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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

Christ in Your Tree? The Newest Weapon Against Evil Atheists Bent on Destroying X-Mas
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 4:22 PM.

Because Christmas is a time to ponder excruciating methods of execution ... 

(click for larger version)

The CHRIST-mas tree, created by holiday decor company Boss Creations, is intended as a weapon in the war on Christmas. From Right-Wing Watch:

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Nelson's Anti-Choice Amendment Defeated in Senate, 54-45: Rep. Diana DeGette Responds
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 3:14 PM.

Today, in debate on the Senate floor on the health-care reform bill, senators voted to table an amendment offered by Ben Nelson, D-Neb., that would have added anti-choice language to the bill, similar to that of the Stupak-Pitts amendment to the House health-care reform bill.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., led the charge against Stupak in the House. Together with Rep. Louise Slaughter, D-N.Y., she co-chairs the House Pro-Choice Caucus.  DeGette issued this statement on word of the Senate action:

"I am delighted the U.S. Senate has rejected an extreme amendment that would have turned back the clock on a woman’s right to choose. The underlying Senate bill already prohibits federal funding of abortion. The amendment the Senate rejected today was an attempt to use health care reform to restrict women's access to reproductive health services. Throughout the conference process, pro-choice Members will be working to ensure that health care reform legislation does not restrict abortion rights beyond current law. Over 40 Members of the House have vowed not to support a conference report that further restricts a woman's right to choose."

Click here to read the abortion provision included in the U.S. Senate's underlying bill.

Gay Obama Administration Official Says He Can't Give a Lesbian Wife Health Benefits
Posted by Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 2:00 PM.

I'm certainly not one of those doe-eyed Obama voters who really thought he was going to come in and change everything, but every now and then some bit of news comes out of the U.S. government that really does leave me dumbfounded. The following is one of them.

The director of the Office of Personnel Management, John Berry, an openly gay man (Victory!) over the weekend said he cannot follow a California court order to provide health benefits to the wife of a federal employee. (Fail!)

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Are Wealthier, Better Educated Neighbors More Likely to Return a Wallet Full of Cash than Poorer Ones?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 1:17 PM.

This is an odd question, on a number of levels:

Is community trust a luxury in America? Gallup data offer some support for that idea -- 82% of those making $90,000 per year or more say they would expect a neighbor who found a lost wallet or purse containing $200 to return it. In contrast, 50% of those making less than $24,000 per year expressed this kind of trust in their neighbors.

I think the poll's informational value is close to zero for a simple reason: by maintaining a constant number of dollars in the wallet, neighbors in wealthier communities have relatively less incentive to pocket the cash. $200 represents 1 percent of annual income for someone making $20K, but just 0.2 percent of the yearly take of someone making $100K. $200 simply doesn't mean the same thing to those two hypothetical individuals. Money doesn't even have the same value for a single individual over the course of his or her life -- I can tell you $20 means a Hell of a lot less to me today than it did when I was going to school and scraping by working part-time jobs. Even if Bill Gates found a lost wallet stuffed with $100,000 in cash, what economic incentive would he have to not have his driver go return it.

It's not a minor quibble. The pollsters specified $200 for a reason. It's substantial enough to tempt people to pocket it, but not such a large sum that just about anyone would. They should have established income first, then asked people making $20k about a wallet with $200, and upped the amount of cash on a sliding scale so those making $100K would have to consider whether their neighbors would return a wallet with $1,000.

Let's also consider this proxy they've come up with. Gallup defines "community trust" as the belief that one's neighbors would be likely to return a wallet with $200 in cash. That's a rather arbitrary marker. What if we defined it as, say, "believing the community will rally around a family in crisis"? What would the results look like then?

One could argue that "not snitching out members of the community to the cops" is a sign of trust in one's neighbors, and the results of this poll would probably look very different if one asked that question. Would those making $90K trust their neighbors not to drop a dime on them if they committed a crime?

Gallup's results also offer an ideological Rorschach Test of sorts. 

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Unless Congress Acts, 3.2 Million Will Lose Unemployment Benefits in Early 2010
Posted by Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 1:12 PM.

Obama announced a $210 billion job creation plan today -- and it's a well-timed announcement what with a new study detailing just how many millions of Americans will be losing their unemployment checks in the first quarter of 2010.

The Center for American Progress (CAP) and the National Employment Law Project (NELP) released a report yesterday that gets down to the very nitty-gritty of our country's unemployment woes. The study estimates that in January, one million Americans will lose their unemployment benefits -- and by the end of March, a total of 3.2 million workers will lose that very essential lifeline.

