Defending against wacko claims...

I don't know about you, but I have been spending a lot of time "arguing" with various folks over _________ (health care, cash for clunkers, obama the socialist, EFCA, etc) and it is getting tiresome....(probably the intent...) Very little of this time is actually spent discussing policy or details, it is mostly swatting down assorted bullcrap...

an example:
I was forwarded this piece of crap by a collegue:

> No more StarKist Tuna for me .....
> > SNOPES" VALIDATES THE FACTS BELOW :
>
> Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi's home district includes San Francisco .
>
> StarKist Tuna's headquarters are in San Francisco , Pelosi's home district.
>
> StarKist is owned by Del Monte Foods and is a major contributor to Pelosi.
>
> StarKist is the major employer in American Samoa employing 75% of the Samoan
> work force.
>
> Paul Pelosi, Nancy 's husband, owns $17 million dollars of StarKist st oc k.
>
>
> In January, 2007 when the minimum wage was increased from $5.15 to $7.25,
> Pelosi had
>
> American Samoa exempted from the increase so Del Monte would not have to pay
> the higher wage. This would make Del Monte products less expensive than that
> of its competitors.
>
> Last week when the huge bailout bill was passed, Pelosi added an earmark to
> the final bill adding $33 million dollars for an "economic development
> credit in American Samoa "
>
> Pelosi has called the Bush Administration "CORRUPT" and many other things
> !!!
>
> How do you spell "HYPOCRISY" ? SHE'S SHAMELESS....
>
> EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD GET THIS E-MAIL. PASS IT AROUND ....!!!

So I sent back a pretty basic reply, put together in minutes, that debunked the email:

>re: Slamming Nancy with unsubstantiated emails. This one started popping up sometime last year. I don't believe it.
>
>From urbanlegends.about.com:
>It's true that StarKist Tuna's former parent company, Del Monte Foods, is headquartered in California's 8th Congressional District, which Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi represents.
>
>It's also true that an early version of the Democrat-sponsored Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007 exempted employers in American Samoa, where StarKist owns a large cannery, from mandated minimum wage increases.
>
>Lastly, it's true that the financial bailout bill passed by Congress in late 2008 included a two-year extension of the economic development credit originally granted to American Samoa in 2006.
>
>The remainder of the above message consists of uncorroborated claims and/or outright falsehoods. To wit:
>
> * Was Del Monte Foods a major contributor to Nancy Pelosi's campaign chest?
> Not according to public records listing Pelosi's largest campaign contributors.
>
> * Does her husband, Paul Pelosi, own $17 million worth of StarKist stock?
> Not according to Nancy Pelosi's financial disclosure statements for the past three years. Nor does he own stock in Del Monte Foods or H. J. Heinz Co. (a major Del Monte Foods shareholder), according to publicly available sources.
>
> * Was Pelosi personally responsible for the provision exempting StarKist from minimum wage increases?
> Unknown. There's no evidence that she was.
>
> * Was Pelosi personally responsible for the "earmark" extending American Samoa's economic development credit for two more years?
> Unknown. There's no evidence that she was.

I got this response:

Your friend mentions an "early version" of legislation that exempted American Somoa from the minimum wage increases. Does he mean that the enacted version does not? I'd be grateful if you can learn what he means and let me know, and also if you could ask him and let me know whether Pelosi voted for or against denying American Somoans the minimum wage hikes.

So I am forced to retort:

A 5 second check of the internet turns up the Dept of Labor website: http://www.dol.gov/ESA/minwage/americanSamoa/ASminwage.htm

which confirms that the new law includes a provision for the minimum wage to be gradually raised in the Am. Samoan Islands until it reaches the US standard. Thus making the min wage applicable to the Am. Samoas. What is interesting is that the previous admin. And congress had been the ones to exempt the islands in the first place, The previous regulation was that the min. wage was set by an appointed “council of industry.” No requirement was made for any base wage…

It really burns me that this “friend” is soooo concerned about the poor am. Samoan worker. Has he ever taken a stand for any other worker right issue? Does he boycott Shell for their hand in the murder of Ken Saro Wiwa? Does he wear Nike? Probably shouldn’t if he cares about labor conditions and fair pay…Does he boycott Starbucks, Dell, Victoria’s Secret and other companies for using prison labor? (http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2008/07/what-do-prisoners-make-victorias-secret )What about products from Brazil, China or India, where there are more people living as slaves (and forced slave labor) today than in any time in history?

