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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

Cheney Looks Awkward as Pelosi Interrupts Him to Applaud Obama's Victory
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on January 8, 2009 at 4:24 PM.

Today, Vice President Cheney stood before Congress and read the official results of the 2008 presidential election. After reading the electoral totals, he declared that they "shall be entered, together with a list of the votes, in the journals of the Senate and the House of Representatives." Just as he was about to move on to other business, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) -- who was sitting next to him at the podium -- jumped up from her seat and began applauding, much to the surprise of Cheney. Within seconds, the rest of the chamber was loudly cheering, with Cheney left looking slightly uncomfortable. Watch it (Pelosi comes in around 3:00).

Obama Can Learn from Bush: 'We Tried' Ain't Enough
Posted by Paco Fabian, AmericasVoiceOnline on January 8, 2009 at 12:35 PM.

In "Bush legacy: 'At least we tried doesn't cut it, " Gebe Martinez argues that there is no rainbow's end on the arc of major issues that only seemed to worsen under Bush's watch.

If there is one lesson President-elect Barack Obama can learn from his predecessor, it is that "at least we tried" is not a graceful end note to failure. It just doesn't cut it.

Especially when it comes to immigration.

The Politico column continues:

Like Bush, Obama is committed to an immigration measure that combines enforcement with earned legalization for illegal immigrants in the country. But as his predecessor proved, Obama cannot wait and turn to immigration after his political capital has run out. And he has to maintain the tone, not react to the rhetoric.

In other words, when it comes to immigration, strike while the iron is hot. Don't end up wondering what would have happened if you'd had the strength to act.

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Rachel Maddow on 'Daily Show': 'Insulted,' 'Embarrassed' By Bush
Posted by Danny Shea, Huffington Post on January 8, 2009 at 10:36 AM.

Rachel Maddow appeared on "The Daily Show" Wednesday night, where she and Jon Stewart discussed the MSNBC family, President-Elect Obama's policy knowledge, and George Bush's Blair House snub of the incoming First Family.

Stewart opened the interview by telling Maddow hers is "a lovely voice to have out there on the air," and then he compared MSNBC anchors to the Munster family.

"Ever see The Munsters?" he asked. "Here's what I think when I watch MSNBC: you're Marilyn," referring to the only normal member of a family of monsters. "But everyone else over there is **** nuts. I'm not gonna tell you who Herman Munster is, but I will tell you I believe Chris Matthews is the dragon who lives under the stairs."

"You know, I'm new there!" Maddow shot back.

Watch:

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Pay Equity: Raise Your Voice for Equal Pay for Equal Work
Posted by Christy Hardin Smith, Firedoglake on January 8, 2009 at 10:17 AM.

Democratic leadership in the House on a Thursday conference call -- including Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Rep. George Miller, chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, and Rep. Rosa DeLauro, vowed to push forward with the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act (H.R. 11) and the Paycheck Fairness Act (H.R 12).

As Rep. DeLauro said: "Women who work hard and productively and carry a full range of family responsibilities should be treated fairly."

Rep. DeLauro emphasized that close to 1/3 of all women in this country live in poverty. And for unmarried women, especially those who are heads of household with children, things are even more grim. These women have income that is, on average, $12,000 less than unmarried male counterparts. As Wade Henderson of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights said, "this IS a civil rights issue."

This needs to change. Women should earn the same pay for doing the same work. That should not even be a question.

The House is likely to re-introduce these bills late Thursday afternoon or, more likely, early on Friday. Rep. Miller, who has championed the Ledbetter Act through the last congress and today, said that the Senate will likely take up this issue next week as well -- that Democratic leadership is looking at the schedule for floor time and that this is a priority for a number of members of the Senate.

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The Importance of Obama's Stimulus Speech
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on January 8, 2009 at 9:58 AM.

It's not especially common for presidents-elect to give major policy addresses two weeks before Inauguration Day, but watching Barack Obama's speech in northern Virginia this morning, we were reminded that these are not ordinary times.

