Arkansas Blog

Fight back against an anti-union smear of the Teamsters! Take this AOL poll and help
us stop the lies being spread about the Teamsters, North America's most powerful labor union.

Yesterday, conservative blogger John Hinderaker asked the
following question in an AOL poll:

What do you think of Barack Obama's private promise to end
strict federal oversight of the Teamsters Union?

- It's a corrupt bargain
- I don't like it, but that's politics
- It's of no concern
---------
Tell AOL's readers it's of no concern. Why? Because this bogus
allegation made by anti-union forces was debunked by the New
York Times and other journalists nearly two months ago. However,
Hinderaker never mentions the fact that there was no "private
promise," or that other presidential candidates presented the
union with similar opinions.

There's no question, our great union should be free from
government oversight. But based on shoddy reporting, a majority
of poll respondents disagree. It's up to us to set the record
straight. Go to my blue name to vote now.
Thank you.

TSA Nazis at their worst...

"Fliers Complain About X-Rated Security Screenings
TSA Agents Forced Woman To Remove Nipple Rings, Pulled Pants Off Disabled Man
Reporting... CBS News - Pam Zekman

When travelers go to the airport, they know what kind of security to expect: luggage searches, metal detectors and shoe inspections.

It's all part of our post 9-11 reality enforced by the Transportation Security Administration. But as CBS 2 Investigator Pam Zekman reports, thousands of travelers have complained that some of these screenings can become abusive and even x-rated.

For arguing with a TSA agent, Robin Kassner wound up being slammed to the floor. She's filed a lawsuit.

"I kept begging them over and over again get off of me ... and they wouldn't stop," Kassner said.

And it wasn't enough for another woman to show TSA agents nipple rings that set off a metal detector. The agents forced her to take them out.

Mandi Hamlin said, "I had to get pliers and pull it apart."

In Chicago, people like Robert Perry are subjected to exhaustive security checks. He was patted down, his wheel chair was examined and his hands were swabbed, all in public view in a see-through room at the security checkpoint. Perry, 71, is not alone

"It's humiliation," Perry said.

Perry was also taken to a see-through room by a TSA agent when his artificial knee set off the metal detector.

"He yelled at me to get the belt off. 'I told you to get the belt off.' So I took the belt off. He ran his hands down over and pulled the pants down, they went down around my ankle," Perry said.

At that point, Perry was standing in his underwear in public view. He asked to see a supervisor. That made things worse.

"She was yelling 'I have power, I have power, I have power," Perry said. The power to stop him from flying to Florida with his wife that day to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

"It makes you feel like you have no rights," Perry said.

Perry said he always alerts TSA agents about his metal knee and wonders why they can't just check his leg.

"If somebody told me that I would save the people on the airplane by taking my pants off out in public out there, I wouldn't mind doing it, but this was not necessary," Perry said.

TSA officials said that when the metal detectors go off, their agents must resolve what caused the alarm. But experts have said it's important to use common sense when balancing security and customer service.

Carlos Villarreal, former director of security for the Sears Tower, said proper training is crucial. "When you're wanding somebody and you can identify which part of the body set of the alarm, that should be sufficient to clear a person," Villarreal said.

But all too often, it's not enough for 16-year old Michael Angone. She frequently flies as a member of the Chicago Children's Choir.

"I've had to completely take my pants off and show them like my entire leg," Angone said.

As a baby, Angone was diagnosed with cancer. Her parents, both Chicago police officers, had to have her leg amputated. She said she always warns TSA security agents that her prosthetic leg will set off the metal detector, but many insist on doing an embarrassing full body pat-down.

"I feel like I'm being felt up in public," Angone said.

Her father Bob Angone wanted to know, "What's the reason for all the feeling up, you know the groping at the back of the neck, the chest, underneath the bra, all the groping on her body, her buttocks?"

CBS 2 News asked the TSA those questions, but got no answers.

"The key word here is reasonable, and they have gone off the track. They are not reasonable," Bob Angone said.

The TSA declined to comment on the Angone and Perry cases, but the agency has announced that soon, passengers who set off an alarm that cannot be resolved will have a choice: Agree to a physical pat-down or what some believe is an even worse invasion of privacy.

This fall, O'Hare International Airport will get its first advanced digital x-ray machine. It allows TSA agents to see through clothes and discover any hidden weapons. Critics have likened it to a virtual strip search.

A spokesman said that out of 2 billion passengers screened nationwide since 9-11, there have been only 110,000 abuse complaints.

As for the nipple ring case, TSA did change its procedures regarding body piercing."

