Tag: Opinion

Conservative secessionists want their own country? Their agenda already rules, even though a majority opposes it

In his seminal book “Better Off Without ‘Em,” Chuck Thompson marshals data to argue that America would benefit by letting the Republican Party and its strongholds formally secede from the country. Whether or not you end up agreeing with Thompson, the argument he forwards is compelling on the policy merits. It also raises an important but less-explored political question: Why would today’s conservatives want to formally secede from a nation that gives them the privilege of governing the whole country, even though they remain in the electoral minority and even though their policy agenda is opposed by a majority of the country?

Partisans on both sides will inevitably deny this reality, because they see the world exclusively through a red-versus-blue prism. The reality-distorting effects of such a prism cast Democratic politicians as uniformly liberal, and therefore creates the illusion that Democratic Party control of the presidency and the U.S. Senate mean those institutions are similarly liberal. But such a partisan view obscures ideological conservatism’s undeniable dominance of both parties – and, thus, American politics.

Slavoj Žižek: Who is responsible for the US shutdown? The same idiots responsible for the 2008 meltdown

In opposing Obamacare, the radical-populist right exposes its own twisted ideology

In April 2009 I was resting in a hotel room in Syracuse, hopping between two channels: a PBS documentary on Pete Seeger, the great American country singer of the left; and a Fox News report on the anti-tax Tea Party, with a country singer performing a populist song about how Washington is taxing hard-working ordinary people to finance the Wall Street financiers. There was a weird similarity between the two singers: both were articulating an anti-establishment, populist complaint against the exploitative rich and their state; both were calling for radical measures, including civil disobedience.

It was another painful reminder that today’s radical-populist right reminds us of the old radical-populist left (are today’s Christian survivalist-fundamentalist groups with their half-illegal status not organised like Black Panthers back in the 1960s?). It is a masterful ideological manipulation: the Tea Party agenda is fundamentally irrational in that it wants to protect the interests of hardworking ordinary people by privileging the “exploitative rich”, thus literally countering their own interests.

Eugene Robinson: Boehner in the Catbird’s Seat

Don’t feel sorry for John Boehner. His party and his country may be losers in this absurd crisis, but he clearly intends to come out a winner.

It’s tempting to sympathize with the House speaker, putative ringmaster of an unruly and at times incoherent Republican majority that delights in thinking the unthinkable. How do you handle someone like Rep. Ted Yoho, R-Fla., who actually believes that crashing into the debt ceiling-and triggering a default-would somehow inspire confidence in the U.S. economy?

Leading the hard-core tea party caucus is in no sense an easy task. But it should at least begin with an honest dose of reality. Instead, Boehner has been feeding his difficult charges a steady diet of fantasy-strengthening his position as speaker while bringing the nation to the brink.

Ralph Nader: Atomic Energy — Unnecessary, Uneconomic, Uninsurable, Unevacuable and Unsafe

No other industry that produces electricity poses such a great national security risk should sabotage or malfunction occur. No other means of generating power can produce such long-lasting catastrophic damage and mayhem from one unpredictable accident. No other form of energy is so loaded with the silent violence of radioactivity.

Nuclear energy is unnecessary, uninsurable, uneconomic, unevacuable and most importantly, unsafe. The fact that it continues to exist at all is a result of a ferocious lobby, enlisting the autocratic power of government, that will not admit that its product is unfit for use in the modern world. Let us not allow the lessons of Fukushima to be ignored.

The US and UK have pitifully low OECD test scores. They are also the countries with some of the greatest inequality

Are Americans dumb? This is a question that has been debated by philosophers, begrudging foreigners and late night TV talk show hosts for decades. Anyone who has ever watched the Tonight Show’s “Jaywalking” segment in which host Jay Leno stops random passersby and asks them rudimentary questions like “What is Julius Caesar famous for?” (Answer: “Um, is it the salad?”) might already have made their minds up on this issue. But for those of you who prefer to reserve judgement until definitive proof is on hand, then I’m afraid I have some depressing news. America does indeed have a problem in the smarts department and it appears to be getting worse, not better. [..]

So are Americans dumb? The answer appears to be yes, some are. The dumb ones are not the poor minorities or low skilled adults who fared badly on the OECD tests, however, but a certain privileged and selfish elite, who have suffered from no want of opportunities themselves, yet seem to think that denying millions of struggling Americans an equal (or indeed any) opportunity to get ahead is a sensible way forward. The results are in now and clearly it isn’t. The question is will enough Americans be smart enough to do something about it?

