Tag: Punting the Pundits

It all began taking shape back in March of 2013, when Sandra Steingraber – the noted biologist, author, educator and advisor of Americans Against Fracking – and 11 other courageous individuals were arrested for blockading the entrance to a natural gas compressor station on the banks of Seneca Lake, in the environmentally sensitive Finger Lakes region of upstate New York. These so-called “Seneca Lake 12” were simply doing what countless other Americans have done over generations when they knew their health and safety were threatened, when their elected leaders weren’t there to help, and when they had no other choice: they stood up for their neighbors, their families and themselves, and were hauled off to jail. Sandra spent 10 days behind bars after defiantly refusing to pay a fine.

The narrative of the Seneca Lake 12 is becoming all too familiar, as concerned residents across the nation are often finding no legal means of resistance against the incessant development of dangerous fossil fuel infrastructure spurred on by fracking. Thanks to the decimation of campaign finance laws by the U.S. Supreme Court, state and federal politicians have become increasingly bought off by the unlimited wealth of the oil and gas industry. As such, pleas from desperate local officials and community groups to reject hazardous infrastructure projects fall on deaf ears.

Amanda Marcotte: If anti-feminists believe false rape accusations are common, why don’t they warn men to protect themselves?

Having read, sadly, a shocking number of people who engage in rape apology, one of the weirdest things about it is how the same person can simultaneously argue 1) that rape isn’t real but is simply women getting revenge because they didn’t get a post-one-night-stand phone call and 2) that women only have themselves to blame if they’re victimized because they partied/willingly had sex/wore something slutty. This seems like a contradiction to me because if women aren’t actually under real threat of rape, why would they have to take precautions? If rape isn’t a thing that happens, then there’s no reason to be careful.

But the contradiction really goes deeper than that, I realized upon reading about Lincoln University president Robert R. Jennings’s lecture to young women about their supposedly awful behavior around men. Jennings was trotting out the usual rape-isn’t-real-but-it’s-on-women-to-stop-the-thing-we-don’t-call-rape contradictory argument, but his argument really drove home how nonsensical it all is.

Maya Schenwar: Prisons Are Destroying Communities and Making All of Us Less Safe

Isolation does not “rehabilitate” people. Disappearance does not deter harm. And prison does not keep us safe.

“Prison,” writes Angela Davis, “performs a feat of magic.” As massive numbers of homeless, hungry, unemployed, drug-addicted, illiterate, and mentally ill people vanish behind its walls, the social problems of extreme poverty, homelessness, hunger, unemployment, drug addiction, illiteracy, and mental illness become more ignorable, too. But, as Davis notes, “prisons do not disappear problems, they disappear human beings.” And the caging and erasure of those human beings, mostly people of color and poor people, perpetuates a cycle in which large groups are cut off from “mainstream society” and denied the freedoms, opportunities, civic dignity, and basic needs that allow them a good life.

In many jails and prisons, incarcerated people are tossed into a dank, dungeon-like solitary confinement cell when they are determined to have “misbehaved.” It’s dubbed “the Hole.” Isolated and dark, it shuts out almost all communication with fellow prisoners and the outside. Guards control the terms of confinement and the channels-if any-by which words can travel in and out. The Hole presents a stark symbol of the institution of prison in its entirety, which functions on the tenets of disappearance, isolation, and disposability. The “solution” to our social problems-the mechanism that’s supposed to “keep things together”-amounts to destruction: the disposal of vast numbers of human beings, the breaking down of families, and the shattering of communities. Prison is tearing society apart.

Stephennie Mulder: The blood antiquities funding ISIL

The sale of illegal antiquities is now estimated to be ISIL’s second-largest revenue stream after oil.

Recently, in an exclusive event at New York’s Metropolitan Museum, Secretary of State John Kerry stood – with perhaps unintended irony – before the facade of the ancient Egyptian Temple of Dendur to back an initiative to track losses of Syrian and Iraqi antiquities, including the destruction of monuments and looting of precious objects from archaeological sites.

Kerry blamed “barbaric” practices of groups like the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), who profit by sponsoring highly organised groups of looters who sell the objects, fresh from the ground, to middlemen.

But one might ask: Who buys them?

It’s politically advantageous to blame ISIL. But it is another barbarism, one that unfolds in the hushed and elegant showrooms of antiquities merchants and auction houses in the Middle East, Europe and the United States, that is the true engine of this commerce.

