"In the beginning, there was nothing.
And God said, "Let there be light." And there was light.
There was still nothing, but you could see it a lot better."
[Woody Allen]
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ARE YOU REALLY IRISH? Yeah? Just click it . . .
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I'm old enough to remember when unions were strong. Other social movements were strong, too.
Democrats should look for the union label
In the St. Pete Times, Feb. 6, ROBYN BLUMNER writes:
... The Democratic Party's anemic showing can be summed up in two words: union members. Or, to be more precise, the lack of them.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the percentage of working Americans who belong to a labor union declined again last year. It stands at 12.5 percent, and if you remove public sector employees the percentage falls to 7.9. These numbers represent the lowest level of unionization in 60 years - far below the highs in the 1950s when 35 percent of the workforce was unionized.
... union members are generally more educated on worker-related issues, and that strongly favors Democrats. If, in the last election, bread-and-butter issues such as jobs, the minimum wage, overtime pay, tax fairness, Social Security protection and health care were eclipsed by the war on terrorism, Iraq and "values" concerns such as gay marriage, then it was union members who uniquely kept their eye on the prize.
A postelection survey conducted for the AFL-CIO by Peter D. Hart Research Associates found that 65 percent of union members voted for Kerry, while only 33 percent supported Bush. But the analysis gets more intriguing as it is broken down. For example, gun owners nationally voted for Bush over Kerry by 20 percentage points. But if those gun owners were also union members, they voted for Kerry by a 12-point margin. White men were for Bush over Kerry by 18 percentage points, but white, male union members preferred Kerry by 21 points. And Americans who go to church weekly voted for Bush over Kerry by 21 percentage points. Add in the union factor and they were for Kerry by 12 points.
One of Bush's priorities has been to strip federal employees of workplace and organizing rights ... In the meantime, the manufacturing sector, labor's lifeblood, has been decimated over the last 4 1/2 years with the loss of 3-million factory jobs.
... In 1980, 35 percent of American workers were enrolled in a pension. That number stands at 20 percent today.
... the Employee Free Choice Act ... would give employees trying to organize significant new legal protections from retaliation. It would also allow for the certification of a union based on the collection of employee authorization cards without the need for an election that may be delayed by an employer for months or years.
Kevin Phillips, in "Wealth & Democracy" says this is the "Second Gilded Age" in the US. The first lasted from about 1880 through 1930. This one began in 1981 with the Reagan Revolution. Are Unions or the process of collective bargaining in the final throes of intellectual and physical death?
Wal-Mart's a pirate. Yup, pirates have been around at least as long as prostitutes. Who takes more with less? If America is becoming Wal-Mart Nation, then it's time we democratized it. Organize!
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HAS BOB WOODWARD BEEN SHIELDING A CRIMINAL ALL THESE YEARS?
JOHN DEAN - former Nixon White House counsel implicated along with others in the Watergate Conspiracy - wrote Feb. 6:
... Without confidential sources, much of what people need to know in a democracy would never be reported, so unless there is a higher reason, journalists must be able to protect such sources who are willing to impart such information. That said, no news person should agree to provide confidentiality unless it is essential to obtain information that the public should be told and there is no other way to obtain the information. A scoop per se does not justify a pledge of confidentiality.
A source may be using the reporter, while the reporter is using the source. Motives range from the noble whistle-blower who is morally offended by misconduct to the staffer who is floating a trial balloon to the low-end leaker who is seeking to gain advantage by sabotaging a competitor or foe ...
I guessed Fred Fielding the other day. Another fellow who I perceive had the integrity and the balls to play source to Woodward's snoop - is Leonard Garment, who this guy says was in the perfect position and had the instincts to be the mole:
He was a covert liberal ... He abhorred Chuck Colson (White House Communication Director) and once described to me the things that Colson was doing as "abominable" and a "disgrace to the country"... He was legal Counsel to the President and would have known EVERYTHING that was going on in regards to Halderman, Ehrlichman and Nixon to say nothing of all the hidden money. He was party to and privy to ALL the inside details of the White House. He has attempted, in a standard intelligence maneuver to place the blame at the feet of someone else (In his book, "In Search of Deep Throat", Garment settles on John Sears, John Sears, then a thirty-something Nixon campaign worker). In his book, Garment states that "Deep Throat", rather than a traitor, was probably hoping to expose the bad aparatchiks in order to inspire Nixon to step up, break clean and save his presidency. To this day, Garment praises Nixon's extraordinary achievements while acknowledging his poor judgement. Leonard Garment formulated the Nixon pardon and sold it to Gerry Ford. "Deep Throat" is rumored to be dying. Garment is pushing 80 and is known to be ailing.
