Category Archives: Liberal

Journalist Jeremy Scahill, a frequent panelist on Real Time With Bill Maher, was booked to appear this Friday but canceled after he found out Breitbart editor Milo Yiannopoulos would also be a guest. Yiannopoulos is known for his provocative stories with such headlines as Gay rights have made us dumber, its time to get back in the closet. He was also permanently banned from Twitter last year a feat that takes some doing. Among his transgressions was targeting SNL comedian Leslie Jones, calling her barely literate, and rallying his hundreds of thousands of followers to direct racist, sexist missives to her. (She briefly quit Twitter over the abuse.)

[Just how offensive did Milo Yiannopoulos have to be to get banned from Twitter?]

Scahill, a founding editor of the Intercept, explained himself on Twitter. He took great pains to express his admiration for the producers and writers of the show. He even sang the praises with a few big caveats of host Maher. But he called Yiannopouloss appearance many bridges too far.

He has ample venues to spew his hateful diatribes, Scahill wrote. Appearing on Real Time will provide Yiannopoulos with a large, important platform to openly advocate his racist, anti-immigrant campaign.

Maher responded to Scahills criticism and doubled down on his decision to have the provocateur as a guest.

Liberals will continue to lose elections as long as they follow the example of people like Mr. Scahill whose views veer into fantasy and away from bedrock liberal principles like equality of women, respect for minorities, separation of religion and state, and free speech, Maher said in a statement, according to Entertainment Weekly. If Mr. Yiannopoulos is indeed the monster Scahill claims and he might be nothing could serve the liberal cause better than having him exposed on Friday night.

Maher also addressed Scahills criticism of his views on Islam. My comments on Islam have never veered into vitriol, Maher said.

Scahill isnt the first person to take issue with the way Maher discusses Muslims. During one episode, Ben Affleck attacked the host and panelist Sam Harris for their racist comments about the religion. (Harris called Islam the mother lode of bad ideas.)

Maher, a champion of free speech, often builds his shows around guests with widely varying views to promote lively debate. Earlier this month, he hosted staunch Trump supporter Tomi Lahren alongside Republican strategist Rick Wilson and Missouri Democrat and Afghanistan veteran Jason Kander. Ann Coulter, another specialist in inflammatory rhetoric, has also been a frequent guest.

[Bill Maher hosted conservative Tomi Lahren on Real Time. They were both preaching to their own choirs.]

The University of California at Berkeley canceled a talk by inflammatory Breitbart writer Milo Yiannopoulos and put the campus on lockdown after intense protests broke out on Feb. 1. (Video: The Washington Post / Photo: AP)

Yiannopoulos is no stranger to boycotts. Earlier this year he was scheduled to make an appearance at University of California, Berkeley, but violent protests broke out around the campus with demonstrators setting off fireworks and throwing bricks. University police ultimately canceled the event, which in turn prompted President Trump, in an early morning tweet, to threaten to pull the public universitys funding.

So far Yiannopoulos hasnt weighed in on the controversy on Facebook a social media account hes still allowed to have.

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'Liberals will continue to lose': Bill Maher defends Milo Yiannopoulos booking after panelist boycotts - Washington Post

What happened to liberal Democrats, and their concerns about civil liberties and government surveillance of American citizens?

Liberals once hated the CIA. And they loved the Russians. Yeah, you can look it up.

And their liberal friends in liberal Hollywood made movie after movie about the dangers of The Deep State and its awesome surveillance powers. One of the best was "Three Days of the Condor," with liberal icon Robert Redford fighting the malevolent CIA boss John Houseman, who longed for "the clarity" of world war.

Years later, Edward Snowden became the liberal demigod and Wikileaks was their winged chariot of truth and beauty. Liberals fretted about the powers of the intelligence community being used on private citizens for political reasons.

So what happened to them? What happened to the ideals of these liberal Democrats?

Donald Trump was elected president, that's what happened to them.

And now you can clearly see the change in them as Trump's national security adviser, Michael Flynn, has become feast for the crows.

