America, America

Let's not forget, as I've said before, that weekends are the creation of unions, of people getting together for their own benefit, & in the long run, the benefit of the society in which they live. Working people have been in rough shape the last 27 years. They have been disrespected by the leaders of both parties, frankly, & actually it's a wonder that anyone is still organized. Here's something to read & to think about. & again, no bullshit about corrupt union leaders, blah, blah, blah. Remember, it's so Jimmy Hoffa.

Recounting his experience during last week’s House subcommittee hearings on the Employee Free Choice Act, Camilo broke down as he described devoting 35 years to his employer, only to have Blue Diamond treat him as if he were a disposable, inanimate machine part.
....
Among the witnesses at the hearings was Gordon Lafer, a professor at the University of Oregon, who has studied how the NLRB union representation election process really works. Lafer also gave a briefing to Hill staffers in which he said the so-called NLRB election process resembles what happens in rogue regimes abroad rather than anything we call American.

Even though the process ends in a secret ballot, it is not fair, Lafer said. He compared what happens in union representation elections to the standards the United States sets for what is “free and fair” in foreign elections and says “every aspect of the NLRB process violates U.S. standards of free and fair.” In a report for American Rights at Work, Lafer compares U.S. standards for foreign and domestic elections with the union representation election—get the list here.

In fact, employer interference in the management-controlled election process by which workers currently are forced to form unions is off the charts. Every 23 minutes a person is fired or discriminated against for supporting a union.

Call. write, email, fax your Representative & Senators urging them to support the Employee Free Choice Act. It's the least we can do in America, for America.

Holy Moly Is Right

Digby.

That is the argument that's clearly driving Bush and Cheney today. They have nothing else. Cheney is melting down on national television. Bush in his bubble is as detached and oblivious as ever. I believe that we are at a point where the only things standing between us and the order to attack Iran are the generals. (Forget congress --- they can't even pass a toothless resolution against the "surge" in less than a couple of months. The "surge" will have already failed by the time they even stage a uselss protest.) And that is about the scariest thing, out of many scary things, I've contemplated since the beginning of the Bush administration. We are now in a Strangelovian bizarroworld where we must count on General Buck Turgidson to refuse to follow orders. Holy Moly.

No Shit

RLK directed my to this.

& I'll direct you to this.




Bird With Two Right Wings


And now our government
a bird with two right wings
flies on from zone to zone
while we go on having our little fun & games
at each election
as if it really mattered who the pilot is
of Air Force One
(They're interchangeable, stupid!)
While this bird with two right wings
flies right on with its corporate flight crew
And this year its the Great Movie Cowboy in the cockpit
And next year its the great Bush pilot
And now its the Chameleon Kid
and he keeps changing the logo on his captains cap
and now its a donkey and now an elephant
and now some kind of donkephant
And now we recognize two of the crew
who took out a contract on America
and one is a certain gringo wretch
who's busy monkeywrenching
crucial parts of the engine
and its life-support systems
and they got a big fat hose
to siphon off the fuel to privatized tanks
And all the while we just sit there
in the passenger seats
without parachutes
listening to all the news that's fit to air
over the one-way PA system
about how the contract on America
is really good for us etcetera
As all the while the plane lumbers on
into its postmodern
manifest destiny


Lawrence Ferlinghetti

One More Vindication

When will my boss listen to me, or to my body?

In a study released yesterday, researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and in Athens reported that Greeks who took regular 30-minute siestas were 37 percent less likely to die of heart disease over a six-year period than those who never napped. The scientists tracked more than 23,000 adults, finding that the benefits of napping were most pronounced for working men.

The Dead

Eric von Schmidt, R.I.P.

Oh, Yeah

Over there.

Good

Yay, Chicks.

Eddie Feigner, R.I.P.

I saw this guy & his court in Rhinelander, WI longer ago than I'd like to admit. Fast pitch was the game back in the day, not this slow-pitch stuff. & the local guys even had nicknames like the big leagues, I remember "Elbow", what a pitcher.

Personal Laughs

I just laughed for 5 minutes. The cause was a piece by Matt Taibbi, via AlterNet via Crooks & Liars. Mr. Taibbi is taking on that supreme wanker Joe Klein. Joe Klein is the stealth "I've always been against the war" pundit. He's a true dick. The article by Mr. Taibbi that caused me the great mirth &, BTW, I feel physically better, contained these jewels, first, what made me laugh:

Beyond that, what you say doesn't even make any sense. For most of us, if we thought there was any chance this thing could work, we'd have been for it, or at least not so violently against it. Instead, our opposition to the war was based on our absolute conviction that it would end in disaster -- which it incidentally has. But according to Klein, if we see a guy step off the top of the Empire State Building, we're supposed to root for him to nail the dismount. The whole issue is irrelevant and absurd. This is a catastrophe, not a baseball game. "Rooting" is a kid's word; grow the fuck up.
....
I think they're all full of shit -- Klein, McCain, Kerry, all of them. But especially Klein. He is the living, breathing incarnation of American "conventional wisdom" -- and what American "conventional wisdom" is is a spineless, slavish, power-worshipping watcher of polls who has no problem whatsoever denying today what he said yesterday, and is mostly interested in making sure he still has invitations to the right Beltway parties.
....
Let's get this straight: there are no "leftists" in modern-day America. Or, rather, there about ten of them, and you can find absolutely every single one of them at the next antiwar or anti-anything protest in Washington; they all fit in one section of the park behind the White House, where you can find pretty much all of them passing out small stacks of socialist fliers, mainly to each other. These socialists are committed, dedicated, utterly serious political activists, which makes them absolutely atypical Americans, which is why there are so few of them.

