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Buzz, perspectives, insight and news from AlterNet

Women's Victory: Baltimore Crisis Pregnancy Centers Must Now Disclose The Limited Nature of Their Services
Posted by Jenny Blasdell, RH Reality Check on December 22, 2009 at 11:42 AM.

On December 4, the Limited Service Pregnancy Centers Disclaimers bill was signed into law in Baltimore City. Baltimore now leads the nation with the first enacted law in the country requiring crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) to disclose the limited nature of their services to their clients.

Introduced by City Council President Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, the law will go into effect in January 2010.  This bill was supported by a diverse coalition of women’s groups and health organizations, and passed by a decisive 12-3 margin in the City Council.

CPCs often advertise “information on all options” or “medical referrals.” Thanks to the leadership of Council President Rawlings-Blake, they must now clarify that this does not include birth control information or abortion referrals. In essence, this bill requires truth in advertising by requiring CPCs to inform their clients if they do not provide or refer for abortion or comprehensive birth control by posting a sign in English and Spanish.  

The measure will be enforced by the Baltimore City Health Department. This law does not violate the centers’ right to free speech and, unfortunately, we suspect that they will continue to spread misinformation.  But at least now women will have a lens through which to view the so-called information about abortion and birth control they receive at these centers.

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GOPers Have Concocted Yet Another Stupid Reason to Axe the Senate Health Care Bill
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on December 22, 2009 at 10:30 AM.

They can't think, they can't govern, but Republicans know how to win. So I've been waiting for the GOP to surprise us with a new direction in its health care bill-killing total war, and this, about which they're ginning up a hissyfit, is obviously the first salvo in the final phase of the war:

Reid Bill Says Future Congresses Cannot Repeal Parts of Reid Bill

Senator Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) pointed out some rather astounding language in the Senate health care bill during floor remarks tonight. First, he noted that there are a number of changes to Senate rules in the bill--and it's supposed to take a 2/3 vote to change the rules. And then he pointed out that the Reid bill declares on page 1020 that the Independent Medicare Advisory Board cannot be repealed by future Congresses:

there's one provision that i found particularly troubling and it's under section c, titled "limitations on changes to this subsection."

and i quote -- "it shall not be in order in the senate or the house of representatives to consider any bill, resolution, amendment, or conference report that would repeal or otherwise change this subsection." ...

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Outrageous: RNC Chairman Michael Steele Makes $20,000 per Private Speaking Engagement
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on December 22, 2009 at 9:21 AM.

The Washington Times today has an exposé revealing that RNC chairman Michael Steele has been “using his title to market himself for paid appearances nationwide, personally profiting from speeches with fees of up to $20,000.” In addition to his $223,500 a year income from the party, Steele is contracted by at least four outside agencies to appear “at colleges, trade associations and other groups.” Through the speaker agencies, Steele is marketed as a “Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Former Lieutenant Governor of Maryland.”

The article notes that this “unusual practice” has come under criticism from former RNC chairmen:

– “Holy mackerel, I never heard of a chairman of either party ever taking money for speeches,” said former RNC chairman Frank J. Fahrenkopf Jr.

– The job “demands so much of your time that you can work 24/7 and not get everything done, so taking time out to speak for the benefit of one’s own bank account is not appropriate,” noted former RNC chairman Jim Nicholson.

– “It just doesn’t look right using RNC resources and trading on the title of chairman to make outside money,” said former RNC chairman Rich Bond. Bond also noted that when he received honoraria, he donated the money to charity to avoid the appearance of impropriety.

But this morning on CSPAN, former RNC chairman Jim Gilmore stepped up to defend Steele’s outside income. Gilmore said the speakers fees were appropriate as long as they are disclosed, and that its “not uncommon for people to have some outside employment as well as being paid as national chairman”:

GILMORE: You know Greta, I think it’s worth writing about so the public can make their own decisions. I’m a former elected prosecutor, former elected Attorney General of Virginia, former Governor of Virginia. I was the former chairman of the RNC, among other types of posts, and I think as long as it doesn’t conflict with the work that he’s doing as national chairman, then as long as the committee is aware of his activities. I think it’s really up to the committee to make those decisions. But it’s not uncommon for people to have some outside employment as well as being paid as as national chairman.

Watch it:

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Al Franken's Anti-Rape Amendment Passes, Infuriating Several (Male) Republicans
Posted by Steve Benen, Washington Monthly on December 22, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

FRANKEN AMENDMENT BECOMES LAW.... In October, Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) proposed a key amendment to the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill. Yesterday, it was signed into law.

Motivated by the harrowing violence Jamie Leigh Jones suffered in 2005 while working for Halliburton/KBR in Iraq, Franken pushed a measure to withhold defense contracts from companies that "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." Franken's measure passed, 68 to 30. The 30 opponents -- representing 75% of the entire GOP Senate caucus -- were Republican men.

There were some implantation questions from the Pentagon, but after some additional efforts, and overcoming a Republican filibuster, Franken's measure became law after President Obama signed the Department of Defense Appropriations Act over the weekend.

Digby had a good take on this.

The reason I think it's good news isn't just on the substance (which it certainly is) but on the politics. Franken's amendment is driving the Republicans crazy because they basically voted to protect rapists and are now paying a political price for that. And now they are whining that Franken was somehow "uncollegial" because the amendment put them in an embarrassing position (which makes me wonder how many other things issues are swept under the rug because it would make members of the opposition uncomfortable.)

That's the kind of thing the Democrats should do more of. Expose the Republicans' hypocrisy and cruelty by forcing these issues on to the agenda.

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Mexico City Becomes the First Latin American City to Approve a Gay Marriage Law
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on December 22, 2009 at 6:55 AM.

Mexico City showed more bravery then many North of the Border States this year when it came to gay rights, and just in time for Christmas, too:

Mexico City has become the first city in Latin America to legalise same-sex marriage, giving gay couples more rights, including allowing them to adopt children.

The bill passed the capital's local assembly by 39 votes to 20 yesterday as supporters chanted: "Yes, we could! Yes, we could!" [...]

The change will enable same-sex couples to adopt, apply for bank loans, inherit wealth and be included in the insurance policies of their spouse – rights they were denied under the civil unions allowed in the city.

"We are so happy," said Temistocles Villanueva, a 23-year-old film student, who celebrated the new legislation by kissing his boyfriend outside the city assembly.

Congratulations to Mexico City's assembly for seeing that we are all God's children, and we all deserve equal rights under the law. Unfortunately, and predictably, the conservative National Action Party (PAN) government of President Felipe Calderón has announced that it plans to mount a court challenge to the action taken by Mexico City. Calderon, as you may recall came into office under a cloud of suspicion regarding election irregularities, and his administration has been plagued by scandals. Sound familiar?

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What's Wrong With the Healthcare Bill? Ask a Nurse.
Posted by John Nichols, TheNation.com on December 22, 2009 at 5:45 AM.

Want to know what's wrong -- really wrong -- with the health-care "reform" bill being pushed through the Senate by Majority Leader Harry Reid?

Ask a nurse.

"It is tragic to see the promise from Washington this year for genuine, comprehensive reform ground down to a seriously flawed bill that could actually exacerbate the health-care crisis and financial insecurity for American families, and that cedes far too much additional power to the tyranny of a callous insurance industry," says National Nurses Union co-president Karen Higgins, RN.

"Sadly," adds Higgins, "we have ended up with legislation that fails to meet the test of true health-care reform, guaranteeing high quality, cost effective care for all Americans, and instead are further locking into place a system that entrenches the choke-hold of the profit-making insurance giants on our health. If this bill passes, the industry will become more powerful and could be beyond the reach of reform for generations."

The 150,000-member NNU, the largest union and professional organization of registered nurses in the U.S., condemned Reid's bill -- which is expected to gain Senate approval this week -- as a deeply flawed measure that grants too much power to the nation's largest private and for-profit insurers.

Specifically, the union that takes in the powerful California Nurses Association, cited 10 fundamental flaws in the Senate bill:

1. The individual mandate forcing all those without coverage to buy private insurance, with insufficient cost controls on skyrocketing premiums and other insurance costs.

2. No challenge to insurance company monopolies, especially in the top 94 metropolitan areas where one or two companies dominate, severely limiting choice and competition.

3. An affordability mirage. Congressional Budget Office estimates say a family of four with a household income of $54,000 would be expected to pay 17 percent of their income, $9,000, on healthcare exposing too many families to grave financial risk.