Antiquities trafficking is a booming business in Syria and Iraq, and not only ISIL is to blame. Syrian government forces have been filmed piling delicately carved funerary statues from Roman-era Palmyra into the back of a pick-up truck, and at the ancient site of Apamea, a capital of the successors to Alexander the Great, the sudden appearance of a vast, lunar landscape of over 4,000 illegal excavation holes indicate it was also looted while under the army’s control.

There’s a powerful solution for disclosing the secret-money sloshing around in our political system. It does not require an act of Congress or action from any of the effectively toothless campaign-finance watchdogs, like the Federal Election Commission. In fact, this solution could be passed in an instant, and the only requirement for action is political will.

President Barack Obama can issue an executive order today that requires government contractors to disclose their dark-money campaign contributions.

Why doesn’t he? And why don’t campaign-finance-reform organizations push for such a fix?

Paul Buccheit: The Billion Dollar a Month Club: A Runaway Transfer of Wealth to the Super-Rich

Our national wealth has grown by an astonishing $30 trillion since the recession, but most of it has gone to people who were already wealthy.

We are living through a massive redistribution of America’s net worth to the beneficiaries of a financial industry that has used cunning and money and power to impose their version of economic “freedom” while deregulating any policies that might have stopped the incessant transfer of wealth.

It’s getting worse, by the year and by the month. President Obama’s claim that “We’ve recovered faster and come farther than almost any other advanced country on Earth” applies largely to the people whose wealth accumulation has dramatically pulled up the averages. The evidence is staring us in the face, but the super-rich are only watching their portfolios.

William Hartung: The Escalation of the War in Iraq Is Grounded in Fantasy

Of the many fallacies underlying the current U.S. military intervention in Iraq, the greatest may be the idea that the United States has a reliable partner in the government of Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi. In his Face the Nation interview, President Obama tied the latest escalation of the war to his trust in the new Iraqi government: “Phase one was getting an Iraqi government that was inclusive and credible — and we now have done that.”

The idea that the Abadi government is inclusive will come as news to people in Iraq. In one of his most consequential decisions since taking office, Abadi appointed Mohammed Salem al-Ghabban, a member of the Badr Organization, as interior minister. The Badr organization is run by Hadi al-Amiri. According to a U.S. embassy cable released by Wikileaks, Amiri ordered the torture and killing of over 2,000 Sunnis between 2004 and 2006 during a campaign of ethnic cleansing in Baghdad. One of the torture methods involved using a power drill to pierce the skull of the victims. [..]

Government-sanctioned violence against Sunnis is not a thing of the past. In the aftermath of a series of successful counter-attacks against Islamic State (also known as ISIS) in Diyala province — attacks in which Amiri was given control of all Iraqi forces — Sunnis in the area suffered torture, executions, and the burning of entire villages at the hands of Shiite militias that had fought alongside Iraqi security forces.

Les Leopold: As Bad As You Think It Is, It’s Worse: Wage Theft Comes to America

In Denmark fast food workers make $20 an hour plus benefits, and the corporations who employ them are still profitable. Why there and not here?

The answer is simple and painful — wage theft. In America corporations are systematically stealing our wages. Virtually everyone in the bottom 95 percent of the income distribution now suffers from wage theft… perhaps, including you!

It starts at the bottom of the income ladder. Many undocumented immigrant day labors survive by standing on street corners and selling their labor to drive-by construction and landscaping contractors. Unfortunately, far too many contractors refuse to pay after the work is done, something experienced by nearly every day-laborer.

We have entered the fourth official month of the latest war without end in the Middle East, and the Obama administration has suddenly doubled America’s troop presence in Iraq – yet there is no approved declaration of war in sight. The so-called “moderate” Syrian rebels receiving millions in weapons are now being defeated, and those same weapons are ending up in the hands of al-Qaida – yet there is no public sign of dialing back in the fight again the Islamic State.

You would think the faces of the mainstream American press would start questioning the White House’s strategy of perpetual war, but you’d be wrong. The drumbeat seems louder than ever; the challengers of power are nearly silent.

Fresh off his party’s drubbing in the US midterm elections, Obama appeared Sunday on Face the Nation, as a meek Bob Schieffer of CBS News lobbed weak questions at the president on his Isis war policy. It was a quintessential example of how some in the mainstream American press have refused to ask critical questions about our new Forever War – even as the most important questions stare everyone in the face.