Watching the speech, it seemed to have a State-of-the-Union-like feel. Obama was addressing the public, but he also went out of his way to repeatedly urge Congress to deliver an economic rescue package immediately. Obama told lawmakers to resist the urge to pack earmarks into the bill, and repeatedly pressed members to get to work: "I urge Congress to move as quickly as possible..."; "Congress [must] act without delay..."; "I'm asking Congress to work with me and my team day and night, on weekends if necessary, to get the plan passed in the next few weeks."

On a related note, Obama also stressed the importance of speed. He described a crisis that is so severe, that every day of delay makes matters worse. Obama talked about the need for "dramatic action as soon as possible," and warned of the dire consequences of inaction.

"I know the scale of this plan is unprecedented," Obama said, "but so is the severity of our situation. We have already tried the wait-and-see approach to our problems, and it is the same approach that helped lead us to this day of reckoning. That is why the time has come to build a 21st century economy in which hard work and responsibility are once again rewarded." To that end, Obama described an ambitious vision on energy, healthcare, education, infrastructure, and closing loopholes that "allow Wall Street wrongdoers to slip through regulatory cracks."

But here's the part of the speech that, at least politically, was the most important:

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Oakland Residents Rise Up to Protest Brutal Murder By Police
Posted by Adrienne Maree Brown Brown, RaceWire on January 8, 2009 at 8:31 AM.

This piece was originally posted last evening over at RaceWire, the blog for ColorLines.

As I write this there are no less than 6 helicopters circling overhead in downtown Oakland. On the first day of the 10th year since Amadou Diallo was brutally gunned down by police in New York City, Oscar Grant was fatally shot in the back by a BART police officer, and the event was caught on video.

As I write this, rumors are flying and media is fanning the riot flames -- car and trash fires, police in riot gear and tanks, restaurant windows being smashed, tear gas and rubber bullets being used. We won’t know the full picture till the night is over and the smoke clears, but the story of the successful nonviolent protest earlier this evening has been overshadowed by this angry chaos.

What is absolutely clear is that folks are furious about the murder of Oscar Grant, furious that a week has passed with no statement or acknowledgment of what happened. What is clear is that we currently don’t have community accountability over our police here in Oakland. In this bubble of progress we are hampered by the same brutal power dynamics that plague the rest of the nation. Racially driven policing that allows the use of lethal weapons in the pursuit of justice is a failed model.

What we need:

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Progressive Breakfast: Obama, Economy, EFCA, and Health Care
Posted by Bill Scher, Blog for Our Future on January 8, 2009 at 7:20 AM.

Progressive Breakfast is the morning roundup of what progressive movement members need to know to start the day.

Econ Plan May Get Bigger and Bolder

In CNBC interview by John Harwood, Obama indicates economic recovery could grow larger than $775B, in advance of major 11 AM address today:

Harwood: ... why stop at $775 billion? Why not go to the $1.2 trillion that some economists have recommended? Is that because you think that the political figure of a trillion dollars is too politically charged to get over? Is it because you think more spending would be pork rather than stimulus? Or do you think you've figured out exactly the right amount of stimulus that's needed?

Obama: Well, first of all I think it's important to note that every economist, conservative or liberal, at this point agrees that we have to have a substantial recovery plan that helps to jump-start the economy, that short-term it's going to be expensive, but it would be much more expensive to see the economy continue in the tailspin that it's been going in. We've seen ranges from $800 to $1.3 trillion and our attitude was that given the legislative process, if we start towards the low end of that, we'll see how it develops. We are concerned ...

Harwood: It's going to get bigger.

Obama: Well, we don't know yet. But what we are concerned about is making sure that the money is spent wisely, that there's oversight, that there's transparency.

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In Gaza, Having to Choose Between My Pregnant Wife and My Mother and Siblings
Posted by Fares Akram, Independent UK on January 7, 2009 at 4:15 PM.

Things are getting worse by the day. The streets here in Gaza City have been empty. It's dangerous to go on the balcony but if you risk looking out you can see columns of black smoke rising from the north. The sound of automatic machine gun fire from the Apache helicopters I find most terrifying.

