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WILL DURST FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

And now, another installment in the continuing saga that is The Herman Cain Sexual Harassment Soap Opera. When last we left him, the candidate was praising his main backers: "The Koch Brothers are my brothers from another mother."  Guess we should be grateful he hasn't dismissed his accusers with an offhand: "Bros before hoes."

You could say the situation is fluid, or more precisely glutinous. It's hard to tell who or what to believe. Conservative talk shows pound home the theory this is all a put- up job while the liberal media remains incredulous the Cain Train hasn't derailed into a fiery pileup. Right now it all boils down to a classic case of He Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said. She Said.

The good news for the first- ever, serious black Republican Presidential candidate is a new CBS poll reveals 61% of potential GOP primary participants don't consider the charges serious. Apparently there's a large contingent of voters who either believe girls lie or boys will be boys. In three short years this country has gone from Hope and Change to Grope and Change. Ain't life odd?

In his defense, Cain maintains he's never engaged in any inappropriate behavior. Ever. Really? Ever? Hell, if this Presidency thing doesn't work out, the guy should run for Pope. Or maybe he's better equipped to replace Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. Of course, the term "inappropriate" is objective. Fashionistas might call his cowboy hat highly inappropriate.

Cain's staff went so far as to say the sexual harassment allegations have actually helped the campaign. Helped! Wow. All he needs is a false imprisonment charge, he could sew this thing right up.

Cain has changed his story almost as often as Mitt Romney changes positions. And his memory problems draw right up to Rick Perry's Energy Department. Again, almost. First he couldn't remember anything, then admitted a charge may have been investigated, but there was no settlement, then maybe there was An Agreement, but now he refuses to comment on any of the cases, relentlessly retreating to his stuttering German "nein, nein, nein."

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JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Climate change produced Japan's catastrophic earthquake and tsunami.  Although the corporate media and the U.S. government have swept the Fukushima nuclear disaster under the proverbial censorship rug, it's important to remember that an earthquake measuring 9.0 on the Richter scale and the ensuing 50-foot high tsunami wave led to a meltdown of three of Japan's Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors. Japan's nuclear regulatory agency reported that 31 radioactive isotopes were released. In contrast, 16 radioactive isotopes were released from the A-bomb that hit Hiroshima Aug. 6, 1945. The agency also reported that radioactive cesium released was almost 170 times the amount of the A-bomb, and that the release of radioactive Iodine-131 and Strontium-90 was about two to three times the level of the A-bomb.  And that information doesn't include the unknown deadly amount of radioactive water from the Fukushima plants that are being perpetually dumped into the Pacific Ocean since the meltdowns occurred last March 2011.

Terming Fukushima Japan's "second massive nuclear disaster," novelist Haruki Murakami said "this time no one dropped a bomb on us" but instead "we set the stage, we committed the crime with our own hands, we are destroying our own lands, and we are destroying our own lives. While we are the victims, we are also the perpetrators. We must fix our eyes on this fact," he continued. "If we fail to do so, we will inevitably repeat the same mistake again, somewhere else."   Indeed, a recent report revealed that radiation is being detected across Europe. "Anywhere spent nuclear fuel is handled, there is a chance that... iodine-131 will escape into the environment," the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says on its website.

Speaking as a part-time resident of Kauai, we've been immensely concerned about radiation plumes blowing over from Japan.  If the government has been monitoring radiation levels, then that critical information has been concealed from the public.

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On the morning of November 14th, the Oakland police again dismantled the Occupy camp in Oscar Grant Plaza. This action was allegedly taken because a man was killed in an altercation near Occupy Oakland last week, and because the Occupy camp has become a place where homeless people can be fed and sheltered.

It was the 101st murder this year in Oakland, and its use as a reason to squash Occupy Oakland is tragically absurd:

A man was shot and killed Thursday just outside the Oakland encampment that anti-Wall Street protesters have occupied for the last month, causing a scream-filled commotion in the City Hall plaza where the camp stands and turning a planned anniversary celebration into a somber, candlelit memorial.

With opinions about Occupy Oakland and its effect on the city having become more divided in recent days, supporters and opponents immediately reacted to the homicide - the city's 101st this year.

Camp organizers said the attack was unrelated to their activities, while city and business leaders, cited the death as proof that the camp itself either bred crime or drained law enforcement resources from other parts of the Oakland.

Mayor Jean Quan, who has been criticized by residents on both sides for issuing mixed signals about the local government's willingness to tolerate the camp, issued a statement Thursday providing a clear eviction notice.

"Tonight's incident underscores the reason why the encampment must end. The risks are too great," Quan said. "We need to return (police) resources to addressing violence throughout the city. It's time for the encampment to end. Camping is a tactic, not a solution."

