Healthy People

A pretty good point (from Wonkette):

Here is a lesson on capitalism and profitability courtesy four companies that refuse — REFUSE — to make sure that their employees are not handling your food with their tubercular hands.

Maybe next time you call ahead for a reservation, you should ask if all the chefs and wait-staffers have seen a doctor lately and if the owner of the joint is willing to guaranty you won't be infected because the pot washer working 29 hours a week at 8 bucks an hour couldn't afford to get a flu shot this year.

This whole stupid argument over Obamacare coming from some of these "conservatives" is just another great example of having people in charge of businesses who really don't understand the first fuckin' thing about business.

And this is what the first thing is:  If you don't take care of the people who take care of your customers, you won't have those customers for very long. (and I can't believe anybody would actually have to say that out loud - fuck)

New(ish) Music

Marc Cohn (yeah, I know - but try to ignore all the shit he's been known for)

The Krugman Speaks

I like Paul Krugman's stuff because it all seems to be totally reality-based.  He's a "leftie" (whatever that means), but his ideology doesn't get in his way.  And since he's engaged in a little thing called "science", it's generally a good thing to let the evidence lead you to a rational conclusion rather than trying to make the numbers fit a particular expectation of how you think the world is supposed to work.

Here's Krugman's whole post from yesterday's NYT:

Transatlantic Divergence

Deadline pressure, so not much blogging this weekend. But pursuing the theme that America is doing the least worst among major economies, here’s a chart I find illuminating:

In the early stages of the crisis, unemployment rose more rapidly in the US than in Europe. This mainly reflected differences in institutions: it’s much easier to fire people in America. From some point in 2010 onward, however, the US situation has gradually improved; initially some of the drop in unemployment was basically people leaving the labor force, but more recently there have been solid though modest gains in the ratio of employment to the relevant population (you have to adjust for aging).

Meanwhile, Europe has gotten much worse; now formally in recession, but the truth is that it has been going downhill all along.

Why the divergence? The obvious answer is that the austerity stuff broke out in 2010, and the austerians took over policy much more completely in Europe than in the United States.

That last paragraph is the main point.  And I think he's trying to tell us that if we give in to the siren song of Austerity, we just make it harder to get ourselves out of the hole we're in.  Also, I've heard others warning us against the effects of Shock Doctrine style economic policy.

We'll have to see, but it seems like Republican politics is not changing much.  I see the Benghazi crap as their attempt to manufacture a 2nd-term scandal for Obama, and now, with all this bogus posturing about a Fiscal Cliff (more like a short ramp IMHO) and talk of some Grand Bargain, they're trying to hang a major rap on him for a double-dip recession and whatever shitty thing that happens as a result of the sudden drop in Demand that happens when you make big cuts in federal spending.  And then, of course, as the 2010 mid-terms roll around, they make all the noise they can possibly make about how all the bad stuff happened on Obama's watch and we have to admit it's all about Obama's failed policy etc etc.

50 Shades Of Purple

There are 2  pretty important things that usually get ignored when looking at how the voting splits out in a national election.  First is the actual mix of Repub/Dem votes in any given location, and the second is the density of the voter population.  So when you just look a the Electoral College map, all you see is big chunks of Red in the middle flanked by big chunks of Blue on the sides.

But when you look at it with a finer granulation, the resolution gets pretty sharp.

(Click on the picture to get a good close look)

(hat tip = Democratic Underground)

The Anonymous Thing

Lots of speculation and suppositioning about whether or not Anonymous had something to do with stopping a real or imagined attempt by Karl Rove to hack the vote for Romney.

From Wonkette (hard to tell what to think when these guys get goin' on something):

Oh cool, Anonymous (we think it is Anonymous?) says Karl Rove was gonna vote fraud all the Machines, and that’s why he was so flabbergasted and refused to believe it when Fox called Ohio for Bamz, but they stopped him from stealing all the Machines by jamming up ORCA, because it was not actually a GOTV system but a “steal the vote” system, but they stopped him, we are pretty sure that is what the following letter, which we guess is from Anonymous probably, says. Seems legit!

And here's the letter:

I guess I just have to wonder about something.  Let's say Anonymous did have the goods on ol' Karl.  The letter seems to indicate they knew an awful lot about the scheme and about how it worked (barn doors etc).  If they knew all that, and they had all the evidence of tampering and what could easily be construed as a bunch of people conspiring to commit Wire Fraud, and Election Rigging and a host of other Federal Crimes - why did they just kinda fold the tent and say in effect, "Watch yer ass, fellas cuz next time we'll be on you like the sun covers Dixie".  Why go all Batman, thwarting the evil genius, but then, instead of exposing him and delivering him to justice, you pat him on the butt and send him on his way with a warning?  I gotta be missing something, or there's a lot more to be found out, but I don't get it - not yet anyway.