4. The excise tax on comprehensive insurance plans which will encourage employers to reduce benefits, shift more costs to employees, promote proliferation of high-deductible plans, and lead to more self-rationing of care and medical bankruptcies, especially as more plans are subject to the tax every year due to the lack of adequate price controls. A Towers-Perrin survey in September found 30 percent of employers said they would reduce employment if their health costs go up, 86 percent said they'd pass the higher costs to their employees.

5. Major loopholes in the insurance reforms that promise bans on exclusion for pre-existing conditions, and no cancellations for sickness. The loopholes include:

· Provisions permitting insurers and companies to more than double charges to employees who fail "wellness" programs because they have diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol readings, or other medical conditions.

· Insurers are permitted to sell policies "across state lines", exempting patient protections passed in other states. Insurers will thus set up in the least regulated states in a race to the bottom threatening public protections won by consumers in various states.

· Insurers can charge four times more based on age plus more for certain conditions, and continue to use marketing techniques to cherry-pick healthier, less costly enrollees.

· Insurers may continue to rescind policies for "fraud or intentional misrepresentation" – the main pretext insurance companies now use to cancel coverage.

6. Minimal oversight on insurance denials of care; a report by the California Nurses Association/NNOC in September found that six of California's largest insurers have rejected more than one-fifth of all claims since 2002.

7. Inadequate limits on drug prices, especially after Senate rejection of an amendment, to protect a White House deal with pharmaceutical giants, allowing pharmacies and wholesalers to import lower-cost drugs.

8. New burdens for our public safety net. With a shortage of primary care physicians and a continuing fiscal crisis at the state and local level, public hospitals and clinics will be a dumping ground for those the private system doesn't want.

9. Reduced reproductive rights for women.

10. No single standard of care. Our multi-tiered system remains with access to care still determined by ability to pay. Nothing changes in basic structure of the system; healthcare remains a privilege, not a right.

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Giuliani Won't Run For Office in 2010, New Yorkers Breathe Sighs of Relief
Posted by Adam Bink, Open Left on December 22, 2009 at 5:10 AM.

Phillip Anderson reports:

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is expected to announce tomorrow that he's not running for governor, U.S. senator or any other office next year, the Daily News' David Saltonstall reports.

Instead, he's expected to declare that he's staying in the private sector for now and endorse fellow Republican Rick Lazio for governor.

As I wrote before, once he bowed out of the gubernatorial race, I never thought Rudy would engage in a year-long campaign to become (likely) 100th in seniority. Personally, I thought his rumor-mongering of running for weeks was aimed at (a) alleviating his own boredom (b) drumming up consulting business (c) done because he was upset at the diminishing number of daily Google News hits on his name (d) all of the above.

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Cop Pulls Gun During Snowball Fight ... Could it Have Been 'Roid Rage'?
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 21, 2009 at 5:15 PM.

OK, here's an item. There's a snowball fight. Broad daylight. Young people. One of them chucks a snowball at a Hummer, which happened to be driven by an off-duty cop. The cop gets out, and decides that pulling his gun is an appropriate response. To a snowball.

The DC police department denied the allegation at first, until Reason put up footage of the incident on Youtube (video to your right).

BBC:

At one point on the video - shown on YouTube - the man identifies himself as a "detective", but refuses to give his full name.

Then he proceeds to admit to pulling his gun.

"Yes I did because I got hit by snowballs," he tells angry residents who demand to know his badge number.

He challenges them to "throw another snowball".

A senior police official in Washington DC has said an off-duty officer who drew a gun at a snowball fight behaved in a "totally inappropriate" way.

Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy Lanier said video footage left "no doubt" the office drew his gun after his vehicle, a hummer, was pelted with snowballs.

The footage showed an angry crowd gathering, chanting: "You don't bring a gun to a snowball fight".

Ms Lanier said the officer had been placed on desk duty.

[...]

Is a statement, Ms Lanier said she had reviewed all the video footage of the incident taken by the public and it was "very obvious" the officer had drawn his police-issue gun "in response to the snowballs hitting his vehicle".

"I have no doubt about this, nor has the officer denied the accusations," she said.

The confrontation ended only when other policemen were despatched to the scene, and managed to calm everyone down.

She said he had not denied the allegations.

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Right-Wing World Net Daily Poll Solicits Gift Ideas For Obama: "Arrest Warrant;" "Ticket Back to Kenya"
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on December 21, 2009 at 4:15 PM.

