Here comes Employee Free Choice...

I hope to God this compromise is okay, and doesn't screw the Unions.

I'm getting this from Jane Hamsher's blogpost on HuffPo, but the data really comes from the National Journal (subscriber only).

[Diane Feinstein's] proposal would replace the card-check provision, which would allow workers to unionize if a majority signed authorization cards and strip a company's ability to demand a secret ballot election. "It's a secret ballot that would be mailed in ... just like an absentee ballot. The individual could take it home and mail it in," Feinstein said. If a majority mailed the ballots to the National Labor Relations Board, the NLRB would recognize the union.

...and I did mention the part where Diane Feinstein wants to be Governor of Union heavy California, right?? Being the one to stop EFCA's passage is a good way to make sure you don't become Governor.

Listen to David Plouffe

From the Huffington Post. David Plouffe speaking at the Panetta Institute in Monterey, California:

"Because we've won so many House seats in the last two elections, we have got more Democrat representing swing seats, so the balance has shifted a little bit," he said. "Right now the Republicans are, I think, at a core in the U.S. House, where there may be four or five House seats that you can plausibly suggest the Democrats have a chance of winning. We've won pretty much all there was to win in the last two elections."

Later in the event, he cautioned that "some people in my party" are "a little over-confident now," after recent sweeping victories.

He's right. I just wish he hadn't said it in front of Karl Rove.

What's In A Handshake?

Photo: AP
 
On 18 April, 2009 the world came to a virtual standstill, holding its collective stanky breath, about to be overwhelmed by "the vapors," Scarlett O'Hara stylee.

It wasn't the North Koreans launching their...satellite, which managed the impossible feat of halting earth's axial rotation, nor was it that British lady blessed with an angel's voice (but sadly pummeled by the ugly stick) belting out some shitty musical number from Les Mis. No sir.

What managed to plunge the news outlets and political talking bobbleheads into an analytical aneurysm (yees, I know...alliteration kills) was a simple handshake between our beloved Honcho-in-Chief and that incessant little barking dog down in Venezuela.

The earth-shattering gesture came at the opening ceremony of the Summit of the Americas in Trinidad, where Mr Obama intended to make Cuba a key priority.

The press ran wildly with the story. What's in a handshake with Chavez? What kind of signal was Obama sending? Was this a clear sign of Obama's undying allegiance to Marx's dogma? Was the United States showing weakness in the face of tyranny?

Former Republican Speaker Newt "Galoot" Gingrich was having a shit-fit on "The Today Show": "Everywhere in Latin America, enemies of America are going to use the picture of Chavez smiling and meeting with the president as proof that Chavez is now legitimate, that he's acceptable."

Dick Cheney went on Fox to declare that Obama's encounters with both Chavez and Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega were not helpful and "sets the wrong standard." He accused Obama of taking an apologetic tone about past U.S. policy on his trips to Europe and Latin America.

"I think you have to be very careful. The world outside there, both our friends and our foes, will be quick to take advantage of a situation if they think they're dealing with a weak president or one who is not going to stand up and aggressively defend America's interests," Cheney said.

Gents, please! Take your illegally-prescribed chill pills and relax. The world is not going to go to shite because of this. It's getting there, but not aided by some awkward 70s-type pressing of the flesh. And besides, I don't recall any of the top Elephants getting their knickers in a row over this particular encounter back in the day.

Echoing my sentiment, but in a much more civilised and eloquent manner, President Obama defended his show of good faith: "It's unlikely that as a consequence of me shaking hands or having a polite conversation with Mr. Chavez that we are endangering the strategic interests of the United States."

Did Holder just leave himself some Wiggle Room?

I got this from reading Andrew Sullivan (who was reading Marc Ambinder), so this is hardly a thought I can take credit for, but listen to what Ambinder has to say about Attorney General Eric Holder’s statement on the late and lamented Torture Prosecutions:

Here's what Attorney General Holder said today in his statement: "Holder also stressed that intelligence community officials who acted reasonably and relied in good faith on authoritative legal advice from the Justice Department that their conduct was lawful, and conformed their conduct to that advice, would not face federal prosecutions for that conduct."

The emphasis is Ambinder's.

Now, I work around Lawyers. I work around them every day. My Dad’s new wife is, in fact, a Lawyer herself.

I’m just saying, I know how these guys sound, and I know when they leave themselves wiggle room.

Folks, that ain’t wiggle room, that’s more like a tunnel in which large eighteen wheels can pass.

Sullivan puts it better than I can:

If evidence emerges of bad faith in torture sessions, then those staffers may well face legal consequences. Ditto if the legal advice was given in bad faith, along Nuremberg lines, Yoo and Bybee should start sweating. That's why the internal OPR report on the legal professionalism of the torture lawyers is so crucial and why it is being fought over so fiercely. If Yoo and Bybee's memos were so below legal standards that they can be objectively shown to be a means to get away with torture rather than good faith effort to apply the law to proposed torture techniques, then they too acted in bad faith. And they too are war criminals.