And what a lifeline it has been for many of those hardest hit by the recession! The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), signed into law in February, extends federal unemployment benefits to laid-off workers by a considerable amount, from the average of 26 weeks to 73 weeks. It also includes a weekly $25 benefit payment and a 65 percent COBRA insurance subsidy.

Experts generally agree that the unemployment rate -- currently at 10 percent -- hasn't hit rock bottom yet, even though there was a bit of a bounce in November. In fact, we may not reach that pinnacle of misfortune until spring or even summer next year. But no matter whether we have already reached that low point or are yet to, we can certainly expect that the unemployment rate will remain in the double-digits throughout 2010.

And remember -- the official unemployment rate only includes people "actively" looking for work, which means the number leaves out everyone who's given up and all those who are underemployed.

So with at least 10 percent of Americans -- that's 30 million people -- unemployed, is Congress going to make a move to keep at least some of these people out of cardboard boxes?

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Glenn Beck's "Buy Gold!" Hucksterism Pisses Off Fox News
Posted by Tana Ganeva, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

People who rely on Glenn Beck for financial advice may have to find another economist to tell them what to do with their money. Beck, who hawks investing in gold as a survival strategy for when Obama confiscates your guns and the world collapses, also profits from gold company advertising and endorsement deals with gold retailers. Beck's very-trustworthy face graces the website of Goldline International, Inc., with the following endorsement: "Before I started turning you on to Goldline, I wanted to look them in the eye. This is a top notch organization that's been in business since 1960." A video on his website, highlighted by Politico in a great piece about the connection between right-wing personalities and gold retailers, offers this sound financial advice from Beck:

If you’ve been watching for any length of time, and you still haven’t looked into buying gold, what’s wrong with you? I was going to say ‘are you just a reporter for the New York Times?’ but I don’t think they actually watch. They just write about it.

I think you’re nuts. When the system eventually collapses, and the government comes with guns and confiscates, you know, everything in your home and all your possessions, and then you fight off the raving mad cannibalistic crowds that Ted Turner talked about, don’t come crying to me. I told you: get gold.

According to a Daily Finance piece, Beck may have breached not only basic journalistic standards, but what counts as basic journalistic standards at Fox news:

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USA Today: Defense Contractors Got H1N1 Vaccine Before Schools and Hospitals Did
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 11:54 AM.

Via Raw Story:

Corporate offices at defense contractors and energy companies in Texas received doses of swine flu vaccine at a time when the vaccine was in short supply and the state's hospitals and schools were receiving none, says a news report published Tuesday.

USA Today reports that Bell Helicopter received 100 doses and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics received 80 doses in October or early November, when the vaccine was scarce. Energy companies Chevron (190 doses) ExxonMobil (160 doses), Dow Chemical (170 doses) and ConocoPhillips (110 doses) also received shipments the newspaper says were destined for the companies' corporate clinics.

"Thousands of registered providers — doctors, hospitals, schools, pharmacies — in Texas alone got no doses in that period," USA Today reports.

A memorandum circulated in October by Lockheed Martin indicates the company either did not expect to receive the H1N1 vaccine, or was keeping its corporate supply a secret from the rank-and-file.

"A limited supply of H1N1 vaccine is expected to be available from public health authorities in mid-October for high-risk individuals, but corporations including Lockheed Martin are not expected initially to have the vaccine to provide directly to employees," the memorandum stated.

Read the rest here.

Why Do Conservatives Doubt Global Warming? Because They Like to Piss Off Liberals
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on December 8, 2009 at 10:58 AM.

Yesterday, I asked why conservatives are so crazed about global warming and was pleased to see so many fine explanations. Amanda Marcotte delved into the subject in depth and I think she nailed it. The reason was obvious, and right under my nose: it pisses off the liberals.

And boy, is it effective! Those liberals sure get steamed when they think about how reckless behavior will result in millions of unnecessary deaths. They blow smoke out their ears when you drive around in an SUV precisely to show how little you give a shit if worldwide drought creates worldwide war. They may be smarter and cooler than you, but by being a mega-watt asshole of sociopathic proportions, you gain the upper hand because you piss them off. There are a lot of ways to piss liberals off. You can be pointlessly racist or sexist. You can sniff around in people’s private lives and carry on about how vegetarians are stupid. But few things really can top the global warming denialism. The sheer magnitude of the damage that it does is so severe that it’s impossible for liberals not to get upset. And so you win!

