Tag: Opinion

Michael Bennet was supposed to be going off a cliff in Vail.

But instead of his usual New Year’s trip to a ski lodge with his wife and three daughters, the junior senator from Colorado found himself in a strange, unfamiliar place in the middle of the night: breaking with the president and his party to become one of only three Democratic senators and eight senators total to vote against President Obama’s fiscal deal.  [..]

In frantic New Year’s Day deal-making, he voted “nay” at about 2 a.m., and the House passed the bill around 11 p.m. He said he did so because the deal did not have meaningful deficit reduction, explaining: “Going over the cliff is a lousy choice and continuing to ignore the fiscal realities that we face is a lousy choice.”

He said he thinks the president wants serious deficit cuts but is dealing with people “so intransigent I’m not sure they could be brought to an agreement that’s meaningful in the absence of going over the cliff. But it’s a terrible thing to say. People at home are so bone-tired of these outcomes.”

Laurie Penny: Russia’s Ban on US Adoption Isn’t About Children’s Rights

The row between Russian and the US on adoption ruins lives and leaves both countries looking sordid

Russia and the US are squabbling over whose human rights abuses are bigger. After the US signed the Magnitsky Act, which blacklists any Russian deemed to be a human rights violator, Russia has retaliated by barring American couples from adopting Russian children, 60,000 of whom have found new families in the US since 1992. Perhaps this is how the cold war really ends: not with a bang, but a series of petty policy disputes that savage individual lives and leave both countries looking sordid.

The uncomfortable truth is that underneath the posturing, Vladimir Putin has a point. The international adoption trade is a shady business – the perfect micro-example of how America’s concept of itself as a benevolent superpower is so often at odds with reality.

Fran Quigley: How Human Rights Can Save Haiti

Last month, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced a new initiative to address the cholera epidemic in Haiti. The plan includes a variety of measures, most notably the building of desperately-needed water and sanitation infrastructure.

This is not yet cause for celebration. The UN and the international community have so far committed to pay only a fraction of the estimated $2.2 billion cost of the program. And the 10-year plan lacks an appropriate sense of urgency, with many more Haitians sure to die needlessly while it is being carried out.

But the announcement is definitely promising news, because it shows that the United Nations is responding to the pressure of a relentless global human rights campaign. Multiple experts, including a member of an investigatory panel appointed by the UN itself, have concluded that the cholera outbreak was triggered by the UN’s own reckless disregard for the health and safety of the Haitian people. Those investigations establish that, in October, 2010, untreated human waste from cholera-infected UN troops was dumped into a tributary of Haiti’s main waterway, leading to a gruesome wave of chaos and death that claimed 7,800 lives and sickened 600,000 more.

The deal emerging from the Senate is a lousy one. Let me count the ways: [..]

Yes, the deal finally gets Republicans to accept a tax increase on the wealthy, but this is an inside-the-Beltway symbolic victory. If anyone believes this will make the GOP more amenable to future tax increases, they don’t know how rabidly extremist the GOP has become.

The deal also extends unemployment insurance for more than 2 million long-term unemployed. That’s important.

But I can’t help believe the president could have done better than this. After all, public opinion is overwhelmingly on his side. Republicans would have been blamed had no deal been achieved.

More importantly, the fiscal cliff is on the president’s side as well. If we go over it, he and the Democrats in the next Congress that starts later this week can quickly offer legislation that grants a middle-class tax cut and restores most military spending. Even rabid Republicans would be hard-pressed not to sign on.

John Nichols: Social Security Is Off the Table… For Now

Preserving Social Security should never have been all that difficult.

But it took Harry Reid to settle the issue – at least as regards the miserably long and absurdly inappropriate debate of 2012.

“We’re not going to have any Social Security cuts,” the Senate majority leader said on the floor of the chamber Sunday. “It’s just doesn’t seem appropriate at this time.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, had attempted Saturday to use the “fiscal cliff” fight to advance a proposal to adopt a chained consumer price index-“chained CPI”-scheme (pdf) that would slash cost-of-living increases for Americans who rely on Social Security and other government programs. The Obama administration had entertained the “chained CPI” switch earlier in December. But as the critical point when a deal to cut Social Security might have been made, Reid said “No.”

