Tuesday, October 3rd, 2006

Politics is a Tradable Commodity
You know John Murtha, right? House democrat from Pennsylvania? Highest ranking Dem on the military appropriations committee? This is the stuff they don't teach you in high-school civics: John is the guy who hands out cash to other Dems in exchange for their votes on issues. This cash is in the form of "earmarks," or pet projects obfuscated in complicated bills that end being passed with little debate. It used to be the case that these bills would spin around and around in debate and discussion for weeks. But thanks to Murtha, back when the dems ran the roost and he was in charge of the committee, all that debate ahs been done away with. And of course, when the GoP took over the house, they kept things the same way. And though John's a Dem, he leans right on lots of issues, such as abortion and gun control. He's more or less one of the Republican's greatest allies. John says he always s teers votes according to his conscious. And it doesn't seem like he's selfishly profiting, but one still has to wonder-- should one man have this much power?

9/11 Commission Upset About Omission
I'm not defending Condi, if course. And we expect her to deny meetings, or at least the content of meeting, that she may or may not have had with intelligence officials on the road to 9/11. But it should be pointed out that the 9/11 commission's shock at revelations from Bob Woodward's new book means that those intelligence officials didn't tell the commission, either, about the meetings. George Tenet, it is revealed, claims that not only did he have a meeting with Condi in July, but that he was very frustrated by her brush-off. So why didn't he tell the 9/11 commission about this? I'll tell you why, but you might want to put on your conspiracy-hat: because he got suspicious about something, a suspicion that didn't pan out by the time Bob Woodward came along to talk about the book. Or, vice-versa-- Bob talked to George, and then George got suspicious, and decided to keep his mouth shut. Either way it's spooky.

Foley Jokes and Tremors
So, yeah, we all know by now, yet another republican has fallen to scandal while we move ever closer to November. Mark Foley has resigned after "too-personal" e-mails and text messages sent to congressional pages have surfaced. Here's some of the jokes: Foley is said to be writing a book about the experience. It's going to be a real page-turner. Did you hear that Foley called for a meeting of his associates right before he resigned? He just wanted to make sure they were all on the same page. Ha ha. Anyway, the real joke is how Reps are handling this. Dems are likening Reps to the Catholic Church, since the Reps have acknowledged already that they knew about Foley's actions and had been handling it internally. So Reps, in response, are accusing Dems of "trying to take political advantage of this situation" (duh!) and have countered by stepping up the fear-mongering in their campaigns. You know, just to remind people they are the party that protects children. Yes, that's why they let Foley be the Chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children. Nice.

Walmart Gets Walmartier
Walmart's got new memos floating around; they're going to up their part-time work force, and are more or less trying to get rid of their long-time employees, since the employees get paid more than new employees "and have the same work productivity." Walmart seems to have forgotten what the heck community means. I myself used to shop at my nearby (now closed) grocery store just because I knew the people there. That's what long-time employees contribute: community. Walmart is also encouraging managers to only hire "healthy" people, so they won't try to suck off the health-insurance tit, and they've been implementing measures to ger rid of those who do depend on that health insurance. Walmart claims they are doing these things to "stay competative," which is horse-crap: Walmart makes 5 times more than all of their other competitors combined. But not from me.