How the recession is affecting Thanksgiving.
How the recession is affecting Thanksgiving.
While many Americans will be sitting down to a hearty Thanksgiving meal on Thursday, too many others will go hungry. With the current recession and increasing unemployment, the number of Americans who lacked enough food hit a record high in 2008, and charities can’t keep up. A look at what’s going on around the country:
– Phoenix: “Donations aren’t meeting demand this year” at St. Mary’s food bank. They’re hoping to receive 26,000 donated turkeys, but by Monday they were only halfway there. “A lot of people who used to give as donors are now coming to us and asking for food,” said St. Mary’s Jerry Brown. “These 3 days are going to be make-or-break whether or not we’re going to be able to feed everybody this year,” Brown added.
– Mississippi: The Mississippi Food Network, which supplies non-profits throughout the state, has decided that it cannot provide turkeys this year “for the first time ever.” It expects to feed nearly double the number of people as it did last year and the cost of turkey has gone up.
– Houston: Organizers are expecting 25,000 needy people to show up at the convention center on Thursday, but they are almost “in the panic mode” as “more than a dozen companies that financially supported the dinner in years past have pulled out, and 60 percent of the remaining donors have scaled back their donations.” As of Saturday, they had fewer than a third of the number of turkeys they need and lacked “the traditional Thanksgiving Day vegetables.”
– Boston: The Greater Boston Food Bank gave out 38,000 turkeys last year. This year, a ticker on their website shows they have collected just 4,200 so far.
Hunger relief agency Feeding America found that 99 percent of food banks reported increases in demand for emergency food aid. But due to weak donations, 78 percent have had to reduce the amount of food provided and 55 percent have had to turn people away.
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Tea partiers heckle woman whose daughter-in-law died because she didn’t have health insurance.
Tea partiers heckle woman whose daughter-in-law died because she didn’t have health insurance.
At a town hall event on health care reform hosted by Rep. Dan Lipinski (D-IL) earlier this month, Midge Hough told the tragic story of how her daughter-in-law, Jenny, and her unborn grandchild died recently because they didn’t have health insurance. Jenny came down with “severe double pneumonia, Septic shock and Respitory failure,” Hough said, “and laid in an ICU unit for the next two months at a cost of $22,000 a day.” Her baby died in the womb and Jenny died a few weeks later. But as Hough was telling her story, tea partiers at the meeting “ridiculed” her, the South Town Star reports. “They moaned and rolled their eyes and interrupted,” laughing loudly and shouting her down at points. Watch it (beginning at 1:30):
Chicago Tea Party Patriots sent out a flyer to encourage attendance at the event, saying Lipinski had “sold us out!” by voting “to pass socialized medicine.” In defense of the heckling, an organizer for the group falsely claimed that the Houghs fabricated their story and called them operatives of President Barack Obama who “go from event to event and (cry) the same story.” At another recent event, Hough told Gov. Pat Quinn (D-IL) that she has been “personally attacked” by tea party activists at her home address. (HT: Crooks and Liars)
New Birther Billboard In Colorado Features Picture Of Obama And Asks ‘President Or Jihad?’
New Birther Billboard In Colorado Features Picture Of Obama And Asks ‘President Or Jihad?’
Today, a new birther billboard went up above Wolf Automotive off I-70 in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. The sign has a picture of President Obama wearing a turban, asking, “President or Jihad?” and exhorting, “Wake up America! Remember Fort Hood”:
ThinkProgress spoke with Phil Wolf, the owner of the car dealership. He said that the billboard is his personal project because he believes the American people have a right to know the facts about the president:
I’m probably like a lot of other people that have asked the question, I want to know who our president is. And to date, I don’t think I know, I don’t think a lot of people know, I don’t think it’s ever been asked — answered. [...]
When this Fort Hood massacre occurred, and I saw the response of our Commander in Chief to this unbelievable, politically correct, nonsense — to me it was just enough. And I wanted to bring a little bit more attention to this thing, because to me it just wasn’t getting addressed.
Wolf added that he and the staff at his dealership have been receiving a significant number of death threats in response to the billboard. “I never expected people to threaten to kill us,” he told us. “I never expected people to harm my employees. … I’ve had people leave the office today — they’re terrified.”
