"Duct Tape Bandit" pleads guilty

Just In Time For Annual Hudson School District Meeting

Kentucky's infamous "Duct Tape Bandit" is heading to prison.

Last August Kasey Kazee gained international notoriety after robbing a liquor store with his face wrapped in duct tape.

Tuesday was the final chapter in the story. With a clear face, Kazee pleaded guilty to second degree robbery. Gone are the scars that once existed from duct tape that wrapped his face.

Kazee walked into Shamrock Liquors in Catlettsburg with his face wrapped in duct tape and his shirt pulled over his head. He then threatened to kill the clerk, telling her he had a gun.

Kazee was the one who ended up on the short end of the stick when store manager Bill Steele chased him out the door with a club. Even after getting caught tape-faced, Kazee denied the act in his now world famous tirade.

"Look at me. Do I look like a duct tape bandit? I'm not no duct tape bandit," Kazee said in a jailhouse interview.

"Even though it's kind of comical, Mr. Kazee is a very dangerous man. He had a previous robbery charge from 2001 and was out on parole on that when he committed this crime," said David Justice, Commonwealth Attorney.

Has The GOP Boogieman Gone Flaccid?

"Today's GOP spends so much time fretting about how to relive the Reagan heyday, it has failed to do him credit by laying out its own plans for today's unique challenges. It remains in hock to interest groups, running ads about sanctuary cities as Americans curse over gas prices. In a repeat of 2006, it spends more time trying to scare voters about Democrats than defining itself. It refuses to give up the earmarks that are a symbol of its worn-out reign."

Kimberley Strassel

A White House Of Cards

Another Fine RNC Whine - Not Enough Tax Dollars for Their Convention

RNC Hosts Disappointed With Lack Of State Help

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) ― The local committee hosting the Republican National Convention says it's disappointed the state didn't follow through on a promised financial guarantee.

In a letter obtained by The Associated Press, Jeff Larson, chief executive of the Minneapolis Saint Paul 2008 Host Committee, told Gov. Tim Pawlenty and legislative leaders the state's failure to offer financial backing in the event of a cash flow shortage "creates a serious risk of breach of our agreement with the RNC."

Larson asked state and local leaders to find an alternative way to fulfill the state's commitment. In a phone interview on Friday, he didn't offer suggestions but said he hoped "creative minds can come together."

As the host committee was trying to lure either the Democratic and Republican National Conventions to St. Paul, it negotiated a package that included a state commitment to back the committee's fundraising with a letter of credit that would be executed if there's a cash flow shortage.

"The commitment of this guarantee by the State was a critical element in the Republican National Committee's decision to award the 2008 Convention to Minneapolis and Saint Paul," Larson wrote in the letter, dated May 21. The convention will be held at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul from Sept. 1-4.

The Legislature didn't pass a bill seeking a $39 million letter of credit in 2007. And in the 2008 session that ended Sunday, a smaller amount of $14 million wasn't approved, either.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said in an e-mail Friday that the governor had "repeatedly and directly" asked the Legislature to secure financial backing for the committee.

"Those requests were rejected by DFL legislative leaders, including when the request was made during the final negotiations to close up the budget," McClung wrote. "This was particularly frustrating because the Department of Finance said that the transaction would be revenue neutral and would not impact the state budget."

Through a spokesman, House Speaker Margaret Anderson Kelliher, a Minneapolis Democrat, said: "The line of credit for the Republican National Convention was included in the House tax bill. In the end, the House, Senate and Governor's office could not reach an agreement on this issue."

Senate Majority Leader Larry Pogemiller, DFL-Minneapolis, said the line of credit was included in a tax bill that Pawlenty vetoed during the 2007 legislative session. "We didn't see any reason to do it again," Pogemiller said.

The host committee is obligated to raise $39 million for the convention; but the committee has an end goal of $58 million to cover operational costs. Larson said fundraising is on track, and the committee anticipates it will raise 80 percent of its $39 million contractual commitment by June 15.

Larson said the state's inaction isn't likely to have financial consequences for the convention; the last two Republican National Conventions have had letters of credit that weren't drawn upon.

But Larson takes issue with the principle behind the commitment. In his letter, he wrote: "Minnesotans are well known for honoring their commitments. It gives us grave cause for concern when the five highest ranking public officials in our State are unable to make good on a commitment of this importance and significance."

The convention is expected to bring $150 million to $160 million in economic activity to the area and create 2,800 jobs, generating over $100 million in wages, Larson said.