Ironically, as BuzzFlash at Truthout noted awhile back, the Oakland Police Department (OPD) is under the watch of a federal judge who has said the department is so egregiously in noncompliance with reasonable police standards that it may be put into federal receivership. It seems that the OPD has a history of planting evidence, framing arrested individuals and being trigger happy, among other "irregularities."

But the most profound injustice is the notion that in a city where 100 people have been killed this year - and even with the heavy police presence around the Occupy Oakland site, this one particular murder wasn't prevented - somehow the Occupy movement was the cause of the shooting.

To blame the Occupy movement for a shooting located in a society that does little to prevent approximately 10,000 firearm homicides a year in the United States, with a large chunk of them in neglected African-American and Latino communities, is beyond nonsensical; it's admitting the failure of the status quo to address violence in a large economically deprived underclass that is generally ignored.

As to feeding and housing the homeless and hungry, isn't that something cities across the nation should be doing? Isn't that what Christ implored of his followers?

What the Occupy movement is doing is not causing an increase in violence and homelessness; it is inadvertently exposing the epidemic of violence, particularly shootings, and poor people without means in need of services.

That is the biggest threat to the status quo of the Oakland municipal government, and to cities across the nation that are unleashing militarized police forces on generally harmless protesters advocating for a just society. The institutionalized powers of government and the 1 percent would prefer that the squalid, deadly underside of our society remain swept under the rug, all covered up.

The truth is too inconvenient and disruptive.

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The One Percent Solution is the name of a novel by

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The verbal gaffe that's basically ended

The Texas Governor’s political life

Reminded me of this famous incident in

The long career of Barney Phife

Watch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBuPQgV8yBM

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Some in the pro-choice community are certainly breathing a deep sigh of relief as Mississippi's Personhood Amendment, which would have defined life as beginning at conception, was soundly defeated on Tuesday, November 8. With nearly 60 percent of the state's voters rejecting Initiative 26, there is no doubt that a celebration is in order.

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Someone recently coined the phrase the "elevation of stupidity" to describe the gyrations of current political campaigners. Indeed there is a depressing array of candidates who lack original ideas and the ability to articulate agendas worthy of serious discussion.

Yet day after day, debate after debate media lightweights and heavyweights alike spend hours of what passes for informed discourse boring the daylights out of most reasonable Americans. The only audience that enjoys the hyperbolic nonsense is one waiting to hear what they already believe - - ready to applaud the most absurd observations ever to be afforded a public forum. It is important, though to realize that members of the human caucus are comfortable celebrating the death penalty meted out in large numbers in Texas or finding it appropriate that others must die because they lack health insurance. It is a state of mind we would not otherwise know were it not for media coverage and so it is best that we are so informed.

But that we are forced to listen to the rants of mindless pontificators holding forth on everything from abortion to the tax code or opt out of news cycles is an unhealthy sign of our times. Where did the Santorums, the Bachmanns and their fanatical colleagues ever get the idea that their opinions were sound enough to guide the rest of us along the paths of righteousness? And what gives them the right to insult a president who is light years ahead of them intellectually or to constantly criticize programs they are incapable of either understanding or revising to accommodate today's economic intricacies?

A cheer goes up from supporters when Governor Perry suggests eliminating the Commerce Department without understanding that Commerce conducts the census among other functions. To be sure certain efficiencies could no doubt be realized at Commerce, but it seems obvious that cheering audiences, caught up in a frenzy of cost cutting, have no idea what they are so excited about and only a vague notion of what tasks various government agencies are charged to undertake. Health care? Why not just accept the Bush assertion that no-one in this country goes without medical attention because they can always go to the local emergency room, even if that care is limited and extremely expensive?

And we are expected to believe that criticism of Herman Cain is the result of the left being unwilling to see a "businessman" in the White House. Perhaps there's an inchoate fear among voters who actually think about stuff that Cain, the businessman could be counting pizza profits when that three-o'clock call reached the White House. Cain, like so many in the general population and among Tea Partiers in particular is incapable of gaining ground in the complex international milieu into which he would be thrust should he somehow reach the pinnacle of power as president. But even in the sorry state of our political condition and an electorate too often willing to mistake the most absurd rhetoric for legitimacy it is hard to imagine Herman Cain rising above his current state of controlled ineptitude.

On the debate stage Mitt Romney does indeed look the most presidential, but the truth is that just looking presidential isn't what the country needs right now. The debates are showing us not who the best candidate is, but rather who is the least foolish among a cast of small-minded hucksters.

 

MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

You might not think that Missoula, Montana, (population around 65,000) would be the place that a revolt against corporate personhood might start, but you'd be wrong.

In fact, this past Tuesday, 75 percent of the voters in Missoula supported a referendum declaring that "corporations are not human beings." It's part of a national movement to encourage states to support a constitutional amendment to deny to corporations the rights given to individual Americans. The campaign was launched after the 2010 US Supreme Court decision granting corporations the rights of free speech guaranteed to individuals, including campaign spending.