John Atcheson: Reality’s Revenge: Will 2013 Be the Year Climate Change Deniers Get Hoisted on Their Own Petard?

n 2007, then Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change chairman, Rejendra Pachauri said:

“If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.”

Well, don’t look now, but 2012 just whizzed past, and thanks to a well-organized and well-funded denier movement, once again, we took no action on climate change.

Ironically, by stalling action, climate change deniers are bringing about the end they’ve been struggling to prevent.

Bottom line: deniers hate big government.  As ClimateProgress editor Joseph Romm pointed out, that’s the main reason many conservatives oppose action on climate change.

Of course there is a second reason: money.

Ralph Nader: Compare the 1912 Elections with the 2012 Elections

Before the electoral year of 2012 slinks into history, it is worth a comparative glance back to the electoral year of 1912 to give us some jolting perspective on how degraded our contemporary elections, voter performance and election expectations have become.  

One hundred years ago, workers were marching, picketing and forming unions. Eugene Debs, the great labor leader and presidential candidate that year, spoke to outdoor labor rallies of 100,000 to 200,000 workers and their families gathered to protest low wages and working conditions.

Farmers were flexing their muscle with vibrant political activity in progressive parties and organizing farm cooperatives, through their granges, and pushing for proper regulation of the banks and railroads.

As President Obama looks to reduce gun violence after the Connecticut massacre through reforms like reinstating the assault weapons ban, he and supporters of sane gun laws in Congress need to be equally serious about strengthening the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the beleaguered agency charged with enforcing federal firearm regulations. [..]

On “Meet the Press” on Sunday, President Obama reiterated his commitment to lay out a package of gun reforms quickly and put his “full weight behind it.” In addition to a tough assault weapons ban, he should be pushing to bar sales of high-capacity ammunition clips and to close the loophole that allows felons and other buyers to evade background checks at gun shows. Empowering the A.T.F. is another step that clearly needs to be part of his agenda.

Robert Kuttner; New Year, New Low for Republicans

Four years ago Barack Obama prepared to take the oath of office as a Democratic president, at a moment when free market ideology and Republican incumbency were disgraced by events. But a year that should have marked the end of the laissez-faire fantasy and the resurgence of effective government instead began an era of muddle through. [..]

Obama wanted to be the president who would change the tone in Washington, meaning a more collaborative relationship with the Republicans. That was not to be. The Republicans would not allow it. Now, history invites Obama to change the tone in Washington by dispatching an extremist Republican Party to the far fringes of public discourse where it belongs.

Peter Dreier: New York Times’ Xmas Present to Corporate Lobby Group Fix-the Debt: A Puff Piece

The New York Times should be embarrassed. On December 24 it gave a Christmas present to the corporate-backed lobby group Fix the Debt with its front-page Business section puff piece about the organization, which is pushing to balance the federal budget by slashing social programs while cutting taxes for the rich.

The 1149-word piece, “One Woman’s War on Debt Gains Steam,” by reporter Annie Lowrey, is a fawning profile of the group’s public face, Maya MacGuineas. The article makes it appear that the Fix the Debt group was hatched last year at a dinner party at Senator Mark Warner’s house, when in fact it is simply the latest incarnation of Pete Peterson, the billionaire Wall Street financier who over many years has invested tens of millions of his money in his long-term crusade to reduce the federal debt on the backs of the poor and middle class, including the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which Peterson funded and where MacGuineas once worked. Peterson is also the largest funder of Fix the Debt, but he isn’t mentioned in Lowrey’s article. The launching of Fix the Debt was announced on the Peter Peterson Foundation website. Lowrey could easily have found dozens of articles on the web about Fix the Debt that reveal Peterson’s crusade and his role in the group, including an investigative article in New York magazine. Los Angeles Times business columnist Michael Hiltzik exposed Peterson’s long-term crusade to forge an elite consensus to slash social spending in pieces last October 2 and October 9. Bob Kuttner performed a similar service in an article for American Prospect.

Indeed, Times columnist Paul Krugman mentioned Peterson’s close ties to the organization in his column “Maya and the Vigilantes” two days before Lowrey’s article appeared.