Matt Burns, convention spokesman, said in an e-mail that the convention will be successful in September, but it's unfortunate that the state didn't meet its obligation.

There's No "US" in "Utopia"

"Real hourly wages for most workers, on the other hand, have risen only 1% since 1979, even as those workers' productivity has increased by 60%. What's more, American workers now clock more hours per year than their counterparts in virtually every other advanced economy, even Japan. And unless you haven't read a newspaper for 15 years, you already know what's happened to workers' health insurance and pension plans..."


"...What has overtaken America's working people is not a natural disaster like "globalization," and not even some kind of societal atavism in which countries regress mysteriously to their 19th-century selves. This is a man-made catastrophe, a result that proceeded directly from the deliberate beatdown of organized labor and the wrecking of the liberal state."


"...It is, in other words, a political disaster, with tax cuts, trade agreements, deregulatory measures, and enforcement decisions all finely crafted to benefit one part of society and leave the rest behind. Few of the voters who gave Ronald Reagan his landslide victories, it is fair to say, intended for this to be the outcome. They wanted their country to stand tall again, certainly; they wanted the scary regulators off their backs, maybe; but I can recall no conservative who trumpeted those long-ago elections – or any of the succeeding contests, for that matter – as a referendum on plutocracy."



"...So let us have one now. Instead of pleasant talk about "change" and feats of beer drinking at the corner tavern, let us hear our candidates address this greatest issue of them all: What kind of country are we to be? A land of equality? Or a bankers' utopia – where the law of the land has achieved mystical oneness with the higher law of classical economics, and devil take the bottom 80%."

Thomas Frank
Fighting Words
Read more @Wall Street Journal.

Counter point to Frank's column by James Pethokoukis @ US News & World Report.

Chris Matthews Tears Up Kevin James on Hardball

"...(Kevin) James goes off like fireworks, blasting Obama's willingness to talk to the nation's enemies and accusing him of policies detrimental to Israel. And Matthews asks him a simple question: What did Chamberlain do? You're defending a speech that equates Obama with him, so what was his sin?

James couldn't answer. He could bluster, sputter and spread fertilizer like a gardener, but he couldn't answer. This became painfully obvious each time Matthews doggedly repeated the question.

What Chamberlain did — he gave Hitler a chunk of Czechoslovakia in exchange for what he thought was "peace in our time" — is not some "Jeopardy!" obscurity. It is, rather, a pivot on which turned perhaps the bloodiest tragedy in human history. Yet Kevin James knows nothing about it.
If anything more aptly symbolizes the regression of conservatism since the age of Reagan, I am not aware of it.

Some will say it's unfair to paint thoughtful conservatives with the same brush one uses to tar this blowhard. I would suggest the very need to use that modifier speaks volumes..."

Leonard J. Pitts, Jr.
Read more.

There's No "Pragmatist" in "GOP"

"Consider independents, that key voting group and bellwether of the national mood. Analysts have pointed to the growing number of registered independents as proof the country is moving toward the "middle." But as pollster Whit Ayres notes, what primarily defines independents is that they are all "cynical about politics and politicians." They aren't ideological in any particular way – left, right or center. They are "pragmatists," says Mr. Ayres. "They want solutions to problems."

This is what Republicans haven't yet understood. Their failures in office kicked off this anger, and they remain its target. Yet they've been doing a remarkable impression of 1980s Democrats, who engaged in trivial warfare even as Ronald Reagan laid out his vision for the future.

Today's GOP spends so much time fretting about how to relive the Reagan heyday, it has failed to do him credit by laying out its own plans for today's unique challenges. It remains in hock to interest groups, running ads about sanctuary cities as Americans curse over gas prices. In a repeat of 2006, it spends more time trying to scare voters about Democrats than defining itself. It refuses to give up the earmarks that are a symbol of its worn-out reign."

Kim Strassel
Potomac Watch
Read more @ Wall Street Journal.

McCain's Spiritual Guides

The principle of the crusades was a savage fanaticism; and the most important effects were analogous to the cause. Each pilgrim was ambitious to return with his sacred spoils, the relics of Greece and Palestine; and each relic was preceded and followed by a train of miracles and visions. The belief of the Catholics was corrupted by new legends, their practice by new superstitions; and the establishment of the inquisition, the mendicant orders of monks and friars, the last abuse of indulgences, and the final progress of idolatry, flowed from the baleful fountain of the holy war. The active spirit of the Latins preyed on the vitals of their reason and religion; and, if the ninth and tenth centuries were the times of darkness, the thirteenth and fourteenth were the age of absurdity and fable.

Edward Gibbon
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire


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"Some Christian ideals change with time and culture. Today, we do not share many of the assumptions of medieval Christians. The modern world exalts democratic individualism, religious liberty, and the separation of church and state. Urban II and the crusaders lived in a world with different ideals. Still, we consider it unfortunate that the crusaders never understood two basic truths: Christianity’s highest satisfactions are not guaranteed by possession of special places, and the sword is never God’s way to extend Christ’s kingdom."

Dr. Bruce Shelley
Christianity Today

Prosperity! What Is It Good For?

"We are a crazy country. The scariest idea we have is of success, prosperity and victory. Nobody wins wars. We have to finally get over that idea. Who gives a s— who wins a high school football game? I am not a competitive person, maybe because I was an only child, so I never had to fight for the second pork chop. I think it's bad manners to compete. Hillary Clinton's greatest vulgarity is her competitive spirit."

Bill Holm
Minnesota writer

Getting Hosed By Idealism

"When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. ... Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked 'insufficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt."

Martin Luther King, Jr.



"Like other American heroes -- Thomas Jefferson, for example, combined a disturbing tolerance for the violence of the French Revolution with the lifelong ownership of slaves -- King was not a simple figure. He inclined toward democratic socialism as the answer to poverty. In his opposition to the Vietnam War, he called America "the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today" and thundered that God might "break the backbone" of American power. Toward the end of his short life -- after years of water hoses and attack dogs, wiretaps and bomb threats -- King became increasingly isolated and depressed.

...Under King's leadership, the civil rights movement affirmed several principles: a belief that Providence favors justice and forbids despair; a belief that even the most bigoted white people have a core of humanity that might be touched and redeemed; a belief that American ideals were the ultimate answer to America's sins."

Michael Gerson
Read more @ Washington Post.

GOP Stands For Family Values

Fossella Is Said to Be Ending Re-election Bid

After more than two weeks of damaging and scandal-filled headlines, Representative Vito J. Fossella of Staten Island has decided not to seek another term in Congress, according to several people close to him.

Mr. Fossella, 43, has been the object of intense scrutiny since he was arrested in a Washington suburb on May 1 and charged with drunken driving. At the time of his arrest, his blood alcohol level was reportedly 0.17 percent, twice the legal limit in Virginia. Under that state’s law, he faces a mandatory five days in jail if convicted.

A week after his arrest, Mr. Fossella, the only Republican representing New York City in Congress, disclosed that he had been on the way to visit Laura Fay, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel. He acknowledged that he and Ms. Fay had had an affair and that they were the parents of a 3-year-old daughter.

Read more @New York Times.

Bush Makes Ultimate Sacrifice for Our Troops

From Washinton Post:

By Dan Eggen

Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 14, 2008; Page A02

President Bush said yesterday that he gave up golfing in 2003 "in solidarity" with the families of soldiers who were dying in Iraq, concluding that it was "just not worth it anymore" to play the sport in a time of war.

"I don't want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the commander in chief playing golf," Bush said in a White House interview with the Politico. "I feel I owe it to the families to be as -- to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal."

Bush said he decided to stop playing golf on Aug. 19, 2003, when a truck bomb in Baghdad killed U.N. special representative Sergio Vieira de Mello and more than a dozen others.

He said he received word of the attack while playing golf during a stay at the family ranch near Crawford, Tex. Press reports at the time indicate he took the call from Condoleezza Rice, then his national security adviser.

"They pulled me off the golf course, and I said it's just not worth it anymore to do," Bush said in yesterday's interview.

President Bush made further sacrifices for our troops by taking up drumming and dancing.

"I've always thought anyone can make money. Making a life worth living, that's the real test."

Robert Fulghum

Populist Pitchforks Of America Arise!

"The state of the union is angry. Citizens are furious about gas prices and health-care costs, broken schools and property taxes. These are the leaky hydrants, the constant reminders that government hasn't done much for them lately. Their fury has bubbled as they've watched Washington obsess over itself – dealing out earmarks, paying off constituencies, launching probes into political enemies. Accomplishing zip.

This anger is the best way to describe today's political landscape. Ever since Republicans were routed in 2006, and more recently with their loss of three special elections, the party has been in a debate about what changed in the country and what to do in response. In the primaries, as Mike Huckabee pitched to evangelicals, Rudy Giuliani pitched to fiscal conservatives, and Mitt Romney pitched to anything that moved, some went so far as to declare the "death" of the Reagan coalition."

Kimberley Strassel
Potomac Watch

Read more @Wall Street Journal.

A Mellon For You Thoughts...

"(Andrew) Mellon's exceptionally long tenure as treasury secretary, from 1921 until 1932, serving three of America's most pro-business presidents, showed him adept at using public office for private gain. Like Dick Cheney, a continuing beneficiary of Halliburton largesse, he saw no contradiction between the two. An early proponent of the theory of supply-side economics, that cutting taxes on the rich would spur economic growth, Mellon anticipated by 60 years the pro-plutocrat policies of Reagan and Bush. As secretary, Mellon continued illegally to remain actively engaged in his business affairs, lobbying for tariffs to protect his firms and contracts to help expand them, while repeatedly lying to Congress and the press about his involvement.

In keeping with his distrust of government intervention (except in his favour) and fervent belief in inequality and social Darwinism (strains of thought used today to justify America's porcine corporate salaries and feeble social insurance system), Mellon chillingly rejected any notion that the government should intervene to help those ruined by the Crash of 1929, or those whose jobs and businesses were annihilated in the Great Depression of the 1930s. Speculators "deserved it"; while the unemployed "will work harder, lead a more moral life". Around this time, as criticism of Mellon grew, his son Paul saw this ditty written in a urinal: "Mellon pulled the whistle/Hoover rang the bell/Wall Street gave the signal/And the country went to hell." Cannadine perhaps fails to draw out how much Mellon's (lack of) policies towards the Depression discredited Republican laissez-faire economics for two generations, until their current vogue."

Mark Bearn
Book review of Mellon: An American Life by David Cannadine
Read view @ News Statesman

Too Much...

"After a while, the United States is simply too much: too much religion and not enough gods, too much news and not enough wisdom, too many weapons of mass destruction ... too much entertainment and not enough beauty, too much electricity and not enough light. ... And the worst excess of all: too many wars, too much misery and brutality — reflected as much in our own eyes as in those of our enemies."

Bill Holm
Minnesota writer

Politics Is Only Slogan Deep

"Of all of the presidential contenders’ slogans this year, Barack Obama’s have been the most interesting. His campaign creed is: “Yes, we can.” To which any reasonable person would ask: “Can what?” The answer, of course, is: “Hope.” But again, a reasonable person might ask: “Hope for what?” To which the answer confidently comes back from the Obama campaign: “For change.” Indeed Obama’s signs say: “Change We Can Believe In,” as opposed, one supposes, to the unbelievable changes. But the elementary problem with this—which any student of logic might raise—is that change can be for the better or for the worse.

Democrats in general, I would submit, confuse change with improvement. They fail to weigh the costs and benefits of change, to consider its unintended consequences, or to worry about what we need to conserve and how we might go about doing that faithfully. They ask Americans to embrace change for its own sake, in the faith that history is governed by a law of progress, which guarantees that change is almost always an improvement. The ability to bring about historical change, then, becomes the highest mark of the liberal leader. Thus Hillary Clinton quickly joined Obama on the change bandwagon. Her initial claim of “experience” sounded in retrospect a bit too boring—indeed, almost Republican in its plainness. So “Ready on Day One” signs morphed into “Ready for Change.”

Republican slogans have not been much better. Mitt Romney’s was: “Washington is Broken.” This populist refrain echoed, among others, Ross Perot’s from 1992. Romney, of course, was less a populist than an expert offering his skill as a businessman-consultant. He appealed to the old Republican fantasy that if only Washington could be run as efficiently as a private business, all would be well. But government is a very different thing from business: Elected officials can’t hire or fire government employees at will, are responsible to an electorate at regular intervals, and, above all, must try to persuade people about goals that-—unlike, say, pursuing higher profits—are amorphous and disputable.

As for John McCain, he doesn’t really have a slogan, unless we count “Mac is Back.” McCain differentiated himself from Romney by saying that he is a leader rather than a manager. A leader, McCain argued, appeals to patriotism rather than self-interest. Certainly McCain’s leading characteristic is his personal honor, which—unlike many republican men of honor—he talks about a lot and in public. He fits the traditional category of a war hero-turned-politician, but with one important difference. Usually war heroes are victorious generals, whereas McCain is famous as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, a war that ended in defeat. This fact helps to explain the somewhat prickly and self-referential quality to his sense of honor. He despises self-interest and likes to say so frequently in public, whether it’s the self-interest involved in campaign contributions (which he wants to regulate), attitudes towards illegal immigration (he imputes to its critics the most selfish motives), or even something like waterboarding (a kind of selfish act, motivated by an urgent sense of national interest). McCain stands against all considerations of low self-interest—or maybe any self-interest—in favor of doing the honorable thing, which sometimes turns out to mean simply doing the thing that John McCain wants to do."

Charles Kessler
Editor, Claremont Review of Books

Read more of “Limited Government: Are the Good Times Really Over?”

Do "Libertarians" Equal Limited Government

"From a certain point of view—let’s call it, for shorthand purposes, the libertarian point of view, or the view associated this year with Ron Paul—every dollar that government spends comes at the cost of freedom. The premise of this view is that government and freedom are opposites—that all government is oppression. By this way of thinking, limited government is simply limited oppression, differing in magnitude but not in kind from tyranny. Interestingly, this notion does not come originally from any libertarian thinker or friend of freedom. It comes from Machiavelli, the great analyst of open and hidden power, of force and fraud. From Machiavelli’s point of view, there’s no difference between just and unjust government, which are the same phenomenon called by different names. All government, whether considered to be just or unjust, is oppression. Just government is the kind we happen to agree with and profit from, and unjust is the opposite kind.

Against this view stand the American Founders and the greatest statesmen, who have always sharply distinguished between just and unjust—or between free and tyrannical—forms of government. What is the Declaration of Independence but a great meditation on the difference between the absolute despotism contemplated by King George III and the freedom that the Americans hoped to enjoy under their own form of self-government? The Declaration does not proclaim that just government is merely less oppressive than unjust government—as if the American republic and, say, Nazi Germany were separated only by degrees of tyranny. Our ancestors thought that republican governments like ours were good because, grounded in human nature and operating by law and consent, they affirmed human liberty. Though fundamentally devoted to the protection of our natural rights, such governments, especially at the local level, might also provide instruction in morality, because republican habits and customs are needed to shape a republican citizenry who can keep government limited, and who have the character to make liberty something good and enduring."

Charles Kessler
Editor, Claremont Review of Books

Read more at Imprimis.

A Cold Day On The Border Line:

McCain Embraces Climate Change!!!


PORTLAND, Ore. — John McCain launched a green-tinted courtship of West Coast swing voters on Monday, with a call to action on global warming and an indictment of the Bush administration's "failed" policies to combat it.

The presumptive Republican presidential nominee visited the wind-power technology firm Vestas, near Portland International Airport, to decry melting polar ice, vanishing glaciers, changes in animal migration and "rising temperatures and waters," all products, he said, of a reliance on fossil fuels that threatens America's economy and security.

Read more Chris and Curt.

The Cleverly HillaryBillies

Architect of the Roaring '20s

“Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate farmers, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system...and enterprising people will pick up the wrecks from less competent people.”

Andrew Mellon

US Secretary of the Treasury during the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge and Hoover administrations



In the darkest days of the Depression, Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, one of the richest men in the United States, opposed any government action to stem the tide of plunging business activity and soaring unemployment. Instead, he urged a policy of supreme indifference.

John Maynard Keynes, for one, thought that prescriptions like Mellon's were preposterous. The economist called those who held such views "austere and puritanical souls" who believed that it would "be a victory for the mammon of unrighteousness" if general prosperity were not "subsequently balanced by universal bankruptcy." Keynes perceived too much good in prosperity to treat it as the enemy, and he revolutionized economic theory to prove his point.

Read more...

"One of the prevailing theories at the time of the Depression was the so-called "liquidationist thesis" - which said basically "let's let the system return to normal. Let's liquidate banks; let's liquidate labor." This was Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary [from 1921 to 1932]. It was partly on the basis of that theory that the Federal Reserve stood by and let a third of the banks in the country fail, which caused the money supply to drop sharply, and prices to fall rather sharply, and led ultimately to the severity of the financial crisis.

I think financial instability, which was not addressed by government or anyone else, was a major contributor, both to the Depression in the US and abroad. I believe the difference today is that we will address financial issues and try to maintain the integrity and stability of our financial system. We will not let prices fall at 10% a year. We will act as needed to keep the economy growing and stable. So, I think there are some very significant differences between the thirties and today, and we learned a great deal from that episode."

Ben Bernanke
April 2, 2008
before Congress' Joint Economic Committee

Liquidation is the only answer.

Andrew Mellon: Father Of Trickle Down Economics

Another Reason To Fear Caribbean Communism

Cuba gives raises to retirees, court employees; says more salary increases on way



Cuba's government on Sunday announced sizable raises for retirees and court employees, and promised future pay hikes for other government workers, saying the increases would target lower-income islanders in a bid to reduce inequalities.

The pay increases — which will affect almost one in five Cubans — were the first since 2005 and the first since Raul Castro replaced his ailing brother Fidel as president. Since taking office in February, he has done away with some of Cuba's most-despised restrictions on daily life, bolstering his popularity and sparking rumors that more changes are coming.

Read more comrades.

Daddy's Little Girl

Minnesota GOP Flaunts More "Family Values" Initiatives

Jena Bush Warms Up For for Fun White house Wedding and GOP Convention Antics
























ST. PAUL (AP) ―

Beer taps, wine corkscrews and martini shakers should get an extra workout during the Republican National Convention thanks to state legislation that pushes bar closing time out by two hours.

The Minnesota Legislature approved a compromise bill Thursday that would let local governments in the seven-county Twin Cities area allow liquor dispensing until 4 a.m. during the convention's run.

The current cutoff time for bars is 2 a.m.

From August 31 to September 5, bars could stay open the extra time if their cities give the OK. The local governments would be allowed to charge special permit fees of up to $2,500.

The Senate approved the bill on a 42-20 vote and the House fell in line with a 112-22 vote, forwarding the bill to Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
































Pawlenty, a prominent supporter of presumptive GOP nominee John McCain, said he won't get in the way."No good happens after bar closing time," he said. "But for one week, for this purpose, I think it's fine."

“One of our pitches is to prove to them we are a fun city, the funnest in the country and a 24-hour city,” Hanson said. “That means providing opportunities for them to socialize and enjoy our city as much as possible.” Spokesperson from Minneapolis.



More "Family Friendly" GOP highlights:

Minimum wage agreement faces Pawlenty veto

A legislative agreement to raise Minnesota's minimum wage in two stages faces a veto threat from Gov. Tim Pawlenty, who wasn't swayed by changes designed to attract his signature.

Pawlenty spokesman Brian McClung said the governor would veto the bill if it reached him in the current form.

Under the plan, the bottom hourly wage for workers at large employers would go up 60 cents to $6.75 in mid-July and climb another dollar a year later. Businesses with annual sales above $625,000 are considered large employers.

Smaller employers would have to pay workers at least $5.75 an hour beginning this July and $6.75 by July 2009. The current minimum wage for them is $5.25 per hour.

House and Senate negotiators said Wednesday they met Pawlenty more than halfway by settling on a lower wage than originally proposed and by pulling out an automatic escalator that would cause the minimum wage to rise on its own in future years.

Rep. Tom Rukavina, the lead House sponsor, also urged the Republican governor to reconsider his stance, citing his upbringing in a blue-collar household.

"I'm hoping that he remembers his roots and where he came from and protects these lowest-paid workers in the state," said Rukavina, DFL-Virginia. "After all, he's protected the highest-paid workers in the state."

Pawlenty rebukes Archbishop's Birthday Wish:

St. Paul, Minn. — Archbishop Flynn says he is not an economist, but he is concerned about the dignity of people.

Flynn supports a bill passed by the Minnesota House this week that would increase the state's current minimum wage of $6.15 an hour by 75 cents in July. The archbishop says people shouldn't need a second or third job to make ends meet.

"True human dignity means that people not only focus on their material survival, but that they have time and opportunity to participate in their social, cultural, and spiritual development as well," Flynn said.

Archbishop Flynn says Minnesota does better than many states on several quality of life indicators. He says the minimum wage should reflect those values.

The state Senate passed a different version of a minimum wage bill last year, and a conference committee will meet next week to try to reach a compromise.

Gov. Tim Pawlenty has said he favors an increase in the state's minimum wage, but he can't support the House bill since it contains an automatic inflation increase.

McCain - "Bush Made Great Progress"

Bush Tax Cuts Create New High Tech Jobs - In India

THIS IS INDIA.

IT IS WHERE YOU CALL WHEN YOU HAVE

A TECHNICAL PROBLEM WITH YOUR COMPUTER

McCain: Swamp Land In Arizona? No Problem!

