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Sunday 13 May 2012

What Occupiers Learned From Obama - and What He Should Learn From Them
Sarah Jaffe, Truthout: "It doesn't seem like too much of a stretch at this point to say that Obama is responsible for Occupy Wall Street's existence.... What's been discussed less often is the fact that the Obama campaign trained a lot of first-time political operators, young people as well as older folks inspired for once to go beyond showing up on election day and then left without much to do. But some of them were planning something else."
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Mass Anti-Austerity Protests Sweep Through Spain
Staff, RT News: "At least 100,000 protesters angered by the country's grim economic prospects turned out for street demonstrations in 80 cities across Spain. In the capital Madrid, thousands of protesters chanted and beat drums as they marched from different directions to converge on the central Puerta del Sol Square. Marches were also held in Barcelona, Bilbao, Malaga and Seville. The four day-long demonstration marks the one-year anniversary of the 'Indignants' protest movement, as Spain's economic woes deepen by the day."
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A Mother's Day Manifesto: Promoting Personal and Communal Responsibility
Windy Cooler, New Clear Vision: "Some time ago a woman invented Mother's Day. Julia Ward Howe. She called on mothers to raise their sons well, to not be tools for war, as she saw happen in the American Civil War.... Quickly this was forgotten; the holiday progressed to honor mothers just for being mothers, not call us to solidarity. And quickly, yet again, the holiday was consumerized."
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Why Equality Matters
Michael A. Peters, Truthout: "The history of equality from antiquity onward reveals that the notion of equality has been considered a constitutive feature of justice whether in its formal, proportional or moral sense.... Inequality damages social relationships. Measures of trust and social cohesion are higher and violence is lower in more equal societies. And similarly, studies show the reason that rates of imprisonment have increased in more unequal countries."
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Tea Party Focus Turns to Senate and Shake-Up
Jonathan Weisman and Jennifer Steinhauer, The New York Times News Service: "The primary victory of a Tea Party-blessed candidate in Indiana illustrates how closely Republican hopes for a majority in the Senate are tied to candidates who pledge to infuse the chamber with the deep-seated conservatism that has been the hallmark of the House since the Republicans gained control in 2010."
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Forty Acres and a Rule: Draft Federal Fracking Regulations Cover Only a Sliver of Land
Lena Groeger, ProPublica: "Last week's media coverage of the Obama administration's newly-proposed fracking rules focused so heavily on how drilling companies would have to disclose the chemicals they use that it largely overlooked the toughest provisions: Drillers would be required to test the physical integrity of their wells, and more water would be protected from drilling.... One major limitation: Although widely understood as 'national' guidelines, the draft rules would in fact only apply to a sliver of the nation's natural gas supply."
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Political Ads: America Discovers Columbus
Michael Winship, Moyers & Co.: "Columbus draws a lot of political advertising because it's the largest city in a big swing state that this year also has a heated Senate contest and congressional races reconfigured by redistricting. What's different here is that when the campaigns end, the advertising keeps on going. Political ads are on the air in Columbus all the time.... In the end, media experts wonder if all the ads made possible by the cash unleashed after the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision will have been worth it."
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Bad Advice from Kurt Vonnegut
Cara Hoffman, Cara Hoffman's Blog: "While Kurt was freeing me from the prison of academia, my mother was at an Adrienne Rich lecture. While I was planning my escape from education and middle class culture, my mother was working her ass off to get the degree she'd missed because she was raising three kids and supporting the idealistic career of her husband. While I was fighting every second to remain a genderless brain on a stick, my mother was living as a smart, uneducated woman in a small conservative place with few opportunities."
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Want to Appreciate Teachers? Stop Treating Their Students Like Dirt
Molly Knefel, AlterNet: "As a teacher, I feel appreciated when my students are taken care of, when they come to me in good condition and ready to learn. I have never known that my student's test scores may be used as an excuse by Mayor Bloomberg to shut down the entire school, depriving the generations of students and siblings and parents of the school community in which they have grown up. These are the conditions under which we celebrate Teacher Appreciation Week, and the students are the collateral damage."
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The Thing That Couldn't Die: Yucca Battle Continues in Congress and in the Courts
Gregg Levine, Capitoilette: "The roughly 300,000 tons of high-level radioactive garbage that lies scattered across the US will remain deadly dangerous for at least another 100 millennia - and each operating nuclear plant adds to that terrifying total by about 20 tons each year. Without a government-funded waste repository, nuclear power simply could not continue to live - and that is why, to the nuclear industry, Yucca Mountain is something that cannot die."
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The BuzzFlash commentary for Truthout will return Monday, May 14th.

Forget Flowers This Mother's Day: 11 Ways to REALLY Help Mothers
Read the Article at AlterNet

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon on Whether JPMorgan's $2 Billion Loss Proves Banks Are Still Too Risky: "I Don't Think So"
Read the Article at ThinkProgress

ALEC Act Would Give Legislatures Power Over AGs
Listen to the Program and read the Transcript at NPR

Talks on Greek Coalition Collapse, Threatening Deal
Read the Article at the New York Times

California Facing $16 Billion Shortfall
Read the Article at USA Today

Weary Warriors Favor Obama
Read the Article at Reuters

How the US Chamber of Commerce Uses its "Spooky PAC" to Funnel Corporate Cash into Secret Attack Ads (infographic)
See the Infographic at Republic Report

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