Wolf also denied that the billboard is making a “racist comment,” calling such a notion “absolutely hilarious” and pointing out that in the presidential election, he wrote in the name of conservative Alan Keyes.
In the past, Wolf’s billboard has featured other birther designs, as well as regular advertisements for cars. Wolf denied that the billboard has any affiliation with WorldNetDaily, which has sponsored other birther signs around the country.
ProgressNow Colorado has launched a campaign asking people to boycott Wolf’s business.
Bush Justice officials support trying terror suspects in civilian court.
Bush Justice officials support trying terror suspects in civilian court.
Saying that critics are “understating the criminal justice system’s capacities,” two top Bush Justice officials came out in support of Attorney General Eric Holder’s decision to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed and other Guantanamo detainees in federal court. Writing in the Washington Post, Jim Comey, former deputy attorney general and U.S. attorney in Manhattan, and Jack Goldsmith, a former assistant attorney general who now teaches at Harvard Law School, wrote that the move is “unlikely to make New York a bigger target” and that civilian courts are a proven venue for terror trials:
[T]here is no question about the legitimacy of U.S. federal courts to incapacitate terrorists. Many of Holder’s critics appear to have forgotten that the Bush administration used civilian courts to put away dozens of terrorists, including “shoe bomber” Richard Reid; al-Qaeda agent Jose Padilla; “American Taliban” John Walker Lindh; the Lackawanna Six; and Zacarias Moussaoui, who was prosecuted for the same conspiracy for which Mohammed is likely to be charged. Many of these terrorists are locked in a supermax prison in Colorado, never to be seen again.
In terrorist trials over the past 15 years, federal prosecutors and judges have gained extensive experience protecting intelligence sources and methods, limiting a defendant’s ability to raise irrelevant issues and tightly controlling the courtroom.
Comey and Goldsmith are hardly the first conservatives to support Holder’s faith in the U.S. justice system. In a joint statement prepared by the Constitution Project, David Keene, founder of American Conservative Union, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, and former representative and presidential candidate Bob Barr wrote Sunday, “We are confident that the government can preserve national security without resorting to sweeping and radical departures from an American constitutional tradition that has served us effectively for over two centuries. … The scare-mongering about these issues should stop.”
Hoffman un-un-unconcedes the NY-23 special election.
Hoffman un-un-unconcedes the NY-23 special election.
On Monday, ThinkProgress reported that failed Conservative Party candidate had rescinded his concession to Democrat Bill Owens in the NY-23 special congressional election. The next day, however, Hoffman’s spokesman said he was un-conceding the race, adding that they weren’t planning on challenging the results. Now, alleging widespread voter fraud at the hands of ACORN and labor unions, Hoffman is again taking back his concession. From a statement posted on his website last night:
As evidence surfaces, we find out that reported results from election night were far from accurate. ACORN and the unions did their best to try and sway the results to Obamacare supporter Bill Owens. [...]
Rest assured, they will not succeed, and I am therefore revoking my statement of concession.
But as Politico’s Josh Kraushaar notes, “Hoffman currently faces next-to-no chance of pulling ahead,” as he would “need to win nearly 80 percent of the outstanding absentee ballots to win.” The Jefferson County Republican elections commissioner said that Hoffman’s allegations were “absolutely false.”
‘Tenther’ Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act
‘Tenther’ Oklahoma Lawmaker Considering Bill To Opt Out Of Hate Crimes Act
A common right-wing objection to federal health care legislation is that it’s unconstitutional. So-called “tenthers” argue that the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution never explicitly gives the federal government the right to regulate health care, leaving that power exclusively in the hands of the states. To that end, officials in various states have raised the possibility of passing legislation to exempt their residents from federal health care reform if it passes.
Oklahoma state Sen. Steve Russell (R) is proposing to use the same argument and tactic to try to exempt his state from the recently-passed Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act — which extends hate crimes protections to gays and lesbians — because he claims it infringes on freedom of speech:
Russell said because the government has decided to intervene on issues of morality, he is worried that religious leaders who speak out against any lifestyle could be imprisoned for their speech.
“The law is very vague to begin with,” Russell said. “Sexual orientation is a very vague word that could be extended to extremes like necrophilia.” [...]
Russell said Oklahoma can opt out of the law on the basis of the 10th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.
“The bill gives the federal government power that was not given to them in the Constitution,” Russell said. “I am aware of the supremacy of the federal government over state governments, but the federal requirements are vague enough for us to make actions. We just have to be very careful on how we proceed.”
