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Copenhagen: Getting Past the Urgency Trap
Posted by Sara Robinson, Orcinus on November 28, 2009 at 4:11 PM.

The article below appeared earlier this week at Grist.

Copenhagen’s still three weeks away, but climate activists are already voicing their enormous disappointment about everything that’s not going to get done there. The heat is rising, and we’re all feeling the overwhelming urgency to get a strong global agreement that will get the laggards off their butts and launch the structural reformations most of us know we need to fix the problem. A lot of us, it seems, loaded all our highest hopes onto this one conference, wanting desperately to believe that this would finally be the moment the long-awaited Grand Transformation would occur.

But the hard truth of the matter is this: change of this magnitude never happens with a single conference, a single treaty, or even a single disaster. The structural changes required to get us off carbon and onto a truly sustainable footing challenge the economic assumptions that humans have lived by for 2500 years. Change that wide and deep will be the work of an entire century, maybe two. (If we’re smart and lucky, our grandchildren may live to see it mostly done.) All of us are well aware of the precarious time crunch we’re under here; but humans change only as fast as they change, and forcing the issue isn’t likely to help. And it may even hurt us in the long run.

We didn’t get into this mess overnight, and we’re not going to get out of it in one dazzling planetary stroke of universal enlightenment, either.

The good news: big, deep changes like this one tend to proceed in a fairly predictable order. If we understand the whole arc of that process, we can have a little more patience with where we are, and think a little more strategically about what comes next.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Hey Gov. Kaine, Restore Voting Rights for Felons
Posted by Tara Lohan on November 28, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

Tim Kaine will be leaving office as Governor of Virginia in January but there's one last things folks are hoping he'll do: Restore voting rights for felons. Virginia and Kentucky are the last states to permanently revoke voting rights for anyone convicted of a felony as well as other civil rights like serving on juries or holding public office.

Here's a message from the Virginia Organizing Project, which has been working on this issue.

1. Virginia has an estimated 300,000 former felons who cannot vote.

2. The Governor of Virginia can restore voting rights for former felons.

3. We need Governor Tim Kaine to sign an Executive Order to correct this injustice -- before he leaves office in January. Call Governor Tim Kaine at (804) 786-2211 or send an e-mail here and ask him, "Please sign an Executive Order to restore voting rights for former felons so that their rights are automatically restored when they finish their sentence."

What you can do if you live in other states:

Please contact Valerie Jarrett at the White House (202-456-1190) and ask her to encourage Virginia Governor Tim Kaine (also DNC Chair) to sign an Executive Order to restore voting rights for former felons.

THANKS! Your phone call can make a HUGE difference -- please pass this on...

After Kaine leaves office he'll be replaced by Republican Bob McDonnell and Virginia residents are afraid that will be a backwards step on this civil rights issue.

Selling Out Democracy in Honduras: The U.S. and the Honduran Election
Posted by Isabel Macdonald, AlterNet on November 28, 2009 at 12:10 PM.

The June 28 military coup d'etat that overthrew Honduras' democratically elected president provided President Obama with "a golden opportunity...to make a clear break with the past and show that he is unequivocally siding with democracy," as Costa Rica's former vice president put it.  However, the U.S.'s recognition of the sham election Honduras' de facto regime is staging on Sunday makes it quite clear that Obama is choosing instead to side with the  far-right Republicans who support the coup.

In the wake of the coup that overthrew Honduran president Jose Manuel Zelaya Rosales, the Guardian's Calvin Tucker observes that there had been some promising signs that Obama was going to remain true to his pledge to "seek a new chapter of engagement" in Latin America. Despite some initial waffling by the State Department, Obama spoke out in strong terms against Zelaya's overthrow, saying that "it would be a terrible precedent if we start moving backwards into the era in which we are seeing military coups as a means of political transition, rather than democratic elections." The U.S. backed a Costa Rican-brokered compromise that would have seen Zelaya returned to office, at the helm of a "unity government." All non-humanitarian U.S. aid was suspended to the de facto regime, as were the U.S. visas of the coup leaders. The State Department indicated that the US would "not be able to support" the outcome of the elections out of concern that they would not be "free, fair and transparent." And finally, during a visit to Honduras by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in late October, the coup leaders agreed to sign the U.S. backed agreement providing for Zelaya's return.

This firm U.S. reaction apparently "privately stunned" the coup leaders, who were sure "this would never have happened if the Republicans had still been in power," according to the New Yorker's William Finnegan.

Indeed, the coup leaders, who along with their allies such as the Latin American Business Council have spent at least six hundred thousand dollars on Washington lobbyists and lawyers, count amongst their supporters several prominent congressional Republicans, including South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint.

DeMint had been leading efforts to block key diplomatic appointments in Latin America, and earlier this month, the Obama administration succumbed to this pro-coup Republican pressure, announcing that it will after all recognize Sunday's election, and not insist on the return of the legitimate president. On November 4, Assistant Secretary of State Thomas Shannon announced on CNN that "the formation of the National Unity Government is apart from the reinstatement of President Zelaya" and that the Honduran Congress will decide when and if Zelaya is reinstated.