I think reports like this one are very enlightening. It's kinda scary to think about flying these days.

I think you need to leave the Teamsters alone and let them function in a free enterprise system. They have a role to play in our society and people have a right to choose them to represent them if they choose. Union representation is the ONLY way they can leverage themselves to get management to listen.

pic of the day

/click name

Oh yeah, rev., FuckBush!

zelda, go wash out your mouth with soap right now!

anti-war poster, clicky

Rev Mojo/Cato I'll see your cartoons and see you one (for action) assuming this works.

That nasty, filthy, dirty natural resource called oil has ruined another water way. This time the Mississippi River in N.O. USCG said it will close a large portion of the river there for days possibly.

Here's the story Ron

(CNN) -- The U.S. Coast Guard closed nearly 60 miles of the Mississippi River from New Orleans, Louisiana, southward after a fuel barge and a tanker collided early Wednesday, spilling more than 400,000 gallons of fuel oil.

The Pics kind of make me want to drive the car off a cliff and only use a bicycle like I did for 6 years of my adult life.

bluename

video his here. Ugh! http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/07/23/mississippi.spill/index.html?eref=rss_us#cnnSTCVideo

This is probably going to get me into trouble...but are the vast majority of TSA workers minorities? Is a lot of this that is going on just some people who are trying to put the screws to non-minority airline passengers?

These glorious insults are from an era when cleverness with words was still valued, and before a great portion of the English language got boiled down to four-letter words. Enjoy!

The exchange between Churchill & Lady Astor: She said, "If you were my husband I'd give you poison," and he said, "If you were my wife, I'd drink it."

A member of Parliament to Disraeli: "Sir, you will either die on the gallows or of some unspeakable disease." "That depends, Sir," said Disraeli, "whether I embrace your policies or your mistress."

"He had delusions of adequacy." -- Walter Kerr

"He is a modest little person, with much to be modest about." -- Winston Churchill

"He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary." --William Faulkner (about Ernest Hemingway).

"Does he really think big emotions come from big words?" -- Ernest Hemingway (about William Faulkner).

"Thank you for sending me a copy of your book; I'll waste no time reading it." -- Moses Hadas

"He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know." -- Abraham Lincoln

"I didn't attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying I approved of it." -- Mark Twain

"I am enclosing two tickets to the first night of my new play; bring a friend if you have one." -- George Bernard Shaw to Winston Churchill

"Cannot possibly attend first night, will attend second if there is one." -- Winston Churchill, in response.

"He is a self-made man and worships his creator." -- John Bright

"I've just learned about his illness. Let's hope it's nothing trivial." -- Irvin S. Cobb

"He is simply a shiver looking for a spine to run up." -- Paul Keating

"There's nothing wrong with you that reincarnation won't cure." -- Jack E . Leonard

"He has the attention span of a lightning bolt." -- Robert Redford

"In order to avoid being called a flirt, she always yielded easily." -- Charles Count Talleyrand

"Why do you sit there looking like an envelope without any address on it?" -- Mark Twain
"Some cause happiness wherever they go; others, whenever they go." -- Oscar Wilde

"He has Van Gogh's ear for music." -- Billy Wilder

"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." -- Groucho Marx

Enough hate down below....
relax, chill and go to bed with good music humming in your brain cells.

clicky

OK, guess the last 2 nights have whacked the usual suspects...not much action here. Church must have been REALLY trying tonight...

Night-night!
|

The good news/bad news on the oil spill--more at my name.

"A tugboat without a properly licensed pilot was pushing the barge; the person operating the boat had an apprentice mate's license."
AND
"The double-hulled tanker Tintomara was loaded with about 4.2 million gallons of biodiesel and nearly 1.3 million gallons of styrene, but did not leak"

Good thing the tanker wasn't breached with the load they were carrying!

Well damn.. I was going to try and escape the country via the Mississippi river in my flat bottom boat.. Guess I'll have to subject myself to another perverted DHS cavity check and fly out of this country before the swastika is printed on every GOP memo.

Lick or click the blue name and read a little bomb that was dropped yesterday at the Gitmo trial of Osama's driver. The Government Prosecutor said the 4th jet on 9-11 would have hit the US Capitol dome if it hadn't been shot down. HADN'T BEEN SHOT DOWN...being the key words in that sentence.

Now..where did that come from? And why haven't we been told about that before? What the fuck is going on in this country? Did they shoot down JFK Jr.'s airplane too? Did Glenn Miller's plane accidentally go down over the ocean during WWII or did our government shoot it down too.

