Thieves in the Temple.

Houses of the holy.

Congress wants to "deal" with the deficit? Well, here's an idea: don't cut Medicare just because Republicans want to and we all need to get along. Cut corporate tax loopholes -- as S. 2075, the Cut Unjustified Tax Loopholes Act, would do -- and raise another $150 billion a year, which comprises around one tenth of our current budget deficit. Stop Microsoft from shuffling off $4 million per day to Puerto Rico to avoid taxation. Stop Hewlett-Packard from hiding all its profits offshore and then "borrowing" from its offshore accounts. Stop ebay, Walmart, Oracle, and other big corporations from hiding more than 80% of their profits in filing cabinets overseas. CALPIRG helps you tell your Congressfolk to end corporate tax loopholes. Not as part of some "bargain" to reduce tax rates in a revenue-neutral scheme, either -- tell them to end the loopholes because it's the right thing to do.

Speaking of Congress, Common Cause helps you tell your Senators to reform the filibuster, as the Senate failed to do at the beginning of 2011. I'll be blunt: Republicans have taken a dump all over Senate procedure the last four years, and not even massive public outcry could prevent the 59-41 deaths of the DISCLOSE Act and the Paycheck Fairness Act. I don't advocate the end of the filibuster, as many very short-sighted folks have done -- have they forgotten the filibusters that saved the Estate Tax in 2005 and 2006? But it is well past time to make Republicans work a lot harder if they want to screw things up. If they want to filibuster, we should make them do a Strom Thurmond and not drink water for an entire day before talking for 48 hours straight, not just put their fingers up and go off to the theatre. You may want to add that to your message.

Meanwhile, it's not just Walmart workers who face hardship -- hundreds of fast food workers at the big chains in New York City walked off the job earlier this week, protesting their meager wages and benefits. Just as Walmart workers all too frequently find themselves on Medicaid just to get health care, McDonald's workers all too frequently find themselves living in homeless shelters -- $7.25 an hour won't get you an apartment anywhere in New York City, after all. And, just like Walmart heirs, fast food executives make money hand over fist while their workers suffer. Now, if you happen to think we should tolerate poverty for the many so the few can enjoy obscene wealth, consider that you're paying for what fast food CEOs won't pay for, because you're paying the taxes that become public assistance for their workers. Sum of Us helps you petition fast food CEOs to do right by their workers.

Finally, the big agribusiness corporations probably think we've forgotten all about this, but we haven't: the so-called "Monsanto rider" to the Agricultural Appropriations bill would force the Secretary of Agriculture to allow planting Frankencrops even if a federal court has halted the planting so an Environmental Impact Statement can be finished. In other words, Monsanto wants to contravene our Constitutional separation of powers so that it can make money whenever it likes on whatever it likes, consequences to America be damned. And these consequences certainly include Monsanto pollution of organic seed with its genetically-engineered seed, carried by the wind -- and the consequences also include Monsanto suing organic farmers for "intellectual property theft." Why should corporations be allowed to push people around like that? The Organic Consumers Association helps you oppose the "Monsanto rider."

Playing with fire.

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (or NDAA) allows our military to detain American citizens indefinitely, just like the 2011 NDAA did, so Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to support NDAA amendments that would revoke indefinite detention powers. Who could have predicted that our government would want the right to detain Americans suspected of terrorism after 9.11? Nobody, of course -- except for anyone who thought about it for a minute. But fewer of us predicted, sadly, that this "right" wouldn't pass during a Republican Administration, but would pass during a Democratic one. We should have remembered that only Nixon could go to China. I hope we're not sitting here in a few years saying nobody could have predicted that our government would widen the definition of "terrorism" to include just about anyone they don't like!

Meanwhile, the Consumer Product Safety Commission (or CPSC) has been working on a rule for toxic flame retardants in furniture since 2008. That's, like, four years, the bulk of that time, again, under a Democratic Administration. So Moms Rising helps you tell the CPSC to keep toxic flame retardants out of our furniture. UC Berkeley and Duke recently found that 85% of American couches contain toxic flame retardants, which researchers link to cancer, thyroid problems, and neurological issues, among other things. So Americans have ten times more toxic flame retardants in their bodies than our Old Europe counterparts, who don't allow toxic flame retardants in their furniture. And the punchline? Flame retardants don't actually retard very much flame.

Finally, Mr. Obama's inaugural promises to be quite lavish -- and, possibly, corporate-financed, since the donors Mr. Obama would normally tap for his inaugural did spend an awful lot of money getting him re-elected. So Public Citizen helps you tell Mr. Obama to refuse corporate donations to pay for his second inaugural, as he did (to his credit) for his first inaugural. It's not a silly thing to talk about -- nobody gives large amounts of money to politicians without expecting something big in return. And surely you remember when we criticized Mr. Bush's lavish second inaugural while soldiers were going without body armor in Iraq. Today we still have soldiers overseas, plus we're in the middle of a sluggish economic recovery. Would it kill the President to have a more, dare I say, austere inaugural ceremony? Or is austerity just for the rest of us?

Locomotion.

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee helps you tell Congress to restore our Constitutional rights and liberties. Specifically, the action alert helps you tell your Congressfolk to oppose the FISA Amendments Act extension, support the JUSTICE Act, reverse the military/indefinite detention clauses in the last defense appropriations act, and update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (or ECPA) so that it extends Fourth Amendment protections to e-mail, text messages, and other online documents. Congress may well care more about cutting Social Security and Medicare as part of an alleged "grand bargain," but they should focus on our right to live free without unwarranted searches and seizures. Perhaps now that one of their own (Mr. Petraeus) has faced career reversals thanks to unwarranted searches and seizures, our elites will be a bit more receptive to our will. But only if we make our will known.

