will occur within our territorial waters," the official said.

Tensions between the two Koreas have been high since the North fired upon the island last month, killing two marines and two civilians. The South Korean military had said Thursday that the exercises would take place in the seas southwest of the island between December 18 and 21, but adverse weather forced a delay Saturday.

"We won't take into consideration North Korean threats and diplomatic situations before holding the live-fire drill. If weather permits, it will be held as scheduled," the military official said.

Meanwhile, North Korea was beefing up its military forces on its west coast ahead of the South's planned drills, Yonhap reported, citing a South Korean government official.

"The North Korean artillery unit along the Yellow Sea has raised its preparedness level," the source said.

Yeonpyeong is located in the Yellow Sea, just south of the Northern Limit Line -- the maritime boundary drawn in 1953 by the United Nations just after the Korean War. The line is three nautical miles from the North Korean coast.

In the absence of a full peace agreement between the two Koreas, the Northern Limit Line remains in place. North Korea has suggested an alternative line, but South Korea has resisted, as it would bring the North's maritime boundary close to Incheon, a main port.

A North Korean spokesman over the weekend said that the planned military exercises were a "sinister design" to violate the Korea Armistice Agreement and "ignite war at any cost."

"The shelling to be perpetrated by the puppet forces of south Korea at last, trespassing on the prohibiting line would make it impossible to prevent the situation on the Korean Peninsula from exploding and escape its ensuing disaster," the spokesman said, according to North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency.

North Korea blamed the United States for allegedly egging on the South Koreans.

North Korea "will force the U.S. to pay dearly for all the worst situations prevailing on the peninsula and its ensuing consequences," the spokesman said.

The Individual Mandate Backlash And Conservative Hysteria, Pt. 2

Why is the individual mandate essential? Current law requires hospital emergency rooms to treat all comers. Without the mandate, uninsured people could wait to buy coverage until they're in the ambulance. In 2008, doctors and hospitals delivered $43 billion in so-called free care. (Of course, it was not free. Taxpayers and anyone with private coverage picked up those bills.)

...

If the mandate goes, so go the parts of the law that stop insurers from rejecting those with pre-existing conditions or canceling policies once the policyholder becomes seriously ill. In an efficient insurance pool, as we've seen in Massachusetts, healthy people must subsidize the sick.

This concept is not foreign to Republicans and has been part of their own past health care proposals. But the new law's inclusion of an individual mandate has suddenly become a big, big problem for them.

Actually, Republicans do not object to expanding government health care as much as they mind paying for it. They did not set aside a single penny for their 2003 Medicare drug benefit, tacking it all onto the national debt. (A giveaway to insurers and drug companies, the Medicare drug benefit is costing about the same as the Democrats' reform of the entire system.)

~Froma Harrop

Another court rejects birther bullshit

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/birther-terry-lakin-dismissed-army-sentenced-months-prison/story?id=12414886&tqkw=&tqshow=WN
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20101214/ap_on_re_us/us_army_birther
http://www.detnews.com/article/20101216/NATION/12160396/1020/NATION/House-votes-to-repeal-%E2%80%98don%E2%80%99t-ask--don%E2%80%99t-tell%E2%80%99--Senate-action-is-next

Consumer demand, not business tax cuts, creates jobs

Consumer purchases can be boosted by tax cuts, livable wage laws and higher wages for workers in general. The last thing you would want to do is give consumers indirect tax increases by lowering business taxes (the revenue loss must be made up by higher taxes for those not included in the incentive) or by taking consumer tax monies and literally handing them over to businesses to do with as they please. In addition, consumer financed subsidies for businesses interfere with the free market by artificially supporting weak businesses rather than letting the marketplace determine which ones produce a desirable good or service.

Each dollar spent by consumers requires someone to invent, manufacture, package, ship, advertise and display the item purchased. For services, each dollar spent has the ripple effect of supporting technical or professional training, office space for the rendering of the service, and all the jobs associated with the maintenance of both the services supplied and the personnel that work in the offices. All this economic activity creates jobs.

So, the next time you hear a politician or businessman announce a new business tax incentive, realize that they have just increased your taxes (to make up the loss in revenue). If we were to instead increase household spending by increasing household income, business would gladly and enthusiastically supply the goods and services consumers desire. Increasing supply does not increase economic activity; it is demand that creates jobs.

