Want to encourage the local economy? Try printing your own regional money. In Great Barrington, Massachusetts, I gave the nice man in the Mr. Ding a Ling truck a W.E.B. Du Bois for my fudgesicle, and he gave me four Mohicans back in change. I walked over to the food co-op and broke a 50—the one with Norman Rockwell on the face—and my excellent sandwich came with four Robyn Van Ens in change. If I hadn't been so hungry, I could have spent my BerkShares on website design, some septic work, a game of billiards, snowplowing, or a horseback-riding lesson. Hell, if the horse got sick, I could have taken her to the vet. But I was still hungry, so I wandered north to Stockbridge and headed over to the tavern at the Red Lion Inn, the quintessential Berkshires hostelry. And there I found waiting for me a nice glass of Berkshire Blonde ale and a burger, only a Melville all together. Also waiting was Susan Witt, the force behind America's most successful alternative currency. "Oh," she said when I told her about my day, "the midwife takes BerkShares, and so does the undertaker. You can get a will done; you can build an addition to your home, fix your car... I like shoes," she added, wiggling her toes. "These weren't cheap."

Some go by names steeped in military tradition like Leatherneck and Geronimo. Many sound fake-tough, like Ramrod, Lightning, Cobra, and Wolverine. Some display a local flavor, like Orgun-E, Howz-e-Madad, and Kunduz. All, however, have one thing in common: they are U.S. and allied forward operating bases, also known as FOBs. They are part of a base-building surge that has left the countryside of Afghanistan dotted with military posts, themselves expanding all the time, despite the drawdown of forces promised by President Obama beginning in July 2011. The U.S. military does not count the exact number of FOBs it has built in Afghanistan, but forward operating bases and other facilities of similar or smaller size make up the bulk of U.S. outposts there. Of the hundreds of U.S. bases in the country, according to Gary Younger, a U.S. public affairs officer with the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 77% house units of battalion size (approximately 500 to 1,000 troops) or smaller; 20% are occupied by units smaller than a Brigade Combat Team (about 3,000 troops); and 3% are huge bases, occupied by units larger than a Brigade Combat Team, that generally boast large-scale military command-and-control capabilities and all the amenities of Anytown, USA. Younger tells TomDispatch that ISAF does not centrally track its base construction and up-grading work, nor the money spent on such projects

My heart is thumping and I am typing this draftless for my blog! Okay, have I got an issue for us that could begin to heal the progressive nation if it is fought for and fulfilled. The Dem reps jumped the shark in selling out. It will give them even a chance to unjump it. But it is a BIG .... HUGE DEMAND ... and if we do the drumbeat on this loud and relentlessly and passionately we can make a difference in this generation and to this world. Let me back up and explain though my hands are shaking as I type. And bear with me burying the lead, but I am a feeler and intuitive and this is how I am processing this. So I wrote that recent blog about the horror of drones and the U.S. wars for world domination. Chilling stuff. Power, control, competition ... the way of the world ... the way of the man-made patriarchal world as opposed to the feminine dynamic of partnership and cooperation. (Marion Woodman’s theory about masculine and feminine ways of functioning.)

Who would imagine that a motel laundry worker could be exposed to radioactivity on the job? Motel guests set off radiation alarms. A cancer patient treated with radioactive iodine was the source. This stuff is dangerous, hard to detect, and stays active forever-- why do we call it 'clean energy'?

ERRY TEMPEST WILLIAMS: Reflections. It’s—yeah, you know, we hear that five million barrels of oil were released from the Macondo well. We know that [ 362] miles were oiled in four states, 400 species of animals threatened from this, 400 controlled burns that killed hundreds of sea turtles and untold numbers of dolphins and sea mammals. We’re told that it’s over, that the story is gone, as is the oil. And what I can tell you in reflecting over six months is that the oil is not gone. The people are still there, and they’re getting sicker and sicker. And I just think it’s really important that, at this anniversary of six months, that we begin to really hear from the people on the ground. And that’s what my purpose was. You know, I have a pen. I’m a writer. I was home in Utah thinking, you know, what can I do? And I had to go. I had to see it for myself. So it was about ground truthing. It was about bearing witness. And I don’t think bearing witness is a passive act. JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, Terry Tempest Williams, this is an extraordinary piece, as you talk about and you relate basically the words of a variety of people on the ground. And I was struck by one particular passage, when you were interviewing a Margaret Curole, and she says to you, "Here’s the truth. Where are the animals? There’s no too-da-loos, the little one-armed fiddler crabs. Ya don’t hear birds. From Amelia to Alabama, Kevin never saw a fish jump, never heard a bird sing. This is their nestin’ season. Those babies, they’re not goin’ nowhere. We had a very small pod of sperm whales in the Gulf, nobody’s seen ‘em. Guys on the water say they died in the spill and their bodies were hacked up and taken away." And she goes on to say, "Fish are swimming in circles. Dolphins are choking on the surface. It’s ugly, I’m tellin’ you. And nobody’s talkin’ about it. You’re not hearing nothin’ about it. As far as the media is reportin’, everythin’s being cleaned up and it’s not a problem." Tell us about some of these—

