First of all, thanks to Wizcon for the heads up on this video.
Let me see if I got this…..The AZ Immigration Law will make millions for a privately owned detention center that has ties to Brewer’s advisers?
Once again, the old adage of “follow the money” holds true.
As a side note…those fences make me laugh. They won’t keep anybody out and one good gully washer, which AZ is famous for, and the fence is toast.
Land of the free and home of the brave. Well, sort of. It seems we are so scared of illegal immigrants that we are becoming a nation where being stopped anywhere and asked to ‘show your papers’ is acceptable. Is this the America you want to live in?
On the Lake Shore Limited
As Nina Bernstein of The Times reported on Monday, border checkpoints aren’t just at the border anymore. She rode the train in western New York and found agents roaming the aisles, questioning passengers about their citizenship and removing those who could not prove they were here legally. What she described looked like just the kind of aggressive internal immigration enforcement that right-wing politicians have clamored for, but is arbitrary, oppressive and dangerously prone to racial profiling.
The Border Patrol says agents ask for people’s documents as part of a “consensual and nonintrusive conversation.” Passengers could decline to answer, but some told Ms. Bernstein that was theoretical, if not fictional, especially on a darkened train at 2 a.m. And train riders and civil-rights advocates told Ms. Bernstein that the burden of document checks falls hardest on people who look like foreigners. A woman who encountered the Border Patrol while riding a train with her boyfriend, who is Mexican, said: “You’re sitting on the train asleep, and if you don’t look like a U.S. citizen, it’s ‘Wake up!’ ”
This should not be happening. We are well aware of the federal crackdown on illegal immigration, sparked by the clamor for fencing and troops at the border. But we do not recall any discussion of imposing internal immigration checks on public transportation, with agents with dogs and guns randomly hauling people off trains.
[snip]
There is probably a reason the Border Patrol is waging its little-noted campaign on Amtrak and buses way out in rural and western New York and not, say, on the D subway to Coney Island, which happens to be near Kennedy International Airport. Border checks on New York City trains would prompt a much louder clamor about misplaced priorities and racial profiling, and harsher questions about whether the crackdown has anything to do with making the country safer.
[snip]
Administration officials, including the head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, have recently said their top priority is catching convicted criminals, gang members and other dangerous immigrants. We welcome the call for restraint and discretion in using limited resources. Someone should tell the Border Patrol.
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas any more.” Apparently some corporations are finding out that there really is no place like home. Kevin Baily of Bailey’s International seemed a bit surprised that “There is a totally different set of laws, different culture, a different work ethic and even a moral culture that is different,” involved when outsourcing American production and jobs. Well, Kevin, I salute you for the insight, but I have to give you a big old DUH for not knowing that BEFORE you took American jobs to India. What did you expect?
The trend to bring production back to the United States is being referred to as re-shoring. I suggest we call it ‘return to sanity’.
If corporations would create good jobs in the U.S. and actually produce something, treat their employees well instead of having a one-sided attitude that workers owe them loyalty and they owe workers nothing, they might find that nobody, but nobody, does it better than the American worker.
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — The story of Bailey Hydropower Private Limited might sound like that of many U.S. manufacturers, except it happened in India — one of the world’s top destinations for offshore operations.
Bailey Hydropower was a 100,000-square-foot manufacturing plant in Chennai, India, producing hydraulic cylinders. Anticipating costs savings from an overseas operation, parent-company Bailey International built the plant in India in 2000 from the ground up to meet its own specifications and fitted it with the latest equipment.
The plant was a major part of Bailey’s operation, producing cylinders in 1,000 different sizes and manufacturing five of the company’s flagship cylinder models.
But in October 2009, Bailey sold the plant and started returning production to Knoxville, Tenn.
Bailey joined the emerging trend of re-shoring — companies bringing back overseas operations because the expected cost savings in less expensive countries didn’t happen.
“A lot of businesses are trapped in the allure of offshoring, but my experience has been that there are more to the costs than what you are quoted,” said Kevin Bailey, one of Bailey International’s owners. “I think so often we are quoted cheap prices overseas and we don’t realize there are hidden costs.”
The cost savings in countries like India and China have been shrinking because labor and transportation expenses there are on the increase. But there are other costs as well, Bailey said.