With Canada and Mexico joining the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" talks, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) still offers S. 3347, the 21st Century Trade Agreements and Market Access Act, and Public Citizen still helps you tell your Senators to co-sponsor the bill. S. 3347 would force trade agreements to adhere to "fundamental human rights and freedoms" as well as "core labor rights," whereas current "free" trade agreements, with their investor "tribunals," run roughshod over those rights. S. 3347 would also force our government to assess security risks in making trade agreements, and would prohibit our government from entering into trade agreements with nations that try to manipulate our currency. In short, there's a lot for sane, reasonable conservatives to like about this bill -- though there's nothing for insane reactionaries desperate to score points on Barack Obama to like about it. Of course, I don't want to give reactionaries anything anyway.

Around the table for Monday, November 26, 2012.

Very bad news out of Egypt: President Mohammed Morsi claims dictatorial powers -- particularly immunity from review by the judiciary, which (he says) is stacked with Mubarak loyalists. He also issues orders claiming he can do whatever he likes, er, has to do against "threats to the revolution." And thus another revolutionary leader jumps the shark.

Adam Davidson assesses whether America really has a "skills gap." Key finding, per a Boston Consulting Group study: "Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates is not a skills gap." But at the end, Mr. Davidson takes a manufacturing CEO's word for it that education is the real problem; I hear about a math-science gap all the time, but he still needs to prove it exists.

Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) says he's going to ignore the Grover Norquist no-tax-hike pledge he took back in the day because "I care too much about my country." Fine words, but don't hold your breath waiting for those words to transmute into action.

Sen. Mark Begich (D-AK) plans to introduce bill that would lift the payroll cap on Social Security payroll taxes -- meaning that income over about $110,000 annually would finally be subject to the payroll tax (and the folks making over $110,000 would receive additional benefits.) The bill would also increase benefits across the board. It sounds terrific -- unless means testing comes in through the back door.

Texas school district suspends sophomore Andrea Hernandez for refusing to wear RFID card around her neck. Ms. Hernandez cites both religious and privacy concerns for her refusal. My guess: the Supreme Court, despite its yen for a national security state everywhere, ultimately rules in favor of Revelation 13:16-18.

Finally, Pat Robertson gamely takes on "the war on Christmas." Note to susceptible Christians: atheists generally have more important things to think about than creating "misery" for you. And if hearing "Happy holidays" at the Cracker Barrel is all it takes to make you "miserable," you might want to look in the mirror.

Penny rants for Sunday, November 25, 2012.

Where to begin with this slab of hot-and-steaming about upper-end tax hikes from Investors Business Daily? With its failure to address Mr. Krugman's assertion that a 91% tax bracket would be moral? With its assumption that we should listen to JFK on taxes because he's JFK? With its slippery-slope reasoning that Mr. Obama wouldn't stop at a 39.6% top bracket when it's been like pulling teeth to get him that far? With its tired "penalizing success" line not two weeks after Citigroup's ex-CEO got another multi-million-dollar payout for crashing his company? How about paragraph 13, which transmutes the desire for more progressive taxation into "the socialist assumption that government has an unlimited claim on the wealth of the people"? Once you say "91% of income over a million bucks," you're setting a limit. How do the fools survive?

Per two Senators' aides, the financial services industry "has already moved to block" Senator-elect Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) from joining the Senate Banking Committee, given her long-standing support for tighter regulation and reform. I must've missed the part where the financial services industry got elected to the Senate, and indeed the mechanics of "blocking" her remain a mystery, except that they're "going nuts" trying to do so. And one hedge fund manager tells us that "(a)t exactly the time that big banks don't want more oversight -- or another potentially activist regulator --that's what they're getting." Again, I must have missed the part where banks ever wanted more oversight. Then again, the banking industry must have missed the part where they crashed the economy. Seriously, we've been putting up with bankster whining for how many years now?

Finally, Matt K. Lewis at The Week suggests that the Republicans should look to George W. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" in order to "modernize" -- just without all that nation-building and debt-spending stuff. I guess we're supposed to believe that, without those wars and budget deficits, Mr. Bush's two terms would have been just dandy -- nay, even compassionate! But what if "compassionate conservatism" was, in Mr. Bush's hands, merely a bait-and-switch -- what if Mr. Bush pretended to be a "compassionate conservative" precisely so that he could get into power and hand out taxpayer largesse to his cronies via "nation-building" and budget deficits? I mean, if you were at all awake during the Bush years, you wouldn't fall for this crap again in 2016 just because Bobby Jindal or Marco Rubio tried it -- unless, of course, Democrats did absolutely nothing with their power in the meantime, which is always the threat.

Gotta get up.

First things first: the Ugandan Parliament, again, wants to make homosexuality punishable by death. Well, for "serial offenders" -- do it once, and it's only life in prison. Except you don't actually have to "do it" -- the bill's definitions are so broad, you could get life in jail for hugging. Oh, and if you're an NGO trying to prevent the spread of HIV in Africa, then you might also get jail time for "promoting" homosexuality. Or if you agitate for gay rights over the internet. Or if you donate to pro-gay causes. Or if you rent a room to a gay person. Or if you refuse to report them to the cops. As an American accustomed to the notion that it's your God-given right to stand up to hatemongers, how does all of that make you feel? Avaaz helps you tell the Ugandan government, again, to stop with the gay hate already.