Leonard Garment Founder: Jazz Museum of Harlem
By the way, "back in the day" - just after the War - Leonard Garment and his college pal Alan Greenspan took their places in the reed section of Woody Herman's "Thundering Herd".
Young Lenny hit the road with clarinet and saxophone, recalling, of his days playing New Orleans gigs, ``smoking a respectable amount of marijuana, sleeping on the beach at Lake Pontchartrain, and breakfasting on chicory coffee and beignets.'' The FBI background checkers must have choked on their bubble gum at this resume. [ from Martin F. Nolan's review of Garment's memoir "Crazy Rhythm"]
Obviously, both Garment and Greenspan decided to leave the band for grad school, Garment to law school and Greenspan to immerse himself in economics and finance. (The post-grad stud Greenspan was one of Ayn Rand's inner circle of Objectivists in the early '60s).
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The Occidental Quarterly (TOQ) (William Regnery II) bills itself as "A Journal of Western Thought and Opinion". Well, sure, it may posture as scholarly (with 10 Ph.Ds on its editorial board), but I think I concur with the Southern Poverty Law Center and American Prospect's Max Blumenthal ( article - "White Noise" ) that it's a nasty little rallying point for white supremacist hate groups and anti-immigrant extremists, for example - Marian Kester Coombs - who is married to Francis Booth Coombs, managing editor of the hard-right newspaper The Washington Times, who has published at least 35 of his wife's news and opinion pieces for his paper, although his relationship to her is not acknowledged in her Times bylines. Here's a sampling of Mrs. Coombs' scholarly, thoughtful rhetoric:
The West is a cultural compound of our Classical, Christian, and Germanic past.
Race differences affect behavior on the playing field as well as in the classroom, the office, and elsewhere in American life—and to discuss them in sports is no less taboo than elsewhere ...
White men should "run, not walk" to wed "racially conscious" white women and avoid being out-bred by non-whites. Latinos are "rising to take this country away from those who made it," the "Euroamericans." Muslims are "human hyenas" who "smell blood" and are "closing in" on their "weakened prey," meaning "the white race." Blacks, Coombs sneers, are "saintly victims who can do no wrong." Black solidarity and non-white immigration are imposing "racial revolution and decomposition" in America.
In a discussion of a 1987 article in a gay magazine that discusses ways for gays to win further acceptance Mrs. Coombs characterized the piece as "a sort of Protocols of the Elders of Queer" — a secret takeover plot, or that ubiquitous "gay agenda".
TOQ proudly runs this statement from James Q. Wilson to help define their mission:
[E]recting walls that separate "us" from "them" is a necessary correlate of morality since it defines the scope within which sympathy, fairness, and duty operate ... The great achievement of Western culture since the Enlightenment is to make many of us peer over the wall and grant some respect to people outside it; the great failure of Western Culture is to deny that walls are inevitable or important.
Defending Dixie: In a piece on The Washington Times Southern Poverty Law Center says it "may bill itself as 'America's newspaper,' but it's gone from being a conservative, error-prone fringe publication to becoming a resource for extremist ideas ... (with) out-of-context quotations, deceptive headlines, and outright partisanship that have led one media pundit to dub the Times'journalism.' " brand of reporting 'gong-show 
(Tony Blankley and Wes Pruden are just SUCH obnoxious poseurs.) THERE! That oughta hold those tidy, righty, whiteys!
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*CURED*!!
Pope John Paul II has returned to the Vatican after spending nine days in Rome's Gemelli hospital. *CURED*!! heralded the MSM!! | ||
Eh? Gosh! Is this a miracle? If the Pope, in *fact*, interceded with the overarching supernatural hierarchy to CURE! ! himself - does it count toward the prerequisite miracles that must be ascribed to a dead Catholic in order to attain canonization - that is, acknowledgement of sainthood? WOW! If he can do that - maybe he can canonize himself!
BBC ... correspondent Matt Prodger in Rome says the Pope had clearly opted to make a public display of strength, rather than simply making a discreet return to the Vatican.
With the illuminated popemobile glowing as it passed through the Rome night, the Pope looked rather well, our correspondent says.
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Yesterday Treasury Secretary John Snow answered some questions re DUBYA's Social Security Reform Plan:
"The president at this point doesn't have a plan."
AND
"There is a major difference between not being fully funded and being bankrupt ..."
So far, the progressives have proven less cogent than Sec'y. Snow in their remarks re "The President's Plan"...
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"I want to feel my way along you, all over you and up and down you and in and out" waxed his highness, adding that he'd like to live in Camilla's underwear "as a tampon".
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I gotta go . . . Good fortune.
Disclaimer: I am a demo religious meme which has been replicated here. You will be blessed if you copy me and pass me on to infect the next mind. And damned if you don't.
