On December 13 and 16, Jon Stewart did two segments shredding the Senate Republicans blocking the 9/11 First Responders Bill. In the second segment of December 16, Jon’s guests were four men who were 9/11 first responders, all of whom are suffering from severe health problems as a result. He talks with them about their reaction to the Republicans blocking this bill.

Thank you, Jon, for your support for these men and women who sacrificed their health to help others.

The third segment is below the fold.  

The links to the Transcripts can be found in this comment by BruinKid at Daily Kos

(10 pm. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

This graphic presents how a lunar eclipse occurs.
	The Moon’s orbit is slightly canted with respect to the plane of the ecliptic (the plane in which the Earth orbits the Sun) and therefore crosses that plane twice a month.

Unfortunately, the weather seems to be taking a Republican bent and will
not cooperate over the 20th/21st.

Again thanks for your time. I look forward to your comments and critiques
below.

The New York Times was, typically, wrong.

FROM SOUTH CAROLINA.; PUBLIC FEELING IN CHARLESTON

THE LEADING MEN IN THE SECESSION MOVEMENT

MISGIVINGS ABOUT THE ISSUE.

Published: December 15, 1860

Emphasis in the original.

I think what’s important to remember as we celebrate the sesquicentennial is the root cause of the Rebellion.

A group of wealthy men thought it was ok to work, breed, and sell human beings like animals based on the color of their skin.

More than that, they were upset that certain Northern States were insufficiently zealous about finding their property for them when it got ‘lost’, causing significant impact to the bottom line.

And also their honor was offended that anyone could think this behavior morally wrong.  It hurt their sensitive feelings.

Alexander H. Stephens

Cornerstone Address, March 21, 1861

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition. This, our new Government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.

This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It is so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North who still cling to these errors with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind; from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity.

One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is, forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics: their conclusions are right if their premises are. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights, with the white man…. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the Northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery; that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle-a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of man.

The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds we should succeed, and that he and his associates in their crusade against our institutions would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as well as in physics and mechanics, I admitted, but told him it was he and those acting with him who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

• How the South rationalizes secession
  
  150 years later, a campaign to deny that the South’s exodus from the union was a revolution is in full force
  
  By Glenn W. LaFantasie, Salon.com
  
  Sunday, Dec 19, 2010 11:01 ET

Is an interesting and lengthy read.  He put me on the track of Stephens’ racist sentiments and makes a Unionist case for treason, which was the official causus belli of the North.

Gone With the Myths

By EDWARD BALL, The New York Times

Published: December 18, 2010

ON Dec. 20, 1860, 169 men – politicians and people of property – met in the ballroom of St. Andrew’s Hall in Charleston, S.C. After hours of debate, they issued the 158-word “Ordinance of Secession,” which repealed the consent of South Carolina to the Constitution and declared the state to be an independent country. Four days later, the same group drafted a seven-page “Declaration of the Immediate Causes (.pdf),” explaining why they had decided to split the Union.

…

(A) look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union – which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy – reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery.

The ordinance is nothing special, Tenther nonsense of the type LaFantasie debunks.  The Declaration on the other hand is quite interesting-

We assert that fourteen of the States have deliberately refused, for years past, to fulfill their constitutional obligations, and we refer to their own Statutes for the proof.

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation.

The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be “to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.

We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.

For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing, until it has now secured to its aid the power of the common Government. Observing the forms of the Constitution, a sectional party has found within that Article establishing the Executive Department, the means of subverting the Constitution itself. A geographical line has been drawn across the Union, and all the States north of that line have united in the election of a man to the high office of President of the United States, whose opinions and purposes are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that that “Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,” and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction.

This sectional combination for the submersion of the Constitution, has been aided in some of the States by elevating to citizenship, persons who, by the supreme law of the land, are incapable of becoming citizens; and their votes have been used to inaugurate a new policy, hostile to the South, and destructive of its beliefs and safety.

From The (South Carolina) State editorial page-

Secessionists were clear about their cause: slavery

Thursday, Dec. 16, 2010

What we found most striking in rereading the Declaration was the complete absence of any other causes. After laying out the argument that the states retained a right to secede if the Union did not fulfill its constitutional and contractual obligations, the document cited the one failing of the United States: its refusal to enforce the constitutional provision requiring states to return escaped slaves to their owners. “This stipulation was so material to the compact,” the document declares, “that without it that compact would not have been made.”

The lies continue. Remember this is the one man who could have stopped the filibuster and didn’t.

This is your morning Open Thread. Pour your favorite beverage and review the past and comment on the future.

Find the past “On This Day in History” here.

On this day in 1776, Thomas Paine publishes The American Crisis.

These are the times that try men’s souls; the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of his country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph.

When these phrases appeared in the pages of the Pennsylvania Journal for the first time, General George Washington’s troops were encamped at McKonkey’s Ferry on the Delaware River opposite Trenton, New Jersey. In August, they had suffered humiliating defeats and lost New York City to British troops. Between September and December, 11,000 American volunteers gave up the fight and returned to their families. General Washington could foresee the destiny of a rebellion without an army if the rest of his men returned home when their service contracts expired on December 31. He knew that without an upswing in morale and a significant victory, the American Revolution would come to a swift and humiliating end.

