1 in 10 Americans are stupid

Retail analysts were expecting 33 million Americans to shop on Black Friday, which, due to all of the store openings on Thanksgiving Day, is now really Black Thursday.

Many claimed their early shopping was for the savings, like the gentlemen in this article  who supposedly bought a 60 inch LED TV for $400 and "saved" $800 from its regular price of $1200.  Actually, anyway you look at it, he saved nothing--zip, zero, nada, zilch.  He stood in line for hours, gave up a holdiday meal with his family, and now has $400 less to his name for a TV that will be outdated in less than five years.

Let's see that scoreboard:  Store:  +$400; Customer:  -$400.

Nowhere in the calculation do you see a +$800 for the Customer.  It's a mirage.

But it sure does wonders for the retailers of America's bottom lines.

Peace,
emaycee

David vs. Wal-mart

According to the Bible, a young man named David who believed he had righteousness on his side tossed a stone and slayed the great Philistine warrior Goliath.

Yesterday, a group called Our Wal-Mart which is fighting for better wages for the poor souls who do the actual work for Wal-Mart staged 1500--that's right, 1500--protests across the United States to call attention to poverty wages and continue their fight for a decent standard of living.

I don't know if they can win in the end, but I do know that, like David, they have righteousness on their side. And if we are to have any hope for a resurgence in the middle class their fight is vital.

These are the jobs of the future for many, many working class Americans, and unless we want to end up like many a third world country, we need these jobs to provide for a respectable standard of living and not just provide wages that don't even meet the poverty level.

It's either that or hello, Somalia.

Peace,
emaycee

Onward "Christian" nation

Conservative hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio today fed the inmates under his charge a Thanksgiving meal (including a yummy vegetarian turkey soy casserole) for only .56 cents each.  You'd think that feeding them only two meals a day the other 364 days of the year, he might splurge a bit on this day of thanksgiving.

Nope.

You know, if God really does judge a nation based on how it treats the least among its citizens, we are in some seriously deep shit.

Peace,
emaycee

Wow, the Pope is Catholic!

From the apostolic exhortation:

"How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of inequality."

This is Pope Francis.  The leader of the Catholic Church.  He's not screaming about gays or abortion.  He's talking about something Jesus Christ actually talked about, the idea that we should help the poor.  This is the Church I remember from when I was but a wee lad, a church that actually cared about human beings and not just social issues.

While the Church has still a long way to go when it comes to who we love and the role of women in our society (and I certainly don't see myself rejoining the Church anytime soon), it's important when the leader of over one billion people speaks strongly about an issue as monumental as income inequality and actually stands up for the least among us.

If nothing else, the Pope made Rush Limbaugh shit his pants and that's always worth the price of admission.

Peace,
emaycee

Please, sir, I want some more

And the answer for America's hungry is "no."

On the first of November, benefit cuts to food stamps took effect leaving a family of four  with an average cut of about $36 dollars a month.  Benefits will now be less than $1.40 per person per meal.

In a word--actually it's not a word but an amalgamation of a word--un-fucking-believable.

Have you ever really given thought to how much $1.40 per person, per meal, is?  For my family (three of us, three meals a day) that comes to $88.20 a week.  Our current grocery bills consistently run better than $150 a week--and believe me, we do not eat like millionaires.  We cut coupons, use lots of store brands, take part in store loyalty programs, and eat lots of leftovers.  We also don't eat fancy meals--meat, side dish, vegetable, or along the lines of spaghetti or tacos.  Could we cut from our grocery bill?  Sure--my gut could definitely use with a few less sweets and we spoil the Beautiful Boy with a few treats, but cutting better than 40% from our food budget?  There's no way we could eat three decent square meals a day on $88.20 a week.

Sadly, though trying as valiantly as they can, food banks (despite republican groupthink) cannot keep up with the demand (also here).  This means that these cuts have resulted in more Americans going hungry, hardly  an optimal outcome (not to mention it's bad economics for all of us).

While Democrats do shoulder some of the blame (deals with the devil rarely pay off) and Michigan's own Debbie Stabenow has been a colossal disappointment (despite two different appeals from me--imagine that, a poor motherfucker with no influence) for spouting the usual fraud bullshit (less than 1%) it's important to remember that this is a republican initiative.  Republicans are happy to watch their fellow Americans go hungry so long as the wealthy have to pay less in taxes (and Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand and the Congressional Progressive Caucus are certainly fighting the good fight).

Let's just hope that--as the leader of America's largest food bank noted--when America's poor begin rioting because they can't afford to eat that their first target are the congressional offices of heartless republicans.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Peace,
emaycee

Sweet dreams aren't made of this

Bishop Shirley Holloway, the leader of an anti-poverty group that Rep. Paul Ryan (he of the Randian groupthink on the hungry, "let them starve") supports recently had this to say:

“Paul wants people to dream again,” Holloway said of Ryan. “You don’t dream when you’ve got food stamps."

Considering our system provides for about $1.40 per meal per person for food stamp recipients, you don't suppose it has anything to do with it being awfully hard to dream when you're fucking starving, do you?

