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Tea Party Activist: Lieberman Staffer Threatened to Have Me Arrested
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 10:00 PM.

He's the senator that progressives love to hate, but Sen. Joe Lieberman isn't feeling the love from the right wing either. Though he may have torpedoed the public option and vaporized the Medicare buy-in proposed as a stand-in for a public option, right wing operatives are determined not to see any health-care reform bill -- not even a toothless one -- passed by the Senate this year. And now, Lieberman seems to have played his hand in such a way that makes the bill all the more difficult for the conservaDems still holding out -- Landrieu, Lincoln, Webb  and the Nelsons -- to vote no.

This morning, members of the Tea Party Patriots led a lobbying day in the Senate, busing in hundreds of right-wing activists (with the help of the astroturfing group, Americans for Prosperity) to visit senators, demanding that they vote down the health-care reform legislation currently being negotiated.

At an afternoon anti-Obama, anti-health-care reform rally, Tea Party Patriots board member Mark Meckler said a Lieberman staffer threatened to have the activist arrested when he refused to leave Lieberman's office after being told the senator was not available.

Here's what Meckler told a crowd of around 1,000 or so right-wing protesters this afternoon from the rally stage:

Three of us -- two on the national board of the Tea Party Patriots, and one of our constituents from California -- went to visit Sen. Lieberman. And we went in respectfully, just like we did every office in the Senate office buildings. And we sat down and said, 'We'd like to see the senator.'  They told us he was not available. We said, 'That's okay; we'll wait ' And we went in, just like we did at some of the other senators' offices. And after about three minutes, the staffer came out and said, 'You're going to have to leave now.'  They said, 'You're going to have to leave, or we're going to have you arrested.'

We tried calling Lieberman's staff for comment, but the voice mailbox was full. I'm sure it is. Question is: Who's left more vituperative messages? Progressives or wing-nuts?

Why Americans Really Need to Pay Attention to Copenhagen
Posted by Rinku Sen, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 4:19 PM.

Negotiations have resumed in Copenhagen after a walkout by the African delegation on Monday. African governments were concerned with the lack of commitment by rich country governments to reducing their own emissions. This follows on the heels of last week's leaked "Danish text" controversy; the text contained proposals that have the world's poorest countries carrying the largest share of the environmental burden. How the Obama Administration deals with fairness questions in Copenhagen will also signal what we can expect domestically as we respond to the recession by building a green economy.

Wealthy countries have done the most environmental damage -- the top 10 contribute nearly 70 percent of all carbon emissions. Yet the Danish draft ignores these numbers, requiring the poor to reduce twice as much as the wealthy. This is expensive - it's cheaper and faster to use existing energy sources to produce plastic, say, rather than to develop new energy for new products that don't hurt the environment. The great irony, of course, is that poor countries have already paid for the damage caused by rich ones. I can't recall the last time a drought or tsunami killed hundreds of thousands of Danes.

The same divisions have played out in our own economy. Communities of color, who experience the highest rates of joblessness and poverty, have also been hardest hit by environmental injustices. According to J. Andrew Hoerner and Nia Robinson of Redefining Progress, African Americans suffer a number of losses from environmental degradation. Remember the heat waves of recent summers? They caused black people to die almost twice as often as whites. Racism itself fuels the climate crisis by generating inefficient overdevelopment. "White flight" and racial segregation in earlier decades meant growing white suburbs while rural and urban neighborhoods populated by people of color fell prey to the discriminatory placement of toxic incinerators, power plants, factories, and other big polluters.

These inequities have been thrown into high relief by the current recession. Officially, unemployment among blacks and Latinos runs almost 50 percent higher than it does for whites. The California jobless rate for whites was 10.7; for blacks and Latinos over 14 percent. Among young blacks and Latinos, the rate is over 50 percent.

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Why the National Review Is Wrong to Whine About Moving Prisoners to Thomson Correctional Center
Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 3:02 PM.

Those lovable chickenhawks over at National Review have a serious problem with Obama’s decision to move Guantanamo inmates to a little-used state prison in Thomson, Ill. Why? Mostly because they’re convinced that these isolated, likely abused people will all of a sudden summon uncanny kung-fu/escape/espionage skills (thus far concealed; it’s all part of their devious plan, you see) and bust out of a facility that’s being upgraded to "beyond supermax:"

TCC is not ready to accommodate international jihadists, who are prone to riot, savagely attack their custodians, attempt escape, and plot terror attacks while in U.S. prisons.