Flynn deserves his punishment. Make no mistake about that. He reportedly lied to Vice President Mike Pence about his phone conversations with a Russian ambassador that included discussion of the Obama administration's sanctions against Russia.

As a former general officer, as a former Defense Intelligence Agency boss, Flynn understands the chain of command. There is no lying to a superior officer, and Pence was his superior. Lying to a superior is grounds for court-martial. Or, at least gives pretext for a quick and brutal departure from the Trump White House, which is what happened.

So Flynn is gone, forced to resign, his head high on a spike upon the Democratic Party ramparts.

Democrats jeer at his head up there. It's as if this episode were street theater in olde England, with Punch and Judy entertaining the small folk. And Flynn's head, up there above them, is pecked endlessly in the sun.

But what victory are they celebrating, exactly? And at what cost to the republic?

What would have been bothersome to liberals of old (the pre-Trump kind) is that Flynn may have been targeted for a takedown by the Deep State intelligence operatives liberals once loathed.

Flynn and Trump warred with the intelligence community during the campaign, and Trump called out the CIA and others on multiple occasions, tweeting at them, provoking them.

Most recently, Trump was furious that his private conversations with the Australian prime minister became public and were used as a club to pound him in the pages of the "Never Trump" Washington Post and other establishment newspapers.

The damning news was that there are reportedly transcripts of Flynn speaking with the Russian ambassador before Trump was inaugurated president.

This indicates that Flynn was most likely the subject of a warrant issued by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. It means his conversations were recorded. The American public should know what this is about. I have a hard time believing Flynn was a traitor. But I don't have a hard time believing that arrogance and foolishness are necessary prerequisites for a hard public fall.

What's astounding about this is that news reports on Flynn's conversations with the Russian ambassador also mentioned something else.

They mentioned the existence of many intelligence community sources, and these many intelligence sources presumably read the transcripts and leaked their contents to reporters.

That's what is amazing. That the intelligence community records the conversations of a private citizen and leaks to damage and weaken a president.

Liberals who once prided themselves on being civil libertarians are overjoyed. They don't question their good fortune. They celebrate.

Now Trump is in open, public war with American intelligence and liberals cheer on the intelligence community leakers.

Trump declared his war with American intelligence on his Twitter account and then did so in person as he stood in the White House at a news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

"I think he's (Flynn) been treated very, very unfairly by the media as I call it, the 'fake media,' in many cases and I think it's really a sad thing that he was treated so badly," Trump said.

"I think in addition to that, from intelligence, papers are being leaked, things are being leaked," said the president, adding that such leaks were a "criminal action, criminal act."

The president's references to Flynn are awkward and politically self-serving.

But the president's reference to the intelligence community in his government is an open declaration of war. And it's dangerous.

Democrats are on the outs, so they love this story about Flynn. It feeds into their belief that Trump is some tool of Russian strongman Vladimir Putin. It's not whether they believe it that matters. What matters is that they see a way to sear this deeply upon the American mind before the 2018 elections.

Democrats will continue to push this theme, even if it means celebrating a possible takedown of administration officials by American intelligence, and the many sources of those reports.

So why aren't liberals more concerned, when once they'd be outraged about authoritarian tactics?

For the same reasons they weren't concerned about presidential overreach when their guy was president, with his imperial pen and his phone.

Because for many Democrats, just like for many Republicans, it's all about power, isn't it? And ideals even those which help keep the republic be damned.

Listen to "The Chicago Way" podcast with John Kass and WGN's Jeff Carlin and guests Sen. Rand Paul and Kristen McQueary at http://www.wgnradio.com/category/wgn-plus/thechicagoway.

jskass@chicagotribune.com

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Whatever happened to liberal Democrats, anyway? - Chicago Tribune

Lifesite

NDP asks election watchdogs to probe Liberal donation reports The Globe and Mail The Liberal Party say the amounts recorded in their quarterly filings with Elections Canada do not in fact reflect the precise donations being made in each instance. They say the figures include more than just the contribution; they also include money ... Trudeau revives Liberal gvmt program designed to circumvent Canadian lawsLifesite Liberals failed to educate voters on electoral reform, says profCBC.ca Liberal Government Disappoints on Justice for Women, First NationsRaise the Hammer all 29 news articles »

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NDP asks election watchdogs to probe Liberal donation reports - The Globe and Mail

A new progressive Political Action Committee plans to recruit and fund primary opponents to Democratic members of Congress that it feels are not aggressive enough in fighting President Donald Trump.

