Happening now, in future coming to you fast

 thanks to TruthOut for the regular news letter.  this is today's edition.

Tuesday 26 July 2011 William Rivers Pitt | So This Is Despair William Rivers Pitt, Truthout: "It is difficult to describe this emotion. I'm used to disappointment, fairly comfortable with heartbreak, and am well acquainted with rage. Over the course of my lifetime, my presidents have been Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, and now Obama ... and each, in his own way, has been worse than the last." Read the Article Chris Hedges | Fundamentalism Kills Chris Hedges, Truthdig: "The gravest threat we face from terrorism, as the killings in Norway by Anders Behring Breivik underscore, comes not from the Islamic world but the radical Christian right and the secular fundamentalists who propagate the bigoted, hateful caricatures of observant Muslims and those defined as our internal enemies. The caricature and fear are spread as diligently by the Christian right as they are by atheists such as Sam Harris and Christopher Hitchens. Our religious and secular fundamentalists all peddle the same racist filth and intolerance that infected Breivik." Read the Article Coercive Religion Misplaced in US Armed Forces Mike Farrell, Truthout: "Raised in the Catholic Church, I was a pretty confused kid. Father O'Reilly, one of the priests at St. Peter's, the church our family attended most of the time, spoke with such a pronounced brogue that I couldn't follow him. But I didn't understand the Mass either, so I smiled and pretended he made sense, just accepted him on faith along with the rest of it." Read the Article On the News With Thom Hartmann: If Boehner's Plan Passed, Standard and Poor's Will Immediately Downgrade US Credit Rating, and More In today's On the News segment: Standard and Poor's warned that if Boehner's plan is passed to avoid an immediate default next week - the agency will STILL downgrade our debt because the Boehner plan is nothing more than a gimmick; Wisconsin Governor Walker closing DMV offices in Democratic areas, making it harder to get photos IDs required to vote; rich Americans paying fewer taxes than at any time in last 50 years; with austerity measures, the British economy has tanked; and more. Watch the Video and Read the Transcript Speaker Boehner's Disgrace Robert Borosage, Campaign for America's Future: "Seldom have we witnessed a more dishonest speech in prime time than that delivered by House Speaker John Boehner last night on the debt ceiling crisis." Read the Article FAA in Partial Shutdown; Air Traffic Unaffected Christine Mai-Duc, The Los Angeles Times: "The Federal Aviation Administration was forced into a partial shutdown Monday after Congress failed to temporarily extend its funding. The agency was ordered to furlough thousands of employees and freeze $2.5 billion in airport construction money." Read the Article In Court, Suggestions of Hacking Beyond the News of the World Jo Becker and Ravi Somaiya, The New York Times: "Front pages across Britain featured pictures of Rupert Murdoch apologizing for phone hacking at The News of the World. But further suggestions that the practice spread beyond his newspaper emerged in a small, nondescript courtroom on Wednesday, even as Prime Minister David Cameron broadened an inquiry into the conduct of the British press." Read the Article Paul Krugman | A Prognosis for Greece Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "Someday, one way or another, Greece will exit from its current state of indentured servitude. But what will it do for a living? I often hear assertions that the answer is 'nothing.' 'What can the Greeks export?' the critics ask. In general, my response to such claims is that those commentators suffer from the fallacy of misplaced concreteness: An economy, even that of a small nation, is a very complex thing, with more possibilities than a casual top-down overview can reveal." Read the Article Unequal Protection: Protecting Corporate Liars Thom Hartmann, Berrett-Koehler Publishers: "The first direct shot across the bow of the doctrine of a corporation's 'right to lie' by using its 'personhood' to claim First Amendment 'free speech' rights came in April 1998, when Mark Kasky, a California political activist, noticed that Nike was engaged in what he considered to be a deceptive greenwashing campaign." Read the Article Republican Mike Lee: I Want America's "House to Come Down" Unless Congress Votes to Rewrite Constitution Ian Millhiser, ThinkProgress: "In an interview on MSNBC's Hardball Monday evening, tenther Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) admitted that he is using the threat of a catastrophic default to extort the nation into rewriting the Constitution to force a permanent era of conservative governance." Read the Article Crash Club: What Happens When Three Sputtering Economies Collide? Mike Davis, TomDispatch: "Even if debt-limit doomsday is averted, Obama has already hocked the farm and sold the kids. With breathtaking contempt for the liberal wing of his own party, he's offered to put the sacrosanct remnant of the New Deal safety net on the auction bloc to appease a hypothetical 'center' and win reelection at any price. (Dick Nixon, old socialist, where are you now that we need you?)" Read the Article Detroit: A New American Frontier Aaron M. Renn, YES! Magazine: "Detroit has become a byword for extreme urban contraction. Yet as the population, industry, and built environment of the city of Detroit have collapsed, Detroit's urban footprint has continued to expand. In Detroit, even the dead are sprawling, as families disinter bodies from urban cemeteries to rebury them in the suburbs. Is there any greater sign of both the