PEEK

Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

PETA Teams Up With Glenn Beck to Bash Al Gore
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 5:39 PM.

I know it's easy to get jealous when someone's got an Oscar, a Nobel, and some pretty big job titles on their resume, but really, the Gore bashing has got to end.

The New York Times took a swipe at Al Gore and his new book this week and now Glenn Beck and PETA's Ingrid Newkirk are teaming up. In some ways it is a perfect match between two people who seem to thrive on generating controversy.

Beck chastised Gore for not giving up meat eating altogether (even though he's admitted to cutting back a lot) and told him it was time for soy milk and tofurkey. Then he invited Newkirk on the show to tag team even though Beck admitted that he doesn't agree with a thing PETA says. Although he did give PETA and the NRA a shout out for not catering to special interests (huh?), so I guess Newkirk should feel good about that.

I know that PETA's main task seems to be to get people really pissed off, but I still think it's a shame to see Newkirk sinking so low as to cozy up to Glenn Beck. The truth is though, what they're talking about is actually a tough issue. There's a lot of really good evidence that eating meat -- at least the way we mostly do it in factory farms -- is bad for the planet. If you've ever seen a factory farm (or smelled one) that would probably seem like a no-brainer.

But there's also some good evidence pointing out that growing soy -- at least the way we do it but slashing rainforests and piling on the pesticides -- is actually bad for ecosystems, water, climate and the whole shebang. And some of that soy we area eating (actually in the US 87 percent of it is genetically modified), some of it is being used for biofuel and some of it is being fed to livestock. But mostly all of it is an environmental disaster.

Umbra Fisk from Grist breaks down a lot of the research and writes:

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Climate Change: The Grown-Ups Are Back In Charge
Posted by Raquel Brown, The Media Consortium on November 6, 2009 at 5:00 PM.

Senate Democrats in the Environment and Public Works Committee finally squelched Republican boycotts and passed a version of the climate bill Wednesday morning. Last week, Republican senators refused to show up to committee hearings in an attempt to stall the bill. Brian Beutler of Talking Points Memo notes that EPW has now set “the stage for other panels to amend the legislation.”

To no one’s surprise, Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., immediately complained about the legislation on Fox News. Sen. Max Baucus, D-Mont., was the lone Democrat that did not vote, which Inhofe interpreted as a sign that the bill is “dead.”

Chairman Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., was much more upbeat and argued that the Republican boycott actually marred their credibility. “The absence of the Republicans during the Environmental Protection Agency’s presentation was a clear message that their criticism of the EPA analysis was not a substantive one,” Boxer said. “We are pleased that despite the Republican boycott, we have been able to move the bill.”

Inhofe also condemned Boxer for passing the bill through the committee unconventionally. Aaron Wiener writes for The Washington Independent that “Without a quorum that included at least two Republicans, the committee was unable to open formal debate on amendments to the bill. But passage requires just a simple majority, and Chairman Boxer and the Democratic leadership chose to forgo amendments in order to move the legislation quickly, given that the end of the GOP boycott was nowhere in sight.”  Luckily, now that the bill is moving on to other committees, Inhofe and his Republican EPW colleagues will no longer have much of a say on the bill’s final outcome.

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Right-Wing "News" Site Falsely Claims Fort Hood Shooter "Advised Obama Transition"
Posted by Staff, Media Matters for America on November 6, 2009 at 4:03 PM.

WorldNetDaily falsely claimed that alleged Fort Hood shooter Nidal Hasan "advised Obama transition" in the headline of an article by Jerome Corsi highlighting his listing as a "participant" in a report for the Homeland Security Policy Institute (HSPI) at George Washington University's Presidential Transition Task Force. However, Corsi himself acknowledges that there is no evidence that "the group played any formal role in the official Obama transition" -- indeed, the Task Force was initiated in April 2008. Moreover, while Hasan was listed as one of approximately 300 "Task Force Event Participants" in the report's appendix, HSPI has reportedly said he was not a "member" of the Task Force, and was listed because he RSVP'd for several of the group's open events.

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On the Lookout for Attempts to Indoctrinate Our Schoolchildren? Try the American Coal Industry!
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on November 6, 2009 at 2:57 PM.

Friends of Coal (FOC) is a front group created by the West Virginia Coal Association. Its mission is to “inform and educate West Virginia citizens about the coal industry” and “provide a united voice” for the industry. To make dirty coal seem appealing, FOC has sponsored or initiated license plates, football games, basketball practices, plane jumps, fishing events, and scholarships.

