New jobless claims drop to 512K, lowest since Jan.

The number of newly laid-off workers filing claims for unemployment benefits last week fell to the lowest level in 10 months, evidence that job cuts are easing as the economy slowly heals. Still, companies are reluctant to hire and economists expect the unemployment rate will tick up to 9.9 percent when October's figure is reported Friday. The jobless rate hit a 26-year high of 9.8 percent in September.

The Labor Department said Thursday that first-time claims for jobless benefits fell by 20,000 to a seasonally adjusted 512,000. That's better than economists' estimates of 523,000. Economists closely watch initial claims, which are considered a gauge of the pace of layoffs and an indication of employers' willingness to hire new workers.
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The Scariest Jobs Chart Ever

Anything's possible, but this seems unlikely. In 1948, U.S. consumers were not still saddled with the massive debts that are stifling consumption today. And consumers still represent 70%+ of spending. The other interesting point with respect to the 1948 "V" is that we have now gone as many months from the peak as it took employment to recover in full in the 1948 recession. And we're still losing jobs.

Most importantly, regardless of what the jobs recovery eventually looks like, it hasn't started yet. The economy is still losing 250,000+ jobs a month. The average workweek, which should be the first indicator to turn up, also fell in August to match its record low. This would not seem to be consistent with a sustained, v-shaped recovery.
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Unemployment in California at 12%, Highest in Nearly 70 Years

California’s unemployment rate in August hit its highest point in nearly 70 years, starkly underscoring how the nation’s incipient economic recovery continues to elude millions of Americans looking for work.

While job losses continue to fall, the new unemployment rate — 12.2 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — is far above the national average of 9.7 percent and places the country’s largest state fourth behind Michigan, Nevada and Rhode Island.Statistics kept by the state show California’s unemployment rate was 14.7 percent in 1940, according to Kevin Callori, a spokesman for the California Employment Development Department.
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Canada's armed forces wave the flag up north

EVERY summer Canada’s armed forces conduct military exercises in the Arctic, allowing them to test their abilities far from southern supply centres. This year they have chosen Iqaluit, the capital of the territory of Nunavut, as the jumping off point for what they are calling Operation Nanook.

Members of the national and international media have been invited to observe this show of Canadian fighting prowess. Some 700 soldiers, sailors and airmen will search for a downed aircraft, hunt a submarine and deal with a mock explosion at the tank farm that supplies all of Iqualuit’s fuel.
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Iran, North Korea and the bomb

HONESTY is a rare commodity in the nuclear underworld, where Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, Syria and possibly others—as well as Argentina, Brazil, Libya and South Africa in times past—have long done deals for the equipment, technology and materials needed for their illicit nuclear programmes. Yet North Korea and Pakistan’s notorious blackmarket-maker, Abdul Qadeer Khan, have both proudly and separately decided to tell the world more about their nuclear exploits. By contrast there is a worrying silence from Iran and Syria, two countries in the spotlight this week at the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear guardian, for their suspect nuclear activities.
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Mad As Hell Doctors

We are a small group of Oregon-Based doctors who care. We believe there is only one way to control costs, one way to remove profiteering from the system, one way to reclaim the care of our patients, and one way to be sure everyone is covered: we must replace our current pay-or-die system and with a comprehensive, publicly financed, privately delivered, Single Payer system that puts people first. Our moment to take a stand for Single Payer is NOW. We may not have another opportunity like this in our lifetime. Please support this unprecedented road trip to real health care reform.

There's no nice way to say it. The financial cost of health care is killing our citizens, hobbling our economy, crushing small business, and threatening the solvency of our government. In the meantime, the Health Care Industry is spending almost two million dollars a day lobbying Congress and manipulating public opinion to accept “reform” legislation that leaves a vicious, for-profit system intact. The "public option" is a trap. We need real reform that finds immediate savings, controls costs, and accomplishes the moral imperative of true Universal Access. A Single Payer plan is the only real path to a Health Care System that is socially, ethically and fiscally responsible.
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New signs raise hopes for recovery

The strongest monthly home sales increase in a decade and an encouraging economic assessment from Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke have provided new support for the hope that recovery from the worst recession in decades may be at hand.

