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Published by Roger Snyder
Mar
8
[Via Boing Boing]
Rep. Nancy Elliott (R-NH), in the video embedded above, explains why she opposes marriage between partners of the same sex. Snip:
I started thinking, and We’re talking about taking the penis of one man and putting it in the rectum of another man, and wiggling it around in excrement, and you have to think…. hmmm, not sure, would I allow that to happen to me?
All of us: that could happen to you! Would you let that happen to you? Is that normal?
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Mar
5
By Matthew Rothschild, March 3, 2010, The Progressive
When Barack Obama gave his “this is it” speech on health care reform on March 3, he once again swerved out of his way to hit advocates of a single-payer system.
He said: “On one end of the spectrum, there are some who have suggested scrapping our system of private insurance and replacing it with government-run health care. Though many other countries have such a system, in America it would be neither practical nor realistic.”
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Mar
4
[From Truthdig]
By Chris Hedges, Mar 1, 2010
We owe Ralph Nader and Cynthia McKinney an apology. They were right about Barack Obama. They were right about the corporate state. They had the courage of their convictions and they stood fast despite wholesale defections and ridicule by liberals and progressives.
Obama lies as cravenly, if not as crudely, as George W. Bush. He promised us that the transfer of $12.8 trillion in taxpayer money to Wall Street would open up credit and lending to the average consumer. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC), however, admitted last week that banks have reduced lending at the sharpest pace since 1942. As a senator, Obama promised he would filibuster amendments to the FISA Reform Act that retroactively made legal the wiretapping and monitoring of millions of American citizens without warrant; instead he supported passage of the loathsome legislation. He told us he would withdraw American troops from Iraq, close the detention facility at Guantánamo, end torture, restore civil liberties such as habeas corpus and create new jobs. None of this has happened.
He is shoving a health care bill down our throats that would give hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to the private health insurance industry in the form of subsidies, and force millions of uninsured Americans to buy insurers’ defective products. These policies would come with ever-rising co-pays, deductibles and premiums and see most of the seriously ill left bankrupt and unable to afford medical care. Obama did nothing to halt the collapse of the Copenhagen climate conference, after promising meaningful environmental reform, and has left us at the mercy of corporations such as ExxonMobil. He empowers Israel’s brutal apartheid state. He has expanded the war in Afghanistan and Pakistan, where hundreds of civilians, including entire families, have been slaughtered by sophisticated weapons systems such as the Hellfire missile, which sucks the air out of victims’ lungs. And he is delivering war and death to Yemen, Somalia and perhaps Iran.
The illegal wars and occupations, the largest transference of wealth upward in American history and the egregious assault on civil liberties, all begun under George W. Bush, raise only a flicker of tepid protest from liberals when propagated by the Democrats. Liberals, unlike the right wing, are emotionally disabled. They appear not to feel. The tea-party protesters, the myopic supporters of Sarah Palin, the veterans signing up for Oath Keepers and the myriad of armed patriot groups have swept into their ranks legions of disenfranchised workers, angry libertarians, John Birchers and many who, until now, were never politically active. They articulate a legitimate rage. Yet liberals continue to speak in the bloodless language of issues and policies, and leave emotion and anger to the protofascists. Take a look at the 3,000-word suicide note left by Joe Stack, who flew his Piper Cherokee last month into an IRS office in Austin, Texas, murdering an IRS worker and injuring dozens. He was not alone in his rage.
“Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours?” Stack wrote. “Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies. Yet, the political ‘representatives’ (thieves, liars, and self-serving scumbags is far more accurate) have endless time to sit around for year after year and debate the state of the ‘terrible health care problem’. It’s clear they see no crisis as long as the dead people don’t get in the way of their corporate profits rolling in.”
The timidity of the left exposes its cowardice, lack of a moral compass and mounting political impotence. The left stands for nothing. The damage Obama and the Democrats have done is immense. But the damage liberals do the longer they beg Obama and the Democrats for a few scraps is worse. It is time to walk out on the Democrats. It is time to back alternative third-party candidates and grass-roots movements, no matter how marginal such support may be. If we do not take a stand soon we must prepare for the rise of a frightening protofascist movement, one that is already gaining huge ground among the permanently unemployed, a frightened middle class and frustrated low-wage workers. We are, even more than Glenn Beck or tea-party protesters, responsible for the gusts fanning the flames of right-wing revolt because we have failed to articulate a credible alternative.
