December and to the end of the year fundraiser

brokeconservativebloggerfundBecause none of the corporations or crony capitalists are cutting me any checks nor is any of Obama’s friends. I could use a little help with expenses around here. It is tough being an independent and not down with the partisan crowds. Because of this, nobody wants to get behind you. Unlike some out there, who are of partisan, ethnic or political privilege; I do not have such luxuries. So, if you can, put a few bucks in to my donation jar, because I could really use the support.

But, it’s all done, under the jump.
Continue reading “December and to the end of the year fundraiser” →

North Korea fires long-range missile, says South Korea

No matter how you slice it, this is not a good thing.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — North Korea fired a long-range rocket Wednesday morning in its second launch under its new leader, defying warnings from the U.N. and Washington only days before South Korean presidential elections.

North Korea declared the launch of a rocket and satellite a success, and state television planned a special broadcast about the launch at noon (0300 GMT).

South Korean and Japanese officials confirmed that liftoff took place shortly before 10 a.m. (0100 GMT), while the United States did not immediately comment on it. Each nation had been urging North Korea to refrain from a launch widely seen as a cover for a test of banned ballistic missile technology.

South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok told a nationally televised news conference that a South Korean Aegis-equipped destroyer deployed in the Yellow Sea detected the launch but South Korea still didn’t know the launch was successful. North Korea had indicated technical problems with the rocket earlier and had extended its launch window to Dec. 29.

Japan said one part of the rocket fell into waters west of the Korean Peninsula and another part fell in the sea east of the Philippines. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak planned an emergency national security council meeting Wednesday, and Japan protested the rocket launch.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un took power after his father Kim Jong Il died on Dec. 17 last year, and the launch also comes about a month before President Barack Obama is inaugurated for his second term.

The North says the Unha rocket was meant to put a satellite in orbit. A similar launch in April broke apart shortly after liftoff, and the condemnation that attempt received is likely to be repeated. Washington sees the launch as a cover for a test of technology for missiles that could be used to strike the United States.

Rocket tests are seen as crucial to advancing North Korea’s nuclear weapons ambitions. North Korea is thought to have only a handful of rudimentary nuclear bombs. But Pyongyang is not yet believed capable of building warheads small enough to mount on a missile that could threaten the United States.

North Korea has spent decades trying to perfect a multistage, long-range rocket. Experts say that ballistic missiles and rockets in satellite launches share similar bodies, engines and other technology. This is the fifth attempt at a long-range launch since 1998, when Pyongyang sent a rocket hurtling over Japan. Previous launches of three-stage rockets weren’t considered successful.

Washington sees North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles as a threat to world security and to its Asian allies, Japan and South Korea.

via South Korea Says North Korea Has Fired Long-Range Rocket – NYTimes.com.

There a few reasons why this is not a good thing and I will lay them out there for everyone who reads here:

  • The Norks are communist as hell, unlike the poser Communist Party of America; these turkey’s are the real deal. 
  • The Norks are being aided (read $$$$) by the Iranians, who are themselves dangerous as hell and support terrorism.
  • If the Nork’s missile ever hit America, it would suck majorly bad, especially if something like nukes or worse were on it.
  • The Nork Government and its people are like nuttier than a snicker’s bar. So, we really do not want them having this sort of stuff.
  • As it says above, the Norks and these missiles are danger to Asian region, not to mention anywhere else they decide to point those rockets.

Again, this one is a bit important.

 

A possible way out of this “right to work” mess?

This could be some very good news, hopefully, the unions and the Democrats can pull this one off and quickly:

Today, Governor Rick Snyder is expected to sign “right to work” legislation in Michigan. Obviously, this will constitute a hard blow to organized labor, for a host of reasons, symbolic and practical alike.

But NBC’s Michael O’Brien reports that labor operatives believe they may have it on a new procedural way to force a vote on the legislation. If the major unions avail themselves of this option — and if it pans out legally — this means the Dem threats to turn this into an extended all-out war could come to pass.

Republicans have tried to protect the law from going before the voters by attaching an appropriation to it; spending bills can’t be overturned by legislative referendum in Michigan. But union operatives think there is another mechanism by which the law can be challenged. According to one good government group’s analysis of the state constitution, there exists the option of the “statutory initiative,” which would be forced by the collecting of signatures equal to at least eight percent of the votes cast in the last gubernatorial election.

Will unions and Michigan Democrats avail themselves of this option? Eddie Vale, a spokesman for the labor-funded Workers’ Voice, which played a big role in the Ohio and Wisconsin labor wars, tells me it’s being seriously considered. “The Michigan Constitution allows two other ways to let the people decide this issue on the ballot, and whether it’s one of those options or the 2014 Governor’s election itself, Michiganders will be heard loud and clear,” Vale says. (There may also be another referendum option as well.)

via The Morning Plum: A way out for labor in Michigan?.

This a good thing and hopefully the Democrats use it and the Unions get behind it.

UPDATED — Video: Idiot right wingers get their tent torn down in Lansing

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Serves them right for being idiots.

