Truthout: 9 February 2012

Komen Foundation: Selling Us for the Cure
Melissa Gira Grant, Truthout: "The practice is called 'pinkwashing.' Some marketers might say it's just the cost of taking corporate money for charitable work, but advocates say it is never worth losing their ability to hold corporations accountable for women's health."
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Mortgage Settlement Fight Not Over, Say Organizers
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "Not everyone is cheering the foreclosure abuse settlement reached today with five of the nation's biggest banks. Activists say the suit does too little to stem the continued financial hemorrhage of the housing market and leaves most affected homeowners behind."
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Greg Palast | The Billionaires' Brokered GOP Convention
Greg Palast, Truthout: "The Plan is working. Mitt Romney's biggest backer didn't want him to win. We know that Paul 'The Vulture' Singer, Romney's Daddy Warbucks, organized the 'grassroots' campaign to replace Romney with Gov Chris Christie back in September. That flopped, so Singer and the billionaire boys' club that courted Christie moved over to Romney."
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Interview With Chris Hedges About Black Bloc
J.A. Myerson, Truthout: "Chris Hedges' syndicated Truthdig column 'Black Bloc: The Cancer in Occupy,' printed Tuesday at Truthout and elsewhere, created quite a stir among members of Occupy Wall Street (OWS). Some endorsed the sentiment. Among others, including some central organizers who helped plan the action over the summer, the column raised eyebrows and hackles. I compiled what I considered to be the best critiques of the piece that I came across (as well as my own questions) and interviewed Hedges over the phone."
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Banks Settle With States on Foreclosure Suits for Pennies on the Dollar
Nelson D. Schwartz and Shaila Dewan, The New York Times News Service: "After months of painstaking talks, government authorities and five of the nation's biggest banks have agreed to a $26 billion settlement that could provide relief to nearly two million current and former American homeowners harmed by the bursting of the housing bubble, state and federal officials said. It is part of a broad national settlement aimed at halting the housing market's downward slide and holding the banks accountable for foreclosure abuses."
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Port Truck Drivers Push to Unionize Amid Squalid Conditions
Yana Kunichoff, Truthout: "American port truck drivers are using tried and true tactics of public pressure and collective organizing to win union recognition and fight back against retaliatory tactics by their employer."
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Constitutional Lawyer David Boies: Constitutionality of Birth Control Mandate (Video)
Lawrence O'Donnell, The Last Word: "Constitutional expert David Boies said there's no basis for a constitutional fight with the birth control mandate. On The Last Word, he compared the current debate that's heating up in Washington to simple tax law or labor laws."
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On the News With Thom Hartmann: Fewer Young Adults Have a Job in America Than Ever Before, and More
In today's On the News segment: The deal to let the banksters walk is near completion; fewer young adults have a job in America than ever before; before people converge to Occupy Chicago ahead of joint G8 and NATO summits in May, the law that forbids people from recording police officers needs to be removed; Toyota announced plans to invest $400 million in manufacturing cars in the United States; and more.
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Reclaiming Civilian Control: How to Keep Generals as Warriors, Not Politicians
Dina Rasor, Truthout: "Sometimes history and circumstances offer us solutions to centuries-old problems and tensions within our long-lasting government. Even though we feel like a young nation, our Constitution is one of the oldest in history. One of the most original parts of our Constitution is that we made the president the chief of the executive branch, commander of chief of the military. Ultimate civilian control over the military has the goal of keeping the military from running the government, taking control through a coup or pushing us into wars that should not be fought."
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Ten States Given Waivers From No Child Left Behind Law
Winnie Hu, The New York Times News Service: "President Obama will waive central provisions of the No Child Left Behind federal education law for 10 states that have embraced his educational agenda and promised to raise standards, and improve accountability and teacher effectiveness, the White House announced on Thursday morning."
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Truthout Contributor David Bacon on His New Book, "Illegal People"
Mark Karlin, Truthout: "Mark Karlin: Isn't the 'immigration' debate in the United States really just a coded way of saying, 'keep brown-skinned people from Mexico and Central America out of the United States'? David Bacon: There's certainly that exclusionary aspect to it. Immigrants coming from Mexico, Latin America, Asia and Africa have always been treated differently from those from Europe."
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Laura Flanders | A Rocky Recovery for Women
Laura Flanders, The Nation: "What constituted good news for women in January was that male and female unemployment were the same for the first time since the start of the recession.... The bad news is that although men lost 70 percent of the 7.5 million jobs that were eliminated between December 2007 and June 2009, men have won 92 percent of the 1.9 million jobs that have been created since then. From 'man-cession' we've gone to 'man-covery.'"
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Paul Krugman | The Whole Truth - and Nothing but
Paul Krugman, Krugman & Co.: "The criterion, according to Politifact, seems to be that a fact isn't a fact if it helps a Democratic narrative. In his State of the Union address on Jan. 24, President Obama said: 'In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than three million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005.' Which is just true. Period."
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BUZZFLASH DAILY HEADLINES