Hmmm…but aren’t prison riots, terrorist plots and maimings pretty hard to carry out when you’re isolated from all other prisoners and under round the clock surveillance by U.S. soldiers? And haven’t residents of Thomson been pretty clear about how much they do want the detainees to be brought there? About how little fear they’re actually experiencing? TCC, by the way, is already equipped with a 12-foot high exterior fence and a 15-foot interior one. The latter includes a two-sided "electric stun barrier."

The threat of escape is only one part of it though, bray the NR editors. Liberal judges, who, like the terrorists, hate our freedom (to detain people without trial), are sure to release these prisoners willy-nilly into the U.S.

Many civilian judges are fundamentally hostile to the concept of indefinite detention under wartime protocols that do not require proof of a crime. With no political accountability to the voters whose lives are at stake, and no guidance from Congress regarding the rules for these detention proceedings, judges have made abominable rulings, vacating the combatant designations of detainees who were trained in terror camps and clearly connected to the jihadist network.

Actually, no judge has ever released a detainee into the United States. And, contrary to this tangled clusterbang of assertions, Obama announced earlier this year that any prisoners brought into the U.S. would continue to be held as “combatants" -- that is, without trial.

Still, the worst part of this is not the ignorance. It's all the crosscurrents of Right-wing doublespeak: The superiority of our nation -- along with that of its people -- must be protected, goes the line of reasoning. Therefore, we ought to keep these detainees incarcerated in a place that’s likely become this generation's biggest symbol of American hypocrisy. Makes sense, right?

Or what about the fact that these armchair generals are so into bragging about the U.S.'s dominance, but refuse to believe that our government could ever contain a few dozen emaciated prisoners? It makes no sense. 

Anyway, big deal if “Gitmo has already been hardened, at a cost of tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.” Big deal if “it is now a state-of-the-art, Geneva Conventions-compliant detention center.” It still exists as a despicable beacon of imperial arrogance -- a symbol the NR editors are all too willing to embrace.

Chuck Norris: Health Reform = Aborted Jesus
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

Health reform has turned into a giant, confusing clusterfuck (seems the only thing that's clear at this point is that Joe Lieberman is the worst thing that has ever happened to the world.)

Fortunately, a while back someone gave Chuck Norris a column at Town Hall, and today he applies his subtle political mind to the wrangling over abortion coverage in the health care bills. Here's what he thinks about that, in so many words: Democrats are stabbing the tiny wombs of fetuses. Health reform will go back in time and make Mother Mary abort Jesus. The next Jesus will never be born because poor people prefer abortions to stonings, and "Obamacare" will allow them to choose termination over public ridicule and/or death. 

I'm not exaggerating. Here are the relevant passages:

In short, while President Obama was accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, the Democrats in Congress drove a sword through the womb of the unborn. 

(Yes, the womb of the unborn. They had to use those tiny plastic swords they put in drinks.)

And:

Lastly, as we near the eve of another Christmas, I wonder: What would have happened if Mother Mary had been covered by Obamacare? What if that young, poor and uninsured teenage woman had been provided the federal funds (via Obamacare) and facilities (via Planned Parenthood, etc.) to avoid the ridicule, ostracizing, persecution and possible stoning because of her out-of-wedlock pregnancy?

He brings up this original argument:

Imagine all the great souls who could have been erased from history and the influence of mankind if their parents had been as progressive as Washington's wise men and women!

Here's a relevant Biblical question lawmakers should ask themselves before they proceed with the bill:

Will Obamacare morph into Herodcare for the unborn?

And here's a really good pun:

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Flip Flop Alert: Sarah Palin Just Recently Decided to Join the Idiot Ranks of Climate Deniers
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 1:19 PM.

So take a guess who wrote these words:

Alaska's climate is warming. While there have been warming and cooling trends before, climatologists tell us that the current rate of warming is unprecedented within the time of human civilization. Many experts predict that Alaska, along with our northern latitude neighbors, will warm at a faster pace than any other areas, and the warming will continue for decades.

Believe it or not that was Palin in 2008. Thanks to Eugene Robinson for bringing this up in the Washington Post today. And no better place to do so, considering the op-ed the paper ran by Palin last week where she said we did not have "trustworthy science" on climate change and perpetuated the myth of a climate science scandal.

Let's recap some other tidbits. Here's the old Palin:

"Climate change is not just an environmental issue. It is also a social, cultural, and economic issue important to all Alaskans."

And here's the new Palin:

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Why Health Care 'Deform' Might Help Elect a Few Real Progressives
Posted by Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 1:00 PM.

I don't call health care reform by that name anymore -- it's entered the unequivocal health care deform category, in my book.

