The presidential election exposed the liberal class as a corpse. It fights for nothing. It stands for nothing. It is a useless appendage to the corporate state. It exists not to make possible incremental or piecemeal reform, as it originally did in a functional capitalist democracy; instead it has devolved into an instrument of personal vanity, burnishing the hollow morality of its adherents. Liberals, by voting for Barack Obama, betrayed the core values they use to define themselves - the rule of law, the safeguarding of civil liberties, the protection of unions, the preservation of social welfare programs, environmental accords, financial regulation, a defiance of unjust war and torture, and the abolition of drone wars. The liberal class clung desperately during the long nightmare of this political campaign to one or two issues, such as protecting a woman's right to choose and gender equality, to justify its complicity in a monstrous evil. This moral fragmentation - using an isolated act of justice to define one's self while ignoring the vast corporate assault on the nation and the ecosystem along with the pre-emptive violence of the imperial state - is moral and political capitulation. It fails to confront the evil we have become.

"The American Dream has run out of gas," wrote the novelist J.G. Ballard. "The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images, its dreams, its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now. ..."

Liberals have assured us that after the election they will build a movement to hold the president accountable - although how or when or what this movement will look like they cannot say. They didn't hold him accountable during his first term. They won't during his second. They have played their appointed roles in the bankrupt political theater that passes for electoral politics. They have wrung their hands, sung like a Greek chorus about the evils of the perfidious opponent, assured us that there is no other viable option, and now they will exit the stage. They will carp and whine in the wings until they are trotted out again to assume their role in the next political propaganda campaign of disempowerment and fear. They will, in the meantime, become the butt of ridicule and derision by the very politicians they supported.

Fleming Island, Florida - In a patriotic Florida neighborhood there's one American flag that's standing out on Veterans Day, but it's also causing outrage amongst neighbors.

"I figure if they can burn the flag, if they can spit on it, if they can put it down as a doormat, why can't I fly it upside down?" says Philip Hoezel, a Fleming Island resident.

Philip Hoezel says he served the Navy for seven and half years and is now using his first amendment right to express his dissatisfaction with last Tuesday's election results.

"Under the conditions normally set for the military at sea, if you fly your flag upside down on a ship, it means you're in distress... I think this country is in distress," says Hoezel.

Tulsa, Oklahoma - The picture of what happened to the children becomes more clear as KRMG finds out more details.

Tulsa Police were called to a home in the 4900 block of N. Frankfort Pl. late Sunday evening.

The neighbor called 911 to say the 4-year-old boy from next door was outside screaming because temperatures were in the 40's and he was locked outside in the nude. KRMG spoke with one of the neighbors. She says, "All she heard was this little boy screaming for his dad says in 'I'm cold, I'm scared, let me in'"

When Police pulled up, Ofc. Leland Ashley says officers could hear the screams from another child inside. Ashley says, "As they approached the house they could hear screaming and crying coming from inside."

Cops saw an 18-month-old girl naked, covered in feces and locked in a dog cage.

Officers, along with one of the neighbors, kicked in the back door of the home. That's where they found another naked girl.

The arresting officer says in the report, "While clearing the house, we found another naked toddler asleep in a bed in the master bedroom."

• Kevin Clash, 52, is on leave after the programme's lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old man
• Accuser claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16

The man who voices the puppet of Elmo on Sesame Street has taken leave amid allegations he had a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old boy.

Kevin Clash, 52, has taken a leave of absence from the popular children's show after the programme's lawyers were contacted by a 23-year-old man who claims he had a sexual relationship with the puppeteer seven years ago, when he was aged 16.

TMZ, who reported the allegations, said that Mr Clash had admitted he had a relationship with the man, but only after the accuser was an adult and said the accusations were both false and defamatory.

I'd like to - and would - if "the troops" were actually defending "our freedoms" - rather than stomping the freedoms of people across the globe. Us included, I hasten to add. Because you can't expect "the troops" who brutalize people abroad to not come home and abuse the people here. The mindset - and the precedents set - cannot be compartmentalized.

Brutality - contempt for other human beings - cannot be turned off and on. The transformation of Andy Griffith into Officer 82nd Airborne is no random happenstance.

It has happened for a reason.

The casual bloodlust of the average American - safely cocooned in front of his TeeVee (probably watching fuuuuuuhhhhhhhtttttball) also has consequences. Osama was right. You send troops to other people's countries, topple their leaders, drop bombs on them from afar. It tends to annoy those people. Some will try to hit back. We call it "terrorism."