Meanwhile, closer to home, underpaid, pushed-around, mad-as-hell Walmart workers all across America plan to go on strike today, on this holiest of shopping days -- this, despite Walmart's mandatory meetings last night (happy Thanksgiving, folks!) implying that "there could be consequences" if folks don't report for work today. The Corporate Action Network helps you find a Walmart strike-related event near you, in case you want to stand in solidarity with them. It's easy; you only need to enter your zip code to find a place to stand with the folks who get low pay, struggle to get full-time hours and/or stable hours, and get either no health benefits or very expensive health benefits -- all while their bosses make a mint. Service workers deserve as much of a chance at a better life as anyone else, and I applaud their courage.

Light posting notice.

Posting will be light around here for a few days. I wish everyone a safe and happy Thanksgiving!

Interstellar overdrive.

The holidays are coming, and what does Rupert Murdoch want? Why, the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, of course! Buddhists teach us that desires are like prisons, but Mr. Murdoch's desire to gobble up more newspapers isn't just his own prison -- it's our prison, too, as he would stifle more local and independent voices so the new papers can be just like him. And how does the FCC feel about this? Sadly, the FCC feels how you'd expect it to feel if Republicans were running the show -- they're trying to gut media cross-ownership rules, so that one conglomerate can own a newspaper, two TV stations and eight radio stations in one market. Just as only Nixon could go to China, apparently only Barack Obama could sell out the anti-media consolidation movement, one of the few truly bipartisan movements in the nation. Free Press helps you demand that the FCC stop giving handouts to big media.

Meanwhile, Democrats and Republicans in Congress are acting like they can reach a deal to avoid that overhyped thing that sounds like "Driscoll skiff" -- which could mean they're about to do something truly horrible. Perhaps they're gunning for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, or for some fake tax hike on the rich that isn't a tax hike at all. US Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the Bush Mobb tax cuts for the rich without cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid. Republicans seem to think they should be "getting something" out of this deal. How many times must I tell these pimps! Our government should be negotiating with we the people, not some intransigent cadre of reactionaries who've earned nothing and deserve nothing. We're done being hostages, done being told we need to give up what we've worked for, paid into, and fought for so that a small amount of justice can finally be done.

Can't keep a good man down.

Amnesty International helps you call upon Bahrain to free Nabeel Rajab. What did Mr. Rajab do to get arrested? You know, used twitter, helped to organize protests against the Bahraini government -- the kind of thing we take for granted here in America. Mr. Rajab got three years in solitary for that last item. What is Bahrain afraid of? Could they be afraid that almost two years of cracking down on Arab Spring-inspired protests makes them look bad? Could they be afraid that Mr. Rajab, after two decades of grassroots human rights activism in Bahrain, might actually get his message across to large masses of people? Well, putting him in jail isn't a good way of suppressing his message -- it's actually a good way of calling attention to his message. You'd think oppressors would be smarter than that.

Meanwhile, though the BP settlement totals $7 billion-plus over five years, and BP could pay more in civil suits, Public Citizen reminds us that BP made $40 billion in profits last year, and worse than that, BP still has defense contracts with our government, getting $1.35 billion in Pentagon fueling contracts in 2011, which would (if kept up) almost pay their current obligations to our government over the Gulf spill. So Public Citizen helps you tell our government to suspend all contracts with British Petroleum. I mean, if I spilled that much oil in the Gulf of Mexico, I'd expect to lose a lot of business, too, regardless of the penalties I paid in restitution. Besides which, federal law actually allows our government to bar corporations that repeatedly run afoul of the law, which BP has also done.

In other news, just as Patriot Coal has decided to end mountaintop removal coal mining in the Appalachia, the Sierra Club helps you tell the EPA to protect streams from mountaintop removal mining. "Mountaintop removal" might sound a little less violent than it actually is -- generally, corporations blow up mountain ridges to get to the coal seams underneath, and then dump a lot of the displaced dirt (mixed in with toxic waste, of course) in the valleys and waterways below, all of which increases folks' risk of cancer, heart disease, and birth defects. Mining corporations only do that because it costs less and requires fewer workers, but with Patriot Coal having apparently rejected that calculus, mining corporations won't be able to cry REGULASHUNZ PUT US OUT OF BIZNIZZZ!!!! as easily.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the state of Pennsylvania to release complete reports on water samples requested by homeowners, the Sierra Club helps you do that -- and if you've missed previous opportunities to get the Justice Department involved in this issue, Food and Water Watch helps you do that. If your Tea Party uncle tells you that REGULASHUNZ IZ CRUSHNG BURDUN!!!!!, you can remind him that the law compels your government to tell you what crap is being dumped in your water when you ask. This isn't about "killing jobs" or suchlike -- this is about making government serve you when you need it. And the government of Pennsylvania clearly prefers to serve the gas drilling corporations, like they get all the say around here. They don't. We do.

Around the table for Monday, November 19, 2012.

The Institute for Southern Studies asks what's next for British Petroleum and Gulf of Mexico residents. BP's settlement last week actually totals over $7.2 billion, including payments to Justice, the SEC, the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences, all payable over a five-year period -- and, as we discussed earlier, they could pay a lot more in civil suits.

