LowerCaseRepublican

Wow...the party that is obsessed with what everybody is doing in the privacy of their own bedroom between consenting adults isn't getting more ass than the "hedonist" Democrats? HAHA /Nelson Muntz

http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/op-ed/g...z1e26golds.html

http://www.antiwar.com/utley/?articleid=3234 SS2k4, being the resident economics whiz, is there any credence to this claim: Scores of billions of Arab money have been withdrawn from American banks. Owners fear that at any moment they could be accused of funding a group that supported a group that supported "terrorism" (even if only against Israeli settlers taking their land) and have all their funds confiscated. These withdrawals are also thought to be a reason for the dollar's decline in value.

She loses a lot of the credibility with the snide remarks. That's what I was attempting to say. As to if she has or hasn't, she had the opportunity to address it but instead attributed it to a "left wing" ideology. That's where I get pissed. Many Republicans have come out against the neo-conservative hijacking of the Republican party and it's sad that more people are loyal to the name Republican (or Democrat) rather than the individual beliefs of the candidate that the parties are shoving down our throats. As Kap stated "Funny thing is, listen to both of these two idiots on the campaign trail promising the whole friggin' world, and even if Kerry repeals the tax cuts, there's still no way in hell all this stuff gets paid for. The government is bloated, and all these people are phonies. It's a sad day (state) in America."

http://www.billingsgazette.com/index.php?i...s/45-subway.inc Funniest part is it's a promo for "Super Size Me"...a movie Moore had nothing to do with but Delay might not get out that much to know the difference. Also, doesn't Delay have more important things to do like actual legislation?!?! I guess getting illegal contributions from Enron is taking up the rest of his time. http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/07/13/...s.ap/index.html This Subway move by Delay almost as bad as Gary Bauer railing on "The Machine Rages On" (when he meant Rage Against the Machine) in stupidity.

"This is no different than what happens at the Skull and Bones initiation, and we're going to ruin people's lives over it, and we're going to hamper our military effort, and then we are going to really hammer them because they had a good time. You know, these people are being fired at every day. I'm talking about people having a good time, these people, you ever heard of emotional release? You [ever] heard of need to blow some steam off?" -- Rush Limbaugh :headshake These damned neo-conservative/neo-liberal amoral goons.

Ah, TownHall.com. First off, he is stating that any person who does not have foreign policy experience is not qualified to get involved in foreign policy. If he holds that to be true then that discounts damn near all Americans from making any statements about foreign policy (i.e. Ann Coulter, Joe Scarborough, etc.) and I'm sure he doesn't want that blade to cut both ways. Secondly, it was a mistake re: Tawana Brawley. He said he believed her story, much like the Senate Intelligence Committee said they believed that Iraq was a threat. Upon later investigation, they found it to be a huge mistake. Plus, the idea that because Sharpton screwed up gives Bush carte blanche is ridiculous. As for the part of the speech about the food in the kitchen, his statement was more that government does not need to be worried about what consentual adults are doing in the bedroom but rather exert their concern on people going hungry. Also, as an author of this article who seems quite disturbed by governmental growth, I'm sure the author's voiced his/her concern about the expansive government growth under the Bush/Cheney administration, right. Oh wait...Also "The Kerry-Edwards ticket is perhaps the wealthiest team to ever run for the White House. Do blacks really need these guys, with their $2,000 suits and $300 haircuts..." Um...Bush and Cheney aren't exactly blue collar Americans either. The simple fact is that Americans don't need either Bush/Cheney or Kerry/Edwards because they are all a bunch of aristocratic goons. I'm not here to defend Sharpton because I disagree with him on certain things but this article contained a lot of cheap partisan shots. The author talks a lot about "impassioned distortions." Methinks the pot just called the kettle black.

Then let's attribute his career to his crowning achievement: being the spokesperson for Jello Pudding Pops. (Oh man those things kicked major league ass)

