Planned Parenthood has a plea for help.

Because of a technical error Congress made in 2005, the cost of birth control in many clinics is rising almost 900 percent from what it was just months ago. Women who were paying $5 to $10 per month are now paying $40 to $50 for birth control. For the college students and low-income women affected by this cost hike, that’s no small matter.

Believe it or not, this is NOT caused by a right-wing conspiracy, but the law of unintended consequences from a technical change in the law.   Contact your local congress-person, or Democratic leadership urging them to support the Prevention Through Affordable Access Act, introduced by Rep. Joseph Crowley (D-NY) in the House and by Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) and Sen.Claire McCaskill (D-MO) .

A side note on class bias in the MSM. This problem effects college students and low income women. The Planned Parenthood article links to three articles. All three  talk about the effect on college students, none deal with the effect on poor women.

If anything symbolizes the mortgage disaster, it is whole neighborhoods of McMansions littered with abandoned house, some stripped of copper, sometimes sheltering squatters.

What will happen to these neighborhoods when the dust settles?  Christopher B.Leinberger in a article
in The Atlantic, says that even if the mortgage crisis didn't exist, long term changes in demographics and buyer preferences may turn these into unwanted behemoth slums.

A structural change is under way in the housing market—a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the cities and toward the suburban fringes. And its effects will be felt more strongly, and more broadly, as the years pass. Its ultimate impact on the suburbs, and the cities, will be profound.

In Townhall.com, David Limbaugh writes a post where he tells his fellow McCain supporters that they should ignore the ranting commentators( including his brother Rush ) and work on bringing the rank-and-file Republicans around.

To illustrate the depth of the opposition he quotes a reader comment.

For me to cast a vote for (McCain) at this time is totally unthinkable. I would have to don from head to toe our surgical isolation gear with heavy gloves and boots and wear a gas mask, too, and carry my ballot over to the ballot box by a pair of tongs. Then I would have to hurry home to shower off in the hottest of water and then douse myself with bleach. ... And I say this knowing that McLame is (supposedly) more conservative than Obama or Hillary!!!

I suggest that the RNC make a mass purchase of hazmat suits, disinfectant, and long tongs.

Several years ago, I replaced all my home’s commonly used incandescent bulbs with compact fluorescents (CFL.) I saw a noticeable decrease in my electric use and bills.

A few months ago, I got Verizon’s Fiber Optic Service, FIOS, for my cable TV and high speed Internet service. It’s remarkably fast, but that comes with a hidden cost, substantial power consumption.

Shortly after the FIOS installation, I noticed that my new cable TV box and Internet modem were noticeably warm, indicating significant power use. I feared my CFL power savings were going up in heat.

I have some dollars burning in my pocket, ready to be contributed -- where should I send them, where will I get the most bang  for the buck?

Hillary and Barak are overrun with cash,  contributing to them is like spitting into the ocean -- no noticeable effect.  Edwards is running behind in contributions, but lack of money is not his main problem.   Besides, I find them all of them acceptable, but none compellingly better.

Well maybe local races. This is better.  There are over 460 congressional and senatorial races.  Many of these are long shots, but every dollar we spend, ties up Republican dollars.  Maybe we can even win a few hail mary races.  Dean's 50-state campaign did so in 2006, giving us control of both houses.  Perhaps give  to Democracy for America, which is building infrastructure across the country.  Their money is well spent.

I have a better idea, contribute to Ron Paul for President.

A Princeton-led research group has discovered an isolated community of bacteria nearly two miles underground that derives all of its energy from the decay of radioactive rocks rather than from sunlight.

Planetary Society

These will survive any surface conditions, until the heat reaches two miles deep.

A few years ago, the historian William McNeill enunciated the law of Conservation of Catastrophe. The law states that solutions to one crisis lead the way for some equal or greater disaster in the future.  This law may point to a future disaster in the Global Economy. Before going further into implications for the economy, I will give some examples of the law.

Forest Fires.

For over a hundred years the US Forest Service has aggressively doused any forest fire as quickly as it could.  Small forest fires, usually ignited by lightning, which used to be very common are now rare.  This allowed a century's worth of debris to accumulate on the forest floor -- making them into tinderboxes.  Now we are seeing large uncontrollable fires fed by this debris.

More on floods, warfare, the electric grid and the global economy below.

In the last five and a half years Bush has shown an uncanny abiliby to weaken his allies and empower his opponents.  Let's look.

Allies

Republican Party
Tony Blair
ex premier of Spain
ex premier of Italy
Joe Lieberman
Israel ( Do you think Iran would have unleashed Hezbollah if they did not have a friendly Iraq on their border and the United States had not unilaterally disarmed itself militarily, diplomatically and economically).

Opponents

Iran
Jihadists
Hezbolla
Hamas
Democrats
China (China is not really an opponent but a rival, but I put them here anyway.  The have piled up enough US dollars to give them an effective veto on US policy by threatening to dump them.  They have also moved into the diplomatic vacuum left by the US's obsession with Iraq to make nice, and sign trade and aid deals.)

With this stellar record in mind, Bush should switch gears and unconditionally support Hamas and Hezbollah.  The two and a half years left in his administration should be enough to totally destroy both of them.

Whenever Hillary or Lieberman bring up the issue of violent video games or internet controls, most of the comments on the Daily Kos run from snide "they don't get it" to "the're pandering to the right".

When a Republican makes some proposal for Net controls, such as Hastert's recent proposal to ban sites similar to MySpace.com we all yell "First Amendment" or point out the technical and social impracticality of the scheme.

We are making a big mistake.  The pornification of our culture and the inability of parents to monitor their kids' interaction is a big issue for anyone raising a child  Your 13-year-old may be 20 feet away, talking with anyone -- and you may not know it.  There was a recent NYT magazine story about a 13 year old, with a webcam equipped computer in his bedroom, ended up being the subject of a large child porn empire -- with him as the featured star, while his parents remained blissfully ignorant of the whole thing.

The discourse after Katrina on how the response to the flooding of New Orleans indicate racism and neglect of blacks gives me a sad case of deja vu all over again.  Deja vu because it contains some truth, but also deja vu because it repeats a common distortion in our discourse of race and poverty.

Because right-wing political correctness has put discussions of class out of bounds, and the left has swallowed it hook, line and sinker. We use race as a proxy for class.  That is statements such as "this policy is unfair to blacks and other minorities" are used instead of "this policy is unfair to the working class and poor".  For brevity in the rest of this diary I will use "black" as a substitute for "backs and other minorities".

Several pernicious effects come from this craven bucking under the to right's definition.