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By Emma Donoghue
$13.72
By Dominic Lieven
$23.73
$22
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By Marie Cocco — No need to fumble for words that sum up the stew of hypocrisy, arrogance and insiderism that is the unfolding saga of Tom Daschle. This is the audacity of audacity.
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By Ellen Goodman — The president took his swing in the 25-year-old game of ideological pingpong known as the global gag rule, but he also made it clear he’d like everyone to put their paddles down.
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AP photo / Chris Gardner
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Scientists have made new discoveries about the traumatic head injuries sustained by football players, including Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, who will play in the Super Bowl this Sunday. Just one concussion can lead to dementia-like symptoms years later and multiple incidents can bring about severe brain damage and perhaps even drug addiction or suicide.
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freechoicesaveslives.org
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In the next move of a partisan ping-pong game over women’s reproductive health, Obama is slated to reverse the despicable “global gag rule” that refuses U.S. aid to foreign health clinics that even mention the word that begins with an A. And sounds like “shma-shmortion.” It’s abortion.
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By Ellen Goodman — After the collapse of trust in every sort of expert—after lenders financed houses for people who couldn’t afford them, bankers created systems they couldn’t even describe and, finally, we hear, Bernie Madoff ripped off even his high school friends—there is a residue of resilience.
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An ailing Ted Kennedy experienced seizures during a ceremonial luncheon on Capitol Hill and was removed from the private function, according to reports. President Obama accompanied Kennedy from the room and then returned to offer a few words of support. The luncheon then went ahead, though without Sen. Robert Byrd, who was too upset over his friend’s seizure to stay. Update 2
Posted on Jan 20, 2009
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Flickr / jphilipg
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There will be negotiation, revision and capitulation, but the basic guts of the Democrats’ $825 billion stimulus package are out in the open. There’s billions for infrastructure, billions for schools and billions for you and me. House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) responded by saying “Oh. My. God,” which we’ll take to mean, “Praise Jesus! The Democrats have done it again.”
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Obama has made it hard for anyone to pin him down philosophically. So when he raises his hand on Tuesday, exactly what can the American people expect?
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By Amy Goodman — Fifty million Americans are without health insurance, and 25 million are “underinsured.” Millions being laid off will soon be added to those rolls. At this perilous moment, we need sweeping New Deal-caliber changes, not the impotent tinkering that has been proposed.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — One of the clearest signals President-elect Barack Obama has sent is his determination to learn from the Clinton years, and particularly from the former president’s failures on health care.
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By Marie Cocco — Much of the business-tax package Obama contemplates fails his own test of cutting business taxes “where it makes sense and is going to work.”
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By Eugene Robinson — President-elect Obama will have more urgent matters to deal with after he takes the oath of office. But somewhere on his long to-do list, he should make a note to finally bring five decades of counterproductive American policy toward Cuba to a definitive end.
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By Ellen Goodman — “Virginity pledges” are one of the ways that government officials measure whether abstinence-only education is “working.” They count the pledges as proof that teens will abstain. It turns out that this is like counting New Year’s resolutions as proof that you lost 10 pounds.
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cdc.gov
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While heart disease remains the No. 1 killer of people in the U.S., researchers have found that we can help explain a large part of these cases through one’s genetic makeup. In fact, one in five white people are believed to have the “blood pressure gene,” where the genetic variance that controls salt in the kidneys changes to affect individuals’ blood pressure.
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New York Health Commissioner and aspiring prop comic Richard Daines, M.D., defends his governor’s proposed obesity tax with this hokey yet alarming demonstration.
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AP photo / Craig Ruttle
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By Chris Hedges — The free market and globalization, promised as the route to worldwide prosperity, have been exposed as a con game. We will either find our way out of this mess by embracing an uncompromising democratic socialism or we will continue to be fleeced and impoverished by our bankrupt elite.
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AP photo / Khalil Hamra
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By Chris Hedges — We fool ourselves into believing we are immune to the savagery and chaos of failed states. Take away the rigid social structure, let society continue to break down, and we become, like anyone else, brutes.
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karljaro.blogspot.com
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Want a soda with that? It’ll cost you, if what you’re after is a non-diet drink and you happen to be in New York, thanks to a controversial tax plan that Gov. David Paterson has cooked up to combat rising obesity rates in his home state.
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AP photo / Hatem Moussa
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By Chris Hedges — Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It is meant to break Hamas, but will only breed future generations of militants.
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By Eugene Robinson — Obama’s statements in the Blagojevich case have been cautious and precise. For most politicians, that would be good enough. For the man who inspired the nation with a promise of “change we can believe in,” it’s not.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Oh, my: Barack Obama is still more than a month away from assuming the presidency and already there are reports about “the left” being dispirited about change it no longer believes in.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — No, the federal government isn’t going to discover new billions under some rock in a national park. But with the economic downturn, the new president’s imperative will be to spend as fast as he can, to the tune of perhaps $500 billion, to keep the economy from going belly up.
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By Marie Cocco — Over the past 10 months, as the hemorrhage of jobs began to push the national unemployment rate toward its October level of 6.5 percent, about 3 million Americans were thrown off the insurance rolls or had their incomes fall so much that they became eligible for Medicaid or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.
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Flickr / mknobil
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World AIDS Day turns 20 today, and while we still don’t have a vaccine, researchers continue to make lifesaving breakthroughs. A team at the World Health Organization in Geneva recently came up with a “thought experiment” that, according to a mathematical model, could end the AIDS epidemic in Africa in only a decade.
