What is it good for?

Rick Santorum thinks we should bomb Iran back to the 7th century.

Marco Rubio thinks hunger and homelessness are the least of our problems--they won't matter if for the, oh, second time in our 239 year history some idiots decide to try to blow something up in the United States.  Because starving and the brutal elements of nature never killed anyone.

Lindsay Graham is desperately trying to relight John McCain's pretty much permanently snuffed out torch which would call for war in the Antarctic if a penguin farted.

It's beginning to look like the republican strategy for foreign policy in 2016 will be war, war, and more war--there's nothing like calling for the killing of people in foreign lands to excite the GOP base.

And this should be the Democrats response:

Good God, y'all--didn't you bozos learn anything from Iraq and Afghanistan?

Peace,
emaycee

Et tu, Brute?

Mitch McConnell, the brains behind the GOP strategy to make President Obama a one term President, this week praised Obama's recent efforts on behalf of the TPP.

Hey Obama--remember the last time Mitch McConnell passed a bill that helped workers in America?

Me either.

Peace,
emaycee

Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. XX--Hayden: Bad as They Seem

Every now and again a song comes along that reminds you that sometimes the best music is the simplest music.  A guitar, a harmonica, and some heartfelt vocals and you're listening to pure pop gold.

Such is the case with Canadian singer/songwriter Hayden and his song "Bad as They Seem."  Originally released on his album Everything I Long For in 1995 in Canada and in 1996 for the rest of us poor bastards, the song might best be described as alternative folk.   The critically acclaimed album launched quite the bidding war for Hayden's talents, made him a very rich man, but also a very miserable man.  He eventually walked away (well worth the ten minutes it takes to read) from fame and has quietly continued to make music for the past twenty years.

"Bad as They Seem" is ostensibly a song about a young man whose life, amazingly enough, is as bad as it seems.  Stuck in a dead end job, still living at home, longing forlornly for the love of his life--and all of it tied around some low string heavy acoustic guitar playing, a harmonica break that's reminiscent of fellow Canadian Neil Young (who was among those involved in the aforementioned bidding war), and it's all delivered in an almost monotone vocal that manages to find the right inflections just when they're most needed.   The song manages to convey a hopeful hopelessness--not sure if that's possible, but when I hear the chorus it's as if the protagonist is singing "it ain't gonna happen...but it might."  And sometimes that's enough.

And who among us in our darkest hours isn't looking for "someone to be [our] better half"?

Enjoy:

Peace,

emaycee

Takin' care of business

Anybody out there get a 15% raise last year?

Anybody out there think your company's CEO is worth 374 times more than you are?

If you aren't a CEO of an American corporation, there is a rock solid chance you answered no to both of those questions (especially the first one).

And yet, the AFL-CIO in its yearly Executive Paywatch report revealed that while the rest of us were making do with less than a 3% increase in our pay, American CEOs enjoyed a 15.6% increase in 2014.  And in the midst of growing concern over income inequality, American CEOs went from a 313-1 ratio to their workers pay to a 374-1 ratio.

What the fuck?  At a time when we can't even get our (republican) Congress to consider a raise in the minimum wage to just ten bucks?

If there were ever statistics that proved the game is rigged, these are probably those statistics.  Maybe I've just been unlucky, but I've yet to work for a company where the CEO wasn't at best a competent leader and businessman--and yet such executives are worth that much more than their workers?  Frankly, these sums are arrogance and egotism personified--sating the psyche of people who aren't nearly as good at what they do as their fantasies would have you believe.

Gonna make it kind of hard to have a lot of empathy for these folks when those pitchforks start a-swingin'....

Peace,
emaycee

Economics for us in today's America in two easy charts, a.k.a. The Second Coming

Chart #1:

Chart #2:



Think there's any correlation?  People who view themselves as middle class are declining precipitously while we lag markedly behind the rest of the world in paying a living wage.  And there's not a lot of hope right now that either of these numbers will improve.

And, eventually we will learn (to steal a line from "The Second Coming" by W. B. Yeats):  the center cannot hold.

Peace,
emaycee

From the No Shit Sherlock Files

Rick Snyder, our not so courageous nor very successful governor this week became only the second republican politician (Willard Romney being the other) to announce he would not be seeking the party's nomination for the Presidency in 2016.

Considering that the record he would be running on would be bad jobs, bad roads, and bad policy (rape insurance, right to work for less) and that Snyder has all the charisma of a sandy piece of driftwood, this really isn't all that surprising.

In fairness, though, none of the other candidates has much to offer, either:

Ted Cruz--Let's turn America into a theocracy
Rand Paul--Let's pretend we're not racists
Marco Rubio--Anybody got a bottle of water?
Ben Carson--I'm fucking nuts
Carly Fiorina--I failed at business and I can fail at government, too
Mike Huckabee--Let's keep hatin' on the gays

And never is heard a discouraging word....

Peace,
emaycee

A new way to spell stupid

Try r-e-p-u-b-l-i-c-a-n.

Seems republicans in the Wisconsin legislature have little better to do than make the lives of poor people even more miserable.  Despite the fact that they have no power to control SNAP purchases by the needy, a public benefits committee in the Badger State legislature took it upon themselves to ban food stamp recipients from purchasing lobster, crab, and shrimp.

Because those are the items you look for when you have five bucks a day to spend on food.

It gets better--the committee also managed to limit the amount of cheese the poor can buy.

In Wisconsin.

Up next, Florida republicans try to limit the amount of oranges the poor can buy with their food stamps.

Peace,
emaycee