FOC is now selling coal to children. ThinkProgress obtained the “Let’s Learn About Coal” coloring book, which asks children to unscramble statements about the “advantages” of coal, such as “Than coal other cheaper is fuels” (”Coal is cheaper than other fuels”). Kids also learn that coal is “important” and “provides jobs for lots of people!”:

The FOC Ladies Auxiliary has been handing the coloring book out to children around West Virginia as part of a “Coal in the Classroom” campaign.

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At Least 5 Need Government-Run Health-Care at Bachmann's Angry Protests Against Government-Run Health-Care
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 1:27 PM.

I find Dana Milbank annoying. Actually, I think he's the living, breathing incarnation of everything wrong with the Beltway media.

Today's column is just as cynical, superficial and snarky as the rest. The argument he makes is typically obtuse.

BUT, it's directed at those annoying Tea-Baggers, so it amuses me!

Technically, Thursday's GOP-sponsored rally at the Capitol was a "press conference" (a Capitol Police spokeswoman explained that the lawmakers didn't have a permit for a demonstration). The speakers took no questions at this news conference, instead calling, at least a dozen times, for the Pelosi bill's death.

"Remember some of the other battles: Lexington and Concord, Hamburger Hill, Pork Chop Hill?" said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa). "We're not going to leave this hill until we kill this bill!"

[...]

But, as with a similar rally by Democrats a week before, unpredictable things tend to happen in the wide-open spaces of the Capitol's West Front. Minutes into the rally, a breeze toppled the American flag from the stage.

More ominously, a man standing just beyond the TV cameras apparently suffered a heart attack 20 minutes after event began. Medical personnel from the Capitol physician's office -- an entity that could, quite accurately, be labeled government-run health care -- rushed over, attaching electrodes to his chest and giving him oxygen and an IV drip.

This turned into an unwanted visual for the speakers, as a D.C. ambulance and firetruck, lights flashing, pulled in just behind the lawmakers. A path was made through the media section, and the patient, attended to by about 10 government medical personnel, was being wheeled away on a stretcher just as House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) stepped to the microphone. "Join us in defeating Pelosi care!" he exhorted. A few members stole a glance at the stretcher. Boehner may have been distracted as well. He told the crowd he would read from the Constitution, then read the "we hold these truths" bit from the Declaration of Independence.

[...]

By the time it was over, medics had administered government-run health care to at least five people in the crowd who were stricken as they denounced government-run health care. But Bachmann overlooked this irony as she said farewell to her recruits.

Read the whole thing. Might amuse you too.

How Does a Religious Cult Have the Clout to Delay Health Care Vote?
Posted by Adele Stan, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 12:30 PM.

Just when it seemed the stars were aligning for an historic vote tomorrow on health-care reform legislation in the House of Representatives, anti-choice Democrats are balking, saying that the plan would permit the indirect flow of federal dollars to fund abortion.

Led by Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., a member of the Capitol Hill religious cult known as The Family, and spurred on by the Catholic bishops, anti-abortion Dems are contesting the fact that some small number of private insurance plans offered via the bill's insurance exchange scheme may offer coverage for abortion -- even therapeutic abortion. Where the federal dollars come in is via the subsidies for which lower-income people would be eligible for buying insurance through the exchange.

Politico's Patrick O'Connor reports on the church's influence at the negotiating table:

Negotiators are working closely with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to finalize language the church can accept. Vulnerable anti-abortion Democrats don’t want to support any bill that the bishops haven’t signed off on.

Last time I looked, abortion was a legal medical procedure in the United States. The changes the church wants would virtually forbid abortion coverage, even for women carrying fetuses without a chance of surviving outside the womb. The church seeks to codify its contempt for women into U.S. law, dooming a woman already facing a tragic pregnancy to compromise her life and health -- mental and physical -- apparently for the sin of having had sex.

As the legislation stands, no federal dollars would directly cover an abortion, and the public plan will offer no abortion coverage. But that's not enough for the men of the cloth.

The question remains, of course, as to whether this is an issue truly of moral conscience, or just a trick for stalling health-care reform. At Michele Bachmann's disinform-athon yesterday on the Capitol steps, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins alleged, untruthfully, that the bill announced last week by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi covers abortion, as did several members of Congress. The Family Research Council is a Republican-allied group.

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After 5 Weeks, 3 GOP Filibusters and 200,000 Americans Running Out of Bennies, Obama to Sign Unemployment Extension
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on November 6, 2009 at 12:07 PM.

The good news is, President Obama will sign a measure today to extend unemployment benefits for at least 14 weeks for people out of work. It's money well spent -- it helps struggling people, and the investment tends to be stimulative -- and with new, discouraging job numbers, the timing is right.

