Archive for April 12, 2010
Andy Stern — Who Fought for We the People — to Resign as President of the SEIU
Say it ain’t so already!
The kind, articulate and fierce Andy Stern — a man who believes that working people deserve a voice, via unions, to push back against the corporate lobbyists who have millions to spend on Capitol Hill (what a radical) — has apparently decided to resign.
This is awful, depressing news.
Stern is one-of-a-kind. Don’t know that anyone else can fill his shoes.
(Republicans must be thrilled. They don’t want us to have a voice.)
Fox News Attacks War Veterans
VoteVets is an organization of concerned American veterans — veterans of all wars — but mostly of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. They think we should cut our dependence on foreign oil because,
We send $1 billion a day in oil money overseas — often to nations that don’t like America very much. Some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorists and funds deadly attacks on American forces, like EFPs specially designed to piece our armor.
This is what our troops are up against, everyday.
We need to break that connection and we can do it with a comprehensive clean energy climate plan. It defunds our enemies and defends America.
Some in Congress say it is a “tough vote.”
Not as tough as what our troops are up against.
Sign our petition and tell the Senate that we need action, not excuses.
Their goal is to stop the United States from spending money on oil and gas that “ends up in the hands of terrorists and funds deadly attacks on American forces…” They think that if we decrease our dependence on oil and gas — from countries that “want to kill us” — we need to develop alternative forms of energy. That’s something we’ve been talking about for a long time (since Jimmy Carter) but that Ronnie Reagan put the kibosh on the day he took office when he removed solar panels from the roof of the White House (that Carter installed).
Anyway, Fox — the flag waving, support-our-vets channel — has decided that VoteVets is a “sick” group:
Click on the “Sick: Video of Troops” graphic on Fox Nation and you go to JedEckert.com and this rant:
What exactly is VoteVets? We’ve seen them lurking around MSNBC and various anti-war organizations ostensibly to support our fighting men and women. The veneer wore off quickly as we all realized this was just another anti-Bush group – this one under the guise of military veterans. They have even admitted to taking money from the Democracy Alliance – the Doctor Evil-esque, far-left funding project of George Soros. If anyone really doubted where these guys stood, there was always their campaign to close Gitmo. (VoteVets wants to close Gitmo because they believe it will make the U.S. less hated in the world and thus help protect our troops.)
Now, they have twisted their transparent, faux pro-military message into something truly offensive. The Vets have taken what looks to be authentic footage of our troops being blown up by terrorists and turned it into a message supportive of Obama’s upcoming environmental legislation. This simply must be seen to be believed.
So, Fox is willing to trash our war veterans in order to protect its mega-corporate buddies like ExxonMobil? Now THAT’s sick.
Diane Kagan Supported Bush Era Doctrines But Liz Cheney Calls Her “Radical”?
Liz Cheney has an acute and clear-eyed understanding of just how fucked up the media in the United States is: Wasting No Time, Liz Cheney Distorts [potential Supreme Court nominee Diane] Kagan’s Record to Call Her a Radical.” That would be a “radical” as in a “liberal radical.” Read the post — nobody calls her on that ridiculous and preposterous notion.
This is what Jonathan Turley had to say about Diane Kagan immediately upon hearing that Justice John Paul Stevens was going to retire:
Diane Kagan would also be a lightening rod. She has taken positions opposed [sic] core civil liberties, here. Kagan has supported Bush positions on “the war on terror” and is viewed by civil libertarians as part of Obama’s embracing of Bush-era doctrines.
So, what’s going on here is that Republicans are vilifying Kagan because they want President Obama to appoint someone who’s even MORE CONSERVATIVE THAN SHE IS. They’re trying to scare the public into believing Kagan — someone who supported Bush’s “war on terror,” illegal wiretapping and Gitmo — is a (liberal) radical. They’re trying to push the bar so far to the right it’s almost incomprehensible.
Keith Olbermann Steals My “Tweet of the Day” Idea
I’ve been doing a “Tweet of the Day” almost since day one on this blog (for more than a year) but, ah, looky here at Keith Olbermann’s “new” idea:
Naw, I’m kidding (or am I?). There are probably a million “Tweet of the Day” people out there.
