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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Top Story

Stores tempt Thanksgiving day shoppers
NEW YORK - The start of the holiday shopping season crept earlier into Thursday as retailers lured shoppers to stores and online ahead of the traditional Black Friday kick-off.

Jesus’ General

The World

Bomb strikes Baghdad, killing 13
BAGHDAD - A bomb exploded in a pet market in central Baghdad on Friday, killing at least 13 people and wounding dozens, Iraqi police said.

'Al Qaeda rolodex' found in Iraq
As many as 60 percent of the foreign fighters who entered Iraq in the past year have come from Saudi Arabia and Libya, according to documents discovered in a raid in September near the Syrian border, a senior U.S. military official in Baghdad confirmed to CNN Thursday.

Plan Increases Role of G.I.’s in Iraq Training
Commanders hope to shift more of the security burden in Iraq to the Iraqis without giving up gains U.S. troops have made, officials said.

Lebanon fails to elect president
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon's parliament failed to elect a successor to President Emile Lahoud just hours before he was set to leave office after it was unable to convene due to an opposition boycott Friday. The failure puts the country in a potentially explosive political vacuum.

Israel, Palestine at odds ahead of talks
JERUSALEM - A draft of the joint document Israel and the Palestinians hope to present at next week's U.S.-hosted peace conference reveal wide gaps between the two sides, with Israel avoiding mention of issues that have derailed earlier peace talks, an Israeli daily reported Thursday.

Israeli: Syrian site hit not a reactor
A Syrian site bombed by Israel in September was probably a plant for assembling a nuclear bomb, an Israeli nuclear expert said Thursday, challenging other analysts' conclusions that it housed a North Korean-style nuclear reactor.

IAEA meeting on Iran sets stage for more sanctions
VIENNA — Going against international will, Iran insisted here Thursday that it would not cease or suspend uranium enrichment, increasing the probability of a United Nations Security Council showdown over harsher sanctions against the Islamic nation.

Afghanistan 'falling into hands of Taliban'
The Taliban has a permanent presence in 54% of Afghanistan and the country is in serious danger of falling into Taliban hands, according to a report by an independent thinktank with long experience in the area. Despite tens of thousands of Nato-led troops and billions of dollars in aid poured into the country, the insurgents, driven out by the American invasion in 2001, now control "vast swaths of unchallenged territory, including rural areas, some district centres, and important road arteries".

Court Dismisses Legal Challenge Against Musharraf
President Pervez Musharraf's script for a tightly controlled political transition moved ahead on cue Thursday, as his hand-picked Supreme Court dismissed the final legal challenge to Musharraf becoming president for another five-year term and officials said he would resign as army chief within days.

Blasts in three northern Indian cities kill 10
LUCKNOW, India (Reuters) - Nearly simultaneous blasts outside courts in three northern Indian cities killed at least 10 people in what a senior government official said were terrorist strikes.

Russia disappointed by U.S. shield proposal-report
MOSCOW (Reuters) - U.S. proposals aimed at easing Russian concerns over a planned missile defense shield fall short of Moscow's expectations, local media quoted a Russian Foreign Ministry source as saying on Friday.

French transport picks up
PARIS - Traffic on French trains, subways and buses started returning to normal Friday after striking transport workers ended a nine-day walkout over President Nicolas Sarkozy's reforms… (T)he victory for Sarkozy was clear as workers voted on Thursday to end the strike after talks opened on his plan to end special retirement privileges for half a million train drivers and other state employees. Sarkozy is sticking by the reform, seen as an important and symbolic part of his broader plans for changing France, but the government is ready to discuss workers' demands to modify its terms.
If Sarkozy had to agree to discuss workers’ demands, how is this such a “clear” victory for him?—Caro

The Nation

Former Iraq Commander Backs Democrats on Pullout
Retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, who commanded U.S. troops in Iraq from 2003 to 2004, is scheduled to speak on behalf of the Democratic Party this weekend in support of a House war funding bill that would require President Bush to bring the bulk of U.S. troops home from Iraq by the end of next year.