Sen. Bernie Sanders: US voter turnout is an international embarrassment. Here’s how to fix it

Americans should be embarrassed. The low voter turnout on Election Day last week in the United States was an international disgrace.

What has become of a democratic form of government that Abraham Lincoln said was “of the people, by the people, for the people“? Can we be satisfied with a “democracy” when more than 60% of people don’t vote and some 80% of young people and low-income Americans don’t either? Can we be content when poll after poll shows that most Americans can’t even name the political parties that control the US Senate and House – or who their member of Congress is?

Nationwide, preliminary indications show that the total turnout in the US midterms was only 36.6%. If these estimates hold true, 2014 will be the least representative election in modern American history. When billionaires and corporations tilt elections, conservatives suppress voting and crucial voters feel unengaged, what kind of example for the world is that?

Robert Kuttner: The Cure for the Democrats’ Woes — Goldman Sachs!

After the Democrats’ drubbing in the 2014 midterm elections, there have been fervent debates about whether the Party should embrace an economic populism to tap pocketbook frustrations — or move further to the center in the hopes of capturing more independents.

One thing the Democrats did throughout Obama’s nearly six years was move closer to Wall Street — from the economic team Obama appointed, to the administration’s premature embrace of deficit reduction promoted by financial moguls, to a bailout plan that shored up the biggest banks rather than breaking them up.

It was this coziness with big finance that allowed the far-right Tea Party movement to paint Wall Street and Washington with the same brush — and to capture much of the populist rage on display against Democrats in the 2010 midterms and once again on November 4.

So the last thing Democrats need going forward is an even closer affinity with Wall Street, right? Well, the Democrats may soon get even cozier.

Hannah Giorgis: Beyond ‘Hands Up, Don’t Shoot’: what if there’s no indictment in Ferguson?

Black lives matter? It’s tough to keep saying something like that – to shout it in anything but protest – with this impending reality: At some point in the next few days, it’s likely that Darren Wilson will not be indicted, by the US justice department or the state of Missouri, for the extrajudicial killing of Michael Brown – an 18-year-old unarmed black man – in Ferguson, in broad daylight, three long months ago. [..]

But to understand a non-indictment in Ferguson as simply par for the course in the United States case is not to say that Brown’s life is unworthy of defending, nor that his death and its international aftermath are unworthy of redress. This reality check simply locates another officer in the context of the white supremacist law-enforcement apparatus that defends him in lieu of protecting its (black) citizens, that operates with impunity. And for the rest of us to view black life as worthy of defending, to unequivocally repeat that black lives matter in a world that insists otherwise, is a radical act – if a tiresome one.

The hard truth about no justice for Mike Brown is that we must reassess our standards for justice to create a kind of peace – for his family, for Ferguson, and for those of whose anger and grief emerge anew each time a black life is taken without consequence.

In the wake of the 2014 midterm “wave election,” Americans will soon find out whether they actually want what they have wrought. The polls tell us that too many voters are weary of President Barack Obama, including a significant number who actually voted for him two years ago. Polls likewise suggest that most voters today repose more trust in Republicans on such fundamental issues as economic growth, national security and budget discipline. But do they want what Republicans in control will do now?

If they are faithful to their beliefs, the Republican leaders in Washington will now seek to advance a set of policies that are simply repugnant to the public-most notably in the Paul Ryan budget, which many Republicans have signed up to promote (though the caucus of ultra-right Republicans considers that wild plan too “moderate”).

Eugene Robinson: In Need of a Rebuilding Plan

All right, all right, I didn’t see the wave coming. All those margin-of-error polls seemed to suggest that Democrats would likely hold their own-probably not keep the Senate but make a respectable showing overall. Wrong.

All the caveats are true. It was a midterm, when the incumbent president’s party usually gets a comeuppance. The Senate losses were within historical norms. In other races, some of the high-profile Republican victories involved incumbents who managed to survive after the scare of their political lives, such as Govs. Rick Scott of Florida, Scott Walker of Wisconsin and Sam Brownback of Kansas.

But no, this turned out to be a genuine wave-one with serious implications for 2016 and beyond.

David Sirota: Tuesday Probably Meant Nothing for 2016

The dramatic, across-the-board victory engineered by Republicans in Tuesday’s elections would seem to bode well for the party’s chance to capture the White House in 2016. The GOP took full control of Congress, flipped at least four governor’s offices from blue to red, and prompted much talk of a resurgent Republican movement.

