Headline of the Day

I saw this headline on Yahoo!

3/21/2013 @ 12:47PM |110,643 views

You Won't Believe The Stupidity Of The Latest Attack On Walmart

So already you can tell this is going to be good, solid objective journalism!

If you thought Mayor Bloomberg’s failed assault on certain large sodas sold in certain kinds of stores was arbitrary and capricious, get ready for a similarly bizarre attempt to punish large retailers.

I thought it was frivolous and whimsical, but do go on, Mr. Roget!

The salvo is called the Large Retailer Accountability Act (LRAA), but just think of it as yet another effort from the DGDP: the Department of Good Deeds Punishment

.

Yes, because if Wal*Mart is known for anything it's for having done so many good deeds. . . wait, Wal*Mart? What good deeds are we talking about?

 

 

Available now at Wal*Mart!

For its sin of providing millions of working class Americans with good service, broad selection and low prices, Walmart might as well have painted a (Target-style) bullseye on itself among progressives.

Good service? Good service? I mean, I'll give you low prices, and I guess I could go along with broad selection since that implies quantity and not quality

 

 

 

But good service? In a Wal*Mart? I'm not complaining, I think for what the Wal*Mart employees are paid, customers are lucky to get any service at all, it's like adding insult to injury to tell someone that have to work for Wal*Mart wages AND be good at their job and have any enthusiasm. I know I don't have any and I get paid a lot more than that. But anyway, I guess my point is Good Service?

 



In order to punish this good deed, though, the rebarbative chairman of the D.C. City Council, Phil Mendelson, has been pushing an extraordinary new law that would apply only to large national retailers, with more than $1 billion in sales, who open D.C. stores of greater than 75,000 square feet.

Ooh, "rebarbative!" You know, nothing screams "I'm afraid that people will figure out that I'm not all that smart" like casually dropping a word like "rebarbative" into a sentence. And before you say anything, yes, I admit that I often go to Thesaurus.com to find a five-dollar word to express my two-bit meaning, but I usually do that to find a funnier-sounding word. I assume most of the readers have already figured out that I'm not the sharpest bulb in the drawer. So what is this horrible rebarbative new law? (see what I did there? Funny word.)

Such firms would be required to pay a “living wage” of at least $11.75 an hour to all employees

. . .  a “living wage” of at least $11.75 an hour to all employees — a 62 percent premium over the federal minimum wage. D.C. already has its own super-minimum wage of $8.25 an hour (set by law at $1 above the federal minimum).

 I like how you put "living wage" in quothes, there, because I don't really think $11.75/hr really is a living wage either. It comes out to about $24,400 per year, gross. You try living on that! I know that's not why you used the quotes, you were trying to imply that $11.75 per hour is an exorbitant amount of pay that would bankrupt poor little Wal*Mart while its employees reclined in the lap of luxury, but we both know that if the minimum wage had kept up with inflation, it would be a little over $22/hour. So, $11.75 hardly seems excessive.

So the LRAA is a super-duper minimum wage proposed mainly to punish a single company, which is why wags in the press are calling it the Walmart Living Wage Bill.

First of all, paying your employees a halfway decent wage is hardly being "punished." It's behaving like a decent human being. Secondly, it seems that this law would also apply to Target, Home Depot, Lowes, Costco, etc. although at least two of those companies wouldn't be affected because they already pay their employees halfway decently.


You may well ask why Walmart allowed the matter to get this far: When it comes to breaking into northern urban markets, can’t one of America’s largest and greatest companies steamroll a few local-yokel pols? Can’t it grease the right palms?

Yeah, what the hell is wrong with this city? Won't anyone accept a bribe? It may surprise you to learn that Wal*Mart does not get to decide how far the matter goes. Shockingly, this is still a democracy, and our elected officials make the laws, and they actually aren't supposed to make them to cater to the Walton Family.

And the answer is: Walmart is way ahead of you. In its D.C. push, which has been underway since at least 2002, Walmart has thoughtfully gone around making the kinds of “donations” to politically-connected figures that wedding guests gave the Corleone family.

You do remember that you're trying to make Wal*Mart the Good Guy in this story, right?

