Directly from the "They're all scumbags" catagory

From Times Online (excerpt):

The longest-serving Republican in the US Senate has been found guilty of lying about free gifts he received from a wealthy oil contractor.

Alaska Senator Ted Stevens, had been hoping to win re-election next week, but last night he faced the end of his 40-year political career, after being convicted on seven corruption charges.

The guilty verdict will make a difficult race almost impossible for the 84-year-old senator, and brings the Democrats one crucial seat closer to realising their bid for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.

Stevens’s downfall will provide another unwelcome distraction for John McCain, whose efforts to run an anti-sleaze ticket have already been compromised by the Troopergate inquiry, which found that his running mate, Sarah Palin, had used her position as Governor of Alaska to settle a personal score

More at Politico: Messy trial ends with a decisive verdict

clip from The Salt Lake Tribune article "Insurance loophole makes it easy for employers to exploit illegal workers" by Paul Rolley (7/26/08):

The law basically allows Workers Comp, or any other insurer that covers injured-worker benefits, to cancel disability payments to someone hurt on the job if it is shown that person has committed a crime, including being in the country illegally.

But, get this, there is no provision in the law to sanction the employer for hiring someone who is in the country illegally, and the injured worker denied the disability benefits cannot pay an attorney to represent him or her against the insurance company's actions, according to Labor Commission rules.

Call it the employer have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too bill.

Under the new law, and its interpretation by the Labor Commission, a construction company, say, can hire laborers to perform dangerous manual jobs and if a laborer gets hurt the company can escape liability by having the insurance company throw out the benefits if the employee cannot prove he or she is in the country legally. And, the employer isn't sanctioned for having certified the employee was legally eligible for work when he or she was hired in the first place.

Opponents of the law say it encourages employers to hire illegal immigrants because it guarantees not having its insurance company be liable, affecting its premiums, in case the worker is injured on the job.

In fact, the South Carolina Supreme Court said just that in a recent ruling against a similar law passed in that state.

Maybe I'm in the wrong field, with all the protections that companies have avoiding the use of American and legal labor, I could make a mint.

If they were in any way sincere, the employer would have to be liable directly if they hired the illegal alien, but no, that isn't good business.

This reminds me of another recent bill that was floating around Kansas, where it was proposed that any organization that help illegal aliens and collected dues would be subjected to fines of up to $2,000 USD, while the employer who hired them went without penalty.

Of course it took the vote of 19 Republicans in Kansas to pass the bill, you can read the entire article here entitled "KS: State passes bill that will encourage more illegal immigration and punishes unions who try to help the workers"(4/20/08):

This is a new low for the Kansas Senate. A majority of them are happy to turn a blind eye to the hiring of illegal aliens and will use immigration reform to bust unions.

So here is the scenario:

• An employer, knowing that he will not be punished for hiring an illegal, puts the illegal alien to work side by side with unionized American workers.
• The union, believing that the employer would not hire illegal aliens (that is illegal, you know), signs the employee up as a member of the union.
• The union is now subject to criminal action and fines even though the union has no ability to verify the legal status of a worker

This is getting worse people, spread the word.Republicans, while pretending to want to close the borders, do everything in their power to allow the use of illegal aliens.

A day he voted against the combustible dust standard, my Congressman, Vito Fosella has been arrested for DWI

From MyDD (5/1/08) :

From The Washington Post:

Rep. Vito J. Fossella (R-N.Y.) was arrested overnight in Alexandria and charged with driving while intoxicated, court records showed today.

Fossella is scheduled to appear in Alexandria General District Court on May 12 for an advisement hearing, the records said.

No other details were immediately available.

[...]

Fossella was elected to Congress in a special election to represent the 13th Congressional District of New York in November 1997, according to a biography on his Web site. The district includes Staten Island and the Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights, and the Bensonhurst and Gravesend neighborhoods of Brooklyn.

Being arrested for a DUI isn't necessarily a political death-knell for an incumbent -- but neither is it terribly good news, particularly when that incumbent is potentially vulnerable. Fossella won reelection in 2006 with about 57 percent of the vote, so he isn't necessarily in terrible shape coming into this election cycle. However, New York's 13th congressional district, which he represents, tends to lean about 1 point more Democratic than the nation as a whole in presidential elections, so this year being a presidential election year doesn't augur particularly well for Fossella's hopes. Throw in a DUI and this race may now be on the map.

At this point, there are a couple of Democrats looking at this race: 2006 nominee Steve Harrison and Brooklyn City Commissioner Domenic Recchia. Recchia, in particular, looks like a formidable candidate, having raised more than $350,000 to this point. In fact, Recchia has more in the bank than Fossella as of the last filing period. So definitely chalk this up as one to keep an eye on...

This is a great post over at the "Silenced Majority Portal: for Informed comment, political humor, and the pursuit of fun." blog

Bitter
Nothing in US History would have EVER changed if people had not been embittered, angry, upset & outraged at the status quo.

No Declaration of Independence.
Think the colonists weren't royally pissed off at the British and King George III? After the first couple of flowery paragraphs it's basically a long list of gripes & grievances against ol' Georgy Boy.