Richard (RJ) Eskow: Boehner’s “Offer”: A Ticking Time Bomb is Still a Bomb

A time bomb with a six-week fuse is still a bomb. And as long as the Republicans keep issuing threats and shutting down the government, they’re still playing with dynamite.

It was initially reported that the GOP’s “offer” to extend the debt ceiling for six weeks was rejected by the White House. There’s good reason to reject it. The Republican proposal isn’t a concession. They’re merely rescheduling their threat so that it can hang over the nation until Thanksgiving. They’d still keep the government closed.  And their proposal reportedly included provisions that would prevent the Treasury Department from taking “extraordinary measures” to keep paying the government’s bills – now, and in the future.

The GOP’s stance is: We won’t hurt you with the debt ceiling now, but we’re prepared to do it in a few weeks. We’ll hold off on wreaking widespread economic havoc until then, but in return you must render yourself helpless in the face of our threats – now, and forever – despite the fact that our corporate funders want us to hold off anyway. Oh – and we’ll keep on hurting you with the shutdown in the meantime.

You call that an offer?

Bill Boyarsky: Cruel and Unusual Republicans Want Poor Americans to Starve

Among the many victims of the Republicans’ deranged effort to kill Obamacare are the millions of forgotten poor suffering from bad nutrition or just plain hunger, one of the most shameful afflictions of American life.

They have escaped media attention. But they will be badly hurt if the effort of right-wing Republican House members-backed by their ultraconservative financial supporters-manages to destroy the Affordable Care Act and then bring down what’s left of the social and economic safety net that has for generations provided minimal protection to the poor, the elderly, children and the disabled.

The Republicans are already insisting on major cuts to the nation’s biggest and most successful nutrition program, food stamps, now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

Amy Goodman: Single-Payer Prescription for What Ails Obamacare

While the ACA was deemed constitutional by the Supreme Court, the opinion gave states the option to opt out of the Medicaid expansion, which 26 states with Republican governors have done. A New York Times analysis of census data showed that up to 8 million poor people, mostly African-Americans and single mothers, and mostly in the Deep South, will be stranded without insurance, too poor to qualify for ACA subsidies, but stuck in a state that rejected Medicaid expansion.

So, while partisan bickering (between members of Congress who have among the best health and benefits packages in the U.S.) has shut down the government, the populace of the United States is still straitjacketed into a system of expensive, for-profit health insurance. We pay twice as much per capita as other industrialized countries, and have poorer health and lower life expectancy. The economic logic of single-payer is inescapable. Whether Obamacare is a pathway to get there is uncertain. As Dr. Woolhandler summed up, “It’s only a road to single-payer if we fight for single-payer.”

Journalists are understandably captivated by the government shutdown and the looming confrontation over the debt ceiling. Those are certainly dramatic stories. But another, quieter drama has been playing out for years in homes and communities across the country, as millions of jobs and trillions in wealth have been lost to Republican economic folly.

Now the Republicans are doing their best to make things even worse. Their budget stance offends many Americans’ sense of morality, since they’re asking poor and middle-class Americans to subsidize the luxuries of the wealthy and the profits of powerful corporations.

But in the end the country may reject their ideology for an even simpler reason: We can’t afford it anymore.

Mary Bottari: Dear WWII Vets, Forget About the Monument, They Are Gunning for Your Social Security

Apparently the only thing both Democrats and Republicans can agree on in Washington, DC, is that they can’t deal with bad press involving Honor Flight vets.

This led to absurd images of Republicans-who had shut down the federal government, including all monuments and museums-rushing to “aid” veterans shut out by monument closures. In the most revolting display, Rep. Randy Neugebauer (R-CA) publicly berated a National Park Service Ranger for a situation created entirely by Congress.

As the government shutdown marches on and the dangerously real deadline of the federal debt limit approaches, it is increasingly clear that the fight over “Obamacare” is merely an opening salvo. The real goal of the hostage takers is a “Grand Bargain” on the budget that would include cuts to Social Security and Medicare.

Richard Reich: Republican Crazy Talk About the Debt Ceiling

“I would dispel the rumor that is going around that you hear on every newscast, that if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, we will default on our debt,” says Sen.Tom Coburn, R-Okla. “We won’t. We’ll continue to pay our interest.”

This is crazy talk. While the Treasury Department could prioritize interest payments after October 17 — the day the Treasury Department says it no longer has legal authority to pay the nation’s debts — and not pay Social Security and Medicare, this would buy a few days at most.

