Cottonmouth Press

Today the news broke that toothpaste made in China and imported here  contained an additive that is an antifreeze component. The factory put it in the toothpaste because it gave a sweet taste and was cheaper than the sweetener glycerin.

Also in today’s news, the Food and Drug Administration has banned numerous fish and shrimp products from China because they are tainted with veterinary drugs.

As my Momma would say, “You buy cheap, you get cheap.”

But  wait, you say, we Americans love cheap.

We gobble up cheap Wal-Mart and Toys R Us products made in China. Numerous state governments bought that cheap toothpaste to use in prisons, mental hospitals, juvenile detention centers and other public health facilities. The toothpaste, according to the New York Times report, cost about 9 cents per tube when bought in bulk.

When will we decide to get tough and demand that the marketplace offer us products made in the USA, built with American labor, fueling American family incomes?

Are we tough enough to pay more for something to assure that our neighbors have jobs and our dog food, toothpaste, shrimp and fish are safe to consume? What if every one of us went to our area store managers, pointed to the MADE IN CHINA label on an item and asked the simple question, “Why don’t you order this item from an American manufacturer?”

I know that business owners love paying $2 a day to some greatful Chinese person who works without health insurance or OSHA safety standards. Example: A guy I know owns a company that makes a hunting product that he sells to our red-blooded boys here in the US of A every fall to use when deer hunting.

This guy counts himself as a patriotic, true American. Do you think he based his factory here in America to give jobs to folks here at home? Hell, NO.

He opened his plant in China, and he’s laughing all the way to the bank! But if you or I questioned his patriotism, he’d be horrified.

My point: It takes a tough consumer to refuse a bargain and opt for the more expensive, homegrown product.
It takes a tough businessman to resist the opportunity to pay low wages and reap huge profits. And it takes a damn tough person to brush his gums with antifreeze just to save a buck on a tube of toothpaste.

Which kind of tough are you?

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

I’m going to write this letter to Scalia, following his spirited defense of torture and Jack Bauer:

“Dear Justice Scalia:

This one time, on ‘Lost’?  I think it was Season 1?  Everybody thought Sawyer had Shannon’s asthma medicine, right?  And so Sayid, who used to be a torturer in Saddam’s Republican Guard, took Sawyer out to the woods and tied him to a tree, right?  And then Sayid tortured Sawyer to find out where the medicine was, and Sawyer wouldn’t tell him anything, and then it turned out Sawyer didn’t have the medicine after all, and he just liked to be tortured or just had low self-esteem or something.

So this proves torture doesn’t work.

 Sincerely,

 Tracey”

Posted by Tracey under Uncategorized | No Comments »

I will make this short and sweet.

If you ever saw The Wizard of Oz, you will recall that the Wizard was nothing more than an ordinary man behind a curtain, using special effects.

Something about this political season is too Ozzish for me. And I speak of Democrats, Republicans and all other participants in this light show we call the debates.

It is time that every one of them, no exceptions, steps out from behind that curtain and in PLAIN ENGLISH tells us the truth about his or her stance on the Patriot Act and the Oil War.

I put myself on the line every day with this blog.

So do you.

It is high time that our future president, whoever it may be, puts it on the line, too. Step up. Be butch! Spit it out!

Because, honey chile, I ain’t in the mood for any more smoke and mirrors.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

I got a history lesson in American legal landmarks this week. Our rights to protest are  broader and deeper than I knew.

The American Civil Liberties Union sent out a fundraising letter,  and it is a serious, full-court press attack on the Bush administration. The letter lists the history of the organization going back to the 1930s and all the landmark court cases in which the ACLU was involved. It is, in my opinion, a history lesson in American jurisprudence.

In the following examples, the ACLU brought and won cases for freedom of assembly, freedom of speech and freedom of political action,  all involving war protests.

In the 1966 case, Bond v. Floyd, the Georgia State legislature was ordered to seat senator-elect Julian Bond, who had been denied his seat for publicly opposing the Vietnam War. Bond had spoken out to support draft resisters. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that criticizing U.S. foreign policy doesn’t violate a legislator’s loyalty oath of office.

This is excellent news for our elected officials. They may legally criticize the Bush foreign policies and still be considered loyal legislators.

