Obama crafts a cabinet crossing aisles & ideologies,
while Senate Republicans revel in their Georgia win
as they intend to tyrannize from a 41-seat minority.

Dems step up to bailout the GOP's banking buddies,
while the GOP balks at loans to the Big Three,
& spreads lies about how much auto workers make.

The new Prez pledges to first push legislation
with bipartisan consensus like children's healthcare,
& hedges on oil windfall tax & Bush taxcut rollback,
while the Right calls him a radical socialist.

And in it all, Dems let Lieberman keep his gavel.

When Dems offer conservatives compromise & comity,
& the GOP digs in to defy progressive promise,
the debate wrongly shifts Rightward
& Liberals are left standing to the side.

Even after an Election, the Right is still wrong
...the real question: will the Left be left behind?

Share your hopes as your share a few pitchers,
& raise your concerns as you raise your glass
and toast this momentous month of transition
at your local progressive social club.

DRINKING LIBERALLY
Find - or start - a chapter near you.

Some of my fellow Kossacks got their knickers in a twist the other day over the news that David Gregory's set to become the new host of NBC's Meet The Press. Why the outrage? Well for one thing, they can never forgive Gregory for dancing with the devil, aka "MC" Rove. Plus, as one unkind Kossack noted, "I think he looks like he's from Planet Of The Apes" (admittedly, the photos offered as evidence made a compelling case).

Why not Chuck Todd? Better still, Rachel Maddow, patron saint of progressive wonks?

Look, I worship the luminous Rachel just as much as the next lefty blogger, but when are you guys gonna wake up and start sleeping in on Sunday? Why waste another precious hour of your life watching all those inside-the-Beltway bozos compete to see who can offer the most ossified observations, the stalest sound bites? (I make an exception for Donna Brazile, for whom God created the DVR.)

Get with the program--Friday is the new Sunday. You've got Left, Right, & Center on KCRW, and now there's Meet The Bloggers, live every Friday at 1 pm Eastern. Meet The Bloggers is an online video show from Robert Greenwald's Brave New Foundation, dedicated to providing a forum for "unconventional political opinion and analysis." It's got the talking heads you actually want to hear from, the folks just beyond the scope of our myopic old media.

And, it's got no commercials. Which makes this Friday's episode especially apt--just in time for the holidays, when so many Americans are "addled by advertising," as the Reverend Billy likes to say, Meet The Bloggers brings us the Rev and the righteous Savitri D from the Church of Stop Shopping, along with tips from the Center For A New American Dream's LaToya Peterson on how to simplify the holidays.

Last Friday, our culture's rampant consumerism literally ran amok and robbed Jdimytai Damour of his very life. Tune in this Friday to honor Damour's memory by learning what we can do to pull our people back from the maw of the malls and restore sanity and humanity to the holiday season.

image: Breeding Zombie Consumers by Sam Sebren

I've tried to put myself in the shoes of the Long Island lemmings who stomped the life out of Jdimytai "Jimbo" Damour in their rampage to ring up a bargain, but I just can't seem to fit into their frenzied footwear. Black Friday--this travesty of a tradition of dashing out the door to score a discounted tv or dvd player before you've even begun to digest your Thanksgiving dinner--is a sign of how badly we need to heed the Reverend Billy and seek salvation at the Church of Stop Shopping.

Damour's death was shocking but not surprising. Isn't the whole point of this retail ritual to feed a shopping stampede? Hopped-up Black Friday buy-bunnies pawed their way through the madding crowd at big box brouhahas all over the country this year; the fatal mall mauling on Long Island was just a new nadir for our nation.

Make no mistake--this was not a tragic accident. According to Newsday, the police were dispatched to the Valley Stream Wal-Mart at 3:10 a.m.--about two hours before Damour was trampled to death--to investigate a disturbance. They spent half an hour admonishing the unruly crowd of 500 or so shoppers "to be orderly," and then they left.

By 5 a.m. the crowd had swelled to 2,000 people pushing against the soon-to-open doors with such force that the glass shattered and the doors came off their hinges. "A metal portion of the door frame crumpled like an accordion," Newsday noted, adding that:

"It was crazy," a worker who witnessed the stampede told the New York Times. "The deals weren't even that good."