A shift to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader, along with genuine grass-roots movements, will not be a quick fix. It will require years in the wilderness. We will again be told by the Democrats that the least-worse candidate they select for office is better than the Republican troll trotted out as an alternative. We will be bombarded with slick commercials about hope and change and spoken to in a cloying feel-your-pain language. We will be made afraid. But if we again acquiesce we will be reduced to sad and pathetic footnotes in our accelerating transformation from a democracy to a totalitarian corporate state. Isolation and ridicule—ask Nader or McKinney—is the cost of defying power, speaking truth and building movements. Anger at injustice, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the political expression of love. And it is vital that this anger become our own. We have historical precedents to fall back upon.
“Here in the United States, at the beginning of the twentieth century, before there was a Soviet Union to spoil it, you see, socialism had a good name,” the late historian and activist Howard Zinn said in a lecture a year ago at Binghamton University. “Millions of people in the United States read socialist newspapers. They elected socialist members of Congress and socialist members of state legislatures. You know, there were like fourteen socialist chapters in Oklahoma. Really. I mean, you know, socialism—who stood for socialism? Eugene Debs, Helen Keller, Emma Goldman, Clarence Darrow, Jack London, Upton Sinclair. Yeah, socialism had a good name. It needs to be restored.”
Social change does not come through voting. It is delivered through activism, organizing and mobilization that empower groups to confront the hegemony of the corporate state and the power elite. The longer socialism is identified with the corporatist policies of the Democratic Party, the longer we allow the right wing to tag Obama as a socialist, the more absurd and ineffectual we become. The right-wing mantra of “Obama the socialist,” repeated a few days ago to a room full of Georgia Republicans, by Newt Gingrich, the former U.S. speaker of the House, is discrediting socialism itself. Gingrich, who looks set to run for president, called Obama the “most radical president” the country had seen in decades. “By any standard of government control of the economy, he is a socialist,” Gingrich said. If only the critique were true.
The hypocrisy and ineptitude of the Democrats become, in the eyes of the wider public, the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the liberal class. We can continue to tie our own hands and bind our own feet or we can break free, endure the inevitable opprobrium, and fight back. This means refusing to support the Democrats. It means undertaking the laborious work of building a viable socialist movement. It is the only alternative left to save our embattled open society. We can begin by sending a message to the Green Party, McKinney and Nader. Let them know they are no longer alone.
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Mar
4
[From BBC News]
Doctors in the Iraqi city of Fallujah are reporting a high level of birth defects, with some blaming weapons used by the US after the Iraq invasion.
The city witnessed fierce fighting in 2004 as US forces carried out a major offensive against insurgents.
Now, the level of heart defects among newborn babies is said to be 13 times higher than in Europe.
The US military says it is not aware of any official reports showing an increase in birth defects in the area.
BBC world affairs editor John Simpson visited a new, US-funded hospital in Fallujah where paediatrician Samira al-Ani told him that she was seeing as many as two or three cases a day, mainly cardiac defects.
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40 miles (64km) west of the capital Baghdad
Major city in the predominantly Sunni province of Anbar, a hotbed of insurgency following US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003
Burned corpses of four ambushed US contractors dragged through the streets of the city in March 2004
Scene of major US-led offensive against insurgents in November 2004, when thousands of marines stormed the city
US military’s use of white phosphorus munitions in that offensive widely condemned
Situation in Anbar as a whole calmer since 2006, when tribal "Awakening Councils" turned against al-Qaeda in Iraq
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Our correspondent also saw children in the city who were suffering from paralysis or brain damage – and a photograph of one baby who was born with three heads.
He adds that he heard many times that officials in Fallujah had warned women that they should not have children.
Doctors and parents believe the problem is the highly sophisticated weapons the US troops used in Fallujah six years ago.
British-based Iraqi researcher Malik Hamdan told the BBC’s World Today programme that doctors in Fallujah were witnessing a "massive unprecedented number" of heart defects, and an increase in the number of nervous system defects.
She said that one doctor in the city had compared data about birth defects from before 2003 – when she saw about one case every two months – with the situation now, when, she saw cases every day.
Ms Hamdan said that based on data from January this year, the rate of congenital heart defects was 95 per 1,000 births – 13 times the rate found in Europe.
"I’ve seen footage of babies born with an eye in the middle of the forehead, the nose on the forehead," she added.
A spokesman for the US military, Michael Kilpatrick, said it always took public health concerns "very seriously".
"No studies to date have indicated environmental issues resulting in specific health issues," he said.