According to the Missoulian, Cynthia Wolken - the councilwoman who initiated the referendum - was hopeful that other cities would follow suit:

"Basically, it affirmed what we were all seeing on the streets, which is the average Missoulian wanted to have their voice heard ... and they want their elected officials to fix the problem of corporate personhood," Wolken said. "So I hope this message is heard and we get started on fixing the problem."

As she sees it, corporations have been given too much power, and as stated in the Missoula resolution, their "profits and survival are often in direct conflict with the essential needs and rights of human beings."

Every week, over the past few months, Truthout has been excerpting Thom Hartmann's prescient book, "Unequal Protection," on how corporate personhood mistakenly became embedded in court rulings. In the book - available in a revised and expanded edition from Truthout - Hartmann writes:

For humans to take back control of our governments by undoing corporate personhood, we'll have to begin with the governments that are the closest and most accessible to us. It's almost impossible for you or me to go to Washington, D.C., and have a meeting with our senator or representative - most of us usually can't even get them on the phone unless we're a big contributor. But most of us can meet with our city council members or show up at their meetings. Lobbying within the local community is both easy and effective. Local politicians are the closest to - and generally the most responsive - to the people they represent.

When enough local communities have passed ordinances that directly challenge corporate personhood, state legislatures will begin to notice. As with the issues of slavery, women's suffrage, and Prohibition (among others), when local communities take actions that are followed by states, eventually the federal government will get on board.

Missoula, the home of the University of Montana, is showing the way.

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ROBERT C. KOEHLER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

"Play faster!" he cried, wildly, over and over. "Play faster!"

The dame who was tickling the ivories complied, out of control herself. The music revved to a dangerous velocity - oh, too fast for decent, sober, well-behaved Americans to bear - and . . . well, you just knew, violence, madness, laughter were just around the corner. The year was 1936 and, oh my God, they were high on marijuana, public enemy number one.

The scene is from Reefer Madness, arguably the dumbest movie ever made - but smugly at the emotional and ideological core of American drug policy for the last three-quarters of a century. The policy, which morphed in 1970 into an all-out "war" on drugs, has filled our prisons to bursting, created powerful criminal enterprises, launched a real war in Mexico and presided over the skyrocketing of recreational drug use in the United States. The war on drugs just may be a bigger disaster than the war on terror.

"The war on drugs, as it has been waged, has not only failed to curtail drug use; it has become a major public health liability in its own right," writes Christopher Glenn Fichtner in his comprehensive new book on our disastrous war on a plant, Cannabanomics: The Marijuana Policy Tipping Point (Well Mind Books).

Fichtner, a psychiatrist - he served as Illinois Director of Mental Health for several years - takes a long, hard look at the politics of irrationality and lays out a compelling diagnosis: "essentially, social or mass psychosis." You can also throw in racism. The war on drugs is simply a race war by another name, fueled by fear of Mexican and African American culture, with the weight of law brought down on African Americans with wildly disproportionate severity:

". . . during a period when the number of prison sentences for drug-related convictions increased dramatically for all drug offenders," Fichtner writes, citing Illinois statistics between 1983 and 2002, "it increased for African Americans at roughly eight times the rate of increase seen for Caucasians."

But reading Cannabanomics kept leaving me with the sense that there was a deeper irrationality to our anti-marijuana crusade than even the racism. For instance, "Examples abound," he writes, "in which the application of mandatory minimum sentences has led to harsher penalties for marijuana offenses than for violent crimes ranging from battery through sexual assault and even to murder."

And the violent enforcement of zero tolerance hasn't been limited to the pursuit of recreational potheads. Those using cannabis medicinally have also been harassed, arrested and sometimes treated with such shocking violence you have to wonder whether the official paranoia about marijuana use - that it leads to mental derangement and violent behavior - is sheer projection.

For instance, early in the book Fichtner relates the story of Garry, a California man who used marijuana to relieve arthritic pain. Despite the fact that this was legal under state law, his house was raided by federal agents: "As he opened his front door, he was greeted by a battering ram and a physical takedown maneuver that left him with a dislocated left shoulder, right hand fractures, blunt head trauma, and a back injury that aggravated the arthritis for which he grew cannabis in his garage in the first place."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

You can say this for the child sex abuse scandal at Penn State: it gave the Vatican a break.

Indeed, just the other day, the government of Ireland pulled its ambassador from the Vatican amid the aftermath of a large-scale sex abuse scandal in the Catholic country - one that the Vatican covered up for years.

Just as the child sex abuse incidents in Ireland, America and around the world tested the faith of Catholics in the Pope vs. the horrifying immoral acts of some priests who were sexual predators of children, the legendary football powerhouse of Penn State - and its all-time, game-winning, record-holder coach, Joe Paterno - were tested against the cover-up of a former assistant coach, Jerry Sandusky, who is alleged to have sexually abused at least eight boys.

