A prediction for 2006

This year, more people will die in Iraq.

Like this guy.

Here's another prediction: Upon hearing this, I will feel sad. Congress will further cut veterans' benefits, citing the need to restrict government growth. The apparent irony of such an action by the supposed party of strong national defense will yet again, go unnoticed.

Assholes like myself will screech about the unfairness of this, changing nothing.

A few more predictions: Twenty years from now, the two children of this guy who actually bother to register and vote will most certainly vote Republican, citing their abiding faith, the memory of their slain veteran father, and a desire to win (the still ongoing) war on terror.

Assholes like myself will screech about the unfairness of this, changing nothing.

I'm sick of people getting killed.

The 50 most loathsome people in the nation.

So right. For so many reasons.

Update:

And from 2004's list my favorite loathsome person; you.

3. You
Crimes: You gaze idly at the carnage around you, sigh, and go calmly back to your coffee and your People magazine. You can’t stop buying useless crap, though you’re drowning in a deepening pool of debt. You think you’re an activist because you bitch all day on the internet, but you reelect the same gangsters at a 99% rate. You consider yourself informed because you waste a significant portion of your life watching the same three news stories cycle over and over again on your gargantuan, aerodynamic television set while you eat processed food. You really thought everything would be okay if Kerry won. Not
only do you believe in an invisible man who magically farted out the universe, you also excoriate and marginalize those who disagree. You have a poorer understanding of your country’s foreign policy history than a third world peasant, but you can’t wait to see what Julia Roberts will be wearing at the Oscars. You cheer as Ukrainians challenge an election based on exit poll data, but keep waiting around for someone else to fix your problems. You can’t think, you can’t organize and you won’t act. This is all your fault.

Smoking Gun: You’re fat.

Punishment: You’re soaking in it.

What he says.

Digby does it gooder than me do it:

They are going to the 9/11 well again. They say that Democrats are sending talking points to Osama and giving aid and comfort to the enemy. Rove says we don't believe that the government should monitor al Qaeda's telephone calls. The next several months will be spent fending off accusations that if we don't let the president do anything he damned well pleases we are all going to die.

I don't know if it will work again. But I also don't know if I can take this campaign one more time. Five years of hearing the same thing over and over again and watching American sheeple fall for it over and over again is just too depressing. I can't tell you how much I'm looking forward to January 20, 2009 (and I'm of an age where rushing the future is no longer wise.) The day I no longer have to listen to one more word from this immoral, dishonest, incompetent, delusional prick will be the best day of my life.

That just about sums it up. I'm so sick of the unfettered arrogance, the absolute willingness to turn yesterday's talking points into today's 'we never said that' that I'm beyond screaming. Beyond pummeling my fists into a wall. It's just hard to believe in democracy when people are willing to just extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who shows zero compunction about twisting the facts to suit their own purpose time and again. And to call them on it is treason. And I know I am not saying anything I haven't read ten thousand times, but sometimes the scope of it all is just breathtaking.

Or, as Against me! puts it:

"When an invasion can give a country its freedom,
When unconsciousness is true happiness,
No, no I don't know what to say."

I been Un Lazy Bastardo

Here's some good stories.

Bolivia elects a left-leaning leader, further adding toward south America's social revolution.

This is a good article on values, Democrats, and the state of affairs.

Here's a piece on UNITE HERE's attempts to negotiate a national union contract for hotel workers.

Fuck a bunch of Chris Matthews.

Illinois AFL-CIO says, "Hey! We really liked the way the Melissa Bean treated us after we endorsed her, let's do that again!"

Here's a great (and late) site on where the late, great Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was when he met the business end of an assassin's bullet.



That is all.

I wasn't gonna do this, but...

I hadn't felt much like posting recently. With the brutal onslaught of an impending Alito ascension to the Supreme Court (motto: making shit up since 1789), let's say I've been getting the party started to welcome in the apocalypse.

Or, I could tell you the truth, that I've been sick, busy, reading, enjoying life, etc. etc. Plus, the internets are a scary place. Case in point.

If this guy didn't exist, The Onion or the The Daily Show would have to create him.

Today is the greatest

Today I go to downtown Chicago to let Mr. George know my heart. I'll have pictures up, I promise. Till then, I leave you with these two posts by Atrios, both of which deserve your 40 seconds.

Pat Robertson is a fraud.

What's wrong with Tom Delay summed up in one conversation

Doug Thompson recalls a sunny meeting with the Prince of Darkness his own bad self.

Fuck the law indeed.

Tonight I met Tammy Duckworth

Tonight I had my monthly meeting with the other Democrats in York Township, and for the first time since I've been attending, Christine's challenger Tammy Duckworth was on the scene.

She came across as very credible, a good candidate, but she really had a hard time answering the questions about her status as a resident in the 8th congressional district (the hated Melissa Bean's district). Her answer as to why she's running in the 6th is essentially that she can beat Pete Roskam, and she has friends here. Part of her hometown (Hoffman Estates) is in the 6th, part is not.

