Chely Wright:
Month: March 2010
East is East
And West is West, and never the twain shall meet. That’s why this song is No. 1 in Eastern Europe right now – and not here:
Throwing Stones at Charlie Rangel
Silly Joe Conason! Doesn’t he know it’s okay if you’re a Republican?
The rule that Rangel violated when he took those now-infamous Caribbean trips was instituted by the Democratic majority as part of its ethics reorganization. This was a rules change that Boehner vocally opposed — and it is a rule that Boehner would have violated more than once had it been in effect a year or two earlier. Back in July 2006, the New York Times reported on one of Boehner’s many subsidized vacations:
“Mr. Boehner flew to a golf resort in Boca Raton, Fla., in March for a convention of commodities traders, who have contributed more than $100,000 to his campaigns and are lobbying against a proposed federal tax on futures transactions. During the trip, Mr. Boehner assured his hosts that Congress would most likely not approve a tax they opposed. His leadership committee, the Freedom Project, which in recent months has enlisted the use of corporate planes from Federal Express, Aflac and the Florida Power and Light Company, later reimbursed the Chicago Mercantile Exchange for the cost of the Boca Raton trip.”
Naturally Boehner’s leadership PAC is funded heavily by corporate interests – so he was “reimbursing” one corporation with money donated to him by others. Boehner has always been known as an obsequious servant of business lobbyists, dating back to the moment in 1995 when he was observed handing out checks from the Brown & Williamson tobacco company political action committee on the House floor. (Confronted by a few naive GOP freshmen, he conceded that such brazen grifting “didn’t look good” and was sorry that he had been caught.)
At this point it is clear that Rangel is guilty of hubris and sloppiness, and perhaps worse. It isn’t easy to understand why he should be branded irredeemably “corrupt,” however, while someone like Boehner is considered an honorable public servant. The notion that he and his cronies would restore ethical standards if they regain the majority must be a joke.
How Can You Tell Karl Rove Is Lying?
His lips are moving, silly! From OpEd News:
In his new memoir, Karl Rove does what he does best. To explain away one lie, he comes up with another. He claims that Bush probably would not have invaded Iraq had he known there were no weapons of mass destruction there. Bush knew perfectly well that our WMD intelligence had been fully discredited. So did everyone else. Anyone who says otherwise is lying. It’s a lie that Bush and his apologists have been repeating for almost seven years.
And media bobbleheads have let them get away with it…
For the umpteenth time, on March 7, 2003 the U.N. inspectors reported that there was zero evidence that Iraq had ever made any attempt to develop a nuclear weapon after the Persian Gulf War. Those findings were later affirmed by Bush’s own Iraq Survey Group, which said “Iraq did not possess a nuclear device, nor had it tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991.”
As for other types of WMD, Hans Blix also found zero evidence of weapons of mass destruction, aside from a small number of empty chemical munitions, which should have been declared and destroyed. Blix also explained why the evidence previously presented by Colin Powell was bogus. On March 7, 2003, Blix said his team needed a few more weeks to complete their work. Germany, France and others went on the record, stating, “While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field.
Yeah, they didn’t want to acknowledge that the bombing runs ordered by Bill Clinton might have actually done the job — because the Republicans and their media enablers said Clinton ordered the bombing only to distract from the Monica Lewinsky scandal.
Happy Birthday, Maya
That Guy!
You know how you’re trying to describe someone in a movie and you say, “You know, that actor that’s in everything?” except you can’t remember his name (if you ever knew it at all)?
Well, now you can look him up!
Not Your Imagination
Older workers really are having a harder time:
Washington, DC—Older workers endured a staggering 331% increase in unemployment over the last 10 years, a new analysis conducted by the AARP Public Policy Institute shows. This dramatic rise in older unemployed workers has resulted in declining financial and retirement security for millions of Americans who have little time to make up the losses.
[…] The new analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data by AARP’s Public Policy Institute shows a dramatic 331.4% increase in the number of unemployed Americans age 55+ and over from January 2000 through December 2009. For age 65+ workers, the increase in the number of unemployed was lower, but still a massive 235%.
During this 10-year period, the number of people unemployed individuals age 55+ increased from 490,000 to 2,114,000. The number of unemployed individuals age 65+ jumped from 143,000 to 479,000.
“Many older Americans are trying to reenter the workforce or stay employed longer for a variety of reasons—for millions of older workers, there is no other choice,” said LeaMond.
On another important measure, duration of unemployment—the length of time an unemployed worker has been looking for a job—older workers also faced an incredibly difficult time.
Average duration of unemployment for workers age 55+ increased from 18.7 weeks in January, 2000 to 34.7 weeks in December, 2009—a jump of 85.6%. Over the same time period, workers age 65+ saw their situation go from bad (24.8 weeks of unemployment) to worse (32.9 weeks), an increase of 32.7%.