Paterno was fired by the Penn State board for ignoring at least one child abuse charge against Sandusky. According to The New York Times:

Upon learning about a suspected 2002 assault by Mr. Sandusky on a young boy in the football building's showers, Mr. Paterno redirected the graduate assistant who witnessed the incident to the athletic director, rather than notifying the police. Mr. Paterno said the graduate assistant who reported the assault, Mike McQueary, said only that something disturbing had happened that was perhaps sexual in nature. Mr. McQueary testified that he saw Mr. Sandusky having anal sex with the boy.

Just this month, Sandusky was finally charged with 40 counts relating to sexual child abuse by the Pennsylvania Attorney General Linda Kelley, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer:

Twenty of the 40 crimes with which Sandusky is charged allegedly took place during the time he worked for Paterno, including three counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, a first-degree felony.

One accuser, now 27, testified that Sandusky initiated contact with a "soap battle" in the shower that led to multiple instances of involuntary sexual intercourse and indecent assault at Sandusky's hands, a grand jury report said.

Indulging criminal and deviant behavior among football players and coaches is no new phenomenon in college sports, considering how football and basketball have become big-time fundraising machines for winning college programs. So it was with Paterno.

Thousands of students (estimates vary) rioted at Penn State in protest of the firing of Paterno. It was a small segment of the nearly 45,000 undergraduate and graduate students at what is considered one of the top public universities in the United States.

But it is still a bit disturbing to know that there is a significant segment of students who value a legendary football coach over the violation of young boys who were anally raped in the Penn State football shower.

No, Paterno is not charged with any deviant behavior, just with turning a blind eye to it.

The Los Angeles Times quotes a protesting Penn State student who sympathizes with Paterno:

James Choi, 18, a freshman from Baltimore, also thought the way Paterno was fired was unjust.

"He shouldn't have to go out this way," Choi said. "They should let him leave with his dignity."

Unfortunately for Paterno, he gave up his dignity and his moral authority when he chose not to tarnish the Penn State football brand over reporting the horror that happened in his team's shower room. As a result, Sandusky continued to violate young boys for years.

Football is a game that's over in three hours or so. The boys who he sexually abused will live with the scars for the rest of their lives.

Paterno is getting off easy. He just has to live with his conscience.

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BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Jackson is dead; Dr. Conrad Murray has been convicted of manslaughter; Philip Anschutz has walked away with millions

In case you've been on another planet, holed up in an Occupy tent somewhere, or just plain too stubborn to care, Dr. Conrad Murray has been found guilty of manslaughter in the death of Michael Jackson.

And one of the more interesting pieces of information that surfaced during the trial was the role played by Philip Anschutz, the head of the Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG), the company that was chiefly responsible for setting up Jackson's comeback tour.

In less than two days, the 12-person jury reached its verdict. Murray was found guilty and carted off to the Los Angeles County jail where he was placed on suicide watch.

Later this month Murray, who could receive probation or as much as four years in prison, will be sentenced.

Jackson's death came while the mega-pop star was preparing for "This Is It," the comeback of all comeback tours; a series of concerts at London's O2 arena. Millions and millions of dollars were at stake. Postponement or cancellation of the tour wasn't an option.

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TONY PEYSER FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

 

The people's verdict in Ohio? SB 5 is dead.

(That pretty much sums up what they said.)

 

An anti-immigrant in Arizona wound up lacking

Necessary votes & he was then sent off packing.

 

Gov. Kasich & State Senator Pearce are already bringing

News to the Right that an unfriendly pendulum is swinging.

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PAUL ROGAT LOEB FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

The Occupy movement has done something amazing, getting Americans to start questioning our economic divides. It's created spaces for people to come together, voice their discontents and dreams, creatively challenge destructive greed. It's created powerful political theater, engaged community, an alternative to silence and powerlessness.

But it also faces major challenges. I'm fine that this new public commons isn't offering detailed platforms for change. We can find plenty in almost any Paul Krugman or Robert Kuttner column. Instead the movement has highlighted the destructive polarization of wealth while voicing what one young woman called "a cry for something better." And that's a major contribution. The movement and its allies now need to keep spreading this message to that majority of Americans who are sympathetic but have given up on the possibility of change. To reach those more resistant, who might respond if seriously engaged. To make the physical occupations not just ends in themselves, but bases where more and more people can participate, and find ways to publicly act. To keep momentum building even in the winter cold, and when media coverage fades. To find continuing ways for people to act without dissipating their energy in an array of fragmented efforts. And, although some participants would disagree, to become part of a broader movement that without muting its voice help bring about a better electoral outcome in 2012 than the disaster of 2010, when corporate interests prevailed again and again because those who would have rejected their lies stayed home.