Thomas Paine was similarly astute. His Common Sense was the clarion call that began the revolution. As Washington’s troops retreated from New York through New Jersey, Paine again rose to the challenge of literary warfare. With American Crisis, he delivered the words that would salvage the revolution.

The American Crisis was a series of pamphlets published from 1776 to 1783 during the American Revolution by eighteenth century Enlightenment philosopher and author Thomas Paine. Thirteen numbered pamphlets were published between 1776-1777 with three additional pamphlets released between 1777-1783. The writings were contemporaneous with the early parts of the American Revolution, during the times that colonists needed inspiring.

They were written in a language the common man could manage and are indicative of Paine’s liberal philosophies. Paine signed them with one of his many pseudonyms “Common Sense”. The writings bolstered the morale of the American colonists, appealed to the English people’s consideration of the war with America, clarified the issues at stake in the war and denounced the advocates of a negotiated peace.

 211 – Publius Septimius Geta, co-emperor of Rome, is lured to come without his bodyguards to meet his brother Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (Caracalla), to discuss a possible reconciliation. When he arrives the Praetorian Guard murders him and he dies in the arms of his mother Julia Domna.

324 – Licinius abdicates his position as Roman Emperor.

1154 – Henry II of England is crowned at Westminster Abbey.

1490 – Anne, Duchess of Brittany, is married to Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor by proxy.

1606 – The Susan Constant, the Godspeed, and the Discovery depart England carrying settlers who found, at Jamestown, Virginia, the first of the thirteen colonies that became the United States.

1776 – Thomas Paine publishes one of a series of pamphlets in the Pennsylvania Journal titled The American Crisis.

1777 – American Revolutionary War: George Washington’s Continental Army goes into winter quarters at Valley Forge, Pennsylvania.

1796 – French Revolutionary Wars: Two British frigates under Commodore Horatio Nelson and two Spanish frigates under Commodore Don Jacobo Stuart engage in battle off the coast of Murcia.

1828 – Nullification Crisis: Vice President of the United States John C. Calhoun pens the South Carolina Exposition and Protest, protesting the Tariff of 1828.

1835 – The first issue of The Blade newspaper is published in Toledo, Ohio.

1900 – Hopetoun Blunder: The first Governor-General of Australia John Hope, 7th Earl of Hopetoun, appointed Sir William Lyne as premier of the new state New South Wales, but he was unable to persuade other colonial politicians to join his government and was forced to resign.

1907 – A group of 239 coal miners die during a mine explosion in Jacobs Creek, Pennsylvania.

1912 – William H. Van Schaick, captain of the steamship General Slocum which caught fire and killed over 1,000 people, is pardoned by U.S. President William Howard Taft after three-and-a-half-years in Sing Sing prison.

1916 – World War I: Battle of Verdun – On the Western Front, the French Army successfully holds off the German Army and drives it back to its starting position.

1920 – King Constantine I is restored as King of the Hellenes after the death of his son Alexander I of Greece and a plebiscite.

1924 – The last Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost is sold in London, England.

1932 – BBC World Service begins broadcasting as the BBC Empire Service

1941 – World War II: Adolf Hitler becomes Supreme Commander-in-Chief of the German Army.

1941 – World War II: Limpet mines placed by Italian divers sink the HMS Valiant (1914) and HMS Queen Elizabeth (1913) in Alexandria harbour.

1946 – Start of the First Indochina War.

1956 – Irish-born physician John Bodkin Adams is arrested in connection with the suspicious deaths of more than 160 patients.

Eventually he is convicted only of minor charges.

1961 – India annexes Daman and Diu, part of Portuguese India.

1963 – Zanzibar gains independence from the United Kingdom as a constitutional monarchy, under Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah.

1964 – The South Vietnamese military junta of Nguyen Khanh dissolved the High National Council and arrested some of the members.

1967 – Prime Minister of Australia Harold Holt is officially presumed dead.

1972 – Apollo program: The last manned lunar flight, Apollo 17, crewed by Eugene Cernan, Ron Evans and Harrison Schmitt, returns to Earth.

1975 – John Paul Stevens is appointed a justice of The United States Supreme Court.

1983 – The original FIFA World Cup trophy, the Jules Rimet Trophy, is stolen from the headquarters of the Brazilian Football Confederation in Rio de Janeiro.

1984 – The Sino-British Joint Declaration, stating that the People’s Republic of China would resume the exercise of sovereignty over Hong Kong and the United Kingdom would restore Hong Kong to China with effect from July 1, 1997 is signed in Beijing by Deng Xiaoping and Margaret Thatcher.

1986 – Mikhail Gorbachev, leader of the Soviet Union, releases Andrei Sakharov and his wife from internal exile in Gorky.

1995 – The United States Government restores federal recognition to the Nottawaseppi Huron Band of Potawatomi Indian tribe.

1997 – SilkAir Flight 185 crashes into the Musi River, near Palembang in Indonesia, killing 104.

1998 – Lewinsky scandal: The United States House of Representatives forwards articles I and III of impeachment against President Bill Clinton to the Senate.

2000 – The Leninist Guerrilla Units wing of the Communist Labour Party of Turkey/Leninist attack a Nationalist Movement Party office in Istanbul, killing one person and injuring three.

2001 – A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Khovsgol Province, Mongolia.

2001 – Argentine economic crisis: December 2001 riots – Riots erupt in Buenos Aires.

