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Honduras Crisis Forces Obama to Focus on Latin America
Posted by Tom Hayden, The Nation on July 1, 2009 at 7:13 AM.

The military coup against Honduran president Manuel Zelaya puts pressure on President Obama to break sharply with past American policies or risk massive defections in what remains of Latin America’s goodwill.

Yesterday President Obama declared the coup was “not legal” and affirmed the Zelaya government’s legitimacy, statements that were considered “very good” by Venezuelan diplomats interviewed by The Nation.

The Obama position is complicated by the history of US training of the Honduras armed forces, past involvement with shadowy death squads, and concern over Zelaya’s alliance with the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas. In the background are memories of US complicity in the attempted coup against Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez in 2002.

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Fox News Urges Viewers to Keep on Tea Baggin' on July 4th (VIDEO)
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on June 30, 2009 at 1:44 PM.

This morning on Fox News, Glenn Beck joined the Fox and Friends hosts to promote new anti-Obama, anti-tax tea party protests on July 4. Steve Doocy introduced the segment, “This weekend, of course the 4th of July, Americans are gearing up for a second round of tea parties to protest massive government spending.”

Reprising their role in orchestrating the first tea parties, the lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks are again helping to organize the July 4 protests. FreedomWorks is working alongside other right-wing groups on a new website to publicize the events, and Americans for Prosperity is hosting several rallies on the 4th, including one with Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX).

But while these lobbyist-run groups played a pivotal role in financing the logistics and coordination of the tea parties, Fox News was certainly the megaphone for the movement. Just as Fox News became a full-fledged sponsor of the April protests, running back-to-back segments and broadcasting live from protests across the country, the network is attempting to motivate another round of radical, anti-Obama protests on July 4th. In recent weeks and this morning, Fox News has run several segments, including one featuring disgraced Gov. Mark Sanford (R-SC), to promote tea parties. Watch it:

Already, Fox News contributor and former News Corp. lobbyist Angela McGlowan is scheduled to appear at the Memphis tea party later this week.

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Katie Couric, Tavis Smiley, Bob Woodward, Nicholas Kristof, and I Hit YouTube with Pointers for Citizen Journalists
Posted by Arianna Huffington, Huffington Post on June 30, 2009 at 8:00 AM.

How would you like to get some pointers from Katie Couric and Tavis Smiley on how to conduct a good interview, from Bob Woodward on doing in-depth investigative journalism in the digital age, from Mike Isikoff on digging deeper to break news, and from Nicholas Kristof on how to cover a global humanitarian crisis and not get shot?

This expert input is now just a click away, thanks to a cool new project being launched today by YouTube. The YouTube Reporters' Center aims to be a one-stop-shop for people looking to learn how to report on what's going on around them, offering over two dozen videos -- ranging from how to capture breaking news on your cell phone to the ins and outs of journalistic ethics.

"We want to deepen the conversation about the importance of citizen reporting in today's media landscape," Steve Grove, the head of news and politics at YouTube, told me. "We want to help media organizations begin to leverage the tremendous power of citizen journalists to contribute to their coverage, and to give citizen reporters new opportunities to improve their work and get it seen by more people. The YouTube Reporters' Center is a great place to get started."

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US Military Escalation Leads to Record Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan
Posted by ZP Heller, Brave New Foundation on June 29, 2009 at 3:41 PM.

According to the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan and a newly released UN report, there were 800 civilian casualties between January and May 2009. Armed clashes between insurgents, the US military, and the ISAF are up 24 percent this year, and have displaced tens of thousands more people. With over 1,000 recorded incidents of violence in May alone, Afghanistan is experiencing the worst security since the war began. And to make matters worse, the UN reported concluded, “The next period will likely experience an increase in the level of violence compared with the same period last year, including complex suicide attacks, intimidation and assassinations carried out by insurgents.” That period, unfortunately, coincides with the Afghan presidential and provincial council elections slated for August.

The deadly consequences of militarizing the political crisis in Afghanistan may seem logical, but they're no less disturbing as we see staggering numbers of civilian casualties from this war. Complicating matters is the fact that insurgents have been targeting NGOs and aid workers. In the past six months, there were over 60 security incidents involving NGOs, with many aid workers reported killed or kidnapped. Such violence undercuts the chances of already underfunded humanitarian efforts, and yet the Pentagon has responded with more troops and airstrikes, creating more violence, more casualties, more anti-American sentiment, and the need for even more aid.

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The Washington Post’s Dana Milbank Calls Nico Pitney a 'Dick' After Heated Debate on CNN
Posted by Amanda Terkel on June 29, 2009 at 7:39 AM.

