From Zombie:

Combined, the new 2010 allegations and the original 1974 allegations accuse Shirley and Charles Sherrod of:

• Paying farm workers as little as 67¢ per hour, far below minimum wage for the era.

• Employing underage children to perform hard labor.

• Compelling their employees to work in unsafe conditions, including getting sprayed with pesticides.

• Firing any workers who acted as whistleblowers.

• Forcing employees to work overtime in the fields at night with practically no advance notice.

• Having a capricious payscale under which employees doing the exact same jobs were paid different amounts according to the whims of the managers.

• Being unwilling to address the abuse even after it was raised by union representatives.

• Seriously mismanaging the farm to such an extent that it went bankrupt…

I saw the original article over at Counter Punch (certainly one of the most entertaining hard-left websites around, but never take everything they say at face value), but held off on talking about it. I tried to get the author of the original article to clarify a few things for me (I wanted to know if government money was used, as well as a few other things), but I received no reply. It is a searing indictment of the Sherrods – and this latest update just makes it more so.

It is a sad fact that while liberals often talk a great game of helping the poor they often end up being the most ruthless exploiters of the poor out there. And this is for both political and economic exploitation. Liberals have always had this problem of not being able to take the poor as they are – as people who have their own ideas, dreams, fears and needs. The Sherrods wanted to help – and the people would be helped, no matter how much it hurt, it would seem.

Such is the long, sad tale of liberals who are always trying to create a utopia for others. Shirley Sherrod is more than just a face on a video, it would seem – she’s a hard-left operator who has a trail of troubles running out behind her. The big question now is: just how did she get hired for anything, given her record?

So, Elena Kagan was confirmed to the Supreme Court today, largely on party lines.

You know, I look back on the election, and realize that McCain didn’t even get as many votes as Bush did in 2004. So, there was a sizable number of potential Republican voters who chose not to vote in 2008 because McCain “wasn’t conservative enough” for them.

We have had judges in recent days and weeks overturn the will of Arizona voters and California voters. Presidential elections have consequences. With two vacancies in the Supreme Court in the past two years, which were expected, perhaps those who stayed home in protest should have thought about the consequences of electing Obama would be.

And you can’t blame me, I voted for McCain.

Is Christianity a failure worthy of renunciation, or do some people choose to renounce rather than reform?

Poll: 30% still entirely suckered by Obama.

Does the minimum wage increase unemployment? It would seem so.

What drives the unemployment rate? Lots of things, and Mish covers them well.

IMF: US real estate problems could bring on second wave of the financial crisis. Which is definitely possible. It could also be brought on by sovereign default. Or collapsing Chinese bubbles. Or a liquidity crisis in Europe. I could go on, literally, for a long time with this.

Government subsidies for bloggers? I vote “yes” on that and will provide easy instructions for where to send the $1,456,957,345.56 I think my blogging is worth. But, seriously, should we be talking about subsidizing the MSM?

Money keeps flowing away from mutual funds. But the economy is fine. Obama says so. Biden does, too. And Bernanke, as well. And none of them would have the slightest interest in hoodwinking us about this.

Confident of victory in November? I am.

From Boston.com:

The number of Americans who are receiving food stamps rose to a record 40.8 million in May as the jobless rate hovered near a 27-year high, the government reported yesterday.

Recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program subsidies for food purchases jumped 19 percent from a year earlier and increased 0.9 percent from April, the US Department of Agriculture said in a statement on its website…

But don’t feel down about – Her Majesty, Michelle Obama, is off on another swank vacation with 40 of her closest friends. And that should make all you poor, little people feel better…after all, poor people like to see their betters having a good time, gives them someone to look up to!

Jonah Goldberg takes note of the alleged nostalgia for William F. Buckley among many people – an alleged desire, it is claimed, for a more urbane and reasonable right – and what is wrong with that picture:

…Buckley, Kristol and Neuhaus (and Reagan and Goldwater) understood and appreciated the hurly-burly of American democracy. Buckley famously insisted he’d rather be governed by 2,000 random names in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard. He passionately defended Joseph McCarthy, and he admired J. Bracken Lee, the 1950s Utah governor who makes Sarah Palin look like Sandra Day O’Connor on Ambien. Oh, and he was a Rush Limbaugh dittohead. Kristol was an admirer of the Christian right and a supporter of the populist tax revolts of the 1970s. Neuhaus was a leading champion of the religious revival on the right…

I don’t think that any of us over 40 can conceive of being conservative without the influence of Bill Buckley. Back in 1980, when I first started to take a serious interest in politics, there was Buckley’s National Review and there was Buckley’s Firing Line on PBS, and that was the lion’s share of conservative media. So, Buckley was a hero of mine – the first person I came across who consistently stood against what I increasingly perceived as what is wrong with America.

