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O’Reilly Revives The War On Christmas

By ThinkProgress on Nov 14, 2006 at 1:35 pm

Last night, Bill O’Reilly revived his baseless claim that Christmas is “under seige” in America from “secular progressives,” highlighting Wal-Mart’s recent announcement that it will use the phrase “Merry Christmas” in its promotional materials this year.

O’Reilly portrayed Wal-Mart’s decision as a victory in the “culture war battle” for those who “want to retain the Christmas tradition,” and lauded Wal-Mart as “the Christmas guys!”

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/11/billxmas.320.240.flv]

Actually, like its decision to use “Happy Holidays” in the first place, Wal-Mart’s return to “Merry Christmas” is motivated by business interests, not an effort to preserve traditional culture:

Wishing for a bigger holiday season after a sluggish fall, the chain said Thursday that 60% more of its merchandise will be labeled “Christmas” compared with last year. And customers will hear Christmas carols as they shop. [...]

Wal-Mart is not alone. Although Best Buy Co. is sticking with “Happy Holidays,” retailers such as Kohl’s Corp. and Walgreen Co. are returning to Christmas.

“They’re all trying to get the spirit back,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst for NPD Group. “Especially since their holiday schedules have been off to a slow start.”

As Wal-Mart spokesman Steven Restivo put it, “We listened to our customers. There’s a call to return to a core Merry Christmas message.” Just as Jesus might have said.

Digg It!

Full transcript: Read more

Climate Progress

U.S. Almost Gets its International Priorities Right

By Joe Romm on Nov 14, 2006 at 12:42 pm

ricenaacp2.jpg“Rice Moves Energy Concerns To Top Of U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda” is the headline in Energy Washington (subs. req’d) today. The article explains:

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has decided to move energy issues to the forefront of U.S. foreign policy, establishing a new global energy coordinator post and changing the scope of two existing undersecretary positions so they can engage directly on energy issues, according to congressional and diplomatic sources. The energy coordinator would act to bolster U.S. policy toward energy consumer and producer nations while establishing greater inter-agency cooperation, according to these sources.

Energy certainly warrants more focus by the State Department, but what we really needed was a headline reading “Rice Moves Climate Concerns To Top Of U.S. Foreign Policy Agenda.”

Unfortunately, that seems unlikely in this administration, so such a move would probably just get her fired, which I guess would make her fried Rice.

Yglesias

What?

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2006 at 12:34 pm

Rarely is the question asked: Has Glenn Reynolds lost his mind? — “my speculation that Iran has some method — nuclear or otherwise — that has deterred us from taking the kind of action that both Bill Quick and I expected in 2004 is seeming better-founded.”

What’s the “otherwise” here? Rick Santorum’s Venezuelan space terrorists, perhaps? And what “kind of action” did he and master strategist Bill Quick expect?

Politics

Former President Bush Blames ‘Bloggers’ for ‘Ugly’ Political Climate

By Faiz Shakir on Nov 14, 2006 at 12:09 pm

Last night on Fox News, former President George H.W. Bush said the current political climate has “gotten so adversarial that it’s ugly.” Asked to offer an explanation for why there is this “incivility,” Bush pinned the blame on bloggers. “It’s probably a little worse now given electronic media and the bloggers and all these kinds of things,” he said. Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/11/hwbloggers.320.240.flv]

Also, Bush revealed that he enjoys using “the email” but lamented that his son, President George W. Bush, cannot for fear that the emails would get subpoenaed. Bush worried that presidents who used email would be forced to prove “that you were telling the truth and all this stuff.”

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Transcript: Read more

Politics

Cornyn Joins McCain, Calls for Sending More U.S. Troops to Iraq

By Payson Schwin on Nov 14, 2006 at 11:02 am

This morning on Fox News, Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) was asked what he thought of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) idea to raise the number of troops in Iraq. (McCain has said he’d like to have “another 20,000 troops in Iraq.”) “I think Senator McCain is on to something,” Cornyn said, adding that an “overwhelming” show of force “could restore some basic semblance of order” to Iraq.