Holidays and observances

   * Christian Feast Day:

         o O Radix

         o Pope Anastasius I

   * Liberation day (Goa)

   * Opalia (Roman Empire)

   * United Nations Day for South-South Cooperation (International)

“Punting the Pundits” is an Open Thread. It is a selection of editorials and opinions from around the news medium and the internet blogs. The intent is to provide a forum for your reactions and opinions, not just to the opinions presented, but to what ever you find important.

Thanks to ek hornbeck, click on the link and you can access all the past “Punting the Pundits”.

The Sunday Talking Heads:

This Week with Christiane Amanpour: It’ll be the SALT Treaty, Obama’s Afghanistan strategy and the impasse in funding the government with Sen John Kerry (D-MA) and Sen. Richard Lugar, (R-IN).

The Round Table guests, George Will, Democratic political strategist Donna Brazile, Reuters Editor at Large Chrystia Freeland and Rajiv Chandrasekaran of the Washington Post will look at the meaning of progress in the Afghanistan war. And Amanpour takes a special look back at her time covering Ambassador Richard Holbrooke.

Face the Nation with Bob Schieffer: Mr. Schieffer’s guests will be Sen. Lindsey Graham, (R-SC), Armed Services Committee Member, Sen. Carl Levin, (D-MI), Armed Services Committee Chair, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, (D-MN) and Sen. Jeff Sessions, (R-AL). They will discuss the recently released Afghanistan report and what’s ahead in 2011.

The Chris Matthews Show: Chris, aka “Tweety”, will be joined by , Andrea Mitchell, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent, Michael Duffy, TIME Magazine

Assistant Managing Editor, Helene Cooper, The New York Times White House Correspondent and Andrew Sullivan, The Atlantic Senior Editor. They will discuss:

Did Barack Obama Get Back on the Right Track This Week? and Top Ten Political Gaffes of the Year.

Yeah, Obama’s on the “right track” alright.

Meet the Press with David Gregory: “LUrch” will have as his exclusive guest Vice President Joe Biden who will no doubt lie about how great the Obama tax cuts are and how the left should suck it up and vote for Obama in 2012.

The Round Table will include the Mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Cory Booker (D), Republican Strategist and Founding Leader of No Labels, an organization devoted to decreasing hyperpartisanship, Mark McKinnon, NBC News Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent Andrea Mitchell, and the Host of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, Joe Scarborough.

Andrea’s getting around this morning

State of the Union with Candy Crowley: The President signs a key tax cut plan into law after a contentious debate in Congress with his own party. What are the chances for bipartisanship that got this legislation passed can possibly carry on to the next session? We’ll talk to Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, (aka the Human Hybrid Turtle) on his party’s agenda.

Then shifting focus abroad to the progress in the War in Afghanistan… where do we go from here and what are the prospects for country’s future? Candy sits down with former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, former CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon (Ret.) and former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Richard Myers (Ret.)

And we’ll break down the week in politics with A.B. Stoddard from The Hill Newspaper and Matt Bai from The New York Times.

I have it good authority that Matt Bai is an idiot

Fareed Zakaris: GPS: Remembering Richard Holbrooke, the man that Fareed calls “maybe the most important American diplomat of the last two decades.” A great GPS panel will discuss what makes a great diplomat…and what’s the way forward in Afghanistan and Pakistan after Ambassador Holbrooke.

Also, Fareed’s take on the President’s recent Afghanistan review and the challenges that lie ahead for the United States and its allies in the region.

Britain’s austerity measures have sparked protests and violence. Fareed sits down with the architect of the austerity, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne.

And then for the other side of the story, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who also served as the U.K.’s finance minister, tells Fareed why he thinks the budget cuts are the wrong move.

Also, what in the world? Why are China and Russia renouncing the almighty American dollar?

And finally a last look at the Pentagon powered by…a Playstation?

Glenn Greenwald: Joe Biden v. Joe Biden on WikiLeaks

It’s really not an overstatement to say that WikiLeaks and Julian Assange are the new Iraqi WMDs because the government and establishment media are jointly manufacturing and disseminating an endless stream of fear-mongering falsehoods designed to depict them as scary villains threatening the security of The American People and who must therefore be stopped at any cost.  So often, the government/media claims made in service of this goal are outright false, which is why I have focused so much on the un-killable, outright lie that WikiLeaks indiscriminately dumped 250,000 diplomatic cables without regard to the consequences (on Thursday, The New York Times, in its article on Assange’s release from prison, re-printed the lie by referencing “Mr. Assange’s role in the publication of some 250,000 American diplomatic documents” only to delete it without any indication of a correction in the final version of the article, while the always-conventional-wisdom-spouting Dana Milbank in The Washington Post — in the course of condemning “the absurd secrecy of the Obama administration, in some ways worse than that of George W. Bush” — today wrote of “Assange’s indiscriminate dump of American government secrets over the last several months – with hardly a care for who might be hurt or what public good was served”).

But this new example from Joe Biden is extraordinary, and reveals how government officials are willing to say absolutely anything — even things they know are false — to demonize WikiLeaks.  First, here’s Biden with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell — on Thursday, December 16 — happily insisting that the leak of the diplomatic cables has done no damage to U.S. relations

   MITCHELL:  This is Vice President Joe Biden, who told me that the leaked cables created no substantive damage — only embarrassment . . . .