UPDATE: emptywheel reports that the AFP people provoked the entire thing and loosened the ropes on the tent. So typical. 🙄

Update #2: Eclectablog has proof as well, that the entire thing was staged.

 

Blogger Round up here

 

The best darned thing written so far about Detroit, The Labor Movement, and “Right to Work”

This is very good:

To understand why the impending transformation of Michigan into a right-to-work state is so mortifying to labor and its supporters—far worse, even, than what happened in Wisconsin and Ohio—one must consider the totemic status of the United Auto Workers (UAW). Although there are, despite all you have heard, many good reasons for public-sector workers to have the right to unionize, nobody ever made a movie or wrote a song about a public-sector worker; public-sector organizing campaigns are pretty tame affairs. But if someone were to write a book titled (with apologies to Vivian Gornick), The Romance of 20th Century American Unionism, it would likely be a dual case study. One story would be about the United Farm Workers of the 1960s and 1970s, courageously built from the grape and lettuce fields by migrant Latino laborers in California.

The other would span from the mid-1930s until about 1970 and tell the story of the United Auto Workers, the union that the Prospect’s Harold Meyerson correctly called the other day the “best” American union. Mass industrial workers, whom many believed were impossible to organize, spawned the UAW. These workers, the immigrant laborers of their time, shocked the nation with the imaginative militancy of their factory-floor sit-downs and “flying picket” lines at the legendary Flint, Michigan, strike in 1937. The union’s brilliant, incorruptible president, Walter Reuther—himself beaten and bloodied in organizing campaigns—sought, with the power of his union and his ideas, to leverage the United States into something resembling the social democracies of Western Europe. He had to settle for millions of working-class people ascending into the middle class in the 25 years following World War II, benefiting directly from UAW collective-bargaining agreements, or seeing their own wages and benefits tied to those of the UAW (and Steelworker’s union) standard.

Reuther, furthermore, supported both the nascent civil-rights movement (and fought hard to cleanse his own union of racism), the New Left, and even supported the beginning of modern environmentalism. The Port Huron statement—the founding, now canonical, document of Students for a Democratic Society—was written in 1962 at a UAW-owned campground for use by its members. You can see Reuther standing behind Dr. Martin Luther King during the “I Have a Dream” speech on the Mall in 1963, while George Meany’s AFL-CIO, from a mixture of racism and red baiting, shied away.

The UAW had enormous political clout, too. It couldn’t change the political economy of the country, but it was a powerful member of the Democratic Party coalition. Reuther had the ear, and vice versa, of every Democratic president and candidate of the postwar era. During this era, the presidential election campaign would begin for the Democratic candidate in—where else?—Cadillac Square in Detroit before a throng of union, mostly UAW, members. One can measure the changes in the Democratic Party, Michigan, and the country from, for example, reading the text of JFK’s 1960 Cadillac Square speech.

When Reuther died in a private plane crash in 1970, every auto plant in the country stopped its assembly lines for one minute in silent tribute—thus the “Big Three” car companies honored their remarkable adversary and the formidable institution he and his members built.

via This Is Not Wisconsin. It’s Worse – RICH YESELSON  – American Prospect

I could not have worded it better myself. This isn’t about “right to work”, this piece of legislation is simply about destroying the labor movement in Detroit. Which is what the Republicans in Michigan and in Washington DC have wanted to do for ages.  If the labor movement is smart, they will stand up to the weasel Snyder and not let this stand. Hopefully, they have the guts to do it.

Governor Rick Snyder starts to feel the heat for his idiocy

I find this to be very encouraging, perhaps Governor Snyder did not realize what he was getting into, or maybe he did.

The Story via Greg Sargent at Washington Post:

The “right to work” battle in Michigan may not be over quite yet.

Top Democrats in the Michigan Congressional delegation just wrapped up their meeting with Governor Rick Snyder, during which they urged him in no uncertain terms: If you go forward with “right to work” legislation, you’ll be consigning the state to years of discord and division. They urged him to consider vetoing the legislation or postponing it until the next session — or even agreeing to subject it to referendum.

According to Dems who were on the call, Snyder told them he would “seriously” take into account their objections — which they took as a genuine indication of possible willingness, for now, to reconsider.

“The Governor listened, and he told us he would seriously consider our concerns,” Senator Carl Levin said on a conference call with reporters.

The tenor of the meeting, which participants described as urgent and intense, underscores the gravity of the situation — not just for Democrats, but for the state itself. Dems told Snyder that forging ahead with “right to work” legislation risked undermining the progress in labor-management relations in the state and could create a situation similar to Wisconsin, where an ongoing battle over collective bargaining tore the state apart for over a year.

I do not trust the weasel myself, and here is why; This comes via Deadline Detroit, which I had some choice words for once, and which I retract those words too — granted, I have not always liked what I have seen there, but I was a bit harsh on them, they have the right to publish what they wish, just like I do…:

Signing right-to-work legislation will have serious, even dire consequences on the state, congressional Democrats told Gov. Rick Snyder this morning, according to Kathleen Gray in the Free Press.