Ralph Nader: Make Civic Engagement a Priority in the New Year

Many people view the New Year as a time for resolutions — losing weight, exercising more, staying in better touch with friends, taking up a new hobby. Here’s something you don’t often hear of when considering New Year’s resolutions — devoting more time to civic life. Our nation has millions of runners, gym goers, bird watchers, collectors, sports fans and musicians. But one area that is often overlooked when it comes to one’s free time and quality of life is the “democratic arts.”

A practitioner of the democratic arts can rally others informally or through civic groups to stand up against the power brokers who act against the interests of local communities or national interests; a practitioner of the democratic arts will dedicate time and ability to watching over institutions such as Congress, government agencies and multinational corporations; a practitioner of the democratic arts will not just grumble at injustices, but rather seek out and challenge injustices. In short, a practitioner of the democratic arts is an active citizen.

Politicians of all stripes can promise “hope and change,” but real change will only come when more Americans decide to try their hand at civic action. There is an old saying: “Eternal vigilance is the price for liberty.” An update may be — if you don’t have a say, you’ll pay, pay and pay.

Alan Greenspan will go down in history as the person who has done more damage to the U.S. economy and society that anyone who was not a foreign enemy. In fact the destruction he wreaked through his incompetence would also exceed the damage caused by almost all would-be enemies as well. [..]

This is why it would have been worth highlighting the news contained in a NYT article on the origins of the “Campaign to Fix the Debt,” the corporate financed effort to reduce the deficit. [..]

This is such an amazing tidbit that it really should have been the lead of the article. The person most responsible for wrecking the economy — and incidentially adding trillions of dollars to the debt — was there at the founding of the Campaign to Fix the Debt.

Wow, what did Santa get you for Christmas?

Matthew Rothschild: Why the “Fiscal Cliff” Bores the Snot Out of Me

I can barely write the words “fiscal cliff” without dosing off. And I’m not alone here. Utter the term to insomniacs and out they’ll go. [..]

And after this weekend or by the end of January at the latest, Congress will have passed a budget bill that maintains middle class tax cuts and averts the alleged calamities that, in all probability, were never going to come to pass anyway. [..]

The “fiscal cliff” has been a tiresome charade, and it disguises the fact that both parties are taking us down the path of austerity.

Sam Sacks: From MLK to Occupy, the FBI Resides on the Wrong Side of History

Why did the FBI consider a movement composed of students, senior citizens, mothers with baby carriages and Americans of all colors and backgrounds such a threat that they required covert monitoring?

During the heyday of the Occupy Movement last year, if you were lucky enough to walk through one of the encampments – as I was frequently here at Occupy DC – you would have seen a community built as an example of what our nation should be striving for. [..]

And in a nation facing economic desperation, historic levels of wealth inequality and a rapidly disappearing social safety net, Occupy was the way forward – a community in every city that could serve as an example of what we as Americans should be striving for during a time when Wall Street suits were choking the lives out of most Americans.

But if you were an FBI agent, then Occupy looked like something completely different. To the FBI, Occupy was a breeding ground for violence and domestic terrorism.

Robert Reich: Cliff Hanger: Why Republicans Don’t Care What the Nation Thinks

Are House Republicans — now summoned back to Washington by Speaker John Boehner — about to succumb to public pressure and save the nation from the fiscal cliff?

Don’t bet on it.

Even if Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell cooperates by not mounting a filibuster and allows the Senate to pass a bill extending the Bush tax cuts to the first $250,000 of everyone’s income, Boehner may not bring it to the House floor. [..]

But this assumes Boehner and the GOP will be any more swayed by public opinion than they are now.

I’m old enough to remember when the NRA was invited into our schools to educate students on gun safety. Yes, I’m old, and I grew up in rural Alaska, but the NRA as an institution has changed as much as everything else has since then. It now operates as a lobby for gun manufacturers rather than for responsible gun owners who grew up with the traditions of hunting and shooting. [..]

In Alaska, many of us need guns to fill our freezers, but if you need a 30-round clip you’re a pretty poor hunter. If you are hoarding automatic (yes, they are legal) or semi-automatic weapons, you need Viagra. [..]

I’m not advocating for no guns. I like mine and am not about to give them up. But in this country, my uterus is more regulated than my guns. Birth control and reproductive health services are harder to get than bullets. What is that about? Guns don’t kill people — vaginas do?

