Emanuel cuts to the chase

Cheney says he isn't part ot the executive branch. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) says no money for you!

The war you usually don't see...

If you have the stomach for it, this is a brutal, but maddeningly honest photo essay on the war on Iraq.

Cheney is un-American

Cheney asserted in 2003 that the Office of the Vice President is not part of the Executive Branch and is, therefore, not subject to executive orders.

There is really only one thing to say about it:

Impeach him now.

Email scandal just the tip of the iceberg

The reason this is such an important scandal is because it is the very heart of how a government becomes tied to one political party. Computer systems in general, but particularly email, is the central nervous system of any modern organization. When the servers are off the books and being run out a political office, it means that the soul of the government is no longer "by the people, for the people..." It's by the republicans, for the republicans. If one were, to say, manipulate the terror warning system to blunt the impact of negative news, this is how you would do it. If you were a Secretary of State of a swing state, and you wanted to collude with the party in power to tilt the election, as Kenneth Blackwell may have done in Ohio in 2004, this is how you would do it.

This scandal is misting lemon juice over a map drawn in invisible ink of a corrupt political nervous system. That the emails that have gone missing are almost all from political workers like Mehlman and Rove absolutely stinks to high heaven. We can't afford to ignore this.

OECD to workers worldwide: "make the best of it"

Although I have my ideological problems with the OECD, I've always admired its clarity of vision and practical approach (cf. their task force on spam). So I'm gratified to read that the new OECD Employment Outlook bluntly states what we anti-globalization types have been repeating for years, workers are getting screwed:

The report pointed to a "remarkable" fall in the share of wages of national income in OECD member countries in the past couple of decades. Japanese wages have fallen by around a quarter as a share of GDP in the past 30 years, while they have dropped 13% in the 15 wealthier European Union countries and 7% in the United States, the report showed.

[snip]

The OECD urged governments to resist protectionist responses and instead adapt employment policies to help people move from one job to another with greater ease and sense of security. It singled out Denmark and Austria as having good policies to help workers adapt to change.

Mr Gurría said some people had lost out, but this was something policies should tackle because globalisation was a positive and inevitable process. "It's how you make the best out of it," he said.

Sensible policy proposals, I must confess. Very anti-union, of course, but at least it still acknowledges the essential role of the state in protecting its citizens economically. This is an idea which seems to have been discarded by both major parties in the U.S.

Here is the OECD's accompanying editorial "Addressing the Globalization Paradox" [PDF] which includes the following crucial sentence: "low-skilled employment can also be supported by making the funding of social protection more 'progressive' and shifting from social contributions to tax bases which fall on broader population groups, and not just wage earners." I'm not sure what "broader population groups" they are referring to (the wealthy are surely a narrower group), but I think they are hinting at major tax-policy overhauls among some rich countries.

Headlines from the War on Sanity

Cheney - lies to high school kids, takes nap

Judge to Guantanamo Jailers - You don't got no jurisdiction, dudes

Bad news for Bush = Time to announce a terror plot! You can set your watch by it

Arkansas chair of the GOP says, 'Gol durnit, we need some more attacks on American soil...'

Caging Master resigns after Conyers requests "lost" GOP emails from BBC. PS. They prove election fraud.

The secret governement

The Bushies continue to blaze new trails in their destruction of the American tradition of transparent government. That's your government by the way. They seem to want to fight the war on terror by working to deprive us of the freedoms "they" supposedly hate us for. No freedom, no war. Get it?

The White House wants to make sure you don't learn who visits top administration officials. So it has made all visitor logs secret.

I have said it before and I will say it again: It would be an enormous gift to the country if this administration were cut short via swift impeachment.

FDA to people: Profit is more important that your health

Let's get this straight...The FDA is moving to PREVENT full testing of US Beef for Mad Cow.

Thump a chump

I gotta say, this is pretty weird.