Right wingers are trying to foment yet more hate by spreading an outrageous chain-email with this photo that purports to show President Obama at Arlington National Cemetery on Veterans Day, listening to the national anthem without his hand over his heart.

Anyone who saw news coverage of the Veterans Day ceremony knows that Obama didn’t wear a red tie, as he does in this picture, but a blue one, and he wore a winter coat over his suit. The picture above was taken several months earlier, at a Memorial Day observation at Arlington National Cemetery. C-SPAN footage from the event shows that this photo was snapped just after Obama took the stage. “Hail to the Chief” was playing, not the national anthem. The others on the podium aren’t saluting veterans or the nation; they’re saluting the Commander-in-Chief.

Solange Magnano: Former Miss Argentina Dies From Cosmetic Buttocks Surgery.
A woman who had everything lost her life to have a slightly firmer behind.

Candy Spelling, widow of TV producer Aaron Spelling, wants to sell her 4.7-acre estate in Holmby Hills for $150 million. The 56,500-square-foot mansion is the most expensive residential listing in the U.S. The three-story “Candyland” features a bowling alley, flower-cutting room, wine cellar/tasting room, barbershop, silver storage room, tennis court, koi pond, gardens, citrus orchard, swimming pool with a pool house, 16 carports, and a motor court that can accommodate 100 vehicles. A service wing houses the staff in five maids’ bedrooms and two butlers’ suites. The house is believed to have more than 100 rooms, but Spelling has never counted them. She plans on downsizing to a 16,500-square-foot condo in Century City.

From the Associated Press: There may be additional emails that could have tipped off law enforcement or military officials to Nidal Malik Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter before he went on his deadly rampage. The U.S. government intercepted at least 18 emails between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American-born cleric. They were passed along to two Joint Terrorism Task Force cells led by the FBI, but a senior defense official said no one at the Defense Department knew about the messages until after the shootings.

Sounds like the same problems with people being asleep at the wheel before 9-11, even with Richard Clarke yelling “the sky is falling.”

Will this be the real armageddon?

1. Declare a moratorium on all home evictions. Not one more family should be thrown out of their home. The banks must adjust their monthly mortgage payments to be in line with what people’s homes are now truly worth — and what they can afford. Also, it must be stated by law: If you lose your job, you cannot be tossed out of your home.

2. Congress must join the civilized world and expand Medicare For All Americans. A single, nonprofit source must run a universal health care system that covers everyone. Medical bills are now the #1 cause of bankruptcies and evictions in this country. Medicare For All will end this misery. The bill to make this happen is called H.R. 3200 (but only with Rep. Anthony Weiner’s amendment). You must call AND write your members of Congress and demand its passage, no compromises allowed. Read the rest here.

Danusha Goska has penned a most excellent essay about the Nazi propaganda film “Jud Suss,” commissioned and overseen by Joseph Goebbels. It’s been called evil, sinister, macabre, hideous, malicious, monstrous, the most vicious ideological propaganda film produced during the entire Third Reich. Check it out in TheScreamOnline, and leave your comments here.

Last night my wife asked me if I thought I was a little too hard on Obama in my letter yesterday congratulating him on his Nobel Prize. “No, I don’t think so,” I replied. I thought it was important to remind him he’s now conducting the two wars he’s inherited. “Yeah,” she said, “but to tell him, ‘Now earn it!’? Give the guy a break — this is a great day for him and for all of us.”

I went back and re-read what I had written. And I listened for far too long yesterday to the right wing hate machine who did what they could to crap all over Barack’s big day. Did I — and others on the left — do the same?

We are weary, weary of war. The trillions that will have gone to these two wars have helped to bankrupt us as a nation — financially and morally. To think of all the good we could have done with all that money! Two months of the War in Iraq would pay for all the wells that need to be dug in the Third World for drinking water! Obama is moving too slow for most of us — but he needs to know we are with him and we stand beside him as he attempts to turn eight years of sheer madness around. Who could do that in nine months? Superman? Thor? Mitch McConnell?

