Good Morning! - Morning Headlines

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Carolyn Kay
MakeThemAccountable.com

Top Story

Food pantries nationwide are running short amid higher costs for gas, utility and health care
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's annual hunger survey released Wednesday showed that more than 35.5 million people in the United States were hungry in 2006. While that number was about the same as the previous year, heads of food banks and pantries say many more people are seeking their assistance.

Eating out is getting lonelier
Restaurants are feeling the pinch as people cut back on their spending in the face of tightening household budgets.
But then again, see below.—Caro

Conspicuous Consumption
In New York City, the price of Zagat's average restaurant meal didn't change at all--up just 0.1%--while at the most expensive 20, it was up 11.1%. In Washington, it's 2.1% vs. 7.6%; Chicago, 3.3% and 6.7%; Atlanta, 3% and 7.8%... "Nobody ever complains about it," says Eric Ripert, chef of Le Bernardin, Zagat’s No. 3 top rated restaurant in New York City, where the average price of a dinner is $129, up 7% from last year. "The clients tell us we can raise our prices even more," he says.

Left Toon Lane

The World

U.S. blames Shiites in new Iraq violence
BAGHDAD - Four members of an Iranian-backed Shiite cell confessed to bombing a public market in central Baghdad, a U.S. spokesman said Saturday. He also blamed Shiites for recent attacks on U.S. bases, raising fears that a three-month truce by the most feared Shiite militia may be at an end.

‘Wave Of Violence’ Against Women In Iraq Undercuts White House’s Claims Of Success
(Thursday) night, NBC Nightly News aired a segment about a “wave of violence that’s gone largely unreported lately against women in Iraq.” The report noted that Iraqi women, once “the most emancipated in the Arab world,” are increasingly unable to walk around without a hijab, wear cosmetics, or work.
Click through to watch the video. —Caro

Political crisis deepens in Lebanon
BEIRUT, Lebanon - Prime Minister Fuad Saniora assured his country Saturday that the military was in control of the streets while lawmakers struggled to overcome a political crisis that has left the country without a president.

Skeptical Arab leaders agree to attend Mideast peace conference
CAIRO, Egypt — Arab countries reluctantly agreed Friday to attend next week's U.S.-sponsored Middle East conference in Annapolis, Md., a scaled-down meeting for which there are scaled-down expectations… Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arranged the conference, scheduled for Tuesday at the Naval Academy in Annapolis.

Iran says it made nuclear fuel pellets
The head of Iran's Atomic Energy Organization said Saturday that the country had produced its first nuclear fuel pellets for use in a heavy water reactor, which is still under construction.

Iran: No smoking gun but strong evidence
The accusations come almost every day from U.S. officials: Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon. Sponsoring terrorism. Killing Americans in Iraq. Intent on Israel's destruction. Yet, some officials add, its government will collapse if only given a push.
Uh huh. We’ve heard this song before, U.S. officials.—Caro

Suicide attacks kill dozens in Pakistan
Militants struck at the heart of Pakistan’s security establishment Saturday, killing up to 35 people in suicide attacks on a checkpoint outside army headquarters and a bus carrying intelligence agency employees, officials said.

Pakistan Alerted U.S. to Emergency Rule
As his government battled democracy protesters and an Islamist insurgency, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf startled his countrymen this month by imposing emergency rule and jailing thousands of opponents. The move wasn't a surprise to the U.S. In the days before the Nov. 3 announcement, the general's aides and advisers forewarned U.S. diplomats in a series of meetings in Islamabad, according to Pakistani and U.S. officials.

Kasparov Jailed After Anti-Putin Protest
(Former world chess champion Garry Kasparov), one of President Vladimir Putin's harshest critics, was charged with organizing an unsanctioned procession of at least 1,500 people against Putin, chanting anti-government slogans and resisting arrest, court documents said. His assistant said he was beaten during the demonstration. At the hastily organized trial, two police testified that they had been ordered before the rally to arrest Kasparov.

