Good & Happy

This makes America better.

Look Out Bu$hCo

The oversight begins. Things are looking up for America. Speaker-elect Pelosi scores big on this selection.

But Mrs. Pelosi chose him over Ms. Harman in part because he has repeatedly taken a more combative stance toward Bush administration policies like the invasion of Iraq, military tribunals for terrorist suspects, and the National Security Agency’s domestic surveillance program.

Mr. Reyes voted against authorizing President Bush to go to war with Iraq, and in June he said that the failures in Iraq “cry out for oversight.”

In September, Mr. Reyes blasted the White House’s justifications for the National Security Agency wiretapping program.

“I take very seriously our obligation to provide the president with the tools that he needs to provide for national security,” he said, “but I also reject the notion that the authorization for use of military force allows the president to ignore the Fourth Amendment and conduct warrantless surveillance on American citizens.”

Oh, & by the way, Harman is no "centrist". In fact, she's barely a Democrat. This whole centrist/moderate meme is just another ReThug attempt to make the Democratic Party cower in the corner. Speaker-elect Pelosi's excellent choice for chair of the House Intelligence Committee is proof that we have a Speaker-elect with a backbone.

Another Chance

To do the right thing. I just received the following from a friend. Those of you from WISCO need to get this message out. We can show the rest of the country what it means to be an American, a free American. This sort of disgusting bullshit cannot be allowed to stand. Thanks in advance.

2006 is going to be different.

Click here to ContributeProgressive voices everywhere are speaking up and telling the extreme right we've had enough of their divisive politics. As I travel all over the country campaigning for progressive candidates I see that people are energized and standing up strong against the failure of Republican leadership.

This year, in my home state of Wisconsin, the right-wing has placed a proposed constitutional amendment banning civil unions and gay marriage on our ballot in November. Make no mistake, they placed this measure on the ballot in a brazen attempt to divide voters and push turnout for conservative candidates.

In just 60 days, we will make history and show them tactics like these won't work anymore.

Defeating this discriminatory amendment matters not just for Wisconsin but for our entire country. Conservative Republicans put similar measures like this one on the ballot in 20 states in 2004. Twenty states have now amended their constitutions in such a way that discriminates against thousands of gay families all across America.

This year it must and will be different.

I am proud to say that Fair Wisconsin has built a strong statewide grassroots campaign to educate Wisconsin voters and to once and for all defeat this divisive political tactic. I need you to stand with me today in support of their efforts by making a contribution of $250, $100 or $50 by going to Fair Wisconsin's website to donate. Your gift will instantly be used to mobilize and educate hundreds of thousands of voters on the real impacts of the proposed ban.

I am proud to stand with Fair Wisconsin and fight the proposed amendment in my home state. I believe we can win here in Wisconsin and make history by being the first state to defeat one of these hurtful amendments. I hope you will stand with us today. Not just because it's my home state but because it will demonstrate that the only way to beat the right wing isn't to compromise on our core values but to stand up and fight back.

Fight discrimination today by going to Fair Wisconsin's website to donate and help Wisconsin make history this November.

Sincerely,

Russ Feingold

Russ Feingold
U.S. Senator
Honorary Chair, Progressive Patriots Fund

This solicitation is asking for a donation of up to $2,100 per election from an individual's own funds and is not asking for contributions from corporations or labor organizations

Tuesday Morning Blog Mini-Roundup

Steve Gilliard at The News Blog.

I'm tired of being bullshitted.

Dr. Atta J. Turk via Atrios.

But the cancer will remain -- keeping you shitting your pants will be the Republican method of politics, keeping you angst ridden and afraid you'll shit your pants will be the Democratic mode.

Sadly,No!

Why do I loathe George W. Bush?

Tristero over at Digby's place.

The right knows exactly who are behaving like fascists - who are, in fact, fascists: themselves.

Dan Froomkin.

The White House would like you to believe President Bush is putting politics aside as he leads the nation in remembrance of the September 11 terrorist attacks of five years ago.

But it's not true.

America, Missing

At least it's on a chain link fence, not a milk carton. From Hoffmania.

