Thanks For Caring...

... enough to shed oh so many fake tears—in the noise machine response to the CBO forecast that a raise in minimum wage could lead to job losses.

Fewer jobs projected, because people might not have to hold down three to survive? Surely that would put us on the road to becoming less Exceptional.

Edroso here, citing more wingnut concern for working stiffs.

How Many...

Ta-Nehisi Coates interview of Jordan Davis' mother. More Coates here, and after the verdict.

Charles Pierce.

David E. makes some connections, including a musical one.

Because if it were ever about race, we might have to ask, "how many little Einsteins, cut down while in their prime?"

Huddle Muddle, Toil And Trouble

It's an unpalatable brew, served up daily.

Well, more of a bout: Supervisor vs. Printed Word ...

The challenger is not so proficient at reading comprehension, and he first encounters the script when he comes before the congregation. The result is much stumbling and garbling, and intoning of such things as—

"All knowledge has its oh...rí-gens... in our perceptions."

—Ley...o...narda... dah Vinci

The script's writer needs to pad daily slots, 52 weeks a year (year, after year, after year...), so nationally branded weeks offer easy filler. Hurrah for National Random Acts of Kindness Week, February 10-16... Although group eyebrows were raised at that one, with its implication of doing something without gain.

Consultants take care of most other weeks.

Recent guidance from those fine professionals has included "Stop Multi-Tasking." Here's a version of what we heard, as going around the Intertubes.

A study done at the University of London found that constant emailing and text-messaging reduces mental capability by an average of 10 points on an IQ test. It was five points for women, and fifteen points for men. This effect is similar to missing a night's sleep. For men, it's around three times more than the effect of smoking cannabis. While this fact might make an interesting dinner party topic, it's really not that amusing that one of the most common "productivity tools" can make one as dumb as a stoner.

Wonder how how long until the morning script writer fills a week by encouraging us to multi-task.

But, It's all good. Or so I keep hearing.

At our office even rubber bands have inspiring slogans...

Freedom's Most Fervent

Roy Edroso goes over the latest—

Last week the Congressional Budget Office issued another report on the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Its most widely-reported revelation was that 2.3 million Americans may leave their jobs because Obamacare would make it inadvisable to them to keep them.

We should say "widely-and-variously-reported," because our rightblogger friends first publicized the news to mean that Obama was going to fire all those people; then, when even the normally hapless American press started explaining that this was not so, came up with other explanations, most of which boiled down to this: Under Obamacare, you no longer have to keep a despised job to have health insurance -- which is terrible, since keeping a job for the insurance is the American Way.

Or, as Edroso puts it here—

...about the CBO finding that, since Obamacare lets Americans quit jobs they no longer need for insurance, 2.3 million of them might do so, and the outrage this engenders among rightbloggers. Yes, freedom's just another word for -- actually, at this point, who knows?

Of course, there won't stop at that, when there will always be another meme to grasp at. Edroso helpfully presents this one—

...in 2010 Nancy Pelosi said something about the Affordable Care Act: That citizens who'd been keeping jobs (first, second, or third) just so they could keep health insurance that went with it would, thanks to the ACA, have a chance to drop it and try to become "an artist or a photographer or a writer."

Pelosi also said Obamacare left citizens free to "start a business and be entrepreneurial and take risk," but none of the brethren heard that -- their brains were too inflamed by visions of dirty bohemians spending their taxpayer dollars on Gauloises, Moleskins, and beret cleaner.

Ergo: right launches War on Poetry. Which at least brings entertainment, courtesy of Edroso's commenters...

RogerAiles

Rick Santorum stands ready to condemn man on doggerel text.

dex

so much depends
upon

a red faced right blogger

glazed with freedom

beside the white
chickenshit voters.

Meanwhile: promising they shall "overcome," and that "the whole world is watching," capitalism's biggest boosters threaten a private corporation—which dared endorse an 'Un-American' union election be held in the South.

Now here's a happy employee...

Dollar store display
Photo: Clever Sister