“There is a totally different set of laws, different culture, a different work ethic and even a moral culture that is different,” he said.
[snip]
Re-shoring has been gaining traction nationally. In one example, the Wrigley Co. announced in July it was moving production of its Life Savers mints from Canada to its Chattanooga, Tenn., facility and creating 40 to 50 jobs there.
I’m so tired of this loud mouth idiot. Why would anyone go to Glenn Beck for a history lesson? A man who never went to college has an online ‘university’? Seriously, people are paying him to teach them something? The country is in worse shape than I thought.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (CNN) — “We are on the right side of history! We are on the side of individual freedoms and liberties and, dammit, we will reclaim the civil rights moment. We will take that movement — because we were the people who did it in the first place.” — Glenn Beck, on his nationally syndicated radio program, May 26.
It is Glenn Beck’s most audacious stunt yet: This Saturday, in the company of former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the National Rifle Association and others, the Fox News Channel host will stand in the sacred shadow not just of the Lincoln Memorial but of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. himself, near the spot where King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech 47 years earlier to the exact day.
During this event — billed as “Restoring Honor” — Beck will aim to “reclaim the civil rights moment” for his cause, and in the process he will continue what he’s been doing for the last 18 months: bending the history of 20th-century America like a Philadelphia soft pretzel.
The revisionist message behind “Restoring Honor” is nothing new for the conservative shock jock. In the year and half since President Obama took office, Beck has led his loyal followers on a journey not just to “reclaim” civil rights but much more audaciously to rewrite the sweeping narrative arc of American history from the time of the Founding Fathers forward.
[snip]
But pseudo-history is having a real impact on current events. In Texas, the new school curriculum downgrades democracy-minded Thomas Jefferson as well as 1960s civil rights. In the political arena, some activists are pushing to repeal the 17th Amendment that allows people to elect U.S. senators directly — largely because the measure was enacted during Wilson’s progressive era.
[snip]
Most moderates and liberals aren’t even aware that this Hollywood-size script doctoring of U.S. history is taking place — and the political consequences may be enormous. George Orwell wrote that “who controls the past … controls the future.” Beck and his fans may reclaim a lot more than the legacy of 1960s civil rights this weekend — unless America’s too silent majority is finally ready to start fighting back for our past.
It’s become obvious that Ken Cuccinelli is a rightwing nut that is determined to set the state of Virginia back 30 years in a woman’s right to choice. This is nothing in the world but an obvious attempt to bypass Roe v. Wade and make abortion almost impossible for many women in the Commonwealth. Once again, it is the poor who will suffer if abortion clinics are shut down.
As a woman, I am sick of women having to fight this same battle over and over and over again.
Virginia abortion rights advocates saw it coming. After Ken Cuccinelli, a rising Republican star known for his hard-line stances on most social issues, was elected state attorney general last year, they knew it was only a matter of time before he zeroed in on abortion.
Earlier this week, Cuccinelli issued a legal opinion advising the state of Virginia to tighten regulation of abortion clinics, holding them to the same standards as hospitals. Abortion-rights groups believe that these regulations would force the majority of the state’s clinics out of business.
Cucinelli’s tactic is not new. In 2001, Mother Jones ran a story about the rise of what abortion rights advocates call TRAP laws, short for Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers. The article, written by Barry Yeoman and titled “The Quiet War on Abortion,” detailed the anti-abortion movement’s shift from targeting the legality of the procedure to applying pressure on its providers:
The new stealth strategy has its genesis in the 1992 U.S. Supreme Court decision Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The ruling reaffirmed 1973′s Roe v. Wade, signaling that overt bans on abortion were unlikely to pass constitutional muster. But it also declared for the first time that states have some authority to regulate abortion clinics, as long as they don’t place an “undue burden” on women’s access to abortions.
The Casey decision started abortion opponents rethinking their tactics. Since direct assaults on Roe wouldn’t fly, “there had to be a shift in strategy by regulation on the outskirts of abortion,” says Dorinda Bordlee, staff counsel for Americans United for Life. That’s when leaders developed a new approach: Couch the issue in terms of women’s health. By claiming that abortions take place in dirty facilities and cause such illnesses as depression and breast cancer, right-to-lifers realized they could subtly move the focus of the debate.