Meanwhile, interest rates will soar, stock prices will plummet, the global economy will begin spiraling downward, and millions of Americans wouldn’t receive their Social Security and Medicare.

Gary Young: Ted Cruz, Obamacare circus performer

His pseudo-filibuster over defunding the ACA was doomed to fail, yet the Tea Party sees him as a lion. In truth, he’s a clown

Ted Cruz’s filibuster to prevent the implementation of Obamacare with the threat of shutting down the government has all the hallmarks of the “noble defeat” of southern Democrats from the mid-sixties onward. He is not so much opposing healthcare reform as protesting its inevitability.

Lest there be any confusion, I am not arguing Cruz is in any way a supporter of segregation or admirer of the late Wallace in his darker days. The comparison relates to his strategy, not his specific intent. It is in Cruz’s buffoonery, showmanship and tactical disingenuousness that he poses now as Wallace in drag.

The recent deaths off the coast of Lampedusa are a gruesome consequence of EU border and immigration control policies that follow the logic of security and restrictionism over human rights and international maritime law

October 3rd, 2013 will go down as one of the deadliest days at the European external borders in decades. 363 people are now thought to have died in one single, tragic incident early that Thursday morning. And while the continuous, everyday deaths of migrants and refugees in the Mediterranean are met by silence, the magnitude of this ‘blood bath’ spurred the Italian and international media to report on it widely. [..]

Last week’s catastrophe is the latest in a series of incidents that have left 19,142 people dead over the last 24 years, 13 of whom died only three days earlier close to a Sicilian beach. 19,142 lives are lost – and that includes only reported and documented deaths. Many others, having died and disappeared at sea, will never be part of these statistics. Giusi Nicolini, mayor of Lampedusa, made it explicit: we are witnessing war-like levels of death at Europe’s frontiers. In Pope Francis’ words, ‘this is a disgrace’. It is a disgrace for a political union that proclaims itself as a defender of human rights in the world. And that, at the same time, invests millions of Euros in restrictionist policies and practices that leave migrants and refugees little choice other than relying on smuggling networks, undertaking life-threatening journeys, and entering the European Union ‘illegally’.

Michele Chen: When Federal Contracts Turn Into Corporate Welfare

Where does the corporate bottom line end and the public interest begin? Through the voodoo economics of federal contracting, Washington’s “partnerships” with private corporations have drained the public trust straight into the pockets of top corporate executives. [..]

Federal contractors are currently subject to a very loose limit on the amount of an executive’s salary that can come directly from federal subsidies: about $763,000. Extrapolating from survey data on the top contractor executive salaries fromthe Government Accountability Office, Demos estimates the aggregate share of public money that is ultimately funneled into executive pay at $23.9 billion.

Rose Ann DeMoro: Heroic Fight by Sutter Nurses Shows That Workers Can Fight and Win

In a political and economic climate so heavily influenced by Wall Street, corporate CEOs, and extremists like those who shut down the government in an effort to block even the modest reforms of the Affordable Care Act, it’s sometimes hard to remember that it is still possible for nurses and working people to fight and win.

Well, thank goodness for the 3,000 RNs, and a few hundred techs, who work at Sutter hospitals and facilities in Northern California. They have just delivered an emphatic message to nurses and other workers everywhere. Stand up for yourselves, stand up for the public interest and the public will be with you and you can prevail.

Zoë Carpenter: Domestic Violence Shelters Struggle to Stay Open During Shutdown

Consider the government shutdown an extension of the GOP’s efforts to cut essential services to American women and their families. Now in its eighth day, the government shutdown has already kicked 7,000 children out of Head Start, and endangered 9 million women and children on WIC, including 2,000 newborns in Arkansas that may not receive nutritional formula if the shutdown persists.

Add women fleeing domestic violence and sexual assault to the list of vulnerable populations that the shutdown puts at greater risk. On Friday, a domestic violence program in DC called Survivors and Advocates For Empowerment with an intake center just blocks from the Capitol announced that it needed to raise $19,000 in a week in order to provide shelter, emergency lock changes at victims’ homes, staff for the hotline and court advocates during the shutdown.

Remember how Republicans “won” the 2000 election? Remember how they tricked the country into going to war in Iraq? They used non-democratic means to get what they couldn’t get legitimately, and it worked, so they did it more. They got used to getting their way using bullying, so they did it more. Now it’s flat-out hostage-taking. And they’re doing it more. [..]

They continue these tactics because it is getting them what they – and the billionaires and giant corporations who fund them – want. They do it because it works. And then they do it again, because it worked.