Australian Premier, an Ally of Bush, Is Defeated
Prime Minister John Howard, one of President Bush’s staunchest allies in Asia, suffered a resounding loss after 11 years in power.

15-year-old girl jailed with 20 men
A 15-YEAR-old girl was put in a Brazilian jail cell with more than 20 men, and for a month was raped relentlessly and forced to have sex for food, human rights groups say.
So don’t go thinking it’s only in Muslim countries that women are mistreated.—Caro

PM: Poland to end Iraq mission in 2008
WARSAW, Poland - Poland's new prime minister outlined ambitious plans for the next four years in his inaugural address Friday, saying he plans to withdraw troops from Iraq next year but also push for stronger relations with NATO.

The Nation

Can Rice save her legacy with 'Hail Mary' pass on Mideast?
As the one top foreign-policy official who's worked for Bush since he became president, first as national security adviser and then as secretary of state, (Condoleeza) Rice's record is intertwined with her boss's. That includes the failure to destroy al Qaida, the invasion of Iraq based on bogus intelligence, the fumbled postwar reconstruction and the halfhearted American effort to rebuild Afghanistan, all of which have eroded America's standing in the Muslim world, Europe and elsewhere.

US marines assist stepped up relief effort in Bangladesh
DHAKA (AFP) - US marines were on the ground in cyclone-hit southern Bangladesh Sunday as the military-led relief operation was stepped up and international aid continued to pour in.
THIS is how you win friends and influence people, as opposed to using our troops to kill people.—Caro

U.S. Starts First Major Pullout From Iraq, Beginning With Brigade Members
The first members of a brigade in Diyala Province have started to leave, but because of continuing violence, another brigade that is already in Iraq will take its place.

U.S. Scales Back Political Goals for Iraqi Unity
The Bush administration does not expect quick progress on major goals like regional elections and a plan to share oil revenues.

Richard Perle: ‘I Don’t Believe I Was Wrong’ About Iraq
Appearing on BBC’s Hardtalk with Stephen Sackur this weekend, Iraq war architect Richard Perle (said) “Well, I don’t believe I was wrong. Let me be very clear about that. What I think happened is that a successful invasion was turned into an unsuccessful occupation. I didn’t favor the occupation strategy. I think the occupation was a mistake.”
Click through to watch the video.—Caro

White House Afghanistan report: Goals unmet
A White House assessment of the war in Afghanistan has concluded that wide-ranging strategic goals that the Bush administration set for 2007 have not been met, even as U.S. and NATO forces have scored significant combat successes, according to U.S. officials.

20,000 vets' brain injuries not listed in Pentagon tally
At least 20,000 U.S. troops who were not classified as wounded during combat in Iraq and Afghanistan have been found with signs of brain injuries, according to military and veterans records compiled by USA TODAY. The data, provided by the Army, Navy and Department of Veterans Affairs, show that about five times as many troops sustained brain trauma as the 4,471 officially listed by the Pentagon through Sept. 30.

Concern over firefighters' anti-terror role
WASHINGTON - Firefighters in major cities are being trained to take on a new role as lookouts for terrorism, raising concerns of eroding their standing as American icons and infringing on people's privacy. Unlike police, firefighters and emergency medical personnel don't need warrants to access hundreds of thousands of homes and buildings each year, putting them in a position to spot behavior that could indicate terrorist activity or planning.

Just Off Insular Senate Floor, Life of the Uninsured Intrudes
Sergio A. Olaya, (who) runs the Capitol elevators on which the senators ride…, is struggling with $255,000 of medical bills incurred by his mother before she died in April from an aggressive form of brain cancer… Senators have access to a wide range of insurance options through the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program. Congress has its own “attending physician”… For more serious problems, they can use nearby military hospitals.

