Day: August 3, 2008

Will Verizon Workers Strike?

Contracts covering 65,000 workers at the US telecommunications giant Verizon expire Saturday at midnight. Verizon executives are demanding that current and retired union workers accept massive health and pension concessions as well as greater flexibility to cut jobs and move workers.

Verizon has made extensive plans to continue operations in the event of a strike. Management employees from throughout the company will be relocated to work in areas affected by a possible strike. The company has also recruited retired supervisors to work during a strike. Contractors and non-union vendors have been hired and are being trained to do work normally performed by union employees.

Verizon employs 230,000 workers. It is one of two major telecommunications companies in the US providing landline, wireless, broadband and long distance service. The company is currently undertaking a massive upgrade to its network that will allow it to enter into the cable TV market.

The unions have not informed their members of any specific bargaining demands. Instead, they have spoken in generalities about defending jobs and maintaining benefits.

Nor have they set a strike deadline. In the past, both the CWA and IBEW have allowed contract deadlines to come and go without calling a strike. They have put forward the absurd claim that by doing so they are hurting the company by forcing it to cover the costs of an anticipated strike.

Soy-Sperm Connection

Calling all men who want to become fathers! Soy products may reduce a man’s sperm count. Based on a recent study, men who consume soy products may have lower sperm counts than those who don’t. The study was based on a small group of men who visited the Massachusetts General Hospital Fertility Center from 2000 to 2006.

Even though the study found that some of the men who ate soy products on a regular basis had lower sperm counts, the researchers conducting the study are not saying that soy products were the cause of the lower sperm concentrations. The men who had soy products in their diets recorded lower sperm counts than those that didn’t, but their counts were still within the normal range.

Something to consider if you are male and are thinking of planting your seed anytime soon.

WAIT! The Chinese eat a lot of soy products, from tofu to sauce, and yet there is a billion or so Chinese. After carefully consideration—–NEVER MIND!

What Have You Learned Politically?

In the last week in politics, what have you learned about the issues facing the country? MSM has done an excellent job keeping “real” issues out of the stories they are reporting.

Let us see now:

You have learned that McCain had a skin cancer thing and the he thinks Obama is vacuous. Obama does not look like other presidents and that he is black and he had a birthday. McCain has changed his campaign slogan to “Country First” and he wears $500 shoes.

If one is truly watching the news for their info then you have learned that the MSM is a bunch of douche bags, that focus on gossip and fluff instead of real political info,

I realize that “professional” journalist, that is an oxymoron, by the way, dislike bloggers; they call them the “Cheet-oh Brigade”. Because they are defined as a group sitting around in their underwear in the Mother’s basement, eating Cheet-ohs and typing. Jealousy does not become them. What they are really angered at is that bloggers may say and analyze in whatever form they choose. While the “Pros” are told by their corporate masters who, what, when and where. Commentators show the same arrogance of our congressional people and in some cases they are one in the same.

I guess I could have made this a shorter piece by simply saying, Hey MSM–Bite Me!

Wal-Mart Running Scared?

Leave it to Wal-mart to pull a stunt like this. They HATE unions ! Wal-mart is so cheap, they will do just about anything to keep wages down. Wal-mart founder, Sam Walton rolled in his grave a million times the way his spoiled kids are running the show.

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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. is mobilizing its store managers and department supervisors around the country to warn that if Democrats win power in November, they’ll likely change federal law to make it easier for workers to unionize companies — including Wal-Mart.

In recent weeks, thousands of Wal-Mart store managers and department heads have been summoned to mandatory meetings at which the retailer stresses the downside for workers if stores were to be unionized.

According to about a dozen Wal-Mart employees who attended such meetings in seven states, Wal-Mart executives claim that employees at unionized stores would have to pay hefty union dues while getting nothing in return, and may have to go on strike without compensation. Also, unionization could mean fewer jobs as labor costs rise.

Wal-Mart’s latest stunt just proves unionization is their worst nightmare.  It would mean they would have to pay workers wages that aren’t below the poverty line.  It would mean they would have to provide workers with adequate health care coverage.  Hell, it would mean they would have to treat their workers with fairness and decency for a change.

And as to Wal-Mart scaring workers into believing that if Democrats win in November, they will lose, I ask this: if you’re a Wal-Mart employee who’s making a meager hourly wage that doesn’t even cover the cost of food for your family or doctors’ visits for your children, haven’t you lost already?

While it’s illegal for Wal-Mart to tell workers who to vote for, the WSJ claimed that employees said Wal-Mart’s human recources managers told them that “voting for Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Barack Obama would be tantamount to inviting unions in.”

Blackwater Enters The World Of James Bond

Jeremy Scahill is worried about the giant mercenary firm’s latest foray into private intelligence. “They’re marketing their services to not only foreign governments, but to Fortune 500 corporations,” he recently told an interviewer.

The forthcoming paperback edition of Scahill’s book on Blackwater, which appeared in hardcover in February 2007, will include 100 pages of new material, including a discussion of last September’s shooting spree in Baghdad by Blackwater operatives — which killed 17 Iraqi civilians but for which nobody has ever been charged.

This is a company that has been accused of murdering Iraqi civilians,” Scahill pointed out, “of shooting the bodyguard to the Iraqi vice-president, of causing blowback attacks on United States troops, of hurting the morale of the United States military — that has cost United States taxpayers over a billion dollars for its operations in Iraq.”

However, Scahill’s greatest concern at present appears to be Blackwater’s venture into the private intelligence business.

“Blackwater started a private intelligence company,” he explained, “a private CIA essentially, called Total Intelligence Solutions. And the man running Total Intelligence Solutions is J. Cofer Black. He’s a thirty-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency. He also was the guy who ran the CIA’s extraordinary rendition program, the government-sanctioned kidnap-and-torture program.”

Is the governemtn out sourcing our intel?  Is that why we need and Intel Czar?  Someone to co-ordinate the info furnished by private companies??

Is Pakistan Really A Friend?

Pakistan on Friday angrily rejected a report that the United States has accused Islamabad’s main spy agency of helping to plan a fatal bombing at India’s embassy in Kabul last month.

The New York Times report comes amid growing signs of a rift between Washington and Pakitsan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) that could affect efforts to tackle Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants.

India and Afghanistan have already accused Pakistan’s shadowy spy agency, which backed the hardline 1996-2001 Taliban regime, of masterminding the embassy bombing.

Amid the rising tensions, the prime ministers of India and Pakistan are set to meet at the eight-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit opening on Saturday.

The Times and Wall Street Journal reported that US officials believe the embassy attack was conducted by forces loyal to Afghan militant Jalaluddin Haqqani, who is tied to Al-Qaeda and based in Pakistan’s tribal belt.

IMO, Pakistan is doing what they must to survive.  They remember how the US treated Afghanistan after the Russian pulled out.  The billions that they get from the US is mostly used in their programs against India.  And will the addition of the troops pulled from Iraq really help the situation?