Journalist, political strategist and blogger David Sirota will be at Seattle’s Town Hall tomorrow night (July 27 at 7:30 PM) speaking about and signing his bestselling book, Hostile Takeover: How Big Money & Corruption Conquered Our Government–and How We Take It Back. Admission is $5 at the door.
Sirota is a former spokesman for U.S. Rep. Bernie Sanders, and a senior political strategist on the campaign of Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer. He is also a senior editor at In These Times, a contributor to The Nation and a regular guest on The Al Franken Show.
I had him on my radio show last Sunday and really regret I didn’t have more time and fewer breaks. Hostile Takeover is a great book that will not only infuriate you, but will give you useful instructions on how to help take our country back.
Note to fellow bloggers:
I’m not so keen on the whole “take our country back” line. I don’t want to “go back”, rather, I want to move America forward.
FWIW!
Darcy Burner hugs rabbits — why won’t RubberStampReichert hug a rabbit? Does he have something against buck-toothed rodents? And Mark the Welsher should pay his gambling debt.
Big money. Like the NEA and “guvment” employee unions [AFL-CIO] Like George Soros or Mrs. Kerry?
INDEPENDENCE, Mo. The assault trial of a man accused of shoving a cell phone down a woman’s throat has begun. Prosecutors say 24-year-old Marlon Brando Gill was angry and jealous when he forced the phone into Melinda Abell’s throat in December. But defense attorneys insist the 25-year-old victim swallowed the phone intentionally to prevent Gill from finding out who she’d been calling. […………..Yes, just another “MOFO” Democrat “communicating” with his “bitch ho”.]
RP-KKK, don’t you have anything else to do? You are tiresome.
Next time let Sirota do the talking.
Skagit, Do you remember Democrat hero Tookie Williams? He remembers you!
To be a librul, you have to believe that oppression comes from big corporations, and freedom comes from government.
Limbaugh is right, and this proves it…
Pay no attention to Mark the Redneck. He’s a sociopath and a right-wing extremist who argues that the way to “win” the “war on terrorism” is to exterminate all of the muslims on the planet.
Alternative scenario: MTR is a paid troll who has adopted an abusive personality with the intent of destabilizing this blog.
SEATTLE – There were some frightening moments early Wednesday in Seattle’s Lake City neighborhood for two young women sharing a house. One of them woke up to find a naked intruder lying right beside her.
Obviously that head-up-his-ass Redneck is acting out. Must be deep-seated guilt over losing and welshing on his bet with Goldy.
SEATTLE – Drug Enforcement Agency agents arrested 14 Somalis in a series of raids for khat, a drug that can cause serious health problems.
Chewed in moderation, khat alleviates fatigue and reduces appetite, with an effect similar to amphetamines.According to the DEA, compulsive use may result in manic behavior with grandiose delusions or in a paranoid type of illness, sometimes accompanied by hallucinations
Wow! Seems like the drug of choice for the wingers here and at (un)SP!
Sorry wingnuts – your connections just got busted.
True friends of Israel cannot let the Dems take power
By Dick Morris and Eileen McGann
Ten years ago, on April 18, 1996, Israel attacked Hezbollah in Lebanon for 16 days in an operation called Grapes of Wrath. The global condemnation of Israel was fierce, especially when it bombed a U.N. refugee camp, killing 107 people, an attack that Tel Aviv said was a mistake.
At the time, the United States did nothing to stop the tide from turning against Israel and President Clinton said, “I think it is important that we do everything we can to bring an end to the violence.”
In private, Clinton seethed at the Israeli attack, saying he had discussed with Israeli Prime Minister Shimon Peres the possibility of concluding a military defense treaty with his nation, pledging U.S. aid in the event of an attack.
“They really want this guarantee from us,” Clinton told me. “I would have given them the commitment, too, but now I can’t because of the uproar over the refugee camp bombing.”
No such treaty was ever signed.
Clinton’s willingness to use American power to force a cease-fire on Israel before it had fully eradicated Hezbollah stands in stark and sharp contrast to George Bush’s insistence on letting Israel proceed with its attacks until the terrorist group is neutralized.
In a nutshell, this illustrates the difference between the Democratic and Republican approaches to Israeli security.
Bush and his administration clearly see the Israeli attack as an opportunity to clean out terrorist cells that have come to be pivotal in Lebanon. With Hezbollah’s power extending into the cabinet in Beirut, it is clear that Israeli military action is necessary to forestall the creation of a terrorist state on its northern border.
While Clinton said he embraced the need for Israeli security, when the going got rough, he bowed to world opinion and called for a cease-fire. When the United States asks Israel to stop fighting, it is like a boxer’s manager throwing in the towel. The bottom line is that true friends of Israel cannot afford to let the Democrats take power in Washington.