Police trying to clear the crime scene were stymied by shoppers who refused to stop shopping even as Damour lay dying, because they'd waited so long for the chance to profit from those special "5-a.m.-to-11-a.m.-only" prices.

So who's to blame for this barbaric episode? It seems pretty clear that both the police and Wal-Mart failed to provide sufficient crowd control, but New York Times media reporter David Carr fingers another faction: the "newspaper writers and television anchors who are now wearily shaking their heads at the collective bankruptcy of our mass consumer culture"--you know, the ones who cheered it all on as the countdown to Black Friday began.

But what about the frenzied folks who left their sweatshop sneaker track marks on Damour's back? Who created these monsters, these real-life incarnations of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead zombie shoppers? As Wal-Mart warrior Al Norman observed on HuffPo:

Reverend Billy mourned Damour the morning after, imagining the horrific last moments of this young man's life before the glass gave way:

On Sunday's Face The Nation, Bob Schieffer was appalled and baffled by the deadly stampede:

Yes, we can. But will we? There are 24 days left till Christmas. It's not too late to stop shopping.

Happy Cyber Monday -- that's right, the newly-minted term for the big post-Thanksgiving day of online holiday purchases. While we often dedicate our column to cool organizations -- from Trick-or-Vote to CREDO -- that build social networks through activity...we though if ever there would be a day to talk about building social community through consumerism, it would be today.

So if you're mind is still wandering from your long weekend off, or if you've started surfing for stocking stuffers, we just have to suggest: The Liberal Card -- promoting liberal pride, liberal community and liberal discounts.

Who wouldn't want to open slender package beneath the tree, beside the menorah, or after the Festivus gathering, and find an attractive, personalized wallet card that declares the bearer a "Card Carrying Liberal" this season?

Your co-workers would enjoy it. Your family would boast it proudly in their wallets. And how do I know? Because even Howard Dean is proud of it (and don't get me started on Ed Asner! Adorable photo below the fold...).

Look how happy he is! Oh, to be clear -- that poster is not the actual Liberal Card. The card is small and fits in your pocket. But it comes in a clever poster packaging that unfolds to become your banner of Liberal Pride.

It's a good time to be a Liberal. And as many claim this is a center-right country, let's remind them that Liberals are loud and proud. Why be afraid to show it? There are a few other folks who are proud to be liberals too: progressive businesses that offer discounts to card-holders.

Recently Liberal Card members were invited for free to an advance screening of Milk. The movie was awesome; now people will pay $10 to see it; and if you were a Card-Carrying Liberal, you now have a smile on your face..

There's more: you get discounts at the online stores of an environmentally-conscious gift shop, a progressive publishing house, a hip tee-shirt producer...even at the Drinking Liberally store. You get bonuses with your Liberal Card when you buy DL schwag. It just keeps giving.

Or, say for example that you live in New York. You go to a new downtown music venue for your free drink in the afternoon, and stay for the show on a members-only ticket. Or you head to an evening play, where your card gets you discount tickets. You end up at a Hell's Kitchen dive for another free drink. That's a great day (maybe even a great date!) -- and it's recession-proof.

But don't take my word for it that The Liberal Card will make you happy. Just look at this face...and tell me you don't see genuine joy.

That's right. Ed Asner has his Liberal Card. Why don't you?

Laughing Liberally To Keep From Crying
by Katie Halper

On Thanksgiving, The Dallas Cowboys beat the Seattle Seahawks 34 to 9. And the day before, when Bush spared two innocent lives, he achieved his own victory of 16 to 1. When Bush pardoned Pumpkin AND Pecan, who were about to meet the same fate as the turkeys televised behind Sarah Palin, he could boast of having 16 presidential poultry pardons under his belt. But Bush has also compassionately conserved human life, once. During his six-year governorship and eight-year presidency, Bush has pardoned one death row inmate, denied clemency over 50 times, and signed death warrants for 155 people, many of whom were innocent, mentally retarded, juveniles, recipients of unfair trials, and/or represented by incompetent and often narcoleptic lawyers.