WeWillReplaceYou.org was formed by a group of progressive activists with backgrounds in the Bernie Sanders campaign, the environmental movement, the Black Lives Matter movement, and the DREAMer movement of young undocumented immigrants.

It's a project of #AllofUs, a new millennial progressive organization that has protested Democratic members of the Senate, urging them to draw a harder line against Trump's cabinet nominees and policy agenda.

While many liberals, including filmmaker Michael Moore, have issued nominal threats of left-wing challenges to Democratic lawmakers, WeWillReplaceYou.org appears to be the first organized effort to explicitly turn those threats into a reality. That will likely put it on a collision course with Democratic efforts to protect incumbents.

"Other groups are probably expecting to primary Democrats, but we think that it's important to make the threat clear now because so many Democrats are not fighting Trump forcefully enough and we need to communicate that we're serious," Claire Sandberg, a former Sanders staffer and one of the group's founders, told NBC News. "Our message to Democrats is pretty straightforward: Fight Trump or we'll find someone who will."

The objective is not necessarily to replace Democratic incumbents, but to pressure them, Sandberg said, adding that the group is holding off on releasing any targets at the moment.

"We want to leave the door open for Democrats to improve and be stronger in their opposition to Trump," said Sandberg. "We're only a few weeks into the Trump administration. Our goal is not primary every single Democratic member of Congress. It's to push Democrats who are there to do better."

WeWillReplaceYou.org will decide which Democrats to target based on where it can have an impact and through surveys of its members. There may be a handful of "litmus tests," the group suggested, such as voting against Trump's Supreme Court nominee, Neil Gorsuch.

The group welcomes comparisons to the Tea Party, and it's certain to attract familiar criticism from Democratic officials worried that primary challenges will undermine the party's ability to retain seats.

Ten Democratic senators are up for reelection next year in states Trump won. Republicans now hold 52 seats and the Senate, and if they were to pick off 8 of those ten Democrats, the GOP would win a filibuster-proof 60-seat majority -- an outcome many Democrats would view as Armageddon.

Sandberg rejected the criticism that primary challenges to those Democrats would imperil the party's effort to hold those seats. Demoralizing the base with tepid opposition to Trump, Sandberg said, should be Democrats' bigger fear.

"The same base that supports those primary challenges will propel them to victory in general elections," she said.

But in places like West Virginia, where Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin is facing a tough reelection battle, Democrats will almost certainly need more than base voters alone to prevail. Trump won the state by over 40 percentage points.

Either way, primary challenges seem inevitable after an election loss that galvanized the left and nurtured doubts about party leadership.

"The 53 Senators, including Democrat Joe Manchin, who voted to put millions of jobs at risk by putting another Wall Street banker in charge of the Treasury Department shouldn't expect to keep theirs," Charles Chamberlain, the executive director of the liberal group Democracy for America said after Manchin joined Republicans in voting to confirm Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin Monday.

WeWillReplaceYou.org plans to raise money and organize volunteer efforts online, so the scale of its operations and the number of races it gets involved in will depend on how much support it receive.

But it hopes to operate on the cheap. The group plans to eschew expensive TV advertising in favor of some digital ads to support its main focus on distributed organizing, which leverages technology to generate phone calls, door knocks, and other volunteer efforts without the overhead of paid staff required by more traditional field programs.

As a hybrid PAC, the group can coordinate directly with campaigns in addition to fund independent expenditures.

In addition to Sandberg, who was the director of digital organizing on Sanders' campaign, advisors to the new group include include Kenneth Pennington, Sanders' former digital director, Rafael Navar, the national political director of the Communications Worker of America, May Boeve, the executive director of the environmental group 350 Action, Taj James, the executive director of Movement Strategy Center, former andra Flores-Quilty, the president of the United States Student Association and Carolina Canizales, a former United We Dream official.