According to NARAL Pro-Choice America, varying degrees of TRAP laws have passed in 44 states plus the District of Columbia. While he was a Virginia state senator, Cuccinelli pushed for the passage of stringent new regulation of abortion clinics. Tarina Keene, the executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Virginia, explained that Cuccinelli’s previous efforts were stymied by a slim Democratic majority in the state Senate that blocked his proposals from reaching the floor. She is not surprised that he is using his current post to try to circumvent the legislature to achieve his longstanding goals.
[snip]
Cuccinelli’s opinion is not binding; it merely advises the Board of Health, the state’s medical regulator, that it has the ability to regulate facilities that provide first-term abortions. If the board takes Cuccinelli’s cue, it will have to open new regulations to public comment and consult with the governor and secretary of health. Such a process would take up to two years.
[snip]
“We predict it’s about $1.5 to $2 million per clinic in extra cost,” Keene said. “It’s just crazy. And the thing is, it’s really just designed to shut these places down. It has nothing to do with medical care.”
She pointed to other outpatient offices performing procedures such as colonoscopies, breast augmentations, and rhinoplasty. “These types of procedures have a much higher complication rate than abortion. [First-trimester abortion] is one of the most common procedures, and it’s one of the safest procedures,” Keene said. “It’s interesting that they are not targeting these other surgeries. It’s only abortion clinics — that’s why we call this TRAP.”
SOURCE
Once again Jon Stewart does the work of the news media and exposes Fox News.
Jon Stewart continued his coverage of the ‘Ground Zero Mosque’ debate last night, focusing on Fox News’ incongruities harder than he ever has. In a segment called “The Parent Company Trap,” Stewart shared with his viewers how Fox News’ plan to “follow the money” from mosque builder Imam Rauf to terrorists will be a tricky one because it leads right back to Fox News.
Stewart showed clips from his show last week, in which he mocked Fox News for playing a dangerous game of association based on speculation, and wherein Fox continued to mention a nameless man with ties to Imam Rauf through the “Kingdom Foundation.” It turns out the man they are referring to but never name is Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, one of the biggest shareholders of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp.
Showing a photo of the prince shaking hands with Rupet Murdoch, Stewart exclaimed, “That’s right, the guy they’re painting as a sinister money force OWNS Fox News.” Stewart then used Fox’s own logic to explain how the “terror mosque” is funded by Prince Alwaleed, despite being a co-owner of Fox News, and therefore funding terrorism. So, using their logic, Stewart said, “If we want to cut off funding to the terror mosque, we must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.”
SOURCE
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
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Since this is a press release I posted the whole thing. Corporations are certainly taking over elections but it’s not really a new thing….it’s just gotten worse.
Remarks of President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
August 21, 2010
As the political season heats up, Americans are already being inundated with the usual phone calls, mailings, and TV ads from campaigns all across the country. But this summer, they’re also seeing a flood of attack ads run by shadowy groups with harmless-sounding names. We don’t know who’s behind these ads and we don’t know who’s paying for them.
The reason this is happening is because of a decision by the Supreme Court in the Citizens United case – a decision that now allows big corporations to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence our elections. They can buy millions of dollars worth of TV ads – and worst of all, they don’t even have to reveal who is actually paying for them. You don’t know if it’s a foreign-controlled corporation. You don’t know if it’s BP. You don’t know if it’s a big insurance company or a Wall Street Bank. A group can hide behind a phony name like “Citizens for a Better Future,” even if a more accurate name would be “Corporations for Weaker Oversight.”
We tried to fix this last month. There was a proposal supported by Democrats and Republicans that would’ve required corporate political advertisers to reveal who’s funding their activities. When special interests take to the airwaves, whoever is running and funding the ad would have to appear in the advertisement and take responsibility for it – like a company’s CEO or an organization’s biggest contributor. And foreign-controlled corporations and entities would be restricted from spending money to influence American elections – just as they were in the past.
You would think that making these reforms would be a matter of common sense. You’d think that reducing corporate and even foreign influence over our elections wouldn’t be a partisan issue.
But the Republican leaders in Congress said no. In fact, they used their power to block the issue from even coming up for a vote.
This can only mean that the leaders of the other party want to keep the public in the dark. They don’t want you to know which interests are paying for the ads. The only people who don’t want to disclose the truth are people with something to hide.