McCain Pushed Land Swap That Benefits Backer
(Pssst...it's called "politics.")

PRESCOTT, Ariz. -- Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

Read more.

Limbaugh Encourages Diversity In "Operation Chaos"

The Drive-By Media is deliberately misreporting that Rush called off Operation Chaos. He did no such thing! Rush has an agenda: to dump this old Hillary-Obama storyline so the Drive-By Media can focus on Rush as the true messiah.

Rush’s Dingle Berries of Wisdom:

There are elected officials named George and Dick who expect to benefit from all the suffering with gas and food prices. They know I turn to Viagra to alleviate my limp dick and to avoid having prostitutes call my Mr. Winky ‘the Little Guy.’"

"According to the Department of Waste Management, talk radio bullshit production has increased approximately 40% since Super Tuesday, while US gulibility has grown more than 30%."

"The Republican Party does not have an attack machine. It doesn't even have a defense machine. The Republican Party is just sitting around twiddling its thumbs and hoping people continue to send it money. There is a conservative survival machine, and it exists entirely to spank it’s own monkey!"

What The Duck...

McCain Makeover Aimed At Young Voters

Citizen? McCain

Washington Post:


"On Wednesday evening, the U.S. Senate unanimously declared John S. McCain III a "natural-born citizen," eligible to be president of the United States. That was the good news for the presumptive Republican nominee, who was born nearly 72 years ago in a military hospital in the Panama Canal Zone. The bad news is that the Senate resolution is a non-binding opinion that fails to resolve one of the murkiest, untested areas of the U.S. constitution."

















No McCain listed.

"Despite widespread popular belief, U.S. military installations abroad and U.S. diplomatic or consular facilities are not part of the United States within the meaning of the 14th Amendment. A child born on the premises of such a facility is not subject to the jurisdiction of the United States and does not acquire U.S. citizenship by reason of birth."

While some people will no doubt seize on the missing birth record as evidence that McCain was not born in the Canal Zone, my own view is that it is probably a bureaucratic snafu. The combination of the birth announcement in the Panamanian American plus the McCain birth certificate plus the memories of his 96-year-old mother persuades me that the senator was indeed born inside the Canal Zone.

But that does not entirely end the constitutional debate. The question remains: how did McCain acquire his U.S. citizenship, by birth or by naturalization. Even though the 10-mile wide Canal Zone was effectively under American sovereignty between 1904 and 1979, when it was handed back to the Panamanians, it was not "in" the United States.

Less Government / More Freedom - Call Your Travel Agent to Book A Carefree Somali Vacation

Our new mayor's political ideology in action:
"Freedom's just another word for nothing left to loose"
From the BBC:

Watch Video:

"People who have visited the capital, Mogadishu, recently say parts of it are a ghost town, but Amnesty says residents fleeing the city are prey for armed bandits on the road who rape women and girls and steal whatever they have taken with them."
"Somalia has been without a central government for more than 17 years and for the past 17 months, the Ethiopian-backed interim government has been struggling to exert its control over the country."

Free Market Tribute to Fallen Heros

Home Depot Honors Fallen Soldiers With Great Prices On Tools

Tough Questions for Sen. McCain

Profits Don't Equal Patriotism

"The commercial spirit is the spirit of profit, not patriotism; of credit, not honor; of individual gain, not national prosperity; of trade and dickering, not principle. "My business is sacred " says the business man in his heart. "Whatever prospers my business, is good; it must be. Whatever hinders it, is wrong; it must be. A bribe is bad, that is, it is a bad thing to take; but it is not so bad to give one, not if it is necessary to my business." "Business is business" is not a political sentiment, but our politician has caught it. He takes essentially the same view of the bribe, only he saves his self-respect by piling all his contempt upon the bribe-giver and he has the great advantage of candor. "It is wrong, maybe," he says, ‘but if a rich merchant can afford to do business with me for the sake of a convenience or to increase his already great wealth, I can afford, for the sake of living, to meet him half way. I make no pretensions to virtue, not even on Sunday."

Lincoln Steffens
From The Shame of the Cities (1904)

Ain't Politics Grand!

With the 1924 Presidential and congressional elections only two weeks away, politicians of all parties began to promise lower taxes to woo voters. In this cartoon, “Mr. Tax Payer” revels in all the attention as the Republican elephant, the Democratic donkey, and the Progressive goat try to outdo each other.

Cartoons by Clifford K. Berryman

See more at The National Archives & Records Administration.