All are working in their personal capacity, not on behalf of their groups.

Another advisor, Jessica Pierce, who once ran the NAACP's field training program, said Democrats' current leadership has taken support from communities of color for granted.

"Even now our elected leaders are still failing us," she said. "As someone who has run national election campaigns in every election cycle since 2006 , but who has also been a part of the momentum of the Movement for Black Lives -- I know that it is going to take all of, working strategically to make the change that people need. We must resist at every level-- from the streets to the Senate."

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New Liberal PAC Targets Democrats for Primaries - NBCNews.com

Conservative groups involved in a multimillion-dollar effort to ensure that federal appeals court Judge Neil Gorsuch is confirmed to the Supreme Court are pushing back against opposition from a coalition of liberal groups.

After more than 100 liberal groups wrote a letter to leaders of the Senate Judiciary Committee Wednesday, America Rising and the Judicial Crisis Network sought to downplay the criticism.

"It's no surprise that this collection of liberal groups would oppose a mainstream nominee like Judge Gorsuch, who follows the law, adheres to the Constitution, and has been effusively praised by legal experts on both sides of the political spectrum," Jeremy Adler, America Rising Squared spokesman, wrote in an email. "Instead of voicing legitimate concerns, this is just a sad attempt to play politics with a Supreme Court seat and knowingly misrepresent Judge Gorsuch's sterling judicial record."

The Judicial Crisis Network similarly labeled the liberals as "extremists."

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"I am not surprised that a group of results-oriented political activists have attacked Judge Gorsuch because he is a fair and impartial judge, not a results-oriented political hack," said Carrie Severino, Judicial Crisis Network chief counsel. "Like Senator [Chuck] Schumer, they are extremists who will try every trick in the book to stop an exceptionally qualified, widely respected nominee who puts the law and the Constitution ahead of politics."

The back-and-forth between advocacy groups over Gorsuch's nomination comes ahead of the confirmation hearings expected to begin in the Senate next month.

Top Story

Allegations that Flynn was targeted by the U.S. intel community for his hostility to the Iran deal haven't gained much traction among Senate Republicans.

02/15/17 6:36 PM

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Conservative groups push back against liberal opposition to Neil Gorsuch - Washington Examiner

New York Times

Liberal Activists Join Forces Against a Common Foe: Trump New York Times Within days of the election, Mr. Boyan began volunteering for the Working Families Party, a liberal political organization focused on income inequality, and attended almost weekly protests to voice his dismay. He traveled to the Women's March on ...

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Liberal Activists Join Forces Against a Common Foe: Trump - New York Times

What's a Liberal to Do When His Spouse Is a Trump Zealot? New York Times She now says she hates all liberals, all Democrats and, particularly, Barack Obama. I am weary and frightened of her diatribes and no longer bring up any Trump-related topic. But she frequently does. Is it ethical for me to remain silent when ...

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What's a Liberal to Do When His Spouse Is a Trump Zealot? - New York Times

Westbrook Pegler with Eleanor Roosevelt. Franklin D. Roosevelt Library/NARA 195810

Westbrook Pegler was extremely good at calling people names. Particularly politicians. In his syndicated newspaper column, he called Franklin D. Roosevelt Moosejaw and mommas boy. Truman was a thin-lipped hater.

Pegler was a bit of hater himself. He didnt like the labor movement, Communists, fascists, Jews, and perhaps most of all, liberals. In one 1938 column, he coined a term for liberals that would eventually come to define conservative scorn for the left. Pegler was the first writer to refer toliberals as bleeding hearts. The context for this then-novel insult? A bill before Congress thataimed tocurb lynching.

Before the 20th century, the phrase bleeding heart was popular in the religious-tinged oratory of 19th century America. Throughout the 1860s, it comes up often in poetry, essays, and political speeches, as an expression of empathy and emotion. I come to you with a bleeding heart, honest and sincere motives, desiring to give you some plain thoughts, said one politician in an 1862 speech. The phrase comes from the religious image of Christs wounded heart, which symbolizes his compassion and love. It was a common enough phrase that London has a Bleeding Heart Yard (featured prominently in the Dickens novel Little Dorrit) which is named after a long-gone sign, once displayed at a local pub, that showed the Sacred Heart.