Peace,
emaycee

600,000

That's the number of Americans who are homeless every day in America (one quarter of which are children).  600,000 homeless Americans every goddamned day in the (and I hate to sound like a broken record) wealthiest country in the history of mankind.

While this may just be fine to the heartless (and lying) bastards on Faux News, it sure doesn't sound very "exceptional" to me.

Peace,
emaycee

Boom goes the dynamite, BOOM!

The funniest thing about today's use of the nuclear option to end republican filibusters of the President's judicial and executive nominees (and wasn't it wonderful to watch Democrats go badass on republican obstructionism) was the republicans' claims that eventually Democrats would regret it.

Regret what?  Democracy working the way it's supposed to?  If the republicans win back the White House in 2016 (and, boy, what are the odds I take up drinking and smoking again should that happen), they should be able to nominate and have an up or down vote on who they want for the nation's courts.  Frankly, we have hearings on the nominees--if a republican nominee turns out to be a member of the Klan (not as unlikely as you might think), Democrats can vote against him, republicans can vote for him and try to explain to the American people why they think a member of the Klan belongs on the bench of one of our courts or in the President's inner circle.

What the republicans are really bemoaning is that this was another colossal fuck-up on their part--they pushed too far and the Democrats had finally had enough.  And now there are 93 judicial vacancies that President Obama can fill if he so chooses which would give the Democrats a commanding majority in America's courts.

Peace,
emaycee

No medals from the Wizard for them

Rep. Fred Upton from some shithole right here in Michigan put forth a bill this past week that unlike Obamacare, manages to ensure that Americans either have no healthcare or have shit healthcare.  It also does nothing for those with pre-existing conditions and reinstates lifetime caps.  Although the bill was the health insurance industry's wet dream (with no chance of passing the Senate or not being vetoed by President Obama), 39 "Democrats" voted for it.  Thereisnospoon says it is just politics--the "Democrats" were those in tough districts who were freed from an issue that could be used against them in their re-election campaigns.

He is wrong.

There is a reason that Elizabeth Warren is much beloved in Democratic circles and that same reason is why she will cruise to re-election as long as she so desires to be a Senator from the state of Massachusetts.  She has political courage and it is something the 39 "Democrats" noted above are sorely lacking.  Senator Warren cares much more about her constituents that she does about her poltical fortunes.

As Digby notes, of the 34 "Democrats" who voted against Obamacare in 2010, only five are still in Congress.  Here's hoping the same fate befalls the gutless 39 of 2013, but that they be replaced by real Liberals who put the people who elected them before their career ambitions.

Peace,
emaycee

Cue "Taps"

Fresh on the heels of McDonald's McResources telling its employees to apply for SNAP benefits and Medicaid in lieu of actually paying them a living wage, we have Wal-Mart, which is owned by the Walton family with a net worth just north of $150 billion, encouraging its employees to donate food to help out their fellow workers in need this Thanksgiving.

Sweet fucking Jesus.

Folks, the American dream is officially dead.  These are the jobs of the future (and why the recent strikes against fast food chains and Wal-Mart are so significant) and if the powers that be are more than happy to let their workers depend on taxpayer largesse and their employees' families being fed by their co-workers there is no limit to how low it can go.

Shit--we're even more fucked than I thought.

Peace,
emaycee

Playing offense (for a change)

Well lookee here--seems the Democrats are actually playing some offense in preparation for next year's elections (and after the disaster that is the Obamacare rollout, they probably should be):

• Pro-choice Democrats in the Senate are going to put forth a bill tomorrow aimed at state laws that have been chipping away at abortion rights.  It has no chance of passing, but it's a signal to pro-choice women that we're not only going to defend them, we're going to fight for them as well.
• Since 76% of Americans favor raising the mimimum wage, Democrats are fighting in 2014 battleground states to get minimum wage increases on the ballot.  Good policy and good politics.

I'm still not holding out a lot of hope for 2014 (even though we won the Governor's race in Virginia, our base didn't turnout any better in Virginia than they usually do for non-Presidential election years) but at least by being true to our party's ideals we're giving ourselves a shot at controlling the damage.

Peace,
emaycee

WTF #1245

While watching commentators on Fox, ESPN, and CBS (with the notable exception of Shannon Sharpe) fall all over themselves trying to be fair to all parties while preaching the old boys will be boys nonsense concerning the rather embarrassing (for the NFL) Miami Dolphins' fiasco involving guard Richie Incognito calling teammate Jonathan Martin the n-word (as well as telling him he'd wanted to take a shit in his mouth), I had but one thought.

Is there any business--any one fucking business--in the entire United States of America where one employee could call another employee the n-word and tell him or her that he wanted to shit in his or her mouth and at the very least, the very fucking least, not ended up in counseling/sensitivity training?  And probably be on a very short leash for the rest of his time with said business?

For fuck's sake, do the Dolphins even have a Human Resources department?

There's nothing to defend here.  If it's not acceptable in any other business, it's not acceptable in the NFL.

