Truthout - 24 January 2012

Patients May Die When Doctors Moonlight as Big Pharma's "Key Opinion Leaders"
Kathleen Sharp, Truthout: "What this illustrates is that drug companies can create entire cultures of over-prescribers for untested, even fatal indications, and that doctors can be easily corrupted. In light of a flurry of recent federal settlements for off-label marketing crimes, it also underlines how you, dear taxpayer, foot the bill for reckless marketing."
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Bill Moyers and Michael Winship | The Washington-Wall Street Revolving Door Keeps Spinning
Bill Moyers and Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: "And so it goes, the revolving door between government service and big money in the private sector spinning so fast it becomes an irresistible force hurling politics and high finance together so completely it's impossible to tell one from the other."
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Obama to Frame Re-Election Themes Tuesday in State of the Union Address
Steven Thomma, McClatchy Newspapers: "President Barack Obama delivers an election-year State of the Union address Tuesday night at a moment when the country is worried about the economy and his own prospects for re-election are mixed at best."
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Robert Reich | The State of Our Disunion
Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog: "Who should have the primary strategic responsibility for making American workers globally competitive - the private sector or government? This will be a defining issue in the 2012 campaign."
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Why Spend Billions on an Unnecessary Nuclear Weapons Facility?
Dana Liebelson, Truthout: "By all accounts, the cold war came to an end more than 20 years ago. Gorbachev rose to power, intermediate-range missiles were eliminated, the Berlin Wall toppled and the Iron Curtain lifted. Unfortunately, it looks like no one told the Department of Energy."
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As the "Jackals of Egypt" Heighten Attacks on Youth Activists, Others Must Join the Fight
Helen Redmond, Truthout: "The youth in Egypt believe they have a grim future as long as the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) is in power. They're right, and that's why they're willing to risk death in order to live real change in their lifetime. Waiting another 30 years isn't an option."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Indiana Might Become a "Right-to-Work" State, and More
In today's On the News segment: President Obama will deliver his State of the Union address tonight, Indiana's state Senate has passed legislation turning it into a "right-to-work" state, Supreme Court delivers victory for Americans' privacy rights, and more.
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Paul Krugman | Rooted in Politics, Austerity Worsens the Greek Tragedy
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "So now the austerity isn't market-driven - it's political, the pound of flesh official lenders are demanding for maintaining the trickle of cash. And it really is in large part about punishment; we've now seen a fairly impressive demonstration that big budget cuts in a depressed economy hardly even reduce the deficit, because they drive the economy down and tax receipts with it."
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Part One: Migration - a Product of Free-Market Reforms
David Bacon, Americas Program: "A political alliance is developing between countries with a labor export policy and the corporations who use that labor in the global north. Many countries sending migrants to the developed world depend on remittances to finance social services and keep the lid on social discontent over poverty and joblessness, while continuing to make huge debt payments. Corporations using that displaced labor share a growing interest with those countries' governments in regulating the system that supplies it."
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Read These Facts Ahead of the State of the Union Address
Judd Legum, ThinkProgress: "Tonight, President Barack Obama will deliver his third State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress. The Republican response will be given by Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels. Before you watch the speeches, get the facts."
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A Tale of Three Speeches About Separation of Church and State
Frederick Clarkson, Truthout: "Separation of church and state, a defining issue in our history, is also a defining issue for Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. The emergence of Romney as the GOP frontrunner and the rallying of top religious right leaders to Santorum at a meeting in Texas over the Martin Luther King Day weekend casts the two politicians' views in sharp relief."
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Weapons R Us: Making Warbirds Instead of Thunderbirds
William J. Astore, TomDispatch: "If the US auto industry has recently shown sparks of new life (though we're not making T-Birds or Mercuries or Oldsmobiles or Pontiacs or Saturns anymore), there is one form of manufacturing in which America is still dominant. When it comes to weaponry, to paraphrase Seger, we're still young and proud and makin' Predators and Reapers (as in unmanned aerial vehicles, or drones) and Eagles and Fighting Falcons (as in F-15 and F-16 combat jets), and outfitting them with the deadliest of weapons."
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Gretchen Morgenson on Corporate Clout in Washington (Video)
Bill Moyers, Moyers & Co.: "One of journalism's premier business reporters is with me now. Gretchen Morgenson won the Pulitzer Prize for her fearless exposes of Wall Street's dirty secrets and reckless behavior. In her 'Fair Game' column for The New York Times she digs into some of the most disturbing and complex scandals of our time. Her recent book with Joshua Rosner on crony capitalism at Fannie Mae is called Reckless Endangerment: How Outsized Ambition, Greed and Corruption Led to Economic Armageddon."
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TRUTHOUT'S BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

The brazen hypocrisy of the GOP on sexual, religious and family matters has been a consistent source of bewilderment for BuzzFlash since the site was founded in May of 2000.

In fact, BuzzFlash (now a part of Truthout) began largely in reaction to the dissemination of a disingenuous, Republican, demagogic, political hypocrisy that is inexplicable on any rational level - and we've covered about every psychological theory that tries to explain how people who hold themselves out to be godly can be full of such hate, bitterness, greed and gross double standards.

In fact, during the last South Carolina debate, Newt Gingrich - who has made the alleged collapse of America's "moral values" one of his trademark "red meat" appeals - deflected questions about his Lothario, adulterer, callous "family values" behavior by attacking the press. Gingrich knows that lacerating the supposed "liberal media" rouses the Tea Party faction of the GOP like splashing a bowl of blood on a vampire.

Gingrich claimed to be "appalled" by the "destructive, vicious, negative nature of much of the news media." He called a panelist question about charges that he wanted an "open marriage" with his second wife (who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis at the time), while he was having a multiyear affair with his eventual third wife, as "close to despicable as anything I [Gingrich] can imagine."

Jon Stewart is feeling BuzzFlash's pain now - one that is particularly acute when watching the GOP presidential debates. In fact, after playing a segment on the "Daily Show" about Gingrich's "indignation" over questions about his egregious, immoral family values, Stewart's brain appeared ready to explode as he listed just some of the audacious hypocrisies in which the former House speaker has engaged.

Recently, I recall seeing a clip of Newt in high dudgeon denouncing the alleged secular godlessness and lack of morality in Europe - and he vowed that he would not let the US sink into such degeneracy. Gingrich is the ultimate con man, saying whatever needs to be said to arouse the ember of the dark side of fundamentalist faith. He creates a fantasy world of demons who are supposedly set out to destroy "divinely" bestowed "American exceptionalism," when he himself has spent more time playing "Sympathy for the Devil" in his life than following the Ten Commandments.

And, most significantly, as Jon Stewart has come to learn, Gingrich is filled with such confident cunning - such calculated lying - that he can make those who engage in reason want to jump out the nearest window in dismay.

He is a master magician of the dark arts. That much you can say for him.

Mark Karlin,
Editor of BuzzFlash at Truthout

The Death of an Ordinary Housecat
Read the Article at The Huffington Post

Graphic Anti-Abortion Ad During the Super Bowl? Nix It
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Who Is the GOP Nominee for President Going to Be - the Adulterer, the Flip-Flopper, the Radical or the Homophobe?
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Human Rights Watch: Iraq Getting Worse
Read the Article at CNN

Patrick McElligott's Anti-Fracking Hunger Strike Is Officially Over. He Got What He Was After at Last
Read the Article at Democratic Underground

Republican Debate Winner in Florida? Nobody Who Watched It
Read the Article at The Washington Post

Rick Santorum Gets Glitter Bombed, Again: Protesters Shower GOP Candidate With Glitter Over Gay Rights
Read the Article at WESH Orlando

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