Here’s the thing about this budget “standoff.” If Democrats or President Obama give in again, Social Security and Medicare will certainly be targets, sooner than later. What else?

Josh Silver: Supreme Court Contemplates More Political Bribery Amidst Shutdown

This Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments in McCutcheon v. FEC, a case that challenges the $123,200 “aggregate limit” on how much one donor may give to a combination of political candidates, parties and PACs. Welcome to the age of government shutdowns, $7 billion elections, and a blatantly pay-to-play Congress with the lowest approval rating of all time at just 10 percent. Amidst this madness, you would have to be a fool or a scoundrel to think it’s a good idea to increase the money flowing into American politics. The current aggregate limit is already nearly two and a half times the average income of an American family. [..]

And once again the American people are trapped in the middle of what is portrayed in the media as an ideological fight between conservatives and progressives. Look a little closer, and you see that cash is driving the debate a lot more than ideology in the latest chapter in modern American politics.

Robert Sheer: Racism and Cruelty Drive GOP Health Care Agenda

Why anyone who claims to be pro-life would want to deny health care to single mothers is an enduring mystery in the morally mischievous ethos of the Republican Party. But the exclusion of a working poor population that skews disproportionately black in the South is simply a continuation of the divide-and-conquer politics that have informed Republican strategy since Nixon.

The game plan of gutting the Affordable Care Act despite its passage into law and before its positive outcomes are demonstrated can be traced to a “blueprint to defunding Obamacare” initialed by the GOP conservative leadership under the aegis of Heritage Action for America. Ironically that is the political front of the Heritage Foundation, the leading GOP think tank that is credited by some architects of Obamacare as the initial inspiration of their health care program. The difference is that whereas the Heritage Foundation was pushing a mild health care reform based on increased profit for private insurers, as in the plan Mitt Romney introduced in Massachusetts, the Republicans object to the provisions in this president’s program that broaden access for the needy.

Eugene Robinson: Server Crashes Prove the ACA Is Here to Stay

While Republicans were throwing their silly tantrum, Obamacare became a fact. There is no turning back.

The point of no return was reached when millions of people crashed the websites of the new Affordable Care Act exchanges trying to buy health insurance. Republicans can fight rear-guard battles if they want, but last Tuesday they lost the war. All they can do at this point is harm the nation-and their own political prospects.

Someday, if the GOP captures the presidency and both houses of Congress, President Obama’s health care law could be altered or even repealed. But it would be replaced by some new program that does the same thing, because there is no politically viable way to snatch away the medical insurance that customers are buying through the exchanges.

You know who should be angry about Obamacare? Real socialists. The tea party opponents of the Affordable Care Act promised them a government incursion that the new law does not deliver.

Think back to the rallies of 2009 and 2010. All those signs mocking President Obama with the word socialist emblazoned upon them were as common as Gadsden (“Don’t Tread on Me”) flags. But the health-care exchanges that launched Tuesday bear no resemblance to what Merriam-Webster defines as “a way of organizing a society in which major industries are owned and controlled by the government rather than by individual people and companies.”

And actual socialists have noticed.

E. J. Dionne Jr.: The Tea Party’s Last Stand

If the nation is lucky, this October will mark the beginning of the end of the tea party.

It is suffering from extreme miscalculation and a foolish misreading of its opponents’ intentions. This, in turn, has created a moment of enlightenment, an opening to see things that were once missed.

Many Republicans, of course, saw the disaster coming in advance of the shutdown. But they were terrified to take on a movement that is fortified by money, energy and the backing of a bloviating brigade of talk-show hosts. The assumption was that the tea party had become invincible inside the GOP.

Robert Kuttner: What if Obamacare Is Popular?

Public opinion seems to be moving against the Republicans. The question is no longer whether they will continue their suicidal gambit but when they will cave and on what terms.

Weirdly, by threatening to shut the government unless Obama killed the Affordable Care act, they got the opposite of what they sought. The rest of the government is closed, and Obamacare is open for business.

And, while Republicans and movement conservatives have spent the better part of a year demonizing Obama’s health reform, the more people become familiar with it, the more people will appreciate it — leaving the Republican alarmism with no clothes.

Michael Winship: Playing Chicken with Food Safety

The other day there was this guy in a chicken suit on Pennsylvania Avenue protesting outside the White House. Silly, but the reason the chicken and other demonstrators had crossed the avenue was to deliver a petition of more than half a million names, speaking out against new rules the US Department of Agriculture wants to put into effect – bad rules that would transfer much of the work inspecting pork and chicken and turkey meat from trained government inspectors to the processing companies themselves. Talk about putting the fox in the henhouse! [..]