Watch it:

[flv http://video.thinkprogress.org/2006/11/Cornyn_troops.320.240.flv]

Increasing troop levels is a bad idea. First, we do not have the troops to send. Any attempt to send more troops to Iraq would, “at the moment, threaten to break our nation’s all-volunteer Army and undermine our national security.” Second, a greater U.S. troops presence “risks further stoking the flames of the insurgency by feeding perceptions of long-term U.S. occupation among many Iraqis.”

Notably, the McCain-Lieberman-Cornyn position has virtually no public support: only 8 percent of Americans support sending more troops to Iraq.

Transcript: Read more

Culture

Kima Greggs

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2006 at 10:38 am

I love me my Wire, and I’ve been enjoying the Kotlowitz/James dialogues on the show in Slate but these praise of Kima as a favorite character on the show cannot stand:

Yes, she’s beautiful and has that sexy, smoky voice. But she’s also another great character who defies stereotypes. A gay detective who loves “men’s work” to the detriment of her home life, but who also has to weather the fact that she’s a woman in a man’s world. She does it with humor and a take-no-prisoners toughness.

Kima, in my opinion, only defies stereotypes insofar as the writers have a weak grasp on what it is stereotypical lesbians would be like. It’s almost as if they decided this major character should be a woman, then realized none of the main writers knew how to write a textured woman character, then decided not to add anyone to the staff who was up to the job, then decided the best way to handle the situation would be to write her just like a man, then hit upon the genius idea that they could justify this by making her a lesbian since, after all, lesbians are into chicks too!

Because they’re actually brilliant writers, the people in charge manage to actually pull this gambit off without detracting from the show in an especially obvious way, but it’s a pretty sorry effort. The other women on the show, meanwhile, tend strongly to either be total ciphers or else (Brianna, De’Londa) these crudely demonic sorts in a way that’s badly out of step with the portrayal of the male criminal element. And then there’s Snoop, about whom I guess I should think more.

Yglesias

Confusion

By Matthew Yglesias on Nov 14, 2006 at 10:22 am

In other leadership news — Trent Lott (R-CSA) is trying to get back into a high-level post within the GOP Senate caucus. I’m confused. My recollection was that after Lott was exposed as a die-hard segregationist, the American conservative movement washed their hands of him and made him a committee chair banished him from the realm as a token of their commitment to the new rightwingery with twice the homophobia and half the racism. Now they’re going back on all that? Didn’t everyone love Michael Steele.

Meanwhile, Jeff Sessions also wants in on the leadership. Really? This Jeff Sessions:

Sessions was U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Alabama. The year before his nomination to federal court, he had unsuccessfully prosecuted three civil rights workers–including Albert Turner, a former aide to Martin Luther King Jr.–on a tenuous case of voter fraud. The three had been working in the “Black Belt” counties of Alabama, which, after years of voting white, had begun to swing toward black candidates as voter registration drives brought in more black voters. Sessions’s focus on these counties to the exclusion of others caused an uproar among civil rights leaders, especially after hours of interrogating black absentee voters produced only 14 allegedly tampered ballots out of more than 1.7 million cast in the state in the 1984 election. . . .

On its own, the case might not have been enough to stain Sessions with the taint of racism, but there was more. Senate Democrats tracked down a career Justice Department employee named J. Gerald Hebert, who testified, albeit reluctantly, that in a conversation between the two men Sessions had labeled the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) “un-American” and “Communist-inspired.” Hebert said Sessions had claimed these groups “forced civil rights down the throats of people.” . . .

Another damaging witness–a black former assistant U.S. Attorney in Alabama named Thomas Figures–testified that, during a 1981 murder investigation involving the Ku Klux Klan, Sessions was heard by several colleagues commenting that he “used to think they [the Klan] were OK” until he found out some of them were “pot smokers.” . . .

He was elected attorney general in 1994. Once in office, he was linked with a second instance of investigating absentee ballots and fraud that directly impacted the black community. He was also accused of not investigating the church burnings that swept the state of Alabama the year he became attorney general.

He got to the US Senate after that (Alabama, you know) and you’ll be shocked to know he’s racked up a voting record that’s not especially solicitous of the interests of black people.

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