physical and psychological abandonment of the city?" Read the Article Glenn Greenwald: Norway Attacks Expose US Media's Double Standard on "Terrorism" Amy Goodman, Democracy NOW!: "Numerous news outlets and commentators initially blamed the attacks in Norway on Islamic militants. Rupert Murdoch's British newspaper, The Sun, ran a front-page headline that read, 'Al-Qaeda Massacre: Norway's 9/11.' In the United States, Murdoch's Wall Street Journal also initially blamed 'jihadists,' reporting that 'Norway is targeted for being true to Western norms.' Meanwhile, on the Washington Post's website, Jennifer Rubin wrote, 'This is a sobering reminder for those who think it's too expensive to wage a war against jihadists.' To discuss the media coverage of the attacks, we're joined by Glenn Greenwald, constitutional law attorney and political and legal blogger who has written about the media coverage of the attacks in Norway for Salon.com." Read the Article Click here for more Truthout articles TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES There's a simple reason that President Obama will not invoke the 14th Amendment to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis: the Supreme Court. Yes, there is speculation that Obama is too risk averse to assert that the Constitution gives him the power to unilaterally raise the debt ceiling - and that may be true. But Obama and his advisers know that if he bypasses Congress by using the 14th Amendment, it will immediately be challenged in the federal courts - which are loaded with partisan Republican judges - and fast tracked to the Supreme Court. With Scalia having led a partisan majority time and time again - including his stopping of the State Supreme Court-ordered presidential recount in Florida in 2004 so as not to harm the reputation of the presumed winner, George W. Bush, (Scalia wrote in justification of his infamous opinion) - it is a given that five members of the Supreme Court have no compunction about leaving the Constitution in the dust. As BuzzFlash has argued before, despite calling themselves "strict constructionists," the five majority votes on the Supreme Court are anything but. In fact, they often interpret the Constitution to justify their political outlook as they did in Bush v. Gore and Citizens United, and a host of other rulings that have dramatically affected the direction of this nation. Thom Hartmann views the 5-4 majority record as being so significant that they have become a de facto arm of the Republicans in Congress. Hartmann calls the GOP majority on the court the "Five Kings." The 14th Amendment is pretty clear when it comes to the debt ceiling: "The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned." That's about as strict constructionist as you can get in prohibiting Congress from limiting the debt ceiling, even though it has been their tradition to vote on increasing it - as they frequently have done under Republican and Democratic presidents alike. But the "Supreme Court Five" aren't going to really enforce the Constitution as it is written, should Obama invoke the 14th Amendment. They will rule against presidential authority and side with the Republicans in Congress. Because their motivation in high-stakes partisan issues like this is not the law as it is written; it is scoring a victory for their political beliefs and sponsors. That is why President Obama will ultimately not assert the 14th Amendment to resolve the debt-ceiling crisis. The "Five Kings" won't allow him, in the end, to do so. Mark Karlin Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout Wealth Gaps Widens Between Whites and Minorities Read the Article at The Associated Press The Damage Done to America by Global Warming Would Be Cause for War if Done by Terrorists Read the Article at BuzzFlash Debt-Lock at the DC Corral Read the Article at MSNBC How Boehner's Debt Plan Produces "the Greatest Increase in Poverty and Hardship" in American History Read the Article at ThinkProgress More Loss of American Jobs: GE Moving X-Ray Leadership Team From US to China Read the Article at the Associated Press IMF's Chief Urges Quick US Resolution of Debt Crisis Read the Article at the Voice of America Hoyer: After Default Crisis, Look Forward to Another Government Shutdown Fight Read the Article at Talking Points Memo Click here for more BuzzFlash headlines ---------- Support Truthout with a tax-deductible donation by clicking here. 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http://www.truth-out.org/speaker-boehners-disgrace/1311689770

A prediction I'll second

Article at Aljazeera in English.  (I've been lazy/appathetic for so long I've forgotten how to do links up there )
CIA veteran: Israel to attack Iran in fall   


And all I can say, is wow, it rings so true, what with all the stupidity about the Gaza blockade, etc.  But if we want the "Rapture" we gotta make sure Israel rules the Middle East.    I'm back to "mindless belief in invisible beings."  If there is a God, She is obviously a population nazi just like me, cus more people have been killed in the name of God than any other thing.  Water and food will be striving to take over that title in the near future, though.


The comments on this article are very thoughtful and seem informed.  Here is just one small quote:

"However, I think there are OTHER forces at play here; I think Netanyahu is no longer merely pandering to the apocalytic Revelations-believing Christians like John Hagee and Pat Robertson, but has become ONE OF THEM.  He has drunk the Koolaide, and is on a Mission From God! "

Hot damn a new cell. Which might give me more possible characters than that POS LG phone. But I do need to find a way to actually read it on the mobile device!