The president of the Houston County Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wants a councilman in Georgia to resign after he made allegedly racial remarks to a fellow council member. At a recent Warner Robins City Council meeting, John Williams told Daron Lee that he should be working in a cotton field. Williams is white and Lee is black. During the exchange, Lee explained that he was growing impatient with the way he was being treated. Lee claimed that Williams referred to him as "boy" two weeks ago, reported WMAZ.

The New York Times just published a story under the headline, "Coalition Forces Routing Taliban in Key Afghan Region" that could not include more Pentagon talking points if it were written by General David Petraeus himself. In both the broad outline of the story and in the particulars, the Times conveys a deceptive picture of the state of the conflict and obscures the continued deterioration of the situation in Afghanistan. The available facts simply do not support the assertion that U.S. and coalition forces are "making 'deliberate progress' and have seized the initiative from the insurgents."

Israeli settlers have begun building new homes at an extraordinary pace since the government lifted its moratorium on West Bank housing starts - almost 550 in three weeks. And many homes are going up in areas that under practically any peace scenario would become part of a Palestinian state, a trend that could doom US-brokered peace talks.

The ACLU says Mark Lyttle's entanglement with immigration authorities began when he was about to be released from a North Carolina jail where he was serving a short sentence for inappropriately touching a worker's backside in a halfway house that serves individuals with mental disorders. "Despite having ample evidence that Lyttle was a U.S. citizen – including his social security number, the names of his parents, his sworn statements that he was born in the United States and criminal record checks – officials from the North Carolina Department of Correction referred him to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) as an undocumented immigrant whose country of birth was Mexico," the civil liberties group said. Lyttle had never been to Mexico, shared no Mexican heritage, spoke no Spanish and did not claim to be from Mexico. The state of North Carolina has an agreement with ICE requiring state officials to report all incarcerated individuals who they believe were born in other countries. ICE began investigating Lyttle and sent him to the Stewart Detention Facility, an immigration detention centre in Lumpkin, Georgia where he spent six weeks. Although ICE knew of Lyttle's long and documented history of mental illness and noted that he did not comprehend the investigation of his status, he was not offered legal assistance and was deported to Mexico.

A U.S. report, based on interviews with former detainees, says Afghan prisoners were abused at a secret military detention centre in Afghanistan. The facility dubbed the 'Black Jail' is thought to be located at Bagram airbase. Former inmates' claim they were subjected to strip searches, sleep deprivation and a lack of food. Some testimonies date from this year, despite President Obama's pledge to clean up prison practices. The U.S. military denies the detention centre even exists. Philip Giraldi, a former CIA officer, says Obama's administration is worse than his predecessor, when it comes to detainees in Afghanistan.

The French think Americans are stupid. The French think everyone is stupid. However, when the French changed from the Franc to the Euro, watching them taking change out of their pockets, looking at the new coins, it was as though they had a live scorpion in their hands. One of the things I always say about the French, "they are the only country with nuclear weapons that never invented the wheel." Now half the Americans I know want to live there and most talk about moving anywhere, anywhere but America. Americans say they can't stand living here anymore, the country with the cheapest food and gasoline, clearly the best television and definitely the the best looking women. This isn't one political side, one race, one religion, its everyone. At first the complaints talk about a government nobody can stand but it all comes back to one thing, stupidity. All Americans believe that all other Americans are stupid.

Here's a shocker: The most immediate state pension crises aren't in New York or California. They're in Middle America. Illinois is just 8 years away from exhausting its pension fund and creating a yearly $14 billion hole, according to data from Kellogg professor Joshua Rauh [PDF]. That's a projected 32 percent of the state's revenue going to fill a pension hole. Every year. Indiana, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Colorado are among the next pension funds to fall. The rest of the union is just around the corner.

Pro-Palestinian activists in more than 100 cars and trucks have crossed into the Israeli-blockaded Gaza Strip through Egypt's Rafah crossing with aid worth nearly $5m. The multinational "Viva Palestina" ship arrived at Egypt's port city of al-Arish from Lattakia, Syria, earlier on Thursday. About 300 activists then flew into al-Arish airport and converged with the ship's passengers before entering Gaza.