The Dow Jones industrial average surged above 9,500 for the first time since November, and oil futures flirted with $75 a barrel before closing up 98 cents at $73.89, the highest settlement price of the year. The Dow rose 155.91, or 1.7%, to 9505.96, and the other big indexes gained more than 1.5%. But Bernanke's rally-sparking reassurance disguises the reality that many of the most populous states -- such as California and Florida, long accustomed to serving as dynamos of recovery and growth -- may not see much cause for rejoicing any time soon.

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The Horrifying Hidden Story Behind Drug Company Profits

Our governments have chosen, over decades, to allow a strange system for developing medicines to build up. Most of the work carried out by scientists to bring a drug to your local pharmacist -- and into your lungs, or stomach, or bowels -- is done in government-funded university labs, paid for by your taxes. Drug companies usually come in late in the process of development, and pay for part of the expensive but largely uncreative final stages, like buying some of the chemicals and trials that are needed. In return, then they own the exclusive rights to manufacture and profit from the resulting medicine for years. Nobody else can make it.

The argument in defense of this system offered by Big Pharma is simple, and sounds reasonable at first: we need to charge large sums for "our" drugs so we can develop more life-saving medicines. We want to develop as many treatments as we can, and we can only do that if we have revenue. A lot of the research we back doesn't result in a marketable drug, so it's an expensive process.

But a detailed study by Dr Marcia Angell, the former editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, says that only 14 percent of their budgets go on developing drugs -- usually at the uncreative final part of the drug-trail. The rest goes on marketing and profits. And even with that puny 14 percent, drug companies squander a fortune developing "me-too" drugs -- medicines that do exactly the same job as a drug that already exists, but has one molecule different, so they can take out a new patent, and receive another avalanche of profits.

Yet moves to change the current system are blocked by the drug companies and their armies of lobbyists. That's why the way we regulate the production of medicines across the world is still designed to serve the interests of the shareholders of the drug companies -- not the health of humanity.
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Hiroshima mayor calls for abolishing nuke weapons

Hiroshima's mayor urged global leaders on Thursday to back President Barack Obama's call to abolish nuclear weapons as Japan marked the 64th anniversary of the world's first atomic bomb attack. "We refer to ourselves, the great global majority, as the 'Obamajority,' and we call on the rest of the world to join forces with us to eliminate all nuclear weapons by 2020," Akiba said.

Hiroshima was instantly flattened and an estimated 140,000 people were killed or died within months when the American B-29 bomber Enola Gay dropped its deadly payload in the waning days of World War II. A total of about 260,000 victims of the attack are officially recognized by the government, including those that have died of related injuries or sickness in the decades since.
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Today's weapons are far more destructive. - Bill

Info from U.S. Forces in Afghanistan

The U.S. Forces in Afghanistan Twitter feed currently has 4,927 followers and more than 470 updates since its inception. In addition, the U.S. Forces in Afghanistan have a Facebook page and YouTube channel as well.

U.S. Recession Worst Since Great Depression, Revised Data Show

The first 12 months of the U.S. recession saw the economy shrink more than twice as much as previously estimated, reflecting even bigger declines in consumer spending and housing, revised figures showed. The world’s largest economy contracted 1.9 percent from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the last three months of 2008, compared with the 0.8 percent drop previously on the books, the Commerce Department said yesterday in Washington. Gross domestic product has shrunk 3.9 percent in the past year, the report said, indicating the worst slump since the Great Depression.

The report signals the process of repairing tattered balance sheets following the biggest drop in household wealth on record may be further along than anticipated. “The current downturn beginning in 2008 is more pronounced,” Steven Landefeld, director of the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis, said in a press briefing this week. The revisions were in line with past experience in which initial figures tended to underestimate the severity of contractions during their early stages, he said.
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How fact-free claims about Obama's citizenship gained mainstream currency

The false allegation that President Barack Obama was born in another country is more than a fact-free smear. Marked by accusations and backstabbing, it's the story of how a small but intense movement called "birthers" rose from a handful of people prone to seeing conspiracies, aided by the Internet, magnified without evidence by eager radio and cable TV hosts, and eventually ratified by a small group of Republican politicians working to keep the story alive on the floors of Congress and the campaign trails of the Midwest.

