February 22, 2010 archive

Obama Goes Nuclear… Corporate WH Puppeteers Rejoice

Yeah, I’m back with yet more bad news about the ‘Nuclear Renaissance’ that’s trying without much panache to corner the market on ‘green’ energy subsidies during this extended worldwide recession/depression. So that renewables will end up with table scraps, as usual.

Afternoon Edition

ek is busy plotting his next take over of the internet, so I am your substitute host of the Afternoon Edition. This is also an Open Thread

Outside Haitian capital, survivor settlements sprout

BAS CANAAN, Haiti (Reuters) – At the foot of rocky hills north of Haiti’s earthquake-shattered capital Port-au-Prince, new settlements are sprouting as survivors flee the claustrophobic, rubble-clogged chaos of the stricken city.

Led by evangelical pastors, several thousand quake victims, some with little more than the clothes they stand in, have thrown up flimsy dwellings of wooden frames draped in cloth or plastic in plots marked out in the dry earth with machetes.

“There’s nothing here, it’s a desert, but we feel safer,” said Jean Oswald Estcyr, as members of his family put up the stick supports that will frame their new home. In the hills around, hundreds more such crude homes are going up.

The shanties look the same as the sprawling crowded tent encampments that cram every space and cranny of the wrecked capital — except that they are sited several miles (kilometers) outside the city in a parched no-man’s land not far from where mass graves hold the bodies of thousands of quake dead.

Haitian President Rene Preval now says the final toll from the catastrophic January 12 quake, one of the most lethal natural disasters in modern history, could reach 300,000.

Breaking News: Aftershock causes panic in Haiti

Chris Hayes’ Speech At Sum of Change/Grow the Hope House Meeting

Yesterday, we were humbled when folks from the DC/MD/VA area packed into the living room of David Hart, founder of Grow the Hope, for a fundraiser to help us cover the annual Netroots Nation conference. We could not have been more thrilled with the level of energy in the room.

Our featured speaker, Chris Hayes, the DC Editor of The Nation, gave a rather fantastic speech that we wanted to share with you all right away:

ACTION! Dems Need Help Being Mediocre At Best!!!

Simulposted at Daily Kos

Since it seems to be a day for cheap sarcasm

I want everybody to get up, get up and go to your phones and dial your Congress members RIGHT NOW and deliver this message!!!

We demand you be more spineless and wishy washy!

After all we didn’t overwhelmingly elect you and give you a mandate over the last two cycles to take real steps to fix what is wrong with America in a bold and decisive fashion! We didn’t put you in office to fix all the things the Republicans screwed up over the last eight…or 40.. years!

We elected you to get the least possible result while protecting your jobs and bowing to the 41 vote Republican majority at every opportunity!

Open Exhaustion

Photobucket

No Public Option, No Mandate

As expected Obama has sold us out to the Insurance Companies.

His “New Regulation System” is likely to be ruled out of order by the Senate Parlimentarian and defeated by Republican Filibuster.

There is still an anti-Union excise tax.

There is NO Public Option and therefore NO constraint on Insurance Company behavior.

He has RAISED the penalty on the Individual Mandate.

It’s Official: Obama Is Against The Public Option

By: Jon Walker Monday February 22, 2010 8:45 am

Just to be clear, you can’t “support” something if you make no effort to see that it passes. If you do things that directly harm its chances of becoming law, like not include it in your health care proposal, then you are against it. But don’t worry, even as Obama takes steps to make sure that people don’t have an alternative to the private insurance companies that helped ruin our health care system, he did take steps to make sure you face an even bigger IRS penalty if you refuse to buy the poorly regulated product from the private insurance companies.

This is not Health Care Reform.

It is a bad bill that must be defeated.

Olympic Alternatives VII

You thought I was not serious?

I’m dead serious.  The only way to effect change is through sacrifice (changing your habits) and protest (telling people what you think, publicly).

Plenty of other stuff out on the Hypnotoad.  Just look-

The Hypnotoad.

"Television is a vast wasteland"
hypnotoad

Mid-Afternoon Update.

Prime Time Update.

FINAL Update.

Docudharma Times Monday February 22




Monday’s Headlines:

NATO Airstrike Is Said to Have Killed 21 Afghan Civilians

Aids: is the end in sight?

USA

Democratic senatorial candidates vie to be seen as outsiders

Toyota tried to cut costs on recalls

Europe

Eurostar train fails again, leaving 700 stranded

French prison system under scrutiny after suicide

Middle East

Dubai hit squad may have used diplomatic passports

Israel adds West Bank shrines to heritage list

Asia

Burma plans crackdown on monks as election nears

Afghanistan: Hamid Karzai’s rival warns him not to cut deals with Taliban

Africa

A death in Egyptian police custody

Latin America

Ecuador effort to protect nature reserve in peril

Yet Another NATO Massacre in Afghanistan

From the Guardian…

Nato and Afghanistan government launch inquiry after planes fire on convoy of vehicles, killing at least 33 people.

Zemeri Bashary, an Afghan interior ministry spokesman, said the airstrike hit three minibuses on a major road near the Uruzgan border with the central Day Kundi province.

Bashary said the 42 people in the vehicles were all civilians.

Last Thursday, an airstrike in the northern Kunduz province missed the insurgents it was targeting and killed seven policemen.

And so far Operation Moshtarak has killed at least 19 civilians in Marjah.

And of course NATO didn’t explain how anyone could even think that you can tell the difference between civilians and insurgents inside three Afghan mini-buses, traveling down a dusty road.

This most recent massacre occurred in Daikundi Province..,

Afghanistan-Daikondi copy

And it isn’t exactly the garden spot of Afghanistan…

Day Kundi 2

But the narrow valleys of Daikundi Province are full of almond groves, and sometimes life can be beautiful, even in Afghanistan, after so many years of war.

Day Kundi 1

Muse in the Morning

Photo Sharing and Video Hosting at Photobucket
Muse in the Morning


Discombobulated

(Click on image for larger view)

Part II…

For Your Consideration: Is Rahm on His Way Out?

Dana Milbank penned an op-ed piece in the Washington Post lavishing praise on President Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. He argues that Obama needs Rahm at the top

Obama’s first year fell apart in large part because he didn’t follow his chief of staff’s advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter.

snip

The president would have been better off heeding Emanuel’s counsel. For example, Emanuel bitterly opposed former White House counsel Greg Craig’s effort to close the Guantanamo Bay prison within a year, arguing that it wasn’t politically feasible. Obama overruled Emanuel, the deadline wasn’t met, and Republicans pounced on the president and the Democrats for trying to bring terrorists to U.S. prisons. Likewise, Emanuel fought fiercely against Attorney General Eric Holder’s plan to send Khalid Sheik Mohammed to New York for a trial. Emanuel lost, and the result was another political fiasco.

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The Week in Editorial Cartoons – Al Gore vs the Denialists

Crossposted at Daily Kos.  If you choose to recommend it there, the Rec Button may have been pushed to the bottom after the last diary comment made.

THE WEEK IN EDITORIAL CARTOONS

This weekly diary takes a look at the past week’s important news stories from the perspective of our leading editorial cartoonists (including a few foreign ones) with analysis and commentary added in by me.

When evaluating a cartoon, ask yourself these questions:

1. Does a cartoon add to my existing knowledge base and help crystallize my thinking about the issue depicted?

2. Does the cartoonist have any obvious biases that distort reality?

3. Is the cartoonist reflecting prevailing public opinion or trying to shape it?

The answers will help determine the effectiveness of the cartoonist’s message.

:: ::



Chris Britt, see reader comments in the State Journal-Register (Springfield, IL)

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