One solution, which is beginning to happen, is for the movement to move to the neighborhoods, building on its existing efforts in hundreds of cities and towns. This doesn't mean abandoning the current encampments. At their best they've created powerful new centers for conversation, reflection, and creative action. People talk, brainstorm ideas, make posters and banners, draw in the curious, including those just passing by. In Seattle, even tourists riding the amphibious tour buses broke into cheers as they drove past. Participants tell stories of lost jobs, medical bills, and student debt, putting a human face on how they and so many others have been made expendable by a country that seems to care only for the wealthiest. Self-organized committees plan creative tactics, handle donations of food, address medical needs, reach out to the media, create innovative art projects, clean the occupation grounds, and ensure physical security. Common meals become a form of communion. The gatherings also convey a sense of festival, inviting in those not yet involved with puppets colorful banners, drum circles radical marching bands, signs saying "I'll believe corporations are people when Texas executes one," and people dressed up as predatory billionaires, Lady Liberty and dollar spewing zombies who chant "I smell money, I smell money." The spirit of play echoes the defiant folk and hip hop music of Tahir Square and the Gandhi meets Monty Python approaches of the Serbian youth movement Otpur, who helped train the initial Tahir Square occupiers.

But for all the value of creating visible protest communities in the centers of our cities, for all the powerful stories and Dadaist humor, most Americans are still watching from a distance, at most passive spectators. So maybe the rest of us. who are about these issues but aren't ready to sleep on the hard cold ground, need to build on the opening that this movement has created to consciously reach out to the rest of America. To the degree that the occupations have led the media to even briefly question America's fundamental divides is a victory. But it's not one that we can count on indefinitely. So we need to find creative ways to take the key issues that the movement's placed on the public agenda to every neighborhood, community, workplace and campus, even those that don't seem natural hotbeds of change.

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PAUL BUCHHEIT FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Redistribution of income has been taking place since 1980, when the top 1% already had a large piece of the pie (7%).

Then they took a second piece (7% more).

Then they took a third piece (7% more).

That's over a trillion dollars a year of AFTER-TAX income that would be going to the other 99% if it weren't for 30 years of tax cuts and deregulation.

If the median household income had kept pace with the economy since 1970, it would now be nearly $92,000, not $50,000.

How do wealthy Americans respond to this? They argue that the top earners pay most of the income tax. But federal income tax is only a small part of the burden on the middle class. Based on data from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, the total of all state and local taxes, social security taxes, and excise taxes (gasoline, alcohol, tobacco) consumes 21% of the annual incomes of the poorest half of America. For the richest 1% of Americans, the same taxes consume 7% of their incomes. Furthermore, the richest people pay most of the federal income taxes because they've made ALMOST ALL the new income over the past 30 years. As productivity has risen 80%, average overall wages have remained flat.

Wealthy people also claim that opportunity exists for everyone, if only they work hard. But an American born in 1970 in the bottom economic quintile had only a 17% chance of making it into the top two quintiles. Data shows that much of Europe has more economic mobility than the United States.

Wealthy people also claim that they've earned whatever they have. But they've made their fortunes with considerable help from society. Government-funded research, infrastructure growth, national security, and property laws have largely benefited rich individuals and corporations. DARPA (the Internet), NIH (medicine), and NSF and NASA (science) have laid a half-century foundation for profit-seeking corporations.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

On Tuesday, America was occupied by sanity.

In a major pushback to the assault on collective bargaining and unions, a unified coalition of organized labor and progressives beat back Ohio Senate Bill 5. This legislation that would have severely restricted union rights - already signed into law by Tea Party Gov. John Kasich - was nullified by a landslide margin of almost two to one. The reverberations will be felt far and wide, including in the upcoming effort to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker.

And although even Keith Olbermann was predicting its passage on "Countdown," even the reddest of regressive states, Mississippi, defeated Initiative 26 that would have legally endowed a fertilized human egg with the attributes of a person. This would have had widespread horrendous impact, such as making any woman taking a morning-after pill a murderer.

There were other less touted victories for democracy and progress. In Maine, voters resoundingly defeated - again through a citizen initiative - a GOP Tea Party effort in that state to eliminate same-day voter registration. This GOP law was part of the broader nationwide GOP effort to reinstall Jim Crow laws and variations thereof to limit non-Republican voters.

In Arizona, there was a huge political upset. GOP State Senate President and Republican power house Russell Pearce - the prime political strategist behind the state's draconian anti-Mexican immigration law - was defeated in a recall election.

There were less noted victories for social progress, but still significant. In Iowa, Democrats held onto their two-vote majority in the state Senate. This ensures that there will be no legislation in the state, for the near future, to ban gay marriages.

If you are looking at party politics, the Republicans certainly won some elections and initiatives. But taking a broader perspective, one can argue that the Occupy movement cleared the air of the GOP dominance of the national media debate for several weeks.

