Anyone can say they support the troops and we should take them at their word, but the proof will come when it's time to provide the money
Dick Cheney speaking at a meeting of The American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
[Still waiting for Cheney or any of his ilk to apply that same reasoning to training & equipping the troops, providing care for soldiers returning from combat zones in Afghanistan and Iraq, and providing care for all vets during the remainder of their lives (rather than viewing the VA budget as a "drag on the economy" as one VA official said a while back).]
I've resisted writing about the recent DOJ audit of the FBI's use of National Security Letters (NSLs), partly because it's so complicated and partly because I just had the feeling that the problem was bigger than the impression you got from the mainstream media.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the agency that issues the monthly reports on jobs, employment & unemployment, wages, and a host of other information on our collective economic health.
In keeping with the cheerleader mentality that views public confidence as more important than the reality on which the confidence is based, the BLS issued its report on February employment, and mainstream publications like the NY Times published stories based on various pieces of that report.
And just when you thought the inept and incredibly corrupt GOP and Herr Chimp couldn't pull off anything even more, well, let's just say it don't look good....
I read a lot stuff that simply makes no sense, and a lot more that calls into question whether some authors realize that the natural implications of what they say contradict other opinions and beliefs they seem to have.
So today's two questions on this subject are:
Globalization and outsourcing have hurt many millions of Americans but the unions have sought to personalize this loss as if it were only hurting their own members when in fact it also has hurt many non-union workers, small businesses and family businesses.
Paul Weyrich, in an otherwise garbled and extremely twisted analysis of union-management relations (in the course of railing against the proposed law that would allow employees choose union representation by means of check cards instead of formal elections).
[I wonder if he Weyrich says the same thing to his pro-outsourcing Republican buddies, or to the corporate interests that help support his Christian right endeavors?]
I don't know which Cavuto show it was, or the name of the genius who said it, but I heard a man clearly state on this afternoon's Fux News that it was "immoral" for the U.S. to provide national health care.
Just so you know, here are some figures from the Feb., 2007 Statistical Supplement to the Federal Reserve Bulletin:
I really thought this might be a joke internet story, until I tracked down a NY Times and discovered this piece:
The official line from the US government and the vast majority of American Business leaders is "outsourcing is good for America." The number of games played to provide evidentiary support for such a notion is truly mind boggling (a subject for another post), but reality keeps raising its ugly little head and whispering "psst, buddy, look at all those juicy American jobs heading off to Asia."