Surprise, surprise -- the Russian government's PR firm placed "opinion" pieces on CNBC and the Huffington Post. PR firm Ketchum says it always comes clean with media outlets about whom it represents, but surely Ketchum knows media outlets rarely come clean with their consumers about potential conflicts of interest.

Hostess announces it's going out of business; "liberal" media blame a baker's strike, but fail to note that Hostess tripled its CEO's salary, and raised nine other executives' salaries, right before declaring bankruptcy a second time. Like I always say, CEOs don't earn the big money by "taking risks" -- the only risk they ever take anymore is that they won't be obscenely rich, but only absurdly rich, if they tank their business.

Swedish furniture manufacturer Ikea admits it used former East German political prisoners as slave labor duing the 1980s. And the whole truth is probably worse than Ikea admits. The more you learn about Ikea's politics, the less you like.

Courtland County (NY) D.A. Mark Suben says, yes, in fact, now that he's been re-elected, he was a porn actor in the early '70s. Hastens to add that he's done soap operas and ads, too! And says he won't resign, despite having lied about this matter to everyone. During an election campaign. If he has any moral compass, he'll change his mind.

Finally, astronomers identify a "homeless" planet, or a planet that doesn't orbit a star but drifts through space. I sure hope it's not actually this planet.

Around the table for Friday, November 16, 2012.

British Petroleum, authors of the Spillageddon in the Gulf in 2010, settle with the Department of Justice on criminal charges. BP will pay a $4.5 billion fine for admitting guilt on 11 felony counts of neglect (though the 11 families of the dead might have a stronger word for it than "neglect"), but BP will also admit guilt to violating the Clean Water Act, which might make it easier for our government to collect up to $21 billion in civil penalties from BP. Unless, of course, Justice "settles" that one, too.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says we shouldn't bother taxing the rich more, because they can afford lawyers to get around high tax rates. How annoying, to find yet another lawmaker who says we just can't enforce the law.

Maine GOP Chair steps in it by suggesting that blacks voting in Maine's rural areas could be a sign of voter fraud. Steps in it further by suggesting he could just as easily have said "Chinese," then goes knee-deep by reminding everyone he plays basketball with a black friend every Sunday. Great job trying to "nip this in the butt," Mr. Webster, but I guess it could have been worse -- he could have said we're the real racists for noticing his racism.

Jobless claims go up by 78,000 due to Hurricane Sandy, but Fox and Friends suggests it's more evidence that Mr. Obama fudges job numbers. Fox's website reports the more likely explanation, but let's not give them credit for hiding the truth where fewer people will see it.

Finally, just as everyone has always wanted, Frito-Lay will introduce a caffeinated Cracker Jack candy, called Cracker Jack'd. Now kids all over America can be as cool as their harried, overstimulated parents!

You killing me.

With that thing that sounds like "pistol whip" coming up at the end of the year, Moms Rising also helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, and let the Bush Mobb tax cuts expire for the top two brackets. The other side wants to make everything complicated -- they want to "eliminate loopholes" (not that we've been telling them exactly what loopholes to eliminate, without success, year after year or anything!) and "raise average (not marginal) tax rates on upper-income taxpayers," which sounds like a bowl of piping-hot Cream of Caca to me, but if Congress does nothing, the Bush tax cuts all expire, so seems to me we have the upper hand. Admittedly, it also seemed that way to me in 2010, before Mr. Obama kneecapped us with his "compromise." That just means we work harder.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our government to stop using most of our antibiotics on healthy feed animals, or to curb animal waste from factory farms, the Pew Charitable Trusts provides a two-fisted action alert with which you may do both. The news hook, this time, is the President's annual turkey pardon -- "pardon the turkey, not industrial agriculture," Pew says to Mr. Obama. Trouble is, of course, that Mr. Obama has done too much pardoning of industrial agriculture -- his Administration won't fight to keep animal manure from factory farms out of our water and won't fight to keep antibiotics free for sick people and sick animals, all this despite gigantic supermajorities of Americans demanding such fights. We'll demand more. It's our job, just as it's his job to do our will.

Around the table for Thursday, November 15, 2012.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that the whole David Petraeus imbroglio started when a Tampa socialite used FBI connections to find out who sent her emails that she (and just about no one else) found threatening. Thus, by last week, the FBI had read tens of thousands of pages of at least three individuals' private emails without actually suspecting anyone of a crime. Now that it's hit one of their own, our elites will surely fight the surveillance state, right? ProPublica tells us more.

Missouri becomes the first state to let CEOs refuse to pay for contraception in their health insurance plans if it violates their "religious" or "moral" convictions. Never mind their employees' actual religious or moral convictions -- in Missouri, you have to have money to have rights!

Mitt Romney says he lost the Presidential election because Mr. Obama gave "gifts" to loyal constituencies -- like "forgiveness (sic) of college loan interest" and "free contraceptives" and, of course, "Obamacare." Hello, Mitt? Election's over; you can stop saying dumb crap. Does Mitt Romney even remember that he also supported the Stafford loan rate cut extension?

Finally, Angus King (I-ME), who quite handily won the race to replace Olympia Snowe in the Senate, says he'll caucus with the Democrats. And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!

Can't stop this.