Not so fast. A more careful look at the returns significantly complicates the narrative that an American electorate, which recently tilted Democratic, has since shifted back to the Republican fold.

In fact, the 2014 election results appear to say more about who did not vote than who did: Younger voters and minority communities stayed home in large numbers, as is typical during a midterm election. If trends from the last two presidential elections hold, those same groups are likely to be far more energized during the next White House campaign, making Tuesday’s results of limited value in predicting 2016.

Richard Brodsky: Cuomo Wins!/Loses! III

Twice before in the last 60 days I’ve posted pieces with the above title. It was true then and it’s true now.

Normally a 13-point win in a down year for Democrats would be good news for the victor. But the Cuomo campaign and his overarching strategy of the past four years were political disasters of a kind you rarely see.

Remember 1) he raised close to $50 million, 10 times his opposition; 2) he had been widely praised for bringing functionality back to New York; 3) New York is reliably blue. One Republican statewide victory and 19 Democratic victories since 2000; 4) he had cajoled and bullied business, labor and the Legislature into submission; no one had ever heard of his opponent; and 5) going into 2014 his poll numbers were excellent.

In spite of all this, he ended up with a primary that was embarrassingly close, a general election that was 10 points worse than his last run and a resurgent progressive third party — the Green Party, of all things. Editorial boards either opposed him or explicitly held their noses and endorsed him. His campaign appearances were sour and depressing and voter turnout was the lowest in 85 years.

Candidate George W. Bush promised an ‘ownership society’ in 2000, but his policies reduced Americans’ share in ownership

When George W. Bush ran for president in 2000, one of his major campaign themes was creating an “ownership society,” in which a larger share of Americans owned homes, securities and other assets.

“Ownership in our society should not be an exclusive club,” he said at a Rancho Cucamonga, California, campaign stop. “Independence should not be a gated community. Everyone should be a part owner in the American dream.”

In 2003 he followed through on his promises by persuading Congress to cut tax rates on dividends by as much as 57 percent and reduce the top rate on capital gains from 20 percent to 15 percent, saying it would encourage more people to own stocks. [..]

So did his tax cuts and easy mortgage loans help make more Americans part-owners of the American dream? No. Instead what followed was a severe narrowing of ownership.

Home ownership last year fell to its lowest level since 1995, long before Bush took office. The rate is expected to drift further down because a weak job market and falling wages mean fewer people can afford to buy homes.

In the case of stocks and dividends, there has been an enormous concentration in the pockets of the richest Americans, my new analysis of official data from the Internal Revenue Service shows.  

Peter nas Buren: Shooting Ourselves in the Foot in Afghanistan

Did you know the U.S. war in Afghanistan is still going on?

While the American war(s) in Iraq and Syria are the Kardashian’s of geopolitics- can’t get them out of the news, don’t want to look but you do anyway- America’s longest war trudges on. We have been fighting in Afghanistan for over thirteen years now. The young soldiers currently deployed there were barely in elementary school when their dad’s and mom’s kicked off the fighting.

And we still haven’t won anything. The Taliban are still there and very potent and dangerous, a corrupt government still runs the country as a kleptocracy, “ally” Pakistan is still playing all sides against one another and the Afghan economy still relies heavily on opium production that finds its way back home here to America. Al Qaeda may have departed Afghanistan, but the franchise is still strong in its new home(s). Defeated? No, just relocated.

Paul Krugman: Triumph of the Wrong

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet midterms to men of understanding. Or as I put it on the eve of another Republican Party sweep, politics determines who has the power, not who has the truth. Still, it’s not often that a party that is so wrong about so much does as well as Republicans did on Tuesday.

I’ll talk in a bit about some of the reasons that may have happened. But it’s important, first, to point out that the midterm results are no reason to think better of the Republican position on major issues. I suspect that some pundits will shade their analysis to reflect the new balance of power – for example, by once again pretending that Representative Paul Ryan’s budget proposals are good-faith attempts to put America’s fiscal house in order, rather than exercises in deception and double-talk. But Republican policy proposals deserve more critical scrutiny, not less, now that the party has more ability to impose its agenda.

So now is a good time to remember just how wrong the new rulers of Congress have been about, well, everything.

