Putin Calls US 'Parasite' as Russia Gobbles Its Debt

Alena Chechel, Scott Rose and Jack Jordan, Bloomberg
Excerpt: "Russia, the world's largest energy producer, has boosted its holdings of US debt by more than 1,600 percent since September 2006, according to US Treasury Department data. Russia used surging commodity prices to build the world's third-largest reserves pile, boosted in part by return on Treasuries."
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Perry Dumber Than Bush

Michael Tomasky, The Daily Beast
Tomasky writes: "Nearly every day has brought forth a new gem. On Thursday, he told a New Hampshire school-age child that he's 'not sure anybody actually knows completely and absolutely' how old the Earth is. He preceded these with a remark about Barack Obama not being respected by the military. And, of course, there was the infamous statement that Ben Bernanke would be committing 'treason' by priming the economy. Not bad - nail the black guy and the Jew in your very first week on the trail."
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FOCUS: Does Rick Perry Have a Porn Problem?

Justin Elliott, Salon
Justin Elliott reports: "Here's an interesting tidbit from Rick Perry's past to keep an eye on. In the mid-1990s, the presidential candidate owned stock in a video rental store chain whose hardcore porn offerings drew the ire of conservative groups. Ironically, it was the social conservative crusaders at the American Family Association - the very group that helped organize Perry's stadium prayer rally this month - who spent years on an anti-porn campaign targeting the company."
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Sheriff Joe Arpaio Probing Obama Birth Certificate 'Evidence'

A conservative website claimed Thursday that Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio has promised to investigate President Barack Obama's eligibility to run for re-election.

According to WorldNetDaily,about 325 so-called birthers gathered Wednesday night to sign a petition alleging that Obama planned to use a fake birth certificate to run for office in 2012.

Jerome Corsi, author of, Where's the Birth Certificate? reportedly presented Arpaio with the petition during a one-hour meeting Thursday.

"Arpaio told the tea party leaders the complaint is within his jurisdiction, and he will be forced to investigate," WND wrote. "He said he expects political pressure, but he pointed out that as the chief law enforcement officer of Maricopa County, he's taken an oath to respond to citizens who approach him about enforcing the law."

But in a statement

Friday, Arpaio had a slightly different version of events.

"What I have agreed to do, contrary to some published media reports, is simply look at the evidence these people have assembled and examine whether it is within my jurisdiction to investigate the document's authenticity," Arpaio said.

It's Not Just News Corp: Why Telecommunications Companies in the US May Be Spying on You Every Day

There is reason to believe that the media we've entrusted to investigate abuses of privacy are part of the cover up.
August 18, 2011

When Guardian reporter, Nick Davies, broke the story that Rupert Murdoch's News of the World had been hacking British citizens' voicemail messages, including those of a murdered teenager, there was a public outcry. Unfortunately, this is the tip of a glacial iceberg that has the potential to bring down a lot more than the News of the World.

Last year, without due public debate and input, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Justice Department approved a merger between Comcast and NBC Universal that gave the Internet cable giant control over the programming of NBC news. At the same time, pursuant to the 2008 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Amendments Act, Comcast as well as all other telecommunication companies are required to cooperate with the Federal government in providing the facility for government to search through all electronic communications sent down their pipes.

So presently, the government, with the help of Comcast and other telecommunication companies, can hack everyone's phone and email conversations. Here also lies a new 21st century media model: a telecom company that owns and operates the infrastructure for the digital transmission of news and information; simultaneously owns the newsroom; and uses it infrastructure to assist the government in mass, warrantless surveillance of all American citizens.
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Major Backlash at Right-Wing Ohio Governor Has Him Scrambling for 'Compromise' With Progressives

Recall victories in Wisconsin and plummeting approval ratings have John Kasich scared--and now he wants to make a deal with labor and progressive groups.
August 19, 2011

It turns out that wholesale attacks on workers' rights aren't nearly as popular in a rough economy as conservative governors thought.

The latest one to realize he's overstepped his bounds and offer “compromise”? Ohio governor John Kasich.

Kasich, elected in 2010 with just 49 percent of the vote, pushed through an attack on public workers similar to the one Wisconsin's Scott Walker championed. Senate Bill 5 (SB5) was passed and signed into law in March, and eliminated most collective bargaining for state workers, as well as increased the amount of money they had to pay for their pensions and made it harder for unions to collect dues.

It spawned mass protests that might have been overshadowed in the public imagination by the sheer size of the Madison resistance. But progressives sat up and took notice when Ohio activists, led by the coalition group We Are Ohio, collected 1.3 million signatures on a petition to allow Ohioans to vote on the bill themselves, putting it on the ballot in November's election. Ohio's "Citizen Veto" is an unusual law; it gave activists 90 days to collect a minimum of 231,149 signatures to stop the bill going into effect until the voters have a chance to decide. The results were so outstanding—more than five times the required number of signatures--that the group and 6,000 supporters held a parade through the city of Columbus to deliver the signatures to the secretary of state's office.

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A Radical New Definition of Addiction Creates a Big Storm

A sweeping new definition of addiction stakes out controversial positions that many, including the powerful psychiatric lobby, are likely to argue with.
August 18, 2011

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If you think addiction is all about booze, drugs, sex, gambling, food and other irresistible vices, think again. And if you believe that a person has a choice whether or not to indulge in an addictive behavior, get over it. The American Society of Addiction Medicine (ASAM) blew the whistle on these deeply held notions with its official release of a new document defining addiction as a chronic neurological disorder involving many brain functions, most notably a devastating imbalance in the so-called reward circuitry. This fundamental impairment in the experience of pleasure literally compels the addict to chase the chemical highs produced by substances like drugs and alcohol and obsessive behaviors like sex, food and gambling.

The definition, a result of a four-year process involving more than 80 leading experts in addiction and neurology, emphasizes that addiction is a primary illness—in other words, it’s not caused by mental health issues such as mood or personality disorders, putting to rest the popular notion that addictive behaviors are a form of "self-medication" to, say, ease the pain of depression or anxiety.

Indeed, the new neurologically focused definition debunks, in whole or in part, a host of common conceptions about addiction. Addiction, the statement declares, is a “bio-psycho-socio-spiritual” illness characterized by (a) damaged decision-making (affecting learning, perception, and judgment) and by (b) persistent risk and/or recurrence of relapse; the unambiguous implications are that (a) addicts have no control over their addictive behaviors and (b) total abstinence is, for some addicts, an unrealistic goal of effective treatment.

The bad behaviors themselves are all symptoms of addiction, not the disease itself. "The state of addiction is not the same as the state of intoxication," the ASAM takes pains to point out. Far from being evidence of a failure of will or morality, the behaviors are the addict's attempt to resolve the general "dysfunctional emotional state" that develops in tandem with the disease. In other words, conscious choice plays little or no role in the actual state of addiction; as a result, a person cannot choose not to be addicted. The most an addict can do is choose not to use the substance or engage in the behavior that reinforces the entire self-destructive reward-circuitry loop.
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