Congress comes back to work today (not next week, as I said earlier; I regret the error), so I've got a slew of action alerts relating to that thing that rhymes with "Siskel glyph." I'll avoid passing along alerts about specific initiatives -- it just so happens I don't want Congress to cut the Earned Income Tax Credit and the Child Tax Credit, for example, but I want to keep this simple, because it really is simple. Fact is, the Democratic Presidential candidate just spent an entire calendar year saying he wants the rich to pay more taxes, and though "conventional" "wisdom" said he should have lost on that basis alone, he won -- so maybe, just maybe, Mr. Obama has a mandate to raise taxes on the rich. Campaign for America's Future, USAction, the AFSCME, and CREDO all help you tell your Congressfolk: let the Bush Mobb tax cuts for the top two brackets expire, and don't cut Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid benefits.

Meanwhile, you've surely heard about 15-year-old Malala Yousafzai, whom the Taliban shot in the head on a school bus because she agitated for young girls to be able to go to school. Now a change.org petition calls upon the last two U.S. Secretaries of State (Hillary Clinton and Condoleeza Rice) to nominate Ms. Yousafzai for a Nobel Peace Prize, and you can urge them to do that here. It is a bit sobering to realize that, in some places on earth, girls can't even go to school because some folks feel compelled to force their reactionary religious beliefs on others, and I stand in awe of Ms. Yousafzai's courage and fortitude. I mean, she took a bullet in the head, for Christ's sake, and isn't backing down. Let's give the Nobel Peace Prize to someone who earned it for once. Yes, I'm looking at you, President Still Fighting Two Wars and Still Keeping Guantánamo Open and Killing Even More Civilians with Drone Strikes than the Other Guy.

Around the table for Tuesday, November 13, 2012.

Our Iraq/Afghanistan veterans find their efforts to get the benefits they've earned complicated by lousy record-keeping -- on the order of we have no record you ever served in Iraq, never mind all the horrible crap you saw there that you can't get out of your head. This is what happens when our government starts wars to enrich an administration's cronies.

Fired Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit received a $6.7 million "incentive award" for his last year on the job. Doesn't matter if the "incentive" was "to go away" -- this is why folks shouldn't say CEOs deserve all that money they make because they "take risks." The only "risk" they take is that they walk away with a seven-digit severance instead of an eight-digit severance if they crash-and-burn their corporation. You and I ain't taking home almost $7 million if we get fired because we stink so bad at our jobs.

Paul Ryan tells Madison, WI reporter that "we didn't lose on Medicare", and the Washington Post cites Romney/Ryan beating Obama/Biden by a larger margin among seniors than McCain/Palin did. That's not the whole story, though -- certainly folks who don't have Medicare yet were emotionally invested in the fight, and certainly Mr. Obama's own triangulation on "entitlements" didn't give voters a very clear choice.

Tulsi Gabbard becomes first practicing Hindu in U.S. House, and will take her oath of office over the Bhagavad Gita. Please, right-wingers, if you're thinking of faking outrage over this development just to get attention, don't. I'm not in a pimp-smacking mood today. But that does not mean I will not smack a pimp.

Today.

The "lame duck" session of Congress begins next week -- and no Congress has ever earned the moniker "lame" like this one has, amirite? -- so I have some pre-emptive strikes for you to fire. Public Citizen provides a slew of action alerts -- four pro, five con -- relating to items on Congress's agenda; you can pick and choose from these as you like, of course. SignOn also helps you tell Mr. Obama exactly what sort of mandate he has from the American people -- a mandate to raise taxes on the rich and put people ahead of corporations, among other things. (Hat tip to reader Karóle Skeen for that link.) Item #3 on the signon.org petition is also fairly important -- we need to stop certain religious folks from forcing their beliefs on the rest of us. Our founders ran from real religious persecution, not the "persecution" of hearing "happy holidays" at Cracker Barrel or having to pay for whatever health care needs your employees have whether you "believe" in it or not.

Meanwhile, Apple has blocked an app from its app store. Apple is notorious for making app developers do things their way; so that must be what this is, right? Not exactly -- the app in question is Drones+, which plots drone strikes on a map as the media reports them. Apple calls the app "objectionable and crude." Here I was thinking actual drone strikes which kill civilians in countries we're not even warring against was "objectionable and crude"! And Drones+ doesn't even "give away" any big military secrets -- as I've already said, it adds drone strikes to a map as the media reports them. So what is Apple really afraid of? Jeopardizing the millions of dollars they get in Pentagon contracts? Roots Action helps you demand that Apple approve the Drones+ app. Who knows? If more people know what our government does to civilians in other countries, they might raise more of a stink and make it stop.

Finally, if you missed any previous opportunities to tell the Justice Department to investigate the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection's alleged failure to provide full water-test results to families that request them, CREDO still helps you do that. Gov. Corbett said that, though he'd let gas drillers do pretty much whatever they wanted in Pennsylvania, he'd still make sure the state government protected our drinking water. Apparently, he thought "protecting our drinking water" meant "pretending to protect our drinking water," by sending partial lab results to three Pennsylvania families, leaving out a lot of the bad stuff. Incredibly, the DEP tells us that releasing partial lab reports is standard procedure. You know what standard procedure is around here when government doesn't do its job? Bring down the hammer of the popular will, that's what.

Around the table for Monday, November 12, 2012.

Thinking Republicans might "compromise" with Mr. Obama on taxes? Forget it -- they're fronting. Now they say no-tax-rate-hikes-but-let's-end-tax-loopholes, and next they'll say wait-not-that-one when confronted with, say, oil subsidies. If Republicans had been talking to me the way they've been talking to Mr. Obama all these years, I wouldn't negotiate with them at all -- especially with Bush Mobb tax cuts about to expire on their own.