But he was also of his time. And, I think, towards the end he began to misunderstand just what it was he had helped mid-wife in to American politics. Buckley was the Cold Warrior, anti-New Deal crusader – which was fine in its place, but he never made that leap past the Cold War and in to the real battles which were emerging starting around 1990. The torch, in a real sense, was passed when National Review had a cover picture of Rush Limbaugh as “Leader of the Opposition” – the torch, that is, being passed from a man who was of one time, to a man of a different time. And with different concerns confronting us, it was a necessity.

Starting in the mid-90’s it was no more about destroying liberals in the realm of ideas; Buckley and others had already done that. What was necessary was destroying liberalism in power – and for this, different leaders had to emerge. They did; they carried the ball – and now the next, logical step is being taken. In the TEA Party movement is the uprising of the people against the liberal Super-state which was always and ever the only means of conservative victory. In a very real sense, the anger shown at town halls and the tens of thousands who carry banners at TEA Party events were implicit the moment Bill Buckley wrote that he was going to stand athwart history and shout, “stop” – because you can’t really stop, eventually, something had to be done.

In later years when we write the histories of our times and erect monuments to those who led the way back to liberty, we’ll have to find a suitable monument to William F. Buckley, Jr. – some plinth near Philadelphia’s Independence Hall would be appropriate, I think, for a statue to the man who first re-awakened our fierce desire for liberty. But let us not pretend that things were some how better when he turned the lights on and went to work. They are better, now; and will continue to get better as we fulfill the promise of conservatism.

It seems that our atheist brother, Christopher Hitchens, has cancer. I recall the Pope once opined on Napoleon, “he is not, perhaps, a believer, but a time may come when his faith is restored to him”.

Agree or disagree with the idea of building a mosque at Ground Zero, you cannot deny that the issue controversial, and an emotional one. On those two things alone, Everyone on the left should be saying “do not build it,” if we went by past precedent.

Editorials like this New York Times piece blasting critics of the mosque are just absolutely absurd.

I remember years ago when talk about a statue of the 9/11 Flag Raising, and some people, in the name of “political correctness” wanted the statue to reflect, not the realities of the moment famously captured on camera, but an altered version, featuring firemen of different races. Now here we are, ten years later, still plagued by political correctness, to put a mosque next to the site of an attack done in the name of Islam.

Sure, the attack was carried out by extremists, but no one can deny that the attack on our country was carried out by Muslims in the name of Islam. This isn’t an issue of religious freedom. No one is denying any constitutional right by saying “This mosque shouldn’t be here.”

What are these people trying to prove by saying the mosque should be built in that spot? That they are so tolerant and open-minded? Give me a break.

Pretty much expected, but still an outrage:

A federal judge overturned California’s gay-marriage ban Wednesday in a landmark case that could eventually force the U.S. Supreme Court to confront the question of whether same-sex couples have a constitutional right to wed.

The ruling by Chief U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker touched off a celebration outside the courthouse. Gay couples waved rainbow and American flags and erupted with cheers in the city that has long been a magnet for gays…

This is just liberalism determined to win, regardless. The people pass a law banning gay marriage, a judge invalidates it. The people then pass a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, a judge invalidates it. Now it goes up further in to the courts – where this judges absurd ruling should fall on 9th and 10th amendment grounds.

Bottom line, however, is that now the gay marriage proponents are putting our backs against the wall – we must now fully press for a US constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. I don’t want to do it, but I will not tolerate a judge usurping the right of the people to decide their laws.

