WHAT'S FAIR: Minimum Skills Earning Minimum Wages

Are you worth $30,000 a year?
For those fast food employees, and their nannies in public office, thinking they deserve $15 an hour, or more, let's do some math.
> At $15 an hour, someone slinging burgers would make $31,200 annually.
> An E1 (Private) in the military makes $18,378.
> An E5 (Sergeant) with 8 years of service only makes $35,067 annually.
So you're telling me, Woody Likefrieswithat , that you deserve as much as those kids getting shot at, deploying for months in hostile environments, and putting their collective asses on the line every day protecting the rights of YOUR unskilled butt!?
Here's the deal, Frank Andbeans: you are working in a job designed for a teenager in high school or working his way through trade school or college. It's a job for someone who is learning how to work. Have you thoroughly learned how to work? These jobs are designed for those looking to earn enough for shared rent, beer, and some food and gas, and hanging out with their equally goofy young pals.
If you have CHOSEN this basic means of making a living as your lifelong profession, you have not planned very well. Time to accept the consequences or to firm up, work your way out of the lower rungs, and rely on yourself, not count on foul promises of a few rise from low wages to high with little or no stops to learn skills that deserve a higher wage. It is a tough lesson, but you either learn it, or you stay where you are. The ones misleading you into believing you deserve higher pay for the same minimum role in life might sound like your hero, but they are only your big talking "better." They are fooling you. Wake up!
Here's what is fair to everyone: If you don't want minimum wage, don't settle on your minimum skills,  don't put forward minimum effort, be the example of a great employee that can move past the minimum job. And please don't expect someone else to pave your way, without you advancing your skills, for a smooth ride to $30k and better in earnings. That's how it might work in your dreams, but in real life, a solid person seeks rewards for effort, not for whining.
I revised this considerably. A version of this, no doubt a chain email, was sent to me by a retired person. He understands what working means. No one promised him a cake walk to a better life.
- J Ruse

Obama, the tough guy, offers more self-important posing after election losses

If he didn't prove it already to everyone who isn't fully enamored with him, the other day Obama showed that he is the narcissistic supermodel of politics: a major poser. 

Obama said he heard the two-thirds of registered voters who didn't vote, in the most extraordinarily arrogant example of a self-serving political interpretation of the citizenry he's ever given. This was only the day after the sting of a Senate control shift to Republicans, and additions to the House and governors' mansions for the opposition party. 

Funny, I thought I heard those registered voters who didn't vote, too. Though for me, they said nothing. Because that's what not voting is. Saying NOTHING. A non-vote, or "if you choose not to decide" as the Rush song goes, is the freedom to abandon the process. Did Obama also hear the many voting age Americans who don't register? A non-vote is not a clear message to one side or the other of an election, as Obama absurdly pretended it was. Not voting is a sign that people need to wake up and participate. That's it. It's on those people who did not vote to resist their functional apathy next time, and vote. And to do more within the system than only vote. Learn about the items on the ballot, not just assume what they are, for instance. 

What's more, Obama's self-important claim that he heard this silence was an open ended claim. He didn't really explain what he claimed he heard. Well, that's convenient for him, isn't it? I don't buy into it. 

The silence is not Obama's to interpret now any more than it was anyone's to interpret his intentions when he voted present in Illinois state senate

If it were Obama's place to interpret the election acts of inaction, then perhaps now that Congress is fully in opposition hands, that branch of our federal government should be free to interpret his empty promises as non-votes in their own way and proceed as they see fit, despite him. After all, talking tough,  Obama has said that he intends to behave similarly -- to disregard Congress -- on immigration "reform." 

Thank the president, once again, for setting the wrong tone. And hope that somehow less stiff and autocratic thinking can prevail, despite Obama, during the next two years.


- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Hi, I'm Charlie Crist, and I am running for US Senate

In a few hours, if the voting gods are merciful to me, Charlie Crist will be making a concession speech in the Florida governor's race.

Here's why I don't like the man, despite believing that, loosely, his time as governor the first time around wasn't so bad. (You cannot lay much blame on Crist for the recession, for instance.)

