Undernews: October 22, 2012

Corporatized schools vs. public education
It's important to keep in mind that, contrary to the capitalist myth, corporatized schools are not about private enterprise at all but about taking public tax dollars and converting them into private profit. - TPR Tampa Bay Times - For-profit education companies are becoming serious players...

NBC pollster compares concern over Romney family voting machine ownership to birther movement
Brad's Blog - This morning, NBC News' top election expert, Chuck Todd, tweeted the following... The voting machine conspiracies belong in same category as the Trump birther garbage. Todd was responding, no doubt, to the many folks who have been justifiably concerned of late, since it was discovered…

Monday Morning Line
Sam Smith - Obama remains tied with Romney in the popular vote but continues to lead in the electoral count, where he is only 41 votes short of winning. Two things to bear in mind: (1) election day organizing is going to be of humungous importance and (2) almost without exception, the changes in the...

What you can expect if Romney wins
Sam Smith If you are a parent . . . Your public school system will increasingly be taken over by corporatized education including privatized charter schools. You can expect activities such as sports, music, and creative activities to continue to decline. Romney made clear his real intent when…

Judge won't let Manning use official statements that could prove his non-guilt
All Gov - Statements by key federal officials¬including President Barack Obama, Defense Secretary Robert Gates , and others¬that the release of thousands of classified documents by online activist group WikiLeaks posed little or no threat to U.S. national security may be used by the defense in....

Word: Urban density
Lloyd Alter, Tree Hugger - In the end, what we need to do is not to make everything like Manhattan; It is more likely that we in fact want to make everything like Greenwich Village or Paris, with moderate height buildings that are more resilient when the power goes out. That's the Goldilocks density…

Sunday Morning Line
Sam Smith There is not a single state that Obama took in 2008 in which he is doing better this time around according to our moving average of latest polls. In Massachusetts and NewYork he's doing just as well, but he lags by two digits compared to 2008 in Connecticut, Oregon and Vermont.

Study finds big jump in Iraqi birth defects
Ammon News - A new study reports a "staggering rise" in birth defects among Iraqi children conceived in the aftermath of the war. High rates of miscarriage, toxic levels of lead and mercury contamination and spiraling numbers of birth defects ranging from congenital heart defects to brain dysfunction...

Top Romney economic adviser helped cause the recession
Alternet - [R Glenn] Hubbard is the ideological hit man instrumental in justifying the mortgage derivatives bubble that caused the Great Recession during the George W. Bush years. He now serves as Romney’s key economic adviser and is the front-runner to be the next Treasury secretary should the...

Oakland becoming a fascity
Common Dreams - Oakland city police have been testing various models and have their sites on a craft that can be outfitted with high-definition cameras, thermal imaging devices, license plate readers and laser radar and can fly at the height of 400 feet for several hours. Linda Lye from the ACLU of…

Who's buyng our elections
Campaign Legal Center - Fewer than 200 individuals have funded 80 percent of Super PAC spending, and the well-heeled interests are funneling millions to “dark money” groups like Crossroads GPS or Priorities USA. Contrast that with the fact that only 0.26 percent of all Americanscontribute more than…

Being rejected can increase creativity
Medical Xpress - Being an outcast can lead to heightened creativity¬even commercial success, according to research by Lynne Vincent; Sharon Kim, and Jack Goncalo, "We show that's possible ... if you have the right way of managing rejection," Goncalo said in an interview. "Feeling different can help…

Georgia big move to corporatize education
A merican Prospect - In March, the Georgia Department of Education released an in-depth report showing that students in the state's charter schools perform worse than those in traditional schools. You might have thought such a conclusion would prompt lawmakers to at least pause on a constitutional...

Why the Catholic Church was worse than the Boy Scouts
Peterr, Firedog Lake - Both organizations were clearly worried about institutional reputation, and the records in both the church and the scouts show how they worked to cover up, hide, and otherwise keep things out of the media and the courtroom. Both groups need to be, and increasingly are being...

Stats: Death by drone
The best currently available public aggregate data on drone strikes are provided by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism , an independent journalist organization. TBIJ reports that from June 2004 through mid-September 2012, available data indicate that drone strikes killed 2,562…

Media ripped off at debates
New Times - The only people allowed in the audience at Monday night's presidential debate at Lynn University will be Lynn students, selected by a lottery to sit on risers in the Wold Performing Arts Center. But the real party will be next door, where an estimated 4,000 journalists from around…

Court decision links cell phones to cancer
Telegraph, UK - Innocente Marcolini, 60, an Italian businessman, fell ill after using a handset at work for up to six hours every day for 12 years. Now Italy's Supreme Court in Rome has blamed his phone saying there is a "causal link" between his illness and phone use, the Sun has reported.

Ann Romney thinks being a Mormon missionary is just like being in the military
Alternet - When pressed by Whoopi Goldberg [on t]he View on how Romney would explain that neither he nor any of his five sons served, Ann explained that the six men found “different ways of serving” by going on their Mormon religious missions. “So, you know, we find different ways of serving,” she…

Japanese official: ground under Fukishima sinking
Natural News - The precarious situation at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan is only continuing to worsen, according to a prominent Japanese official. During a recent interview, Mitsuhei Murata, the former Japanese Ambassador to both Switzerland and Senegal, explained that the...

TSA switching body scanners
Arstechnica - The Transportation Security Administration has been quietly removing its X-ray body scanners from major airports over the last few weeks and replacing them with machines that radiation experts believe are safer. The TSA says it made the decision not because of safety concerns but to...

Oil leaking from BP capping device
Houston Chronicle - Oil in a slick discovered in the Gulf of Mexico is seeping from a 100-ton device that BP used several weeks after the 2010 oil spill in a failed attempt to cap its runaway Macondo well, the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday. The oil is not coming from the Macondo itself, which was...

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