"Given the employment situation and the general bang for the buck you get from unemployment insurance, that's probably the most sensible of the stimulative policies to extend," Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said.

The bad news is, it took far too long to get the common-sense bill through Congress. The measure stalled in the Senate for weeks, and while GOP lawmakers dithered, about 200,000 people who are looking for work lost their benefits.

We talked a couple of weeks ago about why Republicans were forcing delays, and Kevin Drum summarized what transpired on the Senate floor yesterday.

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(UPDATED): Orlando High Rise Shooter Arrested
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 10:27 AM.

UPDATE, via The New York Times:

A 40-year-old man walked into his former workplace in downtown Orlando, Fla., on Friday morning and opened fire, killing one person and shooting five others, the authorities said.

A police SWAT team detained the man, identified as Jason Rodriguez, about three hours later. The police said Mr. Rodriguez had fled the building — the 18-story Gateway Center, a glass-and-granite office building with easy access to the major highways — and went to his mother’s house about an eight-mile drive away.

*****

A mass shooting in an office high-rise in downtown Orlando, Florida has left two dead and six injured. The gunman is still at large, and office workers have barricaded themselves inside. The Orlando Sentinel reports:

Bodies were found on the 12th and 8th floor of Legions Place, a 16-floor building north of Colonial Drive. Only the 12th floor has been cleared. The shooter has not been found, said Deputy Chief Mike Droege of the Orlando Fire Department.

"The building is not secure now," he said. "It's still unfolding."

Seven people were taken to Orlando Regional Medical Center. One person complaining about chest pains was taken to Florida Hospital South.

"They have not found the shooter to my knowledge," Drudge added. "They're still clearing floor by floor."

Office workers are still inside. They have barricaded themselves inside and have received little information from authorities on whether it's safe to leave. One woman inside the building said they have been told the shooting possibly took place on the fourth or eighth floor.

"We've got everybody in one office, with the door barricaded with a chest of drawers. There are about 20 of us in here. We're scared," said one woman who is inside the building. She asked her name and that of her business not be used because she fears for her life.

"We're watching TV, trying to see what is going on, but we really don't know. We're scared. We're safe right now, but we're scared," she said.

Officers with assault rifles are looking for a suspect with blue shirt and blue jeans. Many have their weapons pointed at the parking garage.

Read the rest here.

Right-Bloggers React to Fort Hood Exactly as Expected
Posted by Roy Edroso, Alicublog on November 6, 2009 at 10:26 AM.

FIGHTIN' KEYBOARDERS CALLED BACK INTO ACTION. We'll probably be reading a lot of idiotic stuff about Fort Hood, but it'll be hard to top this from Robert Stacy McCain:

The people who want to kill you are not Tea Party protesters or accountants from Saranac Lake, N.Y. They're not Kentucky populists or Belgian radicals. 

Anyone who wants to distract you from real dangers by telling you to fear this week's pet bogeyman -- global warming! creationists! Ron Paul! -- is not your friend. They are fools and liars who cannot be trusted. They are objectively evil.

The only through-line I can detect in this incoherent gush is this: Liberals are trying to distract you so their friend the Arab terrorist can kill you. So don't shit your pants like they want you to -- shit your pants like Robert Stacy McCain wants you to!

There are other contenders. For example, there's Linda Chavez at Commentary, who attempts to portray President Obama's delivery of planned remarks to a Native American affairs conference before announcing the Fort Hood situation as the equivalent of "President Bush’s 'Pet Goat' moment on 9/11." First of all, Obama was, in the face of crisis, taking care of business rather than, as our last President did, shitting his pants; second, how refreshing to hear a conservative acknowledge there was something weird about "President Bush’s 'Pet Goat' moment on 9/11."

There will be plenty of small-time nutcakes making fools of themselves (like Mad Americans Club, which raves "Obama wants to honor these type of actions with a United States Stamp! USPS New 44-Cent Stamp!!! Celebrates Muslim holiday," apparently referring to this), but the more well-known and respectable rightbloggers are soiling themselves as badly as any of those.

The reason's simple, and the same as it was during 9/11: they think soiling oneself is a sign of patriotism, and consider those who pants are not full of shit to be traitors.

Unemployment Hits 10.2 Percent, Economy Sheds 190,000 Jobs
Posted by Dean Baker, Center for Economic and Policy Research on November 6, 2009 at 9:17 AM.

The unemployment rate crossed 10.0 percent for the first time since early 1983, hitting 10.2 percent in October. The establishment survey showed the economy losing another 190,000 jobs, with most of the job loss in construction and manufacturing.

