Fifty-one years ago today, President Dwight D. Eisenhower issued his final, prescient warning about the rising power of the military industrial complex. More than half a century later, we find ourselves in a political system which has ignored Eisenhower’s sound advice as the influence of the war industry on our society reaches a crescendo. Nowhere is this “disastrous rise of misplaced power” more apparent than in the debate about the Pentagon budget taking place in Washington, D.C.

The war industry stood back with glee when it released a shoddy study that produced the sought-after deceptive headlines about defense spending, the magic sauce of job creation. There was no balance to these reports, and the War Industry should know, because they funded it!

Sarah Palin’s movie opens with shots of celebrities like Matt Damon and Bill Maher wryly observing the oft repeated missive that she’s basically unqualified for county dog catcher.

The Pentagon’s public relations machine is working overtime these days trying to sell a theme of “progress” in Afghanistan to push back against calls to end the war. The message machine behind this push is gargantuan, costing $547 million and employing more than 27,000 people. But, as our latest Rethink Afghanistan video shows, all that wasted P.R. money can’t paper over the fact that the Afghanistan War isn’t making us safer, and it’s not worth the cost.

On college campuses, credit card companies entice naive undergrads into signing up for super-high-interest-rate credit cards by giving away “perceived high-value items” like t-shirts or coffee mugs. They’re called perceived high value items because they really aren’t worth as much as people assume. Their only purpose is to distract from the terrible terms in the [...]

Joe Berlinger, the director of Crude–and our guest on Movie Night in August 2009–has been ordered by a federal judge to turn over 600 hours of unused documentary footage to energy giant Chevron as part of the lawsuit discussed in the film

I’m going to be at Eschacon starting Friday night, probably buying Manhattans for Rox who will be doing my drinking for me. I’m also going to be moderating the first panel on Saturday morning at 8:45 (*yawn*) am on “Having an Impact.” My fellow panelists will be Atrios, NTodd and the lovely Digby.