DeMint took credit for the change in U.S. policy, releasing a press statement declaring "Senator secures commitment for U.S. to back Nov. 29 elections even if Zelaya is not reinstated." In the statement, DeMint said he was

happy to report the Obama Administration has finally reversed its misguided Honduran policy and will fully recognize the November 29th elections... Secretary Clinton and Assistant Secretary Shannon have assured me that the U.S. will recognize the outcome of the Honduran elections regardless of whether Manuel Zelaya is reinstated.

The 23 Latin American and Caribbean nations of the Rio Group do not recognize Sunday's election. However the Obama administration is now going ahead in recognizing the vote held in the midst of what Amnesty International has characterized as a "human rights crisis," marked by an"increasingly disproportionate and excessive use of force being used by the police and military to repress legitimate and peaceful protests across the country." Since Zelaya's overthrow, over 3,500 people have been illegally detained, over 600 have been beaten and dozens have been killed, according to the Committee of Families of the Disappeared (COFADEH), with media workers, human rights defenders and female protesters particularly targeted, according to Amnesty.

The only two presidential candidates on the ballot supported the coup that ousted the elected president. The leading opposition candidate, Carlos Reyes, recently withdrew his nomination for the presidency, calling the election fraudulent, and hundreds of candidates for congressional and municipal seats have also withdrawn from the election.

And Tucker notes that

Trade unions and social movements calling for a boycott of the election are facing mafia-style threats, with the regime's chief of police boasting that he has compiled a blacklist of "all those of the left".

At the same time, Honduras' big business federation, which supported the coup, is reportedly offering "cash discounts" to Hondurans for voting in the election.

The fact that such an election has won the support of the Obama administration does not bode well for the president's "new chapter" of U.S.-Latin America relations.

Wingnuts: Insane Effort to Draft Cheney for 2012 Race Will Frighten Liberals!
Posted by Thers, Whiskey Fire on November 28, 2009 at 9:44 AM.

Comedy, from those scamps at the Jawa Report.

Listen. Can You Hear The Heads Of Liberals Exploding Like Popped Balloons?

The noise is made from the rapid release of air that occupies the space where brains should have been. Heh.

Gracious! To clarify, here is the Exciting News which is supposed to be upsetting to Liberals:

A new group wants former Vice President Dick Cheney back in the White House. The organization - "Draft Dick Cheney 2012" - launched on Friday, and unveiled their new Web site. Their aim: To convince the former vice president to seek the Republican presidential nomination in the next race for the White House.

Yes, yes, indeed, my head is exploding! This has made me hysterical and afraid, the prospect of a Dick Cheney presidential run! I fear it so! Please, please don't throw the fearsome Dick Cheney into the asshole patch that is the 2012 GOP presidential "field"!

Because this, you know, is true:

"The 2012 race for the Republican nomination for President will be about much more then who will be the party's standard bearer against Barack Obama, the race is about the heart and soul of the GOP," said Christopher Barron, one of the organizers of the Draft Cheney movement.

Right. And who would doubt for a moment that Dick Cheney is indeed the most perfect embodiment of "the heart and soul of the modern GOP"? Not this liberal!

Poor Peggy Noonan, Stuck Recycling Right-Bloggers' Talking-Points
Posted by Roy Edroso, Alicublog on November 28, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

Peggy Noonan, newly filled with a sense of purpose, tells us that people don't like Obama anymore. That is, the polls indicate a lot of them do, but the people who matter don't. Among these: columnists, and people Peggy Noonan meets in unspecified "bipartisan crowds":

As I read Ms. Drew's piece, I was reminded of something I began noticing a few months ago in bipartisan crowds. I would ask Democrats how they thought the president was doing. In the past they would extol, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, his virtues. Increasingly, they would preface their answer with, "Well, I was for Hillary."

It's amazing Clinton didn't win the Democratic nomination, with so much vital bipartisan support.

This in turn reminded me of a surprising thing I observe among loyal Democrats in informal settings and conversations: No one loves Barack Obama. Half the American people say they support him, and Democrats are still with him. But there were Bill Clinton supporters who really loved him. George W. Bush had people who loved him. A lot of people loved Jack Kennedy and Ronald Reagan. But no one seems to love Mr. Obama now; they're not dazzled and head over heels. That's gone away. He himself seems a fairly chilly customer; perhaps in turn he inspires chilly support. But presidents need that rock --bottom 20% who, no matter what's happening -- war, unemployment -- adore their guy, have complete faith in him, and insist that you love him, too.

Her model for such people might be Peggy Noonan, who once said things like "Mr. McCain is the Old America, of course; Mr. Obama the New." Remember those days? In any case it would explain her certainty in this analysis.

But Obama does have such people, despite the fact that Noonan is no longer among them.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Try Your Hand: GOP Sex Scandal Haiku!
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 28, 2009 at 6:17 AM.

This is pretty funny -- the folks at TPM are asking readers to send them haiku based on their favorite GOP sex scandals. All good, clean holiday fun for the whole family.

Poetry's not my bag but I figured I'd give it the old college try. So, reaching for some low-hanging fruit, I came up with this:

Hot Summer toe-tap

Dull lay-over, need relief

Oh, no, officer

Have at it in the comments.

Update: there are certainly different forms of haiku (and you don't have to limit yourself -- they're doing limericks in the comments), but the traditional anglicized version is 3 lines, with 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables respectively. And if you want to be a purist, try to work in a kigo, or seasonal reference.