CNN

Jeremy Scahill Takes on Max Boot over Afghan Fiasco

http://www.commondreams.org/video/2009/11/03-0

U.S. officials fear Karzai can't keep anti-corruption pledge

President Hamid Karzai vowed Tuesday that he'd clean up his government in his second five-year term, but U.S. officials are worried that the Afghan leader will have to award key posts to ethnic warlords and regional power barons who're linked to drug trafficking in exchange for their help in his re-election. » read more

From Channel 8 Portland, Maine:

"With 84 percent of the precincts reporting, 53 percent were opposed to same-sex marriage, 47 percent were in favor."
http://www.wmtw.com/politics/21516112/detail.html

=Sigh=

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/11/03-9

The Guardian/UK

We Only Have Months, Not Years, to Save Civilization from Climate Change

International agreements take too long, we need a swift mobilisation not seen since the second world war

by Lester Brown

For those concerned about global warming, all eyes are on December's UN climate change conference in Copenhagen. The stakes could not be higher. Almost every new report shows that the climate is changing even faster than the most dire projections of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in their 2007 report.

• guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 3 November 2009 20.55 GMT
• 
  

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091103_best_justice_money_can_buy/?ln

By Stanley Kutler

Sen. Russ Feingold has called the glut of unlimited campaign contributions nothing more than “legalized bribery.” And who among his legislative colleagues deserves to be hit with this denunciation? “Not me,” say Max Baucus, the largest single recipient of health industry funds, and Joe Lieberman, the senator from Aetna Insurance, and, for that matter, just about all of the rest of Congress. 

Just kidding, right?! That's your kind of humor, isn't it.

I try to understand what you must have experienced to make you who and what you are, and it had to be a horror of neglect and abuse.  I'm sorry for that. That you have survived is a triumph.

But, what a mess indeed, I have to agree.  We are seeing what money does to the system, and it has always been there to some extent.  The railroad barons who used Congress to steal Native American land, the Teapot Dome Scandal, etc.  But, this is worse than anything ever because it's so widespread.

Someone said, on the blog, that Congress people look out for themselves and not the people they represent.  I'd agree with that, certainly in the case of Max Baucas, Joe Lieberman, and others.

I'm also sad to see marriage denied to people of same sex.  It's unconstitutional.  What churches do is their business, but a marriage contract is a legal document in this country, and to deny that based on sex is wrong.  But, I believe it will be allowed one day.  We'll have to keep working on it.

The more issues get discussed, the more complicated they seem.  For instance, the Catholic Church provides hospitals for something like 20 percent of the people. Their stance on abortion makes them opponents of the public option.  And yes, like Catholic schools, they do a lot of good for people, but ideologically this threatens to undermine the health care reform that is so needed.

The majority of Democrats and Republicans trust AARP on insurance more than any other agency.  Even though AARP is an insurance conglomerate in the sense that they sell insurance through a number of companies, such as Kaiser. 

AARP offers all kinds of perks with respect to travel and restaurant discounts, and they get lots of money because they have 40 million members.   As long as Americans don't mind their collusion, don't mind that they get more money from the federal government for medications than Medicare does, as long as they provide private Medicare Advantage Insurance which gets money also from the federal government, we will be stuck with the corruption.

It really is WE THE PEOPLE, and we can't be ignorant. But how do you argue with 40 million Americans who believe what AARP lobbyists say, who also like all those perks???

voters in New Jersey rejected a former head of Goldman Sachs for another term

shouldn't be a surprise

voters in VA rejected a man for Gov. who ran away from a President above 50%

no new trend there

marriage equality has come a long way, with the largest churches working against it polls near 50% in a poor rural state

the big news of the night was the rejection of Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin in a Republican stronghold