Well, we cannot allow the corporate takeover of our democracy. So we’re going to continue to fight for reform and transparency. And I urge all of you to take up the same fight. Let’s challenge every elected official who benefits from these ads to defend this practice or join us in stopping it.
At a time of such challenge for America, we can’t afford these political games. Millions of Americans are struggling to get by, and their voices shouldn’t be drowned out by millions of dollars in secret, special interest advertising. Their voices should be heard.
Let’s not forget that a century ago, it was a Republican President – Teddy Roosevelt – who first tried to tackle the issue of corporate influence on our elections. He actually called it “one of the principal sources of corruption in our political affairs.” And he proposed strict limits on corporate influence in elections. “Every special interest is entitled to justice,” he said. “but not one is entitled to a vote in Congress, to a voice on the bench, or to representation in any public office.”
We now face a similar challenge, and a similar opportunity to prevent special interests from gaining even more clout in Washington. This shouldn’t be a Democratic issue or a Republican issue. This is an issue that goes to whether or not we will have a democracy that works for ordinary Americans – a government of, by, and for the people. Let’s show the cynics and the special interests that we still can.
As usual, Jon Stewart nails it.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Extremist Makeover – Homeland Edition | ||||
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If you read the whole article you will find that the DoD spent $3.5 million on ONE contract with a ‘consulting’ firm to provide ‘spiritual fitness’ to the troops. Have no doubt, this is the military spreading Evangelical Christianity using our taxpayer dollars. The unconstitutionality of the military actions to proselytize for the Evangelical Christians is undeniable.
And we wonder why other countries believe we are engaging in a religious war against Muslims? What else could they think when the DoD is supporting the idea of a rabid Evangelical Christian Army?
And, I keep hearing conservatives screaming about the deficit….well CUT THIS CRAP OUT of the Defense Budget. This isn’t a justifiable Defense expenditure it’s Congress passing a defense budget that in effect allows the U.S. Military to establish a religion with a wink and a nod from Congress in direct violation of the First Amendment.
WAKE UP AMERICA….did we really fight a war of Independence to allow ourselves in a matter of roughly 240 years to become a theocracy? Is this what we want?
For the past several years, two U.S. Army posts in Virginia, Fort Eustis and Fort Lee, have been putting on a series of what are called Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concerts. As I’ve written in a number of other posts, “spiritual fitness” is just the military’s new term for promoting religion, particularly evangelical Christianity. And this concert series is no different.
On May 13, 2010, about eighty soldiers, stationed at Fort Eustis while attending a training course, were punished for opting out of attending one of these Christian concerts. The headliner at this concert was a Christian rock band called BarlowGirl, a band that describes itself as taking “an aggressive, almost warrior-like stance when it comes to spreading the gospel and serving God.”
Any doubt that this was an evangelical Christian event was cleared up by the Army post’s newspaper, the Fort Eustis Wheel, which ran an article after the concert that began:
Following the Apostle Paul’s message to the Ephesians in the Bible, Christian rock music’s edgy, all-girl band BarlowGirl brought the armor of God to the warriors and families of Fort Eustis during another installment of the Commanding General’s Spiritual Fitness Concert Series May 13 at Jacobs Theater.
The father of the three Barlow sisters who make up the band was also quoted in the article, saying, “We really believe that to be a Christian in today’s world, you have to be a warrior, and we feel very blessed and privileged that God has given us the tool to deliver His message and arm His army.”
A few days later, some of the soldiers punished for choosing not to attend this concert contacted the Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The following is from the account sent by one of those soldiers to MRFF, detailing what transpired that night.
The week prior to the event the [unit name and NCO's name withheld] informed us of a Christian rock event that was about to take place on Thursday the 13th.
[snip]
We started marching to the theater. At that point two Muslim soldiers fell out of formation on their own. Student leadership tried to convince them to fall back in and that a choice will be presented to us once we reach the theater.
At the theater we were instructed to split in two groups; those that want to attend versus those that don’t. At that point what crossed my mind is the fact that being given an option so late in the game implies that the leadership is attempting to make a point about its intention. The “body language” was suggesting that “we marched you here as a group to give you a clue that we really want you to attend (we tilt the table and expect you to roll in our direction), now we give you the choice to either satisfy us or disappoint us.” A number of soldiers seemed to notice these clues and sullenly volunteered for the concert in fear of possible consequences.
