Blogito, Ergo Sum
by Gregg Calkins
6 May 2009, a Wednesday
Which is also Kimmie’s birthday! And Clista’s. Happy birthday, you two.
Hmmm...who knew?
Everyone knows the grim news — unemployment in the United States has jumped to 8.5 percent, a 25-year high, and is racing toward double digits. Since November, the nation has lost more than three million jobs.
But not everyone knows the brighter side to the equation: deep in the maw of the deepest recession since the Great Depression, millions are still being hired.
So, while 4.8 million workers were laid off or chose to leave their jobs in February, employers across the country hired 4.3 million workers that month, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Unfortunately, they’re probably not in the manufacturing sector, which we’ve practically given away.
The price to be paid:
Senator Arlen Specter, Republican-turned-Democrat of Pennsylvania, may be his state’s senior senator, now in his fifth term after first being elected in 1980. But as far as committee assignments go, Mr. Specter now ranks below all other Democrats, including Pennsylvania’s junior senator, Bob Casey, who was only elected in 2006.
Perhaps fitting for this curious turn of events, Mr. Casey, 48, now out-ranks Mr. Specter, 79, on the Special Committee on Aging.
Democrats have released their revised committee assignments, which had to be redrawn in response to Mr. Specter’s decision last week to bolt the Republican Party and join the Democrats.
Under a deal reached with Democratic leaders before his jump across the aisle, Mr. Specter is now the most junior Democrat on all of the committees on which he had previously served as a Republican, including the Judiciary Committee, where he was the ranking Republican.
You might wonder how much influence he’s actually going to have?
Mr. Specter switched parties last week after realizing that his political career was effectively doomed if he remained a Republican. He concluded that he could not win the Republican primary next year but said he had made a principled decision to switch camps because the Republicans had shifted too far to the right for his taste.
Uh huh...principled, sure enough. In other news, the tooth fairy left under Jamie’s pillow last night a bright shiny... Specter wanted to be called Senator, plain and simple, no job assignment too low and flexibility guaranteed. Don’t believe me? Read on:
But in giving up his seniority as a Republican, particularly the position as senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee, Mr. Specter also forfeited control of a substantial payroll that covered the cost of many of his staff members. Aides said that Mr. Specter has been asking Democrats to give him money to cover some of the salaries, but it is unclear if they will be willing to do so – particularly after he infuriated Democrats by expressing support for Norm Coleman, the Republican in the contested Minnesota Senate race. Mr. Specter has retracted that support.
Oops...momentary brain burp about Colemen, I had forgotten I switched...well, back to a principled decision, I retract my support.
Two side-by-side NYT items:
The report of dozens of fatalities offered a grim back-drop to a Washington visit by the Afghan and Pakistani leaders on Wednesday.
and
A draft of a Justice Department report found serious errors of judgment in secret memos authorizing brutal interrogations, but opposed prosecuting the authors.
If Bush is a war criminal for killing civilians then so is Obama...the definition is not reached at a certain level, is it? For genocide, maybe, but aren’t ‘dozens’ enough for a war crime?
And, can you successfully prosecute people for errors of judgment, serious or otherwise? Isn’t a crime necessary, first?
I didn’t read this...but why is it I suspect the trimming is not being done by Airbus? I suspect if they had the orders in hand they’d build and deliver the things.
Here’s an Op-ed on climate change written by a nice Liberal. It’s all about how various species of plants and animals who depend on one another for food all are interdependent upon things like when spring comes and when freezing temperatures end, that sort of thing, with this agonized conclusion:
Climate change could create ecosystems that are unknown today. We do not know what plants and animals they will contain. We do not know what will result when the temporal webs that connect plants and animals are broken. It may be that generations to come will see nature’s wonders. But it is more likely that much of the awe and wonder that obtain from the diversity of life on earth that we know at present will be lost.
Since climates have always changed over the hundreds of millions of years of earth’s history, what the author means is only the current global warming that he sees happening.
You have to wonder...does he know what the biodiversity of flora and fauna were in the past when temperatures were generally much warmer (and carbon dioxide levels also much higher)...and does he realize that the cooler periods in earth’s history have been related to mass extinctions of plant and animal life?
Why is it that I suspect not?
From the sound of his statement, he seems to think that the awe and wonder exists only now and never did in the past. What he means is that he likes what he sees now and doesn’t want any change...and that includes cooler, thank you very much. The human desire to resist change is a very powerful one, but is it the right one? What, for instance, did Obama say when he was running?
On a grimmer note, ouch...Dom DeLuise died at approximately my age.