The right-wing website World Net Daily (WND) has been the source of a variety of smears, particularly a campaign to question the legitimacy of President Obama's citizenship. While WND exists at the fringes of the conservative movement, top Republican legislators frequent the WND radio program and the Republican National Committee, among other GOP organizations, fund WND through e-mail list rentals. The website, which files regular articles about the role of Christianity during the holiday season, has a new Christmas-themed poll which asks, "What would you like to give Obama for Christmas?" Readers have responded by voting for: "a court ruling booting his ineligible self from office," "a one-way ticket back to Kenya," and "an arrest warrant":

Ridiculous "Study" Supposedly Finds Widespread Anti-Semitism on Progressive Websites
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on December 21, 2009 at 3:00 PM.

Given how ubiquitous unsubstantiated charges of anti-Semitism have become in the debate over the Middle East conflict, I’m tempted to ignore the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs’ recent “report” supposedly exposing the liberal blogosphere as a teaming hotbed of raw Jew-hatred.

It's easy to dismiss. It may dress itself as some sort of empirical research project, but the "study" is transparently devoid of any informational value, intellectually bankrupt and clearly the product of working backwards from a conclusion arrived at on ideological grounds.

But I won't ignore it, because the strategic decision to pin one's political opponents with charges of anti-Semitism only dilutes the power of that word. Then, like the boy who cried wolf, when real anti-Semitism rears its decidedly ugly head the word loses its all-important power to shame. I'm Jewish, and I don't fear sharp-elbowed criticism of Israeli policy on websites, so it's not in my interest to allow it to be conflated with true anti-Semitism, which is absolutely no joke.

The gist:

Progressive blogs and news sites in the United States are a new field where Jew-hatred, in both its classic and anti-Israeli forms, manifests itself. This incitement is hardly monitored, as many of the most popular blogs are only a few years old and it seems counterintuitive that such anti-Semitic expressions would be found in this political milieu. Monitoring the media for anti-Semitic and anti-Israeli bigotry has so far almost exclusively consisted of reading the major American newspapers, magazines, and journals and attending to the three major news networks, as well as radio broadcasts. However, the huge amount of content in the political blogosphere makes such monitoring - which is increasingly necessary - much more difficult to achieve with any degree of thoroughness.

And they're not going to begin applying any thoroughness here. Ultimately, what the researchers actually found will come as a surprise to few readers: people tend to be mean on the internet.

That is undeniably true. They're mean, cantankerous, undignified, unrestrained and hyperbolic (obviously I don't mean you kids, who are always perfectly dignified). And that's true whatever the subject. For example, in addition to politics, I fancy baseball, and when Red Sox and Yankees fans go at it on the fan websites, it's as fierce as a member of Hamas debating an Israeli settler.

Progressive bloggers (and blog readers, which I'll get to in a moment) can offer some uncomfortable criticism. If one wants to marginalize them as fringe anti-Semites, it's easy enough to find a few saying mean things about their opponents on this issue, as one could with any other. Like baseball. Then if one works, say, at the Institute for Global Jewish Affairs, one merely extrapolates some larger, darker message about modern liberalism from that typically unconstrained rhetoric. It becomes more proof -- dubious, but eagerly accepted in some quarters -- of the rise of "new anti-Semitism" on the left.

Having established a point of agreement -- people are mean on the internet -- consider the flimsiness of the evidence the authors marshal in support of their larger thesis, at least when their ominous editorial flourishes are stripped away.

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Revealed: Bush White House Raised Terror Alert Based On Con Man's Wild Al Jazeera "Decoding" Claims
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on December 21, 2009 at 12:00 PM.

From the Dept. of You-Can't-Make-This-Shit-Up, TPM Muckracker reports:

A self-styled Nevada codebreaker convinced the CIA he could decode secret terrorist targeting information sent through Al Jazeera broadcasts, prompting the Bush White House to raise the terror alert level to Orange (high) in December 2003, with Tom Ridge warning of "near-term attacks that could either rival or exceed what we experience on September 11," according to a new report in Playboy.

We all knew the DHS color-coded terror alerts were bogus and politically-motivated -- Ridge himself recently admitted as much -- but this? This is just ... loony tunes.

According to TPM, "the man who prompted the December 2003 Orange alert was Dennis Montgomery, who has since been embroiled in various lawsuits, including one for allegedly bouncing $1 million in checks during a Caesars Palace spree. His former lawyer calls him a 'habitual liar engaged in fraud.'"

