jerseyhoya wrote:No, you see, we're going to steal the Presidential election in November too. Of course we'll lose another dozen House seats and half dozen Senate seats just to throw the corporate media off our scent.

When you believe in unfettered executive power, who cares about a few congressional seats..... Congress has no power in their fantasy.

Philly the Kid wrote:Hersh: US Considered Ways to Provoke War with Iran

Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh has revealed the Bush administration recently held a meeting in Vice President Cheney’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran. Hersh said it was considered during the meeting to stage an incident where it would appear that Iranian boats had attacked US forces in the Straits of Hormuz.

Seymour Hersh: “There was a dozen ideas proffered how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was, why don’t we build—we, in our shipyard—build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats, put Navy Seals on them with a lot of arms, and, the next time one of our boats goes through the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up. Might cost some lives. And it was rejected, because you can’t have Americans killing Americans. But that’s the kind of—that’s the level of stuff we are talking about: provocation. But that was rejected.”

Seymour Hersh discussed the report during a recent interview at the Campus Progress journalism conference.


source

Sounds like Operation Northwoods, which was almost enacted to start a war with Cuba.

See, that's the kind of thing that upsets me not that they were going to start a war with Iran and lie about it, but they actually considered killing americans.

Monkeyboy wrote:Sounds like Operation Northwoods, which was almost enacted to start a war with Cuba.

Ok this scares the shit out of me.

swishnicholson wrote:McCain's camp is sending this to supporters? See this would make me more likely to vote for Obama than the silly egg thing ever would. And Obama's "epiphany" line is funnier than anything in that one, too:



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mopkn0lPzM8&eurl=http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/washington/2008/08/john-mccain-com.html[/youtube]

I also think there are some dog whistles for the dispensationalists among us. I don't listen to the radio much, but I turned on 1210 twice in the last week because it's the channel the game comes on and both times they were making references to Obama as the AntiChrist. The first time was a whole skit and the 2nd time was the host. The AntiChrist is supposed to promise peace and unite the world.... Obama's trip to the Middle East and Europe played right into it.

Unfortunately, this junk actually works. A girl at work believes Obama is either the AntiChrist or a Muslim spy. I asked her what makes her think he's a spy and she said she knows two people who have talked to Obama. I asked if he confided to her friends that he's a Bin Laden spy and she said "no, but they could tell." You can't argue with logic like that, and to think she's a student at UMass.

mpmcgraw wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:Sounds like Operation Northwoods, which was almost enacted to start a war with Cuba.

Ok this scares the $#@! out of me.

And I would like to point out that this was kept secret for years by numerous people. Those that dismiss conspiracy theories out of hand vastly underestimate the will of people to keep quiet when talking means going to prison or worse, IMO. Any theory should be investigated before being tossed out as "crazy," using the same means, motive, and evidence tests that law enforcement uses all the time. I would also say that most conspiracies require very few people if properly organized -- for example, I don't think it would take many people to mess with computer codes in a few key counties in a swing state. In fact, one person may be able to do it.

Of course, most conspiracy theories turn out to be false, and some are just nuts. But some are also true. In the case of election tampering, I think there is means and motive, and some circumstantial evidence that something happened. More importantly, there is enough evidence of an insecure system that we should be all watching this closely this election, with an eye towards fixing the problem once and for all before 2010. Everyone should want a fair system, one that is secure and encourages participation from as many people as possible. I think we're falling short right now.

mpmcgraw wrote:lol Wal Mart told its workers not to vote Obama.

I don't understand why this is a big deal. They told their managers and whatnot that if Obama got elected, he'd push for the Employee Free Choice Act, which is the union card check legislation that Wal-Mart doesn't want to pass.

jerseyhoya wrote:

mpmcgraw wrote:lol Wal Mart told its workers not to vote Obama.

I don't understand why this is a big deal. They told their managers and whatnot that if Obama got elected, he'd push for the Employee Free Choice Act, which is the union card check legislation that Wal-Mart doesn't want to pass.

It's a big deal if they actually do anything to check up on how their employees vote, and punish those who vote for Obama. If it's just tantamount to an endorsement--as unions themselves make--I agree it's not a big deal.

Given that Wal-Mart employs hundreds of thousands of people, I seriously doubt that they could follow up in any kind of comprehensive way. Though given that the vast majority of Wal-Mart workers are very poorly compensated, I understand why they'd be worried

I watched that Wal Mart documentary on Demand the other day. Scary stuff, though a bit OTT of course.

Laexile wrote:

lethal wrote:Going back to that tax debate from a couple weeks ago:

The question shouldn't be "are the rich getting richer?" It should be are the poor getting richer at a sufficient pace? If the answer is no, then government needs to address that.

so you're saying we all - since "we" are, essentially, the government - needs to get on with addressing it, since the evidence supporting "no" is not vigorously contested by anyone credible?

All right then. I'm not sure, by the way, that "government addressing that" is the crux of the biscuit.

Laexile wrote:There seems to be a belief that economic prosperity is a zero sum game.

There seems to be a compulsion to over-state the objection to observations that maybe the very well off are sucking up more than their share of the spoils of human activity.

If they sat their workers down and made them all vote absentee in front of them, that would be very fucked up and a big story. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.

Irony is that the legislation they are opposing takes away the secret ballot when it comes to union organizing.

jerseyhoya wrote:If they sat their workers down and made them all vote absentee in front of them, that would be very $#@! up and a big story. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.

Irony is that the legislation they are opposing takes away the secret ballot when it comes to union organizing.

what it is is that 'old man walton would have handled it differently' if you subscribe to the mythology.

The current crop of spineless corporate connivers are fundamentally tone-deaf to the pr play their activities generates, and they proceed accordingly, again & again. If I'm a shareholder ( I don't think I am) I'm thinking "why am I investing in such a clueless bunch?"

