Archive for April 7, 2009
Way to Go Vermont!
Looks like there’s a revolution going on and I’m lovin’ it.
Hate Unions? You’re Slitting Your Own Throat
This report uses national data from the Current Population Survey (CPS) to show that unionization raises the wages of the typical service sector worker by 10.1 percent compared to their non-union peers. The study goes on to show that unionization also increases the likelihood that a service sector worker will have health insurance and a pension.
General Motors’ PUMA – You’ve Got to Be Kidding
GM goes from the Hummer to the, ah, P.U.M.A. “mobility pod?” (GM’s PUMA is not to be confused, I presume, with that other PUMA (Party Unity My Ass) which was obsessed with Hillary Clinton during the ’08 election and after she withdrew, worked to defeat Barack Obama.)
Hey. I’m all for small cars, saving energy and doing everything I can for our beloved Mother Earth but does GM really think that the car-buying world will take this seriously? I wish they would, but they won’t, so WTF is GM thinking and why are we giving these jokers our money?
Did the Bush Justice Department Intentionally Sabotage the Ted Stevens Case?
The judge in the Ted Stevens case has excoriated the prosecutors at the Bush Justice Department who handled the Stevens case. (I.e., either they were really, really incompetent or they just acted like they were.)
I wonder whether the Bush Justice Department truly screwed this case up or planned this outcome all along.
Good News
Chuck Forbes of Casper, Wyoming was on the liver transplant list at the University of Colorado for more than a year. Last weekend, during a blizzard, he got a call telling him that a matching liver had been found and he should come in for transplant surgery. Roads between Wyoming and Denver were snow-covered and/or closed (the poor guy must have been absolutely frantic). After placing a call to 911, snow plow drivers from the Wyoming Department of Transportation took turns, as if in a relay race, to clear the way so Forbes and his wife could get to Denver.
Forget the Ballot Box – Get a Gun
I have been a member of the Southern Poverty Law Center for probably 20 years. They are out with their annual report, The Year in Hate. According to the report, hate groups increased by more than 4% between 2007 and 2008 and since 2000, the number is up more than 50%.
As in recent years, hate groups were animated by the national immigration debate. But two new forces also drove them in 2008: the worsening recession, and Barack Obama’s successful campaign to become the nation’s first black president. Officials reported that Obama had received more threats than any other presidential candidate in memory…
Couple this with rhetoric urging violent overthrow of the government coming from the right – as in Michele Backhmann, Glenn Beck and the Fox News’ “militia media,” and Newt Gingrich, to name but a few – and we’ve got a dangerous thing going on here.
From the Department of, What Are They Thinking?
Take a look at this new Burger King ad. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t quite get how square butts are a segue to hamburgers.
Thinking Outside the Box
If I had it all to do over again, I might be an architect (provided that version of me liked formal schooling; this version doesn’t).
Michele Bachmann’s Constituency
“At Gun Show, Conservatives Ignorant Fox Watchers and Right Wing Radio Listeners Panic About Obama.”