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Will California Crush Undocumented Students' Shot at the American Dream?
Posted by Cristina Jimenez, DMI Blog on January 7, 2009 at 2:49 PM.

The California Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case over the constitutionality of a state law (AB 540) that allows undocumented students who graduate from state high schools to pay in-state tuition at public universities.

The lawsuit filed by parents and out-of –state students who attended California universities argues that AB 540 violates federal law by granting in-state tuition to undocumented students while not offering the same fees to students outside of California. Wonder who represents these students? Kris Kobach, chairman of the Kansas Republican Party. Clearly, Republicans don’t seem to get that the anti-immigrant card, as pointed out by Karl Rove, is suicidal. But going back to this in-state tuition battle let me point out a couple of important facts that have been missing from this debate.

Out-of-state tuition is four times higher than in-state. To qualify for in-state tuition, students must be residents of the state or demonstrate that they have resided in the state for at least one year before applying to school. Students involved in the lawsuit were not California residents at the time they were admitted to the University of California system. However, like other out-of-state students, they qualified for in-state tuition after living in the state for a year.

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Cunning Stunt? Porn Industry Wants Bailout
Posted by Lisa Derrick, Firedoglake on January 7, 2009 at 1:59 PM.

In what may be a legit need, or just a way to yank Congress' chain, Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flynt has asked the government for a $5 billion dollar bailout package for the adult entertainment industry since magazine and DVD sales are down. I guess Nailin' Palin didn't do as well as expected...

Flynt, a satirist and free speech advocate as well as a pornographer, states:

People are too depressed to be sexually active. This is very unhealthy as a nation. Americans can do without cars and such but they cannot do without sex. With all this economic misery and people losing all that money, sex is the farthest thing from their mind. It's time for congress to rejuvenate the sexual appetite of America. The only way they can do this is by supporting the adult industry and doing it quickly.

Now I might inclined to support this stimulus package, except Flynt is in bed on the proposal with the biggest piece of scum ever in the adult industry, Joe Francis, the mastur mastermind behind Girls Gone Wild.  Francis is currently out on bail awaiting federal tax evasion charges after spending nearly a year in jail in Reno, NV on the tax charges to avoid extradition to Panama City FL where he was wanted for  six felony counts of conspiracy, prostitution and filming underage girls in sexual situations, plus charges for smuggling contraband into a Florida jail where he was serving a month for contempt.

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Absurd: Joe 'the Plumber' to Become War Correspondent
Posted by Isaac Fitzgerald, AlterNet on January 7, 2009 at 10:48 AM.

This. Is. Ridiculous.

The Ohio man, who became famous during the U.S. presidential campaign after asking Barack Obama about his tax plan, is heading to Israel as a war correspondent for a conservative website called pjtv.com.

[...]

Wurzelbacher says he'll spend 10 days covering the fighting and explaining why Israeli forces are mounting attacks against Hamas.

He tells WNWO-TV in Toledo that he wants "go over there and let their 'Average Joes' share their story."

Let's not forget the time Joe agreed with a McCain supporter who asked him if he believed a vote for Obama was a vote for the death of Israel. Joe's positive response was so outrageous that even Fox News' own Shep Smith took him to task for it:

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Krugman Has a Problem with Sanjay Gupta
Posted by Melissa McEwan, Shakesville on January 7, 2009 at 10:17 AM.

Krugman:

I don't have a problem with Gupta's qualifications. But I do remember his mugging of Michael Moore over Sicko. You don't have to like Moore or his film; but Gupta specifically claimed that Moore "fudged his facts", when the truth was that on every one of the allegedly fudged facts, Moore was actually right and CNN was wrong.

What bothered me about the incident was that it was what Digby would call Village behavior: Moore is an outsider, he's uncouth, so he gets smeared as unreliable even though he actually got it right. It's sort of a minor-league version of the way people who pointed out in real time that Bush was misleading us into war are to this day considered less "serious" than people who waited until it was fashionable to reach that conclusion. And appointing Gupta now, although it's a small thing, is just another example of the lack of accountability that always seems to be the rule when you get things wrong in a socially acceptable way.