Perhaps that - and this is just conjecture - allowed voters some breathing room to look at issues without the emotional pummeling and distortion that comes with Republican control of the media "frame."

Perhaps, the refusal of the Occupy movement to get tied down in electoral details is, ironically, having an electoral impact. It could be providing a buffer zone for sanity to once again creep into debates over public policy, which then has an impact at the polls.

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

According to Forbes online, the financial firm MF Global, which just declared bankruptcy, paid out bonuses to its UK staff just before legally going under.

MF Global was headed by Jon Corzine - former governor of New Jersey, a former US senator and yet another past CEO of Goldman Sachs - until Corzine jumped ship and hired himself a defense lawyer as regulators closed in on the imploding Wall Street brokerage house.

Corzine is a Democrat, but as the Wall Street bailout and DC policies that allow thinly regulated financial risk taking reveal, both parties generally bow to the financial "Masters of the Universe." Remember, for example, that it was Bill Clinton who signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999, after bipartisan passage in the House and Senate. In fact, the Senate voted 90-8 for the repeal; the House, 362-57.

The repeal of Glass-Steagall is widely credited with being a major factor that led to the near implosion of the American economy.

Therefore, it is of little surprise that The New York Times recently ran an article headlined, "As Regulators Pressed Changes, Corzine Pushed Back, and Won":

Months before MF Global teetered on the brink, federal regulators were seeking to rein in the types of risky trades that contributed to the firm's collapse. But they faced opposition from an influential opponent: Jon S. Corzine, the head of the then little-known brokerage firm.

As a former United States senator and a former governor of New Jersey, as well as the leader of Goldman Sachs in the 1990s, Mr. Corzine carried significant weight in the worlds of Washington and Wall Street. While other financial firms employed teams of lobbyists to fight the new regulation, MF Global's chief executive in meetings over the last year personally pressed regulators to halt their plans.

The agency proposing the rule, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, relented. Wall Street, which has been working to curb many financial regulations, won another battle.

Now Corzine has a criminal defense lawyer - as well as a bankruptcy attorney - although the Department of Justice hasn't shown itself too keen on prosecuting Republicans or Democrats who gamble with America's economy.

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Body

When truth takes a walk, nothing of value remains. In our current poisonous political environment it sometimes seems as if anything goes because after all it's campaign season and candidates are positioning themselves to take on President Obama in the general election.

The trouble is that instead of actually framing alternative policies the Republican field is in attack mode all the time whether their positions make sense or have anything to do with how to right the course of the country. Some commentators point out that a man like Herman Cain is the real deal and voters identify with him because he's a plain talker. Never mind that he is an empty vessel who knows very little about world events, the economy or how to run a campaign, even if his poll numbers are up and he has raised significant amounts of cash.

Factor in his defenders on the right who have some of the goofiest reasons at the ready for continuing to support Cain. Ann Coulter, for example, states that Liberals just can't stand a conservative man of color and besides, as she puts it "our blacks are better than theirs" of all the absurd and insulting positions to take. Apparently it doesn't alarm her and some of her colleagues that right-wing blacks constantly play the race card and are into the bargain remarkably under-informed about basic historical fact.

Cain is embarrassingly unable to make sense of the world in all its complexity. His comical take on "Uz Beki Beki Stan" may amuse listeners who are as untutored in the way of the world as he is, but one would hope a serious candidate would refrain from poking fun at countries about which he has no knowledge but which may, in fact, impact our country in significant ways. Never mind about that and never mind about his problems of possible sexual harassment. He may have bigger problems in terms of campaign finance that seem to be emerging. However, Bill Maher says, he doesn't have as big a problem with Cain's apparent misdeeds as he has with the fact that he's just "dumb." That is after all the defining problem with this man and the people who find excuses for supporting him.

We have come a long way from the days of Jim Crow and suppression of the minority vote. And yet maybe we haven't progressed as far as we might have thought. Richard Nixon had his "southern strategy" which continues to be a part of the right-wing approach to elections. Some of the efforts in several states to 'modify' voting laws will if carried out keep minorities, young people and others from exercising their rights at the polls. Widespread, non-existent voter fraud has been used as an excuse to limit access to those voters conservatives want to restrain. Unfortunately, a candidate like Herman Cain represents a step backward by people who are willing to accept an inferior candidate and claim anyone who opposes him is playing the race card. The real voter fraud is that incredibly stupid, uninformed people still vote.

How much are the American people willing to put up with when it comes to believing the nonsensical premises of candidates who bask in the spotlight of their ignorance as if it were a badge of courage and enlightenment. How many of his supporters, one wonders, believe Cain's claim that his security clearance is at a higher level than the president's - - probably far too many. There are always dozens of reasons right-wing politicians have for their opinions. It doesn't matter that logic is rarely a component of their position; they'll continue to 'wing it' forever. Daryl Issue defends the second amendment because he says it was part of the Constitution to protect citizens from a tyrannical government. But if anyone thinks about this for even a second it will be clear that even a hundred A-K 47s would be no match for tanks, air power and nuclear weapons.

