99 Years Ago Today

The Triangle Shirtwaist factory fire.


146 women died to give us worker safety standards.

A Call for Disenfranchisement

Amanda Marcotte has a great post over at Pandagon on these Tea Baggers and the Republithug party. She talks about how these thugs keep expressing that they represent the real people and somehow the Democrats are "shoving something down their throats". I think Amanda has hit the nail on the head: She says:

It's simple, really. They assume, if they don't state it outright, that large numbers of American voters shouldn't have the right to vote. That's the implicit argument when Sarah Palin praises white rural voters as "Real Americans", when birthers obsess over the idea that the first black President simply can't be eligible for office, when tea baggers yell racist and homophobic slurs at politicians, and when they insist that you eliminate black voters from a count if you want to find out how popular a politician "really" is. When Bart Stupak laughed out loud at the very idea that nuns have opinions worth listening to -- and listed a bunch of men whose opinions were the ones that counted-- you had a similar sentiment being expressed. Universal suffrage seems like a fundamental part of democracy to liberals, but it appears that conservatives think it de-legitimizes the results of elections.

See? You let those women, blacks, Hispanics vote and you get things shoved down your throat! It's so simple . . . for a simple mind.

Rudy Giuliani Trashs Unions

Rudy Giuliani was on Morning Joe this morning and all the Country's ills are due to labor unions according to him. One of his examples was that we own GM and only kept the company afloat to appease the UAW. He then complained that Obama owned the banks and was controlling salaries. What kind of up-side-down world does Rudy live in? First of all -- BUSH bailed out the banks and there were NO salary controls connected to the TARP funds. Secondly -- the UAW took HUGE concessions repeatedly and additional concessions were demanded as a condition of extending TARP to the auto makers. The unions were thrown under the bus while Wall Street fat cats kept their precious.

Giuliani is so dishonest that he makes me mad. Why does the MSM give him a microphone to peddle his lies?

Deem and Pass

Don't miss Norm Ornstein's post:

Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status, and vice versa. But I can’t recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of “deem and pass.” That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld). Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid an embarrassing vote on immigration. I don’t like self-executing rules by either party—I prefer the “regular order”—so I am not going to say this is a great idea by the Democrats. But even so—is there no shame anymore?

Yes!

Oscars

I LOVE the Oscars! Cameron Diaz and Sandra Bullock looked GREAT!

But what happened to Booth Gardner's documentary and why was Farrah Fawcett left out of the memorials? I didn't hear Booth Gardner's documentary listed in the list of nominees.

And then there were Zoe Saldana and Vera Farmiga in full swirl ridiculousness!




h/t LA Times

Cantwell & Murray Sign the Public Option Letter

According to Open Left Senator Cantwell signed the Bennett letter to pass the public option through reconciliation. Senator Murray signed earlier this week so we're 2 for 2!!