"Unexploded ordinance, including improvised explosive devises, are a recognised hazard," he added.
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Feb
26
From Kibbles & Bytes from Small Dogs Electronics
By Don Mayer
You all probably know that I am not a fan of nuclear energy as a path for energy independence, but even if I was put in charge of Vermont’s only nuclear plant, I could not have done a better job of undermining their chances for a license renewal than they did on their own.
First it was a failed cooling tower, then a barely competitive power purchase offer but the straw that really broke the camel’s back was the leaking tritium that had found its way into the ground water. After testing, it was revealed that despite their testimony that there were not underground pipes carrying radioactive water, there were many, and they were leaking.
The Vermont Senate, after several hours of debate, in a non-partisan vote, defeated the request for a 20-year license renewal by a vote of 26-4. While this was a vote about a specific antique leaking nuclear power plant, it reflects a sentiment in our state that we should rely upon sustainable renewable energy sources, energy efficiency and conservation for our energy needs in the future.
The Vermont legislature could be an example for our national legislature. Many initiatives are the result of republicans, democrats and progressives working together to fashion legislation for the good of the entire state. Having spent quite a bit of time up in Montpelier talking to these part-time legislators, I find them to all be committed to providing the best for our state. They work together using persuasion and compromise to achieve this goal.
Vermont’s annual exercise of basic democratic rights comes next week with Town Meeting day. All of the towns in Vermont—there are 255 of them—hold annual town meetings to elect local officials, from constable to selectman to cemetery commissioner, and to pass town and school budgets. In my town of Warren, with a population of about 1500, there is a potluck lunch in between the town and school meetings.
Vermont’s legislature reserved the right to approve any extension of the State’s only nuclear plant many years ago. Yesterday’s vote is the elected representatives of the people exercising their right to protect the people from a potentially dangerous license extension and a poor economic deal. Kudos to the Vermont Senate for their courage and foresight!
(Used with permission.)
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Feb
26
(CNN) – Embattled New York Gov. David Paterson is expected to announce later Friday that he won’t seek a full term in office, but will remain as governor for the rest of the year, a Democratic Party source tells CNN.
Paterson is expected to go before cameras later Friday in New York City.
Full story at CNN Political Ticker.
This is important to the Green Party of NY as the only way to get and maintain ballot status in NY is for a party’s candidate for governor to get 50,000 votes or more in the quadrennial election.
The Green Party of NY is currently in its process of determining the candidate for governor and the other statewide offices. The convention will be held in May in the capital area.
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Feb
25
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25
TELL CONGRESS: NO MORE LOANS FOR NUCLEAR REACTORS
Dear Friends:
A quick reminder that tomorrow, Thursday, February 25, is the National Call-Congress Day to stop the Obama Administration’s proposed $54 Billion loan program for new nuclear reactor construction–otherwise known as a giant taxpayer giveaway to wealthy nuclear corporations.
You can reach every member of Congress through the Congressional Switchboard: 202-224-3121.
We ask that your call your House Representative and both of your Senators, if at all possible.
Our asks are these:
*we want them to publicly oppose the President’s request for a tripling of the Department of Energy loan “guarantee” program to $54 Billion.
*we want them to vote against this program in committee if possible and on the floor if it comes to the floor.
We are supplementing the Call-Congress Day with your letters.
*If you haven’t written to your Representative yet this week, please do so here.
*If you haven’t written to your Senators yet this week, please do so here.
Please drop us a quick e-mail (to nirsnet@nirs.org) and let us know that you called, and any response you receive.
This is a National Call-Congress Day, being sponsored by several groups, including NIRS, Public Citizen, Physicians for Social Responsibility, Beyond Nuclear, Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and others.
Let’s keep those phones ringing all day long! Help us spread the word! Make sure everyone has the opportunity to participate. Your actions matter!
Thanks for all you do,
Michael Mariotte
Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org
www.nirs.org
P.S. if you’ve never signed the statement on nuclear power and climate (“We do not support construction of new nuclear reactors as a means of addressing the climate crisis. Available renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies are faster, cheaper, safer and cleaner strategies for reducing greenhouse emissions than nuclear power.”), please visit our home page, www.nirs.org to sign.
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Feb
22
[From CTV News]
Netherlands’ Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende talks to the media to announce that the second largest party in his three-party alliance is quitting, in The Hague, Netherlands, Saturday, Feb. 20, 2010. (AP / Evert-Jan Daniels)
The 1,600 Dutch troops in Afghanistan will begin leaving the war-torn country in August, Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said Sunday, a day after his coalition government collapsed over opposition to extending the country’s mission beyond its scheduled end this summer.