Hate crime protections have been on the books since 1969, but Russell seems to object to only those which protect gays and lesbians. Moreover, Russell and the other tenthers have flimsly legal basis for their claims. The Constitution gives Congress broad power to “provide for the common defense and general welfare,” but as Ian Millhiser noted, tenthers “insist that these words don’t actually mean what they say.” The right-wing fringe believes landmark federal programs such as Medicare, Social Security, the federal highway system, and rules regulating airplane safety are unconstitutional.
Other right wingers have echoed Russell’s concern about the new hate crimes bill: Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-TX) said on the House floor that the measure would lead to Nazism and the legalization of pedophilia and necrophilia. But as Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD) said, “Nothing in this legislation diminishes an American’s freedom of religion, freedom of speech or press or the freedom to assemble,” because the law “targets acts, not speech.” These acts need to be targeted. In 2007 — the most recent year for which data is available — 16.6 percent of all hate crimes reported reported to the FBI “resulted from sexual-orientation bias.”
When asked about whether the state of Oklahoma should reject the $5 million in federal funds that the federal government would give to law enforcement agencies to help prosecute hate crimes, Russell said he thought about finding a way to pass his law while taking the money, but said it would be a compromise in the values of his bill. “I understand the state could use all the money it can get, but we can’t compromise our values for some quick cash,” Russell said.
O’Reilly warns of a coming ‘tax revolt’: ‘Pelosi will be bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor.’
O’Reilly warns of a coming ‘tax revolt’: ‘Pelosi will be bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor.’
Glenn Beck had Fox News host Bill O’Reilly on his radio show today to promote their upcoming “Bold & Fresh Tour,” which will take the two right-wing personalities around the country to preach “the truth — straight up, whether you like it or not.” When Beck brought up Dennis Miller’s appearance on the O’Reilly Factor last week — in which Miller warned of a coming “insurrection“– O’Reilly predicted a “tax revolt” that will “get nasty” and end up with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) “bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor.”
BECK: Last week, I head you say that — you were on with Dennis Miller. … You two were talking about an insurrection coming.
O’REILLY: Tax revolt.
BECK: He used the word insurrection. And not in a comedic way.
O’REILLY: Yeah, tax revolt. I think people, when they figure out how badly they’re going to get hurt in the next few years, there’s going to be a tea party on taxes and its gonna get nasty. Nancy Pelosi’s going to be bobbing up and down in the Boston Harbor.
This statement appeared to be too much for Beck even, who replied, “Uh, I don’t think that’s necessary.” Listen here:
Ted Haggard Mounts A Comeback By Lying: I Was Never ‘An Anti-Gay Guy’
Ted Haggard Mounts A Comeback By Lying: I Was Never ‘An Anti-Gay Guy’
Before resigning in disgrace after a three-year relationship with a male prostitute, Ted Haggard was one of the Christian Right’s most powerful figures — president of the National Association of Evangelicals and a close confidante of the Bush White House. Haggard, now purportedly “completely heterosexual,” hosted a prayer meeting at his Colorado home last night in an attempt to mount a comeback, attracting 110 people. Saying “America loves a scandal, but they love a comeback even more,” Haggard argued he can redeem himself in part because he was never a “hateful, anti-gay guy”:
“I was always well aware of my own personal struggles, but my desire was to be more Godly,” said Haggard. “I was never a religious right, hateful, anti-gay guy — secretly running off, except right at the end. I’d say right at the end, before the crisis. That did develop a little bit stronger.” [...]
“It was good for me to go through the Christian hatred of people believing that I was a gay man — and hating me so strongly because of it. And so because of it, my compassion for the homosexual community has gone up incredibly,” said Haggard.
Haggard has experienced what it’s like to be on the receiving end of “Christian hatred,” and it’s reassuring to know that he now has more “compassion” for gay men and women. But despite his claims, he was responsible for dishing out this hatred for many years.
Haggard catered to the Christian Right’s demonization of gays, calling homosexuality a “sin” and arguing, “We don’t have to debate about what we should think about homosexual activity, it’s written in the Bible.” Haggard also said that Western civilization could be devastated by same-sex marriage:
“[W]e need the Federal Marriage Amendment is for the sake of children. … It would be devastating for the children of our nation and for the future of Western civilization for us to say that homosexual unions or lesbian unions or any alteration of that has the moral equivalence of a heterosexual, monogamous marriage.”
