Rex Kickass

I personally, don't want to see an impeachment happen. I want my President to work within the generous laws he's to be governed by already. I don't want to see a situation where we have to decide if impeachment is warranted. We're just put there it seems.

I'm not a fan of Wal-Mart. I don't shop there. But I do so for my own specific reasons. I lived in a small town where Wal-Mart moved in. Two years later, Meijer moved in too. Within two years, the three local supermarkets in the area closed. If I wanted to shop locally and help insure that the money I spent in the area, stayed in the area - something I try to do as often as possible, I had to drive 15 miles north to the nearest local supermarket. More often I went to Meijer. Why? Meijer does allow some union representation. Wal-Mart has a history of actively working against a worker's right to organize. That bothers me because if they were represented by a union, Wal-Mart could find itself protected against the kind of lawsuits that SS2k5 mentioned they were found guilty of this week. Because there would have been some sort of mediation process to fix the dilemma before it ended up in court. Wal-Mart employees in smaller towns might be able to work for more than 7 dollars an hour - and actually get what they feel they need through negotiation. In short, Wal-Mart employees would be empowered. But the moment, I made the decision to never shop at Wal-Mart again was when I found out that they would let their Chinese employees unionize. It's good enough for them but not for us? I just find that unacceptable myself. I know that Wal-Mart isn't the only company who acts relatively poorly to its employees, that actively union busts, but its the largest private employer in North America. So what it allows or doesn't allow has the potential to change the way business is done throughout the country.

The stories I've heard about a lot of his addresses and settings and equipment they've used to get the shot is incredible.

I have concerns, but its the President's perogative. I guess we should wait for the hearings and see what happens.

Anybody hear ever read "Nickel and Dimed" by Barbara Ehrenlich?

Holy Crap!

QUOTE(NorthSideSox72 @ Dec 21, 2005 -> 11:49 AM) Along these lines, I really think that the Republican party is fracturing into two camps. One is the 90's model, which is highly pro-business, stringent fiscal policy, smaller government, and socially moderate (on the average). The other is this weird neo-con group, the religious right, who are socially very conservative, anti-individual-freedoms, and fiscally ambivalent. Which leads to something else that might spark some interesting discussion. I think that Bush played the far-right in both elections to get him into office, but despite outward appearances, I don't think Bush is a social conservative at all. I dislike a lot of his actions as President, but if you look at the really contentious social issues (abortion, religion in schools, gay marriage), he's talked a big game, but has stopped short of making any real moves. Frankly, I think he played the Cons, and they may not know it yet. How can you say that? Bush pushed for a constitutional amendment codifying discrimination against a group of people. The first time that would have been written into the constitution since the 1700s.

So lets take a look at the Contract shall we? In the first two paragraphs, the GOP frames the debate by saying "Congress is crooked and needs a change in leadership." So everything they based their victory on was based on a problem. Their "positive plan" wasn't revealed until September of 2004.

I say "if true" because I'm not a constitutional scholar. I'm not a lawyer. It looks like he broke the law. And a big one at that. The "they all did it" excuse doesn't fly with me, ever. And I'm sorry that I hold my President up to a high standard, but I do. You think we only b**** about Bush and talk about it being the worst f'ing president ever - but what other president have we had presiding over office here in the US since Soxtalk has been online? Oh yeah, none. You sit there and yell get a f'in message all the time, but when people actually tell you what the message is - you don't listen and shout louder. The message seems pretty clear: Responsibility, Accountablity: screaming for investigation over government missteps because the GOP refuses to do so. Protecting our Environment: fighting to stop an add-on regarding ANWR drilling in Alaska, because its risk with relatively little reward. Protecting the working class: fighting to stop the privatization and dismantling of Social Security. Enhancing National Security: Why don't you ask Senator Lautenberg if he's been fighting to make sure that Port Elizabeth and Newark Airport might actually get the chance to screen cargo going in and out of this country via ship for nuclear, biological, or chemical weaponry. Or how about cargo on passenger planes getting screened? Cause right now he can't get the funding to make that happen. The list goes on. But their bills don't get heard in Congress. Their agenda doesn't get the chance to get a hearing half the time. It's hard to be on the offensive policy wise when the other side is threatening to tear down all of the safeguards that protect you and I physically and financially. It's hard to be on the offensive policy wise when the other side is trying to change the constitution or otherwise appearing to have a blatant disregard for the constitution in many other cases.

This made me laugh.

I work with Advance people. This is what they do. Always working for the shot, always working to make their boss look like a rock star. It's crazy.

I would say the charges, if true, constitute an absolute impeachable offense for any president.

Yet its going to be filibustered and not only does it have support from hardcore liberals like Joe Lieberman but also the few moderate Republican Senators don't seem to be supporting this as well. With Joementum behind the filibuster, how can it fail?

If this was 1995, there would have been impeachment proceedings pending right now.

http://nationalreview.com/york/york200512200946.asp Drudge also links to a column in National Review that talks about how a Clinton deputy attorney general argued that the President has the power to bypass FISA courts. "They all did it." Except that the Clinton administration actually put everything through FISA... and York admits in in his column.

Interesting stuff in the Drudge Report. Drudge claims to have found executive orders by Carter and Clinton to have agreed to do the same thing that Bush did i.e. in regards to this. (The "centrist" Drudge Report has seemingly neglected to research whether Reagan or Poppy Bush has also issued related executive orders.) He keeps quoting this paragraph which is nearly identical in both executive orders linked from Drudge. Seems like a clear violation, right? Except here's the FISA text: I'm not a lawyer, but both the Clinton and Carter executive orders seem to indicate that spying on foreign nationals' electronic communications is acceptable without a warrant as long as it meets the criteria spelled out in the FISA act where electronic communications spying is deemed acceptable. Nowhere does it talk about targetting US Citizens. Which is something the Bush administration has admitted to doing, from what I understand. So "they all do it" is the new excuse from the right, I'm assuming. Except according to what they cite, they don't all do it at all.

It just proves the edict, better to be pissed off than pissed on.

Some other random information on the TWU/MTA strike. MTA Executives gave themselves a 22% raise last year. TWU accepted a 3 year contract with no raise in 2002 to help alleviate MTA budget shortfalls. This year the MTA has been found to have kept two separate sets of books and hiding a surplus of approximately one billion dollars. The MTA also offered to sell rights to property it owns to build a new stadium for the Jets at one-third the market value.

I wasn't sure to be honest.

That seems ridiculously high and wrong to me.

So I'm reading a little more about this. It seems the Taylor law was kind of forced through the state legislature in 1960 after a NYC Transit strike. Also the national wing of TWU is not happy with the local's actions. And the more I read about this, the more I think a full scale work stoppage may have been excessive. Instead maybe partial wildcatting might have been more effective. Monday - no private lines. Tuesday - no Subway. Weds - no buses. Thursday - no Metro North, etc.

You forgot the green balta.

I just find it hard to put a quantifiable number to political bias on a story. The methodology could be very flawed and what they determine to be liberal - may not be what liberal is. Same with centrist or conservative.

One side would accept it. The other would ridicule it. Regardless of outcome.

But Drudge Report "opinions" aren't labeled as such. They are labeled as fact. I don't think that in any case you can determine bias on a mathematical scale. Those things are going to discount casual asides you'd hear from the anchor - which is more and more common on cable news. The merging of opinion and news stories without a clear line of demarcation is becoming more common.