I don’t know if she voted for the final bill, but she probably did (which included min wage req)…and an earlier version did contain an exemption (which was a continuation of the policy put in by Bush and the Repubs when they had control, and also was tied up with Jack Abramoff, who lobbied extensively for the original exemption) but it was removed and a definitive path toward wage parity has been set. Does your “friend” realize that the opposition is the party that has most strenuously opposed this and would repeal it if they regain power? To claim that the Dems are against workers making minimum wage is rich, considering the other party’s pathetic track record on human and worker’s rights.

I personally think this line of baseless criticism is disingenuous.

What do you think fine readers of the OG? How did you spend your summer? Do you remember left wing wackos being able to hog the conversation when the other party was in office?

Conservative Health Care Talk--How to order a pizza after Obama Care

This really brought down the house at the Smart Sense Health Care town hall in Salem, last evening. I think you'll understand why...

And hell, who doesn't love taking a few shots at les vegetarians, no?

Anyone know a Diana?

from Kos,

Hello, my name is Diana and I'm calling from Oregon.

I just wanted to let the SEIU know that America is watching the thug tactics that you folks are using at health care meetings and various other public places, and the absolutely thuggish violent tactics that your group is using.

I suggest you tell your people to calm down, act like American citizens and stop trying to repress people's First Amendment rights. That, or you all are gonna' come up against the Second Amendment.

Stop the violence.

apparently the SEIU is receiving nasty calls...Not to get psycomalogical but sounds like somebody is projecting. Most of the mob behavior is coming from the nuts.

I have to get to one of these meetings, sounds like a ball...

Nobody Loves the Federal Reserve

Nobody loves the Fed, and why would they? But shite, shucks, I cannot say I fear le Fed so much as I fear, say, the CIA.

Turns out, I'm out of step with our great nation on this one. Or at least, so says Gallup:

In 2003, the slight majority of Americans, 53%, said the Federal Reserve was doing an excellent or good job and 5% called it poor. Today, 30% of Americans praise the job the Fed is doing, while nearly as many, 22%, call it poor. While this ratings downturn coincides with a substantial drop in consumer confidence toward the U.S. economy over the same period, it is unclear how much of the Fed's image decline is due to the general decline in the country's economic climate, as opposed to specific perceptions about the agency's performance in carrying out its monetary responsibilities and possibly its role in the crisis surrounding U.S. financial markets. The Fed's low excellent/good rating may also reflect the higher-than-average percentage of Americans having "no opinion" about this arm of the government, relative to the other agencies rated.

1. So anyway: which government agency and/or department do y'all disapprove of the most?!?
   
2. And more importantly, do you foresee a continued Kucinich-Paul nexus mingling with the usual white supremacists and gunfucks to strike up/consummate/re-debut a truly 21st Century monetarist paranoia?!?
   

Serious thinking on a sunny day

If we are going to kowtow to minorities to the point of giving up our own language traditions, we should not be surprised that the left wants to destroy not only our traditions and our culture, but also us. And before anyone gets huffy, look at the hundreds of American towns named for places in Europe but pronounced as if they were simply American.

By the way, my surname comes from Belgium and no one outside of my family pronounces it correctly and we have been here since before 1620.

Hot Talk

Making an ass of myself over at NW Wingnut again. Join me, won't you?

Goddammit, them's fightin' words

But, as a rule, if you’re really in the mood to see blood spilled, take advantage of your right to free speech by taking a position on the first amendment. For instance, there are those who argue there should be absolutely no limits on free speech, even when it comes to pornography, blasphemy or sedition.

Do you have to ask?