Here is another good one. In 1969, the ACLU won Tinker v. Des Moines. The High Court ruled,  “Suspending public school students for wearing black arm bands to protest the Vietnam War was unconstitutional since students do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the school-house gate.”

Thus, our young friends in public high or middle schools who want to protest the Iraq  war, Guantanamo Bay prison or other military actions may legally do so.

In the 1994 case of Ladue v. Gilleo, a Missouri town ordinance barred a homeowner from placing a sign in her bedroom window that said, “No to War in the Gulf  — Call Congress Now!” The ACLU fought the case and won for the homeowner’s First Amendment right to free speech.

This means that, even in gated communities or “planned communities” a person’s right to express antiwar sentiments is protected.

From the state house to the school house to a private house, our right to protest this horrid ongoing war is protected. So is our right to assemble peacebly in protest. So is this blog and all other blogs protesting the Bush administration’s policies.

We can march, speak, write, wear armbands, post signs and shout it out! All legally!

What are we waiting for?

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

The following is copyrighted by Creators Syndicate.  It is Molly Ivins’ column of Jan 5, 2007, written shortly before her death. Molly was a hero of mine, and today I miss her especially because the Congress we hoped for has let us down and the president has us on a sure course to desctruction.

I hope you enjoy it. My intention in posting it is to give Molly Ivins all credit for this work, and I post it as a tribute to her.

        STOP THE WAR NOW          By MOLLY IVINS

 The president of the United States does not have the sense God gave a duck—so it’s up to us. You and me, Bubba.

I don’t know why Bush is just standing there like a frozen rabbit, but it’s time we found out. The fact is we have to do something about it. This country is being torn apart by an evil and unnecessary war, and it has to be stopped now.

This war is being prosecuted in our names, with our money, with our blood, against our will. Polls consistently show that less than 30 percent of the people want to maintain current troop levels. It is obscene and wrong for the president to go against the people in this fashion. And it’s doubly wrong for him to send 20,0000 more soldiers into this hellhole, as he reportedly will announce next week.

What happened to the nation that never tortured? The nation that wasn’t supposed to start wars of choice? The nation that respected human rights and life? A nation that from the beginning was against tyranny? Where have we gone? How did we let these people take us there? How did we let them fool us?

It’s a monstrous idea to put people in prison and keep them there. Since 1215, civil authorities have been obligated to tell people with what they are charged if they’re arrested. This administration has done away with rights first enshrined in the Magna Carta nearly 800 years ago, and we’ve let them do it.

This will be a regular feature of mine, like an old-fashioned newspaper campaign. Every column, I’ll write about this war until we find some way to end it. STOP IT NOW. BAM! Every day, we will review some factor we should have gotten right.

So let’s take a step back and note, for example, that before the war one of the architects of the entire policy, Paul Wolfowitz, testified to Congress that Iraq had no history of ethnic strife. Sectarian and ethnic strife is a part of the region. And the region is full of examples of Western colonial powers trying to occupy countries, take their resources and take over the administration of their people—and failing.

The sectarian bloodbath we see daily completely refutes Wolfowitz. And now Bush has given him the World Bank to run. Wonder what he’ll do there.

And let’s keep in mind that when the Army arrived in Baghdad, we, the television viewers, watched footage of a bunch of enraged and joyous Iraqis pulling down the statue of Saddam Hussein, their repulsive dictator, in Firdos Square. Only one thing was wrong. The event was staged. Taking down the statue was instigated by a Marine colonel, and a PSYOP (psychological operations) unit made it appear to be a spontaneous show of Iraqi joy.

When we later saw the whole square, only 30 to 40 people were there—U.S. military people, press and some Iraqis.  And a U.S. tank pulled the statue down with a cable. We, the television viewers, saw the square being presented as though the people of Iraq had gone into a frenzy and spontaneously pulled down the statue. Fake images and claims have been a part of this fiasco from the beginning.

We need to cut through all the smoke and mirrors and come up with an exit strategy, forthwith. The Democrats have yet to offer a cohesive plan to get us out of this mess. Of course, it’s not their fault—but the fact is we need leaders who are grown-ups and who are willing to try to fix it. Bush has ignored the actual grown-ups from the Iraq Study Group and the generals and all the other experts, who are nearly unanimous that more troops will not help.