UPDATE: The Judge’s conclusion is a monument to liberal idiocy:

Proposition 8 fails to advance any rational basis in singling out gay men and lesbians for denial of a marriage license. Indeed, the evidence shows Proposition 8 does nothing more than enshrine in the California Constitution the notion that opposite- sex couples are superior to same-sex couples. Because California has no interest in discriminating against gay men and lesbians, and because Proposition 8 prevents California from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to provide marriages on an equal basis, the court concludes that Proposition 8 is unconstitutional.

That is sheer opinion dressed up as a legal ruling – the judge clearly is personally offended that the people of California have dared to recognize that men and women are different and that marriage and family hold a special place in society. The judge here is just mad that gay people can’t have a pretty wedding like straight people do – as if the wedding, itself, is what marriage is all about; or that people get married just for the heck of it and so everyone should be able to have a marriage in any manner they like.

We’ll have to see how this goes through the Courts – the judge may later rule that California has to start issuing marriage licenses right away, but that would be to tread on dangerous ground. Gay marriage in theory and awaiting a SC review is one thing – it actually happening and then people taking their CA licenses to other States demanding “full faith and credit” is quite another. So, the judge may hold fire – but, given his clearly irrational view, he might also be in for a dime, in for a dollar.

UPDATE II: A Conclusion Not Anchored in Reality.

UPDATE III: K-Lo over at NRO:

Actual quote from the ruling today: “Gender no longer forms an essential part of marriage.”

This is a court ruling, not an academic seminar at Berkeley.

This isn’t about equality. This is about recreating our fundamental institutions.

Yep.

This is from a CBO report (PDF):

One impact of rising debt is that increased government borrowing tends to crowd out private investment in productive capital, because the portion of people’s savings used to buy government securities is not available to fund such investment. The result is a smaller capital stock and lower output and incomes in the long run than would otherwise be the case.

The effect of debt on investment can be offset by borrowing from foreign individuals or institutions. But additional inflows of foreign capital also create the obligation for more profits and interest to flow overseas in the future. Thus, although flows of capital into a country can help maintain domestic investment, most of the gains from that additional investment do not accrue to the residents.

Which, of course, is what I’ve been pointing out – each dollar borrowed by Uncle Sam is a dollar not available for private enterprise. Thus, less money available to start or expand companies, develop new products, hire new workers. Worse than that, the money borrowed by government has to be paid back by the tax payer with interest – so, not only do we have less money now, we’ll have even less money in the future.

Added to this is the fact that by having foreigners finance a great deal of our national debt, we have become forced – in a very real sense – to turn our mining, manufacturing and farming capacity over to them in order to give them the means of earning the profits with which to finance our debt. That factory an American used to work at? Its in China now so that Uncle Sam could borrow money in order to continue to finance such things as the Department of Labor.

The ultimate solution to this is to balance our budget, pay off our debt and then forbid the United States government from issuing bonds. They are ultimately destructive of American prosperity and American liberty. Balancing the budget won’t be easy – heck, why sugar-coat it? It will be extraordinarily painful – but it must be done.

Starting with a 25% across-the-board spending cut, plus selective shut downs of agencies not tasked with national defense, law enforcement, health care and direct aid to the poor (to make it clear to you liberals – most of what is done at Energy, Labor, Education and Commerce will have to go). If that doesn’t prove enough to balance the budget, then we’ll have to go for tax increases – yes, even in a recession.

Once balanced (and thus on the path to paying off the debt), we forbid the issuance of new debt and start living within our means. We do that, and we’ll rather swiftly return to being an economic power house as debt no longer soaks up America’s wealth…and as foreigners fall all over themselves to park their money in the one global economy not at risk of default.

This will hurt. A lot. But we Americans have gone through worse times in the past and if we come together and help each other out we can do this. And, we must do this – it is get our house in order, or perish as a nation. It is really that serious.

From Rasmussen:

…A Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that 67% of Political Class voters believe the United States is generally heading in the right direction. However, things look a lot different to Mainstream Americans. Among these voters, 84% say the country has gotten off on the wrong track…

This is just an astounding poll result – it shows so very clearly the disconnect between rulers and ruled. With $13 trillion in federal debt, unemployment above 9%, taxes set to rise massively next year, things getting rougher in Afghanistan – just where is there an indicator of things going in the right direction? And yet, the Ruling Class thinks things are just going swell!

I think they must simply be blind to reality. This is actually ok – it means they won’t effectively counter us, and the look of shock on their faces on November 2nd will be priceless.