When the cottonwood is flying and Alaskans are all lined up for Sudafed, we have to get it from a pharmacist, give them our identification, and the state keeps track of how much we’re consuming just so they’re sure we’re not running a meth lab. I get it, meth is bad, but I can buy bullets right off the shelf.

Dean Baker: Washington Post Pushes Mayan End of the World Story on “Fiscal Cliff”

Yes, the Washington Post is getting very worried that it will have egg all over its face if January 1 comes with no budget deal and we don’t get its promised recession. The paper pushed this line yet again, telling readers:

“Unless the House and the Senate can agree on a way to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” more than $500 billion in tax increases and spending cuts will take effect next year, potentially sparking a new recession.”

Of course the potential for a new recession does not refer to missing the January 1 deadline. It is the risk the country faces if we continue well into 2013 paying higher tax rates and with large cuts in spending. This is an enormously important distinction.

Trevor Timm: Why We Should All Care About Today’s Senate Vote on the FISA Amendments Act, the Warrantless Domestic Spying Bill

Today is an incredibly important vote for the future of your digital privacy, but some in Congress are hoping you won’t find out.

Finally, after weeks of delay, the Senate will start debate on the dangerous FISA Amendments Act at 10 am Eastern and vote on its re-authorization by the end of the day. The FISA Amendments Act is the broad domestic spying bill passed in 2008 in the wake of the warrantless wiretapping scandal. It expires at the end of the year and some in Congress wanted to re-authorize it without a minute of debate.

The good news is-thanks for your phone calls, emails, and tweets-Congress will now be forced to debate it, which means we can affect its outcome. [..]

Any Senator who wants to stay true to the Constitution should vote no on its re-authorization, but in the alternative, there are four common sense amendments up for debate today that would go a long-way in curbing the law’s worst abuses

Joe Conason: Veterans Denounce Neoconservative ‘Swiftboating’ of Chuck Hagel

If Chuck Hagel is nominated by President Obama to serve as Secretary of Defense, there will be at least three compelling arguments in his favor. He served with distinction in the military and would, like Secretary of State nominee John Kerry, bring a veteran’s perspective to his post. He has adopted and articulated a sane perspective on the grave foreign policy blunders whose consequences still haunt the nation, including the Iraq and Vietnam wars. And as we have learned ever since his nomination was first floated, he has made all the right (and right-wing) enemies. [..]

The “swiftboating” of Hagel is being mobilized by the likes of William Kristol, the “Weekly Standard” editor, who managed to avoid service in Vietnam but still believes that bloody tragedy was a great idea. Kristol and his ilk have been so wrong about every policy issue over the past four decades that their angry opposition to Hagel is a sterling endorsement of him.

Scholars agree that the timing of Christmas has more to do with the end of winter than the birth of a savior.

The evidence that people celebrated the death of winter is literally everywhere.  Five thousand year old structures designed to track the sun can be found in England,  Ireland, and the Americas; the ancient myths of the Druids, Japan, Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, Crete, Greece, and Rome all speak of and celebrate the rebirth of sun as the days lengthened.

It’s not surprising that early humans were so concerned with the comings and goings of the sun, and that they viewed its return with a joy and reverence reserved for the gods.  We were – and are – completely dependent upon our star and the climate we evolved in for our survival.

Each annual return meant that crops could be grown, animals bred, game and nature’s bounty renewed.  With the whole cycle of birth and life and renewal once again assured, light banished darkness, warmth swept away cold, life vanquished death.

Joy to the world, indeed.

William K. Black: Obama Should Listen to Obama About Avoiding Self-Inflicted Wounds

Reporters need to ask Obama two series of questions. Who insisted on creating the fiscal cliff, threatened Republicans in Fall 2011 when they wanted to eliminate or reduce it, and after the “failure” of the November 2011 “super committee” to reach a deal to inflict even greater austerity on the nation, made a veto threat to block a Republican proposal to eliminate or delay the fiscal cliff? The answer is: Obama. “The White House wanted a ‘trigger’ that would automatically raise taxes on the wealthy and cut health spending, an idea the Republicans opposed.” Obama’s “trigger” became the “fiscal cliff.” I have explained how he then kept the “fiscal cliff” alive by blocking Republican efforts to eliminate or delay it. [..]

