Teabagging - The Musical!

This is AWESOME. Wingers have no taste in music.

Voicemail

I'm with Yglesias,

If you leave a message on my cell phone, I might get back to you one of
these days. If you leave a message on my office voicemail, forget about it. I’m
not even entirely sure I know how to check it. Definitely the whole time I was
employed at The Atlantic I never once returned a voicemail. I figure that anyone
who’s really eager to get in touch with me will email me. In general, I’m not a
fan of talking on the phone, but listening to recorded messages of other people
talking to me on the phone is absolutely the worst.

I haven't bothered to setup the voicemail on my office phone. I have 8 unheard messages on my cell phone. I'll probably just erase them having never listened to them. If you need to talk to me send me an email or a text.

Deep thought

Isn't it nice to see an American president who is so clearly liked by other world leaders and who can travel to visit our historic allies and not be greeted by egg throwing mobs of protesters? The psychological lift to our nation and the world that Obama brings is palpable this week.

This is what class warfare really looks like

Home Depot and their CEO Frank Blake have vociferously opposed the Employee Free Choice Act. Blake wants to protect the statusquo whereby CEO's like him get to decide how their employees may organize their union. The couch their opposition in grandious discussions of democract and the "secret ballot" when in fact they simply want to continue to control the process and subsequently their workers. Here's Wal-Mart CEO Lee Scott speaking last October,

"We like driving the car and we're not going to give the steering wheel to anybody but us."

I suppose we should thank Scott for dropping the facade for us and giving us a peek behind the curtain. Think about what he's defending. It's a system whereby employees have no rights themselves, they are controlled completely by their CEO. Why should your boss get to decide what process you can use to choose your union? It's not the bosses union, it's the workers union.

But really who can blame the Lee Scott's of the world, why wouldn't they want to be in charge? The system works pretty damn well for them. Let's revist our friend Mr. Blake,

Home Depot (HD) CEO Frank Blake received compensation valued at $9.2 million in 2008 - a 20 percent increase from the previous year - as the company’s profit dipped and the retailer laid off 7,000 workers , according to a regulatory filing Monday.

For the 2008 fiscal year, Home Depot’s profit fell 49 percent to $2.26 billion, or $1.34 per share, from $4.4 billion, or $2.37 per share.

Frank Blake is a failure at his job but Frank Blake isn't hurt by his poor peformance - his workers are. 7,000 workers laid off and Blake recieves a 20% raise to over $9 million. So Blake gets richer and richer while his workers face layoffs, low pay and a lack of benefits. And if the workers want to do anything about their work conditions? Well then Frank Blake gets to decide how the workers will be allowed to exercise their legally protected rights.

That's what this fight is about.

The socialism drivel

The Anonymous Liberal,

I spent a lot of time reading conservative blogs today, mostly to gauge their reaction to Obama's auto bailout announcement, and it occurred to me that -- at least with respect to this issue -- the majority of conservatives are engaged an imaginary debate with fictitious opponents...

The notion that there is anyone of significance on the American left who still believes in anything approaching genuine socialism is pure fantasy. That debate, to the extent it ever really happened in this country, was settled a long time ago. What we're dealing with right now are differences of opinion regarding how best to manage the failure of a number of major companies. It's not a debate about socialism vs. capitalism; it's a debate about methods of damage control. But many conservatives have so deluded themselves with their own propaganda that they're not even capable of following the conversation any more. So instead they spend all day indulging in paranoid delusions and debates that have no relevance to current events. It's a sad spectacle.

This is why I haven't bothered to comment substantively on anything that the Denver Post's Ross Kaminsky has written in the last few months. Kaminsky has no interest in debating issues and he's become increasingly untethered to reality. If you really believe that Obama and/or the Democratic Party are instituting a creeping socialism (or is it fascism?) then there's no point in engaging with you. It is, as AL states, a sad spectacle. I actually feel a bit of pity for people like Kaminsky, they've bought into their own propoganda so completely that they've dropped any pretense of intelligence or a rational, coherent thought process.

Apparently though the Denver Post still thinks its worth paying someone to represent this view point. Make of that what you will.