Soldier decries AWOL arrest at hospital
A soldier facing his second tour of duty in Iraq said in a jailhouse interview he was at a hospital seeking mental help when he was arrested in the middle of the night for allegedly being absent without leave. Spc. Justin Faulkner insists his superior officers at Fort Campbell knew about his mental problems but refused to provide adequate treatment.

Senate blocks Bush 'recess' appointments
Two days before Thanksgiving the Senate had a 22-second session, a fleeting moment in the life of an occasionally droning body but plenty of time for majority Democrats to keep President Bush from making "recess" appointments.

Backlog delays naturalizations
WASHINGTON - Immigrants who applied for citizenship after June 1 will have to wait more than a year to become Americans, immigration officials said Wednesday, a delay that will prevent many from voting in next November's elections.
Couldn’t be on purpose, could it?—Caro

Senior HUD Official Resigns Amidst Investigation
Federal investigators are bearing down on Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Alphonso Jackson for setting up his buddies with contracts and then telling Congress that he didn't "touch contracts."

Secret Warrants Granted For Cellphone Tracking
Federal officials are routinely asking courts to order cellphone companies to furnish real-time tracking data so they can pinpoint the whereabouts of criminal suspects, according to judges and industry lawyers. In some cases, judges have granted the requests without requiring the government to demonstrate that there is probable cause to believe that a crime is taking place or that the inquiry will yield evidence of a crime.

Supreme Imbalance: Why Originalism and Conservative Activism Are Wrong (by Geoffrey R. Stone, University of Chicago Law School)
Conservative activism offers the worst of both worlds. It undermines the decisions of democratic majorities, not in order to protect the rights of minorities, or the powerless, or the oppressed, or the disenfranchised, or the dispossessed, or the poor, or the downtrodden, or the accused, but in order to protect the interests of corporations, the wealthy, the privileged, the majority, and the powerful… (M)odern-day conservative judicial activism is a perversion of the values that the Constitution was designed to protect and, more specifically, of the values the Framers relied upon the Court to protect.

Democratic presidential race tightens: poll
(Hillary) Clinton led (Barack) Obama 38 percent to 27 percent in the new poll, a 10-point fall from her 46 percent to 25 percent lead last month. The drop followed a month of attacks on the New York senator from her rivals and a heavily criticized performance in a late-October debate. Former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina remained in third place, climbing four points to 13 percent.

Paulson Sees More Home Loan Defaults in 2008
U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said the number of potential U.S. home-loan defaults "will be significantly bigger" in 2008 than in 2007, the Wall Street Journal's online edition reported… Currency traders in Tokyo cited Paulson's comments as a factor in the dollar's fall to a two-year low of 108.89 yen on electronic trading platform EBS on Wednesday, the lowest since September 2005.

Telecommuting found to boost morale, cut stress
Tired of traffic jams, late trains, packed buses? Telecommuting can be a big plus for workers and employers because it boosts morale and job satisfaction and cuts stress, researchers said on Monday.

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

'Shut up' is hit ringtone in Spain
MADRID, Spain - Many Spaniards were so amused when their king told Venezuela's president to "shut up" they want to hear the words every time their phone rings.
Imagine the political ring tones we could come up with—Rush Limbaugh quotes, Bush and Cheney threats, the possibilities are endless!—Caro

Blogosphere not as radical as pundits think (by Gene Lyons)
Among the blogs I read, there’s no equivalent of the authoritarian impulses, intellectual dishonesty and rote chanting of the GOP party line that characterizes Limbaugh and his imitators on the right. Partly, that’s because most are written by educated individuals who take pride in winning arguments without cheating, and to whom party orthodoxy is anathema. In a saner climate, many wouldn’t be called left-wing at all.

A thought about political discourse (by Paul Krugman)
A meta-thought inspired by the Social Security craziness: Faced with a major public issue, such as the future of Social Security, one might think that the crucial thing would be to ascertain the facts. If I say “there is no crisis,” and you think there is, well, produce the evidence that shows that my arithmetic is wrong — not something I once said that you think proves that I’ve changed my mind. Making this a game of gotcha is just childish. But here’s the thing: this childishness infects a lot of political discourse.

