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AlterNet Video

GOP Senator Lindsey Graham Breaks Ranks, Admits "The Green Economy Is Coming"
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on November 5, 2009 at 11:15 AM.

Finally, a little help from Republicans on the climate bill. GOP Senator Lindsey Graham said yesterday, "We will be working closely with the White House over the course of the next weeks with a few to try to pull together what ultimately could be presented to Sen. Reid and the leadership as a piece of legislation that we hope could get the 60 votes necessary to pass or more, and we would hope it would be more."

It seems not everyone want to be a member of the Party of No Show. Watch the rest.

This video is courtesy of Think Progress.

Iowa Wingnut Steve King Lauds Lobbyists as American Heros for Bussing in Health Reform Protesters
Posted by Lee Fang, Think Progress on November 4, 2009 at 2:46 PM.

On Thursday, the lobbyist-run groups Americans for Prosperity and FreedomWorks — which were instrumental in orchestrating dozens of anti-Obama tea parties and town hall disruptions — are planning an anti-health reform rally at the steps of the Capitol. Republican leadership, like Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), have endorsed the rally. But two of the most rabidly right-wing members of Congress, Rep. Steve King (R-IA) and Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-MN) are amongst the most aggressive promoters of the rally, with the help of talk radio and Fox News.

FreedomWorks has launched a website called “DontKillGrandma.com” listing recommended tactics for activists to engage in while protesting health reform. For the Thursday rally, FreedomWorks says activists should engage in a “simultaneous chant of ‘Kill the Bill.’” FreedomWorks is funded by corporate money and is led by Dick Armey, the former Republican Majority Leader and until recently lobbyist from DLA Piper.

Americans for Prosperity (AFP) is busing people to the rally. AFP is led by astroturf lobbyist Tim Phillips and is bankrolled by gas and oil baron David Koch, the world’s 9th richest person and the financier of dozens of conservative think-tanks, publications, and politicians. Like they did for the April tea parties, AFP has commissioned at least 10 buses from Maryland, New Jersey, and North Carolina to bring protesters — free of charge — to DC for the rally.

During a speech last night, King thanked the lobbyists for bringing in buses from “state after state after state.”

[Ed: Watch it in the window to your right.]

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GOP Loon Goes Off the Rails: Health Reform Greater Threat than Terrorism
Posted by Faiz Shakir, Think Progress on November 2, 2009 at 11:12 AM.

Few Republican congressional members have served as a greater fount for hyperbolic and uninformed ranting about health care reform as has Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC). As ThinkProgress previously documented, Foxx has claimed Democratic reforms would mean seniors are “put to death by their government,” that health reform is a “distraction,” and that “there are no Americans who don’t have health care.” She was at it again today on the House floor, arguing that health reform is a greater threat to our country than “any terrorist right now in any country”:

Everywhere I go in my district, people tell me they are frightened. … I share that fear, and I believe they should be fearful. And I believe the greatest fear that we all should have to our freedom comes from this room — this very room — and what may happen later this week in terms of a tax increase bill masquerading as a health care bill. I believe we have more to fear from the potential of that bill passing than we do from any terrorist right now in any country.

Bill Moyers: We Can't Afford to Escalate the War in Afghanistan
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on November 1, 2009 at 7:24 PM.

Let's not let our governing class make this long and dirty war "our war."

Hanging with the Tea Baggers: What Exactly Do They Mean by 'Judgement Day'?
Posted by Brad Friedman, Brad Blog on October 31, 2009 at 10:22 AM.

So we went out to Griffith Park out here in L.A. to check out the kick-off day for the new "Tea Party Express II" national tour. Thought we might meet some interesting people and file a quick video report. Met a lot of interesting people, and so ended up making a short film of sorts. Enjoy. Spread the word. Go tell the story ("both sides")...

Honduras's 'Bloodless Coup': What You're Not Seeing on TV
Posted by Avi Lewis, Al Jazeera English on October 27, 2009 at 7:43 AM.

This video is a trailer for the Fault Lines' coverage of the coup in Honduras. Watch Part One and Part Two of the full version of Fault Lines: 100 Days of Resistance.

I arrived in Honduras one week after ousted president Manuel Zelaya returned to begin his long spell of internal exile in the Brazilian embassy. With my crew from Fault Lines on Al Jazeera English TV, I went straight from the airport to a funeral. A week later, on our last night of filming, we attended another funeral. The first was for a 24-year-old woman, the second for a 50-year-old schoolteacher, and both active in the resistance to the coup. According to their families, both were killed for it.

The coup regime in Honduras is winning. Tepid pressure from the Obama administration is making it easy for the de facto government to run out the clock until the highly compromised elections in just five weeks. Whether or not international observers bless that vote, a new government will take power in Honduras and declare the stain of the coup removed, democracy restored. Absent the kind of meaningful sanctions Washington has so far been unwilling to impose, the status quo will triumph: the backers of the coup will go unpunished.

Unsurprisingly, the U.S. mainstream media is not reporting the story of what is really going on in Honduras. The de facto government and its backers invested $400,000 (that we know of) in bipartisan lobbying, and succeeded in implanting a deeply distorted narrative of events -- a nouveau cold war story starring Hugo Chávez as puppet master and Zelaya as marionette. Meanwhile, the voice of the social movement struggling to reform its country's constitution in the second poorest nation in the hemisphere has been all but ignored.