"He is NOT an American citizen," yelled a woman at a town hall meeting in Delaware, angrily confronting a congressman. "I don't want this flag to change. I want my country back." When Rep. Mike Castle, R-Del., responded that Obama is a citizen, she and others in the room jeered him.

"It's a fascinating phenomenon," said Jerrold Post, director of the political psychology program at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs and author of the recent book "Political Paranoia." "They are not searching for the truth. They are searching for anything that confirms their fixed idea, their malevolent idea. ... It doesn't soothe people to tell them it's not legitimate. That makes them angry."
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Pelosi to fight for health care bill during recess

As tourists in flip-flops snapped photos of the sign above her Capitol office last week, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spent 14-hour days mediating a sprawling health care bill among the warring factions of her 256 Democrats. Republicans, meanwhile, waged hourly attacks against the 10-year, $1 trillion plan she was crafting. The gilt-tongued president grew wonky, while polls showed public support for reform turning to opposition.

Outside the Capitol, Pelosi's popularity hovers in the basement. But by all accounts, her standing with her colleagues has risen, and if there is any torture going on in her chambers it seems mainly applied to her. "Nancy rose to a new level of professionalism in bringing people together to work out their differences on the bill," said Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., one of the seven Blue Dogs in the closed-door meeting.
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Pharisees on the Potomac

Like cats that have lost their whiskers, the Republicans seem off balance now that they have lost their talent for hypocrisy. They are still practicing the ancient political art of Tartuffery, of course, just without their former aplomb.

Who can forget the glory years, when the Gipper invoked God but never went to church? When Arlen Specter accused Anita Hill of perjury to distract from Clarence Thomas’s false witness? When Newt Gingrich and other conservatives indulged in affairs with young Washington peaches as they pushed to impeach Bill Clinton? No one had more flair than W. and Cheney, crowing about making us safe as they made the world more dangerous, and bragging about fiscal restraint while they spent us into oblivion.
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Maddow Exposes C Street

Whatever else Washington, D.C. stands for, it certainly stands as the center for mixing sex, religion and politics. Whether it’s brothels, hustlers, men’s rooms, escorts, mistresses or interns, it seems there is an unending supply of politicians willing to give the mix a vigorous stir. And, unlike their Liberal brethren, it’s the Conservatives who have the Bible in one hand and condoms (hopefully) in the other!

All of this was documented recently on the Rachel Maddow Show, home of the rising MSNBC broadcast personality who displays intelligence and awareness with her probing and incisive interviews. As Maddow has discovered, today’s philandering Conservative politico isn’t the simple adulterer of the past. Twenty-first century cheaters must have God-driven purpose to their activities according to Coe, proprietor of the secretive Christian-centered C Street House.

Additionally, It’s hard to imagine, for those of us living outside of the beltway, that it was only 30 years ago Republican lawmakers were condemning the benign, self-admitted lust of then President Jimmy Carter who revealed in a 1976 Playboy interview that, “Because I’m just human and I’m tempted…the Bible says, ‘Thou shalt not commit adultery.’ Christ said, ‘I tell you that anyone who looks on a woman with lust has in his heart already committed adultery.’ I’ve looked on a lot of women with lust. I’ve committed adultery in my heart many times…This is something that God recognizes, that I will do and have done, and God forgives me for it.”
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The Family by Jeff Sharlet (Amazon)

Cheney ordered CIA to hide info from Congress

In the eight years of his vice presidency, Cheney was the Bush administration's most vehement defender of the secrecy of government activities, particularly in the intelligence arena. He went to the Supreme Court to keep secret the advisers to his task force on energy and won. A report released on Friday by the inspectors general of five agencies about the National Security Agency's domestic surveillance program makes clear Cheney's former chief of staff, David Addington, had to approve every government official who was told about the program. The report said "the exceptionally compartmented nature of the program" frustrated FBI agents who were assigned to follow up on tips it turned up.