$52M-plus payday for Christie's old boss
When U.S. Attorney Christopher Christie announced a $311 million settlement to end a probe into kickbacks by leading manufacturers of knee and hip replacements, he touted the agreement as a groundbreaking development for consumers and the industry. The deal also proved to be lucrative for Christie's old boss. Former U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft was one of five private attorneys whom Christie hand-picked to monitor the implant makers. Now Ashcroft's D.C.-based firm is poised to collect more than $52 million in 18 months, among the biggest payouts reported for a federal monitor.

SEC Opens Investigation of Company Headed by Key Supporter of Clintons
The Securities and Exchange Commission has launched an investigation into InfoUSA, a Nebraska company that used corporate funds to fly Hillary Rodham Clinton around the country, and one of only two companies to put Bill Clinton on its payroll after he left the White House. The firm, a major provider of database-processing services, disclosed little about the nature of the probe in a filing to shareholders released yesterday.
Has the SEC been politicized, too? The question has to be asked whenever Democratic donors are investigated. See the damage you’ve done, right wingers?—Caro

Social Security to become key issue
WASHINGTON - Three years after the collapse of President Bush's plan for private Social Security accounts, Republican presidential contenders are eager to try again. Not so the Democrats, who gravitate toward increasing payroll taxes on upper-income earners to fix the program's finances.
IT’S MEDICARE, NOT SOCIAL SECURITY, that needs fixing. How many times do we have to scream it before the Beltway insiders acknowledge that fact?—Caro

Media

Permanent link to MTA daily media news

I will be a guest on Tony Seton’s America Back on Track today at 3:30 PM ET. Listen to Tony from 3:00 to 4:00 PM ET every weekday on the Quality News Network.

Bland Menu if Cable Goes à la Carte
As appealing as à la carte cable may sound, there is a reason that Congress has not taken the bait: it would be a consumer disaster… (E)ven if you pick as few as a dozen channels, à la carte will almost surely cost more than your current “exorbitant” cable bill. The reason is that unmoored from the cable bundle, individual networks would have to charge vastly more money per subscriber.
And as I have said for years, we have this exact same problem with subscriptions for other media outlets, including blogs. We could be much more powerful if we banded together to bundle contributions.

On Friday, we got the news that BuzzFlash haslost the bit of subsidy it had been receiving, and now has to be completely funded by contributions and by sales through its Progressive Marketplace. If you have a website or a blog, you can become an affiliate to sell BuzzFlash items. Since BuzzFlash stocks its items, it’s able to buy wholesale and share the profits with other progressive websites. I’ve signed up, and I hope you will, too. We can help ourselves by helping each other, if we only get creative about it, as BuzzFlash has.—Caro

Memo To New York Post: The Bush Administration Was Warned About 9/11
New York Post reporter Andy Soltis writes of the latest Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll that finds a great majority of Americans believe the government failed to heed warnings about 9/11. Soltis writes that this poll shows increasing support for 9/11 “conspiracy theories”… The alarming nature of the Scripps poll is not that 62 percent of Americans believe the government ignored warnings of 9/11; it’s that nearly 40 percent still aren’t aware of that fact.
Does Soltis read his own newspaper? See below a front page of the New York Post from May of 2002. Click here, here, and here for excerpts of articles that I collected after 9/11 documenting the many warnings that the administration received. Many of the links no longer work, but each excerpt contains enough information to find it on Lexis-Nexis.—Caro

Drama Queen fundie Janet Folger’s unhinged vision of the future (by Pam Spaulding at Pandagon)
(At WorldNetDaily, Faith2Action’s Janet Folger warns) of what would happen if Democrats, specifically Hillary Clinton, are in charge. She believes that she and the rest of the bible-beating crowd will be imprisoned for their beliefs. It’s the end of the world as Janet knows it — among other things, the U.S. will be overrun with homosexualists and abortionists, and home schoolers will be under attack by the state.
Remember that one of the under-the-radar rumors promoted by fundamentalist Christians in the 2004 election was that if John Kerry won, Democrats would take away their Bibles. If that’s what you have to do to win an election, your party should never, ever win an election. It doesn’t work so well if people are inoculated by being warned to look for the nonsense. It didn’t work in Australia. See below.—Caro