The second question Obama should be asked is: given your warning that the fiscal cliff’s austerity would cause a recession, why are you demanding a Grand Bargain (sic, actually the Grand Betrayal) that would inflict austerity for a decade and likely cause multiple recessions and larger deficits?

Consider the incoherence of Obama’s statement: “‘Everybody’s got to give a little bit in a sensible way’ to prevent the economy from pitching over a recession-threatening fiscal cliff, he said.” That statement makes no sense. Austerity is the problem. Obama and the Republicans agree that it is a self-destructive policy that would cause a recession, just as it did in the eurozone. The solution is (1) not to raise overall taxes and (2) not to cut overall spending.

Richard (RJ) Eskow: For Wall Street It’s “Peace On Earth, Goodwill Toward Remington”

Despite an epidemic of gun deaths, the river of gun cash never stops flowing. If you follow that river upstream you’ll see that its source lies very close to Wall Street. And the river’s mouth speaks with the voice of politicians, whose campaign fundraising is undoubtedly taking place even on this supposedly holy day for most of them.

‘Tis the season to be lobbied.

“More than 50 firearms-related companies have given at least $14.8 million” to the National Rifle Association, Bloomberg News reports — and that’s just the money we know about. The NRA spent nearly $25 million in the last election cycle alone. True to form, the NRA’s chief said this week that we need more guns in the schools to end the killing of our children.

That’s like spreading a flu virus to stop an epidemic.

Robert Reich: Cliff Hanger: Obama’s Last Stand and the Republican Strategy of Fanaticism

President Obama is cutting his Christmas holiday short, returning to Washington for a last attempt at avoiding the fiscal cliff. But he’s running headlong into the Republican strategy of fanaticism.

It’s a long-established principle of game theory (see Thomas Schelling’s classic 1956 essay in the American Economic Review) that a fanatic who restricts his freedom to avert a disaster puts maximum pressure on his opponent to give ground. [..]

The real problem with this gambit is it doesn’t change the game. Even down the road, Boehner’s hands will still be tied and the fanatics will remain in charge — which will give Republicans the stronger position in negotiations leading to a “grand bargain.” Compromise would have to be almost entirely on the Democrats’ side.

That’s why I’d recommend going over the cliff and forcing the Republicans’ hand. It’s a risky strategy but it would at least expose the Republican tactic and put public pressure squarely on rank-and-file Republicans, where it belongs.

Mairead Maguire was awarded the 1976 Nobel Peace Prize for her actions to help end the deep ethnic/political conflict in her native Northern Ireland.

On Thursday 13th December, 2012, I visited Julian Assange, Editor-in-chief of Wikileaks, in the Ecuadorian embassy, Knightsbridge, London.    It is six months now since Julian Assange entered the Ecuadorian embassy and was given political asylum.  He entered the embassy  after the British Courts shamefully refused his appeal against extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning accused of sexual molestation (no criminal charges have been made against him).  [..]

I believe the UK/Swedish/USA governments are all complicit in this mental torture of Julian Assange,  and I appeal to the  Australian government, Human rights defenders, brave media,  and  people who love freedom and truth to break the ‘silence ‘ and  stand up for the rights of Julian Assange to assurance he will get the change to answer all accusations against him in uk or Sweden and the assurance he will not be extradited to USA where he could meet the same ‘cruel and inhuman’ treatment as pt. Bradley Manning.  The least we can do is raise our voices to  protect JulianAssange (and Bradley Manning) who made such brave attempts, at the cost of their own freedom,  to try to protect all our freedoms and democracy.

Muna Mire: Idle No More: Women Rising to Lead When it’s Needed Most

Chief Theresa Spence is now on Day 13 of her hunger strike. Too weak to leave the teepee she is living in on Victoria Island, a mere stone’s throw from Parliament, she called for a round dance yesterday at 24 Sussex Drive in Ottawa, Prime Minister Harper’s residence.

Throughout the duration of her hunger strike, Harper has maintained a chilly silence around the grassroots Indigenous movement now widely known as Idle No More, taking to Twitter instead to share his jokes about bacon with the Canadian electorate. What started as a string of emails between four Saskatchewan women back in November in protest of Bill C-45 eventually became a hashtag on social media, snowballing over time into a global movement for Indigenous rights.