Last week, the Huffington Post’s Nico Pitney (who is also a former member of ThinkProgress) found himself in the center of controversy after President Obama called on him at a press conference. One of the harshest pieces came from the Washington Post’s Dana Milbank, who called Pitney a “planted questioner.” Today the two faced off on Howie Kurtz’s “Reliable Sources” segment on CNN. Pitney called some of Milbank’s past reporting “pathetic,” and Milbank claimed that Nico had “worked in collusion with an administration.”

The discussion was evidently so heated that Milbank called him a “dick” at the end of the segment, as Pitney writes on Huffington Post:

The only thing that surprised me was when Dana turned to me after our initial sparring and called me a “dick” in a whispered tone (the specific phrase was, I believe, “You’re such a dick”). Howie Kurtz wrote on Twitter that he didn’t hear it, which is understandable — he was doing the lead-in for the next part of the segment on the ABC White House special. But it happened (I urge Howie to watch the video of the panel during the ABC intro) and it was frankly pretty odd.

How is Twitter Dramatically Altering the Journalistic Landscape?
Posted by Laura Flanders, GRITtv on June 27, 2009 at 8:27 AM.

Protests surrounding elections in Moldova and, more recently, Iran have been singled out for their use of social networking tools, particularly twitter. Many have said that cell phones and text messaging played a crucial role in Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004/2005. But are these claims justified? And how is twitter changing the role that journalists play in covering international events such as the street protests in Iran? Can the new technology fill the void? John MacArthur of Harper's, media technologist Deanna Zandt, independent filmmaker and educator Simin Farkondeh, and Robert Huesca, a professor of communications at Trinity University, on the twitter revolutions and the future of journalism.

Talking to Ahmadinejad
Posted by Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation on June 26, 2009 at 6:28 AM.

President Obama has gone about as far as he should go in condemning the government of Iran for its crackdown and repression of a popular movement for change in Iran. Since the election on June 12, his rhetoric has become harsher by the day. Yesterday, he said:

The United States and the international community have been appalled and outraged by the threats, the beatings, and imprisonments of the last few days. I strongly condemn these unjust actions.

Don't we all! But it's one thing for a Nation columnist to call the actions by the current Iranian regime disgusting and despicable, as I've done many times, and it's another thing for the president of the United States to do it. Because in the next few months, Obama may very well have to send emissaries to sit down and talk to that very regime. Now that he's condemned the repression, let's hope Obama goes back to his original plan of trying to get Iran to the table.

The cold, hard reality of Iran is that the current regime, led by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Leader, and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the president is likely to remain in power. Yes, the legitimacy of their government has been stripped away. Yes, the regime has all but eliminated the "republic" part of "Islamic Republic," relying now on sheer military power to rule. Yes, its crackdown on dissidents has been ugly and brutal.

But if Khamenei and Ahmadinejad want to talk to the United States, perhaps as soon as this fall, America's answer had better be: Yes.

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Be in a TV Ad... and Call Senate Democrats Out on Health Care Reform
Posted by Adam Green, Open Left on June 25, 2009 at 7:33 AM.

PCCC co-founder Stephanie Taylor, over at Daily Kos: 

Last Friday, over coffee, Adam Green and I started talking about health care reform. And once we started talking, we couldn't stop. We couldn't believe that so many Democratic senators have the audacity to oppose the public health insurance option.

Polls show that 76% of Americans support the public option. But many of the same health and insurance interests that oppose the public option have given $80 million to sitting Democratic senators. $80. Million. Dollars.

It's easy to feel powerless on big issues like this. But we decided to do something about it. We made a TV ad calling them out. And now we're inviting you (and your friends) to put your name in the ad before we air it in Washington DC!

Click WeWantThePublicOption.com to see the ad -- and add your name.

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee will air this ad on CNN, MSNBC, The Daily Show, and other places that these senators and their staffers will be sure to notice. We'll continually rotate new names in. Please help this idea grow by recommending this post and emailing it on to anyone you think would like to add their name.

Together, we'll make the Senate listen to the vast majority of Americans who say: "We want the public option!"

Join the fun...WeWantThePublicOption.com

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Bankrupt GM Begins Slashing Jobs
Posted by Harry Hanbury, American News Project on June 24, 2009 at 9:33 AM.

The General Motors flameout has been a disaster for blue collar Americans working on assembly lines. Out of 123,000 GM workers left in North America, 20,000 are scheduled to lose their jobs.

Meanwhile, the Auto Task Force appointed by President Obama to oversee the process is led by Wall Street financiers focused on a single goal — turning a profit and getting stock prices to rise. It's an approach that has some people worried.