I know when the US wanted to condemn the killing of the Kurds by Iraq in the UN, they had to provide a provision that Turkey would never be sanctioned for using their army to slaughter 3,000 villages in Kurdistan (northen Turkey) in order to get Turkey to sign on. It sucks having the power of the veto vote in such a small cabal because even though the vast majority believe in something, it could very well get vetoed (as is the case in much legislation that seeks to punish US/Israel for human rights abuses) Saying that Israel votes with the US is almost reflexive, like saying the Ukraine voted with the Soviet Union. William Blum's book "Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower" is an excellent read. He is a former member of the State Department writing about foreign policy maneuvers by the US. In his book, he shows a table with hundreds of examples of UN votes where things like "ending military and nuclear collaboration with apartheid S. Africa" to much more recent rights struggles have been voted against and vetoed by the US and voted against by US/Israel, despite overwhelming votes against the two nations. In fact, the invasion of Grenada in 1983 was met with open contempt worldwide in the UN and in S. America only the military (US installed) dictatorships of Chile and Uruguay concurred with Reagan's decision. To this worldwide disapproval Reagan stated: "One hundred nations in the UN have not agreed with us on just about everything that's come before them where we're involved and it didn't upset my breakfast at all." As Blum goes on to write, "One of the evils of the communist states, we were always told, was that they were oblivious to world opinion." The UN needs to tone down its language because they can't afford to piss off a major power broker or they are f***ed if they do. They can't afford to lose the US, UK, etc. so the power brokers get to pick the rules. I remember having to read some Poli Sci stuff that during the post-Nicaragua Samoza death squad scandal, Nicaragua took the US to the Int'l Criminal Court, got a conviction and the US just dismissed the jurisdiction. Nicaragua then went to the UN with the conviction and the US vetoed any action that would be taken against the US for supporting a murderous death squad in Central America. The UN could function if it wasn't bent over the table to the Security Council power brokers.

I don't know if any of you have read "Our America" but it's a pretty damn good book. It's 2 kids who recorded an audio journal of their daily lives living in the Ida B. Wells homes in Chicago during the mid-late 1990s. There is a lot in the book about how they have trouble getting to school because of gangland war zones, the schools being drastically lacking in materials/quality teachers and how many of their classmates see the easy cash one can make in the illegal drug culture. The two kids that are the authors really describe their environment as a Hellhole and they have a really interesting part where they liken it to a Vietnam war zone due to the lack of respect for life and the violence they see on a daily basis. It's an interesting book because they show how the sub-culture there really plays a role in people getting involved in gangbanging/drug culture because if they are going to die anyway, they might as well die with lots of cash and with horrible schools they see another reason to not waste their time with education. I think it's good that Cosby has called people to be more accountable for their actions but there are other sociological problems that need to be at least alleviated before any of the problems he speaks of will go away entirely. (i.e. poor funding in certain schools) That already sets these kids back compared to most suburban children. "Savage Inequalities" by Johnathan Kozol also explains the disparities within classrooms and how it affects education. When a school has almost no supplies and s***ty teachers, is it any wonder why kids are not achieving? Basing school funding off of property taxes is, IMO, the snafu because it keeps poor communities poor since they cannot invest as much in the education of their children since the money is not there as it is in suburban areas. Now with NCLB and Rod Paige demanding testing and those schools who do not achieve the approximated test scores will be closed, these schools are already scrambling their scant funds to try to teach to the test (which really pisses off teachers to just teach to the test...I'm an Ed minor and have talked to a few teachers). If these schools are closed then what next? They have no opportunity for education. I think re-defining the educational system is one of the key first steps that needs to go down if this problem is going to be rectified. If not, many are stuck in the same boat.

The UN is screwed up because the Security Council controls what goes down. I mean, there is one theory in historical/political science circles that during the furvor for the Korean war, the Russian SC delegate got so angry that he left. If he didn't leave, he could have vetoed it and we may not have had a Korean war. There are tons of resolutions that have been beaten, despite having votes of 100+ nations to 2 votes (almost always US/Israel vote against = that the resolution will fail) That is something that takes place in both Democratic and Republican presidential regimes. IIRC, we are one of 3 nations in the UN to not endorse CEDAW (Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women)...The other 2 are: Afghanistan and Iran. The same sort of problem exists with the IMF/World Bank/Bretton Woods institutions. When they were created, the founding documents show that the goal of the organizations is to "enrich the 1st world at the expense of the 3rd". Still the US and the Allied nations control way over 60% of the voting ability in the IMF/World Bank. Many developing countries do not even get a voice. There must be more parity in the voices who control these organizations. I mean, it was almost a non-story in the US that during the sanctions and continual US/UK bombings from the "end" of the Gulf War up until OIL (Operation Iraqi Liberation...the original DoD name for this war) that the most people in the history of the UN resigned in protest of the sanctions because they saw it was a genocide (with the bombings contributing to that genocide as well)

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/commo...%5E2703,00.html

I don't think outsourcing would be quite as bad if there was the ability to have some form of concrete labor protections involved in it. I'm quite involved in a campus campaign against Coca-Cola (getting our school to get rid of our contract with Coke) for their use of a paramilitary death squad in Colombia to murder/kidnap union activists in order to keep costs low for the plant. Disney uses sweatshop labor in China and Nike uses sweatshops in Vietnam and other places to produce their shoes. By making it mandatory to give people a wage they can survive on and allowing avenues for labor to address violations (i.e. beatings of workers by owners that have been videotaped in Vietnam Nike factories) where they have an actual chance at alleviating their problem would make outsourcing a better pill to swallow. It's the unbridled windfall for multinationals that many people take issue to since they use NAFTA etc. as a bargaining piece to keep organized labor under their thumb. As said in the Bretton Woods founding documents, the goal [of outsourcing] is enrichment of the 1st world at the expense of the 3rd.