The October unemployment rate is still below the 10.8 percent peak reached in December of 1982, but the workforce is considerably older now and in age cohorts where workers are less likely to be unemployed. If the workforce had the same age distribution as in 1982 but current unemployment rates for each age cohort, then the unemployment rate would be more than a percentage point higher. The 10.7 percent unemployment rate for men is 0.6 percentage points higher than the 10.1 percent peak in 1982. This is consistent with the massive job loss in construction and manufacturing.

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Report: Hasan Snapped Under Weight of Bullying, Anxiety Over Deployment
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

It goes without saying that the usual suspects would view the tragic events at Fort Hood as an act of terror inspired by "jihadism." A soldier, a Muslim of Palestinian descent, reportedly shouted "God is great!" before opening fire on soldiers awaiting deployment to Iraq and Afghanistan.

If one is already inclined to see terrorists lurking beneath one's bed, naturally that's a neat end to the story, and supports whatever simplistic notions about Islam and terrorism one might hold.

Yesterday, as the first sketchy reports started filtering in, I thought that an organized act of political terror was about the least likely scenario to have gone down. (This didn't prevent me from thinking, 'oh, this is not going to go well' when the Major's name was released.)

And as it turns out, unless you're reading Right-wing blogs this morning, it does in fact  appear to be a case of an individual snapping under a variety of stresses.

ABC:

Fort Hood shooting suspect, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, wanted out of the Army after being constantly harassed by others in the military and was called a "camel jockey," his family said.

As Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq, he was suffering from some of the same stresses that he was trained as an Army psychiatrist to treat.

Although the 39-year-old had just been promoted to major in May, his family says he had hired a lawyer to help him get out of the Armed Forces.

"Apparently became very disgruntled in the mission in Iraq and Afghanistan and voiced that to a lot of his colleagues," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX)...

...After the 9/11 attacks, his cousin says he was the target of constant harassment from others in the military. His tormentors called him a "camel jockey," said his cousin, Nader Hasan. He wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.

While the bullying irritated Hasan, Nader Hasan believes his upcoming deployment is what set him off. The cousin said, "My mom is his mom… and we didn't know he was being deployed until we heard it on the news today."

The whole thing is obviously an incredible tragedy. But as Mark Ames -- who wrote the book about this kind of rage-killing -- points out on the front, this was anything but an isolated incident. All kinds of people "go postal."

That this one happened to be a Muslim and a soldier with strong feelings about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan only gives those who were already so inclined an opportunity to use a profound tragedy to impugn an entire faith.

Jon Stewart Gets Teary-Eyed Over the Plight of Glenn Beck's Internal Organs
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 6, 2009 at 7:27 AM.

New York State Senate to Vote On Marriage Equality?
Posted by Adam Bink, Open Left on November 6, 2009 at 5:19 AM.

After losses like the one in Maine, I always feel like the best way to channel anger is into the next fight. Well, we've got one on our hands. Empire State Pride Agenda just e-mailed out the following:

Marriage equality has been an issue Governor Paterson has long championed and we are thrilled he has called the State Senate back to Albany next Tuesday and put the marriage equality bill on the agenda. We now expect that we will get the respectful debate and vote that we've been waiting for since June.

There is never a wrong time or inconvenient time to debate human rights legislation because it's always the right time. As long as a group of New Yorkers are being denied equal rights, addressing issues like marriage equality must always be a priority. Support for providing equal rights to LGBT New Yorkers has always been bipartisan, and we expect that this bill will be no different.

We look forward to hearing our lives and our families debated on the Senate floor next Tuesday. It's now time that each of the 62 State Senators vote their conscience on this bill that has great implications for hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers in all parts of the state.

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Why Won't the Democratic Leadership Punish Lieberman?
Posted by DavidNYC , Daily Kos on November 6, 2009 at 4:32 AM.

I swear, this is their logic now:

Sen. Joe Lieberman (ID-Conn.) is unlikely to face retribution if he votes to filibuster the Democratic health care bill, despite renewed calls from outraged liberals for party leaders to punish him by stripping him of his committee chairmanship.

Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) “needs his vote,” one senior Senate Democratic aide said. “It would be counterproductive.”

They've descended into parody: Reid can't punish Lieberman because he needs his vote, which he won't get. This is nonsensical, even by the baroque standards of the United States Senate. Here's some more nonsense:

A great majority of the time, Sen. Lieberman votes with his caucus,” Manley said. “This may be one time they disagree.”

The one time, huh? What is it about the Senate that makes people descend into such pits of absurdity? At least one staffer tells the sad truth:

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