It’s Monday so let’s get started on our open thread. How’s your holiday shopping going? Despite my doubts about the new fitness shoe craze, I bought some. I’ve been wearing them and they’re pretty comfortable but my thighs are killing me. Is this a sign they’re working?
I find this interesting, especially since Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson are intent on killing any good parts of health care reform. Teabaggers are going to stage a “die in.” Why bother, there’s already plenty of people dying from the lack of health care.
Tea Party organizer Mark Meckler writes on his site: “The intention is to go inside the Senate offices and hallways, and play out the role of patients waiting for treatment in government controlled medical facilities. As the day goes on some of us will pretend to die from our untreated illnesses and collapse on the floor. Many of us plan to stay there until they force us to leave.”
The “die-in,” set to take place tomorrow, could be yet another example of Tea Party groups appropriating protest tactics formerly associated with the activist left. The tactic has formerly been used by anti-war groups, or by groups demanding more government action on AIDS. In this case, it’s being done by a group demanding less government action on health care.
“We know it’s a sacrifice to do this right before Christmas,” Meckler writes. “But throughout history American Patriots have made far greater sacrifices than this to protect our liberty. Now the burden (and the honor) falls on us.”
It’s a burden and sacrifice to act like a jerk in the halls of Congress?
The Copenhagen Climate Conference has been temporarily suspended because developing countries have walked out. The dispute is because most of these countries are bearing the brunt of climate change and think the rich countries’ subsidies are too small and the carbon reduction targets are not big enough:
The climate-change conference in the Danish capital of Copenhagen is in disarray after some 130 developing countries walked out of the confab on Monday. That’s led to at least a temporary suspension of the conference while rich-world delegations try to convince developing nations to rejoing the talks.
Fundamentally, the walkout seems to be a “put up or shut up” message from poor countries to rich ones. The developing countries are upset that the Copenhagen conference may ditch the 1997 Kyoto Protocol and are upset with paltry amounts of financing offered so far by developed countries.
An official in the Nigerian delegation which was part of the walkout, said Europe’s lowball offers of financial support were “pathetic. He added: “There will be no commitments from the G77 [bloc of developing countries] until we get better assurances about financial and technology transfers,” reports our colleague Alessandro Torello from Copenhagen.