Howie Hawkins: America just took a wrong turn. It’s time to take a hard left

Double down on oil and trouble? Not so fast: fracking bans in oil country and common sense on infrastructure might turn the US a deeper shade of green between now and 2016

Sometimes it feels as if Sarah Palin won the last two presidential elections. We’re not quite living in “Drill Baby Drill” America, but by co-opting the other Republican energy slogan, a meaningless plan literally called “All-of-the-Above”, President Obama has opened up vast new areas to offshore drilling and pushed hydrofracking for oil and gas onshore. Even as the president says that “we are closer to energy independence than we’ve ever been before”, sometimes it seems like the US is becoming a repressive petrostate. [..]

But there were real victories this week for progressive alternatives on clean energy, economic security and social justice. The extremist blood bath may have painted the country more red, but there were more than a few important – and extremely promising – tea leaves of green. It was even enough to suggest a new, independent, hard-left turn in American politics is still very much possible.

The midterm elections in a president’s second term have historically been a time when the president’s party lost seats in both houses of Congress.  Only a little over a third of the electorate typically votes in these elections, and they are disproportionately white, wealthy and elderly.  In short, a different country voted in 2014 than had voted in 2012, a deep red country.  It is not surprising, then, that the GOP gained control of the Senate.

How could the change affect foreign policy?  The president has wide latitude in making foreign policy and even in making war.  Nevertheless, Congress is not helpless in that realm.  It controls the purse strings via the budget and can forbid the president to spend money on some enterprise (that is how the GOP House blocked the closure of the Guantanamo facility).  The Republican majority now does not have to negotiate with Democratic senators in crafting bills, and it can easily attach riders to key pieces of legislation, making it difficult for the president to veto them.  That was how Congress made the Obama administration implement the financial blockade of Iran’s petroleum sales, by attaching it to the Defense Bill.

E. J. Dionne, Jr.: Worse Than 2010

For Democrats, the 2014 election was not the 2010 Republican landslide. It was worse.

Four years ago, the economy was still ailing and a new wave of conservative activism in the form of the tea party was roiling politics. This time, the economy was better, ideological energies on the right had abated-and Democrats suffered an even more stinging defeat. They lost Senate seats in presidential swing states such as Iowa, Colorado and North Carolina. They lost governorships in their most loyal bastions, from Massachusetts to Maryland to Illinois.

After a defeat of this scope, the sensible advice is usually, “Don’t overreact.” In this case, such advice would be wrong. Something-actually, many things-went badly for the progressive coalition on Tuesday. Its supporters were disheartened and unmotivated, failing to rally to President Obama and his party’s beleaguered candidates. And voters on the fence were left unpersuaded.

A dismissive shrug is inappropriate.

Robert Creamer: GOP Faces Dramatically Tougher New Battle Ground in 2016

It was certainly a tough night for Democrats. But if the GOP believes it has a mandate for the Tea Party agenda, it is sadly mistaken. Most Americans strongly support a progressive middle-class-first agenda. And most important, with the mid-term elections behind us, the 2016 political battlefield completely transforms the political high ground.

With the loss of the Senate and Republicans continuing to control the House, Democrats and progressives need to dig in for an epic battle with the Tea Party and the billionaires that are now in control of the Republican Party.

One bright spot — State referenda to increase the minimum wage passed everywhere they were on the ballot and in local jurisdictions like San Francisco that increased the wage to $15 per hour.

Robert Brosage: Debacle: Get Ready for the Real Fight

Debacle. Bloodbath. Call it what you will. Democrats, as expected, fared poorly in red states in an off-year election. Worse, unpopular Republican governors survived. This was ugly.

Yes, the electorate was as skewed as was the map. Many Republicans won office with the support of less than 20 percent of the eligible voters. Voters over 60 made up a stunning 37 percent of the electorate (up from 25 percent in 2012 or 32 percent in the last bi-election in 2010). Voters under 30 were only 12 percent of the electorate, down from 19 percent in 2012. Democrats won women, but lost white men big. Republicans lost ground with Hispanic voters, but in most of the contested states, they weren’t much of a factor.

The election was fundamentally about frustration with a recovery that most people haven’t enjoyed. Hysteria about ISIS and Ebola didn’t help, but wasn’t the central source of frustration. The Republican theme was to blame President Obama and tie Democrats to him, arousing their base. Democrats chose not to run nationally against Republican obstruction, assuming that technique and right-wing social reaction would mobilize their base.

Republicans would like the country to believe that they took control of the Senate on Tuesday by advocating a strong, appealing agenda of job creation, tax reform and spending cuts. But, in reality, they did nothing of the sort.