He must have been a pretty good liar to have pulled this off (at least one would hope):

Working out of a Reno, Nevada, software firm called eTreppid Technologies, Montgomery took in officials in the CIA's Directorate of Science and Technology and convinced them that technology he invented -- but could not explain -- was pulling terrorist-produced "bar codes" from Al Jazeera television broadcasts. Using his proprietary technology, those bar codes could be translated into longitudes and latitudes and flight numbers. Terrorist leaders were using that data to direct their compatriots about the next target.

The original article quotes a "former CIA official" who was incredulous when he discovered the arrangement between the agency and Montgomery:

The federal government was acting on the Al Jazeera claims without even understanding how Montgomery found his coordinates. "I said, 'Give us the algorithms that allowed you to come up with this stuff.' They wouldn't even do that," says the first officer. "And I was screaming, 'You gave these people fucking money?'" ...

In a detail that should really piss off right-wingers, credit for calling out this bullshit artist goes to ... France.

A branch of the French intelligence services helped convince the Americans that the bar codes were fake. The CIA and the French commissioned a technology company to locate or re-create codes in the Al Jazeera transmission. They found definitively that what Montgomery claimed was there was not. Quietly, as far as the CIA was concerned, the case was closed. The agency turned the matter over to the counterintelligence side to see where it had gone wrong.

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Jailtime For Pregnant Soldiers? The Army Has Made Getting Pregnant a Punishable Offense
Posted by Amanda Terkel, Think Progress on December 21, 2009 at 11:00 AM.

Major General Anthony Cucolo, who is responsible for operations in northern Iraq, has issued a controversial new policy -- which went into effect on Nov. 4 -- that allows throwing women servicemembers on active duty in jail if they become pregnant:

Under the new policy, troops expecting a baby face court martial and a possible prison term -- and so do the men who made them pregnant.

And the rule applies to married couples at war together, who are expected to make sure their love lives do not interfere with duty.

Usual U.S. Army policy is to send pregnant soldiers home from combat zones within 14 days.

But Major General Anthony Cucolo, who runs U.S. operations in northern Iraq, issued the new orders because he said he was losing too many women with critical skills. He needed the threat of court martial and jail time as an extra deterrent, he said.

All troops under his command are covered by the extension to the military’s legal code -- the first time the U.S. Army has made pregnancy a punishable offence.

Military staff judge advocates for the Army have reviewed and approved the policy. The policy is legal under military law, but it raises "a mare's nest of legal, ethical and policy issues." For example, while the policy does say that a man who impregnates a woman will receive equal punishment, it may be difficult to identify him unless the woman reveals who he is.

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What Houston's Election of a Gay Mayor Tells Us About "Red State" Texas
Posted by Amanda Marcotte, Comment Is Free on December 21, 2009 at 10:00 AM.

Some local news stories go nationwide and cause a national alarm, and some simply go nationwide and then sink underwater unnoticed. But on the very rare occasion, a news story goes nationwide and is received with a double take and a "come again?".

That's what happened when Houston became the biggest city in the U.S. last week to elect an openly gay mayor, Annise Parker. Yes, that would be Houston, Texas – the largest city in a state that's assumed worldwide to be nothing but a hot bed of gun-toting, Bible-thumping rightwing reactionaries. Obviously, it's time for the rest of the world to start taking a more complex view, and start thinking of Texas as more than the home of George W Bush.

Parker's election inadvertently revealed the dirty little secret that native (and liberal) Texans like myself have known and been trying to publicize for a long time, which is that Texas is far from a conservative monolith. On the contrary; not only do all the major cities in Texas vote consistently for Democrats, but some rural areas on the Texas-Mexican border have been marginal to consistently "blue" for some time now.

This lines up with the larger national trends in America. Republicans only win elections by controlling white-dominated rural and suburban areas, and almost all other parts of the country lean towards the Democrats. And thus Republican power is being chipped away at slowly through pure demographics, as the nation as a whole grows more racially diverse and more urban. In many ways, Texas is ahead of the trend, since the state has not had a white majority since 2005.