Occupy Wall Street begins a "rolling jubilee," in which good folks pool their money together to buy debt so they can forgive it. That's definitely better than "vulture capitalists" forcing austerity on foreign governments by buying their debt for pennies on the dollar. I wonder how effective it'll be, though -- not merely because $1 million would still only buy about $20 million in debt, because debt gets sliced up and resold so much you might wind up forgiving bankster-to-bankster debt without knowing it.

The Institute for Southern Studies instructs us that big money didn't really do so badly in this election after all. Long story short: big money may not have produced big wins at the national level, but it sure did at the state level -- and we all know how thoroughly state politics have infected national politics over the last two years.

Another election, another premature obituary of the right-wing Christian movement. Remember how the Christian right were dying out in the late '90s, too? The right will always be able to harvest people filled with rage, especially in a bankster-owned economy. Read to the end, though, for Bishop Soto's devastating indictment of the "liberal" media.

Speaking of the "liberal" media, FAIR reports that they're falling all over themselves declaring that Mr. Obama doesn't have a mandate, despite getting more popular votes and more electoral votes than Mr. Mandate himself, George W. Bush. How many times must I tell these pimps! The mandate still derives from us, "liberal" media -- and we don't just shut up after Election Day.

Finally, in a pretty spectacular meltdown we only get to see in modern times, an ice cream jockey gets fired (and reported to the Secret Service) for calling Mr. Obama the n-word on facebook and further musing that he could be assassinated. Then says she's not racist, adding that she was "just simply stating my opinion!!!" and "I don't understand what I did wrong." And people still say gay marriage exemplifies how sick, immoral, and decadent our society has become?

Penny rants for Friday, November 9, 2012.

"Money can't buy happiness, or an election," MSNBC says, citing the numerous losing candidates backed by four billionaires (though saying nothing of the gajillions spent by SuperPACs). Maybe money can't buy an election outright (though it seems to have bought more than a few U.S. Senators in 2010), but money can still buy a lot of TV ads, and right now TV ads are the most passive way of collecting political information, meaning too many people still get too much of their info from TV ads. And a lot of these clowns did a lot better than they should have. The self-funded Tom Smith, who never-not-once mentioned in his gazillion Philly-area TV ads that he was a Republican, did a lot better against Bob Casey than Rick Santorum did. And Josh Mandel, the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, shouldn't be elected to dog-catcher, let alone State Treasurer, yet the $31 million from outside groups got him to 45 points against Sherrod Brown. In 2018 Ohio Republicans might have the sense to get behind someone who's not a complete fool, and $31 million (or more!) might put him over the top.

I buzzed Michael Smerconish's take on Barack Obama's more insane opponents here yesterday, but I feel compelled to demolish a myth Mr. Smerconish propagates in paragraph 7: that the Affordable Care Act (a.k.a. "Obamacare") "is premised upon personal responsibility." I guess he means that a single-payer health care system wouldn't be "premised upon personal responsibility," but a program that preserves (and subsidizes!) the private insurance industry would. But how, exactly, is a single-payer system anti-"personal responsibility"? Taxpayers would be paying for it, wouldn't they? And, as such, taxpayers would have a responsibility to stay on their Congressfolk about making sure it works the way it should work, right? It's a bait and switch -- talk "personal responsibility" and then subtly equate any private, corporate business model with "responsibility," never mind that America's private health insurance industry has become the poster child for irresponsibility. I'll grant that Mr. Smerconish might not be completely aware he's doing that.

Finally, the American people have re-elected Barack Obama for a second term -- which means the "liberal" media, having spent years parroting the far-right's absurd charges of "socialism," will now conclude that Americans have decisively chosen socialism, right? And Republicans, having pursued no policy other than Mr. Obama's defeat, will spend some time with the man in the mirror? I kid, of course. No, the "liberal" media will instead proclaim that the people want bipartisanship, and say nothing about the people's actual desire for good government regardless of whether anyone gets along or not. And Republicans will lurch further and further right -- and why shouldn't they, when Democrats meet Republicans in an ever-rightward-moving "center" so often that you'd have ever reason to suspect their sincerity? Their only reason to change will be this: the people hound them so much that they fear for their jobs. And n.b. that Mr. Obama just spent a year talking about rich folks paying more taxes and still won, in a lousy economy, no less. We have an opportunity, but we have a lot of work to do.

Around the table for Thursday, November 8, 2012.

Conservative commentator Michael Smerconish unfurls this gem in defending Mr. Obama: "the baseless scorn heaped upon President Obama makes Bush's detractors look diplomatic." But I suspect we look "diplomatic" now because we criticized Mr. Bush for things he actually did.

GOP strategist Steve Schmidt says voter fraud "doesn't really exist when you look deeply at the question." You'd think, given his political orientation (and, I presume, his hopes for future employment), he'd want to argue the opposite.

Politico thinks Heidi Heitkamp's win in the North Dakota U.S. Senate race was an "upset"? Typical out-of-touch Northeasterners! As state Attorney General, Ms. Heitkamp's efforts sparked the 1990s tobacco settlement, and she's remained active in the business community since then; why does Politico suggest North Dakota voters don't know her?

