Southern Beale

Blasphemy

2009-11-19T07:57:00.005-06:00

[UPDATE]:

A friend writes of this story:

And do you know why the Psalmist is calling down such horrid curses on the leader's head?

According to my NRSV, the Psalmist says at 109:16--

For he did not remember to show kindness, but pursued the poor and needy and brokenhearted to their death.

And at 109: 30-31, the Psalmist concludes--

With my mouth I will give great thanks to the Lord; I will praise him in the midst of the throng. For he stands at the right hand of the needy, to save them from those who would condemn them to death.

Google THAT, Cheri Douglas.
____________________________________

Aunt B is rightfully horrified by the “Pray For Obama: Psalm 109:8” T-shirt. She writes:

So, when this small subset of folks start throwing out Bible verses like only a small, chosen group will know or be able to find out what they mean? They look like dumbasses. Guess what? The Bible is a perennial best seller. Churches give them away for free. You can read them on the internet. Your secret code is not secret.

And therein lies the problem. We live in a secular culture, and in the internet age, free and easy access to Scripture is coupled with Biblical illiteracy to create a whole mess of problems. The result is everything from a botched bumper sticker slogan to people claiming there’s a Biblical justification for bigotry, war, oppression, and even “free market ideas.”

For those in the dark, Psalm 109:8 reads:

"Let his days be few; and let another take his office."

Ha ha. That’s so funny. Neat little inside joke for the wingnut Obama-haters. Problem is, Psalm 109:9 says:

"Let his children be fatherless, and his wife a widow."

Ooops. Not so funny anymore.

I think what we have here is a classic case of someone cherry-picking a piece of Scripture to make a political point, and folks, that just never ends well.

And yes, they end up looking like dumbasses:

Twitter user Cheri Douglas felt compelled to share the psalm with others. Reached by phone, she said she found it on a website while searching for Bible passages relating to leadership – a topic on which she writes, speaks, and consults for a living.

Ms. Douglas was unaware of the verses that followed the ones she referenced and doesn’t think that those who shared the psalm wish the President harm.

“I don’t believe there’s Christians who wish him ill will,” she says.

But Douglas does say she’s unhappy with the president and used the psalm to convey that she’d like him to serve only one term.

I don't think ~~anyone~~ any of these folks seriously wish the president harm either. But this is what it means to live in a post-Christian world. People who don’t really understand Scripture, are unfamiliar with the meanings of certain passages (like a Psalm sung for “Vengeance Invoked upon Adversaries”), and have no sense of context or Biblical interpretation just throw shit out there without really knowing what they are doing.

A hundred years ago this would have been called blasphemy. Now it’s just called reading the Bible on the internet. But then, a hundred years ago this never would have happened because religion was a much bigger part of American society then, and people weren't quite so Biblically illiterate.

Even better are the people who take these passages of Biblical Scripture out of context and try to make a mint hawking T-shirts and bumper stickers. The intersection of church and market is always an interesting place, fraught with peril and full of all sorts of spiritual potholes. Jesus overturned the money-lenders’ tables for a reason, people. Maybe the Cheri Douglases of the world haven’t Googled that particular piece of Scripture yet.

It’s a dangerous thing when people who are basically Biblically ignorant can Google their way through the Old and New Testaments and think they’ve got some kind of spiritual authority. Have you ever read the Bible? It’s tough stuff. It takes more than just a mouse click to understand what you are reading.

But this is where we’re at, people. This is how we get ridiculous ideas like the Conservative Bible project and people convinced that Obama is the anti-Christ. You know, a little religious education in schools wouldn't be the worst thing in the world.

It’s War On Christmas Time!

2009-11-18T21:08:00.002-06:00

Gosh, and here I thought everyone was going skip the formalities this year, what with the recession and two real wars going on. But not ones to disappoint, the American Family Assn. has fired the opening salvo in the annual War On Christmas, calling for a boycott of Gap Inc.:

AFA is calling for a limited two-month boycott of Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic, the three stores owned by San Francisco-based Gap Inc., over the company’s censorship of the word "Christmas."

Right. Because one group’s free speech is another group’s censorship.

Last year, Gap issued this politically-correct statement to Christmas shoppers: "Gap recognizes that many traditions are celebrated throughout this season and we feel it is important to display holiday signage that is inclusive to everyone."

  Christmas is special because of Jesus. It's not just a "winter holiday." For millions of Americans the giving and receiving of gifts is in honor of the One who gave Himself. For the Gap to pretend that isn't the foundation of the Christmas season is political correctness at best and religious bigotry at worst.

Yes but for millions more Americans the getting and receiving of gifts is in honor of the secular commercial/consumer event known as “The Holidays” and for the American Family Assn. to pretend otherwise is sheer dishonesty.

Sorry but launch all the boycotts you like, that bell won't be unrung. You will, however, present yourselves as a bunch of religious bigots that no one save a bunch of old Scrooges would want to be associated with.

Because nothing celebrates the birth of the Prince of Peace like an old-fashioned culture war.

Putting CNN In The Shame Corner With A Dunce Cap

2009-11-13T09:23:00.006-06:00

This morning CNN’s Ed Lavandera gave us this stunning report on “warning signs” missed in the case of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Hasan:

LAVANDERA (voice-over): Nidal Hasan's family describes him as a good American, but several people who knew Hasan in his years at this Maryland military university say the high-ranking Army officer expressed extremist Islamic views. One says Hasan openly pledged allegiance not to the United States but to the Quran, and when asked of the constitution was a brilliant document simply responded no, not particularly.  

Our sources asked not to be identified because of the ongoing investigation, and the investigators wouldn't comment on the details they offered.

(The online story is here.)

Wow. I’m just stunned. This is what passes for news on CNN these days? I think it goes without saying that Nidal Hasan is public enemy number one, he opened fire on a military base and murdered a lot of innocent people. But the fact that the “most trusted name in news” is now trying to determine if the Ft. Hood shooter was a “good American” and is using his religious views as a barometer is just jaw-dropping.

I wonder how often CNN asked that question of Scott Roeder, James von Brunn or George Sodini?

Did Hasan have extremist views? Well, duh. Opening fire on a group of innocent people is by definition an extremist act. But are someone’s religious views or opinions about whether the U.S. Constitution is “brilliant” extremist? How responsible is it to report snippets of someone's "remembered" conversation--someone you won't even identify? That's the sleaziest tabloid trick of all.

For shame, CNN. For shame.

Here’s a question for CNN and Ed Lavandera. How many times have we heard conservative Christians say they put God before country? Is this extremist?

Or this?

The problem with CNN and Ed Lavandera’s piece is that it’s hearsay and gossip. We are given no context for these snippets that someone remembers Hasan saying. The where and when and why are kinda relevant here. Was he wielding a Molotov cocktail when he said his allegiance was to the Koran? Or was he professing his faith, like those Christian homeschoolers who recite their daily Pledge of Allegiance to the Bible? There's a huge difference between the two scenarios.