But American Jews have voted Democrat in the past and will continue to do so in the future. It is really the Christian evangelical right that stands up for Israel.
The reason Israel has to fight in Lebanon today is that the United States did not permit it to finish the job of destroying Hezbollah in the ’90s. Now, fortunately for Israel’s true friends, the White House is letting Tel Aviv win without reining her in.
Nothing so illustrates the generic anti-Semitism of the global community than its current obsession with proportionality in judging Israel’s response to the kidnapping of its soldiers and the rocket bombing of its cities. The Vatican, the European Union and Russia have said nothing about the almost daily bombardment of Israel’s northern border by Hezbollah or the constant attacks from Gaza after Israel magnanimously vacated the strip. But now that the Jewish state is defending itself, the global community is outraged at the “disproportionate” Israeli response. Only Jewish lives have to be dealt with proportionately.
Israel’s defensive barrier has succeeded in sharply curtailing the once daily suicide/homicide bombing of civilian Israeli targets. Now the Israeli invasion will push back the frontiers from which the terrorists can work their mayhem through missiles.
Bush and the Republican administration realize that Israel is only acting in self-defense. It is obvious that she would not be attacking Lebanon if the terrorists had not made a habit of using it as a base for attacks on Jewish cities.
The global condemnation of Israel is simply illustrative of the low esteem attached to Jewish blood in this world where anti-Semitism comes disguised as morality and a commitment to peace.
If we let the Dems back in power there will be more bloody pizza parlors.
To be a librul, you have to believe that oppression comes from big corporations, and freedom comes from government.
Limbaugh is right, and this proves it…
Commentby Mark The Redneck— [……………………………………..Post Of The Day! Congrats, JCH]
Astronomers at the University of Tasmania have found that the solar system’s smallest planet is not getting colder as first thought and it probably does not have rings. Dr John Greenhill has collected observations from last month’s event when Pluto passed in front of a bright star, making it easier to study. […………………………………………………………………………………Global warming on Pluto! Well, this must be from Republican mothers driving SUVs!!!!]
Pluto? Are they selling building lots?
Is there an Applebee’s yet?
8
“To be a librul, you have to believe that oppression comes from big corporations, and freedom comes from government. Limbaugh is right, and this proves it… ” Commentby Mark The Redneck— 7/26/06@ 6:33 pm
Yeah, I’m sure chicken plant workers in Arkansas appreciate the efforts of congressional Republicans to keep government off their backs by keeping the minimum wage at $5.15 an hour.
Hey Redneck — tell me again how cutting taxes increases revenues:
2000 – $1,372,376,000,000
2001 – $1,297,063,000,000
2002 – $1,152,413,000,000
2003 – $1,069,364,000,000
9
“Mark the Redneck …’s a sociopath and a right-wing extremist”
That’s not all he is. Redneck was not only STOOPID to bet Goldy $100 that I-912 would win by 15 points, but Redneck’s refusal to pay after I-912 lost by 10 points makes him a LIAR and THIEF.
12
According to Dufus, Hezbollah is Clinton’s fault … yawn …double yawn …
When they can’t think of anything else to say, they blame Clinton …
Dick Morris! Now there’s a credible source. Why did he get fired? Oh yeah, telling government secrets to his hooker.
Astronomers at the University of Tasmania have found that the solar system’s smallest planet is not getting colder as first thought and it probably does not have rings. Dr John Greenhill has collected observations from last month’s event when Pluto passed in front of a bright star, making it easier to study.
Pluto is getting warmer. SUV’s?
I say we start working on a cure for conservatism. I think a good dose of the truth will do it.
Mark the cowardly redneck just fucking vanishes every time you present him with a true fact RR. That makes you a magician! Abra kadabra!
The words of the cheap labor conservative are becoming more hallow. Cities won’t allow their citizens to work for starvation wages.
…[T]he Chicago City Council passed a groundbreaking ordinance yesterday requiring “big box” stores… to pay a minimum wage of $10 an hour by 2010, along with at least $3 an hour worth of benefits.
The bill would affect 35 stores already in Chicago, including branches of Kmart, Target, Toys “R” Us and stores like Sears and Lowes. Support for the idea started taking off two years ago when Wal-Mart said it would open its first store in the city in 2006, in the poor Austin ward on the West Side.
[snip]
In a meeting with several black aldermen, Target officials warned that passage of the measure could cause the company to cancel or delay three stores planned for the city’s South Side, the aldermen told reporters.