It put on its payroll the treasurer and campaign manager of a key city council member, Yvette Alexander. It invited neighborhood activists to a focus group that paid $100 and dinner. It spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on local charities like the Greater Washington Urban League and D.C. Hunger Solutions. It arranged a healthy-foods photo-op with Michelle Obama. And it spent in the “eight-figure range” (in the estimate of one journalist) to sponsor a traveling exhibition on the African-American experience that was led by NPR host Tavis Smiley, who proceeded to praise Walmart at the swanky opening-night party amid many influential black leaders

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Really, Tavis? Goddammit, must EVERYONE be a disappointment to me?

Michelle Shocked Draws Fire for Anti-Gay Remarks

 

 



You’d think a business that not only plays by the rules (without asking for tax and zoning breaks)

 

What?!?!? Since when?

 a business that not only plays by the rules (without asking for tax and zoning breaks) but is a beloved icon for the working class and goes to considerable lengths to be a good corporate citizen

A good corporate citizen? Even Wal*Mart doesn't pretend to be a good corporate citizen! They don't deny forcing manufacturing jobs to China, they make no bones about the taxpayers having to subsidize their employees' meager wages with food stamps. What the hell is your definition of a good corporate citizen?


Okay, I'm just going to skip ahead to the end. . .
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And even in statist D.C., there is recognition that an efficient free market, unlike the city’s sclerotic bureaucracies, is a near-miraculous method for lifting people up.

Really.

People are going to be "lifted up" by a company that would rather spend millions greasing influential palms than pay it's workers a lousy $12 bucks an hour? How does that work, exactly?

 

Yeah, that's what I thought.

 

 



Liberalism run amok!

Here's the stupidest headline I've seen in a while:

Has liberalism run amok under President Obama?

By Ryu Spaeth | The Week – 9 hrs ago

Where would you even come up with this sort of nonsense? Unless. . .

Much attention has been given to growing extremism in the GOP — but critics say progressives are just as bad.

Of course! It's modern journalism's slavish devotion to the "both sides do it" zombie lie!

Since President Obama's convincing re-election victory, the dominant political story has centered on whether the GOP should counter right-wing elements within its party and undertake moderate reforms that many argue are necessary for Republicans to return to power

I'm not sure that has been the dominant political story. I think the dominant political story has been the debate over whether we should destroy Social Security and Medicare altogether or just damage them to placate the deficit hawks, who, as everyone knows, are the only serious very important thinkers inside the beltway, since in January, 2009 they suddenly realized that deficits exist!

But while a proposed Republican makeover has grabbed all the attention — see the much-publicized "autopsy" this week of Mitt Romney's November defeat — developments within the Democratic Party have largely escaped the microscope.

Because we're all just too excited to see what Paul Ryan will come up with next to pay attention to stupid Democrats!

Together, Virginia, we can destroy all the olds and poors!

Bwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!!!!!  

David Brooks, the center-right columnist at The New York Times, argues that liberals have, in fact, lurched leftward under Obama.

Oh, well, if David brooks thinks so! David Brooks who thinks that anyone to the left of Dick Cheney is a bomb-throwing radical thinks that Democrats have "lurched leftward?"  Well, okay. I'm game. Let's take a look at this column you link to.  (oh, and by the way, a man who is editor of the "Weekly Standard" can hardly be described as "Center-right.")

There is a statue outside the Federal Trade Commission of a powerful, rambunctious horse being reined in by an extremely muscular man. This used to be a metaphor for liberalism. The horse was capitalism. The man was government, which was needed sometimes to restrain capitalism’s excesses.

Or, it could be a metaphor for common sense. Or a metaphor for the reality-based community. Or for the basic workings of the real world. . .

Today, liberalism seems to have changed. Today, many progressives seem to believe that government is the horse, the source of growth, job creation and prosperity. Capitalism is just a feeding trough that government can use to fuel its expansion.

Ah, yes. The infallible journalistic source "many progressives!" And David Brooks will inform us of what they "seem to believe." Now that's just first-class reportage!

For an example of this new worldview, look at the budget produced by the Congressional Progressive Caucus last week. These Democrats try to boost economic growth with a gigantic $2.1 trillion increase in government spending — including a $450 billion public works initiative, a similar-size infrastructure program and $179 billion so states, too, can hire more government workers.

So, the Progressive Caucus is proposing something progressive? And this constitutes a "lurching leftward?" Also, too, are you really going to dispute that we have serious infrastructure needs in this nation? Do you deny that the large numbers of layoffs of state employees is a big contributor to our nation's unemployment? Or would you have to be a dumb ol' lefty to acknowledge those basic facts?