Joe Lieberman is holding real reform hostage, and Harry Reid is weighing only two terrible options: 1) passing a bill devoid of a public option and Medicare expansion, which is the only way he'll secure Lieberman's vote; or 2) instituting an untriggerable trigger, in order to appease Olympia Snowe. Worst of all is Reid framing this as his being backed into a corner -- as if two of the worst options possible are the only ones to choose from.

Forgive the bah-humbug start to this post, but, as they say, this is not "change we can believe in," and I'm getting tired of using Obama's campaign slogan to voice my frustrations about the Democratic leadership's doublespeak.

And new polling shows that I'm not the only one feeling incredibly let-down by the state of the health care nondebate in Washington. This is not surprising to you and me, sure, but given the blind mess in Congress, it appears the polling I'm about to share with you will come as a surprise to Obama, Emanuel, Reid, & Partners.

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Fox News' New Idea For Fighting Unemployment: Decrease the Minimum Wage
Posted by Pat Garofalo, Think Progress on December 15, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

Back in July, when a scheduled increase in the minimum wage from $6.55 to $7.25 per hour was about to take place, Fox News ran a segment examining how “the hike will hurt,” joining a media chorus about the supposed detrimental effect the increase would have on business hiring.

Now, with its Republican-inspired “Where are the jobs?” campaign in full swing, Fox has gone “on the job hunt” with a “new” idea for increasing employment: cutting the minimum wage. Jumping off from an op-ed by Washington Post editorial board member Charles Lane, Fox yesterday ran a handful of segments on the same basic premise — cutting the minimum wage may be the answer to the jobs dilemma. Watch a compilation:

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Why Is the Washington Post Giving a Platform to Richard Cohen's Outrageous Sexism?
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on December 15, 2009 at 10:44 AM.

Actual Headline of the piece by WaPo columnist Richard Cohen: Why is there no female Tiger Woods?

But what he really wants to know, which is the first line of the article, is: Why are there no female sex scandals?

He goes through the list: No professional female athletes who we hear about "hitting on every caddy, pool boy or masseuse," no female politicians, no female corporate CEOs, no female entertainers, except Madonna, who "was famous for bedding much of New York's outer boroughs," but it was okay because "she was not married at the time." (Did I seriously just read someone wheeling out a "Madonna's a slut" reference in the Washington Post? Seriously?!) "Nobody knows," says Cohen. And a second time. And a third. "Nobody knows" why there are no female sex scandals.

Oh, but he's got some ideas (emphasis mine):

We can guess. The first guess is that women are simply smarter than men. Say what you will about Woods, it's not his wholesome image that has suffered, it's his standing as a sentient being. A person with the wit of a mosquito knows better than to leave a voicemail message on a mistress' phone or to text women who, from the angelic looks of them, would sell their own dear mothers for a chance to appear on Inside Edition. Few women are that stupid. Few men aren't.

The other possibility that strikes me is that women seem not to have the evolutionary urge to couple with cheaply dressed strangers. They have a stronger need to mother — to have a child and then raise that child.

The male equivalents of the sort of women who have courageously come foreword to claim their reward money for entertaining Tiger are evolutionary bad material. No woman would want them as husbands and fathers. They are what Darwin called dreck, which is Yiddish for cocktail waitress.

Wow.

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Honduran Gay Activist Walter Trochez Assassinated
Posted by Doug Ireland, Direland on December 15, 2009 at 9:57 AM.

Walter Trochez, 25 years old, a well-known LGBT activist in Honduras who was an active member of the National Resistance Front against the coup d'etat there, was assassinated on the evening of December 13, shot dead by drive-by killers.

Trochez, who had already been arrested and beaten for his sexual orientation after participating in a march against the coup, had been very active recently in documenting and publicizing homophobic killings and crimes committed by the forces behind the coup, which is believed to have been the motive for his murder. He had been trailed for weeks before his murder by thugs believed to be members of the state security forces. 

In an open letter documenting this wave of political assassinations of Honduran queers he'd written last month entitled "Increase in hate crimes and homophobia towards LGBT as a result of the civic-religious-military coup in Honduras,” Trochez had written that "Once again we say it is NOT ACCEPTABLE that in these past 4 months, during such a short period, 9 transexual and gay friends were violently killed, 6 in San Pedro Sula and 3 in Tegucigalpa." At the end of this open letter, Trochez declared that "As a revolutionary, I will always defend my people, even if it takes my life”.

Sadly, that's what happened. (Full text in Spanish of Trochez's open letter here.)

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Wingnut: "Crushing Student Loan Debt" Doubles as Good Birth Control
Posted by Wendy Norris, RH Reality Check on December 15, 2009 at 9:50 AM.