Today, millions of families will sit down to the obligatory feast with all its fixin's and rejoice to be reunited with their loved ones. Or not. For thousands of gay teens too terrified to come out of the closet, this family gathering will mean tip-toeing through the minefield of aunts and uncles saying things like "You're such a nice-looking young man, why don't you have a girlfriend?" Legions of lesbians have brought their partners home for the holiday masquerading as their "roommate," a charade deemed necessary to preserve domestic harmony.

How many tormented young gay people commit suicide every year rather than risk rejection by their friends and families? How many more are singled out and savaged for being "different"?

The number of such tragedies is fewer today than it was a generation ago, thanks in part to Harvey Milk, America's first openly gay politician. Though the office he held was minor--he served on San Francisco's Board of Supervisors in the late seventies--he became a powerful advocate for gay rights, giving untold numbers of tortured young men and women the hope that they could lead a life free of persecution.

This Thanksgiving also happens to be the thirtieth anniversary of Harvey Milk's assassination at the hands of an unstable colleague. Gus Van Sant's brilliant biopic Milk, which just opened, achieves a breathtaking authenticity in its recreation of Milk's extraordinary life (and death), thanks to a phenomenal performance by Sean Penn, a terrific supporting cast, and painstaking attention to detail.

The most poignant aspect of this period piece, whose sets and costumes evoke the era of Milk's ascendance perfectly, is that the story it tells--of the fight against ignorance and intolerance--is, unlike the hairdo's and the Haight couture--all too current.

Even as we're grappling with the aftermath of the passage of Proposition 8 in California, denying gay couples the right to marry, Milk takes us back to Proposition 6, a 1978 ballot initiative sponsored by a conservative Orange County politician named John Briggs that would have banned gay teachers—or possibly even any public school employees who supported gay rights—from teaching in California's public schools.

Milk and his fellow activists galvanized opposition to the initiative, rallying the support of everyone from Ronald Reagan to then-president Jimmy Carter. Proposition 6 lost by a million votes despite vigorous campaigning by anti-gay crusader and citrus industry sweetheart Anita Bryant. The previous year, Bryant had succeeded in repealing a Florida ordinance that banned discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, calling her campaign "Save Our Children."

Part of Bryant's legacy was a Florida law passed in 1977 that banned adoptions by gays and lesbians. Yesterday--three decades later--a Miami-Dade judge declared the law unconstitutional, stating that “The best interests of children are not preserved by prohibiting homosexual adoption.”

Yes, and the best interests of families are not preserved by preventing committed partners from benefitting, if they so desire, from the covenant of marriage. Someday, gays and lesbians will enjoy the same rights as the rest of the human race. In the meantime, give thanks for the Harvey Milks of the world, who really want to save our children, be they gay or straight.

Screening Liberally Big Picture
by Josh Bolotsky

We know what's going to happen almost from the very beginning, because the film tells us: Dianne Feinstein, long before she becomes a Senator, back when she was President of the Board of Supervisors for San Francisco, will speak at a press conference on November 27th, 1978, and announce that City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man in the United States elected to a major public office, has been shot and killed by former City Supervisor Dan White, along with the Mayor, George Moscone. The crowd moans in shock, disbelief, anger. Cameras flash. This use of archival footage occurs maybe 90 seconds into Gus Van Sant's "Milk," and it's followed by a shot of Milk himself (Sean Penn), maybe a week before the shootings, sitting at his kitchen table alone, recording a tape to be played in the event of his assassination. Cue title card.

"Milk" somehow manages to balance the needs of two very different films for its running time. It is, first of all, an absolutely superb biopic which allows us to feel like we knew Harvey on a first-name basis, helps us to understand what others found so important about him and his work beyond the permanently-earned title of First Openly Gay Office Holder; and a very different film, a meditation on the responsibility activists have to the people who elevated them to position of influence, whether it be via the ballot box, the work of a concerned group of citizens or just the readers of a blog community.