Crist, in 2010, exited the guv's mansion after one fairly successful term, thinking he could walk into the US Senate that year. He SHOULD have run for a second governor's term at that time, and he likely would have won. INSTEAD, he seemed to have proven (to those who paid attention) what his real colors were. By the end of the 2010 Senate campaign, his behavior showed he was a MERE career politician who would say anything, and take any position, simply to gain that power he lusts for like a 14-year-old hormone-raging boy in a Victoria's Secret store. 

He was a nasty SOB up against the far cooler-headed, more principled and unpretentious Marco Rubio in 2010. And Crist kept coming, and looking worse each time: When Crist lost the Republican primary to Rubio, he turned independent to try and earn his rightful place (in his mind) at the high seat of power he so richly deserved. Then he got really nasty.

Crist lost, and did it attacking the same positions he claimed to hold only months prior. Plus, he called Marco Rubio a dangerous extremist, a radical, part of that dangerous Tea Party, yadda yadda. Rubio: an EXTREMIST?! CRIST proved himself a political merchant only. THEN, after all his shrill maneuvering didn't work in 2010, Crist became a Democrat. And he ran for governor, again. As he should have in 2010, but this time with a new party affiliation. Why they took him, I don't know. 

If he wins the governor's race, I would like to begin selling bumper stickers that say "I'm Governor Charlie Crist, and I am running for Senate."

That's why I don't want Crist: he's only a politician. He's got nothing else to offer. We have enough career politicians.



- J Ruse

Tan suit, empty at the WH podium

Would be remiss if someone didn’t note that the suit the media was so chatty about about is… empty. Obama and his empty suit.

Where is the shot of the tan suit on a hangar Photoshopped behind the WH Press Room podium?

- JRuse

The bad news: We have no strategy as to ISIS, or anything else in the Middle East other than reducing American influence.
The good news: Obama is telling the truth.
The worse news: The truth Obama is telling is a monumental and deliberate failure that will take a decade or more to reverse, if it even can be reversed.
And our media?
Beyond pathetic:
Obama's tan suit steals the spotlight at press conference http://t.co/Fr4tRHLO7A pic.twitter.com/CPpSeiwT8G
— NBC News (@NBCNews) August 28, 2014
Taupe and change: Obama's switch from dark to tan suit for serious statement, says @dsupervilleAPhttp://t.co/Dd7imzOhaI
— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) August 28, 2014
Obama might have held a news conference on serious issues, but his #tansuit got the attention. http://t.co/C0sTQR8vK5
— POLITICO (@politico) August 29, 2014
On the Runway Blog: Obama Wore a Tan Suit (and Spoke About World Crises) http://t.co/aMxCpDiVwX
— The New York Times (@nytimes) August 29, 2014



- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

Obama in another populist, economically impractical push to raise the minimum wage


OBAMA'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY: starting building the house by painting the walls.

It's about economic stagnation, stupid. 

Wages of the middle class, people who have worked for years and even hold college degrees, have been stagnant for years. They are interested in being independent, spending money, doing things that benefit minimum wage earners, who are mostly in service industries. Raising the minimum while the middle class is static simply will not help the economy. 

The middle class improving it's situation with market confidence and pressure from leaders to offer raises that suit business profits and performance and potential is what we need. Growing an economy from the bottom up is artificial, socialistic and typical of Obama's treatment of the job market. He has no respect for the markets, he wants to lecture us,  tell businesses to boost the pay on the  low end without an economic policy that works at his end. He leads like some third world Socialist populist loon at times. 

We need companies to stop holding onto their wallets awaiting his next crazy demand. Get them out from under the thumb of govt regulations and threats and let the people who know how to create jobs do so. 

You can't build an economy from the least skilled zone upwards any more than you can build a house starting with painting the walls. But it seems that's what Obama wants to do. 

Help the middle class, help the low-wage earners. That's a plan, not a popularity tactic. Tell your representative this. Don't tell him simply to raise the minimum wage.