When Republicans hold up those glossy folders they say lay out a jobs plan it becomes apparent that they are all about rolling back regulatory mechanisms that are agenda items not job inducers. And when they insist they have bi-partisan support for their plans it should be noted that the entire Republican field and two or three Democrats don't represent bi-partisanship. Maybe truth and logic will come to play a part once again in our world. If not we are doomed to make fools of ourselves on the world stage.

BILL BERKOWITZ FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Four North Georgia senior citizens may have redefined what it means to have a senior moment. Were four old guys sitting around eating waffles and just blowing smoke, or were they really interested in a final shot at immortality? If the allegations that they planned to assassinate government officials and wreak havoc on the city of Atlanta are true, those seniors' "bucket list" contained a heap of militia movement mayhem.

According to government officials, Frederick Thomas, 73, of Cleveland, Ga.; Dan Roberts, 67, Ray Adams, 65, and Samuel Crump, 68, all of Toccoa, were involved in a plot to attack federal office buildings and to disperse a deadly biological poison in Atlanta (http://msnbcmedia.msn.com/i/MSNBC/Sections/NEWS/A_U.S.%20news/Crime%20&%20courts/GAmilitia.pdf).

"Their alleged plot was revealed to the FBI by a confidential informant last spring, and members of the group have been meeting since May with someone they thought was a black-market weapons dealer but who turned out to be an undercover federal agent, according to court documents," NBC News' Pete Williams reported.

"I'd say the first ones that need to die is the ones in the government buildings," Adams was overheard saying in an April 16 meeting, according to the FBI. "When it comes down to it, I can kill somebody," he allegedly said.

The FBI also alleges that, "Thomas, Roberts and others discussed the need to obtain unregistered silencers and explosive devices for use in attacks against federal government buildings and employees, as well as against local police."

"While many are focused on the threat posed by international violent extremists, this case demonstrates that we must also remain vigilant in protecting our country from citizens within our own borders who threaten our safety and security," said U.S. Attorney Sally Quillian Yates.

"While the details of the plot may sound implausible at first glance, further details about those involved indicate that the potential for serious harm was very real," Devin Burghart, vice president of the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), told me in an email. "Some of the individuals arrested for this plot had been steeped in the violent conspiracies of the militia movement for over a decade and they may have felt that they had nothing left to lose-a potentially deadly combination that needed to be taken seriously. Thankfully no one was harmed."

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MARK KARLIN, EDITOR OF BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

In a stunning analysis of the "performance artist" known as Herman Cain, Rachel Maddow lays out a devastating argument that we are being "punked" by a "satirical" campaign that has heavily borrowed from the video game Sim City, the kids' movie "Pokemon" and even a quotation from Chris Tucker in "Rush Hour 3."

No, Maddow is not making this up. Last week, at a high-profile meeting of the Koch brothers' America for Prosperity, Cain delivered the crowd-pleasing line: "I am the Koch brothers' brother from another mother." Maddow followed Cain's paraphrased statement with the original line uttered by Chris Tucker in "Rush Hour 3."

Where might Cain's dubious 9-9-9 tax plan have been formed? Maddow makes a strong case it is derived from the tax structure used in the fictional video game Sim City. As for a key section of Cain's closing statement at an Iowa GOP presidential debate, it came verbatim from a song in the animated movie version of "Pokemon."

Maddow points out that Cain pulls Sarah Palins at every turn in terms of being unaware of basic foreign policy and domestic issues that would face a president, baffling even Chris Wallace and John Stossel of Fox with his answers to questions.

One could argue that Cain's high GOP polling numbers are due to the successful Madison Avenue "packaging" of a presidential candidate. That would make the Cain bid consistent with the modern era of national campaigns as detailed in the seminal book by Joe McGinniss on the 1968 Nixon campaign, "The Selling of the President." But Cain's "run for the presidency" is closer to Jerzy Kosinki's, "Being There," a novel about a gardener lacking in knowledge whose simple statements are mistaken for wisdom and who rises to the highest levels of government influence.

Calling Cain's daily gaffes "too perfect" not to be planned, Maddow believes that Cain never expected to be taken seriously, but was just looking for his moment in history as flavor of the month. But the American public, or at least many Republicans, can no longer distinguish between plagiarized entertainment sound bites and effective public policy.

Speaking of "flavor of the month," Maddow notes that Cain asserted that if he were an ice cream flavor that he would be Haagen Dazs black walnut, because it's a flavor, like him, that will always be around - that, according to Cain, "has staying power."

Haagen-Dazs, Maddow clarifies, no longer manufactures the flavor black walnut.