High-level NSA officials who were responsible for ensuring the surveillance program was legal, including the agency's inspector general and general counsel, were not permitted by Cheney's office to read the Justice Department opinion that found the eavesdropping legal, several officials said. Questions over the adequacy and truthfulness of the CIA's briefings for Congress date back to the creation of the intelligence oversight committees in the 1970s after disclosures of agency assassination and mind-control programs and other abuses. But complaints increased in the Bush years, when the CIA and other intelligence agencies took the major role in pursuing al-Qaida.
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Cheney kept CIA program from Congress

President Obama: A New Era for Credit Cards

It can be difficult to think of an issue that touches more people, or can get a rise out of more people, than credit card fine print, fees, and staggering interest rate hikes. For some it is an irritation, for others who may have already hit a rough patch, it can become a brutal weight.

But as the legislation the President signed today goes into effect, those problems will phase out as normal parts of life for our friends, our neighbors, our families or ourselves. It is a sweeping bill -- as you read through the White House fact sheet on the details, you are sure to be reminded of a dozen angry or frustrated stories you have heard over the years. Just for starters, it bans unfair rate increases, prevents unfair fee traps, requires plain language in plain sight for disclosures, increases accountability all around, and institutes protections for students and young people.
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President Obama: Reform for Our Troops

Last year, the Government Accountability Office, or the GAO, looked into 95 major defense projects and found cost overruns that totaled $295 billion. Wasteful spending comes from exotic requirements, lack of oversight, and indefensible no-bid contracts that don't make our troops or our country any safer. To put this in perspective, these cost overruns would have paid our troops' salaries and provided benefits for their families for more than a year.

At a time when we're fighting two wars and facing a serious deficit, this is unexcusable and unconscionable. As Secretary Gates has said, one dollar of waste in our defense budget is a dollar we can't spend to support our troops, or prepare for future threats, or protect the American people. Well, it's finally time to end this waste and inefficiency.

Already, I've announced reform that will greatly reduce no-bid defense contracts and save the government billions of dollars. And Secretary Gates, working with our military leadership, has also proposed a courageous set of reforms in our defense budget that will target waste and strengthen our military for the future. In taking on this enormously difficult task, he's done a tremendous job, and I want to publicly commend Secretary Gates for that.

The bill I'm signing today, known as the Weapons System Acquisition Reforms Act, represents an important next step in this procurement reform process. It reforms a system where taxpayers are charged too much for weapons systems that too often arrive late -- a system that suffers from spending on unproven technologies, outdated weapons, and a general lack of oversight.
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Obama's Internationalism: Echoes of FDR, HST and JFK

President Obama gave a speech last week in Moscow that conjures up memories of our greatest foreign policy presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and John Kennedy. Two lines from Obama's address directly echo the themes and concerns of these three 20th century Democratic leaders.

First Obama stated: "Any world order that tries to elevate one nation or one group of people over another will inevitably fail. The pursuit of power is no longer a zero-sum game -- progress must be shared." And then he said: ""Now let me be clear: America cannot and should not seek to impose any system of government on any other country, nor should we presume to choose which party or individual should run a country."

His remarks are eerily reminiscent of two powerful speeches which President Franklin Roosevelt and his successor, President Harry Truman, delivered within four months of each other in 1945. FDR said in March 1945: "We shall have to take responsibility for world collaboration, or we shall have to bear the responsibility for another world conflict."
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Cheney Is Linked to Concealment of C.I.A. Project

The Central Intelligence Agency withheld information about a secret counterterrorism program from Congress for eight years on direct orders from former Vice President Dick Cheney, the agency’s director, Leon E. Panetta, has told the Senate and House intelligence committees, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said Saturday. The report that Mr. Cheney was behind the decision to conceal the still-unidentified program from Congress deepened the mystery surrounding it, suggesting that the Bush administration had put a high priority on the program and its secrecy.

Mr. Panetta, who ended the program when he first learned of its existence from subordinates on June 23, briefed the two intelligence committees about it in separate closed sessions the next day. The question of how completely the C.I.A. informed Congress about sensitive programs has been hotly disputed by Democrats and Republicans since May, when Speaker Nancy Pelosi accused the agency of failing to reveal in 2002 that it was waterboarding a terrorism suspect, a claim Mr. Panetta rejected.
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