 Today, progressives are calling on government to be the growth engine in all circumstances. In this phase of the recovery, just as the economy is finally beginning to take off,

[Stop the presses! A right-wing hack has actually admitted that the economy is improving under the Obama administration?]

 these Democrats want to take an astounding $4.2 trillion out of the private sector and put it into government where they believe it can be used more efficiently.

Well, perhaps more efficiently than hiding it the Caymans and not hiring anybody, I guess. Maybe more efficiently than just sitting on piles of assets and not loaning money to small businesses or homeowners.

How do the House Democrats want to get this money? The top tax rate would shoot up to 49 percent. There’d be new taxes on investment, inheritance, corporate income, financial transactions, banking activity and on and on.

Yeah, those would actually be OLD taxes. The kind of taxes we used to have in this country before the Reagan/Friedman/Jarvis/Norquist mindset took over. For the 40 years pre-Reagan, the top tax rate was over 70%. Forty-nine percent is a walk in the park compared to the Eisenhower years! (link)

  Now, of course, there have been times, like, say, the Eisenhower administration, when top tax rates were very high. But the total tax burden was lower since so few people paid the top rate and there were so many ways to avoid it. Government was smaller.

Okay, I don't get it. I've been trying to wrap my head around this for a couple minutes. Is the objection not that the increased tax rate would put too onerous a burden on individual taxpayers, but that the total amount of revenue the government takes in would increase? Like it would be ok if government took a higher percentage in taxes as long as they took it from fewer people? I don't get it.

I also don't get how there could possibly have been more ways to avoid taxes than there are today. There are entire industries dedicated to helping rich people exploit loopholes to avoid paying taxes.

Today, especially after the recent tax increases, the total tax burden is already at historic highs. If you combine federal, state, sales and other taxes, rich people in places like California and New York are seeing the government take 60 cents or more out of their last dollar earned.

Oh, noes! Poor Phil Mickelson! 60 cents out of every dollar? No, what did you say? 60 cents out of their last dollar. Okay, but they had to have already earned many many dollars to get to the 60 cent dollar, so. . . I don't know, it doesn't really seem all that terrible, especially since you know damn well they are hiding a lot of their income in tax shelters. And the very very rich pay the super-low "carried interest" rate, or capitol gains rate, or whatever people who don't have to work for their money pay. Ask Warren Buffet, he can explain it.

The first problem, of course, is that there aren’t enough rich people to cover even the current spending plans. As an analysis by the group Third Way demonstrated, even if we threw every semiplausible tax increase at the rich, the national debt would still double over the next three decades.

 Okay, but what if we just went back to the Clinton-era rates when we were actually paying down the debt?

The second problem is that if you set the tax burden at astronomical levels you really do begin to change behavior and wind up with a very different country. You don’t have to be a rabid supply-sider to believe that when you start taking away 80 percent or 90 percent of somebody’s top marginal earnings, you are going to get some pretty screwy effects.

Well, I don't think anyone is suggesting that, but I believe the country actually did fairly well when the top marginal tax rate was in the 80-90+% range, an era I like to call the 1950's and 60's. (link) 
(yes, it's the same link. So? How much time do you think I have for my silly little blogging hobby?)

Higher taxes will produce long-term changes in social norms, behavior and growth. Edward Prescott, a winner of the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, found that, in the 1950s when their taxes were low, Europeans worked more hours per capita than Americans. Then their taxes went up, reducing the incentives to work and increasing the incentives to relax. Over the next decades, Europe saw a nearly 30 percent decline in work hours.

Really? Really? Increasing taxes provides more incentive to relax? Does anyone need any extra incentive to relax? Everybody loves to relax!


And Europeans saw their work hours decrease because their unions fought for it. Do you think that the bosses of European companies were giving their employees the option of how many hours to work? "What's that Francois? You say your taxes have gone up, so you're going home early today? And coming in late tomorrow? Well, C'est La Vie! Au Revoir, mon ami!" (pretty much my entire French vocabulary)

 

Au revoir, we're all going home! Because of Le Taxes!