Chief Spence is starving herself for her home community of Attawapiskat where there is a dire housing crisis, but more broadly for all Indigenous peoples in Canada, many of whom have rallied around her. Spence is asking for a meeting with the Prime Minister, Governor General and other leaders, and will fast until she gets it.

Rebecca Solnit: 2013 as Year Zero: For Earth and For Us

This last year put the crisis in perspective, this coming year our battle begins

As this wild year comes to an end, we return to the season of gifts. Here’s the gift you’re not going to get soon: any conventional version of Paradise. You know, the place where nothing much happens and nothing is demanded of you. The gifts you’ve already been given in 2012 include a struggle over the fate of the Earth. This is probably not exactly what you asked for, and I wish it were otherwise — but to do good work, to be necessary, to have something to give: these are the true gifts. And at least there’s still a struggle ahead of us, not just doom and despair.

Think of 2013 as the Year Zero in the battle over climate change, one in which we are going to have to win big, or lose bigger.  This is a terrible thing to say, but not as terrible as the reality that you can see in footage of glaciers vanishing, images of the entire surface of the Greenland Ice Shield melting this summer, maps of Europe’s future in which just being in southern Europe when the heat hits will be catastrophic, let alone in more equatorial realms.

Michelle Chen: Despite Exemptions, Police and Firefighters Show Labor Solidarity in Michigan Right-to-Work Battle

Michigan’s new right-to-work law has has struck a savage blow to America’s labor movement in its heartland. Unions across the state have thronged to Lansing to oppose the attack, which makes union membership optional and thus reduces labor’s bargaining clout. But tucked into the legislation are subtle exemptions for particular workers-police and firefighters, who have historically played by a different set of rules, creating political divides in the labor movement.

But in this case, it seems that many members of Michigan’s police and firefighters unions-about 1,700 bargaining units altogether-are standing in solidarity with other public-sector unions to oppose the law.

Of the four Gospels, this story of the “slaughter of the innocents” is told only in Matthew, and there isn’t much historical evidence for it other than Herod’s established record of murders and atrocities committed against those whom he saw as threats to his throne. Scholars say that if it did occur, it was not a major event: Bethlehem was a little town, as the carol says, and the number of children killed would have been accordingly small – about 20 or so. By Matthew’s account, after it was done, “what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: ‘A voice is heard in Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more.’ ” [..]

The people in Newtown, Conn. , are in one of those times when the true meaning of the Christmas holiday is felt and expressed by all people of the community, regardless of faith, wealth or social standing. It is a time for coming together and for understanding and consideration, for seeking whatever solace can be had. It is a time not only for joy to the world but also for hope that there is truth in the words found further on in the Book of Matthew: “Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”

John Nochols: ‘A Christmas Carol’ (The Unemployed Are Not Boehner’s Business Remix)

Charles Dickens would find these times rather too familiar for comfort. In seeking to awaken a spirit of charity in his countrymen, the author called attention to those who callously dismissed the poor as a burden and the unemployed as a lazy lot best forced by hunger to grab at bootstraps and pull themselves upward.

Dickens was, to be sure, more articulate than House Speaker John Boehner and the members of Congress who on the cusp of this Christmas season left Washington without extending jobless benefits for 2 million long-unemployed Americans. But surely he captured the essence of their sentiments with his imagining of a certain conservative businessman’s response to a visit by two gentlemen-“liberals,” we will call them-on Christmas Eve.

Paul Buchheit: The 12 Days of a Capitalist

On the first day of Christmas my employer gave to me ONE penny for every $3 the richest 130,000 Americans make. It’s been a national tradition since 1980.

On the second day my doctor showed me TWO Americans needing mental health care, but only one of the two could afford treatment. The doctor informed me that the fifty states have cut $1.8 billion from their mental health budgets during the recession, and that the 2013 Republican budget proposes further cuts. “It’s crazy,” I protested. “Some states are allowing guns in schools and daycare centers and churches and bars and hospitals, but they’re cutting mental health care?” The doctor just nodded in frustration.

Michael I. Niman: If You’re Reading This, the World Hasn’t Ended – Yet

But give us another 100 years of climate change and we’ll get there.