No Abolitionist Movement.
Think Frederick Douglass & William Lloyd Garrison & Wendell Phillips & John Brown were not OUTRAGED at the horrors & brutality of slavery?

No Emancipation of Slaves.
Think slaves just accepted their lot? In fact it wasn't Lincoln or the 13th Amendment - it was the slaves who freed the slaves (see Eric Foner, Ira Berlin, etc).

No Populist Movement.
Google "1892 Populist Party Platform" for some wonderful rhetoric of outrage!

No Progressive Movement.
Think Upton Sinclair was not outraged? Jane Addams? Emma Goldman?

No Labor Movement.
Think working people gracefully accepted being ground into the dust by the bosses every day of their lives?

No Vote for Women.
Think women were not embittered by their exclusion from the nation's political life?

No New Deal.
Think people weren't royally pissed off during the catastrophe of the Great Depression?

No Civil Rights Movement.
Think MLK was a "dreamer"? That SNCC came out of complacency with Jim Crow? The whole thing was born of nothing more than anger, outrage, embitterment, and HOPE.

No Vote for Black People.
Think it was white people's generosity of spirit that extended the right to vote to African Americans?

No Environmental Movement.
Think environmentalism emerged as a full-blown social movement from the 1970s to the present because people were not incensed about all the crud in the water, air, and earth?
(image from OPOL; message from Docudharma/link to be added)

needed to try out the new tag, Republicrats, and in doing so,
found a rather cool Blog, Politics in the Zeros, with this image



From

14 years and 2 days after the NAFTA agreement took affect we are at a juncture in this country. We have Big Media telling us that only their front runners have a chance to get elected into office, to the point that there is almost no mention of Dennis Kucinich or Ron Paul. Why would that be? In fact ABC and Fox are having Paul excluded from the New Hampshire GOP debate. But what do Paul and Kucinich have in common? Neither of them are members or have heavy ties to the Council Of Foreign Relations. Who? According to WorldNetDaily.com

" just discussion forums for movers and shakers, or, as critics have long alleged, secret societies shaping a new world order from behind the scenes. On that last point at least, no one could challenge the critics: All these groups operate in considerable secrecy, away from the scrutiny of the American public.

According to a variety of sources, the following presidential candidates are either members of one of the groups or have strong ties: Hillary Rodham Clinton, Rudy Giuliani, Mitt Romney, Barack Obama, John McCain, John Edwards, Fred Thompson, Joe Biden, Chris Dodd and Bill Richardson."

Well seeing that the CFR's newest campaign is the North American Union and the end of the sovereignty of the United States as we know it. Having people like Paul and Kucinich who have repeatedly called for a repeal of the illegal NAFTA agreement, and complete withdrawal from the WTO, one can only wonder why they are hidden from the main stream.

Is this all mumbo-jumbo conspiracy theorist jargon? You have to make up your own mind. But before you do take a look at how badly the media acts when someone threatens it's interests, in 1998 two award winning reporters in Florida were about to air a series of stories of the dangers of Bovine Growth Hormones (which winds up in the milk we feed our families) on Fox's local affiliate, pressure from the hormone maker Monsanto led Fox TV to fire the two reporters and sweep under the rug much of what they discovered but were never allowed to broadcast.

Doesn't anyone besides myself notice that the Teamsters defending our borders from Mexican domiciled trucks isn't on the front page of every newspaper, or that when 28,000 workers who were once misclassified become union members isn't the lead story, and in fact, not even mentioned on the mainstream media?

Please don't get me wrong here, I neither believe in everything Kucinich and Paul say, but getting rid of all these anti-American worker agreements would be a good start and I love pointing out what doesn't get mentioned in the Main Stream. I truly believe that we need more views from different political parties.

It's our world and only through the distribution of opposing idea's can we be individuals with all possibilities in front of us. Educate yourself, open your mind and have your own opinions, don't let Big Media do it for you. Where are we headed?

"My relationship to power and authority is that I'm all for it. People need somebody to watch over them. Ninety-five percent of the people in the world need to be told what to do and how to behave."- Arnold Schwarzenegger 1990

Alas, American Idol is starting up again, gotta go dumb myself down to tolerate the upcoming election and the choices they leave us with. Big kudos to Letterman and Worldwide Pants for supporting the Writers Guild strikers, now I hope the WGAE can settle their own labor dispute with their Newspaper Guild Of NY writers. Oh, and lo and behold, Mike Huckabee has decided to cross the picket on the Tonight show, wheres the story in that?

*noteworthy recent news articles our candidates should be more involved in

American workers are laboring longer hours

Labor Unions and Taft-Hartley

*Some Sources

obviously YouTube and Google

BigLabor.com - what got me thinking about this

Democracy Now- Long video with Lou Dobbs interview - Worth the view

Democracy Now on
Atrocity-Linked U.S. Officials Advising Democratic, GOP Presidential Frontrunners

RealChange.org/

NewsWithViews.com/

CarolinaJournal.com/

WorldNetDaily.com

Freedom.org

PRNewsWire.com

Blog.AFL-CIO.org