Initial jobless claims were unchanged for the week, suggesting that jobs continue to be produced albeit at a slow pace. We have recovered more jobs than were lost in private sector from the Bush crash, even in “slow“ months. Obama can take credit for half again what was Bush‘s average month before the crash. If you include the jobs Bush lost at the end (including the early months of Obama‘s term), Bush’s average month was zero new jobs created.
The problem is that Red States have laid off 700,000 teachers, social workers, cops, firefighters and bridge inspectors. This probably killed another two million more private sector jobs that would have produced supplies used by these government workers, or would have benefited from the workers’ spending. Trickle down from the top doesn’t work, but you can drain the economy from the bottom.
Prairie2: We could be just like Greece
Prairie2: Checkmate within the Margin of Error
Obama has said his position on Marriage Equality has been evolving, probably not. Public opinion however, has been evolving, as have the demographics. The old, rigid, fearful of gays, generation of voters has been dying off.
They’re being replaced by a generation that began voting right after Y2K. Remember the computer panic by that name? It was a real threat, and not just a hoax, but not the end of the world the way the same people who have lately been selling gold made it out to be. (BTW, gold dropped under $1600/oz today, it could be on the way down to $700)
Alex Baer: Schoolhouse Shock
You'd think electrically punishing children, as ways of getting their attention, would be outlawed by now in America -- but you would be wrong. You would have thought this would have come up before now -- and it has, over and over. And you know: The shocks still go on and on.
My first nudge in the direction of the Judge Rotenberg Center, the JRC, came in an email today, asking for my support, on a petition at Change.org. It began:
Prairie2: The Colonel can sell cheaper if the chickens also pay the bills
One of Mitt Romney’s favorite lies these days is to label Barrack Obama as the enemy of small business. Obama’s response is to point to a long list of small business friendly executive orders. In fact he’s the first President since FDR to show them any real sympathy, but none of the things he’s been able to do really makes much of a difference at this point.
Traditionally, small businessmen have always voted Republican since they tended to either believe the nonsense Republicans told them, or they foolishly believed that someday they’d be the kind of big business that Republicans actually favor. It’s not like they’re a big voting block anymore,- the last 30 years of Republican policies have gotten rid of almost all of them.
Alex Baer: Anniversary & Sarcophagus
Speaking of the continuing meltdown horrors at Fukushima...
Speaking of the fresh fuel rods jammed into damaged buildings so fragile they couldn't ride out a wiggle...
Speaking of hydrogen gas and steam explosions carrying radioactivity aloft...
Speaking of all the radioactive water dumped into the sea, over and over again, sometimes by accident, sometimes by helplessness and design...
Prairie2: Stand your ground, Jean Valjean
It’s 4-20 and if you can’t remember reading Les Miserables in high school because you were smoking in the boy’s room, there is just one aspect of the story relevant to this rant. It’s that Jean Valjean got five years in prison for stealing a loaf of bread. He then got another 16 years for several attempted escapes. In the past this was considered shocking, but in the corporate owned prison system of America this would a light sentence.
The Corporate prison system routinely engineers ever longer sentences for prisoners in their custody for simple infractions of the rules. A serious crime like stealing bread on three occasions can get you life without parole in a private prison.
Caution: Do Not Explode Lightly
Where will you go when the cow, whale, and/or volcano blows?
Instead of starting with Parrotheads -- fans of Jimmy Buffett and his songs -- for clues, we first go to Colorado, where the U.S. Forest Service is pondering what to do with a group of stray cows that wandered away from the herd over the winter, then moseyed into a ranger cabin, making themselves at home.
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