Some stuff,

There has been a lot of talk about the Mexican flag and a Spanish version of the national anthem (which I feel is a media created story along the same lines as the war on Christmas) lately. This is a very good question. I can't stand the rebel flag, fuckin' traitors. Aren't these suppose to be the "love it or leave it" guys?

I have been trying to find time to read this, but my recently limited free time has cut into my internet time. It looks like I could be working 60 hours this week so I may not get to it anytime soon. I also haven't had the time to watch this, but Progressive Patriots has a video of Feingold speaking at the University of Iowa that I will watch someday.

Ha ha,

Here is Steven Colbert at the White House Correspondents' dinner. It sounds like he ruffled some feathers. My favorite part is;

Addressing the reporters, he said, "Let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions, he’s the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know--fiction."

Some politics,

I think this deserves a little recognition (Wyden not Domenici). That's right; the party married to big oil doesn’t really want to fix the problem.

There is a lot of talk about this clip from the Colbert report. I don't know what all the fuss is about. Crystal is always falling apart on these types of shows. One thing that he said that I do agree with is that democrat's winning congress could help Bush. Everyone needs an enemy and since republicans control everything right now there is no one to blame but themselves. Of course they still try to blame everyone else, but I think people are starting to understand what's up. He goes a little farther with the analyses that I half agree with, if dem's win and use the power seat to just go after Bush it will hurt them. However if they balance it out with passing meaningful legislation it will help them.

The blog's I don't write,

I had an outline for a rant on Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" all worked out, but there is just not enough time in the day for a working man to spend time writing. After three attempts I finally gave up on that fucking book for good. When she was talking about how all her protagonists (in my opinion antagonist) were going on strike and how the CEO's never went on strike before (no shit! when you have everything there is no reason to go on strike), I turned it off in complete disgust. She obviously has no idea what it is like to do manual labor for a living and knows nothing about going on strike. Not to mention the bloody history of the labor movement. Fucking simplistic bitch, I am glad she is dead.

I watch Ken Lay and all the other CEO's going on trial and I see Ayn Rand disciples. I see record high gas prices matched by record high profits and four million dollar pensions and I see Rand disciples. I see the dirt under my fingernails, the cuts on my hand and feel the soreness in my legs, then I look at my petty wage (compared to the fore mentioned). I don't have the patience or tolerance for her selfishness lecture.

NOTE: This was going to be about how I don't write as much as I want to anymore, but as you can see the rant came out. Instead of changing the beginning I figure I would just leave it the way it is.

A little respect,

This morning for work there was a company meeting. They had us meet at a restaurant in the morning and bought us breakfast then had a three hour meeting about the company. All on company time. A previous contractor I worked for had a company meeting with no food and after work giving the message "we are not paying you so attendance in not mandatory, but in your best interest".

It is amazing at how little a company can do to earn respect and how little it takes to lose respect. Now which company would you want to work for? Which company would you work harder for? A little respect can go a long way.

Cinderella Man,

I watched Cinderella Man last night. The movie was basically good, but not great and very predictable (I don't mean there was any twist or anything it was just what you would expect). However there was a subplot with a guy trying to organize a union and they talked about Hoovervilles. I thought the movie would be much more interesting if they would have followed that storyline instead.

"Hoovervilles" were named that because of Herbert Hoover's economic policy (actually Calvin Coolidge's, but he was smart enough not to run again) that a lot of people attributed to the great depression. This same policy would later be repackaged and named Reaganomics.

Some stuff,

Work has me really tired but here are a few things,

Feingold has a new video up. I think it is a little silly, but still good.

Scott McClellan, Bush's press secretary quits. I always thought this guy was comically bad at his job. It seemed like he wasn't that bright. Granted this is a hard job, but I couldn't watch him without thinking is anyone buying this? As for the Karl Rove thing, I don't think that really means anything. So far this big white house shake up seems to be just a game of musical chairs.

Alarm clocks,

Well my bloging has been slowed down lately, between working on my house and writing another book I haven't found time to do much bloging. Now there is another obstacle to my bloging. I am going to go back to work tomorrow.

We shall see what that means to my writing.

The Right Stuff,

While watching the Right Stuff last night one of the characters said something along the lines of; The Roman empire built roads, The British controlled the sea and America put the man on the moon. This lead me to think what will the next great empire super power's accomplishment will be? I think it will be the first country to develop a fossil fuel free economy. Sadly I don't think this will come from our country. We are too rich and lazy to have any sort of real foresight. The lack of new technology in my opinion is Bush's biggest folly. Of course there won't be a new technology when you not only cut funding to science, but argue against the long established basic facts of science.