Don't look now, but Sarah Palin actually said something that made sense the other night -- that Mr. Obama won Ohio by using Bain Capital against Mr. Romney. OK, it's not that impressive a point, but I guess this is how the nutjobs become mainstream. Or, in her case, "lamestream."

The best news of Election Night? Samuel "Joe the Plumber" Wurzelbacher, the man who gives Everyman a bad name, got absolutely pummeled in his run for Congress. Marcy Kaptur walloped Joe by almost fifty points. I'd like to say that even in America, celebrity only gets you so far -- but see the previous paragraph.

They don't care about us.

And we're back to work: remember when Tom Corbett said he'd make sure the state protected our drinking water? Well, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the PA Department of Environmental Protection (or DEP) "produces incomplete lab reports and uses them to dismiss complaints that Marcellus Shale gas development operations have contaminated residential water supplies and made people sick." DEP reports routinely omit toxic heavy metals like lithium, cobalt, and boron from the drinking water reports homeowners request. So that's how you "protect" our drinking water! Recall that Mr. Corbett received over $7 million in campaign contributions from gas drillers and their affiliated organizations. Signon.org helps you call on U.S. Attorney General Holder to investigate the matter.

Meanwhile, S. 3468, the so-called Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act, would make regulatory agencies less independent through permitting more Executive branch interference and through saddling agencies with cost-benefit analyses. Typically, cost-benefit analyses measure a regulation's financial cost to a corporation against that regulation's financial benefits for that corporation -- in short, it acts like the corporation is all that matters in America! A real "cost-benefit" analysis would count the costs we all face from regulations and the benefits we all receive, since government ideally acts on behalf of all of us -- for example, a real cost-benefit analysis of an air toxics rule would also count the benefits folks get in cleaner air, fewer lost wages due to illness, and fewer health care costs, which we all bear sooner or later. But corporations don't care about us, so OMB Watch helps you tell your Senators to oppose S. 3468.

Finally, the vast majority of Americans still oppose using over 80% of all antibiotics to fatten up healthy farm animals -- versus, you know, using those antibiotics on sick people and animals -- but getting our government to move on something everyone wants them to do still proves difficult. And the FDA's not even willing to make big factory farms or big pharmaceuticals disclose how much of our nation's antibiotics they're actually using! Again, nobody wants wanton antibiotic use to create more superbugs that can jump to people -- nobody except the big corporations, and the FDA seems willing to give them all the say. But the FDA is taking public comments about the matter of forcing disclosure, and the Pew Charitable Trusts helps you tell the FDA to force disclosure of antibiotic use. It's a shame it's come to pulling teeth to get disclosure, but we fight where we have to.

Tempest.

Today is Election Day. If you have any problems voting today -- including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues -- call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. If you have a smartphone, you may also text OURVOTE to 90975 and download the Election Protection Smartphone App, which can help you verify your registration, find your polling place, and review state voting rules and regulations. (It can also help you register to vote, in states where you can still do that.) Pennsylvania voters can also download this pdf file from the ACLU which may also answer any questions you may have.

Voting, as I've said before, is a citizen's minimum duty in America -- this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we citizens must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. I have a few friends (dedicated and active citizens all) who won't vote this year, so disgusted are they that Mr. Obama's first term has so closely resembled Mr. Bush's third term. I share their disgust, and I'm not even as happy as I thought I'd be with the third-party choices we have this year, but a non-vote too easily registers as apathy or generic disgust with campaigning -- especially to those overpaid TV punditoids who get paid to ignore what folks actually say. So go out there and vote, but remember that voting isn't the end, but the beginning -- we'll have plenty of work to do tomorrow morning.

Finally, if you want to follow election-related news, please avoid the aforementioned overpaid TV punditoids (who may still be working for one campaign or another, not that the TV networks will disclose that to you). If you want to follow the only stories worth reporting today, then Common Cause's blog will report on any difficulties voters have at the polls.

Good luck and God bless, folks.

Four sticks.

Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell your Senators not to give banks legal immunity when they push unaffordable home loans. At issue is an amendment Sen. Corker (R-TN) has proposed to a relatively uncontroversial bill, S. 3522, the Responsible Homeowner Refinancing Act. S. 3522 would help homeowners take better advantage of lower interest rates, but for Sen. Corker, that can come only at the price of a get-out-of-jail card for banksters. Amazing how often these law-and-order types want to excuse bad behavior if corporations undertake it -- it's like they're saying, come on, I know they crashed the entire economy and we still haven't recovered from it, but let bygones be bygones! Now excuse me while I go plant some dime bags on black folks.

Meanwhile, since Republicans have taken up the habit of holding disaster funding hostage to whatever pet spending cuts they want to inflict upon the populace, Daily Kos helps you tell House Republicans not to take relief funding hostage. Last time they managed to cut funding for first responders, and I can't understand why their election opponents aren't running TV ad after TV ad pointing that out. Unless, of course, said opponents really don't want to win. That could be the case. And enough already from Republicans about being broke and wanting everything paid for and then refusing to hike taxes on any rich folks or cut any well-abused crop subsidies or cut any unnecessary oil subsidies. Really, these idiots have zero credibility.

Union of Concerned Scientists helps you oppose S. 3468, the so-called Independent Agency Regulatory Analysis Act. I say "so-called" for a reason -- S. 3468 wouldn't engage so much in analysis as paralysis (I know, you thought of that even before I did), by giving the President more power to interfere in the workings of independent agencies. You'd think after eight frackin' years of George W. Bush that folks would be more wary of giving Presidents more power -- especially power to interfere in the legislative process that created these agencies and gave them their mandates. But Congress, by and large, doesn't care about legislating -- it cares about mammon, and getting to one President is a lot easier than getting to a bunch of agencies.