A Quick Tho't

I'm hearing way too much whining from people like John Schnatter et al about what difficulties they find themselves in, now that Obummer's been made King of Fuckamericastan.  Poor Papa; it's quite possible he'll be unable to afford the upkeep on his richly deserved 40-room house and personal golf course.  To that we can add the increasing volume of grumbling from those accursed unions and the under-employed.  Here's a shocker: I can't help but feel more inclined toward the people who're actually doing the work.

BTW - a brief aside:  Papa John's stock has been dropping since his little public tantrum - down something like 9%.  So lemme see.
9% of a company worth $1.09 Billion is $98,000,000.
Papa John's "Obamacare cost" = about $6,500,000.
Question:  Why are stupid people like John Schnatter in charge of these things?

I've posted before about an American Working Class that continues to get beat down while the Owner/Investor Class fattens up by getting a shrinking Management Class to work ever harder to maintain the status quo (ie: a continuation of the siphoning upward of as much wealth and power as possible).  And my only problem right this very second is that I can't find those posts, so maybe I just dreamed how great a thinker I am - not that my talking about the whole Class-Fuck thing makes me a great thinker in any case; shit, everybody's talked about that one.

So any-old-way.  I'm coming to realize that the overarching failure of US Government in the last 30 years is that they've done almost literally nothing to protect the American worker's standing as a major contributor to the success of American business - even while they've said almost nothing except how great the American worker is.  Really?  If you love us so much, why do you treat us like such shit?

Here's CNN/Forbes trying to spin the death of Hostess Brands into a cautionary tale about what happens when "the unions" are all intractable and/or stuck in the 70s or whatever.  It tries hard to do the Plenty-Of-Blame-To-Go-Around thing, but it's all about how the bad guy unions wouldn't let poor old Hostess continue to poison Americans with food that isn't really food do what a good entrepreneurial business knows it should do in a truly moral free market universe - which of course is ship all the jobs to Mexico blah blah blah.  And the kicker is that they use this one case to illustrate how nice it is for a Democrat Hedge Fund guy to try to help out and all, but he's just being too touchy-feely and the grownups need to step in to get it straightened out.

So far, in a courtroom near Manhattan and in a negotiating room in downtown Washington, they haven't come close, although a deal could happen even as you read this. The dramatis personaeare impressive: the Teamsters; two large hedge funds, Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital; and the private-equity firm Ripplewood Holdings. In an acrimonious behind-the-scenes war -- refereed by a federal judge -- they wage hostilities over who will get what crumbs from a disintegrating corporate cookie; whether that business can and should be resuscitated; the degree to which fabulous pension plans are anachronistic; whether promises made in collective bargaining ought to be sacrosanct; and just how important it is to save 15,000 union jobs. "There aren't great options here," former U.S. House Majority Leader Dick Gephardt told Fortune. Gephardt is now a lobbyist and consultant with connections to Hostess and the Teamsters. "People will have to pick the one that's a little bit better."

For me, Obama's whole tenure will be a ridiculous success if he does nothing else in the next four years but get our thinking turned around on how to bolster the fortunes of American labor while not flipping over into full-blown Protectionism.

A Fairly Simple Concept

I've been wondering pretty hard about how to articulate the basic shoot-yourself-in-the-foot strategy the GOP is trying to make work when it comes to winning elections and being able to "govern"*.

It just doesn't make any sense to alienate up to 95% of any given (eg: black) demographic if you expect to win - unless of course if you have a solid handle on ways to keep a sizable portion of those demographics from voting in the first place.  And that's what all the Voter Suppression - I mean Election Integrity efforts were all about - fucking duh.  (How many times do we have to hear about it from Maddow and every commentator left of Fred Barnes before we get it?).

Anyway, the GOP's real problem is this:


(hat tip = Balloon Juice)

...and the real real problem is that yes, actually it is indeed possible to fool some of the people all of the time.  But we can hope that the "some of the people" demographic is finally starting to shrink a bit.

*is it really "governing" if you're elected by a self-selecting minority?  I think there's a different word for that.

Deficit And Debt

No really - all your talk about your horrible tax burden and your right to keep the money you (haven't really) earned on your investments, and all the rest of the crap Repubs are always on about means precisely dick.

Today's Pix

It's Not A Cliff

First off, it's never about what they tell us it's about - almost exactly what Chris Hayes is saying here.

And I'll say this again - there's nothing better than listening to smart people talking about important stuff.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy