Even More Political News

Political

Goooooooooooooooore
So there's chatter about Gore as a consensus candidate for the Dems.

That'd be amazing. But it will never happen. The world is not that kind to me.

Plans for Al Gore to take the Democratic presidential nomination as the saviour of a bitterly divided party are being actively discussed by senior figures and aides to the former vice-president.

The bloody civil war between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama has left many Democrats convinced that neither can deliver a knockout blow to the other and that both have been so damaged that they risk losing November's election to the Republican nominee, John McCain.

...

Following a brief flurry of speculation that he might jump into the race last year, Mr Gore claimed he had "fallen out of love" with politics, but he has pointedly refused to rule out another tilt at the White House and said that the only job in public life that interests him is the presidency.

Source: The Telegraph

Tip 'Sharing'
This isn't about the standard 'wait staff share with kitchen staff' sort of thing.

This is where Starbucks stole tips from hourly workers for management.

Starbucks Corp. plans to appeal a San Diego Superior Court ruling last week that ordered the coffee chain to compensate California baristas for tips they shared with shift supervisors.

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In a separate statement Thursday, Starbucks said there is no money to be "refunded or returned from Starbucks."

The California lawsuit was filed in 2004, and was granted class-action status in 2006. Last week, San Diego Superior Court Judge Patricia Cowett ordered Starbucks to pay baristas more than $100 million in back tips and interest, saying state law prohibits managers and supervisors from taking a cut from the tip jar. A hearing is set for May 1 before Cowett on how the California tip money should be distributed.

Starbucks responded in the statement that "shift supervisors are not managers and have no managerial authority," and customers don't differentiate between the supervisors and baristas when they tip.

Cowett also issued an injunction preventing Starbucks' shift supervisors from sharing in future tips, but Starbucks spokeswoman Valerie O'Neil said it would not comply with that order while it appeals the court decision.

Right. The 'supervisor' has no managerial authority.

I'm sorry, but this is absurd. Management stealing from the tip jars? Seriously?

Give me a break. When they want to break a union, companies call nurses 'managers'; when they want to steal from workers, they call managers 'shift supervisors'.

They don't just want to have their cake and eat it too; they want yours.

Source: Raw Story

End Game
So, how does a longtime insurgency, like the one we're facing in Iraq, actually end?

Simple. It ends when everyone gets exhausted.

The first time I visited Belfast, in 1977, it was a city under siege. Stores were closed. British bunkers protected by anti-rocket meshing sat on most intersections. Police and military patrols were the only sign of life on the street. The Europa, which had to be the most bombed hotel in the world, was a sandbagged fortress.

On paper at least, the 1998 agreement between the IRA and the British government was what started to put an end to the violent conflict. But at the bottom of it the IRA lost the will to fight.

This year's IRA parade on Easter morning was one of the most anodyne, sentimentalized events I've ever seen, made up mostly of little boys and old men not even bothering to pose as veterans. A half a dozen marchers carried wooden rifles, but the Republican banners were furled — on orders from the IRA's leadership. Armored police Land Rovers were parked inconspicuously on side streets, but they were there to protect the marchers from Protestants rather than keep a watch on them.

Any lingering doubt I had that the conflict was truly over disappeared when I saw the Europa. There wasn't even a car bomb barrier out front. The place was full of families, many of them American, coming home for Easter. Ex-IRA foot soldiers out front offered driving tours of the old IRA battlefields. Who would ever have thought Northern Ireland would be turned into a theme park?

...

But it wasn't just in Northern Ireland that there was an end to violence. I was in Palermo on Good Friday and met the city's police chief. It's been 15 years since the Sicilian Mafia has been blowing up judges and prosecutors. Is the violence over? "If I dare say it, it is," the police chief said. "The Mafia figured out it just wasn't worth it, the killing and bombing, drawing the fury of Rome."

To be sure, the Mafia still runs Sicily. But like the IRA it is an anodyne force. It is moving into white-collar crime — where the real money is and the sentences are lighter.

