No time for a real post, so just some interesting information I’ve read from the DailyKos (not our Ko).
AMERICAblog:
ABC's Terry Moran just reported that the only time Bush got applause was in the middle of his speech when a White House advance team member started clapping all on their own in order to cajole the soldiers into clapping, which they dutifully did.
So even the applause was fake.
This must've been pretty obvious as even Fox news reported this later in the day. How sad of a president are you when you can't anyone to volunteerily clap for you.
From SurveyUSA in the latest approval ratings:
The bottom line, Bush is at 50 percent or above in only 11 states -- Utah (63), Nebraska (60), Wyoming (58), Idaho (56), Montana (56), Alabama (54), Alaska (53), North Dakota (52), Kansas (51), Kentucky (50), Mississippi (50), and Texas (50).
He's at 40 percent or lower in 14 states -- Ohio (40), Wisconsin (40), Maine (39), Massachusetts (39), Delaware (38), Nevada (38), New Jersey (38), Michigan (38), California (37), Connecticut (37), Illinois (37), New York (33), Rhode Island (33), and Vermont (32).
Nice to see Kansas right up there high with the ignorant states (sigh). I'm sure with teaching intelligent design starting next year will surly move us higher on this ladder.
There are also 3 southern states too. How fucking sad.
From Think Progress:
The House of Representatives voted yesterday to give themselves a cost-of-living raise. Congratulations, lawmakers! Next year you’ll be making $3,100 more than you did this year.
Unfortunately, Congress doesn’t want to share the wealth. This makes the eighth time Congress has voted to increase its own pay since 1997; they, however, have voted down every attempt to give minimum wage earners a cost of living raise since 1997. Today, the real value of the minimum wage is $3.50 below what it was in 1968. Working full time for minimum wage today will rake in a whopping $10,700 a year, or about $5,000 below the poverty level for a family of three.
Hope your conscience doesn’t bother you so much that you can’t enjoy that extra $3,100, Congress.
I’ve heard all your busines cases for not wanting to up the minumum wage. Frankly, all your arguments are asinine. One of the favorite and most common arguments you will hear against raising the minumum wage is that it hurts big and small businesses.
The truth is that small businesses are not the ones that will be hurt and they are not the ones that will stop hiring people with a small raise in minumum wage. Small businesses are usually more lenient in paying people better than the minumum wage.
The ones that will be hurt with an increase in wages are big companies. You know who this will hurt? Big ass companies like Wal-Mart that pays most of their labor force around the minumum wage. The same big ass companies that seem to have our government under their control in stopping legislation that would increase the minumum wage.
An increase in wages will mean a decrease in profits for these big companies and a hit in profits means the business will not hit some arbiturary numbers to appease the all powerful shareholder. And you know what happens when you don’t appease the all mighty shareholder.
You will be punished!!
Your stock value will deflate, your won’t get that extra couple of million dollar bonus this year. Heaven forbid, you may not be able to buy a second plane this year.
So screw the people making minumum wage, according to many of you conservatives, that’s more than enough to survive on anyway. We have bigger problems here. We need to appease the all mighty or they won’t give us more money for us to hoard and to generate a bigger wealth gap between us and you.
The cornerstone of capitalism is about making money. With that mentality, our society has fallen pray to rewarding the wrong types of behaviors. No longer is caring for each other the corner stone of civilization (yes, civilization was developed in order for us to protect each other from other forces), but now, what we care about is satisfying this mystical force that is the shareholders and protecting it by hitting these profit/growth numbers.
Spreading the wealth around and creating a smaller wealth gap? That’s just crazy talk.
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Interesting news from the Ko (our Ko, not the daily one) reporting straight from China.
The Pup blog is NOT viewable in communist China. This is pure speculation on my part, but I believe they are afraid that if the people of China begins to read this blog, they will instantly revolt and overthrow their government to put the Pup in charge!
Yes. Fear me. You know I am the rightful heir of the empire. The Pup will rise!!
Happy Thursday!
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