So, as I said, it’s up to you and me, Bubba. We need to make sure that the new Congress curbs executive power, which has been so misused, and asserts its own power to make this situation change. Now.

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

It was with shock that I read yesterday that the American Taliban had failed to muster 25 percent of the members of the Massachusetts legislature to approve a ballot measure that would allow a vote on same-sex marriage in that state.  How far have we come when 75 percent of any state legislative body decides to pass on this issue?

Granted, we are talking about Massachusetts, and we are talking about a popular and progressive governor whose arm-twisting probably had more to do with the outcome than any newfound love and respect for gayfolk in the state.  Still, it is undeniably progress.

Does this give me hope?  Sure, but it will be a long time before I can expect same-sex marriage in the deep South.  Legislators in Tennessee almost broke limbs running to vote for a ballot measure outlawing same-sex marriage, and then, sadly, the voters did the same thing last November.  So I’m not fooling myself.  Like my partner said, “I can’t even believe Massachusetts and Tennessee are in the same country.”

It’s my understanding that the Massachusetts ballot initiative can’t even come up again for several years; the earliest it could appear before the voters would be 2012.  By then, gay marriage will probably not be of utmost concern to any of us.  Instead, we’ll all be living a Mad Max-like existence, with gasoline almost non-existent and all of us driving through arid desert regions with up-armored cars armed with turrets.  As we lament the loss of our coastal cities and most plants to global warming, we’ll all be wondering why we ever even CARED about same-sex marriage.

 And THAT, my friends, will be progress.

Posted by Tracey under Uncategorized | No Comments »

Former White House attorney Harriet Miers has been subpoenaed to testify before Congress. It is thought that she might reveal information about President Bush’s role (or that of Karl Rove or Veep Dick Cheney) in firing U.S. Attorneys for political gain.

Now, as you may recall, Harriet was nominated by Bush in 2005 to the U.S. Supremes, to replace Justice Sandra Day O’Connor. How likely is it that she will rat out her former boss and his buddies?

Will donkeys fly?

The investigation into the Bush inner circle and their plans to get  rid  of some of the country’s top prosecutors is a winding road. A long and winding road, if Harriet Miers is expected to give damaging testimony.

The last White House aide who testified under oath about who directed his actions was Scooter Libby. And see where it got him?

Harriet Miers is a dead end street as a witness. She was a “work wife” to Bush, just as Condi Rice is a “work wife.”

If only she was as stupid as Monica Lewinsky and had blabbed, on tape, to a close pal.

VOICE OF MIERS ON TAPE, A LITTLE SCRATCHY BUT RECOGNIZABLE AS HER:

MIERS: “So then George had me in his office and he leaned close, you know the way he does, and his voice got husky.”

CLOSE PAL WHO IS TAPING: “Then what?”

MIERS: “He asked me if I would help him out, said that he needed me. I said, yes, I will gladly write memos to the Justice Department for you, dearest, telling them to fire those nasty liberal judges.”

CLOSE PAL: “And then?”

MIERS: “Then, he said if I did a good job, he’d take me to the Crawford Ranch and I could see his pony.”

Ahhh,  if only there were a smoking gun of a tape. If only .. if only..

A girl can dream, can’t she?

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

Kim Gandy, president of the National Organization for Women (NOW) sent out the news, yesterday, that a new bill in the U.S. Senate will strike back at a Supreme Court decision we all hated.

As I wrote in my blog of May 29,  Alabama native Lily Ledbetter, a Goodyear Tire employee at the Gadsden, Ala. plant, was denied equal pay with the men doing the same job as she. Ms Ledbetter sued to get her fair share and it went all the way to the Supremes. The conservative court sided with business (5-4). The ruling said that an employee has 180 days to file a discrimination claim  FROM THE FIRST DAY THAT THE DISCRIMINATION BEGINS.

The decision caused a shockwave among equal employment opportunity believers. What if you have no idea that you are being paid less than your fellow workers because of your skin color or gender? How many of you readers know exactly what your coworkers earn? A pay discrepancy could go on for years before you find out and, guess what? You would be sheet out of luck if you filed suit to get back pay, under the Supremes’ latest ruling.