Peace,
emaycee

Ain't that (corporate) America?

A Department of Labor study shows that in 2008-2009 wage theft accounted for losses in pay of over $185 billion (to show some perspective, bank, gas station, and convenience store robberies accounted for losses of $56 million during the same time period).

To break it down even further,  64% of low wage workers in American have their pay stolen every week, to an average per worker of $2634 per year.

I don't mean this to sound callous, but how many Union Members do you suppose are the victims of wage theft?

This isn't to blame low wage workers for not joining Unions.  It's just another reason why corporate America, the chamber of commerce, right-wing think tanks, et al, do all that they can to keep workers from joining Unions.

As if it isn't bad enough to put up with the shit work conditions and incompetent leadership, they want to fuck workers out of their pay, too.

Peace,
emaycee

Cowards of the country

Yesterday in, of all places, Texas (where everything is big, even the idiocy) a group of nearly forty men stood  with their weapons drawn outside a restaurant where, four, count 'em four, women members of Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense in America were meeting to discuss, um, gun sense in America.  Oh, the irony!

Man, what a pair of cojones each of these men had, standing there defending the right to bear arms, outnumbering defenseless women ten to one!  Regular fucking America heroes!

Wonder if the gutless bastards are members of the tea party?

Nevermind--stupid question.

Peace,
emaycee

Another day, another psychopath

I've never been a fan of electing successful businessmen to political office--frankly, it's always seemed to me to be like hiring an auto mechanic to be the head of neurosurgery.  Yes, he's good with his hands, but car repair and brain surgery are not one and the same.

Recent studies showing a link between psychopathy and corporate CEOs make me even less supportive.

Seems today there was an interesting development in the court proceeding brought forth by Detroit city pensioners against the desires of Rick Snyder and his bumbling band of toadies to put the city of Detroit into bankruptcy and thus freely take away their pensions.  Andy Dillon, the state treasurer, while believing that the course of bankruptcy was the correct one, felt that Snyder and his bumbling band had not sufficiently made the case that they had tried to bargain in good faith with the pensioners and, in fact, that the bankruptcy move looked "premeditated."  Dillon also noted that the deal that emergency manager Kevyn Orr offered to the retirees was so bad that no lawyer could possibly have accepted it.

Who would ever have believed?  A fucking republican former CEO governor trying an end run to fuck over retirees so that the maggots of Wall Street can benefit.

I've always thought the bankruptcy move was a precursor to destroying Detroit and its largely African-American population, thus giving republicans a better chance at winning non-gerrymandered elections (republicans have been stomped in Presidential elections since 1992, and Sens. Levin and Stabenow have been each re-elected by crushing majorities since the early 2000s)--I guess making elderly people who devoted their careers to the city starve is just icing on the cake.

Peace,
emaycee

A couple of thoughts on King Christie's coronation

I'll probably live to regret this post (and I'll freely admit that Chris Christie is the only republican I fear in 2016), but while everyone on MSNBC was falling all over themselves with the implications of,  and Christie's increased chances to be President in 2016 because of, his huge re-election victory for the New Jersey governorship tonight, I couldn't help but wonder...

• Exactly how is Christie's humongous victory in New Jersey going to garner the women's vote, the African-American vote, the Asian vote, and the Latino vote for republicans in the 2016 Presidential race?
• Do you believe there's any way Christie's massive victory tonight will keep the republican's core base, old white people, from dying for the next three years?
• In the republican waves of 2009 and 2010, republicans won governorships in New Jersey, Virginia, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Iowa.  Why is it, do you suppose, that Mitt Romney won zip, zero, nada of these states in the 2012 Presidential election?

Just sayin'.

Peace,
emaycee

Crazier than a shithouse rat

Here's a handy list of possible GOP healthcare reforms:

• Repeating the phrase “you can keep your current doctor” over and over until something happens
• Loosening regulations to allow Americans to ship ill and injured family members to cheaper doctors overseas
• Whatever the opposite of tyranny is
• Allowing sick Americans to choose how they exhaust their life savings on a single medical bill, even if it’s out of plan
• A true market-based solution—perhaps a convenient website—where uninsured people would pay for their own health insurance from private providers
• $2,500 cash incentive to the first person who cures cancer
• A health care law that won’t allow the disgrace of another Benghazi
• Unsettling language and several ominous-looking graphs labeled “Obamacare” followed by a breezy smile and soothing, unspecific words

Keeping in mind that while I'm not in a league with say a Rachel Maddow or a Chris Hayes in how much time I spend studying politics, I'm not exactly a novice, either.  I spend a good 30-40 hours a week reading about politics, if not more.  So when I saw the above, especially the part about the $2500 cash incentive for finding a cure for cancer, I thought, "Can you believe how fucking stupid these republicans are?  $2500?  Shit, that's worth millions!"

Ahem.  Turns out as I read farther in Digby's post these reforms were actually from The Onion.

Though it does say an awful lot about the current state of the g.o.p. that I thought these "reforms" were the real deal.

Peace,
emaycee