...

Before I left Beirut last week I sat down with a member of Hizballah's politburo. He didn't look anything like the old Hizballah I knew from the '80s. For a start he asked to meet in the posh Vendome Hotel, in the rooftop restaurant that has a commanding view over the Corniche and the Mediterranean. Clean shaven and carrying a new leather briefcase, he offered me a Cuban cigar as soon as he sat down. He had just come from a class teaching economics.

We started off talking about the Hizballah military commander Imad Mughniyah, who was assassinated in Damascus on February 12. "Yes, indeed," he said in fluent English, "Hizballah will absolutely have to respond. But not now. There is too much too lose."

He added that he thought that it was unfortunate the West focuses only on Hizballah's military wing. "Can't anyone see Hizballah is just as much about an economic revolution as it is fighting Israel?"

People complain about the Godfather Pt. III endlessly, but it turns out that the portrayal of the end of the Corleone family was fairly accurate. When people tire of violence, they end up moving on to something else, often something more lucrative.

Source: Time.com

Sign of the Times
The housing crisis has become so bad that looters are stealing the copper pipes from old houses, which are worth significantly more than the houses they're found inside.

Similar stories are unfolding nationwide as a glut of home foreclosures coincides with record highs in the price of copper and other metals.

Real estate brokers and local authorities say once-proud homes coast-to-coast are being stripped for copper, aluminum, and brass by thieves. Much of it ends up with scrap metal traders who say nearly all copper gets shipped overseas, much of it to China and India.

In areas hit hardest by foreclosures, such as the Slavic Village neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, copper and other metals used in plumbing, heating systems and telephone lines are now more valuable than some homes.

"We're in an incredibly unfortunate time where the nonferrous metals commodities market for scrap is at an all-time high. Houses are getting stripped pretty quickly once they go through the foreclosure process," Cleveland city councilor Tony Brancatelli said.

"We're seeing houses sold for $100 that are distressed houses that should not be recycled," he said. Some boarded-up homes in his Slavic Village community have "No copper, only PVC" painted on the boards to stop would-be thieves.

This isn't a joke; houses can go for less than the price of their telephone wiring.

Thanks a lot, El Presidente!

Source: Raw Story

A Picture Says 4 Thousand Names
Portrait of El Presidente and St. John McCain, made from the composite of pictures of the four thousand people we've lost in Iraq.

Source: Huffington Post

Cesar Chavez Day
Clinton and Obama are working to one-up each other, but for a change, in a good way.

Cesar Chavez Day.

That's what Barack Obama is endorsing: A national holiday in honor of the late, legendary activist for farmworker rights (pictured below).

Today is Chavez's birthday -- and Hillary Clinton's campaign was the first to draw attention to that this morning, issuing a statement celebrating the 81st anniversary of Chavez's birth (he died on April 23, 1993).


But Obama, who has struggled to overcome Clinton's significant advantage among Latino voters in state after state, sought to one-up his rival for the Democratic presidential nod by joining the call for creating a national holiday to commemorate the father of the United Farm Workers.

Now if we could only get them doing this on Iraq.

Source: The LA Times

Enough Already

Noah Shachtman at Danger Room finds a 2006 report written for U.S. Special Operations Command that suggests ways the military should deal with the blogosphere. One suggestion is for the military to hire bloggers to “pass the U.S. message“:

Information strategists can consider clandestinely recruiting or hiring prominent bloggers or other persons of prominence…to pass the U.S. message. … On the other hand, such operations can have a blowback effect, as witnessed by the public reaction following revelations that the U.S. military had paid journalists to publish stories in the Iraqi press under their own names. People do not like to be deceived, and the price of being exposed is lost credibility and trust.

An alternative strategy is to “make” a blog and blogger. The process of boosting the blog to a position of influence could take some time, however, and depending on the person running the blog, may impose a significant educational burden, in terms of cultural and linguistic training before the blog could be put online to any useful effect. Still, there are people in the military today who like to blog.