SS2K4, many of the companies outsourcing are already posting record profits. Also, many times they are the recipients of corporate welfare and many pay miniscule taxes (thanks to Bermuda tax havens etc.) In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a massive wave of plant closures and layoffs hit Canada. Tens of thousands of workers permanently lost what had once been secure and decent jobs. NAFTA has added to the high Canadian unemployment rate and job insecurity. Similar to the United States, after NAFTA, Canada lost jobs as its trade deficit with Mexico grew from $2.9 billion to $4.3 billion. Also, like the United States, Canadian workers' pay has not kept up with inflation and wages have been much slower to rise when compared to gains in worker productivity. NAFTA has also contributed to undermining Canada's strong social programs, particularly unemployment insurance and national health care. The Canadian Manufacturers Association and the Canadian Chamber of Commerce are trying to cut Canada's social programs while blaming cuts on international competition. Rather than maintain Canada's "high road" social safety net, they want to reduce social welfare benefits by forcing Canadian workers to lower their expectations. There has been a tremendous increase in the number of maquiladora plants-foreign owned plants that receive special tax breaks and export almost all of their production to the U.S.-and an almost 50% increase in the maquiladora work force since NAFTA began. According to the Mexican government, the maquiladoras employ more than 800,000 workers. These plants are exempt from tariffs on imported raw materials and components as long as the final product is exported. The wages workers earn at these jobs make it almost impossible to raise a family. For example, a gallon of milk costs almost three hours of wages. Mexican workers have borne the brunt of the economic crisis in Mexico. Despite the increases in productivity and quality, real manufacturing wages in Mexico are 25% lower then they were before NAFTA. According to the Coalition for Justice in the Maquiladoras, General Motors is Mexico's largest foreign employer. The 74,500 employees of GM's Mexican maquiladora operations earn around 70 cents an hour in 54 factories in 27 different Mexican cities. NAFTA's single biggest defect is its failure to adequately address workers' rights- the right to strike, the right to organize and the right to freely associate. The failure to adequately enforce such core labor laws in Mexico means that Mexican wages have failed to rise. While businesses demanded-and got-a provision in NAFTA that requires Mexico to protect the rights of investors, there is no similar provision for enforcement of Mexico's labor laws or, for that matter, Mexico's environmental laws. This means that when Mexico fails to enforce its labor laws, resulting in Mexican workers' wages being held down and their rights denied, there is little that we can do other than complain. There is a labor side agreement-it isn't part of the actual trade treaty- that, in theory, addresses workers' concerns. But in practice, it is nearly useless. Five cases concerning Mexico have been brought under the labor side agreement for labor violations in Mexico. But there has been no noticeable change on the ground. Take, for example, the cases at General Electric in Ciudad, Juarez or Honeywell in Chihuahua where workers were fired for trying to organize independent unions. Those unions remain unrecognized. Those workers have not been reinstated. In the maquiladoras, workers don't have the ability to fight for better working conditions. If they complain, they are fired. Maquiladora owners keep lists of "problem" employees who are blacklisted because of their complaints. If we don't have an effective way of addressing this problem, Mexican workers aren't going to get a fair deal. They won't be fairly compensated for their hard work and Mexican workers will not be able to buy the goods they make, or goods made by workers in the U.S. or Canada. Sorry for posting all these factoids but it goes to prove a point that fair trade policies would be better than "free trade" policies. I know that Starbucks is buying fair trade coffee from time to time. It is not much more expensive than the regular coffee but it pays the farmer who got the beans a lot more money. I would venture a guess that a job where the union is respected and the workers are valued would increase productivity for the company. In the year 2000 our nation’s annual trade deficit climbed to a record $444.7 billion (as recent as 1980 the US had a $17 billion trade surplus), which was over 39% higher than the previous year’s record; a record of which NAFTA imports from Mexico and Canada contributed a new high of a $110 billion to our nation’s trade imbalance, adding to our nation’s obscene National Debt, which is already costing us US taxpayers a billion dollars a day in interest payments alone. US trade deficits translate into the loss of hundreds of thousands of potentially good paying manufacturing jobs, as well as the loss of hours for those working; all of which contributes to the 18.5 million Food Stamp users. The trade deficits have contributed to corporate profits plummeting, along with skyrocketing defaults and bankruptcies soaring to a historical high of 1,253,000 in 2001 alone. All of which contributed to American household debts climbing to the historical high of $7.6 trillion. Trade deficits cost jobs while weakening our nation’s economy, as well as weakening our national defense base by making the US dependent on foreign products. Trade deficits also provide foreign investors with US currency with which to buy American assets, a legacy that should be part of an American Heritage we leave to our children and grandchildren. Reportedly, there was around $900 billion European investments made in acquiring American assets in 2000 alone; leaving almost 4 million American workers working for European investor owned companies. Liabilities of $1.8 trillion to foreigners make the United States the biggest foreign debtor nation in the world; at the present rate of foreign debt escalation, within 10 years our foreign debt could rise to 50% of our National Gross Domestic Product. Incidentally, our national liabilities to foreigners was only 0.5% of our National Gross Domestic Product as recent as 1972. The enormous foreign debt escalation is a harbinger of a national economic catastrophe in the making. Ending this fair trade orgy of feel good rampant uber-capitalism seems necessary and in it's place fair trade policies which will allow for environmental, labor etc. protections to be enforced with the same voracity as corporate protections have been by the WTO. Fair trade policies allow for competition on a global market.

