All We Are Saying Is Give Banks A Chance

I don't know where I'm a gonna go, when the volcano blow

Who was that incredibly naive jerk a few weeks ago who complained about spending federal money to monitor volcanoes? Oh yeah, rising Repub star Bobby Jindal:

In his official Republican response to President Barack Obama's speech to the nation Tuesday, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal said repeatedly that "Americans can do anything!"

With one exception, apparently. We don't need to keep an eye on simmering volcanoes.

Jindal singled out "volcano monitoring" as an unnecessary frill that Democrats stuck in the recently adopted stimulus package.

"Their legislation is larded with wasteful spending," Jindal said. "It includes ... $140 million for something called 'volcano monitoring.' Instead of monitoring volcanoes, what Congress should be monitoring is the eruption of spending in Washington, D.C."

Surprise, Bobby. You totally FAIL. From Alaska Volcano Observatory:

The eruption of Mt. Redoubt continues. The height of the eruption cloud is estimated to be 50,000 ft above sea level. Further reports will be issued as more information becomes available.

I'm pretty sure folks would appreciate a warning about fucking mountains blowing up, which seems to be somewhat common in Alaska. But if Gov. Jindal had his way, I guess there would be no warning system in place.

Gov. Jindal, here's your Katrina moment. Savor it, it tastes like shit.

give me back my job again

Rep. Miller and Sen. Harkin completely get it regarding EFCA. Via email:

U.S. Rep. George Miller (D-CA) and U.S. Sen. Tom
Harkin (D-IA) today said that a proposal unveiled by three companies
this weekend as an alternative to the Employee Free Choice Act would
further undermine workers' rights on the job. Miller and Harkin,
leaders in the House and Senate on the Employee Free Choice Act,
issued the following statement opposing this approach:

“This proposal is unacceptable. It was written by CEOs for CEOs. It is
not a serious attempt at labor law reform because it fails to
fundamentally address key problems that currently prevent workers from
being able to join together and bargain for a better life.

“This proposal maintains the status quo by denying workers a real say
in the workplace. It denies workers the ability to choose majority
sign-up, the one method for organizing proven to reduce coercion and
pressure from all sides on workers. It rejects a tried and proven
method for ensuring good faith bargaining, denying workers a fair
chance to gain the same kind of enforceable contracts that CEOs always
take for themselves.

“It even increases the power of CEOs to dominate workers’ choices by
allowing CEOs to initiate drives to get rid of a union – a choice that
should belong to workers, not CEOs. It is nothing more than a classic
Washington lobbying campaign intended to confuse the issues and
disguise the real agenda of maintaining the status quo.

Well said, gentlemen.

crime of bein' hungry and poor

Following up on my previous post in re: Limbaugh as Fearless Leader, He Who Must Be Obeyed, we see this from a predictable Republican operative. Either he's too stupid to actually read, or, more likely, he has gotten the Limbaugh Daily Brief and memorized the lies:

"Since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?" Teamsters President James Hoffa recently demanded. He callously dismissed this cornerstone of American self-government that helped emancipated slaves vote after the Civil War and has decided presidential elections since Grover Cleveland beat Benjamin Harrison in 1892.

Hoffa and other union bosses, egged on by Democrats from Capitol Hill to the White House, display world-class hypocrisy, violate international labor standards, and contradict their own sales pitch as they desperately promote "card-check" legislation to drive secret ballots from union-authorization elections.

Once a majority of workers at a labor-targeted institution signs cards showing interest in unionization, rather than trigger a secret-ballot election (as happens today), those cards automatically would impose union-monopoly representation on every worker, including those who never signed cards.

Imagine a candidate with a majority of voters' signatures on his qualifying petition. Suddenly, November's secret-ballot election is cancelled, and he instantly becomes congressman.

As one blogger says, the stupid, it burns. From the SEIU blog:

Corporate front groups' one-line attack on the Employee Free Choice Act is the false claim that it somehow eliminates the secret ballot option for workers to join unions. Although it's blatantly false and dishonest, desperate corporate interests continue to hammer that argument without shame.

But it seems one of their closest allies is finally willing to acknowledge the truth. In this morning's Wall Street Journal, the corporate-friendly editorial board admits:

"The bill doesn't remove the secret-ballot option from the National Labor Relations Act," wrote the WSJ.

There you have it. The Employee Free Choice Act "doesn't remove the secret ballot."

Think Progress has a good explanation:

CONSERVATIVE CANARD: To generate opposition to the EFCA, conservatives have been spouting the canard that the legislation will strip workers of their right to a secret ballot. Sen. Norm Coleman (R-MN), who opposes EFCA, argued, "This act takes away the right to a secret ballot." In a similar vein, Secretary of Labor Elaine Chao writes today in the Wall Street Journal, "It is incredible that interest groups who say they are advocates for workers are striving to end workers' opportunity to have private union elections." In reality, the EFCA does not abolish elections. It merely shifts the balance of the playing field -- from one that is currently tilted overwhelmingly in favor of employers who dictate whether employees can organize, to a process that is instead employee-driven. "Under the proposed legislation, workers get to choose the union formation process -- elections or majority sign-up. What the Employee Free Choice Act does prevent is an employer manipulating the flawed system to influence the election outcome." The myths propagated by the right have prompted some Democrats, including Sens. Ben Nelson (D-NE) and Blanche Lincoln (D-AR), to withhold their support for the bill.

Malicious R's and stupid D's. Not helpful.

Bastards.

It's Spring!