Add to this the controversy over growth-enhancing drugs and hormones, the danger of genetically modified foods, the cruelty of big business factory farms: how can measures like these sound like good ideas to anyone other than those who would put profits above public health? It’s called “runaway capitalism,” and the time has come to stop this free market fundamentalism gone amok.

It’s enough to make you sick.

Our question for today is: Why don’t the Republicans just throw in the towel? Really, this is not going well for anybody.  

Lots of reasons. There’s Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, the General Patton of the government shutdown. And people like the Republican in the House who said he and his colleagues “have to get something out of this. And I don’t know what that even is.” Also, Ted Cruz. [..]

But here’s my long-term theory. Over the past few years, Republicans have terrified their most fervent followers about Obamacare in order to disguise the fact that they no longer knew what to say about their old bête noir, entitlements. Now they can’t turn the temperature down.

Joe Nocera: A Fracking Rorschach Test

A few weeks ago, a group of scientists led by David T. Allen of the University of Texas published an important, peer-reviewed paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The subject was our old friend hydraulic fracturing – a k a fracking – that infamous process that allows companies to drill for natural gas trapped in shale formations deep below the earth’s surface.

Thanks to the fracking boom, America is on the verge of overtaking Russia as the world’s largest producer of oil and gas, as The Wall Street Journal pointed out a few days ago. Supporters of fracking (like me) tend to focus on the economic and foreign policy blessings that come with being able to supply so much more of our energy needs in-house, as it were. Critics, however, fear that fracking could have grave environmental consequences. And they worry that the abundance of natural gas will keep America hooked on fossil fuels.

Ralph Nader: Giant Pentagon Budget Is Unauditable Year After Year

The federal government is currently in a state of shutdown thanks to a small faction of extremist Republicans who vehemently bellow that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will have a catastrophic economic effect on our country. These members of Congress are so irrational about the ACA that they have caused the furlough of nearly 800,000 federal workers — some of whom handle vitally important tasks such as safety inspections, monitoring our food supply and detecting epidemic outbreaks. Congress, however, has failed to address the worst excesses in the federal budget — the bloated, highly wasteful military budget. More than half of federal discretionary spending now goes to the military budget. Many more taxpayer dollars are devoted to the Department of Defense than to the critical needs of our citizenry, including the flawed Obamacare which should be replaced with single payer — full Medicare for all.

Unfortunately, curbing the worst excesses of an out-of-control military industrial complex is not a front burner issue for the 40 or so Tea Party Republicans currently stomping their feet in Congress about health care reform. Instead, Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX), who has recently emerged as the de-facto leader of the opposition to Obamacare, has accused his opponents in Congress of “holding the military hostage” by not giving in to the demands of the extremists in his party.

Mark Weisbrot: President Obama’s Defeats May Turn Out to Be More Important Than His Likely Victory Over Republicans

Looking past the shutdown and budget battle, the big picture is that America’s four decade-long drift to the right is decisively over

If we step back a moment from the government shutdown – an assault on millions of federal workers and people who need the services of the national government at this time – and the Republicans’ over-hyped and largely empty threat to trigger a default on the national public debt, there are more significant recent political developments that will continue long after this damaging political theater is over.

President Obama was twice defeated last month on matters of national and international importance, by grassroots opposition and resistance from within his own party. The first was over his planned bombing of Syria; the second was over his attempt to appoint Larry Summers as chair of the Federal Reserve.

Forty million dollars an hour. A third of a billion every day. $1.6 billion every week. That’s a conservative estimate of the money Republicans are wasting by keeping the federal government closed down. And if pundits like Sean Hannity have their way, they’ll run up a much larger tab before this is all over.

But then, if there’s one thing Republicans know how to do it’s run a tab.

The bill has already come to roughly $1 billion as of today (Thursday), and it grows larger every moment the government stays shut down. Republicans in Congress recently voted to cut $4 billion per year from programs that feed the needy. In two and a half weeks they’ll have wasted more than that on their shutdown.

George Zorncik: Congressional Liberals Mobilize to Keep Social Insurance Out of Shutdown Talks

We’ve seen this movie before: Republicans force a showdown in Congress over funding the government, the debt ceiling or, in the present case, both. Then a “grand bargain” is proposed to solve the impasse-one that includes serious reductions to social insurance programs.