Instead of waiting to see what the president is going to do, we all need to be pro-active and push the agenda that we want to see enacted. What keeps us from forming the same local groups we put together to get out the vote last November? C’mon! We’re the majority now — the majority by a significant margin! We call the shots — and we need to tell this wimpy Congress to get busy and do what we say — or else.

All I ask of those who voted for Obama is to not pile on him too quickly. Yes, make your voice heard (his phone number is 202-456-1414). But don’t abandon the best hope we’ve had in our lifetime for change. And for God’s sake, don’t head to bummerville if he says or does something we don’t like. Do you ever see Republicans behave that way? I mean, the Right had 20 years of Republican presidents and they still couldn’t get prayer in the public schools, or outlaw abortion, or initiate a flat tax or put our Social Security into the stock market. They did a lot of damage, no doubt about that, but on the key issues that the Christian Right fought for, they came up nearly empty handed. No wonder they’ve been driven crazy lately. They’ll never have it as good again as they’ve had it since Reagan took office.

But, do you ever see them looking all gloomy and defeated? No! They keep on fighting! Every day. Our side? At the first sign of wavering, we just pack up our toys and go home.

So, at least for this weekend, let us celebrate what people elsewhere are celebrating — that America now has a sane and smart man in the White House, a man who truly wants a world at peace for his two daughters.

Many, for the past couple days (yes, myself included), have grumbled, “What has he done to earn this prize?” How ’bout this:

The simple fact that he was elected was reason enough for him to be the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize.

Because on that day the murderous actions of the Bush/Cheney years were totally and thoroughly rebuked. One man — a man who opposed the War in Iraq from the beginning — offered to end the insanity. The world has stood by in utter horror for the past eight years as they watched the descendants of Washington, Lincoln, and Jefferson light the fuse of our own self-destruction. We flipped-off the nations on this planet by abandoning Kyoto and then proceeded to melt eight more years worth of the polar ice caps. We invaded two nations that didn’t attack us, failed to find the real terrorists and, in effect, ignited our own wave of terror. People all over the world wondered if we had gone mad.

And if all that wasn’t enough, the outgoing Joker presided over the worst global financial collapse since the Great Depression.

So, yeah, at precisely 11:00pm ET on November 4, 2008, Barack Obama won the Nobel Peace Prize. And the 66 million people who voted for him won it, too. By the time he took the stage at midnight ET in the Grant Park Historic Hippie Battlefield in downtown Chicago, billions of people around the globe were already breathing a huge sigh of relief. It was as if, in that instant, one man did bring the promise of peace to the world — and most were ready to go wherever he wanted to go to achieve that end. Never before had the election of one man made every other nation feel like they had won, too. When you’ve got billions of people ready, willing and able to join a cause like this, well, a prize in Oslo is the least that you deserve.

One other thought. The Peace Prize historically has been given to those who have worked to throw off the yoke of racial discrimination and segregation (Martin Luther King, Jr., Desmond Tutu). I think the Nobel committee, in awarding Obama the prize, was also rewarding the fact that something profound had happened in a nation that was founded on racial genocide, built on racist slavery, and held back for a hundred-plus years by vestiges of hateful bigotry (which can still be found on display at teabagger rallies and daily talk radio). The fact that this one man could cause this seismic historical event to occur — and to do so with such grace and humility, never succumbing to the bait, but still not backing down (yes, he asked to be sworn in as “Barack Hussein Obama”!) — is more than reason enough he should be in Oslo to meet the King on December 10. Maybe he could take us along with him. ‘Cause I also suspect the Nobel committee was tipping its hat to all of us — we, the American people, had conquered some of our racism and did the truly unexpected. After seeing searing images of our black fellow citizens left to drown in New Orleans — and poor whites seeing their own treated no better than the black man they had been raised to hate — we had all seen enough. It was time for change.

Thank you, Barack Obama, for giving us the opportunity to redeem ourselves. Now for the tasks ahead. We need you to do all that you promised to do. We need it. The world needs it.

My prediction for the future? You become the first two-time winner of the Nobel Peace Prize! Yeah!

