I see headlines like, Stocks climb after Fed pledges to hold rates low, and it’s hard not to think that the real hed should have been, Hostages released after the terrorists’ demands were met.
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Kucinich did what the prOg bloggers wanted him to do, so today they’re beating him up all over again for having been the nail that stuck out.
I don’t use the DFH nomenclature popular among lefty bloggers, but in this case it’s hard not to see this as the pro-corporate bloviators kicking dirty fucking hippies while we’re down.
It does get old, and for me, it’s past tiresome. If lefties never get to win any battles despite providing more than our share of cannon fodder, it’s time for us to find a new party, a party of convenience from which we can endorse real Democrats but go galt on the saggy assed poseurs who keep talking the talk while walking Wall Street’s walk.
Am I trying to destroy the Democratic party? No more so than Alan Simpson will destroy the Republicans.
“Alan Simpson’s a great guy, but he’s not going to bring along Republican votes on Capitol Hill,” said Vin Weber, a former congressman from Minnesota who was part of a younger generation of Reagan-era tax-cutters. “He’s always been a Republican that would be willing to raise taxes, but that’s not where today’s Republican Party is.”
The faux Republican party has all but destroyed the Lincoln brand. Simpson’s a true conservative, and no one hates Fox News/Rush style faux Republicans like a real conservative does. From Wikipedia:
Simpson’s father, Milward Simpson, also served in the Senate and was among six Republican members who voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 on constitutional grounds. Alan Simpson, however, has been an outspoken advocate for access to abortion, gay and lesbian rights, and equality for all persons regardless of race, color, creed, gender, or sexual orientation. In an article in the Washington Post, the former senator wrote an article criticizing the “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy stating ” ‘Gay’ is an artificial category that says little about a person. Our differences and prejudices pale next to our historic challenge.”
In 2001, Simpson became Honorary Chairman of the Republican Unity Coalition (RUC), a gay/straight alliance within the Republican Party. In this capacity, Simpson personally recruited President Gerald R. Ford to serve on the RUC’s Advisory Board.
He’s not one of us, but he’s not one of the current crop of them, either.
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From the comments, a link to UAW Local 2244’s president’s statement regarding Toyota’s plant closure in California.
I can’t fault Toyota for stealing a page from Corporate Team USA’s playbook, but conditioning workers’ final pay settlement on the union shutting the fuck up is, to put it mildly, upsetting.
One of the most important reforms this country needs is legislation clarifying that no contract, settlement or judgment can be sealed.
Privacy is not a judiciary value.
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You know who I really feel sorry for? Catholic Boy Scouts from Ireland.
“The Boy Scouts of America actually set back the child abuse prevention movement in this country, held it back, because of their secrecy,” Kelly Clark, a lawyer for Lewis, said in opening arguments.
Parts of the files have emerged in other lawsuits, and officials with the Boy Scouts, based in Irving, Texas, have previously acknowledged concealing some abuse. But in court on Wednesday, Chuck Smith, a lawyer for the Boy Scouts, said the files — sometimes called “the red-flag file” or the “confidential files” — showed that the group had been ahead of national trends in tracking abuse, and he said the files had been kept confidential only to protect victims….
Clark said the files, which were not made public on Wednesday, showed that national and regional scout leaders had allowed troop leaders and volunteers to work with scouts for years after complaints arose that they had abused children, sometimes even after they had been convicted of sexual abuse. He said evidence would show claims of abuse as early as the 1920s.
It’s very difficult for me to imagine why any Boy Scout files would need to be shrouded in secrecy.
And these claims are about the historical BSA organization. Now that all control has been ceded to batshit insane Christianists, this situation can only be getting worse.