I asked her two questions that she handled pretty well. My first was whether she'd vote for CAFTA, she said no. My second was whether she'd support the bankruptcy bill that passed last year (and that punishes peopl for filing for bankruptcy for medical bills). I made sure to mention that 'her' representative voted for both of those pieces of heinous legislation, the former at the urging of Rahm Emanuel.

Afterwards, Christine got up and did a very good job presenting herself, saying that she knew most of the people in the room (ahem, Ms. Duckworth), that she forgot to introduce her campaign manager because she'd been running all around the district to so many events, etc. etc.

I wish that Tammy had run against Melissa Bean in the Democratic primary. She seems like a fine lady, certainly one with a compelling personal story. I'd probably have given her money. She's a fine candidate, but she isn't the issue. The way that the DCCC handled this is.

Friday I'm going here.

Since I didn't get my paperwork in on time to be a voted in candidate for precinct committeeman, I have to do so by write-in instead, so I'm getting that shit together. The contract I was wrapping up really took up a lot of my time in early December. Ahem.

A bad time to be a miner

It's horrible what's happened to the miners whose cave collapsed on them. Condolences are clearly not sufficient for their families, but it's the only equipment I have to deal with a tragedy like this.

People shouldn't be exposed to regular danger as a part of their livelihoods, but that's the world we live in.

I think something has been missing in the media coverage of all that's gone down--the perspective of the United Mine Workers of America. Wouldn't you think that the official voice of actual miners would have something relevant to say on the matter?

Greg Saunders over at TMW has an appropos point on the way the print media use the same photos to make two different statements--one about relief and the other about overwhelming loss. He's also right about the atrocious headline the Boston Herald tagged on to their coverage ("Miner Miracle--God Answers America's Prayers!).

The editor should be fired alone for that goddamnawful pun. When people die is not, as a rule, the most appropriate time to showcase your sense of humor.

Just sayin'.

Matt Yglesias Nails It.

To the wall.

"To my eyes, insofar as DeLay is involved, I don't see how one can minimize this, even though I don't actually find the caper all that interesting as such. DeLay has, for years, been the leading figure in the House Republican caucus. To the extent that he's corrupted, all his henchmen are corrupt too, even if they weren't so clever as to personally pocket any cash. The point, after all, of the Russia/IMF bribes wasn't to get DeLay to vote for the appropriation; it was to get DeLay to get the Republicans to vote for it. DeLay's great strength as a congressional leader has been the discipline with which he's led his troops. He said "jump" and they asked "how high?" As a consequence, all the troops are tarnished by their leader's sins."

Yep. Delay staked his reputation on his ability to get the republicans in Congress to fall in line with his orders. Even if they didn't take any money, as a whole they bear some responsibility in this sad affair.

Transit Strike Rundown

Josh Eidelson has more on the fallou from the transit strike. I think he about hits it on the head. The one thing I don't think most people appreciate is the inherent danger in bargaining a two-tiered contract, with different benefits and wages for future and current employees. It's like signing your own death sentence. It's the quickest way to increase resentment among young and old workers I can think of.

Andy Stern Bio in the WaPo

The Washington Post has a piece on Andy Stern, the President of the Service Employees International Union. It's lengthy, and a fairly psychoanalytical article that focuses on how the death of his daughter helped push in to the point where he led the SEIU out of the AFL-CIO this summer.

There's much that's useful in it, but it suffers from what is common about labor coverage-focusing on labor leaders as the movement itself, which they most certainly are not. This piece from Arizona focuses on their organizing strategies there, and lays off the 'union-boss' bent.

I myself go back and forth about my feelings with regard to the SEIU. I think that their service model kind of sucks (that's the way in which union members receive assistance from the union when they have a problem). They also have a bad reputation when it comes to internal union democracy.

On the other hand, they can absolutely organize the shit of some exploited workers. They excel at it. They're the only union with a focus on private-sector organizing to grow their membership. So clearly, they're doing something right. Unlike my union, I think they've also been successful 'branding' themselves with workers around a few key issues--key among them health care and privatization, Wal-Mart, and public funding for services. They're an issues union.

And they can raise the standard of living from those they represent. That's where I think they shine strongest--bringing a sort of rough justice for a wide group of people whom the economy has largely left behind, and whose interests would never be addressed without representation from a union.

They're the only other union I would consider seriously going to work for, warts and all.

More on Abramoff-Delay

This Washington Post story nicely details the way Abramoff took money from Russian energy tycoons and pumped into American electoral politics. Mostly for Tom Delay through an outfit called the US Family Network which existed primarily on paper.

Please visit TalkingPointsMemo, because they're going to be on this shit faster than white on rice. They're talking about up to 20 lawmakers and staffers going down, and there's apparently some talk that Abramoff will try and take a Democrat down with him, just to keep things bi-partisan.

That would be pretty funny, given his history as a reactionary apparatchik.

Dammit, turn your back for a minute...

And Jack Abramoff pleads guilty.

I remember when he was innocent, innocent I tells ya.

Happy new beer!

We jetted out of town down to the outer banks of North Cackalacka for New Year's, which explains an absence of posts.

And the fact that no one reads this explains the utter lack of emails I got questioning when will I post again.