[snip]
San Francisco; Albuquerque; Santa Fe, N.M.; and Washington have across-the-board minimum wage ordinances for all but the smallest businesses. Those in San Francisco and Santa Fe have set levels near that in the Chicago bill without driving out retailers, said Annette Bernhardt of the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University Law School, which helped draft the Chicago bill and has done economic studies of its likely impact.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07.....ef=sloginb
Hezbollah Invading U.S. From Mexico
Al-Zawahri: ‘All the World Is a Battlefield’
“We’ve had Hezbollah agents that came across the border with Mexico,” Jerome Corsi, co-author of “Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America’s Borders”, told Sean Hannity during an appearance Wednesday night on Fox News Hannity & Colmes.
Appearing with co-author and Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist, Corsi agreed with Hannity that border security is important for national security because Hezbollah terrorists could be coming across the border with weapons of mass destruction.
Citing the arrest and conviction of Hezbollah agents who had already infiltrated the U.S. across the border, Corsi said: “They are in federal prison. They were convicted for sending money back from Detroit to Hezbollah agents in Lebanon. So we have definitive proof that we have Hezbollah – [the terrorist group] that Israel is fighting today – sleeper cells that we know are here.” [……..It’s OK as long as they vote Democrat!!!! hehe, JCH]
The world’s largest retailer suffered a blow on Wednesday when Chicago aldermen passed a bill that requires big-box stores, including Wal-Mart, to pay a so-called living wage. The ordinance could curb Wal-Mart’s appetite to build stores in the city limits. -snip- That expansion is a threat to Jewel and Dominick’s, the Chicago area’s two major supermarket chains, where workers are unionized and where prices are generally 15 to 30 percent higher than those at Wal-Mart.
It was all about the unions.
For weeks we’ve seen people wearing ACORN t-shirts protesting for a “living wage”. It wasn’t until some of the news stations interviewed these “activists” that it was revealed they were actually Jewel and Dominick’s employees.
One woman who was interviewed said we’re here (at a rally wearing ACORN t-shirts) because we work at Jewel and Wal-Mart was a threat to our jobs.
The media did report that the unions threatened to pull support (money and votes) from any Democrat alderman who didn’t vote their way, they said they would find Democrat candidates to run against anyone who didn’t vote for the “living wage”.
In today’s NYT there is an opinion piece by a prominent scientist who has, evidently, grown weary with skeptics using his research to argue against global climate change.
I have excerpted the important points below, but you can see the whole thing (if you subscribe) at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07.....doran.html
Why is it that the deniers have to mischaracterize the research? Maybe because the have none of their own.
Cold, Hard Facts
By PETER DORAN
Published: July 27, 2006
In January 2002, a research paper about Antarctic temperatures, of which I was the lead author, appeared in the journal Nature… My research colleagues and I found that from 1986 to 2000, one small, ice-free area of the Antarctic mainland had actually cooled. Our report also analyzed temperatures for the mainland in such a way as to remove the influence of the peninsula warming and found that, from 1966 to 2000, more of the continent had cooled than had warmed. Our summary statement pointed out how the cooling trend posed challenges to models of Antarctic climate and ecosystem change.
Newspaper and television reports focused on this part of the paper. And many news and opinion writers linked our study with another bit of polar research published that month, in Science, showing that part of Antarctica’s ice sheet had been thickening — and erroneously concluded that the earth was not warming at all.
Our results have been misused as “evidence” against global warming by Michael Crichton in his novel “State of Fear” and by Ann Coulter in her latest book, “Godless: The Church of Liberalism.”
Our study did find that 58 percent of Antarctica cooled from 1966 to 2000. But during that period, the rest of the continent was warming. And climate models created since our paper was published have suggested a link between the lack of significant warming in Antarctica and the ozone hole over that continent. These models, conspicuously missing from the warming-skeptic literature, suggest that as the ozone hole heals — thanks to worldwide bans on ozone-destroying chemicals — all of Antarctica is likely to warm with the rest of the planet. An inconvenient truth?
The disappointing thing is that we are even debating the direction of climate change on this globally important continent. And it may not end until we have more weather stations on Antarctica and longer-term data that demonstrate a clear trend.
In the meantime, I would like to remove my name from the list of scientists who dispute global warming. I know my coauthors would as well.
All those who believes that Rush is right ARE the problem
30
The media did report that the unions threatened to pull support (money and votes) from any Democrat alderman who didn’t vote their way
Horrors! Say it ain’t so, Jughead.
It is hardly a newsflash that those people and organizations who use their money and numbers to influence politicians withohold it if they are ignored.
If pols do the same with Exxon, they may wind up dead.
If Wal-Mart wants to sell cheap goods, they should sell them to the Chinese. If we’re going to have a middle class in America, we have to set some kind of standard in the sectors of the economy that can’t just move to China with their jobs.