   BIDEN:  And I came in [to the U.N.] almost all to embraces – it wasn’t just shaking hands – I know these guys, I know these women – they still trust the United States – there’s all kinds of —

   MITCHELL:  So there’s no damage?

   BIDEN:  I don’t think there’s any damage.  I don’t think there’s any substantive damage, no.  Look, some of the cables are embarrassing . . . but nothing that I’m aware of that goes to the essence of the relationship that would allow another nation to say:  “they lied to me, we don’t trust them, they really are not dealing fairly with us.”

But here’s the very same Joe Biden, in a preview of an interview with David Gregory — taped the following day, Thursday, December 17 — to air this Sunday on Meet the Press, gravely lamenting that Julian Assange has harmed American foreign relations:

 

This guy has done things that have damaged and put in jeopardy the lives and occupations of other parts of the world.  He’s made it more difficult for us to conduct our business with our allies and our friends.  For example, in my meetings — you know I meet with most of these world leaders — there is a desire to meet with me alone, rather than have staff in the room:  it makes things more cumbersome — so it has done damage.

New York Times Editorial: The Tax-Cut Deal

As it became clear last week that Congress would pass the tax-cut deal he made with Republicans, President Obama said it “proves that both parties can in fact work together to grow our economy and look out for the American people.” It proves no such thing.

Mr. Obama himself described the talks that led to the $858 billion deal as a hostage negotiation. The Bush-era “middle class” tax cuts were extended for two years, along with other tax cuts that both sides wanted; the cost is high – $485 billion – but the breaks will support consumer spending while the economy is weak.

Mr. Obama knows, however, that significant parts of the deal – especially the two-year, $139 billion extension of the high-end Bush-era tax cuts and the generous new estate tax provisions for multimillionaires and billionaires – will generate relatively little new growth. And because excessive tax cuts worsen the deficit, they actually threaten Americans by creating pressure to cut spending on other programs that actually are needed.

Frank Rich: The Bipartisanship Racket

JEEZ, can’t we all just get along? Can’t we be civilized? Can’t we reach across the aisle, find common ground and get things done? Can’t we have a new Morning in America as clubby and chipper as MSNBC’s daily gabfest, “Morning Joe“?

This is actually the manifesto of the new political organization called No Labels. It’s no surprise that its official debut last week prompted derisive laughter from all labels across the political spectrum, not to mention Gawker, which deemed it “the most boring political movement of all time.” But attention must be paid. In its patronizing desire to instruct us on what is wrong with our politics, No Labels ends up being a damning indictment of just how alarmingly out of touch the mainstream political-media elite remains with the grievances that have driven Americans to cynicism and despair in the 21st century’s Gilded Age.

Although No Labels sounds like a progressive high school’s Model U.N., its heavy hitters are serious adults – or at least white male adults. Among the 16 billed speakers at last week’s official launch in New York, there were three women and no blacks, notwithstanding an excruciating No Labels “anthem” contributed by the Senegalese-American rapper Akon. (Do find on YouTube.) The marquee names on hand included Michael Bloomberg; Senate Democrats (Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, the incoming Joe Manchin of West Virginia); moderate Republicans drummed out of office by the Tea Party (Charlie Crist, Mike Castle); and no fewer than four MSNBC talking heads. Despite Bloomberg’s denials, some persist in speculating that No Labels is a stalking horse for a quixotic 2012 presidential run. At the very least the organization is a promotional hobby horse for MSNBC.

David Sirota: Why the “Lazy Jobless” Myth Persists

During the recent fight over extending unemployment benefits, conservatives trotted out the shibboleth that says the program fosters sloth. Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., for instance, said added unemployment benefits mean people are “encouraged not to go look for work.” Columnist Pat Buchanan said expanding these benefits mean “more people will hold off going back looking for a job.” And Fox News’ Charles Payne applauded the effort to deny future unemployment checks because he said it would compel layabouts “to get off the sofa.”

The thesis undergirding all the rhetoric was summed up by conservative commentator Ben Stein, who insisted that “the people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities.”

The idea is that unemployment has nothing to do with structural economic forces or rigged public policies and everything to do with individual motivation. Yes, we’re asked to believe that the 15 million jobless Americans are all George Costanzas — parasitic loafers occasionally pretending to seek work as latex salesmen, but really just aiming to decompress on a refrigerator-equipped recliner during a lifelong Summer of George.

John Nichols: Rejecting Bigotry and Bitter-Ender McCain, Senate Scraps Ban on Gays in the Military

Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992 with the strong support of the LGBT community and allies who believed that his election would usher in an era when gays and lesbians could serve openly in the military.

Instead, supporters of equality and of strategies to assure that the military attracts the best and the brightest got the noxious “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” compromise, which supposedly allowed closeted gays and lesbians to serve in the military but in fact became a new platform for discrimination.

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” lasted through Clinton’s presidency and George Bush’s.

But, now, after two decades of organizing, campaigning and lobbying, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” has been rejected-and with it the ban on gays and lesbians serving openly in the U.S. military.

In an indication of how far the movement for LGBT rights has come, a bipartisan Senate vote of 63 to 31 to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and lift the ban.