Will Haggard finally practice what he preaches by pushing for equal rights for gay men and women?
RNC employee health insurance plan covers abortion.
RNC employee health insurance plan covers abortion.
Last week, 176 House Republicans joined with 64 Democrats in voting for the so-called Stupak amendment, which could “could effectively stop many employer-provided health insurance plans from covering abortions for tens of millions of Americans” and restrict any private plan in the insurance exchange from offering abortion coverage. However, Politico reports today that the RNC’s own employee health care plan covers elective abortion — “a procedure the party’s own platform calls ‘a fundamental assault on innocent human life’”:
Federal Election Commission Records show the RNC purchases its insurance from Cigna. Two sales agents for the company said that the RNC’s policy covers elective abortion.
Informed of the coverage, RNC spokeswoman Gail Gitcho told POLITICO that the policy pre-dates the tenure of current RNC Chairman Michael Steele.
“The current policy has been in effect since 1991, and we are taking steps to address the issue,” Gitcho said. [...]
According to several Cigna employees, the insurer offers its customers the opportunity to opt out of abortion coverage — and the RNC did not choose to opt out.
Recently it was also revealed that the health insurance plan used by the right-wing, anti-choice organization Focus on the Family also covered “abortion services.”
In ‘Act of Despicable Hubris,’ ACCCE Exploits Veterans Groups To Push Dirty Energy Agenda
In ‘Act of Despicable Hubris,’ ACCCE Exploits Veterans Groups To Push Dirty Energy Agenda
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) — a front group of big utilities and coal companies — is no stranger to fraud. During the summer’s House debate on cap-and-trade legislation, lobbyists working on behalf of the coal group sent forged letters to members of Congress, and lied under oath about it. Now, ACCCE is trying to exploit Veterans Day by misrepresenting veterans groups in an email to supporters:
With Veterans Day around the corner, we wanted to take a moment to reflect on all the military personnel who are involved in ensuring our country is protected.
Energy security is one issue that has become increasingly important to our veterans. In fact, national veterans groups Votevets and Operation Free are urging the government to become more energy independent and less reliant on foreign oil.
We can do this by using the abundant domestic fuels we already have. With more than 250 billion tons of recoverable coal reserves, the United States has more coal than the Middle East has oil.
The letter implies that VoteVets and Operation Free support ACCCE and its dirty energy agenda, but the the two groups are actually vocal backers of clean energy legislation. VoteVets excoriated ACCCE for citing them in the email, writing that VoteVets “will never advocate the continued use of carbon based fuels” and that ACCCE is trying “to hijack America’s Veterans” in “an act of despicable hubris.”
Operation Free — a veterans group which is dedicated to fighting climate change — was also quick to condemn ACCCE. In a blog post, Operation Free wrote that the email “dishonors Veterans day” and is “insulting to all of the Veterans who are fighting to protect America’s national security by supporting clean, American power.”
Will ACCCE acknowledge their continued misrepresentation and apologize for using Veterans Day as a prop to support an agenda that many veterans oppose?
Study: 2,200 Vets Died Last Year Because They Lacked Health Insurance
Study: 2,200 Vets Died Last Year Because They Lacked Health Insurance
On the eve of Veterans Day, a team of researchers from Harvard Medical School has released a study finding that an estimated 2,266 veterans under the age of 65 died last year because they did not have health insurance. That “translates to six preventable deaths per day” and more than twice the number killed in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.
Being uninsured raises a person’s odds of dying prematurely by 40 percent. The researchers found that 1.46 million veterans between the ages of 18 and 64 lacked insurance in 2008. While most veterans are eligible to receive excellent care from the Veterans Administration, those who were not injured in combat and whose income is above a certain threshold are often ineligible. Others are assigned low priorities, providing them with less consistent and more expensive access to care:
“Like other uninsured Americans, most uninsured vets are working people – too poor to afford private coverage but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid or means-tested VA care,” said Dr. Steffie Woolhandler, a professor at Harvard Medical School. [...]