More at ALL BUSINESS

Stronger Working Class = Stronger Economy

To start off, I’m not an economist, nor have I ever claimed to be one. Right now in our history we are at a crossroad. There are people out there that will tell you the model our economy has been running on for the last thirty years or so is just fine…I call Bullshit! Whatever you want to call it, be it trickle-down, supply-side, voodoo or the ever popular reaganomics, they are all the same thing. Giving to the wealthy, be it through tax breaks or incentives, allowing outsourcing, and dereg­u­lation to just name a few. The theory is that with all this extra or freed up capital wealthy individuals or businesses would reinvest by creating more jobs and oppor­tunity. This has been proven time and time again that it just doesn’t work. As my father used to say, “Trickle-down economics doesn’t trickle down to us.” What most people don’t realize is that one of the ways the rich stay rich is by being incredibly cheap and stingy. So, if they get a huge tax break do you really think they’re going to put it into a business? In most cases, no.

There is also another economic policy that has been practiced in this country tradi­tionally known as “Laissez-faire”, which translates into “Let it be”. Meaning, let industry be free from government inter­vention of any kind. This is a “Hands-Off” system that has failed time and time again, most recently in 2008 with our economic meltdown, which we are still feeling today…at least I know I am. We can not trust that industry will do the right thing, ethics in business is dead. It is up to the american people and our government to become the stewards of our economy through regulation. Because, if it was up to “Big Business” we’d all be in chains, working 16 hour shifts, for pennies a day.

Now, there is another way of thinking, I’m not exactly sure what it is classified as, but I like to call it “common sense.” Think of a house, for a house to be able to stand the test of time there must be a strong foundation, if you build your house on the sand, it will surely sink and fall. Our economy is like a house, the working class is its foundation, if you have a poorly treated and meagerly paid working class it is just like building your house on sand…the economy will sink and fall. If you look back in history, our economy is strongest when the working class has strong Union repre­sen­tation. When people make a higher wage they are more likely to buy back into our economy, meaning spend money on goods and services, hence creating a stronger economy. And the rich will still make lots and lots of money…

There are other factors to consider as well, our manufac­turing sector has been decimated by the hands-off policies and free trade agreements of the past. 2.4 million jobs lost to China since the year 2000, that is unacceptable. And some of it has to do with China lowering the worth of its currency, which makes our American goods very expensive and Chinese goods very cheap. Our government has been trying to convince the Chinese to stop this practice to make things fair again. I doubt China will change the way it does business. What may have to happen for things to balance out is the government should impose heavy tariffs on Chinese imports to equalize the pricing with american goods. There by making it a level playing field for American manufac­turers to compete in the market. This could quite possibly create a boom for the american manufac­turing industry, and we may get many of our jobs back that we lost.

Some people take the loss of our manufac­turing sector way too lightly. There are the obvious effects of hurting working families and local economies. But, there is another very damaging effect of losing manufac­turing in this country. Our country is becoming a nation of consumers, we buy this, we buy that…but what do we make? If we are ever caught in an economic blockade or embargo, we would be, for lack of a better term…SCREWED.

So, we’re at a crossroad in our economic history. Do we keep running things as we have been, or do we choose to create something better for those we leave behind?

The Beer Party

The Individual Mandate Backlash And Conservative Hysteria

Starting in the early 1980s, up through well into 2009, the individual mandate was an eminently respectable Republican position, embraced by conservative policy wonks and leading Republicans. Since then, virtually the whole of the conservative movement has coalesced around the position that the individual mandate is not merely misguided but actually unconstitutional, a fact conservatives somehow overlooked during the previous three decades.

Indeed, conservatives now believe that the policy they once embraced (or at least tolerated) would amount to an abrogation of the very principle of limited government. The conservative argument, reflected in Republican judge Henry Hudson’s ruling against the individual mandate, is that purchasing health insurance is the ultimate individual decision, and that abridging this liberty would, in Hudson’s words, “invite unbridled exercise of federal police powers.” If the individual mandate is permissible, writes George Will, then “Congress can doanything - eat your broccoli, or else - and America no longer has a limited government.” Megan McArdle echoes, “On a reading of the commerce clause that allows the government to force you to buy insurance from a private company, what can't the government force you to do?”