Appearing on Dutch television Sunday, Balkenende said the Netherlands will pull out of Uruzgan province, where 21 Dutch soldiers have died since they were first deployed there in 2006.
“Our task as the lead nation ends in August this year,” he said.
A marathon cabinet meeting Saturday ended when the Dutch Labour Party, the second largest partner in the coalition, walked out.
Balkenende had wanted the government to agree to a NATO appeal for the Dutch troops to stay in Afghanistan in a scaled-down role for another year, mainly to help train the Afghan army and police force.
The Labour Party insisted Dutch troops leave Afghanistan in August as planned and accused Balkenende’s Christian Democratic Alliance party of reneging on a 2007 agreement to bring the troops home this year.
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Feb
19
[From FAIR]
Reports on New Nuclear Plant Leave Key Questions Unasked
On February 16, ABC World News and NBC Nightly News aired incomplete and unbalanced reports following Barack Obama’s announcement of $8 billion in new loan guarantees for a nuclear power plant in Georgia.
ABC reporter Jake Tapper announced that “for years leading Democrats and liberals opposed nuclear energy. No new nukes was the cry. So some may have been surprised to hear President Obama say today, essentially, yes, new nukes.”
But after that nod, nuclear opponents mostly disappeared from the piece, which showed Tapper stressing industry claims about job creation for this new plant (“3,500 on-site construction jobs and 800 permanent operations jobs”) and the amount of energy the plant will generate–enough “for 550,000 homes, 2,200 megawatts worth of electricity that would offset about 30 million barrels of oil.” He also quoted two anonymous Georgia residents saying their town needs the jobs.
One critic–Greenpeace’s Jim Riccio–made a short comment about safety concerns, but was countered by Tapper: “Nuclear power advocates say since then plant design and equipment requirements have been upgraded.” Tapper then quoted nuclear industry lobbyist Patrick Moore, introducing him with his past credentials: “Back then, he was an anti-nuclear power activist and a founder of Greenpeace. Today, he lobbies for nuclear energy.” After Moore claimed that “nuclear industry is generally one of the safest industries we have,” Tapper concluded that “he’s not the only one who’s changed his mind.”
Moore’s former Greenpeace ties make him a media favorite, but he wasn’t actually a founder, just an early activist–Extra!, 1-2/08–and it’s worth noting that, as PR Watch pointed out (3/14/07), “Moore has now spent more time working as a PR consultant to the logging, mining, biotech, nuclear and other industries…than he did as an environmental activist.”
The report by NBC Nightly News suffered from some of the same problems: Three sources are quoted supporting the nuclear plan, with only one critic (Erich Pica of Friends of the Earth). In attempting to discuss safety concerns, NBC mentioned Chernobyl and the 1979 partial meltdown at Three Mile Island (Extra!, 7-8/93). Neither network mentioned the current problems with nuclear reactors; the Vermont Yankee nuclear plant, for example, is leaking radioactive tritium into the groundwater, a safety hazard that is being documented at other nuclear sites around the country (Associated Press, 2/2/10; Greenpeace Blog, 1/28/10).
NBC also has bigger issues: its parent company General Electric is a major player in the industry, and has done business with the company planning to build the Georgia plant (southerncompany.com)–a major fact NBC neglected to mention in its report.
While both reports mentioned that the Georgia plant would be the first built in the U.S. in three decades, neither gave much of an explanation as to why this would be the case. But as nuclear power critics have documented for years, the plants have proven to be financial disasters, with severe cost overruns and a general reluctance among investors to foot the bill for projects that are unlikely to be profitable (Greenpeace, 10/15/08). Obama’s pledge of multi-billion dollar loan guarantees should have caused reporters to wonder why the industry, after decades of experience, needs so much government assistance in the first place.
ACTION: Please ask ABC and NBC why their reporting on the White House’s nuclear power plans omitted important facts about nuclear power in favor of the optimistic projections of the nuclear industry. And, in NBC’s case, why the report failed to disclose its parent company’s financial ties to the nuclear industry.
CONTACT:
NBC Nightly News
nightly@nbc.com
ABC World News with Diane Sawyer
Web Form:
http://abcnews.go.com/Site/page?id=3271346&cat=World%20News%20with%20Diane%20Sawyer
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