I think Jonah Goldberg nails it here.. The one overriding feature of the Obama presidency has been arrogance. The left, lead by the Obamessiah and his wife, Mary, thinks they own the world, but as the totally un-orchestrated Tea Parties show, there is a revolution a'brewin'. A revolution inspired and supported, but in no way organized or funded, by many groups that Jonah Goldberg works for and/or his mom owns. Please, whatever you do, do not notice the fact that Goldberg supports his assertion that Obama's arrogance is breathtaking with one quote from Charles Schumer and...well, the Schumer quote.

I'll admit it, we're complete and total hypocrites

Speaking, as I often do, for "the left," I'd like to take a moment to criticize President Obama for golfing this weekend instead of staying at the White House to monitor the developing swine flu epidemic.

The comparison between the swine flu outbreak which has devastated approximately 20 Americans in five states and Hurricane Katrina, which wiped out an entire American city, left approximately 2000 people dead, and tens of thousands homeless is in no way specious. The comparison between Obama golfing (golfing!) during this crisis and the (some say) criminal disregard for life shown by President Bush is so strikingly similar as to be shocking. The whole Kennedy had a secretary named Lincoln thing is done after this. Also comparable is the fact that Obama has not even bothered to appoint someone to the position of Director of Homeland Security Health and Human Services Secretary who is acceptable to the extreme anti-abortion crowd, while all President Bush did was publicly praise the guy who fucked the whole Katrina thing up. I'd like also to note that it took 20 people getting sick before the Obama administration declared a public emergency, while Bush was savaged for waiting only two days after the hurricane struck to do anything about it.

When are we on the left finally going to admit that this Obama guy is exactly the same as Bush? Hypocrites all, we are.

Bigger by the second

Over at NW Republican wingnut Coyote is having a fun time with numbers. In a post titled "An Obama rock concert?" - reference to the 75,000 people that turned out in Portland to see Obama The Decemberists - he posts picture of roughly 5,000 people in Lansing to see Joe "the Plumber" Plumber. No one said math was Coyote's strong suit.

Better, in the same post, he estimates that the crowd in Salem was 2,000. Now, one expects that a wingnut website is going to double the size of the crowd that actually shows up. Just as the cops automatically double the number of beers Coyote estimates he drank when they pull him over. Maybe he realized that in a state of 3.7 million, pulling in 2,000 people is not so impressive. What is that 5/ten-thousandths of a percent? I'm going to be honest with you, I'm not used to dealing with numbers that small, so I may be off, correct me. Or maybe Coyote remembers that Obama drew 10,000 people in Eugene - twice - so he updated his post and his number to reflect that some people were estimating there were 3,000 people there. Seconds later it was 3,200, but you know the libural media, right?

Six hours later, Coyote had that number up to 4,000. I am imagining that by this afternoon 8,000 people will have been at the Capitol yesterday loudly protesting the policies of the Bush Obama administration and calling for an end to the War tax cuts for the wealthy an increase to the capital gains tax an end to government as we know it.

Really when was the last time liberals were able to draw such a crowd? Huh? Huh? Oh yeah, that Obama rock concert.

Exactly

When a right-wing blog posts a commentary with the headline "The American Gorbachev" can expectations be so high that they are impossible to realize? No.

This piece is less of a critique and more of a comparison of two leaders of two big countries. Again, this comparison is not entirely accurate and/or scientific. I mean you can compare Bush to Brezhnev using the same template. Both invaded Afghanistan and stayed home more than they traveled. There was even a theory that the reason Brezhnev stayed home and Gorbachev traveled so much is because Brezhnev was fed from the outlet and Gorbachev worked on batteries. So, in this light, the real purpose of this comparison is more in the line of Plutarch’s ‘Parallel Lives’ of let’s say,“Alexander the king, and of Caesar, by whom Pompey was destroyed.”

Oh, and, in conclusion:

If Obama is the post American captain destined to bring our spaceship down from the position of superpower to “a normal UN sanctioned operational mode” let’s hope for a smoother landing and a sharp difference from Gorbachev who neglected the fact that one can make a nuclear submarine feel like a raw boat for only as long as it is facing an iceberg.

