Year: 2009

Green America Offers Seven ‘Green’ Fixes for Economy

Buck Banks

Green America (formerly Co-op America) offers seven solutions to our current economic crisis that simultaneously aid the environment. You can read all of them here, but my favorite is the idea of Clean Energy Victory Bonds:

How are we going to pay for this green energy revolution? Green America and our allies at Clean Edge propose Clean Energy Victory Bonds. Modeled after victory bonds in World War II, Americans would buy these bonds from the federal government to invest in large-scale deployment of green energy projects, with particular emphasis in low-income communities that are hardest hit by the broken economy. These would be long-term bonds, which would pay an annual interest rate, based in part on the energy and energy savings that the bonds generate. During WWII, Americans bought over $185 billion in bonds — that would be almost $2 trillion in today’s dollars.

I’d buy one, would you?

The All-New White House Web Site is Up

Trish

While you were watching Obama being inaugurated on T.V., elves were busy transforming the White House web site. Actually, it might not have been elves but one Macon Phillips, who in the first blog post (!) to the site, identifies himself as the White House’s “Director of New Media.”

By clicking on “the Agenda” in the navigation, you get a to-do list Obama and his team are planning to complete. Under “Civil Rights” you find this:

Support for the LGBT Community

“While we have come a long way since the Stonewall riots in 1969, we still have a lot of work to do. Too often, the issue of LGBT rights is exploited by those seeking to divide us. But at its core, this issue is about who we are as Americans. It’s about whether this nation is going to live up to its founding promise of equality by treating all its citizens with dignity and respect.”

— Barack Obama, June 1, 2007

  • Expand Hate Crimes Statutes: In 2004, crimes against LGBT Americans constituted the third-highest category of hate crime reported and made up more than 15 percent of such crimes. President Obama cosponsored legislation that would expand federal jurisdiction to include violent hate crimes perpetrated because of race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, or physical disability. As a state senator, President Obama passed tough legislation that made hate crimes and conspiracy to commit them against the law.

  • Fight Workplace Discrimination: President Obama supports the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, and believes that our anti-discrimination employment laws should be expanded to include sexual orientation and gender identity. While an increasing number of employers have extended benefits to their employees’ domestic partners, discrimination based on sexual orientation in the workplace occurs with no federal legal remedy. The President also sponsored legislation in the Illinois State Senate that would ban employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

  • Support Full Civil Unions and Federal Rights for LGBT Couples: President Obama supports full civil unions that give same-sex couples legal rights and privileges equal to those of married couples. Obama also believes we need to repeal the Defense of Marriage Act and enact legislation that would ensure that the 1,100+ federal legal rights and benefits currently provided on the basis of marital status are extended to same-sex couples in civil unions and other legally-recognized unions. These rights and benefits include the right to assist a loved one in times of emergency, the right to equal health insurance and other employment benefits, and property rights.

  • Oppose a Constitutional Ban on Same-Sex Marriage: President Obama voted against the Federal Marriage Amendment in 2006 which would have defined marriage as between a man and a woman and prevented judicial extension of marriage-like rights to same-sex or other unmarried couples.

    • […]

Celebrating the Dawning of the Era of 44

Trish

The St. Aug Inaug

We were feeling it in St. Augustine this morning. The bells in the churches on the Plaza rang and the crowd that was gathered to share the moments together (via big screen T.V.) couldn’t stop cheering. The loudest outburst followed the announcement that, according to the Constitution, Obama became the president at noon, whether he had taken the oath of office or not. After that, the best moment had to be when Obama said, “we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals” and the camera cut to Bush, looking as pouty-faced as any three-year-old.

My friend Renee, an early Hillary supporter and atheist Jew, might have summed it up best. It’s as if, she said, someone knew exactly who our country needed now and sent him to us. Amen.

Senior African-American Clergy Find Form Letter from Rick Warren ‘Insulting’

Jon Ponder

Warren greeted by protests at MLK appearance in Atlanta

In advance of his appearance yesterday at the Martin Luther King Center in Atlanta as part of ceremonies honoring Dr. King’s birthday, Rick Warren sent a form letter to senior African American clergy asking for advice, including this bit in which he devalues his controversial selection by Barack Obama to give the prayer at the inauguration:

[…]

Obama’s Rick Warren Scandal Just Got Worse

Jon Ponder

The Obama team has just opened up a new front in their skirmishes with gay rights supporters over Obama’s decision to invite Rick Warren, the anti-gay megachurch preacher, to give the invocation at the inauguration tomorrow.
HBO says it was ordered by the Presidential Inaugural Committee not to broadcast the gay bishop’s prayer.
The latest incident occurred yesterday when HBO failed to broadcast an invocation delivered by openly gay Bishop Gene Robinson during pre-inaugural events at the Lincoln Memorial. Now HBO is claiming it was ordered not to broadcast Robinson’s prayer by the Presidential Inaugural Committee:

…HBO insisted in an email on Sunday night that it was not their decision to omit Robinson’s invocation, saying, “The producer of the concert has said that the Presidential Inaugural Committee made the decision to keep the invocation as part of the pre-show.”

Pam Spaulding speaks for millions:

Remember, this was the supposed salve on the wound to the LGBT community for the upcoming high-profile appearance of Rick Warren at the actual inauguration on Tuesday, which will be seen by millions and will float out there on YouTube in perpetuity. I had no illusions that Robinson’s appearance would reach the same level of exposure as Warren’s, but damn — no broadcast of it at all? That’s just freaking rich.