Fred (that’s Norwegian for “Peace”),
Michael Moore

The U.S. Senate will vote this week on the critical spending bill that funds the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of Interior, and other agencies that oversee environmental programs. Although the bill, for the most part, is a bipartisan pro-environment bill, the Senate is expected to vote, possibly as early as today, on amendments that would significantly weaken the bill and block key activities to combat global warming.

One particularly worrisome amendment, sponsored by Senator Murkowski (R-AK), would prohibit the EPA from regulating global warming pollutants from power plants under the Clean Air Act even though in May the EPA officially recognized that this pollution poses a danger to our health and therefore is subject to regulation under the act. Another harmful amendment, proposed by Senator Grassley (R-IA) and Senator Harkin (D-IA), would prevent the EPA from calculating and informing the public of the full environmental impact of biofuels. The amendment would overturn a 2007 law that requires a complete analysis to ensure that biofuels will actually reduce global warming pollution.
Take action now.

Blaise Bellew writes: Today being 9-11-09, I was sent a “Remember 911″ slide show that asked me to “Define Fear and Courage.” These are some of my thoughts:

Forget 911… no. Never. Forget Pearl Harbor… never. Forget the assassination of JFK… never. Forget the assassination of Bobby Kennedy… never.

But did the American People learn from 911? Its hard to say Yes. Has the Economic Bomb been good for America? I think not. Has the loss of life in those countries been worth it? Probably not because of the way we have gone about this war. Have the children that have lost a parent benefitted from this action taken by a small group of wealthy people? How about all the men and women that have lost their jobs, lost their businesses, lost their homes because of the extended tours? Have they seen a reason for all this? I won’t call the leaders that started all of this “Americans” or “Patriots” because the troops sent were simply not enough, under-trained, and under-supported. In all the years, did they get “The” guy? So what, in all this flag waving, rah-rah-don’t-forget, is this all about, really?

This is all about retribution and making money. It does not matter to the guys who started this that there are young men like your son that come home changed and hurt. They are fodder for a rich man’s gain. Not one of the Viet Nam vets I have known or worked with have been or are healthy. This I speak of not lightly nor without great respect for the men and women who walk away after that one last look of their loved ones, knowing that it can all change in an instant and probably will… the little girl or boy that doesn’t know who that stranger is that has returned after great anticipation. This isn’t “four quarters then hit the locker room to clean up” so you can go out for a few beers.

Yeah, I fucking remember. I remember the lies — the lies that were fabricated and the liars that spoke the lies to get this all started, and I remember who it affects. Everyday, I remember. Everyday.

One of my ancestors starved to death in the Andersonville Prison fighting for the North. He was the only male of that generation. He left a mother and child behind to fend for themselves in the 1860’s. He is on the Memorial.

Everyday, I remember. Everyday.

My father never spoke of the war… he is on the Memorial. WWII was spent on a destroyer in the Pacific. Of what little he ever said was that they made it through two typhoons. They were subjected to Kamikazes for 160 days straight. And stationed in post-war Tokyo, no one was allowed to know what the Japanese did with the reparations money. No one. Not servicemen, not civilians. He did say that the busiest place in Tokyo was the Tokyo Stock Exchange and that the “Big Board” was lit up by American companies being speculated on.

Everyday, I remember. Everyday.

When the North Koreans overran the Choisin Resevoir and all the American Forces, my father was the Chief Naval Admitting Officer for the Navy. His job was to decide who gets what level of care — who lives, who has the most chance of survival and who doesn’t. He was one of the privileged that served their country in “the hour of its greatest need” during WWII and signed a document that if there was an emergency he could be called up on very short notice. Underline “very short.” He got that notice. Four days later he left his young wife and children after literally handing over the keys, to the building manager, of his new and just-started Beverly Hills Eye Surgery practice. He did not have the time to sell his practice. He reported ASAP because there was an Emergency.

Everyday, I remember. Everyday.

My remembrance is deeper than what I had for breakfast. My remembrance is deeper than my hair appointment. Yes, I remember.

Everyday, I remember. Everyday.