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