During the previous month, we’ve all heard about the supposed end of the Mayan calendar, which isn’t actually ending. Except for a handful of cranks, we also knew the world wasn’t going to end on December 21. But the media still covered the story. And they covered it well. The Nexis/Lexis database shows that during the past 30 days the US newspapers and “news wires,” which are the sources for much of what is broadcast and distributed online, ran twice as many stories mentioning the Mayan calendar as they did mentioning the UN Climate Change Conference. This fact alone is terrifying on many levels.

Climate doom isn’t a certainty-that is, we still have a very small window of opportunity to take some very drastic and radical action to avert the worst effects of global warming, and prepare for what’s already heading our way. This is a tale of two doomsdays. One is nonsense, but it entertains us. The other is real, and unless we change the way we live, it will destroy us-or, more accurately, it will allow us to destroy ourselves. And that’s why we’d rather talk about the end of the 13th baktun.

Our country and our media have too much reverence for the U.S. military and the CIA, which are not making us safer but rather helping to create new threats. As the Washington Post reports, some of our generals have an “array of perquisites befitting a billionaire, including executive jets, palatial homes, drivers, security guards.” Even worse, many officers later join the boards and executive suites of military contractors, where they rake in millions making corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Northrop Grumman richer at taxpayer expense, and sometimes promoting war itself on the network news. Our military-industrial complex is as corrupt and rotten as any institution of America’s broken democracy, and more deadly than most in its consequences.

We need to end this war in Afghanistan and the other operations that are making Americans less secure and recruiting new enemies daily. Then we can focus on fixing our broken economy at home.

Robert Kuttner: The Zombie Party

Public opinion is steadily moving away from the Republican Party, as is America’s demographic future. President Obama’s three-point re-election win understated that reality, while events since Election Day have underscored it.

Public opinion dramatically favors restoring higher tax rates on the top 2 percent. Large majorities oppose cutting Social Security or Medicare. Acceptance of same-sex marriage is increasing, and is already the overwhelming majority view of those under 40 — the future electorate. Most Americans don’t support the absence of any regulation of combat weapons. [..]

And yet a Republican Party, as personified by the House Majority, is the zombie that has been overtaken by public opinion but will neither change nor get out-of-the-way.

So reforms desired by most American voters will be a long time coming.

David Paul: The Absolutist Politics of Norquist and LaPierre Will Destroy the Republican Party

National Rifle Association executive vice president Wayne LaPierre really out-did himself this week. Speaking in response to the Newtown, Connecticut shooting, LaPierre concluded that armed guards in the schools were the answer. Like those old time liberals he so disdains, LaPierre’s solution to mass murder in schools was to throw money at the problem, demanding that Congress “appropriate whatever is necessary to put armed police officers in every single school in this nation.” [..]

Better that he had kept his mouth shut.

In one week, the two major planks of the Republican Party have demonstrated later stages of rot. Even more than its anti-abortion stance, the Republican Party is bound to its anti-tax pledge and pro-gun commitments. And those two political shibboleths are enforced by the organizational and political skills of the two men who are their public personae: Americans for Tax Reform founder Grover Norquist and LaPierre.

Robert Parry: The Real Rationale for the 2nd Amendment, That Right-Wingers Are Totally Ignorant About

A big obstacle to commonsense gun control is the Right’s false historical narrative that the Founders wanted an armed American public that could fight its own government.

Right-wing resistance to meaningful gun control is driven, in part, by a false notion that America’s Founders adopted the Second Amendment because they wanted an armed population that could battle the U.S. government. The opposite is the truth, but many Americans seem to have embraced this absurd, anti-historical narrative.

The reality was that the Framers wrote the Constitution and added the Second Amendment with the goal of creating a strong central government with a citizens-based military force capable of putting down insurrections, not to enable or encourage uprisings. The key Framers, after all, were mostly men of means with a huge stake in an orderly society, the likes of George Washington and James Madison. [..]

The men who gathered in Philadelphia in 1787 weren’t precursors to France’s Robespierre or Russia’s Leon Trotsky, believers in perpetual revolutions. In fact, their work on the Constitution was influenced by the experience of Shays’ Rebellion in western Massachusetts in 1786, a populist uprising that the weak federal government, under the Articles of Confederation, lacked an army to defeat.