Paying for babies isn't just a seedy black market adoption scheme anymore. It was one of the solutions suggested to boost the U.S. birth rate among college student loan-strapped couples at a recent Family Research Council policy lecture.

Allan Carlson proposes paying up to $5,000 per baby born, or one-quarter of each parents' outstanding loan balances, to reduce the financial burden he claims is preventing debt-laden young married couples from starting families.

Carlson isn't some benevolent socialist from a former eastern bloc nation. He's the president of the conservative Howard Center for Family, Religion and Society that operates the right wing World Congress of Families.

According to Carlson, adoptions would also qualify, but like births, would be capped at a maximum of four children — twice the current average birth rate for U.S. women. That could net recent graduates $40,000 in total loan forgiveness from the federal government.

It's unclear if men and women placing their children up for adoption would also be eligible for the natal discount. And curiously, he never addresses single parenthood and loan assistance but that probably doesn't square with the moral rectitude of what he refers to as "responsible homes."

Carlson has been shopping his jaw-dropping idea since at least 2004 with little to show for it. But with unemployment rates for recent graduates topping 10.6 percent in Sept. and college seniors' average debt loads rising to $23,200, the Family Research Council snagged the politically volatile situation to push its stock ultra-conservative beliefs.

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Residents of Upstate New York Fight Gas Drilling...With Zombies (Video)
Posted by Byard Duncan, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

Citizens of Upstate New York have found a unique way to voice their concerns about natural gas drilling in the area: they’ve made a zombie movie.

"Frac Attack: Dawn of the Watershed" is a 17-minute film that employs many of the genre’s signature characteristics -- cannibalism, festering wounds, protagonists who can’t seem to run seven steps without falling down -- to raise awareness about hydraulic fracturing (hydrofracking for short), a controversial drilling technique. In the film, residents of Ithaca, NY find that their well water has been contaminated with foul smelling, "proprietary" fracking chemicals. After drinking it, they turn into moaning, brain-hungry monsters.

Essentially a zombie PSA, "Frac Attack" was made with the help of 70 community volunteers and with a budget of about $300. Shira Golding, the film’s director, said the horror genre was a perfect vessel to raise public awareness.

"The situation itself is so ridiculous on so many levels that the film itself is kind of echoing that shock and ridiculousness,” Golding said. “How could we even consider this?"

The film was shot over the course of two weekends in October, according to McKenzie Jones-Rounds, its leading lady. Approaching the issue of gas drilling with an eye toward creativity, she said, was a way to make the advocacy side of it more accessible.

"It’s an outlet for people who may not have one," she said. "It’s such a good metaphor for the unfortunate apathy much of the public has about these issues."

New York is currently embroiled in a debate over drilling in the Marcellus Shale, an enormous rock formation that’s believed to hold the largest cache of natural gas in the continental United States. Were Marcellus drilling to begin, the state’s southern tier would be ground zero for exploration. Many in the area have already leased their land to gas companies.

"We can see very clearly that there are really strong forces at work to try to get this drilling happening," Golding said. "The Department of Environmental Conservation is really not calculating for the cumulative effects of this drilling."

"The spirit of this film is very much supposed to be by and for the community, to spark involvement in the community," she added.

"Frac Attack" debuted last Thursday at a local theater in Ithaca. Both its R-rated and PG-13-rated versions can be watched here. Teaser after the jump.
 

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Obama Team One Step Closer to Closing Gitmo
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 15, 2009 at 7:34 AM.

FROM GITMO TO THOMSON.... This is a welcome, important step towards closing the detention facility at Gitmo once and for all.

Dozens of terrorism suspects being held at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, will be moved to a little-used Illinois state prison that will be acquired and upgraded by the federal government, an Obama administration official said.

The critical step toward fulfilling President Obama's pledge to shut the Guantanamo detention center will be announced Tuesday, said the official, who reported that Obama has ordered the acquisition of the eight-year-old Thomson Correctional Center, about 150 miles northwest of Chicago.

As part of the plan, over the next six months, federal officials will upgrade the facility, to the point that it will have a security level described as "beyond supermax."

This afternoon, Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin, both of whom support the transfer, will be briefed on the policy at the White House.

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Michael Steele's Economic Plan: Take Away Unemployment Benefits
Posted by Ben Armbruster, Think Progress on December 15, 2009 at 6:00 AM.

[Monday] President Obama [met] with the nation's top bank executives in the President's "latest push for lenders to take greater responsibility as the nation combats an economic crisis that began on Wall Street." "The president is looking forward…[to discussing] the need to increase small business lending and the Administration's plans for financial reform," a White House spokesperson said [on Monday].