Also, how does raising taxes provide an incentive to work fewer hours? Let's see, I used to take home 10 Francs an hour, now, with the additional tax, I only clear 8 Francs. What to do, what to do. . . I know, I'll put in fewer hours, that way, I get fewer Francs per hour, but multiply that by fewer hours. . .Francois, you diabolical genius, you're rich!


So, anyway, has liberalism "run amok" under President Obama? Short answer: no. Long answer David Brooks is the worst columnist in the world, unless you count Ryu Spaeth who wrote the original article for "The Week" in which he cites both David Brooks and Jennifer Rubin as if they were objective arbiters of reality to criticize the Democrats' alleged leftward lurch (don't you wish!).
Check out his entire article here: http://news.yahoo.com/liberalism-run-amok-under-president-obama-155000998.html if you're in the mood for a laugh.

 

The Bible has a casting problem

The husband and wife team behind History Channel's "The Bible" miniseries issued a statement in response to accusations that the actor cast in the role of Satan was chosen due to his vague resemblance to President Barack Obama:

“The actor who played Satan, Mehdi Ouzaani, is a highly acclaimed Moroccan actor. He has previously played parts in several Biblical epics – including Satanic characters – long before Barack Obama was elected as our President,” said Burnett and Downey.
“This is utter nonsense.”

Okay, I'm perfectly willing to assume that he was not chosen due to his resemblance to POTUS.  But you know what? You've still got a serious problem with the casting here.
Let's see if we can spot a pattern here:


Moses is played by British actor William Houston

 

You may have to answer him these questions three.

Abraham?



Another Brit, Gary Oliver.

Mary, mother of Jesus?



The very British Roma Downey.
 



Jesus Himself?

 

Portugese actor Diogo Morgado.

But Satan, the embodiment of evil?

 

Black guy!


I don't even care if he bears a resemblance to the President, why are you casting a black guy as Satan? Why would you assume that Satan would be black? Especially when you apparently assume that all of the ancient Hebraic characters would look like lily-white Europeans? You couldn't find anyone whose ancestors came from the Holy Lands?

 

 

A Jewish actor? Now I've heard everything!

So, yeah, maybe it's a coincidence that Mehdi Ouzaani sort of looks like Barack Obama in 20 years, but how are these casting decisions not just a teensy bit, oh, I don't know. . .racist?


Oh, and by the way, if this hand-hole is at all indicitave of your production values. . .

 
. . . I wouldn't be clearing out any space on your Emmy shelf.


Oh, wait, the Emmys are terrible! You'll probably need to add a shelf.

Happy St Padrick's Day!

I don't celebrate it myself, being neither Irish nor Catholic, but I do love the music and the dancing.

CPAC Crowd pretends Sarah Palin isn't a huge embarrassment

Sarah Palin was one of the stars of this year's CPAC, the only place in the world where she is considered relevant and Chris Christie is not. I don't know what the bulk of her speech was about, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess it was about the Real America? But I did see this clip, in which she acts like a snotty 12-year-old boy to wild applause from the troglodytes.


First she does what any 12-year-old whose dad lets him have a gun would do, makes sure everyone knows she has it. "Hey, did I ever mention that me and Tahd have guns, 'cuz we totally do. I totally bought him a gun for Christmas. He totally bought me a gun rack for all the guns I have, you guys. I'm kind of a gun expert!"

Then she makes a juvenile dick and boob joke "he has the 'gun', you guys! Get it? 'gun?' But I have the 'rack!' Ha ha, you get it? 'rack?' Hmm? You know, 'rack?' like boobs?" Ugh! painful.

Then she acts like she's some kind of defiant rebel by sipping from a Big Gulp. In Washington, DC. Where there are ZERO restrictions on sizes of soda, so wow! You're really flaunting your bad-girl street cred, there. For the record, I agree that mayor Bloomberg's soda rule is a stupid rule. And it has already been tossed out by the courts. But you're not in New York. You're not exactly stickin' it to the man, there. It would be like me flying to Las Vegas and playing a slot machine and bragging about how I'm a total bad-ass because gambling is illegal in Georgia. Then I fly back to Atlanta and brag to everyone about how I broke the law and totally got away with it because I'm a rebel and I'll never be any good. I'm a rebel and I never ever do what I should!

But of course the mouth breathers in the CPAC audience erupt into wild ovations like she was Spartacus, brazenly defying the Imperial might of Caesar! Oh, my God, what a hero!



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