Category: Politics

The main reason I’m posting this is because Annette and I saw a blurb about this on the news last night and her reaction to it (as was mine) was “what a crock.”

You may have seen or heard the story, that some “study” has suggested that U.S. mothers deserve a salary of around $134 K a year. Here’s a quote/passage from this Yahoo News article:

A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother’s role — housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

First off– and this is where I’m putting on my academic hat briefly– this study has enough holes in it to taxi a 747 through. People don’t hold ten different jobs at the same time. All of us– moms, dads, kids, etc.– multi-task like this. In our household, these tasks are not all neatly assigned to “mom,” either. I mean, I’m more of the laundry machine operator, cook, and computer operator in our corporation er household than Annette, I think. I could go on, but at face value this, is just freakin’ stoopid.

And it’s also patronizing, ultimately. We all know that the “job” of “home maker” has been traditionally undervalued, and we all also know damn well that there’s no way there’s going to be some program to pay mothers. So what can we do to make mom-types feel better? I know! Let’s invent some crazy dollar figure for how much they are worth– but not too crazy, not like “millions” of dollars, just six figures. That will give some moms the chance to say “see, I am worth it.”

Agh! I’m going to food engineer some breakfast soon….

Lots of stuff happening today, May 1. I’m all for the various protests that have to do with the legislation out there dealing with immigration; if you’re interested in a kind of “educational” video on it all, especially as it relates to things like making English the official language and the Spanish version of the National Anthem, click here.

But let’s not forget something else that happened this day a mere three years ago. What’s that, you ask? Why, this is “Mission Accomplished” day, the day that W. declared victory in Iraq. Here’s a sad “by the number” statement on the whole affair; and here’s a few pithy words from G. Gordon Liddy about Bush way back when.

See this Washington Post article.

Now granted, New York and NYC is perhaps the bluest part of the nation, but as the weather improves, as the election season heats up, and as the situation in Iraq deteriorates– note that the discussion now is not about whether or not the situation is improving; it’s really more or less about whether or not Iraq is technically in the midst of a civil war or not– I suspect that this protest might represent a trend.

Or at least I hope it does.

I don’t have too much time right now to comment on this too extensively, but I managed to stumble across this, “Bush Impeachment – The Illinois State Legislature is Preparing to Drop a Bombshell.” Basically, the article claims (by using a weird loophole in the procedures for the US House) that there is going to be a resolution calling for Bush’s impeachment.

Now, I don’t know if this is true or not. But of course sitting in my desk right now is a copy of the March 2006 Harper’s magazine, which has the cover story “The Case for Impeachment: Why We Can No Longer Afford George W. Bush.” And here’s an interesting quote from this article I linked to above:

The call for impeachment is starting to grow well beyond what could be considered a fringe movement. An ABC News/Washington Post Poll Conducted April 6-9 showed that 33% of Americans currently support Impeaching President Bush, coincidentally, only a similar amount supported impeaching Nixon at the start of the Watergate investigation.

I had better things to do than watch W.’s State o’ the Union tonight. Like clean the lint from between my toes and clip my fingernails. Okay, not really. We actually watched part of disk two of the first season of The Sopranos (we’re a little behind). That’s a more entertaining form of organized crime.

Now, on the one hand, it is pretty clear that I didn’t miss much. As I type this (waiting up for The Daily Show), I’m watching ABC News “after the speech” coverage, and it is just clear they are killing time here. One of the commentators said something along the lines of “there was nothing really new here; it was as if he ‘cut-and-pasted’ passages from recent speeches, even some things from past State of the Union speeches.”

On the other hand, I wish I would have had a chance to play this absolutely hilarious GW Bush drinking game. I’d even be willing to play the suit, if that’s what it would take. (Thanks to Andre for the link).

It’s been a while since I’ve posted anything here about politics and I have a lot of other stuff to do this morning, but I couldn’t resist: is it possible that, even with a Republican congress, that the piles of scandals might lead to W.’s impeachment?

Crazy a few months ago; and yet, Arlene Specter (of all people!) was one of the first to drop the I-word in an interview on ABC’s This Week. And, as this entry from the daily kos makes clear, he isn’t the only one on the right who is at least saying there needs to be an investigation. When Republicans (albeit moderate ones) start talking impeachment….

Add into that Al Gore’s recent speech where he denounced the administration, a speech that by many accounts was mighty mighty impressive, perhaps the sort of thing that might launch a Gore in 08 campaign. The full transcript of the speech is here (and elsewhere on the ‘net). Here’s a nice passage:

The President has also claimed that he has the authority to kidnap individuals on the streets of foreign cities and deliver them for imprisonment and interrogation on our behalf by autocratic regimes in nations that are infamous for the cruelty of their techniques for torture. Some of our traditional allies have been deeply shocked by these new, and uncharacteristic patterns on the part of Americans. The British Ambassador to Uzbekistan – one of those nations with the worst reputations for torture in its prisons – registered a complaint to his home office about the cruelty and senselessness of the new U.S. practice that he witnessed: “This material we’re getting is useless,â€? he wrote and then he continued with this – “we are selling our souls for dross. It is in fact positively harmful.”

Can it be true that any president really has such powers under our Constitution? If the answer is “yes” then under the theory by which these acts are committed, are there any acts that can on their face be prohibited? If the President has the inherent authority to eavesdrop on American citizens without a warrant, imprison American citizens on his own declaration, kidnap and torture, then what can’t he do?

The Dean of Yale Law School, Harold Koh, said after analyzing the Executive Branch’s extravagant claims of these previously unrecognized powers: “If the President has commander-in-chief power to commit torture, he has the power to commit genocide, to sanction slavery, to promote apartheid, to license summary execution.”

The fact that our normal American safeguards have thus far failed to contain this unprecedented expansion of executive power is, itself, deeply troubling.

And to top it all off, W. et al may very well get sucked into the whole Jack Abramoff thing too!

Anyway, a couple of interesting months coming up; watch for a raised terror alert.