Michael Moore: ¡Viva WikiLeaks! SiCKO Was Not Banned in Cuba

Yesterday WikiLeaks did an amazing thing and released a classified State Department cable that dealt, in part, with me and my film, ‘Sicko.’

It is a stunning look at the Orwellian nature of how bureaucrats for the State spin their lies and try to recreate reality (I assume to placate their bosses and tell them what they want to hear).

The date is January 31, 2008. It is just days after ‘Sicko’ has been nominated for an Oscar as Best Documentary. This must have sent someone reeling in Bush’s State Department (his Treasury Department had already notified me they were investigating what laws I might have broken in taking three 9/11 first responders to Cuba to get them the health care they had been denied in the United States).

Former health insurance executive Wendell Potter recently revealed that the insurance industry — which had decided to spend millions to go after me and, if necessary, “push Michael Moore off a cliff” — had begun working with anti-Castro Cubans in Miami in order to have them speak out and smear my film.

So, on January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took a made up story and sent it back to his HQ in Washington.

Gains outweigh setbacks in a landmark year for gay rights

Repeal of the military’s ‘don’t ask, don’t tell’ policy may be the movement’s biggest victory yet, activists say.

By Robin Abcarian and Jessica Garrison, Los Angeles Times

December 19, 2010

Today the military, tomorrow the marriage altar?

In an era when gay Americans have seen stunning progress and many setbacks in the quest for equality under the law, many believe 2010 will go down in history as a watershed that will lead inexorably to more legal rights.

Saturday’s vote in the Senate to allow the repeal of the federal law banning gays from openly serving in the military is “one of the greatest, if not the greatest, victory in the history of the movement for gay and lesbian equality,” said Aaron Belkin, director of the Palm Center, a UC Santa Barbara think tank that studies the issue of gays in the military.

The evolution of the perfect American Christmas tree

We want flawless trees, where once, those from the woods were just fine

By Wynne Parry

Lynne Aldrich, who owns a farm along with her husband Lee in North Central Iowa, got a call one holiday season from a upset woman. Apparently, her husband had shown up at the Aldrich Tree Farm to pick out a Christmas tree alone. Mistake. His wife described the tree he had chosen as the ugliest one she had ever seen. Lynne Aldrich told the woman to bring the tree back and pick out a new one.

So, the couple returned and headed out into the 28-acre farm, leaving the tree leaned up against the barn. Within 10 minutes another family had driven up and claimed it. Then the complaining woman returned with a tree that, from Aldrich’s perspective, was ugly, so ugly in fact that the couple hadn’t even tagged it for sale.    

USA

Rupert Cornwell: After 150 years, the Civil War still divides the United States

Out of America: As the country prepares to commemorate the great schism, the echoes of the bloody conflict still reverberate through its politics and culture  

Sunday, 19 December 2010

“A joyous night of music, dancing, food and drink” is probably not how most people would choose to mark an event setting the stage for a conflict that lasted four years, cost 620,000 lives, and ended in annihilating defeat.

But when it comes to the American Civil War, South Carolina is not ordinary. It was the state where passions ran highest then, and where the flame of the “Lost Cause” is most tenderly nourished now. The war was made inevitable by an act of defiance by South Carolina. How fitting, indeed how inevitable, that the 150th anniversary commemorations of the most traumatic and divisive event in the country’s history should begin in similar vein, in the same state, tomorrow.

Probable carcinogen hexavalent chromium found in drinking water of 31 U.S. cities



By Lyndsey Layton

Washington Post Staff Writer  

An environmental group that analyzed the drinking water in 35 cities across the United States, including Bethesda and Washington, found that most contained hexavalent chromium, a probable carcinogen that was made famous by the film “Erin Brockovich.”

The study, which will be released Monday by the Environmental Working Group, is the first nationwide analysis of hexavalent chromium in drinking water to be made public.

It comes as the Environmental Protection Agency is considering whether to set a limit for hexavalent chromium in tap water.

Europe

Moscow riots expose racism at the heart of Russian football

Links between neo-Nazis and fans are growing as the country gears up for the 2018 World Cup

Miriam Elder

The Observer, Sunday 19 December 2010  

Behind a black door just steps from the golden domes of Novodevichy monastery, a group of young men and women sit huddled at computers. They are surrounded by racks of the red and white jumpers and scarves that mark the devoted fans of FC Spartak, Moscow’s leading football club.

This is the headquarters of Fratria, the unofficial Spartak fan club that lost one of its members when he was killed during a brawl with a gang from the Caucasus, the restive mainly Muslim region on Russia’s southernmost flank.

Vatican Bank hit by financial scandal… again

Investigators are closing in on the Pope’s bank, dissatisfied by claims that it will change its ways

By Victor Simpson and Nicole Winfield Sunday, 19 December 2010

This is no ordinary bank. The ATMs are in Latin, priests use a private entrance, and a life-sized portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall. Nevertheless, l’Istituto per le Opere di Religione (the Institute for Religious Works) is a bank, and it is under harsh new scrutiny, including money-laundering allegations that led police to seize ¤23m (£19.5m) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the “Vatican Bank” has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a “misunderstanding” and expresses optimism that it will be cleared up quickly. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital”.