Gibson: WH deserves a medal for outing Plame.
In his “My Word” segment this afternoon, Fox News pundit John Gibson applauded the White House’s decision to blow the identity of covert CIA agent Valerie Plame. “I’m the guy who said a long, long time ago that whoever outed Valerie Plame should get a medal,” Gibson said. “And if it was Karl Rove, I’d pin it on him myself.” Gibson argued the outing of Plame was justified because “this was about an anti-Bush cabal at the CIA” that needed to be “rooted out.”
Click through to watch the video.—Caro

Publisher Of McClellan Book: Scottie Won't Implicate Bush For Lying About Plamegate, After All (by Greg Sargent)
The publisher of the forthcoming book by former White House flack Scott McClellan is now walking back the idea that the book will finger President Bush for knowingly misleading McClellan about Plamegate, saying that if Bush did mislead him, he didn't do so deliberately… It's very hard not to conclude that McClellan and his publisher deliberately played the media for chumps with the too-cute-by-half excerpt they posted (Tuesday). And it worked.

'L.A. Times': Matthew Dowd, Former Bush Aide, Stands by Critique
NEW YORK When he publicly broke with his former boss, President Buss, it made the front-page of The New York Times. Now neither the president nor Karl Rove speak to him, but Matthew Dowd is not backing off. In a major piece by the Times' Mark Z. Barabak, Dowd, a top political operative for the Bush team in 2000 and 2004, continued his critique of the Iraq war, declaring, "I guess somebody would make the argument, 'Well, the Iraq war was about defending ourselves.' But it seems an awfully huge stretch these days to say that."

Holocaust Denial, American Style
Institutionally unwilling to consider America's responsibility for the bloodbath, the traditional media have refused to acknowledge the massive number of Iraqis killed since the invasion.

O'Reilly visits troops in Afghanistan
NEW YORK — Bill O'Reilly thinks American troops aren't getting enough support — from the USO… The USO … has been active sending comedians and professional golfers on entertainment tours to bases in the Persian Gulf.

'Push poll' critics were on Romney's payroll
When news broke about alleged push poll calls in Iowa and New Hampshire critical of Mitt Romney's Mormon faith, the presidential candidate's campaign referred reporters to a few voters who had received the calls. But the campaign didn't disclose those voters were also on Romney's payroll.

Romney Tidbits from Josh Marshall:
Romney: Thinking I'm behind the push-poll is like being a World Trade Center conspiracy theorist.
Romney: Attacking me means attacking Thanksgiving

Pay-To-Praise? Firefighter Who Cheered Rudy Now Campaign 'Political Strategist'
John R. Orlando, who serves with Engine 216 in Brooklyn, New York, …(said in June) "bottom line is, I think (Rudy Giuliani has) been more of a friend to firefighters than I've seen in the news. I don't think all the criticism is warranted."… On September 28, 2007, the Giuliani campaign paid one John R. Orlando more than $1,580 for what they deemed on a campaign filing as "political strategy consulting."

They hate me! They really hate me! (by Paul Krugman)
Part of (Washington Post columnist) Ruth Marcus’s attack involves selective quotation from my writings circa 2001… What i was arguing then was not that Social Security itself was in crisis, but that the rest of the government budget should be run responsibly — basically, that the lockbox should be honored… As for what I wrote in 1996: the world looked very different then… Medicare and Medicaid looked less important as sources of fiscal problems than they do now. John Maynard Keynes is supposed to have said, “When circumstances change, I change my opinion. What do you do?”