The hasty addition of Bishop Robinson to the lineup a few weeks ago was also badly bungled, when an Obama staffer somehow managed to channel both Clintonian truthiness and Bush stubbornness in in one short statement:

An Obama source said: “Robinson was in the plans before the complaints about Rick Warren. Many skeptics will read this as a direct reaction to the Warren criticism — but it’s just not so.”

Riiiiighhtt. Makes sense. Why would Obama want to appease homos he has just slapped in the face?

[…]

Pallin’ Around With Bigots: Obama and Warren

Trish


Six degrees?

Sarah Palin overplayed her hand with a guilt by association shot at Obama last fall. Because Obama served on a board with William Ayers, a former Vietnam War protester who bombed empty government buildings back in the day, Obama too must be a terrorist, she claimed. Palin’s logical leap lacked credibility because it defied the space/time continuum. When Ayers was staging antiwar rallies, Obama was 7 or 8 years old. By the time Obama met Ayers as a grown-up, the former radical was a distinguished college professor and civic leader, having been awarded Chicago’s “Citizen of the Year” honor in 1997.

Even though Palin was wrong to characterize Obama as “pallin’ around with terr-ists,” in degrees of separation at least, that relationship was the real deal.

A lot of people on our team correctly shouted Palin down when she made her ridiculous charges, and most people correctly ignored them on election day. What a difference a few short weeks, and one unpopular decision, can make.

This won’t be the last time Obama seems too inclusive of the ideologically impure to suit those who worked hardest to get him elected

Since Obama invited him to give the invocation at his inaugural, many on the left are throwing everything that “purpose-driven” Pastor Rick Warren ever did at Obama. Warren has worked in a missionary capacity with leaders of African countries (some of whom believe that a shower will wash away exposure to AIDS) who have criminalized homosexuality, locking up gays or handing out much harsher punishments.

Warren has also exhorted his followers to become as fanatical about Jesus as Hitler youth were in their convictions. That’s not a pretty picture but it’s also not uncharacteristic for born-agains, who are routinely urged to accept the Bible as inerrant and follow it literally — even the truly wacky stuff.

In spreading the word of Jebus, Warren has probably met a ton of other superstitious bigots, and slapped them on the back for their “good works” besides.

The problem isn’t that Rick Warren believes things we on the left don’t. The problem is our logic that because Obama invited Warren to offer a prayer on Inauguration Day, Obama is therefore advancing not only whatever Rick Warren does, but everything that everyone Rick Warren has ever been associated with does too.

It didn’t hold up when Sarah Palin said it, and it doesn’t hold up now.

This won’t be the last time Obama seems too inclusive of the ideologically impure to suit those who worked hardest to get him elected. I foresee many more such moves, which our side will classify as mistakes. If I ever fall in that category, remind me that I went on record, here and now, as saying that I trust Obama to have a bigger vision than my own, and that I think he’s right that we will get further by talking to everyone, and including everyone, than we will by staying inside our own little belief bubbles. I’m willing to wait and see how it all works out.

Pepsi Lowers the Bar on Obama Rip-Offs

Trish

Sure, there are a lot of shameless attempts by marketers to capitalize on the Obama “movement,” turning the inauguration into an advertiser’s political version of the Super Bowl.

But the web site launched by Pepsico, refresheverything.com, has to be among the most egregious. Besides ripping off the Obama “O,” the site features just plain awful language intended to show how Pepsi and Obama are after the same things: refreshing the nation.

Come on! Join the high fructose corn syrup-based national renewal

Refresh everything. It’s the guiding spirit behind everything Pepsi does.

This site will feature a series of fun experiences that let you participate in that spirit. And to start, it’s time to speak your mind as a new president prepares to refresh the nation.

So c’mon and take a look around. And be sure to check back for more ways to change our world into a fresher, funnier, more optimistic, much better place.

Does it get any worse than this? Well of course it does, as such stars as the ubiquitous Will.I.Am, Lady Gaga, Tracy Morgan, Eva Longoria, and NASCAR driver Jeff Gordon (whose video is the most sincere), lead the way in the tired practice of posting a YouTube for the incoming president. You are urged to do the same but of course, you’ll need to sign up for Pepsi email at the same time. That’s so you can continue to be a part of the great high fructose corn syrup-based national renewal.

Lessons From the Bush Years

Buck Banks

In a column slated to run this Sunday in the Washington Post, Bob Woodward sumes up 10 hard-earned lessons that Barack Obama should draw from George Bush’s troubled presidency:

1. Presidents set the tone. Don’t be passive or tolerate virulent divisions.

2. The president must insist that everyone speak out loud in front of the others, even — or especially — when there are vehement disagreements.

3. A president must do the homework to master the fundamental ideas and concepts behind his policies.

4. Presidents need to draw people out and make sure bad news makes it to the Oval Office.

5. Presidents need to foster a culture of skepticism and doubt.

6. Presidents get contradictory data, and they need a rigorous way to sort it out.

7. Presidents must tell the hard truth to the public, even if that means delivering very bad news.

8. Righteous motives are not enough for effective policy.

9. Presidents must insist on strategic thinking.

10. The president should embrace transparency. Some version of the behind-the-scenes story of what happened in his White House will always make it out to the public — and everyone will be better off if that version is as accurate as possible.