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

Vacationer-in-chief: Obama will be getting lessons... on sport

It looks like Golf Digest has unearthed the big reason President Obama is spending President's Day weekend in Palm City, Fla.
He's getting golf lessons from one of the sport's top coaches.
Butch Harmon, who has worked with Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, and other golf stars, will school Obama, as will son Claude Harmon III.
Read the story: http://www.usatoday.com/story/theoval/2013/02/15/obama-butch-harmon-golf-scho...

I'm very glad that the president is trying to improve his skills. I just wish they were skills that mattered AT ALL.

When's he start his economics training with Ben Stein or somebody? As if.

- jR

Posted via email from Like, Totally Political Dude! - posterous

Ultimate Fighting: solar cooling versus global warming

Nothing's funnier to me than an atheist follower of the Green Movement or Climate Change activism. "I think God is a cruel lie, but unproven theories and reasons to hate industry and people having jobs, and civil expansion, are AWESOME!" That said...

TG Daily - Harvard astrophysicist: Sunspot activity correlates to global climate change

Harvard astrophysicist Dr. Willie Soon tells us that Earth has seen a reduced level of sunspot activity for the past 18 months, and is currently at the lowest levels seen in almost a century. Dr. Soon says "The sun is just slightly dimmer and has been for about the last 18 months. And that is because there are very few sunspots." He says when the sun has less sunspots, it gives off less energy, and the Earth tends to cool. He notes 2008 was a cold year for this very reason, and that 2009 may be cold for the same.

As of today, there have been 15 days in a row without any sunspots. In 2008 there were 266 days scattered throughout the year without sunspots, and in 2007 there were 163 days without sunspots. These are the #2 and #9 fewest sunspots years seen since 1911.

Earth warming, sun cooling. What kind of climate change should we be watching out for, and why does Al Gore insist on lying about 200-foot rises in ocean levels just to get us to stop using so much oil? Groan.

Dr. Soon's field of specialty is the sun. He explains that sunspots are planet-sized pockets of magnetism with much greater energy output and matter expulsion, some of which strikes the Earth's atmosphere as extra energy from the sun. He says when sunspots are present, the temperature goes up, when they are not present the temperature goes down. He also told a reporter at WBZ, CBS TV 38 (in Boston, MA) that beginning in 1645 and continuing through 1715, there were no observed sunspots. This is the period known as the Little Ice Age.

He also explains that sunspots go in cycles, which are around 11 years. There are periods of maximum activity (called the Solar Max) and periods of minimal or no activity (called the Solar Min).

Around the year 2000, the current cycle had reached its maximum. As of right now in 2009, it is at a period of zero sunspot activity. Still, he explains that no one knows for sure how long the cycles will last, and there are precedents that sunspots can persist for long periods of time, or there can be few or none for long periods of time (as happened between 1645 and 1715 during the Little Ice Age).

Could it be that the universe is more significant than people, and it is less stout (that is, we must protect it, like it's more pliable than we are)? Somebody ask Al Gore his views of a self-correcting planet and universe. Because apparently he's the poster child for all things "science", right? For the current leadership and the sore winners of the recent U.S. election? Will we simply find reason to start a broad-reaching, formal sun worship religion in the U.S.? Hmmm... legislating nature worship -- making Gore's mission complete....

Dr. Soon is an astrophysicist whose field of expertise is the sun for Harvard and the Smithsonian. He said, "The Sun is the all encompassing energy giver to life on planet Earth." And presently it's getting a lot of attention from scientists. He expects that if 2009 is another cold year which correlates to the decreased sunspot activity, that the global warming theories which attribute temperature fluctuations to increases in the levels of atmospheric CO2 will need to take notice.

He says, "If this deep solar minimum continues and our planet cools while CO2 levels continue to rise, thinking needs to change. This will be a very telling time and it's very, very useful in terms of science and society in my opinion".

So we're set to lower our CO2, except China isn't. I think that's great, it helps. But what is coming? Cooling? Warming? One and then the other? Why is cooling going to still create a rise in ocean levels? Are we just being scammed by some scientists like people in the Middle Ages, etc., were being scammed -- and some today, still, of course -- by a shamelessly power-seeking clergy/political leadership? Is this really just to get us all to behave in the ways they want us to, despite any solid evidence of anything?

Today is not the day that question will be answered. Come back tomorrow....

Not really.

Al Gore as much as has said he's exaggerated all along about "global warming" to get people to react. That's called propaganda: lies to achieve a desired goal is plain old political propaganda. Yet, all these sad little minds adore the Gore.

Just wait for Al Gore to give you your orders, children, for further response to nature's activity. You know -- be a mindless dweeb that blames industry for everything and adores the losers of most elections, so long as they are not Republicans. And good luck with that.


- AirFarceOne (twitter)

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Sen. Dodd's reelection bid embraces his, umm, success with banking

From the Political Hah! Dept.:

Chris Dodd’s Comeback Slogan: ‘Banking on Change’ - BrianFaughnan’s blog - RedState

So what’s Chris Dodd’s plan to save his lucrative government gig? Remind people of his spot on the Banking Committee [link to RollCall article]:

Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), facing increasingly difficult odds in 2010, is spending the two-week recess barnstorming his home state to try to improve his political standing…

The appearances are part of a series dubbed “Banking for Change,” meant to highlight Dodd’s work on consumer protection issues as chairman of the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee.

Seriously? [link to Dodd's site]

If Dodd manages to win this time around, having proven what a terribly self-interested boob he is -- and it appears that Conn. voters are even less cerebral than Mass. and West Va. voters (Ted, John Kerry, Barney, etc.) -- it shows just how much work that sincere, dignified conservatives and general non-cretins will have to get through to try to recover some sway in D.C. That is, to clarify, there is a lot of work to come for people who believe in simple things:

• smaller government,
• a balanced budget,
• power to the actual people (not their elected king by proxy),
• peace through strength,
• America still is (stuck or blessed as) the leader of the free world and should act like it,
• despising mistreatment of people here but giving passes for mistreatment of "groups" elsewhere is absurd
• liberty, freedom and the pursuit of happiness don't equate with living in a welfare state
• we have the biggest guns, and we don't prefer to use them, but we damn well will
  

So, cut to the chase: Get the pitchforks, effigies, tar, feathers, and torches ready. Just like the good old, pre-Revolutionary War, days.

- jR, aka AirFarceOne (Twitter)

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