Middle East

Politics in Iraq Casts Doubt on a U.S. Presence After 2011



By STEVEN LEE MYERS, THOM SHANKER and JACK HEALY

Published: December 18, 2010

BAGHDAD – The protracted political turmoil that saw the resurgence of a fiercely anti-American political bloc here is casting new doubt on establishing any enduring American military role in Iraq after the last of nearly 50,000 troops are scheduled to withdraw in the next 12 months, military and administration officials say.

Given Iraq’s military shortcomings, especially in air power, intelligence coordination and logistics, American and Iraqi officials had long expected that some American military presence, even if only in an advisory role, would continue beyond 2011.

Asia

Koreas up the ante over artillery drill

December 19, 2010

SEOUL:  

South Korea’s military said it would go ahead with a live-fire drill on a border island bombarded by North Korea last month, despite the North’s threat to strike back with deadlier firepower.

But the one-day drill, scheduled for some time between today and Tuesday, may be pushed back.

”There is no change in our stance with regards to the live-fire exercise,” a Defence Ministry spokesman said.

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”We cannot confirm … whether we will carry out the exercise today.”

Foreign troop death toll hits 700 in Afghanistan  

Latest to die is NATO soldier killed by roadside bomb in country’s south

Reuters

KABUL – A member of the NATO-led force in Afghanistan was killed on Sunday, taking the total number of foreign troops killed in 2010 to 700, by far the deadliest year of the war since the Taliban were toppled in 2001.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) said one service member was killed by a roadside bomb in southern Afghanistan. It gave no other details.

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A total of 521 foreign troops were killed in 2009, previously the worst year of the war, but operations against the Taliban-led insurgency have increased dramatically over the past 18 months.

About 2,270 foreign troops have been killed since the war began, roughly two-thirds of them Americans.

Africa

Mugabe ‘confident’ of winning 2011 elections



MUTARE, ZIMBABWE Dec 19 2010 08:34  

Mugabe, Africa’s oldest leader and in power since independence from Britain in 1980, was officially endorsed by his ZANU-PF followers as its presidential candidate at the party’s annual conference in the eastern city of Mutare.

Tsvangirai’s Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) conceded for the first time that a presidential election could take place in 2011, but it ruled out parliamentary polls until 2013.

Mugabe (86) could hold on to power until well into his nineties if he wins another term after a ballot that for months he has insisted must take place next year because a power-sharing deal with Tsvangirai, the current prime minister, is not working.

Shady group blocking official diamond sales  

Elite accused of exploiting problems with the Kimberley Process  

Dec 19, 2010 1:12 AM | By SUNDAY TIMES CORRESPONDENT    

A review teamof the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS), diamond dealers in Harare, politicians and civic organisations monitoring diamond dealings believe there is a cartel of greedy senior politicians, lawyers, unscrupulous businessmen and top civil servants who are making it difficult for KPCS to allow Zimbabwe to sell its diamonds.

Since diamonds are being sold unmonitored, the country is losing sales worth millions of dollars to underworld buyers in South Africa, Dubai, India, Lebanon and other diamond-dealing countries.

Latin America

Mexican drug cartels find youths to be easy prey

Faced with a poor education system and dismal job prospects, boys and girls as young as 11 are lured into acting as mules, peddlers, lookouts – even executioners – for drug cartels offering easy money.

By Ken Ellingwood and Tracy Wilkinson, Los Angeles Times  

Reporting from Jiutepec, Mexico, and Mexico City – The curly-haired suspect in the sweatshirt faced the flash of news cameras, looking impossibly small.

“When did you start to kill?” he was asked. “How much did you earn?” “How many did you execute?”

He said he began killing at age 11. A drug cartel paid him $200 a week. He’d killed four people.

“How?” came the final question.

“I cut their throats,” he replied. Then masked Mexican soldiers hustled him off, the way they do other drug suspects.

Ignoring Asia A Blog

(10 am. – promoted by ek hornbeck)

So here’s the deal. Grab your bootstraps and pull as hard as you can. Elbow everybody else out of the way, and climb over any mountains of bodies in your way. Or stomp them if they won’t be reasonable and just die.

Do unto others before they do unto you, and you too can make the big time. Baby.

The top of the mountain waits for you! The shining city on the hill where the streets are paved with gold and you’ll never have to look another whining starving emaciated worthless shiftless lazy ass bum in the eye again and all the beautiful people look like they just walked off the cover of a magazine.

God loves you and he wants you to live a rich life in heaven on earth.

Believe, my friends. Believe, and you too can live the American Dream. Jeezus loves you too and this is God’s Country my friends!

Give up your whining socialist fantasies and screw the suckers. Be a real self made man or woman. The brass ring is there just waiting for you to grab. You can do this!

Buck up, straighten up, and fly right. If you miss it you have only yourself to blame for being so worthless. The world doesn’t owe you a living. You have to get out there, grab a live baby, and rip it’s heart out with your teeth if you want to live the blessed life of a fulfilled human being.

The only winners are those who die with the most toys. You know this in your heart of hearts, and everyone else is a loser. Just fertilizer. Shit. Made to serve you. The ground upon which you strut in silver slippers, my friends.

It’s get better on the flip…

DANYA NADAR, TRNN: On Friday, December 17, 2010, President Obama signed into law an $850 billion tax cut package after receiving clearance from the US House of Representatives.