The whole post is well worth a read if you wonder what makes the global warming deniers tick. What makes it an unusual issue is that pissing off the liberals really is pretty much the only motivation, unlike others which have stronger cultural ties to traditional shibboleths.

It's a temperament thing. There are people we run across in life who just hate earnestness and loathe anyone who gives a damn about anything.(They also like to hurt small animals and make fun of those less fortunate than themselves.) Most of those people join the conservative tribe. It's where they find their soul mates.

Conservative Family Values, Beating the Crap Out of Defenseless People Edition
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 9:50 AM.

Here are two stories that appeared just inches apart on John Cole's blog.

Item one:

In an incident in which the perpetrator should have considered that he would become a household name on Wonkette before going through with it, former Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton is facing assault charges for allegedly beating the shit out of his mistress while having sex. His ladyfriend had not uttered the “safe word,” probably because Jetton was beating her unconscious. [link]

Wonkette notes, "Rod Jetton is married with three children and attends Methodist church regularly. He is affiliated with the Republican Party. He is a Real American, the end."

Item two:

Former Congressman (and C Streeter) Chip Pickering is reportedly under police investigation for his involvement in a brawl with a rival youth league soccer coach.

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GOP Leaders Flex Their Hypocrisy Muscles, Start Bawling Over Harry Reid's "Slavery" Comment
Posted by Eclectablog, Daily Kos on December 8, 2009 at 8:36 AM.

Oh, the faux shock. Oh, the feigned outrage. Republicans and other conservatives have themselves all adither over Senate Maj. Leader Harry Reid's comments comparing opponents of health reform to those who opposed the abolition of slavery.

"It's playing the race card!" exclaimed Michelle Malkin!

"It's outrageous!!!," yelled Rush Limbaugh!

"He played 'that race card, that slavery card, that civil rights card'," shouted Michael Steele.

Funny, isn't it? Whenever a Republican makes some blatantly racist comment, they immediately hide behind the mantra that "you can't say anything about black people or they accuse you of playing the race card." Then, when Reid says something mentioning slavery, they accuse HIM of playing "that race card, that slavery card, that civil rights card".

Hypocrites.

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Eric Cantor on How to Create More Jobs: Umm...Create More Jobs!
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 8, 2009 at 7:25 AM.

ERIC CANTOR, POST TURTLE.... House Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor (R-Va.) visited the conservative Heritage Foundation last week to unveil what he called "a no-cost jobs plan." Andrew Leonard summarized the pitch: "Cut regulations. Freeze spending. Cut taxes. No new taxes. That's the plan."

It was, of course, the Bush/Cheney agenda -- which helped get us in this mess in the first place -- warmed over.

A week later, Cantor appeared at the Economist's World in 2010 conference. The frequently-confused GOP leader said his party has plenty of important "big ideas" and policy proposals. The Economist's Daniel Franklin asked Cantor to identify the Republicans' big idea on jobs. Pat Garofalo reports that Cantor couldn't think of anything specific.

FRANKLIN: What is the big idea? "Jobs" is not an idea.

CANTOR: The big idea is to get, to get, to produce an environment where we can have job creation again.

I almost feel bad for the guy. Cantor was elected to Congress before he was able to learn anything about public policy, and was put in the GOP leadership before he could speak intelligently about any issue.

Eric Cantor as a congressional leader is a classic example of a post turtle -- you know he didn't get up there by himself; he obviously doesn't belong up there; he can't get anything done while he's there; and you just want to help the poor, dumb thing down.

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New Report Probes Suspicious Guantanamo Suicides
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on December 8, 2009 at 5:00 AM.

Over at TalkLeft, Jeralyn reports:

Seton Hall University School of Law's Center for Policy & Research has released a new report on the Guantanamo suicides. You can read the full report, Death in Camp Delta, here (pdf). From the press release:

[T]his report highlights the derelictions of duty by officials of multiple defense and intelligence agencies who allowed three detainees to die and elected not to conduct a proper investigation into the cause of the deaths.

[More...]

The three detainees were each reported to have been found hanging in his separate cell shortly after midnight on June 10, 2006. According to the government’s own autopsies, each detainee had been hanging unobserved for a minimum of two hours. The deaths went unnoticed despite the constant supervision of five guards who were responsible for only 28 inmates in a lit cell block monitored by video cameras. According to Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), each detainee should have been observed a minimum of once every 10 minutes by the guards. Despite clear violations of the SOP, no guards were ever disciplined.