In a private meeting in Detroit between seven members of Congress and Snyder, Sen. Carl Levin told reporters afterward they asked Snyder to either veto the legislation or remove the appropriation attached to the bill, which would allow a statewide vote on the issue.

“The labor environment has dramatically improved in the state,” Levin said. But with right to work, “instead of having a Michigan united, we’re going to have a Michigan divided.”

A couple of hours after meeting with the delegation, Snyder signaled his continuing support of the right-to-work bills when he tweeted, “Freedom to work is all about creating more and better jobs in Michigan.”

So, basically, this guy is nothing more than a lying snake. If I were the labor movement, I would not trust him at all. if anything at all; I would begin to mount a recall effort against this man and get him out of office as soon as they possibly could. Like others have noted, Governor Snyder has proven that he is nothing more than a lying stack of crap and will say and do anything to stay in power — including straight up lie to get elected, like he did to me and every other person who trusted him.

There is two things in this world that I have little or no use for — and that is thieves and liars; and this idiot Snyder is a lying piece of crap, if there ever was one to be behold.  As the Detroit Free Press rightly noted, Governor Rick Snyder knowingly lied to the people of Michigan, including disillusioned Democrats like myself, who come from Democratic Party voting families and who happen to care about this State and this Country and do not agree with the far socialist left agenda of President Barack Obama. This does not mean, however, that we think that unions ought be outlawed and busted up.

Again, as I wrote before on here, this was nothing more than a pander to the extremist wing of the Republican Party and by doing this; Governor Snyder will pay a terrible price.

 

 

 

Mixed feelings about this one

I am, of course, referring to this video and article…

First the Video: (Via Mediaite)

Scarborough has a point, the Conservative movement has become a bit of a racket and yes, there are people getting rich off promoting the extremist crap that is on the right. I could name names, but I really do not want to be sued. Furthermore, there are a great deal of bloggers, who are getting, what I like to call “Backdoor Payments” to write the extremist tripe that they publish on their blogs. I never was approached about writing any of it; because I knew it was crazy and I did not want to be a part of that sort of stuff. I believe in Independent Media and not corporatist media.

Some people, like this idiot here; might believe that I was part of that extreme fringe. They would be wrong. I never felt comfortable being a part of the far right. One reason is because of their misguided hatred of the unions, which came to pass here in Michigan the other day. Do not get me wrong, I do defend what I believe to be morally right, like capitalism, as opposed to Government socialism and the like. But some of the stuff, like the Anti-Jihadi tripe that comes from a few bloggers, I decided that I wanted to put as many miles between me and them as possible. Because it basically has become less about terrorism, and more about a religious war, between Jews and Muslims. Which in this gentile Christian’s view, is a bit silly. Seeing both sides are guilty of the same things.

However, as for Bill Kristol and his article, there are a few points of which I have quibbles with; here are a few of them:

The good news is that these new leaders do not have to create something de novo. They have an American tradition to appeal to. That tradition would suggest a “light footprint” isn’t the best America can do. It would suggest that it’s not really America’s destiny to tiptoe through the world, hoping not to do too much to disturb dictators and jihadists.

[…]

Contemporary liberalism is committed to leading from behind, with a light footprint. Isn’t it the historic task of American conservatism to shape an America that will lead again from the front, with a stride worthy of a great nation? Isn’t it the task of conservatism to restore American leadership so that friends of freedom around the world, Seeing, shall take heart again, in an America that seeks to leave behind us / Footprints on the sand of time?

What just read above is nothing more than the core of what Wilsonian foreign policy or, as it is commonly called — Neo-conservatism is truly about; and that is that somehow or another it is America’s destiny to somehow or another be the world’s policeman. The problem with Kristol’s idea is this here: We did his idea of American greatness for eight solid years — in Iraq and in Afghanistan and what did it get us? Nothing. Well, nothing but four thousand plus dead soldiers and a ton of debt, that President Obama happily added to. Yeah, sure, we killed Osama Bin Laden — big deal. By that time, he had transferred operations over to other people within the Al-Qaeda organization and was hiding in Pakistan. That is, if you are actually foolish enough to believe what the Government (Bush or Obama controlled) and the corporate-controlled Government actually tells you.

So, in closing: Yes, there are issues with the Conservative movement. Anti-intellectualism is one. Wilsonian idiots who want us to be in perpetual war is another and then do not want to actually pay for them is another. Also too, wobbly moderates who will not stand for anything, is another. Another is the cronies who want to control the GOP’s nomination process and direction of message — so that they can continue to get their handouts from the Government and the tax breaks. The list goes on and on. It is not to say that Conservatism, whether fiscal or social is a horrible idea. It is just the people who are supposed to be promoting those ideas, have done a pretty rotten job of doing it.

This is not to say that this is anything really new. It is has been this way, since the days, when Reagan boarded the plane back to California, hoping that he had turned the reigns of the Presidency over to someone as much of a Conservative as he was. Sadly, he was wrong and we as a Nation are poorer for it too.