When it comes to sex, there is a Plan B.

In a surge of recent moves that appear to accommodate the realities of living in a contemporary world - and not the mythical Ozzie and Harriet past (that was really just a Hollywood television fantasy) - the Obama administration's Department of Health and Human Services is now requiring that insurance companies and plans include birth control in their free preventive services. This would include the "Plan B" pill (pharmaceutically aka as Levonorgestrel), which can be taken after intercourse, for a very limited time period, to try and prevent a pregnancy.

You might be surprised to learn that birth control will be mandated as free if you are insured, since you might not be aware that many preventative health care procedures are now free under health care reform. Of course, it is not unlikely that the same people who continue to batter "Obamacare" are now in an uproar about how America will allegedly further descend into a sexual libertine nation if the pill and Plan B are considered preventative

It's hard to know what it is about Republicans and sex. So many of them seem to regard it as the downfall of civilization, when it appears globalization and the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act had much more to do with America's decline than Elvis Presley and the pill.

And then there is the strange reality that so many Republican leaders seem to live rather licentious lives (think Newt Gingrich) while decrying the fall of "social values" in the US. Sex is sort of a third rail psychological hot button for followers of the GOP that gets them politically aroused beyond any relationship to this modern world.

There are so many contradictions in the Christian right's view of anything but monogamous marriage between a man and a woman - and anything but the birth of any child from a sex act - being acceptable. You could spend a week listing them.

But I prefer Jesse Jackson's view (paraphrased) that the anti-sexual crusaders might have more credibility if they advocated as much for a poor or minority baby living after it was born as they did for the baby being carried to full term. Somehow, much of the so called "pro-life" fanaticism stops at birth.

I don't claim to understand the religious right's mysterious preoccupation with sex, but I do recall perhaps a meaningful insight.

Andrea Pelosi, daughter of Nancy Pelosi, is a documentary filmmaker. In 2007, she released a film, "Friends of God: A Road Trip," in which she profiled evangelical leaders. I recall a segment with Ted Haggard, before he was outed, in which he bragged that religious believers have great sex, only it's all within the confines of marriage. He had a broad, country-boy grin on his face as he emphasized the point.

I can't help thinking today - as the various "family" religious groups protest the health care reform birth control provisions - about the perversity of Haggard's claims considering subsequent revelations.

Just because some Americans have sexual hang-ups, doesn't mean that the rest of us are not entitled to a Plan B as part of our health care coverage.

Mark Karlin
Editor, BuzzFlash at Truthout

The Top Twelve Reasons Why You Should Hate the Mortgage Settlement
Read the Article at Naked Capitalism

BP Wins Exclusion of Damning Emails From Oil Spill Trial
Read the Article at Reuters

Romney Doubles Down on Anti-Immigration Stance
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Protesters Prepare to Occupy CPAC
Read the Article at In These Times

Republican Candidates Are Using "Freedom of Speech" and Religion as Weapons to Make Political Points
Read the Article at BuzzFlash

Ex-Monsanto Lawyer Clarence Thomas to Hear Major Monsanto Case
Read the Article at the COTO Report

Why We Shouldn't Be Surprised That Susan G. Komen for the Cure Is Anti-Women
Read the Article at This Can't Be Happening

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