The Bush/Cheney campaign outsourced their campaign solicitation etc. phone campaign to India. They're all a bunch of two faced schmucks. What the f*** did we do to get stuck with these guys? Out of all the people in the US, the best we have to offer is a boozed up cokehead whacked out on anti-psychotics and who has the intellect of an 8 year old vs a guy who looks like Lurch from the Addam's Family and has the exact same policy beliefs? I mean, Bush and Kerry agree on the PATRIOT Act. They agree on the war in Iraq and the war on Terror, they are both incredibly pro-Israel, they are both severely pro-Plan Colombia and pro-drug war. They are both pro-NCLB. I fail to see how Kerry is the clear alternative to Bush. Vote 3rd party because America deserves better than a neo-conservative/neo-liberal coup. And Tex, there was a poll done of American companies in the Wall Street Journal during the debates over NAFTA/FTAA. According to the WSJ: A majority of executives from large companies already had plans to shift some production to Mexico and that a large number intended to use NAFTA "as a bargaining chip to keep down wages in the U.S." This trend continues. According to a recent study, in more than half of union organizing drives, the threat of moving jobs to Mexico or closing plants was used to limit organizing success. (bold emphasis mine)

A friend of mine got taken off a flight for wearing this t-shirt: The airline gave him a free ticket for his troubles since his luggage was already checked and he had no carry on (and therefore couldn't change his shirt). So for a $17 t-shirt, he got a $200 plane ticket.

We lost 7 in a row. We're 5 GB. Twins picked up a minor league P and lost Mientjdsjfoiejfr in a 4 team trade that landed Nomar with the Cubs.

http://mensnewsdaily.com/archive/newswire/...04-abortion.htm Planned Parenthood is now selling shirts that say "I had an abortion." It's caused a rift between PP chapters and pro-choicers. I personally think this gives the pro-life movement a chance to come out with their own tee... How's this for a slogan: No One Can De-Fetus! It works on so many levels. I'm pro-choice but I think that abortions shouldn't be the primary form of birth control. They should be safe and legal but don't rely on having a fetus getting its head sucked flat with a vaccuum in lieu of using the pill, condoms, etc. The shirts do take away a little bit of the social stigma related to abortion but is not the best means to go about it.

Benson pitched against the Braves with the Pirates and then had to go back out against them again in such a short period of time. I think that has something to do with him getting smoked hardcore.

And here's to hoping the Padres or the Giants take that from them. :fthecubs

s***...2-2 on solo shots by Sosa and Alou.

Ozzie Smith, Roger Clemens, Wade Boggs, Mark McGwire, Darryl Strawberry

Shave those sideburns, Mattingly!

I think M Night just has the same formula...change the setting, change some character names and *poof* another s***ty movie.

Jim...Garcia and Mark are fine. If this tipping pitches thing for Contreras can be fixed by the Sox, then we just got a steal for a pitcher with some great stuff in exchange for a pitcher who would not pitch inside and whose cutter has been figured out by most of the league. I think upgrades could definitely be made for Schoeneweis. (Crosses fingers and hopes for a Pavano or another good pitcher to take his place and allows Garland to be a #5 starter) I also think there need to be a few offensive upgrades as well esp. if Magglio does not return next year but cementing this rotation is the #1 priority and I agree with KW on getting that done. If Contreras gets his s*** straightened out, KW picks up another quality SP and gets him signed for a few years and Garland remains the #5 (I think anybody will admit that he has done better than a lot of the 5th starters we've seen this season for the most part) then we are going to have one helluva staff for the next couple of seasons.