Republicans are Challenging California's Global Warming ActIf they aren’t trying to knock down the health care reform legislation, they’re trying to block appointees in the Senate review. And if they aren’t busy calling Obama a socialist tyrant, they’re occupied defending the needs of the Wall Street bankers. And when they need something to do for a weekend, well, it’s time to go out and demonize some sort of forward-thinking climate law. Like, say, in California.

I realize that those examples are Federal Republicans, but the same sentiment pervades on the West coast. And California is a leader in all things for the Earth, meaning that this is the front lines for the next generation of progressive green policies. So the Republican party tries to nip it in the bud, so to speak…

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Green BeretOn Sunday, 60 Minutes aired an episode with a segment about the Green Berets that was in effect a Marine Recruiting advertisement to entice young men (and high school boys) to join the military in order to risk life an limb for one of the two wars the US is currently fighting.


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Scott Brown's election means 41 Republicans in the SenateSo Massachusetts voters have elected Scott Brown rather than Martha Coakley. A Republican rather than a Democrat will assume the vacant seat in the senate. The Democrats now have 59 rather than 60 seats there. Massachusetts, a decidedly Blue state, has elected a Republican senator to take over for legendary senator Edward Kennedy- the longest champion of the health care cause that the senate had.

It begs the obvious questions: How did this happen? What are the Democrats going to do about it?

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"You want me to do WHAT with my money?"You know, it's times like these that make it clear that Rush Limbaugh is his own worst enemy.  If Rush didn't want people to hate him, then the way forward is obvious.  Instead, Rush has chosen to attack the credibility of everyone who has ragged on him for saying what he did about Haiti last week, and to try and misdirect our attention away from what he did say.

Rush constantly falls back on the "I'm being quoted out of context" excuse, combined with "That isn't what I meant."  So let's look at what he said last week.  On the topic of Haiti, Rush Limbaugh said "We've already donated to Haiti.  It's called the U.S. income tax."


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Coakley is in danger of losing the 60th vote for health care reform.I’ve been writing about the health care reform legislation for months now. I almost don’t know what I’ll do when it either passes or fails- I’ll lose such a consistent piece of subject matter. It’s a hopeful piece of legislation in a time where the rest of the news seems to be about war and financial ruin and the failures of the world’s governments to agree on how to address climate change.

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House Leader Nancy Pelosi Is Doing What She Can To Get The Votes To Get The Bill PassedThe Labor Union has said that they now support a higher tax on high-cost health insurance, one of the many methods that Democrats are trying to institute to pay for the new reformed health care system. It’s a big deal- Labor Union support would count as one of the major hurdles that the bill had to get in order to have any hope for moving forward.

It is being called the “Cadillac Tax,” and it was a big divider between the Senate and the House versions of this bill. Many are hopeful that this will mean adoption by both houses and sending of the health care bill to the President soon.

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U.S. President Barack Obama is negotiating with Russia to reduce numbers of Nuclear WeaponsThe U.S. and Russia have been going through some major talks about nuclear issues over the past few months, and several times along the way other issues, like the Copenhagen summit or arguments about missile placements or Afghanistan have gotten in the way or delayed negotiations, but now a senior U.S. arms control official says that the two nations are “really close” to agreement.

What does “really close” actually mean? Well, that part we can’t be sure of. What we can be sure of is that this is getting a lot of press and is something that both countries want to do, so we can assume that they are certainly making progress and that something will happen in the near future. Good.

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You Betcha!The Republicans seem to be taking over the airwaves at a rapid-fire pace. First, George Bush’s daughter got a job at NBC as some kind of education commenter. Nice to have connections, isn’t it?

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Does the Detroit Incident Mean We Need New Security Measures?After what happened over Detroit, how worried are you about it happening again? In the aftermath of September 11 we watched Congress rush through the Patriot Act, and people were more than willing to give up on a lot of their civil liberties to gain what seemed like advantageous safeguards against terrorist threats from both outside and inside the country. Since then there have continued to be terrorist threats form both, and there probably will continue to be.

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Copenhagen ended effectively on December 18 and the gavel came down the morning of the 19th. Give everybody 48 hours or so to get home, get through jet lag and wake up to look at the agreement that they all made with their advisors and other important folks on Monday and, you guessed it, Tuesday rolls around and it is the time to start complaining. The wire feeds are flooded with different countries complaining about this or that part of the agreement- nothing surprising, really, as something that takes 193 signatures from around the globe and has to be in consensus is going to be watered down, and anything that gets countries as disparate as the U.S. and the Bahamas, or Australia and Sri Lanka, or even China and say, Jamaica to sign their names to it has got to be full of concessions and compromises, not passion.

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