This is the intellectual rationale for the hysterical conservative response to the pasaage of health care reform. By this line of reasoning, the individual mandate springs from a paternalistic desire to compel individuals to engage in behavior that affects nobody but themselves.

But of course, the decision not to purchase health insurance is the very opposite. Those who forego health insurance are forcing the rest of us to cover their costs if they exercise their right to be treated in an emergency room. They are also forcing the rest of us to pay higher insurance rates, now that insurance companies can no longer exclude those with preexisting conditions. That, of course, is exactly why conservatives supported it for so long.

Conservatism's sudden lurch from supporting (or tolerating) the individual mandate to opposing it as a dagger in the heart of freedom is a phenomenon that merits not intellectual analysis but psychoanalysis. This is simply how conservatives respond in the face of every liberal advance. At such moments the nation is always teetering on the precipice between freedom and socialism. The danger never comes to pass, yet no lesson is ever learned. We simply progress intermittently from hysterical episode to hysterical episode.


More:

Are We On The Cusp Of A New Age Of Rage?

For a while now, I have been commenting how America is ruled by a wealthy elite. The top 5% or so of Americans are watching their wealth increase while everyone else suffers job loss, home repossession, and a declining lifestyle. 

This decline in the fortunes of the vast majority of Americans obviously has a very, very bad effect upon the lives of Americans. Crime, suicides, family violence, homelessness...... all increase as the American Dream vanishes.

I agree with Paul Watson that we are beginning to see a new age of rage due to the dominance of the wealthy elite over the rest of us.

As Gerald Celente has often warned, when Americans lose everything, they will start to lose it, and nowhere was that more apparent than in the case of Clay Duke, the 56-year-old gunman who opened fire on school board members in protest against his wife being fired and his unemployment benefits running out.

Duke spray-painted a V for Vendetta sign on the wall before brandishing a gun and telling everyone apart from the school board members to leave the room.

The response to this tragic series of events from both the establishment left and the establishment right will undoubtedly be to try and portray Duke as a nutcase conspiracy theorist whose views are an example of why free speech on the Internet needs to be curtailed, despite the fact that both on his Facebook page and another website he recommended, Duke promoted websites from across the political spectrum, including Media Matters, who are usually the first to exploit tragic events like these to sling mud at their political adversaries.

The fact that no one was injured and that Duke ultimately claimed his own life has contributed to him becoming a martyr in the Michael Douglas Falling Down mould rather than being considered a deranged lunatic, and Facebook pages in his honor are already attracting members. Duke was stopped when shots from a security guard wounded him, before he took his own life. Despite the fact that it was a gun that stopped the rampage, Time Magazine and others are already blaming the tragedy on the Second Amendment.

In a de-facto online suicide note posted on Facebook, Duke railed against the financial terrorists that prompted him to take such a drastic course of action.

“I was just born poor in a country where the Wealthy manipulate, use, abuse, and economically enslave 95% of the population. Rich Republicans, Rich Democrats… same-same… rich… they take turns fleecing us… our few dollars… pyramiding the wealth for themselves,” he wrote. “The 95%… the us, in US of A, are the neo slaves of the Global South. Our Masters, the Wealthy, do, as they like to us…”

MORE

The American Empire Is Collapsing, And Americans Will Be The Last to Know

50 years from now historians will probably be writing about the fall of the American empire. But history is writing itself furiously in the present, accelerated by the revolution of global freedom of information. What would have taken years to unlikely gather is accessible to anyone with a few strokes on a computer keyboard. So never mind the historians of the future, and let's see how reality is shaping up today.

The crumbling period of the United States empire started on September 11th. Since then, a chain of events so dire occurred that it would seem the empire defeated itself by a series of catastrophic mistakes. After 9/11,  Americans wanted revenge, and the war in Afghanistan became a very easy sale for the Bush administration. But then the neo-cons seized the opportunity to push their agenda  of the New American Century project, and it was precisely the Achille’s heel  of the empire.