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The Real Reason Obama Is Escalating In Afghanistan
Posted by Christian Parenti, The Nation on December 8, 2009 at 4:30 AM.

The real goals of the Afghanistan escalation are domestic and electoral. Like Lyndon Johnson, who escalated in Vietnam, Obama lives in mortal fear of being called a wimp by Republicans.

To cover his flank and look tough in the next U.S. election, Obama is expanding the war in Afghanistan. To look strong in front of swing voters, he will sacrifice the lives of hundreds of U.S. soldiers, allow many more to be horribly maimed, waste a minimum of $30 billion in public money and in the process kill many thousands of Afghan civilians.

It is political theater, nothing else. What are the other possible explanations for Obama's escalation? And why has he pledged to start drawing down the new deployment after only a year of fighting?

Is it to get the job done? To rebuild Afghanistan? To kill Osama bin Laden and crush Al Qaeda? No, all those goals are nearly impossible. And Al Qaeda is too small and internationally defused to destroy.

Some say the Afghanistan war and the escalation are about building a pipeline to export gas from Central Asia. Nonsense -- only a maniac would invest large sums of money in building a pipeline there. In the late 1990s the Argentine firm Bridas and the U.S. firm Unocal jockeyed for the right to build such a project. But that dream, always tentative, has evaporated. It will be many decades, at best, before Afghanistan is safe enough to host a new, foreign-owned gas pipeline.

Others say the Afghanistan war is about establishing US military bases to menace China, Russia and Iran. Indeed, because of its occupations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. now has bases on either side of Iran and small bases in Central Asia. But these do not require this escalation.

The real purpose of these 30,000 soldiers is to make Obama look tough as he heads toward the next U.S. presidential election.

As a landlocked, underdeveloped, fragmented buffer state with few resources, Afghanistan has long served as a means to get at other issues. Consider the history of how the United States has used Afghanistan.

First, during the cold war Jimmy Carter and then Ronald Reagan used the country as the Soviet "bear trap." Later, George W. Bush used it to trampoline into Iraq. The Bush administration discussed regime change in Iraq at one of its first cabinet meetings. Among other things, the administration wanted direct economic control, and indirect geostrategic control, over Iraq's vast oil wealth. That has been partially accomplished, as witnessed by the recent Exxon and Royal Dutch Shell deals there.

The only credible way into Iraq was via Afghanistan. On September 15, 2001, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz actually suggested that the United States skip an invasion of Afghanistan and go directly to Iraq. But that would have made coalition-building impossible. After all, Al Qaeda was in the Taliban's Afghanistan.

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Sex Workers Offer Freebies for Climate Change Delegates in Copenhagen
Posted by Tara Lohan, AlterNet on December 7, 2009 at 5:30 PM.

Finally, a sexy story about climate change. As the big talks have finally kicked off, here's one of the lighter stories I've read about what's happening over there.

This is from AFP:

Prostitutes of a Danish sex workers association will offer their services for free to delegates of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen, an association official told AFP Saturday.

Susanne Moeller said the move was meant to protest an anti-prostitution initiative undertaken by Copenhagen city hall.

The city, host of the December 7-18 UN climate summit, distributed postcards in Copenhagen's hotels that said "Be sustainable: Don't buy sex." It also sent letters to hotel managers inviting them to take measures to avoid prostitutes meeting clients in their establishments.

This is a bit odd considering that sex work in Denmark is legal. And surely, if you're involved in the difficult work of trying to save the planet from doom, you may want to engage in adult activities to relieve some stress, right?

Apparently, sex workers there agree and are fighting back against this discrimination. Here's more about their plan:

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Nelson's Stupak-like Amendment Expected to Fail
Posted by Daniela Perdomo, AlterNet on December 7, 2009 at 4:21 PM.

Ben Nelson (D-NE) is moving forward with his attempt to include anti-abortion language in the Senate health care bill, and his amendment could be voted on as early as today.

The full text of the Nelson amendment confirms that it includes much of the same language as the one penned by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-NE) and included in the final House health care bill.

The key piece in both the Nelson and Stupak amendments is that absolutely no funds appropriated by health care reform can be used for abortion services. This would directly affect all women covered by the proposed government insurance plan, but as I wrote a couple weeks ago, we have good reason to believe that this effect would spillover to women covered by private insurance plans. If the Stupak/Nelson language makes it into the final health care bill, industry-wide abortion coverage could very well be phased out in the longer-term, endangering access to safe abortion services for all who can't afford to pay out of pocket.

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