Yeah. This isn't the least bit unseemly.

Source: Think Progress

Primaries
I can't believe I agree with a Florida politician, but I've been saying the same basic thing for a while now.

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-FL) appeared on CNN to slam both the Democratic Party nominating process and the Electoral College.

Nelson said he would like to abolish the Electoral College entirely, because "people are increasingly dissatisfied when you can have the most votes for president and the other candidate ... ends up being elected, as last happened in the year 2000."

He is also proposing to do away with the current presidential nominating procedures in favor of six large regional primaries, which would be held between March and June of every presidential election year in an order to be determined by drawing lots.

CBS's John Roberts did not comment on the merits of Nelson's proposal, but merely noted that "Iowa and New Hampshire are going to scream bloody murder."

"Of course they're going to kick up and scream, "Nelson replied, "but those states are not representative of America as a whole and why should they have an outsized influence?"

The regional primary is a neat idea. It would curtail travel costs and provide a logical grouping, so that regional issues and focuses would be retained.

On the other hand, 'region' is a bit hard to define. California is big enough and powerful enough to count as its own country. It would easily qualify as two or three regions of its own. On the other hand, the South may be a series of states, but demographically and politically they comprise, with the exception of Florida, one big bloc of Stupid.

I'd suggest a rotation for primaries, with first year determined by lots, rather than lots each time. That could lead to a run of one area being first or last that would be unpleasant.

Other than that, not a shabby plan. As for Iowa and New Hamsphire? Fuck 'em. The current system is the height of anti-democratic behavior.

Source: Raw Story

Death of Death Benefit
So Chrysler is screwing over their middle rank white collar workers.

Chrysler LLC's white-collar retirees are losing free life insurance benefits but are eligible for a one-time pension boost of up to $4,000, according to a letter retirees should receive this week.

Previously retirees were covered by a life insurance policy at no charge, with a death benefit equal to their last year of pay, for those who retired before 2003, or $50,000 for those who retired after that.

Chrysler is allowing affected retirees a one-time opportunity to buy into a voluntary plan through MetLife at a reduced, group rate.

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On one hand, retirees' families are less likely to need the life insurance payout to support a family or pay off a mortgage, Wise said. On the other, the cost of a 65-year old obtaining even a 20-year term plan is steep -- $1,600 a year or more, he said.

...

White-collar retirees will receive from $1,000 to $4,000, depending on their years of service and years since retirement. They may choose to take the payment as a one-time lump sum, roll it into an Individual Retirement Account, or have it paid as part of their monthly benefit.

So they get at most 4 grand in exchange for losing 20+ grand of insurance premiums.

Oh yeah, what a bargain!

Still think we don't need white collar unions?

Source: The Detroit News

King Corn
The Ethanol Lobby strikes again.

BB&T Capital Markets analyst said Monday corn rationing may be necessary this year, following a U.S. Department of Agriculture report predicting farmers would plant far fewer acres of corn in 2008.

According to the March Prospective Plantings Report, farmers intend to plant about 86 million acres of corn this year, down 8 percent from 2007, when the amount of corn planted was the highest since World War II.

Analyst Heather L. Jones said in a note to investors if the USDA estimate proves accurate, the year may produce just 200 million bushels of corn. That, she said, wouldn't be enough to meet demand, given current export and feed demand trends and higher ethanol demand. Both ethanol and animal feed are made with corn.

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Shares of Tyson Foods Inc., one of the world's largest meat companies, fell 12 cents to $16.01 in afternoon trading, while shares of pork producer Smithfield Foods Inc. dropped 39 cents to $25.57.

Chicken producer Pilgrim's Pride Corp. shares dipped 19 cents to $20.28. Earlier in the day, the stock reached a new four-year low of $20.08.

Thanks a lot, Flexfuel Fuckers.

Thanks a lot.

Source: Raw Story

Hagee Video
This is still in my browser window from quite a while ago.


Man it's been in there forever.

Source: Attytood