Yesterday was the travel day from hell, we got stuck at an airport (and a shitty regional one at that) for over 8 hours and I didn't hit my pillow until 1 a.m. I should have been back by five. Ugh.

One highlight of the day's events was when the flight attendant got bonked in the head by a seriously wasted passenger attempting to enter the lavatory. He started crying. The flight attendant, I mean. He called for the captain, I suppose to enforce some kind of discipline on the guy, but by that point we'd landed, so I'm not sure what he intended to do the drunkard in question. I later noticed that this same drunkard got to baggage before we did, so I suppose no harsh sentence was meted out.

If I were the flight attendant, I'd be crying over my gutted pension. Maybe he was crying over both, I dunno.

Labor Icon dies at 87, you likely heard nothing about it.

I certainly didn't, and I pay attention to this kind of stuff.

Clinton Jencks was the figure portrayed in the amazing Salt of the Earth, a film about striking latino miners. It's well worth your dough to track this down.

Jackie, Oh.

Read this Washington Post story on Jack Abramoff.

Corruption, anyone?

I had no idea that Jackie, Oh had done work on behalf of the apartheid government in South Africa and murderous dictator Jonas Savimbi. Wowza. That's a scorecard from hell.

In other news, the Department of Homeland Security is apparently horribly mismanged and open for corruption as well.

I certainly feel safer, I don't know about you.

My First Contract

I said earlier that I'd post more of the details about the contract I'd settled earlier in December. Let me first say I'm tremendously proud of my hard work, and I wouldn't have been able to do any of it--absolutely none of it--without the leadership of the local. They're hardworking folks trying to right a lot of wrongs, but more about that later.

The skinny on the contract goes like this: Four years, 11.5% in salary increases over that time, a two year ban on subcontracting, increased sick days and an early retirement incentive.

Of these, the things I'm most proud of are the ban on subcontracting and the increased sick days. Here's why: school districts all across this great state are hiring private companies to come into schools and perform jobs that our union members currently perform. They often save the districts money by paying dirt wages with no benefits. This is obviously bad.

I was speaking to a friend about this ban on privatization and he said "isn't this kinda what unions do?" I said yeah, but without a specific clause in your contract the employer can get away with it. The union can still fight like hell, but management has the right to engage in this kind of activity unless otherwise prohibited.

On the sick days, we got a doubling of their extended sick leave (the kind you use if you're out for a while) and kept a clause in their contract regarding how that leave can be used. That was a pretty major victory.

The thing I took away from all of this was the vicious shellacing we as a bargaining team took from a heated minority of the union's members. They were upset because the rules about distribution of overtime details were re-rigged to be very slightly more redistributionist. To be blunt, they wanted it all, and anything less was viewed as one person put it, as our 'punking.'

Apparently for insisting on some measure of equity of opportunity for all the union's members we got punked. I never saw Ashton Kutcher at the bargaining table, but I suppose he could have been hiding behind the superintendent's desk.








It was an ugly display all around.

The thing about this round of bargaining is that we were only able to get accomplished what we could because of the relationships we had been able to build with the employer. That sounds at once obvious and strange. Obvious because, well duh. Strange because isn't bargaining supposed to be a bunch of screaming and yelling and people hitting the table with their shoes?

I dunno. There are whole philosophies where people get in touch with their inner wet noodle and bargain accordingly and some people wouldn't bargain without screaming. I didn't know any better so I approached it thusly: I know what managment wants so I'll ask for what we need from that perspective.

I'd say that largely it worked. Also, it didn't help that the previous union's leadership was hated by management, as they were largley perceived as a bunch 0f self-interestd yobs.

The new team was able to build a level of trust and credibility that frankly, had never existed at the table for this group before. The funny thing is that slightly under half of their own membership doesn't know a good deal when they see one.

But I bet they take the raises and benefits regardless.

Transit Strike Settlement

Jonathan Tasini has the rundown, and he chalks it up as a bad deal overall because of the increased cost in health care. I say differently. To my mind, the key issue wasn't health care, but the idea that new workers would have different benefits and pension rights than more senior workers. The TWU might have had a rough go of it by increasing costs in health care, but to accept a tiered wage and benefit package would have been long-term suicide. To that end, I'd say it was a success.

Tasini also points out the attempt on the part of the mayor (who was labor backed by the way--great job guys!) to pit the striking workers agains NYC commuters--other workers. I'd take his analysis one step further by pointing out that it failed generally. People in NYC probably didn't enjoy the trevails of a transit strike, but according to Survey USA more than half supported the union over management.

In the transit strike, whose side are you on...the union? Or Management?

Union--52%
Management--40%
Unsure--8%

So there you have it. By and large, people expressed solidarity for workers whose struggle for economic justice made their own lives a living hell. Sometimes, although rarely, humanity does not disappoint.

A good book right now.

Is Hardcore Zen, by Brad Warner. Warner was a bassist in a band you've never heard of in Ohio in the mid-80's. A hardcore band. Hence the name. And it is in fact a Zen book, which I'm enjoying immensely. It's very much not a scholarly work, if it were intended for a punk audience (or an audience with a punk-philosophical bent), then it's succeeded. I will note only that it's the only Zen book I've seen with a toilet on it.