On Wednesday, the Senate overwhelmingly passed the legislation by an 81 to 19 vote, and on Thursday the House approved the bill by a vote of 277 to 148 members. T

The Middle-Class Tax Relief Act [Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act] provides a two-year, across-the-board extension of Bush-era tax cuts, a 2 percent rollback of Social Security payroll taxes, extends unemployment insurance for 13 months, and brings back the estate tax at 35 percent for 2 years on estates of more than $5 million. The bill also ensures that tax rates won’t rise on almost all Americans on January 1, 2011. Prior to signing the bill into law, President Obama spoke about the importance of this legislation to middle-class Americans, to stimulating the economy, and to job creation.

PRES. BARACK OBAMA: First and foremost, the legislation I’m about to sign is a substantial victory for middle-class families across the country. They’re the ones hit hardest by the recession we’ve endured. They’re the ones who need relief right now. And that’s what is at the heart of this bill.

NADAR: The Real News spoke to Tom Ferguson, senior fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and asked him who he thinks benefits from this new law.

THOMAS FERGUSON, PROF. POLITICAL SCIENCE, UMASS BOSTON: The question here of who wins and who loses on this, I think it’s real clear who actually wins. It’s America’s superrich, ’cause the real issue was not whether there was going to be a tax cut for middle-class and poor Americans. President favored that. The Democrats in Congress favored that. The remarkable thing here is the president effectively dealt with the Republicans, undermined his own party, especially in the House of Representatives, and then awarded a tax break to the people who garnered most of the income in the United States, the increase in income in the United States, over last 10, 20, or even 30 years.

So who won? The superrich. That’s obvious. There is something–there’s about $60 billion worth of unemployment compensation there. You know, that’s got to help, sure, people who are unemployed. The striking thing here, though, you want to pay attention to is how the White House has just–was so slow on this. They spent most of the year messing around on unemployment benefits. They didn’t do anything. When they finally decided they were going to lose the election, they did an extension earlier, and they only put the extension through to November 30. That’s why they had to do this again.

A couple of other striking things about this bill. I mean, they did chop the Social Security tax for a couple of percent for a year. Now, that’s a really interesting thing, because what it’s going to do is put them in the position, as the tax goes back at the end of the year, of opening themselves to the charge that they raised taxes in an election year. And, you know, my take is that’s going to make it hard to just let it go back up. And Social Security is not, as we’ve sometimes discussed on this program, in any real danger at all, not for decades. But it will make the short-run finances of Social Security look worse.

My reading of this is the White House in fact is operating here to try to squeeze cuts in Social Security either soon or in a year or so. I really think that this is an extension of the deficit commission politics there. Now, in terms of, you know, do we get an economic stimulus? Yeah, we do, and, you know, as somebody who thinks we haven’t had a big enough economic stimulus, I’d favor that.

Here’s the thing, though. If you’re going to stimulate the economy, tax cuts are about the worst possible way to do it. In the end it’s going to be the unemployment compensation, maybe the chopping of the Social Security tax itself, and maybe some of the accelerated depreciation provisions, and things like that in the bill. It’s not going to be–most of the tax cuts are going to end up–that go to the superrich are going to be saved. This is a lousy way to get a stimulus.

I think the real value of this whole business is it shows you how cheap is all the talk about the deficit, because two weeks ago they were all talking, oh, deficit, deficit, deficit, we’ve got to cut it, blah blah blah. At, you know, basically the first sign of a proposal from the Republicans, the White House and Republicans agreed to let’s just cut taxes. I mean, this shows you the worthlessness of American political rhetoric and, you know, the startling fact that the White House didn’t even try to make much of an argument on this in favor of a sort of traditional Democratic bill.



NADAR: Many members of the House who voted against the bill, such as Representative Anthony Weiner, expressed concern that President Obama and lawmakers will face enormous election-year pressure in 2012 to extend the cuts again or to make them permanent.

I Want a Dog for Christmas, Charlie Brown!, Madagascar.  

Oh, really? I’m from Playskool.

And I’m from Mattel. Well, I’m not really from Mattel, I’m actually from a smaller company that was purchased by Mattel in a leveraged buyout.

• ABC Family– Toy Story, Santa Claus Is Comin’ to Town
• AMC– Miracle on 34th Street x 2 (just like last night)
• Bravo– House marathon
• Disney– Fish Hooks marathon (3 premiers)
• Discovery– Our Thing (premier)
• E!– Knocked Up
• ESPN– College Throwball, Udrove Humanitarian Bowl: Fresno State v. Northern Illinois, R&L Carriers New Orleans Bowl: Ohio v. Troy
• ESPN2– College Hoopies, Alabama v. Oklahoma State, Women’s College Volleyball NCAA Tournament Final: California v. Penn State
• Food– Guy Fieri night, Triple D marathon (with premier)
• FX– Pineapple Express
• History– Immigration (premier), Masonic Conspiracy Theories
• Lifetime– Deck the Halls, Marry Me
• MTV– Roll Bounce
• Nick– iCarly x 2 (1 Hour Specials)
• Oxygen– Pretty Woman x 2
• Sci Fi– Red: Werewolf Hunter (World Premier), The Cave
• Spike– The Transporter x 2
• Style– The Dish (Year End Special premier, am I mistaken or did Danielle Fishel guest star on last night’s Sanctuary?)
• TBS– ♥s them some Fred Claus (sigh)
• Turner Classic– Meet John Doe, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (I thought it was Capra night, but it’s really Gary Cooper)
• TNT– The Wizard of Oz x 2
• Toon– Stuart Little
• USA– Titanic

Later-

• ABC Family– Happy Feet
• AMC– Holiday Inn (not the same as last night)
• FX– It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia (this week’s Holiday Special), Deck the Halls
• Oxygen– Something’s Gotta Give
• Sci Fi– The Hitcher (not the good 1987 version), The Seamstress
• TBS– The Heartbreak Kid
• Turner Classic– Friendly Persuasion (Cooper sans Capra)
• TNT– Shrek 2
• USA– Psych, Burn Notice (this week’s)
• VH1– Back to the Future

SNL– Jeff Bridges and Eminem.