In other news, Demand Progress helps you tell the President to stop justifying the death penalty for whistleblowers. Yes, you read that right, and here's how this particular Goldbergian interpretive contraption works: whistleblowers release information, some of which may be classified; that information can theoretically be received by anyone, including "the enemy"; thus, whistleblowers can be said to be "communicating with the enemy," and thus can die for their crimes. Can you say chilling effect, boys and girls? Preventing your campaign hacks from spreading petty dramas to the press is one thing. Hamstringing your own government workers from acting on their conscience when they witness corruption is another thing entirely.

Around the table for Monday, November 5, 2012.

Retired NSA analyst Michael Duniho suspects that computerized voting results are being manipulated in America, entirely to Republicans' benefit. Long story short: Mr. Romney's share of the vote in this year's Republican primaries went up, for no discernable reason, in larger precincts, while the combined share of Messrs. Paul and Santorum fell by the same amount. Intuitively I suspect 20-point swings are a bit large, and we witness plenty of other, lower-tech methods of suppressing the vote. But computer voting machines are notoriously secretive, and the larger precincts are where you'd do it. And most internet doom forecasts don't get denial-of-service attacks like Mr. Duniho's analysis got for several days.

Meanwhile, witness the journey of one Peggy Cobb, 97 years old, as she tries to comply with Georgia's Voter ID law. I dare anyone to call her stupid because the state went out of its way to make compliance with the law absurdly difficult.

Senate Republicans successfully pressure Congressional Research Service to pull study finding that tax-cuts-for-the-rich don't actually prompt economic growth. Fortunately, Republicans won't be able to pressure everyone else into pulling their own studies finding exactly the same thing.

Ho hum, Russia uses an anti-child pornography law to ban political speech on the internet and spy on its citizens. Is this what conservatives mean when they speak of "unintended consequences"? Probably not, since Mr. Putin rather obviously intended the consequences. (I said "conservatives" for a reason -- of course I know that when reactionaries speak of "unintended consequences," they mean the imaginary consequences of any non-reactionary political policy.)

Surprise! Alleged free-marketeer John Stossel took FEMA money three times while arguing that FEMA should be abolished. No, it's worse: he all but admitted that he built his beach house because he knew FEMA would foot the bill for repairs, while demanding that FEMA "(s)top rewarding people for taking these foolish risks." The flesh is so weak when faced with the government teat! That's yet another reason I support a la carte cable packaging -- why must I pay for garbage like this?

Finally, the Straight Dope asks whether women are better than men at multitasking, and finds the research inconclusive -- but suspects that women multitask more than men do, in large part because we give women more to do.

Around the table for Friday, November 2, 2012.

Charles Ornstein asks: "Why Do Hospital Generators Keep Failing?" Long story short: hospitals still put generators in their basements. Which flood. Still, read the article.

UAW and others file complaint against Mitt Romney, charging that Mr. Romney hid a windfall from the auto industry bailout in his wife's blind trust. I'm so looking forward to hearing cable news punditoids squeal UNIONZ VZ ROMNEY OMG!!!!

Former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel (R) endorses Democrat Bob Kerrey in the state's 2012 Senate race. This endorsement trails the electorate rather than leads it, I think -- Mr. Kerrey's been sneaking up on Ms. Fischer for a few weeks now.

Massachusetts U.S. House candidate Richard Tisei (R) produces a genius campaign ad, comprising a 30-second video of a Gloucester, MA beach, with a single caption "because you need a break from all the campaign ads." The aw, that was nice at the end is too much, but Mr. Tisei sounds like a guy who thinks he has his election in the bag, which he probably does.

Feeling gravity's pull.

Heard of the American Tradition Partnership? With a name like that, it's gotta be good, right? Well, perhaps not: ATP, nominally devoted to "fighting the radical environmentalist agenda," helped kill Montana's hundred-year-old ban on corporate spending in elections in 2011, because, you know, ATP IZ PEPULL!!!!!! Turns out ATP also filed with the IRS as a 501(c)4 non-profit social welfare organization in 2008, yet mailed out fliers weighing in on candidates in that year's Montana Republican primaries right beforehand. 501(c)4 organizations can "participate" in elections, as long as they focus solely on voter education, but if the mailers actually endorsed candidates, ATP could be in trouble with the law. So Free Speech for People helps you tell the Justice Department to investigate ATP. Maybe ATP was clever enough to skirt the spirit of the law without breaking its letter. But the road to hell is paved with the skulls of the similarly clever.

Meanwhile, if you haven't left comments with the FTC supporting better privacy protections for children online, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood still helps you do that. Congress passed the Childrens' Online Privacy Protection Act in 1998, but the law mandates the FTC to produce rules implementing and enforcing the law, and the FTC hasn't updated those rules since 1998. Can you think of anything that might have happened since 1998? Maybe the ubiquity of cell phones? Or the explosion in social networking? Some things haven't changed, though -- today's corporations still target children more fiercely than they target their parents, as even the Wall Street Journal found 30% more cookies and tracking devices on kids' websites than on those more frequented by adults. Going after the parents' pocketbook through their children is an old trick, and today parents need more tools to fight it. And we need to help them get those tools.