Friday, August 5, 2011

Health Warning

From an email:

To Help Balance the Federal Budget, Should the Blue Angels Be Cut?

"[T]he Blue Angels' budget is about $30 million." Read the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Could the Blue Angels be grounded -- forever?

Republi-CON Sexual Health Hypocrisy

Republi-cons oppose free birth control because they claim it "will wipe out the American race and instantly turn daughters into wanton harlots with insatiable sexual appetites."

Of course, Republi-cons support insurance paid "real, necessary medical expenses, like boner pills."

Watch The Colbert Report, Women's Health-Nazi Plan.

Priceless: A Republi-CON Candidate Caught Trying to Con the Other RepubliCON Candidates

"Allegations arise that 80% of Newt Gingrich's Twitter followers aren't real, but making up people may be the key to keeping his campaign alive." Watch The Colbert Report, Newt Gingrich's Twitter Scandal:

Israel Should Make Peace With the Palestinians ASAP

UPDATE II: "Welcome to the Arab Spring, Arab-Israeli chapter. Commentators sometimes talked as if the Facebook revolutionaries had forgotten about the Palestinian issue. Not so: The 'dignity revolution' is connecting, as in last week’s frightening riot at the Israeli Embassy in Cairo, with the ever-flowing font of Arab shame and rage toward the Jewish state. Bidding for regional leadership is Erdogan, who thundered Monday, 'Israel cannot play with our dignity.' . .

When you strip away the posturing on all sides, what’s happening is that Israel now lives in an Arab neighborhood where public opinion matters. For decades, Israelis have dismissed the 'Arab street,' as if presidents and kings were the only decisive voices. That approach worked so long as dictators could suppress popular opinion, but no more. . .

[The] bottom line on the collision of the new Arab Spring and the old animosities: Israelis may ultimately be more secure in a world of Arab democracies. But it will be a world where compromise is part of survival."

Read the Washington Post, Israel’s new problem with the Arab Street.


UPDATE: "If you think Congress is obstructionist on the debt ceiling, look at the Middle East. But there’s hope." Read The New York Times, Seeking Balance on the Mideast.

"The struggle today across the Arab world is between the 'I will make you afraid' leadership and the 'We are not afraid anymore' citizens." Read The New York Times, The New Hama Rules.

Union Busting, Part of the Republi-CON War on the Middle Class

UPDATE VII: "The decline in organized labor’s power and membership has played a larger role in fostering increased wage inequality in the United States than is generally thought, according to a new study." Read The New York Times, Labor’s Decline and Wage Inequality.


UPDATE VI: There wasn't always Republi-con distain for labor unions. in 1983, Ronald Reagan said: “where collective bargaining is forbidden, freedom is lost.” Watch the mythical Reagan says it himself:




UPDATE V: "Since the early 1980s, when General Electric's widely admired chief executive, Jack Welch, declared that the primary goal of the corporation was to increase shareholder value, America's corporate managers have been faithfully rewarded for treating their employees as necessary - or unnecessary - evils, to be shed whenever possible, or replaced by foreign or temporary workers, and most certainly not allowed to form unions or receive wage increases. Thirty years later, this form of shareholder capitalism has swept the field of nearly all opposition, with results - chiefly, the eclipse of the decent-paying job - that grow more glaring with each passing day." Read the Washington Post, Where's the economic recovery?


UPDATE IV: Stephen Colbert's proposal for two America's -- America Plus and Poor America. Funny, but unfortunately true:

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
The Word - New Country for Old Men
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical Humor & Satire BlogVideo Archive


UPDATE III: "In the raging battle over union rights in Wisconsin, those seeking to curtail collective bargaining for state employees have advanced an argument that seems hard to resist: It will make it easier to reward those workers who perform the best [as judged by a performance review]. What could be fairer than that? . .

Performance reviews are held up as objective assessments by the boss, with the assumption that the boss has all the answers.

Now, maybe your boss is all-knowing. But I’ve never seen one that was."

Read The New York Times, Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You.


UPDATE II: "Madison, Wis., is looking a lot like Baghdad in 2003, with government officials exploiting fiscal crises for fun and profit" to benefit our corporate overlords. Read The New York Times, Shock Doctrine, U.S.A.

The real objective -- "reward the G.O.P.’s wealthiest patrons by crippling what remains of organized labor, by wrecking the government agencies charged with regulating and policing corporations, and, as always, by rewarding the wealthiest with more tax breaks." Read The New York Times, Why Wouldn’t the Tea Party Shut It Down?


UPDATE: Wisconsin Gov. Walker has been caught "eagerly recounting his efforts to crush collective bargaining in Wisconsin to an out-of-state billionaire backer," who supported his election and has current (rules on pipeline transport) and possible future (no-bid sell-off of any state-owned heating, cooling, or power plants) business interest in the state. Read The Business Insider, Why A Reporter's Prank Call To David Koch Is No Laughing Matter.

Here is Jon Stewart's take:


"Republican talk of balancing budgets is cover for the real purpose of gutting the political force of middle-class state workers." Read The New York Times, Spreading Anti-Union Agenda.