Despite the cold, hard facts, however, Texas is still seen as the old conservative stereotype. In fact, the mainstream media went to some lengths to downplay the significance of Annise Parker's election. The initial AP story covering the victory dedicated a lot of ink to the low voter turnout, without noting that this is typical in an off-season run-off election. It failed to mention that both candidates in the run-off -- Annise Parker and Gene Locke -- are Democrats, or that Locke also brings liberal bona fides to the table as a former civil rights activist. Anyone reading Andrew Malcolm's account of the election in the LA Times, in which he calls Parker "conservative" and refuses to mention that the actual conservative candidate, the Republican, got knocked out of the running in the first election, would not get a true picture of Houston politics. So wed are many mainstream media writers to the "Texas is a conservative monolith" narrative that Democrats are being turned into Republicans in order to make the story work.

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It's Time For Americans to Get Comfortable With Black Santa
Posted by Melissa Harris-Lacewell, TheNation.com on December 21, 2009 at 9:00 AM.

On Sunday night I indulged two of my favorite obsessions, the Christmas holidays and sentimental Americana, by watching Oprah Winfrey's special "Christmas at the White House."

This televised tour of the decorated White House immediately evoked my holiday musings from last year. In the month after Obama's election I felt like a kid at Christmas, with visions of a black president dancing in my head.

I have always been an over-the-top lover of all things Christmas: cookies, stockings, carols, lights, twinkly trees, sappy TV movies, egg nog, and wrapping paper. I was raised in a secular, humanist household. I came to Christianity as an adolescent. This means Jesus is a second string character in my holiday memories. It is Santa Claus who occupied the central iconic position of Christmas during my childhood.

And for me Santa Claus always was, is now, and always will be a black man.

Part of my investment in Santa's blackness derives from my personal biography. My father is a brown-skinned man who smokes a pipe and has had a full beard of gray hair since my infancy. Black Santa looks like my dad, so I am drawn to him. But my father is nothing like a jolly elf. Professor Harris is a stern disciplinarian and a politically engaged intellectual. I can't imagine anyone less likely to hang out with toy-building magical creatures while wearing a fur-trimmed red suit.

My attachment to black Santa is rooted in a fierce racial consciousness I have nurtured since childhood. In my adulthood I have revised much of my unthinking, black nationalist assumptions. My feminist commitments, interracial political work, and emerging cosmopolitan sensibilities make me somewhat less likely to exercise an automatic preferential option for blackness. This journey of political consciousness is also reflected in my holiday choices.

In college I added Kwanzaa celebrations to my holiday calendar. It was a way of countering Christmas commercialism and asserting my connections to black culture. Later I learned the brutal, misogynist history of Kwanzaa's founder, Malauna Karenga, and I became less enthusiastic about the holiday. I have experienced similar shifts in racial consciousness as a researcher, writer, political advocate, and Christmas enthusiast.

But through it all my insistence on and attachment to black Santa has never wavered.

As a kid, black Santa represented a benevolent spirit of goodness and kindness directed toward African American children. Black Santa cared about little girls who look like me. I did not need blue eyes or blond ringlet curls for black Santa to find me adorable. Black Santa did not put a blond baby doll under my tree. He knew that I needed to rock, hold and nurture a baby doll with brown skin and kinky hair. Black Santa expected Nat King Cole to be playing on the stereo when he arrived on Christmas Eve.

The election of Barack Obama has changed my thinking about black Santa a bit. I am now convinced that black Santa is equally important for white Americans. Barack Obama is now the President of the United States. He is a deeply imperfect president. Racism still exists during his presidency and will persist when it is over. Obama cannot cure racial inequality. But he, Michelle, and the girls have altered the face of the first family.

Symbols matter. They help shape our understanding of national culture and identity. A president is not a country, but he embodies the national identity. Santa is the secular, commercial symbol of a religious holiday, but he nonetheless embodies the popular imagination of the holiday.

It is time for Americans to get comfortable with black Santa.

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As Military Launches New Attack In Afghanistan, U.S. Ambassador Suggests Extended U.S. Occupation
Posted by , Democracy Now! on December 21, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

In Afghanistan, the U.S. has launched a major combat operation in the Uzbeen Valley. Five U.S. Special Forces have reportedly been wounded in the early stages of the attack. The new assault comes as the U.S. has begun sending the first wave of the 30,000 additional troops ordered by President Obama earlier this month. On Thursday, the first Marine battalion deployed under the escalation left Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. Battalion member Lance Corporal Joseph Jones was asked about his mission.

Lance Corporal Joseph Jones: "This is what we do: kick down doors, and we look for people and shoot at people. This is what we do. This is what I signed up to do. I don't know about everyone else."