It does not matter that the founders of the movement, including Baden-Powell himself, had little interest in promoting religion beyond a very generalized belief in a Supreme Being, a fact that should make it as easy for the Boy Scouts as the Girl Scouts to change the oath (in practice, if not in wording) from a belief in God to a belief in a Supreme Being. The religious conservatives who control the national office of the Boy Scouts see themselves as important troops in the culture wars. If religion, masculinity, and citizenship are as tangled as the rhetoric of the Boy Scouts and others seems to make them and if, as so many historians and social critics have suggested, there is evidence everywhere of a “crisis in white masculinity,” a status revolution in which white males feel like the beleaguered class, then it makes sense that the men running the Boy Scouts see the atheists and their ACLU lawyers as agents of an assault upon masculinity and whiteness (symbolized by certain European religions and the very American religion of Mormonism). The link between white masculinity and religion at century’s end explained why the Boy Scouts would not make this compromise, while the Girl Scouts would; the Girl Scouts, quite simply, have no stake in the masculinity part of the tangle.
See also Natzinger’s letter, coming soon to a Catholic apologist near you.
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A Gazan rocket killed a Thai worker in Israel this morning. As usual, the NYTimes doesn’t mention the aggregated body count. American news media never does.
GAZA — A foreign worker in Israel was killed Thursday by a rocket fired from the Hamas-controlled Palestinian territory of Gaza, according to the Israeli military, soon after the European Union’s top foreign policy official arrived here on a rare visit by such a high-ranking official.
The foreign agricultural worker, who the Israeli military said was from Thailand, was the first fatality from Gaza rocket fire since the end of a three-week Israeli military offensive into Gaza in January 2009. Israel said the primary purpose of its military campaign was to halt years of rocket fire from Gaza against southern Israel.
The Times of London doesn’t mince any words about the attack, but they do provide actual context:
A radical Palestinian group with suspected ties to al-Qaeda killed a worker in southern Israel today when it fired a rocket from the Gaza Strip, just as Baroness Ashton of Upholland, the EU’s deputy foreign policy chief, was visiting the blockaded territory.
The rocket killed a Thai immigrant worker at a farming community just across the heavily guarded Gaza border, Israeli medical officials said.
Lady Ashton was visiting UN facilities in the coastal enclave, which was hard hit in a war 14 months ago when Israel launched a major offensive to try to stamp out constant rocket fire by Hamas, who rule the territory, and other militant groups.
Despite the fragile ceasefire that resulted from the conflict, in which around 1,400 Palestinians and a dozen Israelis were killed, there has been sporadic rocket fire from Gaza, although usually without causing any casualties.
The claim by the Ansar al-Sunna brigades was significant, as aid workers and analysts have been warning that the dire conditions in Gaza – under tight Israeli and Egyptian blockade for three years, and devastated by the war – were spawning a new generation of even more radical Islamists with ties to al-Qaeda.
Hamas, which Israel and the West classify as a terrorist group, is considered by the new breed of radicals to be too moderate and not enforce strict enough Islamic codes.
The London Times has no kind words for Hamas yet they successfully convey the lopsided nature of the dispute. 1,400 dead Palestinians versus 11 Jews and one Thai. Those are numbers that explain all you need to know about what’s going on in Gaza.
Then again, the London Times didn’t base its report on what Israel’s military told them. The NYTimes finds space to write about how many rockets have been fired so far this year, but doesn’t even acknowledge that the first 29 generated no casualties. The NYTimes doesn’t speak truth to power, at least not to NY Jews.
It’s like firing a gun into the sky. Sooner or later someone will get hit, but I have yet to hear of a single Israeli bulldozer ever missing its target.
To be continued.
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Etc.:
Perfect hashbrowns made with butter (actually, olive oil is easier and healthier)
Kraft cutting salt by 10% (which means their canned goods and processed meats now only have 4x as much salt as you need)
Sholom Rubashkin’s sentencing date set
78 ill from Shigella outbreak at a Chicago area Subway
ChiTrib on neti pots
Monsanto’s patent on Roundup Ready seed expires in 2014, and Monsanto has responded by jacking seed prices up 64%
How Wellpoint turned $30 million into $6.2 million
Harold Meyerson on the mess that is California
Details on the beating Bernie Madoff got in prison
Ken fucking Cuccinelli
The Scientology diet
Why sane people don’t go on Fox
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Btw, it’s not the Daylight Savings time. The Wolves have been out west and I’ve been staying up late to watch their games.
No, there’s no excuse for that. Not the way the Wolves have been playing.
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Alex Chilton, R.I.P.
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