CNN’s piece was shockingly unprofessional. It’s an affront to religious people of all stripes: the idea that you cannot espouse a religious view without being labeled an extremist is offensive. If you can't give us context, if you can't give us more information, then just don't run it at all. It's worse than irrelevant, it's inflammatory. And it’s appalling.

“Government-Run” Healthcare Is Not Fascism (But This Bill Might Be)

2009-11-11T08:22:00.002-06:00

Yesterday I was forced to debunk a right wing talking point near and dear to the hearts of the tea bag set which continues to go unchallenged by our punditry: namely, that the healthcare reform package is “government-run” healthcare.

Excuse me? True government-run healthcare is one in which the doctors are government employees and the hospitals, clinics, etc. are all government-owned. You know, like our VA. This healthcare reform package doesn’t do anything close to that. All it does is rein in some abusive health insurance company policies and provide access to health insurance for those who can’t afford it.

Indeed, while we do have a government-run healthcare system in this country, you must be in the U.S. military or a veteran to take advantage of it. And one might ask the tea bag set why a true government-run healthcare system is fine for our soldiers and veterans but not fine for the rest of us.

With that in mind I headed over to one of my favorite bloggers and saw that he, too, is discussing the “government takeover of healthcare” thing. So before I retreat back to my bat cave for another week of hard-core creativity, I thought I’d point people to The Search For Integrity for an interesting perspective on healthcare reform and why we need the public option.

The Reverend points out some very inconvenient truths about this healthcare reform package. For example:

One complaint is that a public option will have to be paid for with taxes, or, more directly, that the premiums paid toward such a plan amount to a tax. Sure. But at least those tax dollars go to the government, which is ultimately responsible, however unwieldy our system is, to the people. I can vote the decision-makers in and out of office, raise a public outcry to persuade people to join such a cause. Clearly Congress has the power, constitutionally, to raise taxes. But does Congress have the power to require people to put money directly in the pockets of private corporations? Money that is required by law to be paid out of people’s incomes is a tax, any way you cut it. Why should my tax dollars go, not to my government, run (however imperfectly) by people I can vote for or against, but to a company, whose primary motivation is profit, which has every incentive to provide denial of service to its customer (me), and which lives in a culture that thinks it is just fine to pay its executives millions or billions of dollars, and feels it must do so in order to retain such “talent”?

Directly taxing the people in order to enrich corporations is fascism. That’s what an individual mandate without a public option would bring us to.

Now, of course, it won’t be called a tax, it will be called a premium. I think that’s kind of funny, really. If it’s a payment required by law, it’s a tax, and if it’s a tax, it should go to the government. If instead of going to the government it goes to a private corporation, what does that say about who is really in charge here?

Someone needs to ask Senators Joe Lieberman, Mary Landrieu, Olympia Snow, Lamar Alexander, Bob Corker and all the rest why they support fascist healthcare system in this country. I thought they were against that sort of thing.

Anyway, I urge everyone to read The Reverend’s entire post over there because there’s a lot of good stuff and a lot of great food for thought.

How Not To Evangelize

2009-11-10T09:41:00.004-06:00

Via Pith In The Wind we have an update on the “Not Religious? You’re Not Alone” billboard I wrote about here.

Now, as many of my regular readers know, Southern Beale is “religious.” However I’m as offended as the most avowed atheist at the way religion is used as both a marketing tool, get rich quick scam, and a political wedge in this country. In fact, there’s a lot about modern American religion that offends me these days. So when a secular group does a little old-fashioned billboard evangelism (and trust me, Nashville has seen plenty of the other kind--including, in answer to the lady who called, one at Harding and I-65 which said you will burn in hell if you don't believe in God), I think it’s a positive step. News flash to the churchy set: you got a little competition in the message wars.

Of course, some folks didn't like it. Here are the messages Secular Life received on their answering machine from a few of those people:

Stupak Stupidity

2009-11-09T18:47:00.004-06:00

You know, I thought conservatives--Blue Dog Democrat and Republican alike--were against government interference in private enterprise.

Or a government bureaucrat coming between doctor and patient.

Yet it seems that is exactly what they are doing by jumping on board the Stupak bandwagon:

Sixty-four Democrats voted for Stupak’s amendment, without which the House healthcare bill would not have won final passage in a 220-215 vote.

Stupak’s language not only prohibits abortion coverage in the public insurance option included in the House bill. It would also prevent private plans from offering coverage for abortion services if they accept people who are receiving government subsidies.

Gosh, where’s the free hand of the market when you need it? I wonder if the Tea Partiers are concerned about this gross government intrusion into private enterprise? Aw, who am I kidding!

You know, I love it when my lady parts are turned into a political football. It makes me feel so very special. So much like ... gosh, what is the word I’m looking for? Oh yeah: chattel. Frankly, I’m a little creeped out Congressman Stupak is even thinking about my lady parts in a bill that does so much more to overhaul health insurance. It’s a little pervy.

Yes, this royally pisses me off. But you know, a reality check, people. Being a woman has been a pre-existing condition since, you know, forever. As I pointed out when I wrote about this last month, gender rating is widespread in health insurance markets (that’s where women pay more than men for identical plans). So, you know, what’s a little inequality among friends? We’ve only been allowed to vote for, what, 90-something years? Surely you didn’t think you’d have equal access to health services by now, too?

Here’s the thing. Abortion is still legal. Try as they might, the anti’s have yet to outlaw it, and they probably never will. We won that battle.

All they’ve got left are rather empty gestures like the Stupak Amendment, which applies to insurance coverage of abortion--something which, according to the Guttmacher Institute, only paid for 13% of abortions (or thereabouts) in 2001. And Stupak also only applies to insurance plans on the exchange, which itself affects a small percentage of people.

So, this all looks like a lot of hoo-hah over an amendment that would affect a relatively small number of women. Unfortunately, those women are the poor, the ones who need reproductive choice the most. Yes, it sucks. But since when does Congress care about the poor, anyway? Is anyone really surprised?

Take heart. If Stupak becomes law, you can still buy an insurance plan that covers abortion services. You just can’t be poor, or receive government assistance. And those more well-off can always pay for their abortions themselves, without a health insurance plan.

I’m trying to see how much has changed. Abortion services available for the well off, but not the poor. How is this different from what we have now? From what we’ve ever had?

Make no mistake: they’ve done a really shitty thing to women, treating us like second class citizens who aren’t entitled to the same health insurance options as penis-Americans. Am I pissed off? Yes.

But abortion is still legal. We can still get low-income women the reproductive health services they need in other ways. Start by donating to NARAL or Planned Parenthood, if you are able.