Whatever you think of WMT's stance on 'impending' legislation - I feel corps are entitled to do what they feel they need to do re: employee organizing, & that unions ought to be much more creative in offering viable reasons to be union members & not rely so much on legislating membership growth- WMT should spend MUCH more time thinking about how their response plays with current & future customers as well as their million or so employees.

Under the current environment, a worker fears for their job if they attempt to join a union. This would simply take away that fear. Now, basically if enough people want to join a union, that's it. A secret ballot isn't really needed. It's a red herring, IMO.

jerseyhoya wrote:If they sat their workers down and made them all vote absentee in front of them, that would be very $#@! up and a big story. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.

Irony is that the legislation they are opposing takes away the secret ballot when it comes to union organizing.

Here's what I suspect happened, based on reports around here. This was a meeting with store and department managers. Now, a dept manager at Wal-Mart is a manager, but is not especially well compensated. The specific issue was a union issue, and I would guess the meeting was first to remind the managers that 1) Democrats favored this bill, 2) Wal-Mart was opposed to it (which everyone knows) and most importantly 3) Wal-Mart probably told these mid and low level managers how much tougher their jobs would be supervising a unionized workforce.

Now I've heard these low and mid managers are treated like dirt by Wal-Mart--long hours, and since they're management, no overtime. I suspect that one way Wal-Mart motivates these people is by setting up a division between non-management and management.

TenuredVulture wrote:Here's what I suspect happened, based on reports around here....

I believe one of the technical questions is whether WMT was dispensing its counsel to hourly supervisory employees, who are or might themselves be bargaining unit-eligible, in which case, as I understand it, WMT's actions might be interpreted as illegal intimidation.

Thought about sticking this in Floppy's anthrax thread, given its heavy conspiracy paranoia subtext. Must be something in the water:

NYTimes Book Review wrote:Black Sites - review of
[url=http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/books/review/Brinkley-t.html]The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned Into a War on American Ideals
[/url]

"Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, Dick Cheney in effect took command of the national security operations of the federal government. Quickly and instinctively, he began to act in response to two longstanding beliefs: that the great dangers facing the United States justified almost any response, whether or not legal...."

drsmooth wrote:

Laexile wrote:

lethal wrote:Going back to that tax debate from a couple weeks ago:

The question shouldn't be "are the rich getting richer?" It should be are the poor getting richer at a sufficient pace? If the answer is no, then government needs to address that.

so you're saying we all - since "we" are, essentially, the government - needs to get on with addressing it, since the evidence supporting "no" is not vigorously contested by anyone credible?

I didn't say "we" are the government. Incomes of the bottom 90% increased 4.6% during this period. What would be a sufficient increase?

drsmooth wrote:

Laexile wrote:There seems to be a belief that economic prosperity is a zero sum game.

There seems to be a compulsion to over-state the objection to observations that maybe the very well off are sucking up more than their share of the spoils of human activity.

What does "sucking off more than their share" mean? Marxist theory was that the owners of factories were reaping the rewards while doing nothing, while the workers were getting nothing for doing everything.

Are the rich doing too well economically? I thought this was a country where we celebrated people working hard and earning more money. Are you suggesting capping the amount of money people can make? Throwing road blocks in front of businesses to bring their revenues down? The first thing companies do when earnings are down is cut employees.

The top 5% of all Americans are paying 60% of all income tax. The bottom 50% pay 3%. Taxes paid by millionaire households more than doubled to $274 billion in 2006 from $136 billion in 2003. So the tax cuts had the desired effect of increasing revenue. When capital gains taxes were raised the amount paid in taxes went down.

Would increasing taxes be done to increase revenue? It could have the opposite effect. If the goal is to sock it to the rich because you don't want them to do so well, you'll get that. Increasing taxes on the rich will decrease their earnings. Of course history shows that anything that impedes businesses hurts their employees also.

This guy is on the Reading City School District Board. Just take a minute out of your day and read about 10 of his posts. They're mesmerizing.

Is our children learning with this guy at the helm? Here's a recent post:

What does Reading and New York have in common? Why oh Why and When will we see our Drug Sniffing Dogs?

I know the Reading School District spends thousands of dollars on Long distance phone calls to NewYork.

Ignore the content, just look at the sentence structure of this guy's writings:

I voted NO because the Reading School District has other land that it currently owns that they could of placed more buildings.

Mr. Smith goes to Washington( Keith Stamm ) asked for a report from every Reading School Director who went on a trip the last two years. I'm giving them the courtesy to post their response on this blog.

The bigger question is how many School Directors go on these trips in the State of Pennsylvania.

Maybe, if they only were allowed to go on one trip per/4yr term the State of Pa. could reduce the Real Estate tax on properties.

WINNER YES!

pacino for Mayor

TenuredVulture wrote:

jerseyhoya wrote:If they sat their workers down and made them all vote absentee in front of them, that would be very $#@! up and a big story. Beyond that I'm not sure what they can do.

Irony is that the legislation they are opposing takes away the secret ballot when it comes to union organizing.

Here's what I suspect happened, based on reports around here. This was a meeting with store and department managers. Now, a dept manager at Wal-Mart is a manager, but is not especially well compensated. The specific issue was a union issue, and I would guess the meeting was first to remind the managers that 1) Democrats favored this bill, 2) Wal-Mart was opposed to it (which everyone knows) and most importantly 3) Wal-Mart probably told these mid and low level managers how much tougher their jobs would be supervising a unionized workforce.

Now I've heard these low and mid managers are treated like dirt by Wal-Mart--long hours, and since they're management, no overtime. I suspect that one way Wal-Mart motivates these people is by setting up a division between non-management and management.

Does anyone here shop Wal-Mart? Does anyone boycott it?