Dr. David Himmelstein, the co-author of the analysis and associate professor of medicine at Harvard, commented, “On this Veterans Day we should not only honor the nearly 500 soldiers who have died this year in Iraq and Afghanistan, but also the more than 2,200 veterans who were killed by our broken health insurance system. That’s six preventable deaths a day.”
Unfortunately, health insurance is just one of many serious problems vets face. Up to one-in-five veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while male vets face suicide rates double the national average. And, as the VA under President Obama recognized, veterans still account for up to a quarter of all homeless.
The fact that even veterans cannot receive adequate health care demonstrates that the current system is broken and in need of dramatic overhaul. A robust public option will guarantee that vets and all working-class Americans will be able to afford quality health insurance. Still, the study’s authors warn that the health care legislation “would do virtually nothing for the uninsured until 2013” and would “leave at least 17 million uninsured over the long run when reform kicks in,” leaving many veterans without care.
Palin gives a lackluster speech in Wisconsin, frequently uses ‘bogus’ or ‘awesome’ to discuss weighty topics.
Palin gives a lackluster speech in Wisconsin, frequently uses ‘bogus’ or ‘awesome’ to discuss weighty topics.
During the summer’s debate over health care reform, right-wing activists and lawmakers latched onto former Alaska governor Sarah Palin’s false claim that President Obama and congressional Democrats were proposing government “death panels” that would “pull the plug on grandma.” While Republican leaders largely abandoned this myth, Palin revived it on Friday during a speech at a Wisconsin Right to Life fundraising banquet. In her remarks, Palin “repeatedly suggested that liberal social policies could lead to de facto euthanasia.” The speech was closed to the press and audience members were not allowed to bring cell phones, cameras, or any recording devices, but a few reporters still managed to sneak in. Politico reports that Friday’s speech was less than inspiring:
Palin had remarks prepared but frequently wandered off-script to make a point, offering audience members a casual “awesome” or “bogus” in discussing otherwise weighty topics.
As in: “It is so bogus that society is sending a message right now and has been for probably the last 40 years that a woman isn’t strong enough or smart enough to be able to pursue an education, a career and her rights and still let her baby live.”
Other Palin touchstones included: praise for the military, jeers for the “the liberal media” and a general manner of speaking that often veered into rhetorical culs-de-sac.
While she drew applause during her remarks, Palin’s extemporaneous and frequently discursive style was such that she never truly roused a true-believing crowd as passionate about the issue at hand as she. Not once during her address did they rise to their feet.
Palin warned on her Facebook page last night that the “death panel” provision is in the health care bill that just passed the House.
LeBron James wants to ‘dunk on’ President Bush’s ‘ass.’
LeBron James wants to ‘dunk on’ President Bush’s ‘ass.’
Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James is widely considered to be one of the best professional basketball players of all time, but in an interview in next month’s Maxim magazine, he says his ideal opponent would be someone better known for clearing brush than shooting hoops. If given the opportunity to dunk on anyone in the world, LeBron says it would be George W. Bush’s “ass”:
[INTERVIEWER]: If there was one guy on the planet you could dunk on, who would it be? That teacher?
[JAMES]: If it doesn’t have to be a basketball player, George W. Bush. I would dunk on his ass, break the rim, and shatter the glass.
Getting dunked on is considered an embarrassing insult in basketball terminology.
(HT: Huffington Post)
Limbaugh whines that NFL is an outpost of ‘racism and liberalism.’
Limbaugh whines that NFL is an outpost of ‘racism and liberalism.’
Hate radio show host Rush Limbaugh’s bid to purchase a minority stake in the St. Louis Rams failed yesterday, after players, a team owner, the head of the players union, and the commissioner publicly expressed concern about his joining the league based on racist comments he had made in the past. Today, Limbaugh addressed the controversy on his show, saying it was all a ploy by Democrats to villainize him and calling the NFL “outpost of racism and liberalism”:
LIMBAUGH: They [Democrats] have to have a villain to advance everything, because they cannot sell their ideas. They had to demonize me with false, fake, made up quotes. To protect their precious little — National Football League as an outpost of racism and liberalism, which is what it is.
Listen here:
But as Media Matters points out, NFL teams, owners, players and personnel gave overwhelmingly to GOP since 1989. Limbaugh fans are rallying behind him, with some proposing a boycott of the NFL. A RedState blogger strongly supported the hate radio host in a post titled “Tonight… We Are All Rush Limbaugh.”
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