The Hidden Effects of "Don't Ask Don’t Tell"
Posted by Abe Forman-Greenwald, Brave New Foundation on June 23, 2009 at 3:00 PM.

When President Obama recently chose Sonia Sotomayor as his Supreme Court nominee, he singled out her "practical understanding of how the law works in the everyday lives of the American people." It is now time for Obama to apply that standard to the families of gays and lesbians who choose to serve in the United States military. A practical understanding of the effects of "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell" on the partners of gay service members would quickly reveal its failures.

As a producer of the documentary series In Their Boots, I have been privileged to meet a number of recent veterans and their families.  These vets face many complex issues to which there are no easy solutions. From a lack of mental health resources to the struggles of integrating back into civilian society, there are difficult policy choices that must be made in order to best serve our nation’s veterans and their families. However, one issue facing military families has a clear and obvious solution. By repealing "Don’t Ask Don’t Tell," our government could allow gay service members to communicate with their loved ones openly while on deployment, and it would save millions of dollars currently wasted by discharging essential military personnel during wartime. How’s that for a 2 for 1 deal?

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GRITtv: Will Obama Stand Up to Wall Street?
Posted by Laura Flanders, GRITtv on June 23, 2009 at 7:23 AM.

Nomi Prins, author of It Takes a Pillage: Behind the Bailouts, Bonuses, and Backroom Deals from Washington to Wall Street, discusses why giving more power to the Federal Reserve is pure folly. It's an institution, she says, that deserves to be split apart.

Do Americans Have a Right to Healthcare?
Posted by Staff, The Nation on June 22, 2009 at 3:19 PM.

In part one of a three-part series, The Nation's Washington editor Chris Hayes debates Reihan Salam of The National Review over healthcare. Is it a universal human right, as Hayes says, or a responsibility, as Salam says? What's the best system for implementing healthcare in the United States? Will it save money or cost money? Watch and decide.

Comedian John Hodgman Declares Obama the "First Nerd President"
Posted by ZP Heller, AlterNet on June 22, 2009 at 7:53 AM.

At Friday night's 2009 Radio and TV Correspondents' Dinner, comedian John Hodgman declared President Obama the first nerd President.  Hodgman got into the war between jocks and nerds, tackled the tougher differences dividing nerds and geeks, and then questioned the President on comic book characters.  Enjoy! 

Can Pelosi Save American Health Care Reform from the Republican Health Care Horror Show?
Posted by Howie Klein, Down With Tyranny! on June 20, 2009 at 11:22 AM.

We may not always agree with Nancy Pelosi's strategies and tactics. Taking Bush's and Cheney's impeachment off the table drove a lot of people to hate her, no matter how remote a chance there was that that could have succeeded-- or even proceeded without shutting down the basic functioning of Congress and even a chance of getting any progressive legislation passed. And passing progressive legislation is the reason we were all so excited when Pelosi was sworn in as Speaker. Her commitment to real health care reform is almost the only thing standing between the American people's rapidly diminishing chance of getting any genuine reform and the salivating Insurance Industry CEOs who may well have brought off enough Max Baucuses and Blanche Lincolns and Arlen Specters, Joe Liebermen, Paul Ryans, Chuck Grassleys and Ben Nelsons to turn reform into a massive bailout for the Insurance companies. Yes, it's Nancy Pelosi-- not Barack Obama, who could go a long way towards ending this mess by saying "I won't be signing any health care bill unless it includes either single payer or a robust public option"-- who is keeping us out of the clutches of the Insurance Industry predators.

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"Daily Show" Mocks Republicans for Comparing Themselves to Iranian Protestors
Posted by Alex Leo, Huffington Post on June 19, 2009 at 6:37 AM.

Jon Stewart devoted two segments last night to Republican claims that their plight is akin to that of Iranians protesting a rigged election.

Earlier this week Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.) tweeted:

"Iranian twitter activity similar to what we did in House last year when Republicans were shut down in the House."

John Culberson (R-Tex.) did the same, referencing an appropriations bill debate:

"Oppressed minorities includeHouseRepubs: We are using social media to expose repression such as last night's D clampdown shutting off amends"

And David Dreier (R-Calif.) (who apparently doesn't know that Twitter is the place to make inappropriate analogies) said out loud:

"I wonder if there isn't more freedom on the streets of Tehran right now than we are seeing here."

Ah yes, demonstrations that have left dozens dead fighting against an oppressive regime are very much like your fight against Democrats ending a debate on spending at 9p.

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