Now, Sens. Edward Kennedy, Tom Harkin, Hillary Clinton and Barbara Mikulski introduced legislation to knock down that barrier the high court erected. Over in the U.S. House, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, George Miller and Eleanor Norton will introduce a companion bill.

This week, Ledbetter testified before a House Congressional committee. According to an Associated Press report,  she told the committee, “I really suspected that I was being paid less, but I didn’t have anything to prove it. It would have been much more to my advantage to have filed earlier in my career but I didn’t know at the time that (the pay difference) was so far out of balance,” she said.

The USA has a worker discrimination law that allows workers 180 days to file a grievance if they discover pay discrimination. It falls under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which had a good intent. It was intended to give workers 6 months to file a suit from the time the discriminatory act occurred, which in Ledbetter’s case was the whole time she worked at Goodyear, up to her FINAL paycheck.

What five of the Supremes did was to spin the meaning of that clause. In her biweekly column, titled “Below the Belt,” Ms. Gandy wrote: “As long as the Supreme Court intends to periodically mangle our rights, I’d like to suggest that public service announcements be issued to let us all in on the secret. For instance, in light of the recent 5-4 decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear Tire, all women, and really anyone who might be discriminated against on the basis of their race, color, religion, national origin or disability, should get the following message:

(VOICE OVER VIDEO OF WOMAN RUSHING)
“Hurry. Right now. Before it’s too late. Take these three little steps:
1) Find out the salaries of every co-worker who performs duties similar to yours, then
2) Determine whether you are being paid less than your coworkers, and whether the disparity is unrelated to differences in experience or performance (and therefore may have to do with your sex, race, national origin, religion, or disability) and
3) If you think you are, then RUN, don’t walk to the nearest office of the perpetually backlogged Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) and file a charge of discrimination pronto.
(SCROLLING MESSAGE ON SCREEN)
Important PostScript:  If the company’s decision that created the pay disparity (as in, you were hired at a lower salary) happened over 180 days ago, please disregard this message.”

Gandy goes on to say, “The new-majority RATS (i.e. Roberts-Alito-Thomas-Scalia) were led to 5-4 victory by the King RAT, Anthony Kennedy.”

To see Ms Gandy’s entire column, go to http://www.now.org/news/note/061207.html

Various news outlets have reported the following quote, but I think it bears repeating. Rep. George Miller (D-CA)  said, “As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg (who dissented from the RATS’ ruling)  suggests, the ball has now fallen into Congress’ court and we intend to address this ruling.”

Miller, who is chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, said, “The Supreme Court’s narrow decision makes it more difficult for workers to stand up for their basic civil rights at work and that is unacceptable.”

Do I hear AMEN?

The appointment of good Justices to our highest court is a presidential job.

Yet another reason, wouldn’t you say, to get a new president A.S.A.P.?

Posted by Gita under National | No Comments »

As it is June, the legislatures of our fine Southern states are either done shoving their hands in the taxpayers’ piggy banks or else they are about to call it a sine die (final gavel comin’ down). I might hear from other residents across the South on this, but I do really think that Alabama topped the charts this year in terms of pork barrel spending. In fact, I’d give Alabama lawmakers a trophy.

For those of you who are not familiar with pork, here’s a quick refresher.

Lawmakers draw up a budget for the coming year. State agencies come, hat in hand, to tell the budget committee how much they need  for another 365 days.  Like, the State Troopers ask for $20 million to keep law and order and to purchase new SUVs for the highway patrol. Other entities, not state agencies, also ask the Legislature for money. Like, various arts and crafts groups or Head Start programs in poorer neighborhoods.

The Governor’s Mansion is always a line item in our budget. Wallpaper, it seems, just peels away in sheets with all that summer dew in Montgomery. We here in Bama have a penchant for buying our po-lice nice cars and giving our First Lady nice chaises.

Anyway, once the House of Representatives gets the budget on the floor for a vote, numerous last-minute needy persons and organizations are brought up in conversation. One House member recalls that the YMCA in his district needs a new roof. Another comes to the well with a line item that would give firefighters in his district Gold’s Gym gym privileges  so that his boys will stay in shape.