GitS: SAC 2nd Gig– Selecon and Make Up (Episodes 12 & 13)

Listen, Doc, about the future…

NO! Marty, we’ve already agreed that having information about the future can have disastrous consequences. Even if you’re intentions are good, it can backfire drastically! Whatever you’ve got to tell me, I’ll find out through the natural course of time.

…

What about all that talk about screwing up future events? The space-time continuum?

Well, I figured, what the hell?

Zap2it TV Listings, Yahoo TV Listings

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 Defiant Gbagbo orders UN out of Ivory Coast

by Dave Clark, AFP

30 mins ago

2 Gbagbo defiant in I.Coast as aide urges ‘combat’

by Dave Clark, AFP

Sat Dec 18, 8:04 am ET

3 Assange cites McCarthyism as BoA tightens WikiLeaks vice

by Beatrice Debut, AFP

1 hr 34 mins ago

4 US Congress backs lifting military gay ban

by Olivier Knox, AFP

2 hrs 2 mins ago

5 China, Pakistan conclude $35 bln deals

by Khurram Shahzad, AFP

Sat Dec 18, 9:53 am ET

6 Chinese premier vows to stick by Pakistan

by Khurram Shahzad, AFP

Sat Dec 18, 9:44 am ET

7 Australia set to level Ashes series

AFP

2 hrs 56 mins ago

8 Obama warns of possible setback in US-Russia ties

AFP

Sat Dec 18, 8:22 am ET

9 California approves first broad US climate plan

AFP

Sat Dec 18, 3:23 am ET

10 Preval agrees not to release Haiti vote count: OAS

AFP

Sat Dec 18, 3:12 am ET

11 Foreign troop death toll in Afghanistan in 2010 nears 700

By Paul Tait, Reuters

1 hr 56 mins ago

12 Ivory Coast’s Gbagbo digs in, tells U.N. to leave

By Ange Aboa, Reuters

1 hr 32 mins ago

13 Irish opposition calls on PM to dissolve parliament

By Yara Bayoumy, Reuters

Sat Dec 18, 9:46 am ET

14 Maliki to name Iraq government Monday

Reuters

Sat Dec 18, 7:32 am ET

15 WikiLeaks’ Assange says fears U.S. extradition

By Avril Ormsby, Reuters

Sat Dec 18, 10:04 am ET

16 Irish debt downgraded as EU eschews crisis

By Padraic Halpin and Jan Strupczewski, Reuters

Fri Dec 17, 5:23 pm ET

17 SEC expands mortgage probe: sources

By Matthew Goldstein and Rachelle Younglai, Reuters

Fri Dec 17, 5:22 pm ET

18 Kabul silent over Obama’s Afghan war review

By Jonathon Burch, Reuters

Fri Dec 17, 5:04 pm ET

19 Pakistan spy agency denies it exposed CIA chief

By NAHAL TOOSI, Associated Press

15 mins ago

20 Gbagbo orders UN peacekeepers to leave Ivory Coast

By MARCO CHOWN OVED, Associated Press

24 mins ago

21 Obama offers assurances to GOP on nuke treaty

By JULIE PACE, Associated Press

5 mins ago

22 Bank of America stops handling WikiLeaks payments

By TOM MURPHY, AP Business Writer

33 mins ago

23 Conn. company’s stuffed germ toys catching on

By STEPHANIE REITZ, Associated Press

2 hrs 40 mins ago

24 Senate votes to overturn military gay ban

By ANNE FLAHERTY, Associated Press

11 mins ago

25 Belarus opposition complains of dirty tricks

By MARIA DANILOVA and YURAS KARMANAU, Associated Press

2 hrs 43 mins ago

26 Congress rushes to finish bills before holidays

By DONNA CASSATA and ANDREW TAYLOR, Associated Press

Sat Dec 18, 5:56 am ET

27 WikiLeaks chief says US preparing to indict him

By KIRSTY WIGGLESWORTH and RAPHAEL G. SATTER, Associated Press

Sat Dec 18, 12:46 am ET

28 Bones found on island might be Amelia Earhart’s

By SEAN MURPHY, Associated Press

Sat Dec 18, 12:47 am ET

29 Ga. woman sues to overturn assisted suicide law

By GREG BLUESTEIN, Associated Press

2 hrs 11 mins ago

30 With love, teens face a deadly diagnosis

By ALLEN G. BREED, AP National Writer

2 hrs 19 mins ago

31 Alaska high court considers disputed Senate race

By BECKY BOHRER and RACHEL D’ORO, Associated Press

Sat Dec 18, 12:39 am ET