CNN: The Most Busted Name in News
Or, Why I Don’t Watch CNN Anymore, Con’t.
A must read about the sheer propaganda that CNN is starting to pump out at a greater and greater rate: With More Deficit Hysteria Propaganda, CNN Becomes the “Most Busted Name in News.“
And “busted” doesn’t mean busted as in exposed or found to be doing something illegal, it means busted as in broken, which CNN is. Actually, I think busted is too kind a word. It’s disintegrating.
Deadly School Lunches
This is astonishingly bad:
I was ready to have a perfectly civilized discussion–blog-to-blog–with Sam Fromartz over at ChewsWise on the subject of what we can do to get kids to eat better when I was stopped dead in my tracks by the lunch being served at my daughter’s elementary school here in the nation’s capital. Look at the photo above and tell me what you see. Do you see the same thing I do? French fries, a bag of Sun Chips, and an 8-ounce carton of strawberry-flavored milk.
You almost have to rub your eyes and take a second look. Can this really be true? Hello, Jamie Oliver! Not all the bad school food is in Huntington, W.Va. We’ve got the same stuff right here in Washington, D.C., barely a mile from the White House.
To my knowledge, Michelle Obama has never addressed the glycemic bomb being served daily to public school children right outside her door. But I could be wrong. Yes, just a mile or so from the White House, where we’re told over and over the Obamas are hard on the case, solving the nation’s childhood obesity epidemic, kids in elementary school are being served chips, fries and strawberry milk for lunch.
How hard is it to put together oh, say, a sliced turkey or chicken sandwich on wheat bread with some fresh spinach leaves for crunch, and to add some carrot sticks and an apple on the side? Jeeze Louise!
Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal Shut Out of Pulitzer
It’s a big deal that the Wall Street Journal failed to win a Pulitzer prize today, again:
Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal, which was once a Pulitzer-hoarder under Paul Steiger, once again goes home empty handed. The paper has not won an award since April 2007, and this brings the Journal‘s Pulitzer count in the Murdoch era to a grand total of zero. On the one hand, Mr. Murdoch and Journal editor Robert Thomson would tell you that they don’t care about awards. And yet that didn’t stop Mr. Thomson from getting into a public shoving match with Times editor Bill Keller over a George Polk Award submission. Mr. Thomson said that Mr. Keller tried to tamper with the awards process in 2008.
To deflet the attention away, minutes before the Pulitzer news was released, the Journal sent out a press release about their accomplishments with the Payne Awards.
Hey Murdoch: When you care more about ideology than good, hardcore journalism, people can tell (well, some people can).
Wall Street Hates Democrats
In the run-up to each and every election, without fail, Republicans are fond of trying to scare the public by claiming that Wall Street, and the business community in general, don’t do well under a Democratic administration. As a matter of fact, they supposedly hate it when Democrats are in charge. The next time you hear that, remember this, because it’s total bullshit: The Dow Jones Industrials closed above 11,000 for the first time since September 26, 2008 today.
The Dow has been slowly climbing upward since the fall of 2008 when Obama was elected. Again, remember that. It was under Bush that it fell to its knees.
Carl Paladino, NY GOP/Tea Party Gubernatorial Candidate, Big on Racism, Porn and Bestiality
An online New York state news outlet, WNYMedia.net, has obtained dozens of emails sent by New York Republican and Tea Party-backed gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. Talking Points Memo (TPM) went through the emails, and describes them as racist, and containing references to porn and bestiality. (Facts are facts folks.)
Paladino’s campaign manager, Michael Caputo, seems to be pretty darn stuck on bestiality himself, because when commenting about the emails to TPM, he accused Democrats of “wanting to change the subject from substantive issues to ‘having sex with horses and S&M parlors.”
Here’s a snippet of what TPM found:
• A December 2008 email showing a video of African tribesmen performing a traditional dance. The video is entitled “Obama Inauguration Rehearsal.
• A September 2009 email entitled, “Easy Steady Big Fella….XXXX,” with a photograph that graphically depicts a horse having sex with a woman.
