Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
, - Financial Times (U.K.)
Stephan: Yet another international view on what is happening in the U.S. concerning the destruction of the American Middle Class. What is most alarming of all is that many in the Middle Class are actively, even passionately, working for their own destruction, while conservative Republican politicians, who have completely prostituted themselves to the corporate virtual states, encourage them.
WASHINGTON — Technically speaking, Mark Freeman should count himself among the Âluckiest Âpeople on the planet. The 52-year-old lives with his family on a tree-lined street in his own home in the heart of the wealthiest country in the world. When he is hungry, he eats. When it gets hot, he turns on the air-conditioning. When he wants to look something up, he surfs the internet. One of the songs he likes to sing when he hosts a weekly karaoke evening is Johnny Cash’s ‘Man in Black
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Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
CAROL LYNN GROSSMAN, - USA TODAY
Stephan: I have never been a fan of Billy Graham, much less his son Franklin. The elder Graham was notably absent during the civil rights era. I never saw him at a single rally, and he made very few -- and those equivocal -- comments on behalf of decency and fairplay in racial matters. There was always something a bit smug and self-righteous about him. His son Franklin, who has always been a lesser man, is engaged in what I think is actual evil.
Rev. Franklin Graham, shown here at a NASCAR race, says Obama was ‘born Muslim’ and appeared to doubt Obama’s Christianity. Religion professor Stephen Prothero says Graham is spreading ‘disinformation’ about Christianity and Islam, which Graham once described as
Rev. Franklin Graham is leading a ‘disinformation campaign’ against President Obama by attacking Obama’s Christian faith and distorting Islam’s theology, says a leading religion professor.
After CNN’s John King gave Graham a full news cycle to raise a lifted eyebrow at President Obama’s Christian profession of faith, Stephen Prothero, religion professor at Boston University, came on King’s show Friday night to undercut Graham and question why CNN would ask an evangelist known to slur Islam, to speculate on its theology.
According to a transcript released by CNN, Prothero, author of God is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World, told King, the finding in a recent survey that 18% of Americans believe Obama is Muslim …
… is because we have people who are supposed to be responsible public leaders, like Franklin Graham, who are spreading what seems to me like a sort of disinformation campaign… What Franklin Graham should say: ‘Barack Obama says he’s a Christian, he’s a […]
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Sunday, August 22nd, 2010
ELLEN KELLEHER, - Financial Times (U.K.)
Stephan: Contrast this with the next article below it.
Investors in emerging markets who are enticed towards China, now the world’s second-largest economy, but who do not know where to start, should think about the companies and sectors that will profit most from the rising incomes of the Chinese, say fund managers .
As Douglas Turnbull, co-manager of Neptune’s two China funds, sees it: ‘The future of the Chinese economy is about harnessing the spending potential the emerging middle class in China can unleash
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Saturday, August 21st, 2010
DAVID DAYEN, - firedoglake
Stephan: This struggle has implications for each one of us. Make your views known, if you want the internet as we know it to survive. Write the FCC.
Two FCC Commissioners and one US Senator slammed the Google-Verizon joint policy agreement and strongly endorsed the principle of net neutrality last night at a hearing before hundreds of citizens in Minneapolis, giving the Chairman of the federal agency Julius Genachowski all of the support he would need to regulate broadband Internet, if he so chose.
Democratic Commissioners Michael Copps and Mignon Clyburn both endorsed the reclassification of broadband as a communications service, under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. Copps said simply, ‘It’s calling an apple an apple.
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Saturday, August 21st, 2010
MARTIN CRUTSINGER, - The Associated Press
Stephan:
WASHINGTON — Nearly half of the 1.3 million homeowners who enrolled in the Obama administration’s flagship mortgage-relief program have fallen out.
The program is intended to help those at risk of foreclosure by lowering their monthly mortgage payments. Friday’s report from the Treasury Department suggests the $75 billion government effort is failing to slow the tide of foreclosures in the United States, economists say.
More than 2.3 million homes have fallen into foreclosure since the recession began in December 2007, according to foreclosure listing service RealtyTrac Inc. Economists expect the number of foreclosures to grow well into next year.
‘The government program as currently structured is petering out. It is taking in fewer homeowners, more are dropping out and fewer people are ending up in permanent modifications,’ said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics.
Besides forcing people from their homes, foreclosures and distressed home sales have pushed down on home values and crippled the broader housing industry. They have made it difficult for homebuilders to compete with the depressed prices and discouraged potential sellers from putting their homes on the market.
Approximately 630,000 people who had tried to get their monthly mortgage payments lowered through the government program have been cut loose through July, […]
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