Health care, statistics, and vadge

In my last newsletter I gave you some statistics. I did not do this to attempt to set a hard base line, rather to point out the fact there is no “silver bullet” solution to our current health care situation. A few years ago a person testifying before a committee said “statistics are like a bikini, what they reveal is enticing but what they conceal is critical”. One should view any numbers under deliberation from such a perspective, as they often don’t tell the whole story.

-- Jeff Kruse, OR-1 (R)

Isn't Jolie French?

I know all of you have been getting excited about the possibility of an Atlas Shrugged movie coming out soon. I mean it doesn't have a writer, or director or anything, but with just about everyone going Galt and attending tea parties and whatnot, you just know it is going to happen soon.

Our good friends over at Big Hollywood, perhaps America's best website for wingnut discussion of popular culture, are already speculating on who should be cast in the lead roles, especially that of Dagny Taggart. She is not only the heart of the book, but she has been the main source of wingnut masturbation fantasies since 1952. As such, it is crucial that the actress be hotter than the proverbial baker's oven. But does she also have to be ideologically pure? The answer, at least from the comments I read, is no. Actually, the answer seems to be that one Angelina Jolie, who is hotter than the proverbial baker's oven, would be so awesome there is some effort to rehabilitate her.

Actually Ms Jolie is a pretty good choice for the role. She is nowhere near as far left as her fellow actors, gave a fairly good interview in '08 about McCain and the good he might bring (apostasy!) and from what we've gathered is a serious woman that the world takes seriously- she supposedly holds her own quite well in cabinet level meetings and knows more than her UN counterparts about Darfur and whatnot.

Scrolling through the comments, I see no objections to her on the grounds that she is twice divorced, a home wrecker, and/or living in sin with children. My how the wingnut opinion of single mothers has changed over the last year.

Anyway, the biggest fear, of course, would be that "Hollywood" would destroy the story because they don't "get it." This has been my biggest fear for some years. It also serves as a ready-made excuse for the all-too-predictable failure of the movie at the box office. I mean, we all know that Americans are dying to see a movie in which the richer/betters in our society laugh as civilization disintegrates. Especially if the last half-hour of the movie features a twenty-five minute radio address from a character who has only briefly appeared in the film up to that point. Can you imagine the cuts to all of our heroes listening intently to their radios while John Galt explains to the word that they will all die unless they cede complete control of the world to him and his chosen few? Riveting film going to be sure. America is ready, but Hollywood couldn't handle it.

Of course, it has been suggested that the book would work better as a seven-part miniseries a la John Adams, which is, of courser, even more true. Then, Galt's speech could take up a whole episode and we wouldn't have to cut any of the brilliance. That way we could spend an hour watching scenes of bridges collapsing and roving bands of marauders killing each other and rich people packing for the big get away all while listening to a disembodied voice tell us that all of that was a result of taxes. Obama would never let it happen.

Anyway, you buy the tickets, I'll buy the popcorn, and we'll laugh and laugh and laugh.

We electrified the guitar

If you haven't, do.

This is not going to end well

In times past there was a prevailing wisdom that the violence stemming from the drug war equated to just one drug dealer killing another and after they finished killing each other off, things would go back to being peaceful and all would be well— this theory is no longer valid.

I think I saw that movie

This has to be one...........
the most original thoughts regarding the impact of socialism on society. I would've used it for the benefit of my children had I not already informed them of the LBGT community looking for the perpetual free ride. Information that I acquired as an adult, since I'm not LGBT, had to be disseminated to my children at an early age because I married a closet case that eventually colluded with the gay family court system. My children were able to observe first hand that LGBT children are not "born that way". Kudos on your economics lesson to the economically naive.

The man has three houses to pay for

I was writing a post last night wherein I discussed wingnut attempts to pin the AIG debacle on Obama, even though their boy Bush was the one who gave AIG the $85 billion. Some very, very fine weed and a shiny box with moving pictures distracted me. One thing I commented on was the undercurrent of argument that the people who were getting the bonuses were just poor, hard-working slobs who had nothing to do with the crisis, and Obama was terrorizing them and making them fear for their jobs. It was the bit I didn't think anyone would buy, as I have often been accused of "reading too much into things." In my own, completely unnecessary, defense, I give you the Washington Post.