Attacking Iraq: The Biggest Geopolitical Blunder In History

When the Bush administration attacked Iraq in 2003, a critical element escaped their understanding of the regional and demographic parameters: By toppling the Sunni regime of Saddam Hussein, they would give the upper hand to the oppressed Shia Iraqi majority allied with Iran.

In a word, the US troops who fought and died in the conflict did it ultimately for the regional benefit of the Iranian Islamic Republic. The blunders did not stop with geopolitics, but were compounded by a catastrophic financial burden.

The Cost Of Wars in Iraq And Afghanistan Is Bankrupting The US Economy

If the Pentagon was a corporation, it would be the largest in the world. The curiously called, Department Of Defense, costs the  American taxpayers, since the ill advised attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, around $700 billion a year. Of course, if you add up health care for wounded veterans, and  layers of new “security” administration such as the Department of Homeland Security,   the numbers keep adding up to top $1 trillion a year. Overall more than 25 percent of the federal budget gets swallowed in the financial black hole that is the Pentagon.

If Americans could do the math, they would quickly understand that the bill for the two wars is now creeping up to $10 trillion. In order to achieve the chimeric goals of the neocons of an ever lasting global American empire money had to be borrowed. Currently, for every dollar spent by the federal government 40 cents is borrowed. America used to borrow mainly from Japan and Europe. but now does its main borrowing from China. In a striking reversal of fortune, the “poor man of Asia” has now become the country in the world with the most liquid assets.

Empires Always Have An Expiration Date

Americans have a delusional  sense of historic exceptionalism which they share with most previous empires. After all America’s ascension to a leading role on the world scene is very recent. The deal was sealed in Yalta in 1945 between Stalin and Roosevelt, with Churchill present but already taking the back seat. In a matter of 5 years, and about 60 million deaths, two news empires had emerged from the ruin of three: the United States and the Soviet Union. On the losing side of history was, of course, Japan, the empire of the sun, but also Britain and France.

The old imperial powers of Britain and France were slow to fully understand the nature of the new game. It took the loss of India for the United Kingdom, in 1948,  and the one of Indochina for France in 1951 to make them understand that they would have from now on an ever shrinking role on the world stage. However, it took 9 years for Britain and France to fully digest the consequences of Yalta. In 1956, France and Britain took their very last joint imperialist venture by attacking Egypt over the ownership of the Suez Canal. The decaying empires were told to back off by the United States and the USSR.

A Repressive Capitalist Globalization Or The Revolution Of Global Freedom Of Information ?

The Cold War was a fairly predictable era. Beside a few crisis such as the flash point of  the Cuba missile crisis, the two super-powers fought to augment their respective turfs thought proxy wars. But Afghanistan came along for the Soviets, and the long war made the USSR collapsed. Naturally the United States started acting as the only super-power left, and for this reason as the master of the universe.

The narrative of Ronald Reagan is peppered by such elements, and so is the one of all of his successors including Barack Obama. But all empires had the same distorted visions of themselves, the Romans imposed the Pax Romana on their vassals for a long time, so did Charlemagne, and Napoleon for a much shorter time. In any sense, power is cyclical and never lasts.

Thanks to WikiLeaks and the courage of his founder Julian Assange and the one of  Pentagon’s whistleblower Bradley Manning, it has become rather obvious that while President Obama has changed the official tone of Washington from the Bush administration, the overall goals of US foreign policies have remained  the same: Ensure and expend  US power and authority on vassal states. This push to establish a new world order under exclusive US authority has been prevalent in all of the US administrations since Ronald Reagan and the end of the cold war.

President Obama, despite what could be his personal convictions is a prisoner of this imperial system. Obama is trapped by a complex nexus of inter-locking institutions such as the Pentagon, the CIA, the State Department etc, and by powerful interest groups profiting from endless wars. The very same institutions and interest groups have been at the core of every post-1945 imperial presidency. As early as 1946, president Harry Truman said: “From Darius’ Persia, Alexander’s Greece, Hadrian’s Rome, Victoria’s Britain; no nation or group of nations has had our responsibilities.”

However, most analysts and foreign policy experts currently assume that the present century will not be American. In this tectonic  power shift, under the push of China and India, the emerging new world order will be plural and decentralized. But the main question is: How Americans will adapt to this new paradigm where the United States loses its status of uncontested leadership?

AlterNet