A suspected outbreak of cholera has killed at least 49 people in central Haiti, officials say. The director-general of the health department, Dr Gabriel Thimote, said he was awaiting laboratory test results to confirm cholera was the cause. The victims suffered diarrhoea, acute fever and vomiting. More than 450 people are being treated in hospital. The outbreak is centred in the Artibonite and Central Plateau regions, north of the capital Port-au-Prince. Cholera is an intestinal infection caused by a bacteria transmitted through contaminated water or food. The source of contamination is usually the faeces of infected people. [Note: Where did all that money go that was supposed to have been funded by Bush-Clinton to help the Haitians?]

NPR fired Juan Williams for saying he's nervous when Muslims board his plane. As expected, conservatives are howling to yank NPR funding and liberals are saying NPR jumped the gun. It's nice to see we've finally achieved bipartisanship by rallying around the notion that NPR sucks - unless, of course, you're an opera fan.

Is a Republican sweep inevitable? Saying so is just a strategy. Don't forget Rove's Bush "inevitability strategy." And Hillary's. It's a strategy, that's all. We're seeing it used now in the midterms. Continued...

The firms that pushed securitization the hardest decided to treat mortgage record keeping into a game of Three Card Monte. Now that even they can't find the queen, they deserve to suffer the consequences.

Florida State Representative William Snyder is drafter of an Arizona-style immigration bill that has the support from Republican candidate for Governor, Rick Scott. What distinguishes this Florida bill is language that specifically allows law enforcement to "to assume legal status if the person had a Canadian passport or a “passport from any ‘visa waiver country’” — which are primarily located in Western Europe." Snyder claims the language is necessary because Florida has "an enormous amount of … Canadians wintering here in Florida. … That language is comfort language.”

The California budget deficit is arguably the single most important problem faced by the state today. The deficit is attributed to a variety of reasons, chief of which is the inability to pass the budget on time.

Family Farmers Face Unfair Competition from “Organic” Factory Farms. An independent report has been released that focuses on widespread abuses in organic egg production, primarily by large industrial agribusinesses. The study profiles the exemplary management practices employed by many family-scale organic farmers engaged in egg production, while spotlighting abuses at so-called factory farms, some confining hundreds of thousands of chickens in industrial facilities, and representing these eggs to consumers as “organic.”

Why re-open an old Republican scandal less than 2 weeks before the mid-terms? Was Ginni Thomas 'dialing while disturbed'? Or was she trying to draw attention away from her husband's role in allowing anonymous donors to enrich her organization? Did 'Citizens United' make the Thomas family more valuable?

"Why doesn't Woodward report on how this power struggle between Obama and the military is being influenced by his own reporting - and explain why these generals are willing to keep dealing with him if the result is that they themselves are jettisoned? Why would they do so unless their criticisms of Obama are themselves sanctioned as part of an organized effort to push Obama - something deemed so important that powerful military figures have to fall on their swords? (If you think McChrystal's remarks to Rolling Stone that "got him in trouble" were accidental - read these comments from the editor of that piece to Charlie Rose on how McChrystal and his team knew they were speaking on the record.) ERIC BATES: This is not the interview where somebody forgot the reporter laid down his notebook and it was an off-the-cuff comment. These were comments over a period of days and weeks, oftentimes repeated, in a culture there that was clearly like this. They began within five hours of our reporter arriving. Within five hours of arriving in Paris, they were referring to Joe Biden as Joe "Bite me," saying those kinds of things openly in front - CHARLIE ROSE: And never saying to your reporter "This is off the record. You cannot print this, I'm being open with you to give you a sense of the tone." ERIC BATES: Absolutely not."

Though I have no love for Juan Williams - the Black Alan Combs of cable - I have to disagree with NPR's decision to fire him. All it will accomplish is the Right-wing going ballistic on Political Correctness being worse than Hitler, Stalin and Beelzebub combined which plays right int the voting booths on November 2nd

Often a crisis like this goes viral and understandably this one certainly has and following the current events becomes challenging. As I stated in my first posting all parties to a mortgage agreement should be held accountable and face the consequences of their actions if they break the terms of that agreement. Homeowners who have defaulted on their payments and have been foreclosed on should lose their home. The actual holder of the note does have legal standings to foreclose if documentation is in good order and should. A resolution will be found to fix whenever the ‘chain of title has been broken’ and ambiguity exist as to who the actual holder of the note might be. And a resolution will found for those cases where foreclosure has occurred and fraudulent paperwork was used in place of potentially missing documents. I am certain there may be some folks who will attempt to take advantage of this situation in an attempt to keep their homes but if they are in default this situation should not entitle them to a house scot-free. There have been reports of some homeowners who were not in default that have been wrongfully foreclosed on and in such cases they should get their homes back. I am confident these matters will be fixed especially if authorities want to restore health and integrity to the real estate market.

I had a great time. While this article will lack much of the newsworthiness you’ve come to expect here, there’s something about being there. That’s the flavor I will try to convey in this story about my experiences at the Kitzhaber/Obama Rally here in Portland yesterday.