I understand Obama's railing against the bonuses -- but I think he may be making a mistake, both short-term and long-term.
...
Well, because in the short run, hammering the AIG employees to give back their bonuses risks costing the government more than honoring the contracts would. The worst malefactors at AIG are gone. The new top management isn't taking bonuses. Those in the bonus pool are making sums that for most of us would be astronomical but that are significantly less than what they used to make. Driving away the very people who understand how to fix this complicated mess may make everyone else feel better, but it isn't particularly cost-effective.

Yes, it really would be a tragedy if these hard-working Joes, the backbone of American industry, were driven away while their industry was collapsing and thousands of qualified people, who have not been part of destroying a financial giant, were looking for work.

Jesus Christ driving a turnip truck.

It gets worse, though. While Joe Sweat-Argyle needs his promised bonus, Joe Lunchbox at UAW can go take a leap. Yes, he has been forced to renegotiate a contract, but that's a future contract you see, so it's cool. He's already been paid for what he has done, if he doesn't like the new contract, he doesn't have to show up to work. It's just that simple.

There you have it, the nation's liberal media at work.

h/t: LGM

The GOP comeback starts here

Holy fucking crap. If I told you that the Republican chair of the House Policy Committee was writing really, really bad "literature" critique on a right-wing website would you believe me?

I kid you not.

He writes to tell us that Gran Torino is a conservative movie and Clint Eastwood's character is a true conservative. This assertion has been disputed elsewhere and I am not sure Representative McCotter is writing in some sort of response or not. You'd think, but then the only way he can come up with that Eastwood is a true conservative is that he brings order out of chaos in his neighborhood just like Reagan did with the nation (don't ask me). And he hates his "Yuppie" kids. This is, apparently, all it takes to be a conservative, because McCotter rejects the character's racism, acknowledges he probably votes Dem, and is a unionist.

Before you read what follows, remind yourself that this guy is a leader of the Republican party. Read it and smile:

Like Walt Kowalski’s kids who would blithely stow their “old man” in a human warehouse, most American’s believe they are “post-Detroit.”

They are wrong, because right now no one is post-disorder. If the rest of the nation facilitates the decimation of Detroit through malign neglect, deeper social, economic and political chaos will accelerate and spread from the Motor City to the rest of America. The “limo libs,” the globalist Gucci “conservatives,” and all arm chair ideologues will pale before the deluge and drown in their streams of intellectual adolescence. [!] All the while as the waters rise, an anxious citizenry will call out for intelligent, mature leaders - flesh and blood, heart and soul Gran Torino Conservatives - devoted to creatively achieving constructive change amidst Globalization’s chaos

Until these Gran Torino conservatives arrive to restore order, justice and freedom to our American home, “Fasten your seat belts. It’s going to be a bumpy night.”

Stupid with an S

Anyone else watch Fox News' Trillion with a T? I tuned in for the promised Andy Stern action, but there was very little of it. He got in two sound bites, one supporting the S-CHIP expansion and one about the funding of NCLB. The program was the expected propaganda job, with little pretext to fairness or balance, but I'm not bitchin', I knew what I was in for.

I did like this guy though. I mean, not as a human being or anything, but as a Republican who is young, can speak to a microphone without looking like a jackass, and is a sweet piece of meat, if that's your thing. He's extremely conservative and from Arizona so I guessed he was Mormon (not that there's anything wrong with that) and, of course, I was right. Does this hurt him for president or will Mitt's failed bids pave the way?

The answer is yes.

Grammar and punctuation are ever evolving rubrics, as well

A lot of the legislative agenda is driven by assumptions that have reached the level of given facts. Science is an ever changing rubric and even such core principles as gravity have been modified over the years as more information has become available. As we enter into a debate on our various courses of action, I think it is important to examine the base line to see if there is enough “real” science to warrant the direction we are taking. To that end my next few newsletters will deal with Oregon’s environmental agenda.

If you ask any climatologist (who has not bought into a political agenda) if the planet is getting warmer the answer will be; “we don’t know”.