Points to Ponder

I have a couple of posts up at the Detroit News. Bush is at it again with the signing statements. I wonder, "Who needs Congress when you have The Decider?"

Condi is in Iraq hollering at Maliki, Bush is on the road collecting cash for the party and Shia militias have taken over the hospitals. It looks like Iraqis are free to live in fear -- again. I'm suggesting regime change.

We knew this, but Atty Tood has proof that Ashcroft was briefed on the 9/11 threat weeks beforehand and protected his own sorry ass but did nothing to inform the traveling public. Tood still has no answer to why "on Sept. 10, 2001, 'a group of top Pentagon officials suddenly canceled travel plans for the next morning, apparently because of security concerns.'

I think this was underreported. British troops find no evidence that Iran is supplying Iraqi insurgents with arms. This of course refutes the Bush administration's contention that Iran is regularly doing so.

This one also slipped under the radar this week. The NLRB continues its mission to destroy unions with new ruling on supervisor classification this week. Center for America Progress estimates 8 million workers could be affected.

Kevin Drum has the best quote on this story.

This is, by the way, the kind of thing I'm talking about when I say that Republicans have made it steadily harder over the years to organize unions. Most people will never hear about this ruling, just as most have never heard of the dozens of other under-the-radar rulings, laws, regulations, and court decisions that have slowly chipped away at the ability of unions to organize over the years. But believe me: business lobbies have. And since this ruling mostly affects service industries, they can't pretend that globalization has forced their hand. They just want to eliminate any organized pressure to pay their workers more.

And pity poor Afghanistan. After five years, the reconstruction is going rather badly and the government has even less control outside of Kabul. Heck it's barely hanging on in the capital. But don't even read the article, just click into the photo gallery on the side bar and let the beautiful pictures tell the ugly story.