Just as the British of King George III's era called the insurrectionist colonists who dared to fight back "terrorists." Just as Reinhard Heydrich's SD thugs called the partisans in the occupied east a few generations later. Just as we - "we" being the comfortable couch potatoes watching "the game" - call anyone who dares object to the American Imperium - and its imperial storm troopers.

No one wants to hear this, of course.

The troops are "fightin' fer freedom," god bless 'em. Just exactly as the legions of the Wehrmacht had belt buckles stamped Gott mit uns - and fought for freiheit, too. Or so they were told.

As we are told today.

The problem is one of separating sympathy for the idealistic kid from StumpJump, West Virginia from revulsion at what the kid from StumpJump, West Virginia, will do in my name. With my tax dollars.

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia - Hundreds of Catholics have gathered in prayer and worship outside a Malaysian hospital after seeing an image said to resemble the Virgin Mary on one of the windows.

Pictures of the image have gone viral among local Christians on Facebook and large crowds have gathered at the Sime Darby Medical Centre just outside Kuala Lumpur.

Those assembled Sunday maintained they can now also see an image of an adult Jesus Christ just two windows away from His mother.

Nearly 100 Catholics were still at the hospital Sunday, lighting candles, singing hymns and saying prayers. Several tourist buses added to the congestion.

Some have come from as far as Singapore, over 300 kilometers (187 miles) away, to see the image on a seventh-floor window, which they describe as a miracle.

Big Al will not drink his own urine. He's very clear about that. But he does spend three months of every year in his underground bunker because he fears that the Russians might send a nuclear missile toward Uncle Sam at any moment.

His bunker, buried 10 feet (3 meters) underground in an undisclosed location, will protect him from the gamma rays of an atomic bomb. But the temperature outside his bunker dips to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius) in the winter, so he stores 10,000 pounds (4,536 kilograms) of wood inside to keep him warm using his wood-burning stove (which curiously seems to lack a chimney), and a one-year supply of "bunker stew." He is also a music producer, and has lately turned to writing country songs about preparing for the apocalypse.

Big Al (who declined to give his last name) is just one person featured in the second season of Doomsday Preppers, a show on the National Geographic Channel that profiles extreme survivalists who believe the world as we know it may soon end. The show's first season was the highest-rated on the network at the time. The second season debuts Tuesday (Nov. 13) at 9 p.m. ET.

The gunman who walked into a Michigan police station and opened fire on Veterans Day was a 64-year-old military veteran in poor physical health and struggling with "internal issues," police said Monday.

Harold Joseph Collins, of Southfield, Mich., was killed in a shootout with officers at police headquarters in Southfield on Sunday afternoon, authorities said. An officer was wounded in the exchange.

At a press conference Monday, Southfield Police Chief Eric Hawkins outlined the sequence of events that led to the shootout.

He said Collins, brandishing a .380-caliber handgun, walked into the lobby of the police station with a blank stare on his face; without warning he tried to shoot an officer behind bulletproof glass.

"The suspect approached the front desk officer and simply stared at the officer. The suspect appeared to be staring into the distance and not a word was said," Hawkins said.

Police in Kent have arrested a man after a picture of burning poppy was posted on a social networking site.

The force said in a short press release posted on its website that the man, from Aylesham, had been arrested on suspicion of "malicious telecommunications".

"This follows a posting on a social network site of a burning poppy," said the statement on Sunday, which added that he was in police custody awaiting interview. Police provided no other details of the incident, which comes as the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is preparing to release interim guidelines for prosecution of offences on social media.

Padraig Reidy, of Index on Censorship, which campaigns on freedom of expression issues, said: "News of this arrest is very worrying. Index hopes that when the CPS issues its guidelines on free speech later this month, due regard will be given to free speech online."

A Southwest Airlines jet slid off a taxiway at Denver International Airport on Saturday amid light snowfall and freezing temperatures.

DIA spokeswoman Jenny Schiavone confirmed that the aircraft slid off the taxiway shortly after 5 p.m. There were no reports of injuries.

Schiavone says passengers of Flight 1905 were bused from the taxiway to the concourse.

The Denver-bound Boeing 737 had departed Saturday afternoon from Metropolitan Oakland International in California.

Schiavone says flight schedules and overall DIA operations were not disrupted following the incident.

Further details were not immediately available.

Source: The Associated Press