Laurence Kotilkoff | Bloomberg.com Let’s get real. The U.S. is bankrupt. Neither spending more nor taxing less will help the country pay its bills. What it can and must do is radically simplify its tax, health-care, retirement and financial systems, each of which is a complete mess. But this is the good news. It means [...]

Stefan Molyneux | Freedomain Radio.com The death of the middle class, and the real purpose of government education… Sources: http://www.fdrurl.com/un2

Corbett Daly | Reuters.com The second largest U.S. residential mortgage funds provider reported a loss of $6.0 billion, or $1.85 per diluted share, in the second quarter, including a $1.3 billion dividend payment to the government. That compares with an $8.0 billion loss in the prior quarter and is the best three-month performance in a [...]

Stephen Webster | Raw Story.com It’s no secret that many of the world’s largest industrialized nations are somewhat eager to ease their reliance on the U.S. dollar. For months China and Russia have pushed ever subtly, for a new “global reserve currency,” to give governments around the world enhanced economic stability in the event of [...]

Josh Silver | Huffington Post.com For years, Internet advocates have warned of the doomsday scenario that will play out on Monday: Google and Verizon will announce a deal that the New York Times reports “could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay [...]

Suzanne Goldenberg | Guardian.co.uk The Obama administration is facing internal dissent from its scientists for approving the use of huge quantities of chemical dispersants to tackle the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, the Guardian has learned. The US Environmental Protection Agency has come under attack in Congress and from independent scientists for allowing BP to spray [...]

Andy Worthington | Truth Out.org On Friday, the Polish Border Guard Office released a number of documents to the Warsaw-basedHelsinki Foundation for Human Rights, which, for the first time, provide details of the number of prisoners transferred by the CIA to a secret prison in Poland between December 5, 2002, and September 22, 2003, and, [...]

Glenn Greenwald | Salon.com As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military [...]

Anthony Heaney, M.D.,Ph.D. | Cancer.UCLA.edu Pancreatic cancers use the sugar fructose, very common in the Western diet, to activate a key cellular pathway that drives cell division, helping the cancer to grow more quickly, a study by researchers at UCLA’s Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center has found. Although it’s widely known that cancers use glucose, a [...]

Andrew McCarthy | National Review.com It has been over 20 years since the American-sponsored Afghan mujahideen stunned the world by forcing the invading Red Army to withdraw, a major falling domino in the Soviet collapse. Now Jack Devine, a former top CIA official who was instrumental in that effort, argues that, in today’s war, there [...]