Is the Stupak Amendment worth scuttling healthcare reform over? I don’t think so. But it has been a tremendous reality check. It has shown us who within the Democratic Party thinks it’s their business to decide what insurance plans should be available to women.

Got that? Good. Now use that information.

More American Morans

2009-11-06T09:25:00.002-06:00

From yesterday's Michelle Bachmann/Fox News-led "tea party" in Washington. You'd think after six months of protests they'd have figured out how to use spell-check:

One would also think that they'd have figured out there is no government run healthcare in anyone's future. But that's the low information voter for you: rallying to protest something that doesn't exist.

Morans.

Ask Your Doctor If Hiatus Is Right For You, v 2.0

2009-10-30T05:00:00.001-05:00

How interesting that I first asked this question almost exactly two years ago. In the past two years I’ve learned a lot about this blogging thing, including that my original assessment was 100% correct: it is both cathartic and addictive. It can also be a huge time-waster.

So the time has come to set some boundaries. Mine is a temporary one: I’m about to embark on a creative project that will leave my time for blogging extremely limited. My project will take up most of my creative energies during November, so I hope you will indulge me the occasional cat photos, garden blogging and only sporadic rants. Hopefully I will be channeling my energies in a different direction, at least for the next several weeks. I should be back sometime in December, God willing and the creek don’t rise.

There are plenty of blogs out there so I don’t need to tell anyone where to go to scratch that liberal itch, but over the years I have come across some amazing unsung peeps whom I encourage you to check out:

Bouphonia; be sure to stop by on Friday for a weekly dose of Friday Hope Blogging. It’s the best way to end the week that I can think of.

Interested Citizen is a Nashville blogger, like me. I always see a story I hadn’t seen before over there.

Southern Female Lawyer offers some killer recipes as well as some kick-ass commentary.

John Shuck is pastor of First Presbyterian Church (PC-USA) of Elizabethton, TN. He’s a social justice warrior with a mission for GLBT equality. Lots of good stuff over there.

The Impolitic--that’s Libby Spencer and Cpt. Fogg. Two great bloggers, one from Detroit and one from Florida.

See y’all on the other side!

Love & Peace,

Southern Beale

Nashville Gets Secular

2009-10-29T11:39:00.005-05:00

Welcome Crooks & Liars!

An update on this post is here and offers audio clips of local reaction to the billboard.

------------------------------

Christian fundamentalists looking for signs of the apocalypse might want to head to my part of town next week to see this new billboard:

Secular Life, a Nashville-area social network for atheists, agnostics, seculars and other nonbelievers, will unveil a new electronic billboard at 4102 Hillsboro Circle in Green Hills on Sunday.

It's aimed at the so-called Nones — the growing number of people with no religious affiliation.

The billboard, which coincidentally launches on All Saints Day, reads "Not religious? You are not alone,'' along with a phone number and Web site for Secular Life.

Now, this wouldn’t be newsworthy in a city like New York or Los Angeles. But here in Nashville, where religion is crammed down your throat at every turn--including on numerous billboards scattered all over town--a billboard advertising atheism and secularism is definitely an anomaly.

As a sidebar to this story, I am very familiar with this particular electronic billboard; when it first appeared (in place of an old-fashioned non-electronic kind) it raised a huge outcry among neighborhood folks who don’t like the increasing prevalence of these electronic thingamajigs. They are quite controversial irrespective of their advertising content, mainly because they are too bright, too loud, and too obnoxious for anyplace not Times Square (blogger S-Town Mike has given a lot of coverage to the issue.)

This one shows us the weather report and sports headlines in addition to advertisements. Personally, if I want to know the weather forecast I'm not looking at a freaking billboard. Thank you for turning what is a quiet retail/residential area into something that resembles downtown Tokyo. How sensitive to the neighborhood. Not.

This particular one, as I recall, doesn’t meet the existing code for where electronic billboards can be located. It was snuck in under the dead of night under the outdoor advertising industry’s favorite “let’s do what we want now and deal with the consequences later” ploy. Outdoor advertising companies like Lamar are huge bullies, in my opinion.

As I recall, Councilman Sean McGuire was supposedly working to get it removed, though that was a few months ago and I never heard any more about it.

Anyway, I’ve digressed far from the main topic. But it's interesting that a message advertising secularism has been placed on an electronic billboard supposedly destined for removal (though who knows ...).

So come on down and check it out while it's still there.

Told Ya So

2009-10-28T17:16:00.004-05:00

Nobody could have anticipated this:

In a bid to generate excitement in a struggling condo market, developers of the luxury Terrazzo building in the Gulch plan to offer one-fourth of the building via auction at steep discounts next month — a move that critics say will hurt existing owners.

"This is horrible,'' said Betsy McInnes, who is listed as an owner of a $373,000 one-bedroom Terrazzo unit with her daughter, Waller McInnes. The daughter rents out the Terrazzo condo to a tenant and is trying to sell it.

The mother said her 28-year-old daughter owns three properties and has three mortgages.

McInnes said she's afraid the Nov. 21 auction will drive prices lower and further hurt values for people who have already invested a lot. "This is pretty depressing,'' the mother said Tuesday.

But developers of the Terrazzo insist the auction will help condominium sales recover and prove beneficial in the long run.

Really? How do you figure that? If I bought a $375,000 condo in a building where similar units are now going for half that amount, I’d be very ticked off.

Sadly, I predicted this nearly two years ago. If only someone had listened. In February 2008 I wrote:

Just give it a few weeks. I have no doubt we are headed for a massive real estate bust, with all of those fancy downtown condos the first to go belly up.  Yes, they overbuilt. Yes, there’s too much inventory--or rather, too much of the same inventory. How many $200,000-$1 million units do we need downtown? Who’s supposed to buy these things, anyway? You can still get a nice house in Nashville for that kind of money, you know.  

Plus, Nashville has no “downtown living” infrastructure. There are no grocery stores, dry cleaners and parks downtown. Public transportation in Nashville is notoriously crappy. This isn’t Chicago or Manhattan. You can sleep and work downtown and eat in a restaurant and go to a hockey game, but for everything else you’re going to need a car to schlep to another part of town. Downtown “living” is something of a misnomer.

  I’ve never understood the massive building frenzy that has resulted in Viridian, Velocity, Encore and Icon, not to mention Terrazzo, Exchange, Phoenix, Westin and the Signature Tower. I don’t understand why there wasn’t some kind of plan for more diversity of housing options, a wider variety of price points to appeal to a wider variety of buyers. Nashville has a critical housing shortage--but not in these high price ranges.

So, have we learned our lesson? I don’t think so. WTVF’s Jeff Tang just interviewed Terrazzo developer Bill Barkley. Said Barkley:

"Other cities have an overbuilt condominium market of thousands of units. In Nashville there are only 600 and something units in this downtown area. That’s not an overbuilt, that’s an undersold situation."