On NBC's Today, RNC chair Michael Steele said that in order for banks to start lending to small businesses, the federal government should reduce the unemployment tax:

STEELE: Well, I think, first off, he should recognize that banks aren't going to lend money to people who can't pay them back. … So there's -- there's this whole cycle of not understanding exactly how the economy works with respect to small-business owners. Take that pressure off of them. Let's -- let's eliminate the capital gains tax. Let's reduce the unemployment tax.

Watch it:

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Michelle Obama to Receive Christmas Gift, Wingnut Incensed
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 15, 2009 at 5:14 AM.

Roy Edroso reached deep into the primordial muck this week, and pulled out a bright, glittering gem of wingnuttery.

First, the wind-up, with a hint from the Obamas upcoming interview with Oprah Winfrey: 

During the joint interview with the Obamas — the first since they sat down together for The New York Times to discuss their marriage — Winfrey asks them about their gift giving. The couple riff for their pal:

OW: Is there a greater pressure to give a good gift when you’re the president or can you get away with a lesser gift if you’re the president?

First Lady: What are you gonna get me? You should feel pressure.

Innocuous enough banter. But not innocuous to a blogger known as "the narcissist" ...

Wow. Just…wow. The first two sentences uttered by the Klingon Princess sum up with elegant simplicity the mind of the Obama voter.

“What are you gonna get me?” I’m reminded of the various video and audio clips of delerious Obamabots exclaiming how they were looking forward to having their mortgages paid and their gas tanks filled; of jubilant paupers whose squalid lives would be changed by free money from “Obama’s stash.”

“You should feel pressure.” Nothin’ says lovin’ like a veiled threat from wifey, huh? Those four words words speak volumes about the psyche of the Klingon Princess and the nature of her relationship with the man who would be the first American dictator.

Remember Bush Derangement Syndrome? The supposedly pathological desire to hold Bush accountable for the disastrous series of failures -- and crimes -- that marked his term in the White House?

But, wait, this guy's just getting ramped up ...

For the longest time I have entertained an entirely unscientific theory that the dominant member in a marital union somehow determines the sex of the children.

You don't say.

Supreme Court Refuses to Hear Gitmo Torture Case Claiming Detainees Are Not "Persons"
Posted by , Center for Constitutional Rights on December 14, 2009 at 4:00 PM.

The following is a news release from the Center for Constitutional Rights.

Today, the United States Supreme Court refused to review a lower court's dismissal of a case brought by four British former detainees against Donald Rumsfeld and senior military officers for ordering torture and religious abuse at Guantánamo. The British detainees spent more than two years in Guantanamo and were repatriated to the U.K. in 2004.

The Obama administration had asked the court not to hear the case. By refusing to hear the case, the Court let stand an earlier opinion by the D.C. Circuit Court which found that the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, a statute that applies by its terms to all "persons" did not apply to detainees at Guantanamo, effectively ruling that the detainees are not persons at all for purposes of U.S. law. The lower court also dismissed the detainees' claims under the Alien Tort Statute and the Geneva Conventions, finding defendants immune on the basis that "torture is a foreseeable consequence of the military’s detention of suspected enemy combatants." Finally, the circuit court found that, even if torture and religious abuse were illegal, defendants were immune under the Constitution because they could not have reasonably known that detainees at Guantanamo had any Constitutional rights.

Eric Lewis, a partner in Washington, D.C.’s Baach Robinson & Lewis, lead attorney for the detainees, said, "It is an awful day for the rule of law and common decency when the Supreme Court lets stand such an inhuman decision. The final word on whether these men had a right not to be tortured or a right to practice their religion free from abuse is that they did not. Future prospective torturers can now draw comfort from this decision. The lower court found that torture is all in a days' work for the Secretary of Defense and senior generals. That violates the President's stated policy, our treaty obligations and universal legal norms. Yet the Obama administration, in its rush to protect executive power, lost its moral compass and persuaded the Supreme Court to avoid a central moral challenge. Today our standing in the world has suffered a further great loss."

The four former detainees -- Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed, and Jamal Al-Harith -- were held from 2002 to 2004 at Guantánamo before being sent home to England without being charged with any offense. They filed their case in 2004 seeking damages from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and senior American military officers for violations of their constitutional rights and of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which prohibits infringement of religion by the U.S. government against any person. Their claims were dismissed in 2008 by the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit when that court held that detainees have no rights under the Constitution and do not count as "persons" for purposes of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act.

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