May 2006

By now I am sure most of you have read about Delay thinking Stephen Colbert is actually some right-wing journalist, even though his show is obvious satire and appears on Comedy Central. If you are in the dark on this then check out Think Progress.

Now Bob Greenwald has responded:

Life as I have known it is coming to an end.

How will I ever recover from the harsh sting of a bad review from Tommy boy? According to a recent fundraising effort by Delayites, I "crashed and burned" on Colbert. Clearly, this is tragedy -- Shakespearean in its implications and Chekhovian in its impact.

AND -- now the money addict is using my appearance on Colbert to fundraise. That is either the highest compliment possible, or the lowest blow.

So, see the movie made by Mark Birnbaum and Jim Schermbeck, The Big Buy: Tom DeLay's Stolen Congress, and then decide if Tommy really should be using this film to fundraise. Or better yet -- subpoena the film for his trial, as his lawyer is saying the DeLay team may do!!! What to do in a world turned this upside down? Celebrate Clean Money Day, a day dedicated to the memory of Tom. Go to a house party and work like hell so that some of DeLay's corrupt cronies are thrown out of office this November. In the meantime I will retreat to fathom the meaning of "crash and burn" on Colbert...

Bob did a great response but I am worried about it. Delay has proven that when we deal with him we are dealing with an entirely new level of idiots. They might take what Greenwald said in this post and believe that he is conceding in this. True that might add a little more fun to this very interesting story.

Rep. Tim Ryan (D-OH) blasted the Republicans on the House floor in a blistering speech. He used people like Newt Gingrich as an example of how conservatives are even fed up with the failures our Republican controlled government. Check out the video below the fold. This is a blistering attack

 (h/t Atrios).

The problem with illegal immigration is the employers. These people exploit the conditions in which these people are here and use those reasons for their own profit. If employers didn't higher illegal immigrants then we would not have illegal immigrants. So how is Senate addressing this situation? They are going to fine the employers.

Now some people might think that is a great move, but wait. The Republican legislation slated to pass Senate would make the fines a mere $20,000 dollars. Let's look at what that will do.

You own a farm. You hire 5 illegal aliens to work for $3.15 an hour. If you gave that work to documented workers and had to pay minimum wage it would cost you $2.00 an hour more. That means for every hour of work out of those five immigrants you save $10.00 ($2.00/hr X 5 illegal immigrants). Now if you work these guys 40 hours a week for 1 year you would save $20,800 dollars. Already you are making a savings over what the maximum fine would be.

Finding people to work for the joke we call minimum wage is hard. Say you would have to pay American workers $7.15 an hour. Now if you work those illegal immigrants for one year and get caught, you have still saved yourself over $20,000 after the fine.

This is the same problem that we have with the environment. Current EPA standards limit the fining at $50,000. If you have a company who is doing illegal dumping or deep well injecting of toxins into an oil well, they save over a million a year. That $50,000 is a nice little cost of doing business and it is not guaranteed you are going to get caught.

(This is Karma, my new kitten. She is a three month old bobbed-tail)

Finally Congress is working on some decent legislation:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A television shot of a little boy losing his dog during Katrina rescue operations was the catalyst for the House to pass legislation Monday that would require pets to be considered in emergency-preparedness plans.

"The dog was taken away from this little boy, and to watch his face was a singularly revealing and tragic experience," said Rep. Tom Lantos, a California Democrat and sponsor of the Pet Evacuation and Transportation Standards Act. "This legislation was born at that moment."

The bill, which passed 349-24, would require state and local preparedness offices to take into account pet owners, household pets and service animals when drawing up evacuation plans.

Offices that fail to do so would not qualify for grants from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

I could not even begin to think of how these people felt being taken from their homes while their pets are left to suffer. So many people do not understand that pets are family members to a majority of Americans. This is even more so with seniors who have turned to a furry companion to fill that empty void by the loss of a spouse or loved one.

I have to compliment Congress and working on this bill and the House for passing it. It is nice to see something make its way through that isn't dedicated to helping out the corporations.