Is Rahm brilliantly playing some long game of chess on behalf of the American people, or is he so syphilictically corrupt that he can't help but do a Bush-like corporate smash-and-grab robbery of the treasury on behalf of big business?

The military coup by SOA graduates in Honduras has once again exposed the destabilizing and deadly effects that the School of the Americas has on Latin America. The actions of the school’s graduates are unmasking the Pentagon rhetoric and reveal the anti-democratic results of U.S. policies. It is time for a change towards justice. From November 20-22, 2009, thousands will vigil at the gates of Fort Benning, Georgia, to stand up for justice, to shut down the School of the Americas and to end the oppressive U.S. foreign policy that the school represents.

Progressives and ardent supporters of a healthcare public option are cheering the Senate version of health reform legislation to emerge Thursday. Social conservatives, meanwhile, are attacking the bill for lack of an anti-abortion amendment that had been included in the House version.

Two new public opinion polls show the faltering U.S. economy seems to be taking its toll on President Barack Obama's approval rating.

Palin is whining about her Newsweek photo, but it reflects who and what she really is.

Thom Hartmann talks with John Perkins author of Hoodwinked and Confessions of an Economic Hit man

International travel by world leaders is mainly about making symbolic gestures. But let’s hope that when the cameras aren’t rolling Mr. Obama and his hosts engage in some frank talk about currency policy. For the problem of international trade imbalances is about to get substantially worse. And there’s a potentially ugly confrontation looming unless China mends its ways. Despite huge trade surpluses and the desire of many investors to buy into this fast-growing economy, Chinese authorities have kept that currency persistently weak. China’s weak-currency policy exacerbates the problem [of the depressed state of the world economy], in effect siphoning much-needed demand away from the rest of the world into the pockets of artificially competitive Chinese exporters. This problem is about to get much worse. Because for the past year the true scale of the China problem has been masked by temporary factors. Looking forward, we can expect to see both China’s trade surplus and America’s trade deficit surge. Unfortunately, the Chinese don’t seem to get it: rather than face up to the need to change their currency policy, they’ve taken to telling us to raise interest rates and curb fiscal deficits. And I’m not sure the Obama administration gets it, either. The administration’s statements on Chinese currency policy seem pro forma, lacking any sense of urgency. That needs to change. I don’t begrudge Mr. Obama the banquets and the photo ops; they’re part of his job. But behind the scenes he better be warning the Chinese that they’re playing a dangerous game.

After eight years of war, we’re losing – only to have turned Afghanistan and Pakistan into terroristic turmoil.

The current U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan, General Karl W. Eikenberry, who was top U.S. military commander in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2007, has told President Obama he opposes sending more troops. .... snip ... When the RAND Corporation held a forum on Afghanistan recently on Capitol Hill, Zbigniew Brzezinski claimed that it was uncontroversial that US troops had to stay in Afghanistan. I pointed him to polls of Americans, and he replied that Americans get fatigued and don't know any better.

"...At the request of staffers at City Hall, Eiss filled out a form, which he later learned was a formal request for records access under New York's Freedom of Information Law. A week later, he received a response saying his request was denied. The reason: "Materials requested are protected by copyright and release of materials is through exclusive license only."

"I was facilitating a meeting in Washington, DC this past weekend, and an Iraq “War” veteran claimed that the GI resistance movement ended the Vietnam War. I started to say that I was sure that the GI movement was a part of ending the Vietnam War as was the draft, the student movement, the Congress (that had some influence back then), and I was interrupted by the rep from Veterans for Peace who simply said: “actually it was the Vietnamese people who ended that war.” That’s the plain truth after millions dead/wounded, the Vietnamese people succeeded in vanquishing the U.S."

Chomsky takes on a critic. "Noam Chomsky interviewed on the BBC program HARDtalk, during his tour of the United Kingdom in Nov. 2009."

Instead of drawing on this excellent, time-tested model, President Obama and the Democrats in Congress have pretended Medicare doesn't exist. Obama went so far as to say on several occasions, including in his address to Congress on health care reform, that while single-payer plans such as those in Canada and France might work well in those countries (indeed they do, and at much less cost than our insane "system" here!), introducing such a system here would mean "starting from scratch." Come again Barack? From scratch? Those countries modeled their systems, in part, on Medicare, which we had here first! And Medicare is actually a bigger program than the entire Canadian health care system!

He has been the most recent high level official to state publicly what many NATO military and political leaders are increasingly recognizing as a primary obstacle to success in the war torn country.

A Goldman Sachs report projects earnings per share and stock values of the five largest insurance companies under four different health care reform scenarios. It is an excellent example of how vampires think, and shows us which facets of the reform proposals are most frightening precisely because they represent true reform. They are: cuts to Medicare Advantage, regulations that disallow exclusions for pre-existing conditions and recision, and finally, the odious public option.

The largest U.S. private health insurer is urging its employees to lobby the Senate against comprehensive healthcare reform that includes a public option, according to an advocacy organization that has unearthed the effort.

"Soon we’ll know who our new administration has in mind to replace Karzai’s regime. Will it be an insider like our General Wardak? Certainly not impossible. He’s been the man for decades, and they’ve invested a lot in him and his son, and enriched him and his family tremendously. Will it be another puppet just like Karzai but with a new face? Certainly possible. That would mean another group of carpetbagger war profiteers entering the market to grab the pots of gold financed by us, while the Karzais and Wardaks go away and enjoy their hundreds of millions of dollars stashed somewhere."

It's just about a 100% certainty that the draft of the senate bill that goes out to the floor for a vote, first facing filibuster, will not include the public option. That way, Lieberman, Baucus and the gang of Republicrats will have no excuse help prevent the GOP filibuster. There may even be Republicans who go along, like Olympia Snowe. They will have been given cover, allowed to only vote on a bill that met the criteria they "so boldly" set. Once the bill gets into conference, the house and senate can get together and add the public option and it will only take 51 senate votes to pass. They might even try to pull out the anti-abortion amendment, since so many of them Bluedogs who voted for the house anti-abortion amendment failed to vote for the reform bill. That's far less likely. The question is in the way Harry Reid handles this. Lieberman and Snowe understand all this. Will they vote to pass a bill without a public option, knowing that it may be added? That's going to be the big question.

Oh, those poor souls who are crying so hard about the legislation provided for Universal Healthcare in the House. I mean, our "leaders" were so concerned with helping the average working American who do not have and cannot afford to buy private insurance for whatever reason that they just were so very unfair to those who have contributed so much to the problems we now face. My heart just bleeds with sympathy for these groups of people.

Last month, a large ship carrying 76 men was seized off the coast. Although the origins of the ship and the men was initially unknown, the government has learned that the men are Tamil migrants and the ship was used by the LTTE, a terrorist organization...