Ahh, air on a G string always takes me Bach, or maybe it's just spring fever! Whatever, if it's not baroque, don't fix it.

I'm Hawkin' Here

I'm a loser

Someone who shares a mutual friend with me added me as a "friend" on Facebook tonight. He listed his Political views as Conservative, his Religious views as Christian.

Fine.

But one of his groups is Barack Obama Is Not My President.

Sorry, pal. I never even said that about the abomination that was George W. Bush. If you can't accept that Barack Obama is President, you have no business commenting or even thinking about politics in America.

So long, and have a nice day.

Going down

Never have so many bent over so far and been corn-holed so deeply. The latest is Jim Tedisco (R-Mouthful), candidate for Congress from NY-20 apologizing to Boss Limbaugh:

"Jim's comments were in response to a question about what voters are asking him about on the campaign trail," writes campaign spokesman Adam Kramer. "So far, the concerns he has been hearing from voters on the campaign trail have been local in nature, such as his support for lower property taxes, fiscal responsibility, and his opponent's appalling support for the AIG bonus loophole. That was his point and any effort to characterize it otherwise is a distortion of the facts."

Here's how the Republican brand is doing lately:



With numbers following this trend, why do these cowards follow a guy whose numbers are even lower:

Over the past few weeks, the White House has been casting right-wing talk show host Rush Limbaugh as the head of the Republican Party, and based on a new CBS News poll, it appears they may be onto something. According to the poll, Limbaugh’s favorable rating stands at just 19 percent, a full 43 points lower than President Barack Obama’s.

Limbaugh’s unfavorable rating, meanwhile, stands at 40 percent, while 41 percent say they don’t know or don’t have an opinion. Not surprisingly, the conservative commentator, who has said he hopes that the president’s economic policies fail, is far more popular with Republicans – 47 percent view him favorably – than with Democrats, just seven percent of whom view him favorably.

Can't even get a majority of his own party. Under normal circumstances that would be worse than weak. For Republicans, it's a mandate.

Idiots.

We Don't Need No Education

Gee, Republican Governors Sarah Palin (AK), Mark Sanford (SC), Tim Pawlenty (MN), Piyush Jindal (LA), all want to reject part of President Obama's economic stimulus plan.

And what part of the plan do the want to reject? I'm so glad you asked. They want to reject the part that supports education and extends unemployment benefits. And why do they want to reject such obviously needed money for the children and jobless in their states? Because they want to run for president and they don't have a leg or platform to run on if President Obama succeeds.

e.g.

Palin rejects federal stimulus money

The biggest single chunk of stimulus money that Palin is turning down is $160 million for education. There’s also $17 million in Department of Labor funds (vocational rehabilitation services, unemployment services, etc.), about $9 million for Health and Social Services and about $7 million for Public Safety.

And their common excuse is their states would have to raise taxes on businesses or cut back on benefits once the federal funding runs out. Earth to planet GOP - Maybe if your kids get an education they can get better jobs and pay taxes, maybe if the unemployed families can feed their families and have new job training (after you SOBs shipped their current jobs overseas) they can find work and pay their taxes, maybe if these under served folks can get health care up front they won't need to go to 10x more expensive emergency rooms, maybe if we have more public safety there will be fewer crimes which cost all citizens more in taxes.

But they don't care about their citizens, they only care about political positioning for the next election.

Paraphrasing the old joke; Governors, you've agreed you'll take our money, now you're just haggling over how much.

Whores. Dishonest whores.



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak

One Thing Leads To Another

The media posits, supposedly reflecting the peoples' view republican & MSM concern trolls' view that President Obama is spread too thin, has bit off more than he can chew, can't walk and chew gum at the same time.

After 8 years of a president that couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time, couldn't speak english with or without a telepromter, I welcome a president who can multitask.

And who can figure out that the financial meltdown, oil dependence, health care and education are all interrelated.

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome President Obama:

"I know that there are some on Wall Street and in Washington who've said that we should only focus on the banking crisis and one problem at a time. Well, we're spending a lot of time focusing on this banking crisis, and we will continue to do so because until we get liquidity flowing again, we will not fully recover. But the American people don't have the luxury of just focusing on Wall Street. They don't have the luxury of choosing to pay either their mortgage or their medical bills. They don't get to pick between paying for their kids' college tuition and saving enough money for retirement. They have to do all these things. They have to confront all these problems. And as a consequence, so do we."
[...]
Now, there are those who say the plans in this budget are too ambitious to enact; to say that -- they say that in the face of challenges that we face, we should be trying to do less, than more. What I say is that the challenges we face are too large to ignore. The cost of our health care is too high to ignore. The dependence on oil is too dangerous to ignore. Our education deficit is growing too wide to ignore. To kick these problems down the road for another four years or another eight years would be to continue the same irresponsibility that led us to this point. That's not why I ran for this office. I didn't come here to pass on our problems to the next President or the next generation -- I came here to solve them.

Can anyone argue the points President Obama made?

The US pays more for health care than any country in the world, yet we are 37th in the world for actual health care.

But what about the children!?

29th on Infant Mortality

The infant mortality rate in this country declined sharply in the 20th century but then plateaued from 2000 to 2005.
[...]
In 1960, the United States ranked 12th lowest in the world in infant mortality. By 2004, the last year for which comparative data are available, it had dropped to 29th, tied with Poland and Slovakia.

Gee, I wonder what happened between 2000 and 2005!?

And that's just how health care is tied into our economic troubles. Don't get me started on energy dependence. And education? Well there might be a post soon on that!



Cross posted at VidiotSpeak