By the 1930s, though, the phrase had fallen out of common use and Pegler, who one politician called a soul-sick, mud-wallowing gutter scum columnist, recruited it into a new context, as a political insult. He was a master of this art. As a contemporary of his wrote in an academic article on political name-calling, Pegler has coined, or given prominence to, a fair share of unfair words. (Pegler also called the AFL a swollen national racket, economics a side-show science, and Harold Ickes, who ran the Public Works Administration, Donald Duck.)

Pegler first used bleeding heart in a column castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on a bill to provide penalties for lynchings. Pegler wasnt for lynchings, per se, but he argued that they were no longer a problem the federal government should solve: there had only been eight lynchings in 1937, he wrote, and it is obvious that the evil is being cured by local processes. The bill, he thought, was being used as a political bait in crowded northern Negro centers. And here was his conclusion, emphasis ours:

I question the humanitarianism of any professional or semi-pro bleeding heart who clamors that not a single person must be allowed to hunger but would stall the entire legislative program in a fight to ham through a law intended, at the most optimistic figure, to save fourteen lives a year.

Pegler was apparently pleased enough with this use of bleeding heart that he kept it up. He later wrote of professional bleeding hearts who advocated for collective medicine after a woman couldnt find a doctor to help her through labor, and lobbed the insult of bleeding heart Bourn at a rival, left-leaning columnist. By 1940, he had condensed the phrase down to bleeding-heart humanitarians and bleeding-heart liberals.

Peglers usage did not immediately catch on, though. (Perhaps thats because he went on to become so right-wing that he was asked to leave the John Birch Society.) If the New York Times archives is any indication, through the 40s and 50s, bleeding heart was most often used to refer to the flower Lamprocapnos spectabilis, which grows rows of pretty pink blossoms, and occasionally sports.

Bleeding heart wasrevived in a political context in 1954, by another infamous right-winger, Joe McCarthy, who called Edward R. Murrow one of the extreme Left Wing bleeding-heart elements of television and radio. It wasnt until the 1960s that it really started to come into common use, though. In 1963, the satirical columnist Russell Baker put it on a list of political insults: If one is called a phoney, about the only thing he can do is come back with some epithet like, anti-intellectual or bleeding-heart liberalor you must be one of those peace nuts. By the end of the decade, Ronald Reagan, then newly elected governor of California, had picked it up as a way to describe his political trajectory. I was quite the bleeding-heart liberal once, he told Newsweek. By 1970, he was known as a former bleeding heart Democrat.

After that, the phrase was fully ensconced in political short-hand and quickly claimed by liberals as a positive trait. You are called a bleeding heart liberal because you have a heart for the poor, one told the Times. Count me with the bleeding heart liberals, an NAACP lawyer wrote in a letter to the editor.

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The True Origins of the Phrase 'Bleeding-Heart Liberal' - Atlas Obscura

Updated February 15, 2017 15:15:55

One Nation candidates in the WA election are threatening to disobey their own party on the controversial preference deal struck with the Liberal Party.

"I feel like I have just received a kick in the fangs by our own party," one candidate said in an email seen by 7.30.

"The party is selling me and the constituents out."

Now some of the party's candidates are openly defying the head office directive and threatening to give their own instructions of directing preferences.

Dane Sorensen and David Miller are two candidates who were prepared to go on the record for 7.30.

When they decided to run for One Nation in Western Australia, they did not expect to become bargaining chips.

But that is what the pair, who come from opposite ends of the political spectrum, believe they have become under the controversial deal between Pauline Hanson's One Nation party and the WA Liberals.

Under the deal, the Liberals will preference One Nation in all but one of the Upper House seats and in return will One Nation will preference the Liberals in all the lower house seats it is contesting.

Mr Sorensen, a former mining executive, and Mr Miller, an electrical fitter and traditional Labor voter, are big supporters of Ms Hanson but are united in their opposition to the backroom deal.