Even the voters who supported Republican candidates would have a hard time explaining what their choices are going to do. That’s because virtually every Republican candidate campaigned on only one thing: what they called the failure of President Obama. In speech after speech, ad after ad, they relentlessly linked their Democratic opponent to the president and vowed that they would put an end to everything they say the public hates about his administration. On Tuesday morning, the Republican National Committee released a series of get-out-the-vote images showing Mr. Obama and Democratic Senate candidates next to this message: “If you’re not a voter, you can’t stop Obama.” [..]

In theory, full control of Congress might give Republicans an incentive to reach compromise with Mr. Obama because they will need to show that they can govern rather than obstruct. They might, for example, be able to find agreement on a free-trade agreement with Pacific nations.

But their caucuses in the Senate and the House will be more conservative than before, and many winning candidates will feel obliged to live up to their promises of obstruction. Mr. McConnell has already committed himself to opposing a minimum-wage increase, fighting regulations on carbon emissions and repealing the health law.

Michelle Goldberg: People Voted for Republicans Last Night-That Doesn’t Mean They Like Them

Well, that was hideous. It was clear from the start that Democrats were going to have a bad night, but in the end it was worse than most expected. In North Carolina, Senator Kay Hagan, who was polling slightly ahead, lost to Thom Tillis, a candidate who once declared the necessity of getting citizens to “look down at these people who choose to get into a condition that makes them dependent on the government.” Iowa is sending Joni Ernst to the Senate, a woman who wants to abolish the EPA and has warned of a UN plot to forcibly relocate rural Americans into urban centers. Odious Republican governors like Rick Scott and Scott Walker kept their jobs, and the GOP won gubernatorial races in blue states like Massachusetts, Maryland and Illinois.

The strange thing, though, is that while the election was an overwhelming victory for conservatives, it really wasn’t a conservative mandate. That’s not just progressive spin — it’s hard to think of a single actual policy issue on which voters gave their endorsement to Republican plans. Voters are desperately unhappy with the economy, worried about chaos in the Middle East and the spread of Ebola at home. The mood of the country, if it’s possible to generalize, is sour, anxious and suspicious, and many, particularly the white male voters whose overwhelming backing pushed Republicans over the top, hold President Obama responsible.

If Republicans make significant gains in Senate races Tuesday, then politics will be following pattern. Presidents who are elected by big margins initially and then re-elected comfortably tend to have a lousy time of it in their sixth years. [..]

If Republicans pick up the six seats they need to secure clear control of the Senate tonight-or after runoff elections in Louisiana and Georgia-that will be big news. But the real question is what happens with the governorships.

In a wave election, the party that wins big in congressional races also wins big in the states. That’s what happened in 2010, when Republicans took the US House, shifted plenty of Senate seats and made big gains in statehouses. That’s also what happened in a number of historic wave elections.

But will it happen tonight?

Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban: Elections 2014: Your Very Predictable Vote

As America completes another costly, polarized and exhausting election cycle, it’s commonplace to characterize our society as being divided into warring tribes of liberals and conservatives. But this view oversimplifies the causes of our political differences.

Most people aren’t ideologically pure, and most don’t derive their opinions from abstract ideologies and principles. People are more strongly influenced by the effects of policies on themselves, their families and their wider social networks. Their views, in short, are often based on self-interest. [..]

If the United States set policy simply by polling its residents, it would look quite different. There would be greater spending on the poor, health care, Social Security and education. Immigration would be reduced. School prayer would be allowed. Anti-American speech by Muslims would be restricted. Abortion would be legal in cases of rape and fetal deformity, but illegal if the abortion was motivated by not wanting more children, by being poor, or by being single.

Why doesn’t America look like this? Negotiations at the federal level result in more conservative economic policies, and more liberal social policies. That’s because they involve one set of highly educated, wealthy representatives negotiating with another, and the policies that result reflect their own core interests.

Leslie Savan: Why the Media Are Ignoring the Dangerous Ideas of Joni Ernst and Other Extremists Now on the Cusp of Power

Joni Ernst, who may become Iowa’s next senator, denies climate change, supports a personhood amendment and says she’d use her “beautiful little Smith & Wesson” to defend herself “from the government, should they decide that my rights are no longer important.” She’s also seriously flirted with a John Birch Society-backed conspiracy theory about an evil plot called Agenda 21.