The rest of the people that the Kleins of the world are calling "leftists" are mostly cautious consumers who watch a lot of Netflix movies, have maybe read Love in the Time of Cholera once or twice, and whose most aggressive step in the direction of socialism is a vote in favor of increased school spending. They might drive a foreign car, or willingly see a movie with subtitles. If that makes them "leftists," what word are we going to use for real leftists?

Now I think Love in the Time of Cholera is a great novel & anyone who as read it once, much less twice, as potential. But it is also true that they have no understanding of what it means to be "left." What really does pass as socialism is voting for school spending. & that is too bad for America. Matt Taibbi is just a great writer. I think there are more than 10 leftists left in America, but his point is well taken. Go read the whole thing.

"Victory Is Not An Option"

From today's Washington Post, William Odom says some right things. I wonder if it will make any difference?

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq starkly delineates the gulf that separates President Bush's illusions from the realities of the war. Victory, as the president sees it, requires a stable liberal democracy in Iraq that is pro-American. The NIE describes a war that has no chance of producing that result. In this critical respect, the NIE, the consensus judgment of all the U.S. intelligence agencies, is a declaration of defeat.
....
For the moment, the collision of the public's clarity of mind, the president's relentless pursuit of defeat and Congress's anxiety has paralyzed us. We may be doomed to two more years of chasing the mirage of democracy in Iraq and possibly widening the war to Iran. But this is not inevitable. A Congress, or a president, prepared to quit the game of "who gets the blame" could begin to alter American strategy in ways that will vastly improve the prospects of a more stable Middle East.
....
Strangely, American political scientists whose business it is to know these things have been irresponsibly quiet. In the lead-up to the March 2003 invasion, neoconservative agitators shouted insults at anyone who dared to mention the many findings of academic research on how democracies evolve. They also ignored our own struggles over two centuries to create the democracy Americans enjoy today. Somehow Iraqis are now expected to create a constitutional order in a country with no conditions favoring it.
....
1) We must continue the war to prevent the terrible aftermath that will occur if our forces are withdrawn soon. Reflect on the double-think of this formulation. We are now fighting to prevent what our invasion made inevitable! Undoubtedly we will leave a mess -- the mess we created, which has become worse each year we have remained. Lawmakers gravely proclaim their opposition to the war, but in the next breath express fear that quitting it will leave a blood bath, a civil war, a terrorist haven, a "failed state," or some other horror. But this "aftermath" is already upon us; a prolonged U.S. occupation cannot prevent what already exists.

My emphasis. There is more, go read it all.

This Is What Happens

When ReThuglicans rule. Global warming is exacerbated by policies from a once progressive state. & that asshole J.B. Van Hollen just pulled us out of a suit against the EPA.

Wisconsin generates greenhouse gases linked to global warming at a rate that is about one-third faster than the national average, a Journal Sentinel analysis found.

This trend will only escalate because the state's utilities are on the leading edge of a national building boom of coal-burning power plants, fueled by an ever-increasing appetite for electricity.

Power plants under construction in Oak Creek and Wausau will cost utility customers almost $3 billion, representing the most such construction activity in any state, according to the U.S. Department of Energy.

Once the plants fire up, Wisconsin's coal plants will pump 10% more carbon dioxide into the air by 2012, state energy planning figures show.

And those emissions will increase. Last week, Alliant Energy Corp. of Madison announced plans to build a 300-megawatt coal plant on the Mississippi River in Grant County at a cost of nearly $800 million.

Support The Troops

Joe, the new guy told me about this a week or so ago. The only good thing to come out of it was that Joe got his tooth fixed ASAP. When will the war criminals in suits be held accountable?

Is J.B. van Hollen An Asshole?

You decide. Oh, & stop breathing, it is bad for your health.

Oh, Really?

Report Says Pentagon Manipulated Intel

A ''very damning'' report by the Defense Department's inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

''That was the argument that was used to make the sale to the American people about the need to go to war,'' said Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich. He said the Pentagon's work, ''which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate ... is something which is highly disturbing.''

Jeebus

Now this would be true lake effect.

While the northern Plains and Northeast shiver in dangerously cold temperatures, the folks in upstate New York are keeping warm shoveling snow - lots of snow.

Since Sunday, the small towns of Parish and Mexico have recorded more than 6 feet of snow, and forecasters with the National Weather Service say it isn't over yet.

Another 2 feet or more of heavy lake effect snow was expected Thursday for the communities along eastern Lake Ontario, and more squalls are likely through the weekend.