"I wasn't told I found out about it in the Sunday Times and reading social media," Mr Miller, candidate for the seat of Collie-Preston, told 7.30.

"How it looks to me, [the deal] is to get people into the Upper House at the expense of people in the Lower House.

"[I'm] less than impressed."

Mr Sorensen, who is running in the seat of North West Central, says they should have been consulted.

"People are perceiving that One Nation are purely trying to get the Liberal Party re-elected and that's not what I joined the party for and it's certainly not what I stand for," he said.

A big point of contention for the Lower House One Nation candidates who are opposed to the deal is the fact that they are funding their own campaigns.

Mr Sorensen estimates his will cost up to $15,000. It's understood the party has agreed to refund 75 per cent of advertising costs after the election.

"I don't mind funding my own campaign as long as I'm not being dictated to as to how I will proceed with that campaign," he said.

"Why would we preference, on a blanket basis, the party that has done an abysmal job of running the state?"

In an email to other disgruntled One Nation candidates, Mr Sorensen said the One Nation party had provided total disorganisation and stupid directives.

"We, the scum, are just cannon fodder. To say I'm not impressed, is an understatement," he said.

"It amazes me that this 'party' expects us to all fund our own campaigns and then find out that they are manipulating us behind the scenes."

Mr Sorensen then goes on to advise the other candidates to do their own "how to vote" cards, a sentiment endorsed by Mr Miller.

"This deal is shambolic," he told other One Nation candidates in an email.

"I, for one, will decide who I preference."

Forty-five candidates are running for One Nation at the March 11 poll.

The WA One Nation leader, Colin Tincknell, declined to be interviewed by 7.30 but in an email he said that the how to vote card is only a recommendation and that the One Nation has always encouraged voters to make up their minds on preferences.

Topics: government-and-politics, elections, state-parliament, one-nation, states-and-territories, bullying, wa

First posted February 15, 2017 13:31:04

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One Nation candidates David Miller and Dane Sorensen furious over WA Liberal preference deal - ABC Online

Updated February 15, 2017 14:52:17

A call by a Tasmanian young Liberal supporter group to rid the state of poker machines has won rare praise from an arch political rival but also a distancing from the Liberal Party.

The Tasmania University Liberal Club (TULC), which calls itself the state's "largest right-wing youth organisation", said poker machines should be banished from Tasmania, including in the state's two casinos.

The TULC's statement that it was "time to see these bad machines out of our state" was welcomed by the Tasmanian Young Greens and comes at the end of the first week of hearings of the parliamentary inquiry into gambling in the state.

TULC president Blake Young said the group which he said was not officially affiliated with the Liberal Party had taken a "hard-line" approach over the issue.

"As a centre right group, freedom and personal choice is something we do value but at the end of the day the people being damaged by pokies are the most vulnerable in our community," Mr Young said.

"They have very little money to live on and far too many are feeding everything they have into these addictive machines."

Mr Young said the money spent on machines, estimated to be about $200 million, could be better spent elsewhere.

"Are we comfortable with the fact that our economy is underwritten by poker machines? I don't think we are.

"It is a hard-line view compared to what any policy outcome might be from the current inquiry, but we definitely think our state would be a better place if poker machines weren't here."

Mr Young said there was a rare opportunity for young Liberals, young Greens and young Labor members to "speak in unison" on the issue.

Today, the state director of the Tasmanian Liberal Party, Sam McQuestin, tweeted "all Lib members entitled to their views, but please note no formal link/affiliation between Lib party and tas uni (sic) Libs".

Young Greens convenor Holly Ewin congratulated Mr Young and the TULC on its position.

"The Young Greens support the removal of pokies from pubs and clubs, and it's my personal view that they have no place in the community at all," she said.

Ms Ewin said all three "young" parties could agree and it would send a strong message to politicians.

She said the Young Greens did not have a formal position on the removal of pokies from casinos, but there was "strong support".

Young Labor has been contacted for comment.

Topics: gambling, political-parties, tas

First posted February 15, 2017 13:23:11

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Anti-pokie stance from Tasmania young Liberal supporters welcomed by Greens - ABC Online