I imagine many people who work at Jewel and Dominick would work at a Huffy bicycle plant, or a Levis factory, if there we still any of them here.
Hello and congratulations! nokia6630
Tell me again about how the republicans are the moral ones?
http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/001217.php
$1 billion in annual sales and 90,000 square feet of space to pay its workers at least $10 an hour and spend $3 an hour on fringe benefits. Now, with those kind of numbers as a threshold, you know exactly who that bill is aimed at: Wal-Mart. Target is also caught up in it…but that’s about it.
Setting aside the fact that every time the minimum wage is raised it kills jobs, why stop at $10? Why not $11? Surely those hard-working Americans deserve more. Why not make it $15 an hour? Then everybody would have a great job! The answer, of course, is that if you raise the minimum wage too high, then the company won’t be able to hire enough workers to be competitive and do the job. If the law says everybody has to make $10 an hour, then the prices are going to go up. Fewer people will shop there. And so on down the line.
And just how is this fair to Wal-Mart and Target? What about stores that have $900 million in annual sales and their stores are only 89,000 square feet? Why should they get to pay under $10? Once again, government steps in, attempting to impose economic fascism and set wages.
But here is what is really going to happen.
Wal-Mart doesn’t have any stores in Chicago proper, but they’re planning on building them. Perhaps now Wall-Mart will bal and the people who live inside Chicago will have to commute to the suburbs to go shopping. Perhaps Target will make good on its threat to close their stores and take a walk entirely…leaving everyone who works there without a job and the people without a place to shop.
Nice going Chicago…any other companies you want to run out of town?
This living wage nonsense is growing. By definition it’s economic fascism. Politicians pandering to the voters … and killing the goose that laid the golden capitalist egg.
So JCH, your argument is that the state has no right to set wage levels?
Here’s a project for you boyo. Try living in Chicago, or Seattle, or San Francisco, or any of these other wide spots in the road on even $10/hour. You get to pay rent (usually in a shared house, you won’t be able to rent your own space on wages like that unless you find a nice $500/month broom closet), buy groceries, put away a few bucks for a rainy day, and maybe keep a rattletrap car running. It’s doable, but it’s not a lot of fun.
Yes, keeping wages low probably creates jobs if you’re just counting raw numbers. If your business model only works when you won’t pay your employees a living wage, you are not getting much value out of your employees, and are thus not much of a businessman. Costco manages to keep their prices cheap and pays their employees properly at the same time. If you use your employees as assets rather than treating them as liabilities, it’s amazing what you can do.
JCH “Washout” Bush:
Hey, speaking of Tookie Williams, how many times to you think Randy “Dookie” Cunningham has taken it up the ass by now?
How many blow jobs do you think he’s been forced to perform?
Do you think he’s known as a swallower or a spitter? In prison that is.
I wonder if they make him wear make up to look a street walker prostitute?
Yeahhhhh, the former US Navy pilot, MOH nominee, and poster child of the Bush Republican Crime Family is getting banged up his ass regularly.
I wonder if he’s grown accustomed to being ass fucked by big black men who just love putting it to “the man!”
34.
And just how is this fair to Wal-Mart and Target?
You can do all the worrying about Wal-Mart and Target, cry them a river, Jughead.
In a study of over 3,000 counties, researchers found that counties with more Wal-Mart stores had a larger increase (or a smaller reduction) in the poverty rate between 1987 and 1999 than did counties with fewer or no Wal-Mart stores. Controlling for factors such as education, employment rates and population, the study also found that an additional Wal-Mart store was correlated with a statistically significant 0.2 percentage point increase in the county poverty rate. The authors conclude that “the presence of Wal-Mart unequivocally raised family poverty rates in U. S. counties during the 1990s relative to places that had no such stores.” Part of the increase in poverty rates can be explained by displaced workers going to work at Wal-Mart for lower wages.
Goetz, Stephen J., and Hema Swaminthan. Wal-Mart and County-Wide Poverty. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology, 2004, Staff Paper No. 371.
All the rubes on town councils in the South have bought your “competition” bullshit, and now their towns are dead. The Wal-Mart Arkies will have to deal with the slickers now, and if they want the consumers who live in Seattle, San Francisco, Chicago, and I predict other cities, they’ll have to pay reasonable wages. Wages that don’t put an additional tax burden on cities and counties to pay for the poverty Wal-Mart and Target cause.
REP William J. Jefferson, DEMOCRAT, LA: GBS’s father????
1jxnXufalSsdmf l5tt7ffZx0E5 n2ZpP4yCbe
fNCMs0KHFVGt xLo56asR7VR ao97kVMnbeVrQ5