Another Day Of Infamy

September 08

1974 President Ford pardons former President Nixon

I'd forgotten. I do remember that I was in a home on 2nd St. in a town in far northern Wisco helping to figure out who got what from a pickup truckload of food that a couple of us had brought up from the Cities. That was back before the Food Coop storefront. We were listening to the radio & the announcement came on the air. Looking back, it was another downward step in the decline of democracy in America. Headline via The Progressive.

Labor Day

As the son-in-law pointed out the other day, the loss of wages in this is the direct result of the loss of union representation. In 1971, I began a job as a bartender. It was at a Labor Temple in northern Wisco. Try to find one of those anymore, but the way. Sadly, that labor temple was knocked down for a real estate office. That is a real tragedy. Anyway, the bartenders had been organized as Teamsters, a truly progressive Teamster local taught me a lot. I was paid the princely sum of $3.50 an hour, with double-time 7 holidays during a year. I got married while I worked at that bar & had we become pregnant, my benefits would have paid for everything during the pregnancy. It was a great job & what made it great were the patrons. These were working men & women who knew what work was & who knew what banding together into a union meant. Most of the union folks were members of a paper maker's local. My wife & I left that town in 1972 to move farther north & a bit west. I'm still a Teamster, inactive status. We live near enough to Duluth, MN, the 3rd most organized city in America, so the union movement hasn't been lost or diluted. But these losses in wages are real things for real people. The wealthy haven't suffered at all. & to show y'all how bad it is, remember the $7 an hour I made on 7 days a year back in 1971? Well, in my local county, that's what the local government is offering for a wage for people to work as mentors for at-risk or adjudicated youth. In 35 years nothing has happened for the low end worker. & remember, working with at-risk youth requires a lot of stamina, love, intelligence, & a willingness to flip-off the local schools, D.A.s, & social service departments when they need it. $7 an hour! It's more than an outrage. But this is where 26 years of Alzheimer's Ronnie, Bu$hCo I, Clinton's "Ending Welfare As We Know It Bullshit", & Bu$hCo II's hatred of the poor & middle class have got us. Proud? Feeling safer yet?

LABOR DAY was created by the machinists union in New York in 1882 as a ``workingmen's holiday." Unions all over America adopted the idea. By 1894, Congress passed legislation making Labor Day an official holiday. The day also celebrated the act of organizing, politically and in the workplace, to improve livelihoods and lives.

Today, the politics have largely been leached out of it. Labor Day is a long weekend that marks summer's end.

And that extra day of rest is needed more than ever. Government statistics show that the typical family works about 500 more hours a year than families did 30 years ago, because it takes two incomes to make it. Even so, family incomes are failing to keep pace with the cost of living.

This past week, these items have been in the news:

The Census Bureau reported that median incomes for working-age families were down again, for the fifth straight year. Real median income for households under age 65 is down by 5.4 percent since 2000, even though the economy has grown every year. All of that gain has gone to upper-bracket people and corporate profits.

The Pew Research Center released an extensive survey on public attitudes about the economy. Pew reported, ``The public thinks that workers were better off a generation ago on every key dimension of worker life -- be it wages, benefits, retirement plans, on-the-job stress, the loyalty they are shown by employers." And, statistically, the public is right.

The Globe recently reported that chief executives of nonprofit hospitals now routinely make more than $1 million. University presidents are not far behind.

The Economic Policy Institute (on whose board I serve) has released its annual, encyclopedic report, ``The State of Working America." Among its findings: The economy's productivity increased by a remarkable 33.5 percent between 1995 and 2005, but real wages have declined since 2000. Employer-provided health coverage declined from 69 percent in 1979 to 56 percent in 2004. The top 1 percent's share of interest, dividends, and capital gains has risen from 37.8 percent in 1979 to 57.5 percent in 2003.

Politically, it's evident what is occurring. Those in a position to capture astronomical incomes are awarding themselves an ever-larger share of the national economic pie. Meanwhile, ordinary incomes, job security, health security, and retirement security are eroding.
....
So this Labor Day, at the beach or in town, we suffer not just from reduced economic opportunity but diminished political imagination. You can ignore politics, but you can't escape it. So we might as well reclaim democracy to benefit the many rather than the few.

Democracy. Has it, too, become a quaint idea?

Reminder

Booman discusses this in a interesting post today. Go read it, but first read this:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.