EXTRA! EXTRA! PEOPLE ARE IDIOTS and believe in ghosts!; Johnny Cash's Daughter Slams Republicans; Jon Stewart was Wrong; The Conservative Media Paints False Picture of Election; Tea Party FAILS; more

- Republicans Didn't Win a Majority to Deny Our Care While a recent New York Times/CBS poll showed the public split over on the new [health care reform] law, only one-quarter of repeal supporters stuck with their position when told repeal would mean that insurance companies would no longer be required to cover people with medical conditions or prior illnesses.

- Buck Up People...Progressives Won! ...the Congressional Progressive Caucus, the largest caucus in the House Democratic Caucus at over 80 members, emerged virtually unscathed, losing only three members.

By constrast, the conservative Blue Dog Democratic caucus was more than sliced in half from 54 members to only 26. Further, of the 34 conservative Dems who voted against Obama's Healthcare Reform, a mere 12 won re-election.

- Rich Media, Poor Democracy As the 2010 elections come to a close, the biggest winner of all remains undeclared: the broadcasters. The biggest loser: democracy. These were the most expensive midterm elections in U.S. history, costing close to $4 billion, $3 billion of which went to advertising. What if ad time were free? We hear no debate about this, because the media corporations are making such a killing by selling campaign ads. Yet the broadcasters are using public airwaves.

- 10 Steps to Take Now After a Brutal Election

- Just 32% of Tea Party candidates win For all the talk of the Tea Party's strength [by the conservative mainstream media] ... just 32% of all Tea Party candidates who ran for Congress won and 61.4% lost this election.

- Barack Obama's Green Agenda Crushed at the Ballot Box With a slew of new climate change deniers entering Congress, Barack Obama's environmental ambitions are now dead

- WikiLeaks Founder Urges US to Investigate Alleged Abuse by Its Troops The founder of whistleblowing website WikiLeaks has called on the US to investigate alleged abuses by its troops in Afghanistan and Iraq

- Zogby Interactive: 37% Believe in Ghosts & 23% Say They Have Been Visited by the Dead A Zogby Interactive poll found that 37% say they believe in human or animal ghosts, 23% believe they have been visited by a dead relative or friend, and 20% say they have seen or heard a ghost. Another 22% say that while they have not experienced a ghost, they know someone who says they have.

- Johnny Cash’s daughter to GOP chief: Stop using my father’s name, you ‘asshat’ he daughter of star singer Johnny Cash has some harsh words for the Republican Party's House leader.

Notes Gawker, "Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) has been using a dumb—trust me, really dumb—line involving Johnny Cash in some recent speeches. Cash's daughter Roseanne doesn't think much of that. And she let Boehner know, by calling him 'asshat.'"


Jon Stewart's "Rally for Sanity" Ignored Reality
When Jon Stewart said the Left and Right were equal, he ignored the facts.
Also read this.

Sean

Global Warming Still Reality; US Imperialism; Large Scale Farms (that feed mostly meat industry) Destroy World; more (posted 12/04/09)

- Chomsky Speaks on US Imperialism Chomsky, Professor Emeritus of Linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, came to Columbia on Thursday to discuss hypocrisy and "schizophrenia" in American foreign policy from the early settlers to George W. Bush.

- The Privatized War in Afghanistan

- Amy Goodman's Border Woes Have Americans in a Tizzy The alleged hounding and 90-minute detention of U.S. broadcaster Amy Goodman by Canadian border guards demanding to know her views on the Olympics is making waves throughout the U.S., and none of it is good for Canada's reputation.

- Victory at Last!: Monty Python in Afghanistan A stale crew breathing stale air has ensured that Afghanistan, the first of Bush's disastrous wars, is now truly Obama's War; and the news came directly from West Point where the president surrendered to his militarized fate.

- Wendell Berry: Large-Scale Farms Killing Land as Well as Towns A passive populace obsessed with easy answers has led to an economy that is destroying America's land, author Wendell Berry told a packed-in crowd at the University of Virginia on Thursday evening. "Simple solutions will always lead to complex problems, surprising simple minds," he said.

- America's Regression ... it's virtually impossible to find a country with as high a percentage of torture supporters as the U.S. has. In Iran, for instance, only 36% believe that torture can be justified in some cases, while 43% believe all torture must be strictly prohibited. Similarly, 66% of Palestinians, 54% of Egyptians, and over 80% of Western Europeans believe torture is always wrong. The U.S. has a far lower percentage than all of those nations of individuals who believe that torture should always be prohibited. At least on the level of the citizenry (as opposed to government), we're basically the leading torture advocacy state in the world.


An Open Letter to Congress From US Scientists on Climate Change and Recently Stolen Emails
by Climate Experts
Published on Friday, December 4, 2009 by CommonDreams.org (click to see signatories)

As U.S. scientists with substantial expertise on climate change and its impacts on natural ecosystems, our built environment and human well-being, we want to assure policy makers and the public of the integrity of the underlying scientific research and the need for urgent action to reduce heat-trapping emissions. In the last few weeks, opponents of taking action on climate change have misrepresented both the content and the significance of stolen emails to obscure public understanding of climate science and the scientific process.

We would like to set the record straight.

The body of evidence that human activity is the dominant cause of global warming is overwhelming. The content of the stolen emails has no impact whatsoever on our overall understanding that human activity is driving dangerous levels of global warming. The scientific process depends on open access to methodology, data, and a rigorous peer-review process. The robust exchange of ideas in the peer-reviewed literature regarding climate science is evidence of the high degree of integrity in this process.

As the recent letter to Congress from 18 leading U.S. scientific organizations, including the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Meteorological Society, states:

"Observations throughout the world make it clear that climate change is occurring, and rigorous scientific research demonstrates that the greenhouse gases emitted by human activities are the primary driver. These conclusions are based on multiple independent lines of evidence, and contrary assertions are inconsistent with an objective assessment of the vast body of peer-reviewed science. … If we are to avoid the most severe impacts of climate change, emissions of greenhouse gases must be dramatically reduced."

These "multiple independent lines of evidence" are drawn from numerous public and private research centers all across the United States and beyond, including several independent analyses of surface temperature data. Even without including analyses from the UK research center from which the emails were stolen, the body of evidence underlying our understanding of human-caused global warming remains robust.

We urge you to take account of this as you make decisions on climate policy.

Sean