Anyone who can utter that many conservative lies and talking points about single-payer/"socialized" medicine is, to put it generously, the wrong choice - and looks an awful lot like a signal from Obama that he doesn't give a damn about one of the most vital issues facing us. It's not bad enough that he said before that he doesn't support single-payer, but he clearly hasn't learned anything of value in his long period of running for president. Another "Up yours!" to the people who voted for him thinking he had to be better than this.

...I don't consider Gupta an honest voice in the healthcare discussion, and I don't think anyone should. As a medical journalist, he's not really that good - he's on TV because he says things The Villagers like, which means conservative bull.

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Has Sen. Dianne Feinstein Gone Rogue?
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on January 7, 2009 at 9:56 AM.

Just a few weeks ago, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) joined her colleagues in urging Rod Blagojevich not to fill Illinois' vacant Senate seat, warning him that his appointment would not be seated. Yesterday, she changed her mind, broke party ranks, and said Roland Burris should be seated.

This came a day after Feinstein fired a shot against Barack Obama's bow, criticizing his choice of Leon Panetta as the next head of the CIA.

To be sure, for years Feinstein has hardly been a reliable, consistent voice when it comes to Democratic politics, but all of a sudden, she seems to be going out of her way to be ... I hesitate to use the word ... mavericky. What's up?

While Feinstein has broken with her party in the past, her double shot this week seems to have caught Democratic leaders off guard as they tried to show a sense of unity at the opening of the 111th Congress.

Feinstein, who turns 76 in June, is rumored as a candidate for California governor in 2010, and Democrats say privately that she may be breaking with her party to better position herself for that race. [...]

With Obama in the White House and Democrats holding a big majority in the House, Republicans may need help from centrists such as Feinstein to stop Democratic legislation from moving through the Senate. Republicans say Feinstein is at the top of their list of potential Democratic defectors.

James Joyner made the case yesterday that when Republicans were in the majority, they became a rubber stamp for the Bush White House, and Feinstein deserves kudos for demonstrating some independence. "Feinstein and Obama are not on the same 'team,'" Joyner argued. "Senators represent a different constituency than the president. Moreover, they represent a different institution with different prerogatives and responsibilities."

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Democrats 'Scrambling to Push Out' Pro-Israel Resolution
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on January 7, 2009 at 9:29 AM.

Just as Israel is indicating it conditionally welcomes an Egyptian-French cease-fire proposal, Democrats in Congress are "scrambling to push out" a "non-binding resolution supporting Israel's goal" in the Gaza military operations:

U.S. Rep. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the U.S. House of Representatives majority leader, told JTA he was looking at such a resolution, which is being drafted in the office of Rep. Howard Berman (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

"Certainly it would not demand a cease-fire," Hoyer said. "It would speak to the conditions that would justify a cease-fire. A cease-fire is not a just cease-fire when it's just Israel" holding fire.

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Deal or No Deal? Obama and Reid Butt Heads Over Burris
Posted by Sam Stein, Huffington Post on January 7, 2009 at 9:19 AM.

The apparent decision to seat Roland Burris came after aides to President-elect Barack Obama contacted senior Senate Democrats and suggested that they reverse course and accept Gov. Rod Blagojevich's controversial appointment, according to a senior Dem congressional aide.

Just minutes after the decision to seat Burris was reported, Obama offered the veteran Illinois pol praise and promised a working relationship.

"That is a Senate matter," he said of the news. "But I know Roland Burris, obviously he is from my home state. He is a fine public servant, if he gets seated then I am going to work with Roland Burris like all other senators to make sure that the people if Illinois and the people across the country are served."

Confusion remains as to what will happen with Burris. While reports signaled his imminent seating, a spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said the AP report was "wrong," and that "there have been no decisions."

Later, at a press conference following a meeting with Burris, Reid praised Blagojevich's pick as "candid" and "forthright," but said the Senate is waiting for a court to rule whether the signature of the Illinois secretary of state is needed for Burris to take the seat.

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