Howard election campaign hit by dirty tricks scandal
The election strategy of the Australian prime minister, John Howard, was in turmoil today after members of his Liberal party were caught red-handed in an inept dirty tricks campaign. Bogus flyers from a fake organisation called the Islamic Australia Federation were distributed through the letterboxes of voters in a marginal seat, claiming the Labor opposition sympathised with Islamic terrorists.
Has Karl Rove been to Australia lately?—Caro
Racist science for choads (by Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon)
(I)t looks like Michael Medved is going to be a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute… Medved is no scientist, just a dedicated culture war soldier. Which of course means that the Discovery Institute is less interested in discovery than in squelching any perceived threat to the cultural dominance of white Christians of a fundamentalist stripe. Medved no doubt was hired because of his willingness to lie, deceive, conceal, and distract from any realities that clash with his and the Discovery Institute’s culture war goals.

Silly New Wingnut Meme: Democrats Are The "Party Of The Rich" (by Greg Sargent at The Horse’s Mouth)
The winger bloggers and commentators are starting to push a silly new meme: That Democrats, not Republicans, are the "party of the rich." The basis for this? A new "study" done by the Heritage Foundation… The key data point backing up the claim is that Dems "now represent the majority of the nation's wealthiest congressional districts."… (But the) chief data point just doesn't support the claim.
Here’s what I wrote to one of my right wingers who tried to taunt me with this information: So you're helping them get richer, which helps them donate more to liberal causes. And they don't even want your help! Stupidest of the stupid.—Caro

The Clinton campaign's lesson for the Democrats: How to fight back (by John Aravosis at AMERICAblog)•
Like her or hate her, Hillary Clinton's people know how to fight back. It's a lesson that Democrats should take to heart and replicate. I'm still not convinced that Hillary is proactive enough on issues that matter to her, on things she actually believes in rather than things her pollster has come up with, but when they're attacked they know how to fight back.

Pressure for Results: The Politics of Tallying the Number of Iraqis Who Return Home
By all accounts, Iraqi families who fled their homes in the past two years are returning to Baghdad. The description of the scope of the return, however, appears to have been massaged by politics. Returnees have essentially become a currency of progress. Under intense pressure to show results after months of political stalemate, the government has continued to publicize figures that exaggerate the movement back to Iraq and Iraqis’ confidence that the current lull in violence can be sustained.

Red tide rising (by Paul Krugman)
The fall in the federal deficit since 2003 has been widely used by conservatives — including the Bush administration and all the leading candidates for the GOP presidential nomination — as proof that tax cuts actually increase revenue. So here’s a heads-up: the good times are about to stop rolling. The key factor in rising revenue hasn’t been a growing economy — it has been a surge in corporate taxes as a share of GDP. But now profits are falling. Revenue will follow — and the deficit is about to get bigger again.
It will be Bill Clinton’s fault.—Caro

NPR Thinks That Medicare Is Socialized Medicine (by Dean Baker)
That is the only possible conclusion that one can draw from its report this morning on the health care proposals of the presidential candidates. It asserted that Dennis Kucinich explicitly supports "socialized medicine." Kucinich has openly supported a universal Medicare plan that would extend a Medicare-like insurance program to the entire population… Is NPR really unable to find a reporter who recognizes this distinction or did it feel a need to slur ("socialized medicine" is a slur in the current political context) Dennis Kucinich for some reason?

High Empathy (Mostly Women), Low Empathy (Mostly Men) and the Movies
New research suggests that producers of emotional films can increase their male audience by emphasizing the films’ disconnection from reality.
Gosh! Do we really need MORE disconnection from reality?—Caro

Technology & Science

Torvalds On Where Linux Is Headed In 2008
The creator of Linux is excited about solid-state drives, expects progress in graphics and wireless networking, and says the operating system is strong in virtualization despite his personal lack of interest in the area.