Ah, it’s always good news when you’re the developer (or the trade association president). That “600-some units available” figure sounds awfully optimistic, especially when you remember what's happening down the street:

Velocity celebrated its finishing touches and opened Monday with 263 units, about a block from the Terrazzo. Seventeen of those units have been sold, according to records with the Davidson County Register of Deeds.

Oh, ouch. And I’d love to know what “this downtown area” means. If it means "The Gulch," then they're screwed. It certainly doesn’t include all of the condos and townhomes available in the West End Avenue area, where single family homes have been torn down for condos like nobody’s business.

I’m sorry for Mr. Barkley and everyone else who lost their shirts during the “clap louder!” Overweening Oughts. The past decade has been marked by wretched excess, no more so than in the real estate market, yet when a few of us raised our hands and asked if such overkill was warranted, we were called Debbie Downers and Negative Nellies. We were called people who Wanted America to Fail.

Sigh. So, here we are.

You know, it’s quite a feat for a city to be overrun with luxury condos no one wants to buy, and an estimated 2,200 homeless people needing a place to live. If only we could somehow put these two together.

We should be so proud!

(h/t, Pith.)

Tell Us How You REALLY Feel

2009-10-28T08:05:00.004-05:00

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger sends the California legislature a memo:

Schwarzenegger's people deny the hidden F-bomb was intentional.

Okie dokie.

VietAfghaniNam

2009-10-28T06:00:00.000-05:00

If ever I had a WTF moment, this would be it:

KABUL, Afghanistan — Ahmed Wali Karzai, the brother of the Afghan president and a suspected player in the country’s booming illegal opium trade, gets regular payments from the Central Intelligence Agency, and has for much of the past eight years, according to current and former American officials.

The agency pays Mr. Karzai for a variety of services, including helping to recruit an Afghan paramilitary force that operates at the C.I.A.’s direction in and around the southern city of Kandahar, Mr. Karzai’s home.

The financial ties and close working relationship between the intelligence agency and Mr. Karzai raise significant questions about America’s war strategy, which is currently under review at the White House.

WTF?

I’ve been mulling an Afghanistan post for a while now; I’ve held back simply because I don’t know that I possibly have to add to the conversation. But this news makes me think ... WTF???!!!

I have no fucking clue what we are doing in Afghanistan. Controlling the poppy trade? I mean, other than what you can glean from looking at a map: Oh lookie, there's Iraq on one side, Afghanistan on the other, and wooopsie isn't that Iran caught in the middle? But other than that, what the hell are we doing in Afghanistan??!

So our CIA has been paying the brother of the president of Afghanistan to do dirty deeds. And the president of Afghanistan is a man regarded as a U.S. puppet, whose re-election is questioned by the people because of widespread fraud. I’m so shocked.

No, I haven’t forgotten 9/11. Remind me, how many Afghanis were on those planes that crashed into the twin towers?

There’s a very nefarious trend among our punditry to confuse the Taliban with Al Qaeda, and while no one would pretend the Taliban is an example of democracy, there are plenty of oppressive regimes out there in the world which America has chosen to do business with. It was so cute how a few years ago it was politically correct to say Afghanistan was the "right" war, hell I even said it, but now I'm just wondering... WTF?

Yes, Afghanistan is a cesspool of human rights abuses. I’ve seen those pictures of women being executed for no reason other than wanting to get an education or defying their husbands.

But is a military occupation the answer? It seems to me if ever there was a place where exercises in nation-building--schools, infrastructure, development--would yield positive results for everyone, Afghanistan is it. This is a country that every superpower has tried to occupy in the past century. I think the Afghanis are a little tired of it. So now our presence in there is fueling an insurgency. Who is surprised? And just what, exactly, are we accomplishing?

How much money have we squandered over there? What has our CIA done, in the name of U.S. citizens, that we don’t know about?

I do not like it. No I do not.

When Conservatives Come Between Me & My Doctor

2009-10-27T12:30:00.003-05:00

I guess we women should be used to crap like this by now:

Approximately 40 House Democrats are prepared to block healthcare reform legislation from coming to the floor should the bill include federal subsidies for abortions, said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) Friday.

Abortion has been the elephant in the room on the healthcare debate: the Right has been desperate to trot out its most favorite wedge issue; knowing this, the Left won’t touch the topic with a 10-foot pole. But it was inevitable that abortion would come up as part of the debate over the public option, so here ya go, folks.

Let the games begin!

Nothing demonstrates women’s inequality better than the use of abortion as a wedge issue to derail healthcare reform. The reality is, abortion is legal; most private insurance policies cover the procedure to some degree, just as they would cover any medical procedure involving lady parts. And it’s ludicrous to think a public health insurance option shouldn’t cover the same medical procedures as any private health insurance policy. We’re talking about insurance here, people; insurance is not healthcare, as I’ve said ad nauseum.

And trying to equate a public health insurance plan that covers abortion as anything close to “government funded abortions” is wildly off the mark and incredibly dishonest, preying on people’s ignorance and their fear. Insurance is not healthcare! Oh wait, I already said that.

I don’t get why this is so hard for people to understand or even controversial. Even more ironic is that it’s usually the same people harping about how “Obamacare will put a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor” who are trying to insert themselves between me and my doctor.

You don’t see me sticking my nose into their healthcare decisions, do you?

But this just highlights the vast inequality between men’s and women’s healthcare. I love it when pharmacists with a “conscience” think it’s okay to deny women birth control pills but have no qualms about filling Cialis and Viagra prescriptions for men.

Here’s a news flash: private health insurance is a discriminatory system! Insurance companies routinely treat women differently from men; “gender rating” (charging same-aged women and men different premiums for the same coverage), is widespread.

The National Women’s Law Center first looked at the issue in 2008; one year later, they’ve found little has changed:

• Gender rating remains rampant in the individual health insurance market and among bestselling health plans. NWLC examined the best-selling plans (generally the top 10) in each state capital and found that 95% practice gender rating, compared to 93% of such plans in 2008.

• Using the same random sampling methods as in 2008, NWLC found even more egregious examples of gender rating among 25-year-olds in 2009. At this age, women are charged up to 84% more than men for individual health plans that exclude maternity coverage.

• Despite the bleak landscape, two states made improvements since the Center issued its Nowhere to Turn report in 2008. In April 2009, Arkansas passed a law expressly prohibiting health insurance companies from using a woman’s status as a domestic violence survivor to deny coverage, and in October 2009, California became the eleventh state to ban gender rating in the individual health insurance market.

• New research revealed that, in most states, it is common for a female non-smoker to be charged more than a male smoker in the individual insurance market simply because she is a woman. [...]

• Maternity coverage remains largely unavailable in the individual market, with virtually no improvement in access. In 2009, 13% of the health plans available to a 30-year-old woman across the country provide maternity coverage, compared to 12% in 2008.