4056 American soldiers dead, 1,205,025 Iraqis dead, $3 trillion & climbing

"Oh, no, we're not going to have any casualties."

President George W. Bush,
(Response attributed to him by the Reverend Pat Robertson, when Robertson warned the president to prepare the nation for "heavy casualties" in the event of an Iraq war, 3/2003)


"Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, Saddam has continued to produce them, he has existing and active military plans for the use of chemical and biological weapons, which could be deployed within 45 minutes."

Prime Minister Tony Blair
Sept 24, 2002

"I think things have gotten so bad inside Iraq, from the standpoint of the Iraqi people, my belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators"

Vice President Dick Cheney
March 16 2003

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"

Barbara Bush,
on Good Morning America
March 18,2003

"See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda."

President George W. Bush
May 24, 2005

The Times They Aren't A Changin'

"The conditions which surround us best justify our cooperation: we meet in the midst of a nation brought to the verge of moral, political, and material ruin. Corruption dominates the ballot-box, the legislatures, the Congress, and touches even the ermine of the bench. The people are demoralized; most of the States have been compelled to isolate the voters at the polling-places to prevent universal intimidation or bribery. The newspapers are largely subsidized or muzzled; public opinion silenced; business prostrated; our homes covered with mortgages; labor impoverished; and the land concentrating in the hands of the capitalists. The urban workmen are denied the right of organization for self-protection; imported pauperized labor beats down their wages; a hireling standing army, unrecognized by our laws, is established to shoot them down, and they are rapidly degenerating into European conditions. The fruits of the toil of millions are boldly stolen to build up colossal fortunes for a few, unprecedented in the history of mankind; and the possessors of these, in turn, despise the republic and endanger liberty. From the same prolific womb of governmental injustice we breed the two great classes-tramps and millionaires."

From the Populist Party platform 1892

McCain On Gay Rights

Obama Union Support

How Ya Gonna Keep Him Down In Hyde Park?

"The humblest citizen of all the land, when clad in the armor of a righteous cause, is stronger than all the hosts of error."

William Jennings Bryan

The Hyde Park Hillbilly Speaks

“It's a funny story so get ready to laugh. Get ready to bust your sides laughin', 'cause it's sure a funny story. It's about a hick, a hick like you, if you please. Yeah, like you. He grew up on the dirt roads and the gully washes of a farm. He knew what it was to get up before dawn and get feed and slop and milk before breakfast, and then set out before sunup and walk six miles to a one-room, slab-sided schoolhouse. Aw, this hick knew what it was to be a hick, all right. He figured if he was gonna get anything done, well, he had to do it himself. So he sat up nights and studied books. He studied law, because he thought he might be able to change things some -- for himself and for folks like him.

Now I'm not gonna lie to ya. He didn't start off thinkin' about the hicks and all the wonderful things he was gonna do for 'em. Naw, naw, he started off thinkin' of number one. But something came to him on the way. How he could do nothin' for himself without the help of the people. That's what came to him. And it also came to him with the powerful force of God's own lightning back in his home county when the school building collapsed 'cause it was built of politics' rotten brick. It killed and mangled a dozen kids. But you know that story. The people were his friends because he'd fought that rotten brick. And some of the politicians down in the city, they knew that, so they rode up to his house in a big, fine, shiny car and said as how they wanted him to run for President.

And he swallowed it. He looked in his heart and he thought, in all humility, how he'd like to try and change things. He was just a country boy who thought that even the plainest, poorest man can be President if his fellow citizens find he's got the stuff for the job. All those fellows in the striped pants, they saw that hick and they took him in.

Now, shut up! Shut up, all of you. Now, listen to me, you hicks. Yeah, you're hicks too, and they fooled you a thousand times, just like they fooled me. But this time, I'm gonna fool somebody. I'm gonna stay in this race. I'm on my own and I'm out for blood. Now listen to me, you hicks! Listen to me, and lift up your eyes and look at God's blessed and unfly-blown truth. And this is the truth. You're a hick, and nobody ever helped a hick but a hick himself!

Alright, listen to me! Listen to me! I'm the hick they were gonna use to split the hick vote. Well, I'm standin' right here now on my hind legs. Even a dog can learn to do that. Are you standin' on your hind legs? Have you learned to do that much yet? Here it is! Here it is you hicks! Nail up anybody who stands in your way! Nail up Hillary Clinton! Nail up McCain! And if they don't deliver, give me the hammer and I'll do it myself!”

Food For Thought