UPDATED: Carper Vote Watch

UPDATE: Carper is a jerk. Shocking! From Jen Hill, SEIU: As of last night our Senator Carper has signed on to the Nelson Collins amendment. The amendment will reduce the…

It is worse than you think…

The unemployment numbers. Look at where the jobs are being cut. Construction and Manufacturing in the top 4 industries affected, with rates in the double digits. Indeed, the 18% for…

Women and Children First

Followed by cops and firefighters.  You can screw science, as well.  But rest easy, defense spending will increase under the latest stimulus plan changes. Total Reductions: $80 billion Eliminations: Head…

Deep FOIA Thought

Sitting in my car at a level crossing waiting for 100 car coal train headed for the Indian River Power Plant to pass by, I heard that Pete Schwartzkopf is…

Insanity

What Atrios, Digby and John Cole said.... I really don’t understand how bipartisanship is ever going to work when one of the parties is insane. Imagine trying to negotiate an…

598,000 Jobs Lost in January

While unemployment jumps to 7.6 percent. Recession-battered employers eliminated 598,000 jobs in January, the most since the end of 1974, and catapulted the unemployment rate to 7.6 percent. The grim…

Talking Point Smackdown — Honeybees!

One of the resident wingnuts brought up a portion of the recovery package that is supposed to support honeybees — of course, you consider the source and presume that you are dealing with more manufactured outrage over something silly. Little did I know. Yesterday evening, I found out exactly what she was talking about (column by Michael Hiltzik in the LA Times):

What in heaven’s name does Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell have against honeybees?

That question haunted my days after I saw the Kentucky Republican on TV fulminating about a provision he found in the proposed government stimulus package. The provision, he said, would provide $150 million for “honeybee insurance.”

“This is nonsense,” he said, as if he took it personally. You had to think he got stung as a kid or maybe caught a local swarm in the act of recruiting aphids for Al Qaeda.

So I resolved to get to the bottom of this scandalous expenditure.

Hiltzik provides some more background here, so make sure you go read it all, but here is the good part:

Jacket-less Bush

First a lesson in Irony, and now a lesson in Hyprocrisy. Andrew Card, you can stick your condescension and your smug racist advice for Obama where the sun don't shine.…

Confidence

The classic refrain from Wall Street and the Republicans, in opposition to President Obama’s $500,000 cap on the salaries of those bank executives who have so failed in their jobs that they required billions of taxpayer money, is that 1) the market should determine the salaries; and 2) the best get paid the best.
Those two excuses are, of course, wrong. Banks were failing all last year, but the market did nothing to prevent those failed CEOs and executives from receiving hundreds of millions, if not billions, in bonuses that they did not earn. Indeed, some of the bonuses paid out had the feel of a literal robbery. And if these miserable failures in life did earn that money, if they were the best, then why are banks failing everywhere? Why did they need a federal bailout?

Logic is the enemy of Wall Street now, I suppose. It has always been the enemy of Republicans. But I digress.

His rotundness, Ric Struthers, the head of Bank of America’s credit card operation, was in Wilmington yesterday to talk about irony.

Yes, irony.