It seems some people are so accustomed to this kind of inequality that they think it's okay (and it takes folks like Democratic Sen. Debbie Stabenow to point out the obvious to troglodytes like Republican Sen. John Kyl.)

So now we have an interesting case where we have an unfair private insurance system that penalizes women because of their gender, charging them more for no reason and not covering certain services. And a group of conservatives want to build that same inequality into the public insurance system by having just some procedures covered for women, whereas all procedures will be covered for men.

Umm, no. The main point of the public option is to rein in the unfair and abusive practices of the private insurance industry (NOTE: On reflection that was a huge brain fart. The main point of the public option is to lower costs. But reigning in abusive insurance industry practices would be a nice ancillary effect.) You just can’t do that if your corrective element is going to be just as unfair and abusive and discriminatory.

The reality is, no one involved in this debate gives a crap about abortion or gender discrimination. They’re trying to kill healthcare reform. They’re using their favorite wedge issue to do it, and conservative Democrats are playing along.

That Touch of Merde

2009-10-26T21:32:00.002-05:00

Our $700 million ~~military base~~ “embassy” in Baghdad still has a few problems, and we don’t just mean a leaky roof:

But according to a report issued last week by the State Department’s inspector general, the complex is a monument to shoddy work and incompetent oversight. Walls and walkways are cracking, sewage gas flows back into residences, wiring is substandard, fire protection systems are faulty and other safety provisions are not up to contract specifications.

The report says that construction “was significantly deficient in multiple areas” and may not meet safety codes. It called on the State Department to seek $132 million in damages from the main construction company, First Kuwaiti General Trading and Contracting, which received $470 million for work on the embassy.

[...]

The 57-page report details problems with water, wiring, design, automation, sewage, walls, ceilings, power generators, emergency safe areas and structural reinforcement to protect the embassy from earthquakes. It says that First Kuwaiti charged for $33 million worth of design services that were either incomplete or undocumented. Executives at First Kuwaiti did not respond to a request for comment.

Awkward! If First Kuwaiti GT&C doesn’t ring a bell, let me dig into the memory hole for you:

First Kuwaiti, as well as other Middle Eastern companies under U.S. contracts in Iraq, has been accused repeatedly of pressuring its workers to take jobs in war-torn Iraq against their wishes . Once there, those workers are said to have often endured pay of just dollars a day, lousy food, bad medical care, crammed housing and 12-hour work days, seven days a week. Some who have witnessed such brutal conditions liken it to modern-day slavery.

First Kuwaiti's general manager, Wadih al-Absi, calls such accusations lies. But the accusations come from workers in Nepal, the Philippines, former Halliburton supervisors and even those well acquainted with the company's upper management. None of these people know each other, but they have the same complaints of poor treatment and labor trafficking.

[...]

The contract for the U.S. embassy "was political," said one competitor. Why political? Because Kuwait was the only country bordering Iraq that was willing to allow the staging of land troops for the 2003 invasion, whisper other disgruntled contractors. The State Department intervened before on behalf of other Kuwaiti firms. After the invasion, the U.S. ambassador to Kuwait, Richard Jones, pressured Halliburton to buy overpriced fuel from the unknown Kuwaiti firm Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company, according to official documents. That fuel, intended for domestic use in Iraq, resulted in ongoing disputes about overcharges of possibly several hundred million dollars. Jones then returned to Washington to serve as the senior adviser and coordinator for Iraq at the State Department. He was in that position when First Kuwaiti was awarded the embassy contract.

I wrote about First Kuwaiti GT&C here, when the Bush Administration waived a law requiring open and competitive bidding to award the embassy contract to the firm. This is after it rejected a North Carolina firm, of course.

I wrote about it again when a criminal investigation into labor trafficking began.

It’s that touch of merde, Baghdad style. We basically gave the contract to a Kuwaiti firm in exchange for them letting us use their country to stage our war. And then they rip us off and use foreign slave labor to build our embassy. There’s so much irony swirling around this story I can’t stand it.

If there’s a more perfect metaphor for our entire Iraq misadventure I’d love to see it.

Newsom's Mill, Tennessee

2009-10-25T18:46:00.006-05:00

Today was one of those perfect fall days we've seen so few of in Tennessee lately: sunny, crisp and fresh, with fall colors just starting to burst. It was Sunday to boot, which meant Mr. Beale and I spent a few hours driving around the countryside outside of Nashville, just to enjoy the day. It was pure heaven.

We headed out to Newsom’s Mill, along the Harpeth River. The mill itself, built in 1862, still stands. And this is for Aunt B, who has been collecting ghost stories lately: the place gave off major “Blair Witch Project” vibes for me. Maybe it’s because decrepit old stone ruins in the middle of the forest are creepy by their very nature. But then I read the interpretive signs (no easy feat as they are riddled with bullet holes--yes, we Tennesseans will shoot at anything), where I learned that a skeleton was once found on the property with a pitchfork through it.

I don't know any more about the victim but I’d say it’s a good bet they are haunting the place these days, and you won't catch me walking around out there after dark. And I think Aunt B has another ghost story to track down.

Why We Fought A Revolution

2009-10-25T09:11:00.002-05:00

Britain’s Lord Griffiths, who happens to be vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International, offers us a reminder:

Public must learn to 'tolerate the inequality' of bonuses, says Goldman Sachs vice-chairman

Bankers' soaring pay is an investment in the economy, Lord Griffiths tells public meeting on City morality

One of the City's leading figures has suggested that inequality created by bankers' huge salaries is a price worth paying for greater prosperity.

In remarks that will fuel the row around excessive pay, Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs International and a former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, said banks should not be ashamed of rewarding their staff.

Speaking to an audience at St Paul's Cathedral in London about morality in the marketplace last night, Griffiths said the British public should "tolerate the inequality as a way to achieve greater prosperity for all".

He added that he knew what inequality felt like after spending his childhood in a mining town in Wales. Both his grandfathers were miners who had to retire from work through injury.

[...]

Griffiths said that many banks would relocate abroad if the government cracked down on bonus culture. "If we said we're not going to have as big bonuses or the same bonuses as last year, I think then you'd find that lots of City firms could easily hive off their operations to Switzerland or the far east," he said.

Goldman Sachs is currently on track to pay the biggest ever bonuses to its 31,700 employees after raking in profits at a rate of $35m (£21m) a day.

The idea that greed is good because somehow one person’s obscene pay will eventually benefit the masses is one made often by free market conservatives and tea party protesters here in the States. The irony that this is the same exploitive attitude found among British lords should be lost on no one.

Furthermore, the argument that people should just tolerate inequality because if they don’t, the bankers will take their toys and move to Switzerland is at best elitist and patronizing; at worst, it's economic blackmail.