Keep Selling the Cheap Laptop, Supporter Urges
As commercial sales of One Laptop Per Child's XO laptop close Monday, a user tracking the nonprofit effort said continued commercial availability of the laptop could benefit OLPC's nonprofit effort, the XO manufacturer and children using it as a learning tool.

School to track pupils with radio chips sewn into their uniforms
Children are to be tracked in school via radio chips sewn into their uniforms. The manufacturer is marketing the Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) surveillance system nationwide, following a trial with 19 pupils at Hungerhill School in Doncaster this year. The chip is embroidered into school uniforms using conductive 'smart threads'. A teacher can then scan these to view the pupil's identity, photo, whether they misbehaved in lessons and their school attendence record.

Teen Boys at Growing Risk for Eating Disorders
Decade of data shows increase in weight-control behaviors across cultures

Saline Irrigation Eases Chronic Nasal Symptoms
Salt water rinse of the airway beats saline sprays at providing relief, study finds

Many Treatments Can Ease Chronic Pain
More often than not, chronic pain is untreated or undertreated, but it does not have to be this way.

Sleep Problems Plague the Older Set
But they don't have to be an inherent part of aging, experts say

Amateurs Unravel Russia’s Last Royal Mystery
A discovery may have finally put to rest rumors that two of the children of Czar Nicholas II had escaped execution.

Can Airplanes Fly into Outer Space?
According to NASA, any vehicle hoping launch into orbit has to travel about seven miles per second (11 kps), or about 25,000 mph (40,000 kph). (Your) average sub-sonic airliner, of course, doesn't fly near that fast. There's also fuel problem too.

Spacewalkers Wire up Space Station's New Room
Two spacewalking astronauts wired up the International Space Station's (ISS) newest room Saturday, capping a month-long marathon of work to prepare for the December arrival of a new European laboratory.

Environment

Christmas Trees to Bear 'Green' Tags
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP)—Picking a Christmas tree is typically a matter of taste. Is the shape right? Is it too tall? Too short? Now a handful of growers in the top Christmas tree producing state of Oregon want people to consider another factor—how "green'' a tree is. They've created a system to help consumers identify trees grown under certain environmental standards.

Natural disasters have quadrupled in two decades: study
More than four times the number of natural disasters are occurring now than did two decades ago, British charity Oxfam said in a study Sunday that largely blamed global warming.

Australia's new PM Rudd acts swiftly on climate
BRISBANE (Reuters) - Australia's new prime minister, Kevin Rudd, made climate change his top priority on Sunday, seeking advice on ratifying the Kyoto pact and telling Indonesia he will go to December's UN climate summit in Bali.

British Firms Urge Action on Climate
In an unprecedented joint effort, 18 of Britain’s top companies, including carmakers, airlines, retailers and banks, are pledging a push to reduce carbon emissions.

Meat, poultry, vegetables feel heat from global warming
HYDERABAD, India (AFP) - From meat, poultry and milk to potatoes, onions and leafy greens, everything consumed on the world's dining tables is feeling the heat from climate change, scientists say.

Scientists urge $2-3 billion study of ocean health
OSLO (Reuters) - Marine scientists called on Sunday for a $2-3 billion study of threats such as overfishing and climate change to the oceans, saying they were as little understood as the Moon.

Nanosolar’s Breakthrough - Solar Now Cheaper than Coal
The Nanosolar company … (has) successfully created a solar coating that is the most cost-efficient solar energy source ever. Their PowerSheet cells contrast the current solar technology systems by reducing the cost of production from $3 a watt to a mere 30 cents per watt. This makes, for the first time in history, solar power cheaper than burning coal. These coatings are as thin as a layer of paint and can transfer sunlight to power at amazing efficiency.

Motorhead Messiah
Johnathan Goodwin can get 100 mpg out of a Lincoln Continental, cut emissions by 80%, and double the horsepower. Does the car business have the guts to follow him?

For more headlines, visit MakeThemAccountable.com.

boy, the media again sweeps another story under the rug. Despicable.

Pay attention before you criticize.

Caro

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