Practice Tests, Not News, Bring in the Big Bucks for the Post
It’s official: The Washington Post Company now gets more than half of its revenues from teaching people how to take tests, not from providing them with news. The company founded as a home for a Washington daily newspaper is now mostly an educational enterprise. The Post reports in its latest financial statement that Kaplan, its educational division, brought in 50.3 percent of the company’s revenues. The newspaper division, essentially the Post, brought in 21 percent of revenues. The rest came from cable-TV systems, television stations, and Newsweek magazine.
Have you ever seen a story that criticizes school testing in any of the WaPo Company’s publications?—Caro

Is CBS News sitting on "important investigative stories"?
That's what Dan Rather's lawyer claims. "In the wake of what's happened to Rather, there have been important investigative stories that haven't been broadcast," says Martin Gold. "Because the people involved say, 'If this is what happened to Dan Rather, what's going to happen to little old me?'"
You can control the country with only a few dedicated people willing to attack those who dare to tell the truth.—Caro

Technology & Science

Bangladesh shows satellites save lives
GENEVA - Improvements to a global network of early warning systems helped save many lives in Bangladesh last week when a powerful cyclone pummeled the country's southwestern coast, an intergovernmental group said Wednesday.

U.K. In Uproar Over Massive Data Loss
The British government is revealing that the personal data of over 25 million people is at risk of exposure as a result of several computer disks that got lost in the mail.

The Big Holiday Depression Myth
Most people have heard the bit of folk wisdom about how depression and suicide increase during the last two months of the year… Actually there's no evidence that suicide rates spike in December; in fact they drop slightly.

Analysis: Hurdles remain for stem cells
NEW YORK - For all the excitement, big questions remain about how to turn this week's stem cell breakthrough into new treatments for the sick. And it's not clear when they'll be answered.

Infants can judge a good playmate
Even infants can tell the difference between naughty and nice playmates, and know which to choose, a new study finds.

Researchers find mirror fools phantom limb pain
BOSTON (Reuters) - Viewing the reflected image of an intact limb in a mirror can fool the mind into thinking that a lost leg or foot still exists, dramatically relieving phantom limb pain, researchers reported on Wednesday.

Many Americans Can't Afford to Eat Right
Cheap fruits and veggies often unavailable to poorer, rural consumers, studies find.

Cranberry Sauce May Be Healthy Treat
Science is revealing how berry helps ward off infection

Huge Submarine Landslide Discovered
A newfound submarine landslide from 60,000 years ago is the most colossal event of its kind ever discovered. The flow of sand and mud rushed some 930 miles (1,500 kilometers) down a slightly sloped seafloor, with an initial burst of speed estimated at 45 mph (20 meters per second), said study leader Peter Talling of the University of Bristol.

New Way to ID Stars in Night Sky Photos
BALTIMORE - A new search engine will soon turn your night sky images into powerful research data and identify the twinkling objects in them with just the click of a button. The Astrometry.net database will hunt down and name celestial objects in any amateur photo, pinpoint the region of night sky that was photographed and use the image to expand a detailed database of the cosmos for use by scientists

Environment

Green-Minded Shoppers May Bring a Shift to 'Black Friday'
OAKLAND, Calif., Nov. 21, 2007 -- As consumers increasingly embrace all things green, companies of all sizes are trying to capitalize on the post-Thanksgiving shopping frenzy and do right by the planet at the same time.

Hair and Mushrooms: The Next Big Thing for Oil Spill Cleanup?
SAN FRANCISCO, Nov. 23, 2007 -- An unlikely tool has emerged to help hundreds of volunteers soak up globules of bunker oil spilled from a cargo ship that hit the Bay Bridge earlier this month. The volunteers are using mats of human hair, which naturally acts as a sponge to absorb oil from air and water, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.

Fuel's gold: Termites point way to new dawn of bio-energy
PARIS (AFP) - A team of US scientists poring over the intestines of a tropical termite have a gut feeling that a breakthrough in the quest for cleaner, renewable petrol is in store.

Will future home furnaces be more efficient?
Amid volatile and rising prices for natural gas, the Bush administration has unveiled new efficiency standards for home furnaces and boilers.
Oops, did the furnace manufacturers forget to donate to the Bush campaign?—Caro

Sweden Turns to a Promising Power Source, With Flaws
Wind energy is coming under scrutiny, not just from hostile neighbors but from energy experts who question its reliability as a source of power.

EU to promote research on clean energy
Brussels, Nov 23 (Xinhua) The European Commission has proposed a plan to promote research that will liberate the European Union's (EU's) potential for clean energy.

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

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Caro

Good job! Thanks for the info, and The Republican Jesus, loved it!