Does anyone really think Goldman Sachs will abandon the London market to its competitors? Does anyone else really think that the inequality created by bankers' huge salaries will create prosperity for anyone other than that same privileged group?

It seems to me we fought a revolution over this kind of exploitation, the attitude that “you little people are here to serve us aristocratic foks.” The economic exploitation of colonies is a theme which runs deep through British colonial history, and one often hears the argument that this is what led to the fall of the British empire. How ironic these arguments are now parroted by America's free-market conservatives, our own home-grown brand of elites who confuse greed with patriotism.

I don’t mean to dump on our British cousins. Here's an idea from Lord Turner, chairman of the Financial Services Authority:

Lord Turner, who was also present at the meeting, called once again for a global tax on financial transactions. He said that such a so-called "Tobin tax" could redistribute bank profits to help fight world poverty and climate change.

See, they aren't all bad.

I don't see the argument that people must tolerate inequality for their own good as resonating anywhere in the world. The mere fact that such gross inequality exists pretty much negates your argument. If a group of bankers raking in mega-millions helped the rest of us, then we wouldn't all be in such dire straights right now, would we?

If the idea that tax cuts spurred the economy and allowed wealth to rain down like pennies from heaven on the rest of us, we'd all have benefitted from the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 and poverty would not be at an 11-year high.

Face it, there are no free market fairies, and nothing trickles down on the people except misery. Telling people to shut up and let bankers have their giant bonuses because it's good for Britain (or America) is not a winning argument.

Let's Hear It For The AHIP Singers

2009-10-24T10:48:00.002-05:00

Billionaires For Wealthcare, those brave activist souls with some pretty good singing pipes, literally let their voices be heard at a recent AHIP meeting. Watch it:

**applause**applause**applause**applause**applause**!!

China Does Climate Change Turnabout

2009-10-24T09:02:00.001-05:00

Conventional wisdom holds that China, now the world’s largest contributor of greenhouse gases, is also the biggest foot-dragger on climate change, refusing to place a cap on its greenhouse gas emmissions. (In fact, it seems this is a popular talking point among anti climate-change legislation folks.)

That seems to be changing, according to today’s Washington Post:

Yet, in visible and less visible ways, China has begun to address its emissions problem. The steps are driven in part by the parochial concern that climate change could worsen the flooding that plagues the country's low-lying coastal regions, including Shanghai, and cause water shortages in western areas as glaciers in the Himalayas melt away.

But China has also begun to see energy efficiency and renewable energy as ingredients for the type of modern economy it wants to build, in part because it would make the nation's energy sources more secure.

"We think this is a new business for us, not a burden," said Gan Zhongxue, who left a job as a top U.S. scientist for the giant ABB Group to head up research and development at ENN, the Langfang company that made its fortune as the dominant natural gas distributor in 80 Chinese cities.

This makes sense, and is the argument we tree-hugging liberals have been making in the U.S. for years. It’s just good business. God hasn’t made dinosaurs in a few million years; oil is finite. We’re running out, the world is going to need a new energy source, so why not be leaders of the new energy economy instead of holding on to the past?

According to the Post, China’s government has taken steps to address climate change that put the American government to shame:

Still, China has taken significant steps in the past five years. It removed subsidies for motor fuel, which now costs more than it does in the United States; its fuel-efficiency standard for new urban vehicles is 36.7 miles per gallon, a level the United States will not reach for seven years. It has set high efficiency standards for new coal plants; the United States has none. It has set new energy-efficiency standards for buildings. It has targeted its 1,000 top emitters of greenhouse gases to boost energy efficiency by 20 percent. And it has shut down many older, inefficient industrial boilers and power plants.

[...]

Smaller details are getting attention, too. Xie said forcing supermarkets to charge for plastic bags reduced the use of the bags by two-thirds, saving the equivalent of about 30,000 barrels of oil a day.

Last week, the Paris-based International Energy Agency said the efforts are starting to pay off. The agency lowered its estimate of future Chinese greenhouse gas emissions.

This should set off alarm bells here in the States: if a behemoth like China is transitioning its economy toward a green future, we’d better scramble to catch up or we will be left behind.

Make no mistake, China has a long way to go. I suffer no delusions in that regard. But we can no longer hide our head in the sand and justify our own polluting ways by saying “China’s worse!”

Drowning In The Bathtub

2009-10-23T07:14:00.006-05:00

I’m old enough to remember $700 toilet seats at the Pentagon and Reagan-era calls to “cut government waste.” In fact, “cutting government waste” has become such a part of the American lexicon that no budget conversation, from the county dog catcher’s office to the massive federal budget, can take place without hearing the “government waste” mantra repeated ad nauseum.

That’s all very well and good but after nearly 30 years of hearing that canard, and with an economic downturn cutting revenue at all levels of government, we’re seeing the effects of those shorn-to-the-bone government budgets. It’s pouring out there, a deluge, and no one has a rainy day fund.

I won’t even bring up the sorry State of California, where the budget crisis is its own weird brand of wackadoodle. The people keep voting for all sorts of unfunded programs (like a $3 billion bond for stem cell research) while also voting to restrict taxation. Grow up already, people. Sooner or later you’re going to have to start paying for this stuff.

And that’s my message to people here in Tennessee (and everywhere else). After years of “cutting the fat” we’ve started cutting some pretty alarming stuff. On the local level, my 2009 Davidson County property tax statement came with this aviso:

“Due to budget restraints, we will not be mailing a courtesy reminder as we have in the past in the month of February. This will be the only statement you will receive for the 2009 tax year.”

Really? That’s the “fat” we’re trimming from the budget--sending a second property tax bill? This is on top of Metro Public Works cutting their mowing program this summer. And let me say, trying to cross Granny White Pike at Gale Lane has been a dangerous proposition when the grass is knee-high.

Even more alarmingly, Putnam County, TN, is in such dire straights it has considered doing away with county primary elections:

COOKEVILLE, Tenn. -- Putnam County is looking at the prospect of eliminating primary elections in hopes of saving $60,000.

On Monday night, the county commission voted 14 to 9 to ask the county parties to forgo primary elections and select candidates through private caucuses.

Primary elections are historically low-turnout, but nonetheless canceling an election for fiscal reasons sets off alarm bells with me. You tea party folks yammering about your loss of freedoms might want to consider what it means to cancel an election because the county doesn’t have the funds to stage it.

Then again, will our moribund electorate even notice?

It’s only a matter of time before this fiscal starvation starts costing people in other ways. Up in Michigan, the state budget situation is so sorry, they’ve had to stop safety inspections of school buses:

"It's not a good thing, but it's a budget reality," LeBlanc said. "I'm not sure there are viable alternatives."

I guess the free hand of the market is supposed to protect Michigan kids on their way to school from now on.