Also in the Right Stuff, they had Lyndon Johnson playing the primary political person. They played him almost in a comical buffoon way. I felt they did it so over the top that it didn't fit into the story. Also Kennedy had an very minimal part in the movie, now how the fuck do you make a movie about going into space and not have JFK be the main politico?

Gaining steam,

The approval of censure is going up. It is now at 45% and remember this is basically one guy pushing this. Although he has two co-sponsors and a handful of other senators have said they will vote for it, most recently John Kerry, no one else is fighting all the white house spin besides Feingold, but much like all his great lone stances it is gaining support as the democratic base is telling its elected officials to wake up.

Remember Feingold was the first person to say get the troops out by the end of 2006. At the time he was called a fringe politician. Now that is the majority stance in the country. Which brings up the big question; Could Feingold be hurt by being ahead of the curve on too many issues?

Tom Delay movie,

Robert Greenwald, who did the documentaries Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price, Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism, Uncovered: The War on Iraq and Unprecedented: the 2000 Presidential Election, is now making a movie about Tom Delay called "the Big Buy". Here is the trailer.

In the audience,

Here is a interesting look at what it is like to be in the audience at the Daily Show. By coincidence it is the day they interviewed Feingold, well maybe not coincidence since that is how I found the article. Something kind of interesting about the Feingold interview it was never put up on the Daily Show web page. I wonder if that is because Jon Stewart endorsed the censure idea. Here it is on Crooks and Liars, in case you didn't watched it.

Scary,

This scares the hell out of me.

More Feingold and Hackett,

While looking at Russ For President I found a couple of good links,

First off Paul Hackett, while sitting in for Jerry Springer on Air America, has a great interview with Feingold. Everywhere I look today these guys are connected at the hip. I love it. It almost sounds like these guys are teaming up.

Rolling Stone has a nice little article on Feingold.

More Hackett interview,

(I wanted to write this separately since it is on a different topic)

From the same Hackett interview he later talks about censure,

"Regardless of whether or not you agree or disagree with it, something like 40 percent of Americans back Feingold's move," Hackett says. "Something like 25 percent of Republicans back that move. Just one man, so imagine 40 senators from the Democratic Party and a handful of Republicans got behind that. Now I'm not necessarily advocating that; I'm just saying here's an example of somebody who's willing to lead and move in the direction they believe is the right direction."

That is something to keep in mind when people bring up it doesn't have the majority of support from the public. It has a lot more support in the public then it does in Washington. I can only imagine (or dream) what kind of support it would have if the whole democratic party wrapped its arms around the idea of holding the president accountable to the law. Then Feingold wouldn't be alone fighting the silly spin from the white house.

I didn't really like how Hackett left the senate race. I think he let his supporters pissed on the party too much. I know he got kind of screwed, but that is part of politics. Anyways I really like this interview and hope he sticks around talking the plain common sense like he does. This all fits in with the Markos and Jerome's book "Crashing the Gate". Here is Markos on the Colbert Report.

Liberty and justice for?

As you may of heard Russ Feingold announced his support for gay marriage this week. I came across a interview with Paul Hackett (read the whole interview it is really good) that may give some insight as to why he came out now,

at a recent breakfast he had with U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wisc.

"I told him it's not a discussion about 'I think that you should approve the gay lifestyle.' I'm not going there," Hackett says. "My gay friends aren't going there. My gay friends want to be left alone. They want to have the same rights in their personal relationship as my wife and I have. If you think that's immoral, fine. Rest easy that, if your religious beliefs are 'They're all gonna burn in hell,' let 'em burn in hell. But while we're here on earth, we all get the same rights.

Skipping down a little bit he goes on to say,

Furthermore, stop taking your lens of religion and placing it over the Constitution of the United States and trying to argue that we have to believe it your way, the religious nut way. Let the rest of us Americans worship our god and live our lives in private.

This is how I feel about so many social issues. If you don't believe in gay marriage don't marry someone of the same sex. If you don't believe in abortion don't get one. When it comes down to it the question is very simple; Do you believe in liberty?

And then there is,

Nancy Pelosi (house democratic leader) post on Kos titled taking the gloves off. I couldn't stomach reading what she had to say. She wants to take the gloves off but when Feingold calls for censure she comes out and attacks him when she doesn't even have to vote on the motion. This is the typical DC democrat that can't win elections and has forced the country to the far right. I have no time for weak politicians like this. For Christ sake she is from San Francisco of all the places in the country can't we get a real progressive or liberal from there.

Anyway I am not alone in my thoughts. Read the comments on her post.