How much of the information we've been told the last 8 years can we believe? I always thought those crazies who said Cheney stagged 9-11 were....just that crazy. But Jesus.......one gigantic lie after the other keeps surfacing every week........is George W. Bush his real name? If I hadn't been to the big hole in NYC, I'd start wondering if it wasn't all filmed on a stage and was as fake as a 3 dollar bill.

HADN'T BEEN SHOT DOWN..............mull that over while you have your coffee this morning.....

DBI, why didn't you call me at 2:30 AM??? I was walkin' the floor wondering if I would go back to sleep and thinking the rest of the world was enjoying their nice soft pillows.....

As for the 4th plane - I don't give the government any credit, but I don't think it was shot down regardless what this attorney said, because we've heard the tapes from that flight and the people were fighting with their captors. I just don't think the US government on that day, had the wherewithall to take down that plane - not that Cheney wouldn't have loved to have fired the missile that accomplished that feat (he could have assuaged all that pent up killing desire he was to 'busy with other things' to indulge during Nam).

Of course it is possible, but we had the Keystone Cops in charge on that day and the left had was constantly fighting with the right hand, so I think they were all too busy with their own cluster jerkoff to determine where a dangerous plane was and get it down. Maybe I'm too sentimental, but I'd rather believe the brave people on that plane gave their own lives to stop another tragedy rather than our government doing it.

Now, IF they had done it, they surely would have lied about it because they would fear a revolt.....so anything could be true, but as of today - 7-24-08 at 7:30 AM, I don't much believe it happened.

DURANGO - loved your list of insults. I like quick comebacks and have spent most of my life reliving past arguments/disagreements and wishing I had "thought to say"............

Hey...I missed that fourth plane, too, DBI. Guess the government's been too busy calling all of us conspiracy nuts. Besides...everyone knows that it was a missile that hit the Pentagon...so there were only two (now three) planes. Plus the Twin Towers weren't brought down by the planes...what it was, I'm not sure...but everyone knows...

After developing a love for history, there is NOTHING I put past our government. Especially one run by Darth/President Shit for Brains.

If the truth of the matter is, that the passengers of the 4th plane were fighting hand to hand with the box cutter wielding terrorists AND one of our jets shot the plane down to prevent it from entering populated airspace already knowing what had happened in DC.....I could live with that. It doesn't take a damn thing away from the passenger-heroes.

But as I remember Dick Cheney gave the order to shoot down the jet filled with passengers, which he clearly didn't have the power to do. A couple of days later the White House put out a cover-up which no one believed and they couldn't offer proof of, saying that oh no...it wasn't Cheney that gave the orders, he was just passing on what Bush told him to do. The problem with that story is that Bush was hightailing it to his hide-y hole in Nebraska and according to logs was incommunicado during the time he supposedly gave Cheney the go ahead to shoot down American passenger planes. Lie number 9,937,742 for this criminal administration. And a damn good reason to withhold information about our government shooting down a commercial flight. Might show the world who the real US Prez has been all these years.

I don't have a wish either way, I just hope we find out the truth about this situation. Clearly 9-11 was a horrible day though Bush had been warned that bin Laden planned to attack within American borders. But I hate a lie worse than chasv hates gays and telling a whole country and the world one thing and then nearly 7 years later finding out the other galls me to no end. What else have they lied about. And isn't it nice of them, according to today's NY Times, to give Pakistani forces an upgrade in jet fighters cause they've been so FK'ing helpful since 2001. Bombing Pakistan makes far more sense than bombing Iran.

What of WTC 7?

Wait wait.. The discussion in question, dbi... is a discussion between members of AL Q... they were speculating as to what happened..

I don't buy a lot of the 9=11 conspiracy stuff.. However, I sure don't trust government who feels the need to operate in increasing secrecy..and coverup so much of what should never be secret at all. Tolerance of covering up incompetency or worse is one sure fire way to kill democracy and let the fascists (or whoever) take over.

The more they do everything from the new USATT to groping everyone in the buff in airports.. to lying us into wars.. the less this country can or will ever be secure or certain their government isn't what we should all fear the most.

I just got a mailer today from some rwingnut who claims the World Trade Center was imploded on purpose...that it was not the plane...the plane crashing into the tower was just a cover-up for the real thing.

Anyone else with any knowledge of this?

There's a whole cottage industry around theories of how the WTC buildings came down. Check out 911Truth dot org. You can read till you hurl. It's all theory but like global warming/not global warming/ everyone is totally convinced they are right......

Yes, Old Blue Eyes, this information, these theories, have been around all over the place since 9/11.

The best summation I've seen is in Part II of "The Zeitgeist" film, which begins at 40:35.

bluename