Let’s say these 107 generous souls agree on a budget. Next, it goes upstairs to the Senate chamber where, likely as not, names will be called and a punch or two thrown.  All that testosterone in one small room, who can blame them?

The senators then examine the budget and find that there’s enough spare change in it for each of them to insert a bit of lard here and a bit of fatback there. Some senators are better than others at this game. Lowell Baron, a good Democrat from the town of Fyffe, has long been our Undisputed King of Pork.

But this year, the entire legislature, every man-woman-jack of them, surpassed our wildest pork expectations. Our lawmakers gave themselves a 61 percent pay raise (state employees, by contrast, get about 3 percent a year).

It gets even better: Our elected officials in the Senate passed a resolution to give themselves a $500 a month CUT in their health insurance premiums. Yeppers.

You see, state law currently allows legislators to receive health insurance, but they have to pay the full cost of the coverage. That’s about $690 per month for family coverage. By contrast, state employees pony up about $180 per month for family coverage.

The resolution by Sen. E.B. McClain, D-Midfield, said that senators should get the same deal as state employees. It passed on a voice vote with hardly a ripple or a raised eyebrow.

And  Lord love them, they waited until the closing moments of the session, near midnight, just before Lite Gov. Jim Folsom Jr. gaveled the session to a close.

Savoir faire, I tell ya!

Posted by Gita under Alabama | No Comments »

It isn’t often that I post blogs twice in one day, but this is such a Southern story, and my blog, after all, is about LIFE AND POLITICS BELOW THE SWEET TEA LINE.

Three Southerners in the U.S. Senate brought down President Bush’s highly trumpeted bipartisan immigration bill this week, a curious matter because the three are Republicans. Alabama, South Carolina and Texas can now be proud that they put these men in Washington, thereby scuttling the biggest chance we’ve had in decades to sort out our old,  piecemeal immigration policies.

If passed, the almost 800-page measure would mark the biggest overhaul of the immigration system since 1986. It would couple tighter border security and identification requirements with creation of a legal guest worker program. 

It is hard to see, at first blush, why Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) and John Cornyn (R-Texas) would work so hard to beat this bill.  After all, Giant Agribusiness and meat-packing businesses wanted the bill because it would guarantee them a flow of cheap plentiful labor from Mexico for years to come.

And Karl Rove wanted this bill badly, I hear, pinning hopes on turning the Latino voting bloc into a reliable  Republican voting bloc. Rove has said that the Latino vote will surpass the black vote in numbers in the next decade, and he hoped to make George W. Bush an icon among Latinos as the man who would deliver more generous immigration policies. 

Moreover, the failed vote to move toward final passage was a big setback for President Bush, who needs a Big Domestic Policy Success as part of his legacy when he leaves office. God knows his foreign policies have sucked wind. (Ironically, President Bush is set to headline a fundraiser for Sessions later this month in Mobile, Ala. Wonder if he’ll still come?)

The three who orchestrated the failure of the immigration bill were very canny, because doing so boosted their own ratings with conservative voters. Jeff Sessions took a tough law-and-order stance on one aspect of the bill, the provision to ease up on punishments and deportations of those who are in the USA illegally and give the estimated 12 million undocumented workers in the USA a chance for citizenship.

At one point Sessions likened the massive immigration bill to a rotting fish and charged that it could allow “foreign-born child molesters to obtain United States citizenship.”  Scare tactics, gotta love them.

DeMint and Cornyn followed traditional conservative thinking which is, and always has been, that an influx of immigrants would take jobs and social security benefits away from Real Americans. I have a teensy hunch that these Southern senators opposed the immigration bill  for racist reasons. It would not surprise me in the least. But I could be wrong.

Finally, the failure to pass the immigration package was a low blow to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), who has tried for five months to stop Republican filibusters of legislation he supports. A motion to end a filibuster is called a “cloture” motion, and Reid’s failed cloture efforts make him look ineffective, to say the least.

I betcha that the trio of Southern conservatives will flex their muscles again and maybe even muscle Reid out the door.

We could be in for a junta in the U.S. Senate with Sessions, DeMint and Cornyn grabbing some extra power in months to come.

Posted by Gita under Regional | No Comments »