Could this happen in Tennessee? We’ve already dumped another 84,000 people from TennCare. Now the state legislature says it will permanently slash $1 billion from Tennessee’s state budget. The reason is lower revenue, but the Republican legislature thinks this is a good way to operate state government:

“I really think you need to expect and can treat these $1 billion to $1.1 billion in base reductions ... as permanent,” said Jim White, executive director of the legislature’s Fiscal Review Committee, told House leaders on Thursday. “State government is going to be smaller and different after we complete this budget year.”

Well, that’s a great talking point and it sure looks good in the press release, but how does that look in practice? Not so good, it seems:

After more than two hours of grim assessments Thursday, House Speaker Emeritus Jimmy Naifeh, D-Covington, had enough. He predicted the state’s Rainy Day Fund, once at $750 million and projected to fall to $323 million in 2010-11, “is probably going to go down to zero.”

He called the removal of some TennCare recipients “heartbreaking” and said lawmakers are to blame. He also urged colleagues to look at a tax increase.

“No one has got the backbone or the guts to talk about revenue enhancement,” Rep. Naifeh complained. “That’s what we need to at least explore.”

Nope, no one has the guts or backbone, not the Republicans and not the Democrats. But it’s pretty irresponsible to view your “rainy day fund” as budgetary fat.

People are so disconnected from the services that government provides that no one notices the hypocrisy of fiscal conservatives calling for ballot initiatives over stuff like English Only and do we need a new convention center. You know, that's all very well and good but it costs money to open up the polling places and count all of those votes. Who’s gonna pay for it?

Conventional wisdom holds that tax increases during a recession are a sure way to prolong the misery. Maybe now isn't the time, but eventually we're going to have to repeal those Bush tax cuts which helped no one but the super wealthy. Didn't see any of that trickle down over the past eight years, either.

Yesterday I heard Thom Hartmann advocate a 50% tax on people making $3 million+. Rather than hurt “small businesses,” he said, it would actually grow the middle class because business owners would funnel their profits back into their businesses instead of taking home big salaries to be spent on European vacations and yachts.

Here's a handy-dandy chart of Top U.S. Federal marginal income tax rate from 1913 to 2009:

Our tax rates are among the lowest they've been in the past 100 years. Are people better off? No. Has the "Laffer Curve" fulfilled its promise of increasing revenue? No it has not. Instead we're cutting safety inspections of school buses, using up our rainy day funds, and talking about cancelling elections because governments can't afford them.

It's time for someone to be a grown up and talk about what it means to operate a state budget without a safety net.

Dear Lamar: Thank You For Playing!

2009-10-22T05:00:00.001-05:00

ThinkProgress pokes some fun at Sean Hannity, Lamar Alexander and the whole “enemies list” meme. Watch it:

ThinkProgress concludes, noting:

The irony is rich, of course. In attempting to debunk Anita Dunn’s argument about Fox News, Sean Hannity has instead validated it — proving just how effective Fox News can serve as the “communications arm of the Republican Party.”

Thanks for playing along!

Lamar Alexander Listing To The Right

2009-10-21T11:47:00.004-05:00

[UPDATE]: Pith has video of Lamar's floor rant.

--------------------------------

What is it with Tennessee Senators making bizarro comparisons? Yesterday Sen. Corker compared the American Medical Assn. to a prostitute.

Today Sen. Alexander compares President Obama to Richard Nixon:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Republican invoked the memory of the scandal-marred Nixon administration on Wednesday to urge U.S. President Barack Obama to "back up" and not "start an enemies list."

Senator Lamar Alexander told Reuters he has begun to see the Obama White House adopting an attitude similar to that of the Richard Nixon White House four decades ago, that "everybody is against us and we are going to get them."

Gee, you don’t say. Excuse me, but you kept your yap shut when the Bush Administration created its own de facto enemies list by politicizing the Dept. of Justice, outting a CIA agent because her husband called bullshit on pre-war lies about Saddam Hussein, and even engaged in its own long-running feud with the New York Times. Don’t recall you clutching your pearls about an “us vs. them” attitude back then, Senator.

Of course, he’s just reciting a Karl Rove talking point from three days ago. Which makes so much sense. The “enemies list” is one of those silly political mudballs one side throws at the other when they’ve got nothing better handy. It conjures up negative historical connotations (Nixon! Hoover! McCarthy! Bad!), negative social connotations (they must be paranoid! And a narcissist!) and emotional fears (A list! That means conspiracy!). It's also a great distraction from more pressing business--in this case like, oh, how the Republican Party is bleeding voters at the seams.

During the last presidential campaign the Clintons supposedly had one. So did, incidentally, the Obama campaign. Everyone from Michael Moore to Markos Moulitsas supposedly made George W. Bush’s list. Bill O’Reilly said his was real, and he threatened to post it on the internet.

There’s more:

Alexander made the comments at the Reuters Washington Summit, a series of interviews with key Washington figures, in advance of a speech that he plans to give later in the day on the same topic on the Senate floor.

Seriously? You’re going to devote a floor speech to a point Karl Rove made on Fox News Sunday?

All in defense of Fox News?

You know, not too long ago when the Republican base was frothy-mouthed about birth certificates and death panels and tea party “patriots” hung Democratic Congressmen in effigy, a few of us went to Sen. Alexander’s office in Nashville and asked why he was remaining silent. As a member of the Republican leadership, an elder statesman of the Republican Party, we viewed him as someone with the gravitas needed to influence his colleagues and urge everyone to dial back the rhetoric.

But now we know why he kept silent. He has no interest in being the measured voice of reason. That’s not how he rolls these days. He’s cast his lot with the wackadoodle wing of the Republican Party, proving his conservative bonafides by spreading nonsense about an “enemies list” right alongside Karl Rove.

Nice work, Senator.

Climate Change Astroturf Group To Hold Nashville Forum

2009-10-20T11:30:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I blogged about the Consumer Energy Alliance, an astroturf organization connected to the oil industry-funded Institute for Energy Research.

Today I was forwarded an invite to a forum they’re hosting next Wednesday at the downtown Sheraton (as always, click on the pic to make it larger):

The CEA promises an “in depth discussion” on the impact of pending Federal climate change legislation. Since the CEA aren’t exactly honest brokers, presenting themselves as some kind of consumer organization when in fact they are part of the oil industry lobby, I think it’s safe to say they plan to spread a lot of half truths and misinformation.

Just a guess. I could be wrong!

They’ve been extremely aggressive in trying to get folks to attend this meeting, making lots of phone calls and personal visits to drum up attendance. In particular I hear they want public officials to attend, even (I hear) inviting Mayor Dean. So I thought we should all know what we're getting into.

Their featured speaker is Tom Mullikin, whom they list as a “nationally recognized environmental attorney” and indeed his bio is impressive. What it doesn’t say is that Mr. Mullikin has made a name for himself speaking at Chamber of Commerce events around the country and spreading misinformation about climate change in the process.