Posted on Dec 1, 2008
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Thinking of whipping up another tuna casserole? You may change your mind after reading this convincing expose by Jane M. Hightower, a San Francisco doctor.
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EPA / Jon Hrusa
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In a glaring example of the importance of theory in practice, U.S. researchers have accused former South African President Thabo Mbeki of being responsible for more than 300,000 AIDS-related “avoidable deaths,” pointing to Mbeki’s siding with a theoretical camp that argues AIDS is caused by a collapsed immune system, not a viral infection. As a result, offers of free drugs and grant money for AIDS treatment were rejected.
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By Marie Cocco — This week marks a decade since a consortium of state attorneys general negotiated the landmark settlement of lawsuits against tobacco companies. The results are in: Cigarette consumption has declined by 28 percent in the past 10 years.
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AP photo / Kiichiro Sato, file
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By Chris Hedges — The swelling numbers waiting outside homeless shelters and food pantries around the country have grown by at least 30 percent since the summer. If Barack Obama continues to turn to the elites who created the mess, if he does not radically redirect the nation’s resources to assist the working class and the poor, we will become a third-world country.
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By Regina Marler — A new volume of the late poet’s correspondence sheds fresh light on the anguish and art of Sylvia Plath.
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Those famous “multiple Democratic sources close to the transition” have revealed three more members of Barack Obama’s Cabinet: Former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle as secretary of health and human services, Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano as chief of homeland security and Obama’s billionaire buddy and top fundraiser Penny Pritzker to head the Commerce Department. Update: Pritzker is out.
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Flickr / Brave New Films
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By Marie Cocco — The giant discounter is the only store where hard-squeezed consumers can afford to buy anything, and so it has kept posting sales gains amid the retail bloodbath.
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google.org/flutrends
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While worries over Google’s “big brother” surveillance practices still worry many, a softer, more health-conscious side of the search giant is partnering with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The tool, “Google Flu Trends,” uses the aggregate regional data obtained from flu-related searches to predict epidemics weeks before they can be diagnosed by traditional measures.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — If Reagan had the voters’ permission to move away from strategies associated with liberalism, Obama has sanction to move away from conservative policies. And Reagan offers another lesson: His first moves were bold, and Obama should not fear following his example.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — With Obama’s victory, it’s time to hope that the era of racial backlash and wedge politics is over. Time to imagine that the patriotism of dissenters will no longer be questioned and that the world will no longer be divided between “values voters” and those without a moral compass.
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Flickr / Oop
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The chemical BPA is common in plastic products such as baby bottles and food containers, despite concerns among scientists and environmentalists about its safety. The FDA has defended BPA use and recently turned to an outside panel for backup. That group of scientists, however, ended up criticizing the agency’s guidelines.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Japan’s prime minister says he has information that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is “probably in hospital,” though capable of making decisions. “Anyway, his condition isn’t good,” added Prime Minister Taro Aso, who has been known to dip his toe in outrageous waters.
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Wikimedia Commons / edited for effect
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By Chris Hedges — The old assumptions and paradigms about capitalism and free markets are dead. A new, virulent populism, still inchoate, is slowly and painfully rising to take their place. This populism will determine the future of the country. It is as likely to be right-wing as left-wing.
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By Ellen Goodman — A cohort of entrepreneurs and scientists is the cutting edge of the Personal Genome Project. In an act of altruism and/or exhibitionism, the PGP-10 have put their medical records, traits and genetic codes on the Web where all the scientists, paparazzo and peeping Toms can see them.
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John McCain and his running mate respond to Colin Powell’s endorsement of the other ticket, which the general said was motivated in part by McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Catholics, who are quintessential swing voters and gave narrow but crucial support to President Bush in 2004, are drifting toward Barack Obama. And this time, some church leaders are suggesting that single-issue voting—such as on abortion—is by no means a Catholic commandment.
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Obama for America
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Barack Obama will spend Thursday and Friday off the campaign trail in order to visit his ailing grandmother, Madelyn Dunham. Obama was raised in part by his grandparents, and has credited his grandmother with teaching him “values straight from the Kansas heartland.”
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A devastating and growing problem is explored in Michael Paul Mason’s riveting new book, “Head Cases.”
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By Marie Cocco — The essential fallacy of the 401(k) has been exposed. It took a historic market collapse—one that threatens to impoverish workers already in retirement and those who are nearing it.
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By E.J. Dionne, Jr. — Each campaign has given voters ample notice about the inclinations, temperaments, habits, philosophical leanings and advisers they would bring to the White House. That’s enough.
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By Eugene Robinson — John McCain and Sarah Palin are going to try their best to make us talk about anything but the big issues facing our country, because most Americans think Barack Obama’s solutions are better.
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AP photo / Susan Walsh
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By Chris Hedges — The passing of the $850-billion bailout pulled the plug on the New Deal. The Great Society is now gasping for air, mortally wounded, coughing up blood. It will not recover. It was murdered by the Democratic Party.
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By David Sirota — In the late 1990s, Washington was in the throes of a deregulatory orgy. Many lampooned Rep. Bernie Sanders’ opposition to the grotesquerie, and his notoriety as the only self-described socialist in Congress. Nobody guessed that in a few years our country would become the United States’ Socialist Republic.
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By Marie Cocco — So this is how the “ownership society” works. We own all the bad stuff.
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commons.wikimedia.org
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Rumors are flying after the North Korean dictator skipped a parade in honor of the country’s 60th anniversary. A U.S. intelligence official said Kim apparently “suffered a health setback, potentially a stroke.” Or he could be fine. News travels slow out of the hermit kingdom.
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