Harry Potter Thursday,

As was pointed out to me a shit load of stuff happened yesterday, but I stand by my decision to spend all day reading the second Harry Potter book and not write or keep up with all the stuff going on.

So here is my wrap up of what all went down yesterday.

Tom Daley after quitting to "help his party" keep his seat hurts the next guys chances by sending attack dogs to fuck with the democrat's press conference. This is the kind of thing that turns your supporters away from the polls. There was also some other dirty tricks going on by other republican's. They are really looking desperate.

My congressman James Sensenbrenner grew some balls and accused Gonzales of stonewalling. I am not impressed. I have seen him grow these balls before only to fall right off when anything meaningful is to come of it.

Harry Taylor blast Bush at some event. This just goes to show how low Bush has actually sunk, he has to listen to opposition.

Now the bomb shell, Bush told Libbey to leak Plame's name. This is huge. I have been talking about this case for a while. I think it is getting to a point for the republicans that they are either going to have to impeach Bush or sink their party for the next twenty years. Keep in mind Plame was working on important shit.

Arrested for,

A guy gets taken off a plane for signing along to the Clash and Led Zeplin.

Unbelievable,

Did Bush just hire anyone to work for him. First Claude Allen, President Bush's top domestic policy adviser gets caught shoplifting a couple of months back, now deputy press secretary for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Brian J. Doyle gets caught trying to have sex with a 14 year old girl.

This is insane! Do these guys think they can just do anything?

Putting the hammer away,

I am sure by now you have heard Tom Delay quits! This is huge. He was suppose to be sticking it out and claimed that all the attacks against him were false and partisan and all the other typical things politicians say when they get busted. I don't think he would of retired unless his legal troubles were very real, his party was in big trouble and most importantly he couldn't get elected again. In a way I almost wish he would of stuck around, but I think the stench of corruption will still linger on in the GOP after he is gone.

Q&A,

I like to watch a show on C-SPAN Sunday nights called Q&A. I think it is one of the truest interview shows out there. Most interview shows are more conversations between the interviewer and the interviewee. Q&A however focuses primarily on the interviewee. Of course since it is C-SPAN it is mostly political type people, but they do a lot of people outside of Washington, which is nice. Another part of the show that I like is that it deals more with the person's insight then just stances on issues. I like this because it removes a lot of the partisanship from the debate and I don't change the channel in disgust when they are interviewing republicans. As a matter of fact some of the most interesting interviews I have seen were with republicans.

Anyway I was watching last Sunday and they were interviewing Lt. Col. Karen Kwiatkowski about her role in the movie Why We Fight. There is more on this interview over at Kos. She mentioned Curveball a couple of times in her interview often followed by a laugh. I know who Curveball is, but started wondering how many other people do. So here is what you should know about Curveball;

First,

"Curveball" would be the attributed source of pivotal information concerning weapons of mass destruction leading up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq.

Basically he was the guy that gave them the information about mobile chemical labs.

The CIA claimed that it did not have "direct access" to Curveball, and that the mysterious informant instead communicated to Germany's intelligence service, which relayed the information to the United States Defense Intelligence Agency

Ok that is fine, but

He was described by German intelligence as an individual not living in Iraq and as an "out of control" and crazy alcoholic.

and

They found among other things that he placed last in his university class when he had claimed to place first, and that he had been jailed for embezzlement before fleeing to Germany.

There is some talk that the administration didn't know he wasn't creditable and other people say they did. You can go to the site to read more on this if you want. My point is if you are going to go to war, not knowing a source isn't creditable is a really bad excuse.

Here is another story I found. I am sure you can find much more by doing a search if you are interested.

I just think that this is something everyone should know.

Television,

See why McCain won't be our next president here.

Feingold on fox news here. Here he is on local TV.

Bill Mahr has some funny stuff here.

My answer to immigration,

This weekend listening to all the talk shows I see that the "keep them out" branch of the republican party is trying to get the working class on there side by saying this will drive down wages and take their jobs and so forth. I would say to these people that the answer to that problem is a good strong union.

About eight years ago I was working on a job and some time in mid morning a bunch of workers whose legal status was questionable came on the job to hang dry wall. After lunch there was a union representative there to check their union cards (they all had them and stayed on the job). In contrast while I was working for a nonunion company there was a large number of workers whose legal status was questionable worked for at least six months. I was working at a different plant at the time, but I heard that INS raided the place and everyone ran every which way. So when the union was involved it took hours to be resolved and when there was no union it took months.

I don't mean to sound against immigration I just want to point out that the best way to enforce this would be to have a strong union. So for all the people against the immigration I think they should take a look at where there representative/state stands on such issues as "right to work" and unions in general.