That’s just how the GOP would like the current drama to play out. Wednesday, National Review‘s Robert Costa reported that House Speaker John Boehner and Representative Paul Ryan are rallying nervous Republicans by telling them that while Obamacare may not end up getting defunded, GOP leadership is cooking up another big budget deal that includes cuts to the safety net so cherished by many conservative members. “It’s the return of the grand bargain,” one member told Costa. “Ryan is selling this to everybody; he’s getting back to his sweet spot,” said another.

In particular, Costa mentioned Chained CPI as one component of the emerging proposal. This, you may recall, is a cut to Social Security benefits dressed up as a ostensibly “more accurate” recalibration of the formula used to adjust benefits to inflation. (It’s not.)

Amy Jones: The Forgotten War

Will the U.S. still be meddling in Afghanistan 30 years from now?  If history is any guide, the answer is yes.  And if history is any guide,  three decades from now most Americans will have only the haziest idea why.

Since the 1950s, the U.S. has been trying to mold that remote land to its own desires, first through an aid “war” in the midst of the Cold War with the Soviet Union; then, starting as the 1970s ended, an increasingly bitter and brutally hot proxy war with the Soviets meant to pay them back for supporting America’s enemies during the war in Vietnam.  One bad war leads to another.

Ralph Nader: Congressional “Mad Dogs” Render the Powerful Powerless

SHUTDOWN – blared the Washington Post headline. None of the powers-that-be could stop a small faction of Republicans in the House of Representatives from shutting down many federal government operations starting on October 1.

Suddenly the powerful Business Roundtable and U.S. Chamber of Commerce are powerless, along with two hundred corporate trade associations, who see Uncle Sam as their big customer. Suddenly, the Republican dominated National Governors Association, together with Mitt Romney, the Party’s presidential nominee in 2013, are powerless. Also powerless so far are the allegedly sovereign people, who want uninterrupted safety inspections, enforcement of labor and environmental laws, children’s nutrition and educational programs (like Head Start), student loan processing, veterans benefits, detection of epidemics, access to national parks, and inspections of nuclear power plants.

As the government shutdown dragged on, gloom mounted. James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, warned that foreign intelligence services might swoop in and recruit furloughed C.I.A. workers. That seemed a little paranoid, but then we’re talking about spies.

The C.I.A.-doom scenario sounded a bit like the problems facing the cast of “Homeland” this season, except for the part where a member of Congress is a terrorist mole who falls in love with an intelligence agent who frequently fails to take her bipolar disorder medication. Reality in Washington has gotten so muddled that the land in “Homeland” is looking sort of attractive.

Eugene Robinson: Warm Enough for You

Skeptics and deniers can make all the noise they want, but a landmark new report is unequivocal: There is a 95 percent chance that human-generated emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are changing the climate in ways that court disaster.

That’s the bottom line from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which Monday released the latest of its comprehensive, every-six-years assessments of the scientific consensus about climate change. According to the IPCC, there is only a 1-in-20 chance that human activity is not causing dangerous warming.

You may like those betting odds. If so, let’s get together for a friendly game of poker, and please don’t forget to bring cash.

Robert Sheer: The Government Leakers Who Truly Endanger America Will Never Face Prosecution

Secrecy is for the convenience of the state. To support military adventures and budgets, vast troves of U.S. government secrets are routinely released not by lone dissident whistle-blowers but rather skilled teams of government officials. They engage in coordinated propaganda campaigns designed to influence public opinion. They leak secrets compulsively to advance careers or justify wars and weapons programs, even when the material is far more threatening to national security than any revealed by Edward Snowden.

Remember the hoary accounts in the first week of August trumpeting a great intelligence coup warranting the closing of nearly two dozen U.S. embassies in anticipation of an al-Qaida attack? Advocates for the surveillance state jumped all over that one to support claims that NSA electronic interceptions revealed by Snowden were necessary, and that his whistle-blowing had weakened the nation’s security. Actually, the opposite is true.

Michael Lerner: Democrats: Stop Being Wimpy in Implementing the Governmental Shut Down

Spiritual progressives are not wimps. While we bend over backwards to avoid violence and to affirm the humanity in everyone, including those who are doing evil deeds, we do not back away from opportunities to powerfully challenge those deeds. Unfortunately, President Obama and the Congressional Dems don’t seem to have that kind of chutzpah.

Instead, they appear to be wimps, and that doesn’t encourage much trust. So even though temporarily they are slightly winning the battle about who is to blame for the government shut down, they keep missing opportunities to challenge the Tea Party and their supporters.