Now, all that said “wiggle room” isn’t a substitute for action (which I think we, the ACLU, Senator Russ Feingold, and civil libertarians would prefer). But it is something, especially when you couple this with action from the Congress. Either Chamber will do.

I think, in the wake of our most recent NSA Spying Story, the Congress might find itself a little more willing to act.

Granted, it has an air of “It’s one thing to have the mob get wiretapped, but now that it’s one of us…” but again, it'll do.

Oh, and in case your fingers were crossed, uncross 'em. Spain isn't going to help:

Despite recent reports to the contrary, Spain’s attorney general has now reportedly decided not to prosecute the Bush Six — the top legal officials in the Bush administration who allegedly approved the torture of terror suspects. Attorney General Candido Conde-Pumpio said that the United States would be the proper forum for such a case.

We can only hope.


Originally posted at Fort McHenry.

News from the Teabag Front in Sacramento, CA

 
Kim, a 43-year-old homemaker, bellowed: "You hurt my family!" She argued that, thank to taxes and the stimulus package, "We've had to cut our long distance and caller ID." Her 22-year-old daughter, Ashley, with her baby sister strapped to her chest, cut in: "We even got rid of Netflix!" - War Room, Salon

Now we see why this astroturf movement isn't really connecting with, say, the average Somali.
---

Speaking of which, here's everything you need to know about how the situation in Somalia came to be, but couldn't find anywhere near the MSM. (Courtesy of Foreign Policy magazine, quickly becoming a favorite periodical.)

This is who they are...

The following is intentional. I have collected a small smattering of images from today's Teabaggin' Parties from the Washington Independents' Aaron Weiner and David Weigel, as well as some stuff from Daily Kos.

These images, of course, show the worst of the worst. Protestors advocating violence, or racism, or toeing that fine line.

These images do not show all protesters. There were those who merely wanted to protest taxation and the deficit. I merely find these people deluded, not dangerous. And it is danger of which we speak here.


Yeah, let's link our deadly enemy, the one we might have to go to war with, with the duly elected President of the United States.

And yes, the sign says "While Some Kenyan tries to Destroy America". Forget the "In Living Color" quote.


Anything to make the President look alien and foreign.

And of course, my "favorite" for the day...

Apparently, it was from Chicago.


Are you sure you want to go there?



Originally posted at Fort McHenry.

"Mental Gymnastics..."

Even when I disagree with him, Taibbi is always fun.

And, right now, I certainly don't disagree with him.

It requires serious mental gymnastics to describe the Obama administration — particularly the Obama administration of recent weeks, which has given away billions to Wall Street and bent over backwards to avoid nationalization and pursue a policy that preserves the private for-profit status of the bailed-out banks — as a militaristic dictatorship of anti-wealth, anti-private property forces. You have to somehow explain the Geithner/Paulson decisions to hand over trillions of taxpayer dollars to the rich bankers as the formal policy expression of progressive rage against the rich. Not easy. In order to pull off this argument, in fact, you have to grease the wheels with a lot of apocalyptic language and imagery, invoking as Beck did massive pictures of Stalin and Orwell and Mussolini (side by side with shots of Geithner, Obama and Bernanke), scenes of workers storming the Winter Palace interspersed with anti-AIG protests, etc. — and then maybe you have to add a crazy new twist, like switching from complaints of “socialism” to warnings of “fascism.” Rhetorically, this is the equivalent of trying to paint a picture by hurling huge handfuls of paint at the canvas. It’s desperate, last-ditch-ish behavior.

...

But actual rich people can’t ever be the target. It’s a classic peasant mentality: going into fits of groveling and bowing whenever the master’s carriage rides by, then fuming against the Turks in Crimea or the Jews in the Pale or whoever after spending fifteen hard hours in the fields. You know you’re a peasant when you worship the very people who are right now, this minute, conning you and taking your shit. Whatever the master does, you’re on board. When you get frisky, he sticks a big cross in the middle of your village, and you spend the rest of your life praying to it with big googly eyes. Or he puts out newspapers full of innuendo about this or that faraway group and you immediately salute and rush off to join the hate squad. A good peasant is loyal, simpleminded, and full of misdirected anger. And that’s what we’ve got now, a lot of misdirected anger searching around for a non-target to mis-punish… can’t be mad at AIG, can’t be mad at Citi or Goldman Sachs. The real villains have to be the anti-AIG protesters! After all, those people earned those bonuses! If ever there was a textbook case of peasant thinking, it’s struggling middle-class Americans burned up in defense of taxpayer-funded bonuses to millionaires. It’s really weird stuff. And bound to get weirder, I imagine, as this crisis gets worse and more complicated.

Originally posted (such as it is) at Fort McHenry.