Republicans bribe themselves to pass minimum wage hike.

The GOP is going to raise the minimum wage this year. A cause for celebration, even though it's only to steal away a Democratic campaign issue this fall. But it shows just how desperate, and how vulnerable, the GOP really is.

Of course, this act of charity isn't exactly charity. It comes with a hefty price. In the same bill is a MASSIVE tax gift to the rich. America's wealthiest 7,500 families will get a cut in their inheritance taxes owed. What does this mean?

It means the GOP tax cut is going to people who DID NOT EARN THE MONEY. It's one thing to give money back to those who earned it, but this tax cut will go to those whose greatest labor could be nothing more than being born. So apparently, the GOP favors the rich so much that they'll even give their relatives a tax cut, whether they deserve it or not. Kinda makes all those working class Republicans look like saps.


Back to the bribing... Since the wage hike was the GOP's doing, which would have passed overwhelmingly with Democractic support, this tax gift was entirely unneccessary--except as a bribe to get support from within the GOP.

(I'm all for tax cuts. But why does the GOP definition of "tax cut" ONLY apply to the richest people, those who have absolutely no need for it?)

Neocon Kaplan admits he was wrong (sorta)

Neocons aren't done with their mea culpas. Frontliner Lawrence Kaplan has come to the revelation that the Neocon plan for Iraq (forcibly interjected democracy) is a failure. While he offers no apologies, he does seem to take the position of "who knew?" Here, he is being either obtuse of dishonest.

MANY people spoke against the invasion on the basis that Iraq will not embrace democratic reforms at gunpoint. The chief reason being deep religious and ethnic hatreds among the three major groups (Kurds, Sunnis, Shi'ites). The neocons are now acting like this is somehow a new development, with the implication that the Bush administration couldn't have forseen it. In fact, ONLY the Bush administration (and Tony Blair) failed to see this problem back in 2002.

Kaplan tries to make the argument that Bush's lack of prewar planning is now irrelevant, citing recent acts of unimaginable cruelty (a girl was allegedly beheaded and had a dog head sewn in its place) as essentially proof that the Iraqis are too savage to be civilized. I hope this isn't the GOP's next trick to protect Bush. Before 2003, Iraq was one of the most advanced--culturally and economically--nations in the Middle East...all held together as one political unit by the iron fist of Saddam Hussein.

Bush willfully ignored the history of Iraq, a country with artificial boundaries set by self-serving Brits in 1920 that disregarded native demographics. We can never forget this, out of respect for the soldiers if nothing else. Presidents owe it to the soldiers to make foreign policy based on ALL the info available--not the cherry-picked info that rationalizes a preconceived agenda.

Amnesty would bring an end to millions of corporate crimes each year.

The GOP continue to blast the Democrats by saying that the Dems want to "reward the criminal behavior" of the illegal immigrants in America by granting them amnesty. The GOP is correct about one thing--this issue IS about rewarding criminal behavior...by corporations.

See, either way the U.S gov't will be rewarding criminal behavior. By doing nothing, the GOP will be rewarding all those millions of illegal hirings by corporations over the years. Yep, the GOP wants to continue to allow corporations to pass over decent hard working citizens in favor of cheap illegal foreigners. They want to continue to ignore state and federal laws that punish employers for hiring undocumented workers. And they want to continue the illegal source of employees who do not demand fair wages, work safety, health and retirement benefits, and any other labor right that citizens possess.

So we can either forgive the Mexicans who only want to earn a better life, or we can forgive all those criminal employers who have turned their backs on their citizen neighbors just to put more money in their already over-stuffed pockets.

There's the choice: we'll either have two groups of criminals sticking it to the American citizenry, or we can make both groups honest and above board.