January 10, 2008 · 1 Comment
During his first trip to the West Bank, “Gaffe overshadows Bush visit.”
“You’ll be happy to know, my whole motorcade of a mere 45 cars was able to make it through without being stopped,” Bush said after being asked about the 30-minute journey from Jerusalem and Ramallah. “I’m not so exactly sure that’s what happens to the average person.”
“I remember once in Hawara, one of the checkpoints outside Nablus, and I was doing the story of a family who lost their main loved one … he was a cancer patient and he was told to get out of his car and walk across the checkpoint, and that killed him,” said Al Jazeera’s David Chater in west Jerusalem.
Categories: palestine · power · war
Tagged: bush, checkpoints, gaffe, israel, palestine, politics
If there is any benefit to underfunding domestic offices to finance the costly, oppressive wars in the Middle East, it has to be this: FBI Wiretaps Dropped Due to Unpaid Bills.
Unfortunately, the problem is not that the FBI is underfunded. With a budget of $6.04 billion (FY2007), they can afford a few phone bills. [Sorry, the wars have no benefit despite their costs.]
But yet, of the 990 wiretapping bills in 5 FBI field offices, more than half were not paid on time. Many phone companies treated the government as if it were just a working class person–and cut their service off. But no company would allow regular folks to accrue $66,000 in unpaid bills.
And this wasn’t discovered until a Justice Department audit. I’m glad the government is too inept to actually infringe on our civil liberties as they would like.
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Categories: capitalism · humor · labor · power · society · war
Tagged: humor, capitalism, labor, economy, immigration, profit, workers, fbi, government incompetence, systems, civil liberties, wiretapping, phone lines, disconnection, finances, debt
Chamber of Commerce vows to punish anti-business candidates
By Tom Hamburger, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 8, 2008
WASHINGON — Alarmed at the increasingly populist tone of the 2008 political campaign, the president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is set to issue a fiery promise to spend millions of dollars to defeat candidates deemed to be anti-business.
“We plan to build a grass-roots business organization so strong that when it bites you in the butt, you bleed,” chamber President Tom Donohue said.
…
“I’m concerned about anti-corporate and populist rhetoric from candidates for the presidency, members of Congress and the media,” he said. “It suggests to us that we have to demonstrate who it is in this society that creates jobs, wealth and benefits — and who it is that eats them.”
Categories: capitalism · labor · power · society
Tagged: business, capitalism, economy, election, politics, populism, presidential candidates