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BOB FITRAKIS AND HARVEY WASSERMAN FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

Tuesday's most important vote is the repeal of Ohio's vicious anti-labor Issue 2.

Polls show the repeal winning by 20% or more. But will it - like the 2004 presidential election - be stolen by a 1% intent on crushing working people and stealing huge sums of money?

Like Wisconsin's millionaire assault on the bargaining rights of public unions, the thoroughly bought Ohio legislature has passed a draconian law aimed at crippling the organizing ability of working people.

The attack has the loud, persistent support of Wall Street's hand-picked Governor John Kasich, who made millions as a Foxist commentator and Lehman bond dealer. Among other things, Kasich helped pawn $400 million in Lehman's junk bonds onto the Ohio teacher's pension fund, making him a multi-millionaire. Control of that money would be directly affected by the outcome of this referendum.

The legislature's original passage of the anti-labor bill drew thousands of demonstrators to the statehouse lawn and key locations throughout the Buckeye State. The pre-occupy rallies got ardent support from progressive, union and working people across Ohio's political spectrum.

But the vast, apparently limitless resources of corporate America have been polluting the Ohio media and distorting the nature of the vote in an attempt to thoroughly confuse voters, who must vote no on this issue to defeat the bill. Since corporations are now considered "people," with no real limits on what can be spent, the corporate anti-labor deluge has been horrific.

But, that's only the beginning. In 2004, the Ohio's GOP control of the governorship and Secretary of State's office made possible the theft of the presidency for George W. Bush. Though highly sophisticated exit polls showed John Kerry winning the state by more than 4%, the "official" outcome had him losing Ohio's 20 electoral votes - and thus the White House - by more than 2%.

By all credible estimates such a shift of more than 6% was a statistical impossibility. It was primarily engineered by Bush consigliere Karl Rove and Republican Secretary of State J. Kenneth Blackwell.

Rove and Blackwell helped knock a half-million or more primarily Democratic voters off of Ohio's registration rolls prior to election day. Despite the obvious irregularities that defined the registration process, voting procedures, ballot tabulations and final electronic manipulations, John Kerry conceded Ohio - and the election - with more than 200,000 votes left uncounted.

In July of this year, www.freepress.org posted the architectural maps used in Blackwell's 2004 voting operation in Ohio. His electronic reporting operation was designed by a partisan Republican firm, GovTech and linked directly to servers at the premier Republican and right-wing tech company SmarTech in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

In the 2005 election, a corporate coalition parallel to the one fighting to crush worker rights this year worked on a comparable issue. In reaction to the theft of the vote in 2004, a popular uprising had designed Issue 2 to make it easier for Ohioans to vote early by mail or in person.

Two days before the 2005 vote, the Republican-leaning Columbus Dispatch poll showed that Issue 2 passed by 26 points, 59% to 33%.

But, on that November 8 (the same day as this year's vote), Blackwell oversaw the defeat of Issue 2 with the utterly implausible support of 63.5%. Once again, the shift from pre-election polling to final "official" vote count was a virtual statistical impossibility.

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NIKOLAS KOZLOFF FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

As an undergraduate at University of California, Berkeley in the late 1980s, I did not visit the nearby city of Oakland very frequently. For the most part, I was ensconced in my own student circles and, to the extent that I got involved in politics, it was the local campus activist scene which drew me in with its focus on Central America and US counterinsurgency efforts in the region. To be sure, Oakland had a radical tradition going back to the 1960s and the Black Panther movement, yet by the time I was in school that era was already a distant memory for many.

If there was any doubt about Oakland's radical stripes, however, then yesterday's general strike will certainly dispel any such notions. Galvanized by tumultuous developments over the past several weeks, in particular a nasty police crackdown on a local "Occupy" encampment, activists moved to effectively shut down the city by carrying out a general strike. Activists were particularly incensed by violent police tactics including use of tear gas and even grenades. During nighttime unrest, an Iraq war veteran was hit with a projectile and suffered a skull fracture.

Spurred on by the need to end police brutality, defend schools and libraries against local closures, and put an end to overall economic inequality, Occupy Oakland called for a day of action in which the circulation of capital would be blockaded, students would walk out of class, and various occupations would be staged around the city. Oakland is particularly important to commerce as the local port is the fifth largest in the country, and though union officials did not authorize a strike, many longshoremen voiced support for Occupy's efforts.

The Unusual Weapon of the General Strike

As I explained in another piece, general strikes are practically unheard of in the United States. Indeed, the Oakland unrest marks the first general strike in the country in 65 years. One notable exception to this pattern of labor docility was the Seattle general strike of 1919, which in my estimation holds profound historic lessons for anti-capitalist protesters in Lower Manhattan. For the most part, however, US labor has shied away from such confrontational tactics, and this has posed a great tactical dilemma for the left according to veteran organizers.

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