But all you’d know from the corporate media is that Ernst made a really catchy ad about castrating pigs and that she is supposedly (but not really) the victim of a sexist remark made by outgoing Democratic senator Tom Harkin.

Norman Ornstein, the pundit who was once quoted all over until he dared to say that Republicans are the real obstructionists, explains such grand omissions brilliantly:

The most common press narrative for elections this year is to contrast them with the 2010 and 2012 campaigns. Back then, the GOP “establishment” lost control of its nominating process, ended up with a group of extreme Senate candidates who said wacky things-Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock, Sharron Angle-and snatched defeat from the jaws of victory in races that should have been slam dunks. Now the opposite has happened: The establishment has fought back and won, vanquishing the Tea Party and picking top-flight candidates who are disciplined and mainstream, dramatically unlike Akin and Angle.

It is a great narrative, a wonderful organizing theme. But any evidence that contradicts or clouds the narrative devalues it, which is perhaps why evidence to the contrary tends to be downplayed or ignored. Meantime, stories that show personal gaffes or bonehead moves by the opponents of these new, attractive mainstream candidates, fit that narrative and are highlighted.

Zaid Jilani: The looming disappointment of Michelle Nunn

A more populist campaign could have re-energized Georgia’s politics and saved the Senate for the Democrats

The nation’s political eyes have been on Georgia for the past several months, which, according to polls, has teetered on the edge of slipping into the blue column for the first time in 12 years. The races for governor and the U.S. Senate have been competitive (though Republicans have a clear edge going into Election Day), not to mention a host of down-ticket elections, for the first time since 2002. The state’s changing racial demographics and aggressive registration of minority voters is generally credited with this trend.

For much of the country, the Senate race in particular is crucial because it may decide who controls Congress’ upper chamber come January. But for Georgians, living in a state plagued by all sorts of bread-and-butter issues – high unemployment, massive numbers of people without health care and very high rates of child poverty – the campaign offered little substance and lots of slogans. This is perhaps why the race as well as control of the Senate is slipping out of the Democrats’ grasp.

Per capita income drop would be more than twice as bad but for New Deal programs under attack by conservatives

Americans made significantly less money in 2012 than in 2000. That decline, as disconcerting as it is, would have been more than twice as bad if it weren’t for three New Deal era safety net programs that largely offset falling wages and vanishing interest income.

Income per American, measured in 2012 dollars, fell more than $1,000 from 2000 to 2012. That decline would have been close to $2,200 per person but for increased payouts from Social Security, unemployment insurance and traditional pensions, my latest analysis of the official data shows.

Those increased benefit payments saved Americans from much more human suffering and stopped the worst recession in eight decades from descending into a vicious cycle of falling incomes that reduced sales of goods and services, which in turn would have savaged corporate profits, forcing even more layoffs and ultimately threatening social stability.

Glen Ford: For Moment, the World Embraces the Cuba Model – and Slaps the Empire

“For Cuba, service to oppressed and exploited peoples is a revolutionary act of the highest moral caliber.”

Revolutionary Cuba has always been a miracle and gift to all humankind. This week, the nations of the world – with two savage exceptions – instructed their emissaries at the UN General Assembly to tell the world’s self-designated “indispensable” country to end its 54-year-long trade embargo against Cuba. The virtually unanimous global rebuke to the American superpower, in combination with the extraordinary breadth and depth of acclamation accorded Havana, tells us that it is Cuba, not the U.S., that is the truly “exceptional” nation on the planet.

It was the 23rd time that the United Nations has rejected the embargo. The outcome was identical to last year’s tally, with only the United States and Israel voting against the non-binding resolution. Although the list of American allies on the Cuban embargo issue could not possibly get any smaller – Israel, after all, can only exist if joined at the U.S. hip – this year’s political environment was even less deferential to the reigning military colossus. In recognition of its singular commitment to the fight against Ebola in Africa, Cuba soared, once again – the hero nation.

Despite having suffered cumulative economic damages of more than $1 trillion at U.S. hands over the last half-century, the island nation of 11 million people has made itself a medical superpower that shares its life-saving resources with the world. No country or combination of nations and NGOs comes close to the speed, size and quality of Cuba’s response to the Ebola crisis in West Africa. With 461 doctors, nurses and other health professionals either already on site or soon to be sent to Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, Cuba sets the standard for international first-response. The Cuban contingent of medical professionals providing direct treatment to sick people outnumbers that of the African Union and all individual countries and private organizations, including the Red Cross.