Caving?
Who could imagine the White House knuckling under to Republican demands on military trials for 9/11 suspects?
This is not a small thing. This is the entire neocon rationalization for the war – that terrorist acts are acts of war by terrorist states, and that suspects should be treated as soldiers of an enemy state.
And of course Obama’s going to cave, because Lindsey Graham will withhold his seal of approval and that will make the Baby Jesus cry.
Labor Unrest
This is pretty funny. Can you imagine the New York Times staffers doing such a declasse thing as actually picketing over job losses? (Which is why they’re bleeding jobs, I guess.) Compare that with France, where the laws are on the side of the employees. That’s because, as Michael Moore noted in “Sicko,” in America, people are afraid of their government and in France, the government is afraid of the people:
It’s not exactly the storming of the Bastille, but today will mark the second day of picketing outside the offices of the International Herald Tribune — all because the company is planning to chop the sports editor, Peter Berlin, and five other non-newsroom jobs in Paris.
One source said that the paper had always prided itself on “having a sports section tailored to readers outside the US. If they are getting rid of the sports editor, it sounds like they are just going to run more stuff out of New York.”
Four of the staffers will be spared if they accept similar jobs in Hong Kong.
One source said that due to European work rules and mandatory benefits, a worker in Hong Kong would cost the company less than the same person in Paris.
Sulzberger probably rues the day he convinced the Washington Post and the Graham family to hand over their 50 percent stake of the IHT, giving the Times full ownership of the money-bleeding daily.
In Paris, nothing can be done without a lot of meetings, and management has been in talks with the Comité Central d’Enterprise and various employee groups.
“We’ve proposed moving the one editorial job for economic reasons and also because we think it will improve our journalism by allowing that editor to start earlier in the Asia day,” said an IHT spokesperson.
Understand, it’s not that the Times organization doesn’t make money. It’s that they continue to chase obscene profit margins.
Arrested for Drinking in a Bar
I thought Philly cops were rough, but this is too absurd for words:
LATE ON A BALMY Saturday night last June, six Fort Worth cops and two officers from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission went looking for trouble. They had just raided two Hispanic bars in an industrial stretch of town and nine detainees now sat in the paddy wagon (pdf), hands bound with plastic ties. The rest of the city’s bars would soon shut down. It seemed like the night was over, except for the paperwork. Then Sergeant Richard Morris had an idea. “Hey,” he said. “Let’s go to the Rainbow Lounge.”
A half-dozen police cruisers, an unmarked sedan, and the prisoner van slid to a stop in front of the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s newest gay club, at about 1:30 a.m. on June 28, 2009—40 years, almost down to the minute, after New York City police raided the Stonewall Inn with billy clubs and bullhorns. Inside the bar, the officers fanned out, grabbing and arresting six patrons for public intoxication. Benjamin Guttery, a 24-year-old Army vet, says an officer told him to put down his drink, then “bulldozed” him through the crowd to the paddy wagon but then let him go. “I’m 6’8″, 250 pounds, and I had just finished my second drink,” Guttery told a local reporter. “I might have had enough to have a loose tongue, but not a loose walk or anything like that.” Another man alleges that he was slammed against a wall, elbowed, and fell on the ground, landing him in intensive care for a week with bleeding in his brain. He was charged with public intoxication and assault.
They say everything’s bigger in Texas, and that includes absurdity in law enforcement. Most states and towns have public intoxication laws that allow peace officers to pick up the drunk and disorderly. But in the Lone Star State, the nation’s broadest PI law lets cops go virtually anywhere and arrest anyone for drunkenness—even if they’re quietly nursing a beer in a bar.
Arrested for drinking in a bar? Sounds like the ultimate catch-22. Since 2006, when Texas overtook California as the state with the most drunk-driving fatalities, cops and a beefed-up task force from the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission have used a 1993 law as a pretext to enter any bar and arrest its patrons on the spot. The public intoxication standard, backed by the Texas-based Mothers Against Drunk Driving, is so broad that you can be arrested on just a police officer’s hunch, without being given a Breathalyzer or field sobriety test. State courts have not only upheld the practice but expanded the definition of public intoxication to cover pretty much any situation, says Robert Guest, a criminal defense attorney in Dallas. “Having no standard allows the police to arrest whoever pisses them off and call it PI,” he says, adding, “If you have a violent, homophobic, or just an asshole of a cop and you give him the arbitrary power to arrest anyone for PI, you can expect violent, homophobic, and asshole-ic behavior.”
Gee. I wonder how many people they arrest in the superboxes at a Dallas Cowboys game.