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Sen. Bernie Sanders: The Fight for Better Health Care
Posted by Sen. Bernie Sanders on October 23, 2009 at 7:00 PM.

One of the reasons that I am a strong proponent of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all proposal is that it is much less complicated than what we are going to end up with in Congress. A single-payer approach saves hundreds of billions of dollars a year because you don’t end up with thousands of different health insurance programs appealing to all different kinds of people and costing a fortune to administer. I am going to continue the fight for single-payer. I am cautiously optimistic that we may end up with legislation that will allow states to go forward with single-payer if they want to.

Senator Sanders Unfiltered is a weekly web program produced by Brave New Films.

Stay up-to-date with "Unfiltered" on Facebook. Follow Bernie on Twitter.

President Obama's Heroes: A Bunch of People Who Would Not Approve of War in Afghanistan
Posted by ZP Heller on October 23, 2009 at 12:33 PM.

On September 8, 2009, a school girl named Lilly asked President Obama who he'd have lunch with if he could pick anyone alive or dead. The president chose Gandhi, explaining that Gandhi's nonviolence inspired Martin Luther King, Jr. and Cesar Chavez in the United States.

All three of these men--Gandhi, MLK and Chavez--were committed to nonviolence and opposed war as a foreign policy tool. Similar to his invocations of Jesus and the Sermon on the Mount during the campaign, the president continues to cite "inspiration" from luminaries of nonviolence, only to reject their philosophies when it comes time to govern.

Learn more about the war in Afghanistan at http://rethinkafghanistan.com.

Mr. President, your heroes are watching you.

Alan Grayson Schools GA Wing-Nut Paul Broun on Constitution
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on October 23, 2009 at 11:50 AM.

Two of the House's most vocal members spar over the GOP's ongoing jihad against ACORN. Hat-tip to Jill C. at Brilliant at Breakfast, who adds: "It's frightening that Republicans who know absolutely nothing about the Constitution are allowed to create law in this country."

Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) Humbles Hudson Institute Dilettante Over Health Care Bankruptcies
Posted by AlterNet Staff, AlterNet on October 22, 2009 at 12:12 PM.

Franken drove home the point that medical bankruptcies are unheard of in countries with viable heath care systems. 

Heather Graham Stars as 'The Public Option' in Funny MoveOn Video
Posted by Jan Frel, AlterNet on October 21, 2009 at 11:23 AM.

Heather Graham stars as the Public Option in this funny ad, showing how she'll force the lazy, bloated private insurance companies to get back in the game and compete. After all, competition is as American as apple pie. Featuring actor Peter Coyote as the narrator-- Check out more from MoveOn.org

Pass it on to your friends!

Glenn Beck Sees a Communist Under Every Rock
Posted by Free Press on October 15, 2009 at 9:28 PM.

FOX News' Glenn Beck makes it seem like everyone and everything is a communist, socialist or fascist. What happens when people go looking for them?  Free Press went to find out.

Flashback: Al Franken's Supply-Side Jesus
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on October 9, 2009 at 11:30 AM.

Al Franken has gone out of his way to appear staid and ... "senatorial" since his campaign to represent Minnesota in the upper house of the U.S. Congress, but we remember the days when Al Franken used his humor to make a point. In the video window to your right is an oldie -- Al Franken's animated comic strip, "Gospel of Supply-Side Jesus." Enjoy!

Pelosi to GOP: Thanks But I'm In My Place
Posted by Staff, AlterNet on October 8, 2009 at 11:18 AM.

In a statement (falsely) criticizing Nancy Pelosi for not supporting an escalation of the conflict in Afghanistan, the NRCC offered the hope that General McChrystal, the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, would "put [Pelosi] in her place." In the video to your right, Pelosi responds to a reporter's question on the matter.

The Human Cost of War: The Images the Corporate Media Doesn't Want You to See
Posted by Liliana Segura, AlterNet on October 5, 2009 at 2:30 PM.

This past weekend, AlterNet had the privilege of hosting a screening of Robert Greenwald's important new documentary, Rethink Afghanistan, in New York City. It was just one of several screenings to kick off an impressive nationwide campaign by Brave New Films to spread a crucial message about the war in Afghanistan: This is not the "good war" as we have been told by so many for so long. This is a losing battle, and it is costing us dearly: in billions of dollars, in thousands of lives, and in the eyes of the rest of the world.

And of course, it is costing the people of Afghanistan more than anyone. Perhaps one of the most jolting things about watching the film is seeing image after terrible image of civilian suffering: desperate families mired in refugee camps, pain-stricken schoolgirls attacked with acid by the resurgent Taliban, countless injured men, women and children who are the "collateral damage" from errant U.S. bomb strikes. It is a punch-to-the-gut reminder of just how sanitized this war -- which Obama has always called the "right front" of the so-called war on terror -- has been.

Of course, if you're the New York Times, these very images, which have the power to awaken people to the human cost of war, are actually proof of a slanted agenda on the part of the filmmaker. "At an almost breathless pace that leaves little room for reflection, Mr. Greenwald presents a flurry of sights, voices and figures, many of them compelling but all reflecting his point of view," writes NYT film reviewer Andy Webster in a dismissive 250-word review today.

"Mr. Greenwald's documentary has no time to approach an opposing view with sympathy or understanding for its concerns," he concludes.

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