Those of us that chose not to attend (about 80, or a little less that half) were marched back to the company area. At that point the NCO issued us a punishment. We were to be on lock-down in the company (not released from duty), could not go anywhere on post (no PX, no library, etc). We were to go to strictly to the barracks and contact maintenance. If we were caught sitting in our rooms, in our beds, or having/handling electronics (cell phones, laptops, games) and doing anything other than maintenance, we would further have our weekend passes revoked and continue barracks maintenance for the entirety of the weekend. At that point the implied message was clear in my mind “we gave you a choice to either satisfy us or disappoint us. Since you chose to disappoint us you will now have your freedoms suspended and contact chores while the rest of your buddies are enjoying a concert.”
At that evening, nine of us chose to pursue an EO complaint. I was surprised to find out that a couple of the most offended soldiers were actually Christian themselves (Catholic). One of them was grown as a child in Cuba and this incident enraged him particularly as it brought memories of oppression.
If you read this ARTICLE the concept behind Spiritual Fitness that is being espoused by the Pentagon bears no resemblance to how Spiritual Fitness is actually playing out in places like Fort Eustis and Fort Lee. I have no problem with Cognitive Behavior Therapy, but I do have a problem, A BIG PROBLEM, with forced adherence to Evangelical Christian doctrine and forced attendance of Evangelical Christian concerts and services. How deep does the Evangelical Christian indoctrination go in the Military?
(Sounds eerily familiar, doesn’t it?)
Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) was an ardent nationalist and prominent Protestant pastor who emerged as an outspoken public foe of Adolf Hitler and spent the last 7 years of Nazi rule in concentration camps.
Since when is TSA tasked with discovering whether or not a woman is embezzling funds or divorcing her husband? Even after this woman was allowed to proceed, Philadelphia police contacted her husband to ask him about the checks. What’s up with that? Had it been a man with those checks would they have checked with the wife to make sure he had ‘permission’ to be in possession of and deposit those checks? What’s next, should a woman have to have a permission slip from her husband to travel?
Just how much freedom and privacy are Americans willing to give up just to fly?
Daniel Rubin: An infuriating search at Philadelphia International Airport
By Daniel Rubin
At what point does an airport search step over the line?
How about when they start going through your checks, and the police call your husband, suspicious you were clearing out the bank account?
That’s the complaint leveled by Kathy Parker, a 43-year-old Elkton, Md., woman, who was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport on Aug. 8.
She says she was heading to Charlotte, N.C., for work that Sunday night – she’s a business support manager for a large bank – and was selected for a more in-depth search after she passed through the metal detectors at Gate B around 5:15 p.m.
A female Transportation Security Administration officer wanded her and patted her down, she says. Then she was walked over to where other TSA officers were searching her bags.
“Everything in my purse was out, including my wallet and my checkbook. I had two prescriptions in there. One was diet pills. This was embarrassing. A TSA officer said, ‘Hey, I’ve always been curious about these. Do they work?’
“I was just so taken aback, I said, ‘Yeah.’ ”
What happened next, she says, was more than embarrassing. It was infuriating.
That same screener started emptying her wallet. “He was taking out the receipts and looking at them,” she said.
“I understand that TSA is tasked with strengthening national security but [it] surely does not need to know what I purchased at Kohl’s or Wal-Mart,” she wrote in her complaint, which she sent me last week.
She says she asked what he was looking for and he replied, “Razor blades.” She wondered, “Wouldn’t that have shown up on the metal detector?”
In a side pocket she had tucked a deposit slip and seven checks made out to her and her husband, worth about $8,000.
Her thought: “Oh, my God, this is none of his business.”
Two Philadelphia police officers joined at least four TSA officers who had gathered around her. After conferring with the TSA screeners, one of the Philadelphia officers told her he was there because her checks were numbered sequentially, which she says they were not.
“It’s an indication you’ve embezzled these checks,” she says the police officer told her. He also told her she appeared nervous. She hadn’t before that moment, she says.
She protested when the officer started to walk away with the checks. “That’s my money,” she remembers saying. The officer’s reply? “It’s not your money.”
At this point she told the officers that she had a good explanation for the checks, but questioned whether she had to tell them.
“The police officer said if you don’t tell me, you can tell the D.A.”
REST OF ARTICLE