To wit:

”I just try to lay out the facts.”

Those were the words of Tom Mullikin (lawyer and nationally known speaker) at a talk he gave sponsored by the Kansas Chamber of Commerce to a “crowded hall full of business and political leaders from across the state,” as printed in the Wichita Eagle. Mr. Mullikin went on to talk about how local efforts to curb the effects of coal plants on the environment are useless, listing “facts” about how man-made emissions only comprise 5.5 percent of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and that “Kansas homes, factories, cars, livestock and power plants… contribute just 0.013 percent of all greenhouse gases floating in the world’s atmosphere.”

This is not the first time I’ve heard these statements about percentages, and they are irrelevant. It is not the overall percentage of greenhouse gases represented by human activity that matters – what matters is how much the overall amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere increases, and 5.5% is a significant amount. Just think of blood alcohol levels, or a glass of water filled to the brim – one more drop will make it overflow.

The other glaring piece of misinformation provided by Mullikin is the idea that changes and efforts on a local scale to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is futile. This notion is not only totally incorrect, it is irresponsible, and Mr. Mullikin should be ashamed for touting such nonsense.

According to this writer, Mullikin even claims that because China is now the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, there’s no point in Americans trying to reduce their carbon emissions. Which is the most twisted piece of logic I’ve ever heard.

Anyway, I suspect the CEA is hosting these events with the help of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (the Nashville Chamber, which is separate from the U.S. Chamber, knew nothing about it). Call it a gut instinct.

The Chamber is a little red-faced these days when it comes to the climate change issue. There was yesterday's faux-press conference prank, and there have been a steady stream of businesses and utilities dumping their membership over the Chamber's opposition to federal climate change legislation (Mohawk Paper joined the mass exodus today.)

Earlier this week, the U.S. Chamber was busted for hyper-inflating their membership. They seem now to concede that they represent 300,000, not 3 million, businesses, though no one seems to have let the Consumer Energy Alliance know: their bio for board member Bill Kovics, the U.S. Chamber's VP of Energy, Technology & Regulatory affairs, still lists the higher membership number.

Anyway, it’s all very interesting and a little bit sleazy to me. You have an industry group pretending to be a consumer group holding a forum to spread misinformation about federal climate change legislation. They've been aggressive in trying to get public officials to attend, and I just want to say that if Mayor Dean or other public officials attend an anti-climate change event it would be a little embarassing, seeing as how Tennessee is trying to fashion itself as a regional leader in clean energy.

So, just a heads up, foks. But there IS a free lunch. I wonder if we can get some of downtown's homeless through the door? I'd hate to see all that food go to waste.

U.S. Chamber Of Commerce Gets Punked

2009-10-20T05:00:00.001-05:00

Hey, Koch Industries! We libs can lie about who we are in front of the media, too! Except when we do it, we have way more panache:

Will the real U.S. Chamber of Commerce please stand up?

Environmental activists held a hoax press conference Monday morning, pretending to be the business group -- and pretending to announce that the chamber was dropping its opposition to climate-change legislation now in Congress.

The event, complete with fake handouts on chamber letterhead, at least a couple of fake reporters, and a podium adorned with the chamber logo, broke up when a spokesman from the real chamber burst in.

Oh, noes! Who are these merry pranksters? Why the Yes Men, of course. They’ve punked all sorts of high-falutin’ folks, like the World Trade Organization, Dow Chemical, GO-EXPO, and more.

But Monday’s prank nearly errupted in fisticuffs as someone with the real Chamber of Commerce showed up to confront the imposters. But when reporters asked him the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's position on climate change, and if they believed it did not exist, he dodged the questions.

Watch the video:

Consumer Energy Alliance: Another Astroturf Front Group

2009-10-19T16:19:00.004-05:00

Via Kleinheider we learn of yet another fake “grassroots” organization targeting climate change legislation. This one calls itself the Consumer Energy Alliance and it is now running TV ads in Tennessee telling us scary things about low carbon fuel standards.

I asked the Great Gazoogle to tell me more about the Consumer Energy Alliance and it told me the only “consumers” allied with this professional astroturfing outfit are those duped into believing it’s not a cleverly disguised bunch of K-Street lobbyists for the oil industry.

But I did my own research. I followed the linky-links from the Consumer Energy Alliance’s website. The LCFS campaign website is “SecureOurFuels.org.” I looked at their contact list and got this:

I did a check on the phone number and found it is the main number for the Institute For Energy Research. Chris Tucker, the press contact for SecureOurFuels (and Consumer Energy Alliance, as his e-mail address indicates), is also listed as the press contact for the IER.

And who is the IER? The IER board consists of the usual petroleum/energy industry suspects and American Enterprise Institute scoundrels. Folks like Preston Marshall, president of oil exploration company MarOpCo (of the creepy old bazillionaire-who-married-Anna-Nicole-Smith Marshalls).

And Wayne Gable, Managing Director of Federal Affairs for Koch Industries. Ah, it always comes back to Koch Industries, doesn’t it?

Gable is also president of the Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Claude R. Lambe Foundation. According to Wikipedia the Lambe Foundation funds.... you guessed it ... the Institute for Energy Research.

I have one question: what will happen when Koch Industries runs out of money?

Of course, you just need to look through the Consumer Energy Alliance’s publications list to see lots of pro-drilling titles and know these folks are fossil fuel industry shills.

Or, as Grist noted in 2006:

The Institute for Energy Research, incidentally, "articulates free-market positions that respect private property rights and promote efficient outcomes for energy consumers and producers." Its director, Robert Bradley, wrote "Global Warming Concerns Are False Alarm" and "Renewable Energy: Not Cheap, Not 'Green'." ....

So, to recap: We have the Consumer Energy Alliance running TV ads fighting a part of the climate change bill that encourages alternative energy use. The Consumer Energy Alliance is part of the Institute for Energy Research, which is a front group for the oil and gas industry.

Can we say we are surprised? Not me.

Before They Were Stars

2009-10-18T21:11:00.002-05:00

Before the Heene family flew, Icarus-like, too close to the sun that is America’s fascination with all things bullshit, they cut a music video in which they vowed “not to be pussified”:

You just can’t make this up. Our media got punk’d by professional publicity whores who have been pitching a science-based reality show to the networks, whose last great grab for attention involved pimping their kids in a bad rap song.

CNN cut away from a presidential speech for this? Does no one over there know how to hit teh Google?

And we wonder how they got the whole “Saddam has WMD” thing so wrong.

Hindsight is 20-20, of course, and now a few columnists are even saying ”we weren’t the only ones who fell for it!” Oh no you don’t. You will not get away with that. You’re the freaking news media. It is your job not to get this shit wrong!

I'm so tired of our media sucking in this country.