Losses on JPMorgan Chase’s bungled trade could total as much as $9 billion, far exceeding earlier public estimates, according to people who have been briefed on the situation.

[Adbusters] A new petro state has emerged in global affairs and its extreme political behavior has unsettled both Americans and Europeans alike.

For starters, the year-old regime has muzzled government scientists who are now accompanied by Soviet-like “minders” at public events.

It has branded environmentalists as “foreign radicals.”

It has abandoned its commitments under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce atmospheric pollution and effectively has no national plan to deal with climate change.

On the eve of the Supreme Court’s decision on Obamacare, here’s a message to all the conservative activists out there, for whom this day has been a long time coming: Hats off to you! Unlike many of your opponents, you know how to build and sustain a political movement.

... jump-starting nuclear power is not just bad politics. It’s awful economics.

The nuclear energy industry in the United States is powered by corporate welfare on plutonium. What is in theory a wonderful technology is in practice an economic white elephant. The data accumulated during the last 30 years suggest strongly that nuclear plants will never be able to cover their operating costs, let alone recoup the billions it costs to build them.

[A 1972 piece by Nora Ephron, who just passed away.] I have to begin with a few words about androgyny. In grammar school, in the fifth and sixth grades, we were all tyrannized by a rigid set of rules that supposedly determined whether we were boys or girls. The episode in Huckleberry Finn where Huck is disguised as a girl and gives himself away by the way he threads a needle and catches a ball — that kind of thing. We learned that the way you sat, crossed your legs, held a cigarette, and looked at your nails — the way you did these things instinctively was absolute proof of your sex.

When Caren Berg told colleagues at a recent staff meeting, "There's new people you should meet," her boss Don Silver broke in, says Ms. Berg, a senior vice president at a Fort Lauderdale, Fla., marketing and crisis-communications company.

"I cringe every time I hear" people misuse "is" for "are," Mr. Silver says. The company's chief operations officer, Mr. Silver also hammers interns to stop peppering sentences with "like." For years, he imposed a 25-cent fine on new hires for each offense. "I am losing the battle," he says.

North American oil production is on the rise in a serious way, and there are two prime culprits: the Bakken shale and the oil sands. ... oil from the Canadian oil sands is so heavy that it has earned a distinct moniker: "bitumen." And there is a tsunami of bitumen on the way. The two million bpd being produced in the oil sands today is set to increase 50% in just the next three years.

From a truly progressive point of view, the Obama Presidency has been a failure as most of his policies have, at best, pulled America back to the Clinton years. The 1990′s saw welfare reform, the repeal of Glass Steagal, and the onslaught of neoliberalism at an unprecedented scale. While Obama promised a great deal of change before being elected, he got into office and immediately moderated his rhetoric and did not fight for progressive policy he had advocated.

If there is one thing conservatives love more than tax breaks it's Ronald Reagan, and you can't look at Reagan's history without remembering the Simpson-Mazzoli Immigration Reform and Control Act, which granted the dreaded "a word" (amnesty, that is, something Obama pointedly said his plan will not do). But a lot of conservatives try to forget their beloved Reagan signed amnesty into law and said, "I believe in the idea of amnesty for those who have put down roots and who have lived here, even though some time back they may have entered illegally."

King became a symbol for police brutality and the troubled relations between the LAPD and minority residents. He was eventually awarded a $3.8-million settlement, but the money and fame brought him little solace. He had repeated run-ins with the law and as of April said he was broke.

President Barack Obama’s administration announced Friday that it would stop deporting younger illegal immigrants and would begin granting them work permits.

The policy will apply to immigrants younger than 30 who arrived in the U.S. before the age of 16, have been in the country at least five years, have no criminal history and graduated from high school, earned a GED or served in the military. The decision could affect as many as 800,000 immigrants.

During the controversy over the proposed ban of sugary drinks over 16 ounces in New York City, Jon Stewart pointed out that if Mayor Bloomberg’s soda ban and Governor Cuomo’s marijuana decriminalization both pass, a 17-ounce soda will draw a larger fine ($200) than a 25-gram bag of marijuana ($100). It was a funny bit, but it reveals a larger, unfortunate fact of recent liberalism: We’ve been incoherent and hypocritical in our policies toward vices.

What makes Martinez's candidacy unique is that he's proudly announcing himself as an Occupy Wall Street candidate—the first one ever to get on a congressional ballot. That makes him an anomaly in the world of electoral politics and a contentious figure inside the movement. Is he committed to this thing called Occupy, or is he piggybacking on it to advance his own political ambitions? Does it even matter if his intentions are pure, if Occupy Wall Street has been clear from the jump that it won't rely on elected politicians to bring the changes it demands? ...