• A January 2010 email, containing a hardcore pornographic video entitled “Miss France 2008 F[***]ing.”
• A July 2009 email showing a photograph of an airplane landing directly behind a group of black men. The caption reads: “Holy Sh*t. run ni**ers, run!”
I’d say TPM’s description is pretty darn accurate.
“Lazy Mexicans”
Two major building projects are taking place in my immediate neighborhood. One is an addition to and the remodel of the house directly across the street. The other is the landscaping of the front yard of the house six doors to our south.
The project across the street began last Thursday with the removal of part of the outside brick veneer, removal of the kitchen cabinets and some inner walls and the destruction of a small front overhang that our local county assessor refers to as a “porch.”
The landscape job down the street, which includes the removal of a 30′ tall evergreen tree, began today.
I can hear the workers across the street from where I sit at this moment. It’s a very warm day here and my office window is open. The men are speaking Spanish.
I walked by the landscape job a few minutes ago while taking my two dogs on their afternoon jaunt, and the workers there were speaking Spanish too.
Both of these jobs involve hard physical labor and when I watch the men work, the label “lazy Mexican” just doesn’t fit. In fact, they are doing tremendously hard work for a wage (probably not a very good wage) that “Americans” wouldn’t accept. They’re anything but lazy.
(Oh, and what I’m not mentioning are the “lazy Mexicans” who installed sod in our backyard two years ago and the “lazy Mexicans” who re-roofed our house about six years ago.)
Nebraska Implies Women Who Want an Abortion Have Mental Problems
The American Taliban continues its oppression of women in the United States: New Pre-Abortion Requirements Pass in Nebraska:
Nebraska lawmakers on Monday gave final approval to a first-of-its-kind measure requiring women to be screened for possible mental and physical problems before having abortions.
Supporters say it simply puts abortions in line with other medical procedures in which patients are screened for possible problems.
“We’re dealing with destruction of early, unborn life, so we ought to take extra care,” said Greg Schleppenbach of the National Catholic Conference.
The measure is unusual, however, in spelling out what factors doctors must consider when doing the screenings. Schleppenbach said that’s because doctors otherwise would turn to other abortion providers to set the standards for the medical community.
The bill requires a doctor or other health professional to screen women to determine whether they were pressured into having abortions. The screenings also would assess whether women have risk factors that could lead to mental or physical problems after an abortion.
In the end, it’s simple: The law is meant to make it harder for women to get an abortion (which, by the way — yo, Nebraska — is legal).
Shocker: No, Tea Partiers Are Not “Mainstream”
From FiveThirtyEight — the best polling site on the web:
Last week, the ongoing debate over what we know about the tea partiers took a new turn, with scores of conservative commentators like The LA Times’ Andrew Malcolm and Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds assuring us that a new Gallup poll proves the TPers are not a “fringe” or “racist” group.
But the Gallup results only confirm that tea partiers are “mainstream” in their demographics, when what really matters are their attitudes. Results released Friday of a new multi-state poll of white voters conducted by the University of Washington’s Christopher Parker paint a more complicated picture. The survey asked white respondents about their attitudes toward the tea party movement–and their attitudes toward non-whites, immigrants and homosexuals.
Much more interesting stuff at the link above.
Republicans (hey, fine by me) push the idea that Tea Partiers are “mainstream” at their own peril. It just isn’t true and if they ignore that fact they’ll be in trouble (but again, fine by me — have at it boys and girls).
Scott Brown’s Daughter Joins CBS
Ayla Brown, a daughter of Massachusetts Sen. Scott Brown (R), has joined the “CBS Early Show” as a “special contributor.” Per TVNewser, Brown is a former “American Idol” contestant and she “performed” on the broadcast earlier this year.
The obvious comes to mind: (1) would she have been hired if her father wasn’t who he was, and (2) will her relationship to her father give CBS access to people it might not otherwise have had? But what struck me most about this report was TVNewser’s use of the word “performed.” Brown “performed” on the broadcast earlier this year. Sad but true. So much of what we see on quasi-news shows like the “Early Show,” is a performance.
