November 7, 2013

It's a topsy-turvy world, and maybe the problems of one person doesn't amount to a hill of beans...

But this is my hill. And these are my beans!

And I'm not quitting. It's not over!

Nothing is over until we decide it is! Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!

And it ain't over now. 'Cause when the goin' gets tough... The tough get goin'! Who's with me? Let's go!

October 18, 2013

Why does Florida produce so much weird news? Our experts explain.

Why does Florida produce so much weird news? Our experts explain.

<snip>



See, that’s the thing about Florida. It’s not that we have a lock on all the weirdness. Human nature guarantees that weird things can happen anywhere. What sets Florida apart is that it produces more weird news than anywhere else, and our weird news tends to be weirder than anyone else's. No other state is going to have a guy who faked a python rescue. No sir.

That’s why, in 2001, administrators for the snarky website Fark.com approved a tag for news items from Florida, the only state so honored. “Other states have odd stories come out of them, but no state can challenge Florida,” a Fark.com administrator said in 2011. “It’s the heavyweight champion of weirdness.”

How did Florida become the Go-To State for Weird? I consulted a number of experts, including historian Gary Mormino, author of Land of Sunshine, State of Dreams. Some folks think the rise of weirdness in Florida started with the 2000 presidential election, which guaranteed no parent would ever again name a newborn boy Chad. But Mormino contends it began long before that, as far back as the 1920s when unscrupulous hucksters were pulling wacky stunts to sell swampland to Yankees. The national news first began noticing this aspect of Florida in the 1980s, when cocaine cowboys were tearing up South Florida and Time magazine’s cover asked if the state was “Paradise Lost?” Now we’ve got all the aggregators jumping on the Florida weird-news bandwagon, collecting clicks with our craziness. How does Florida maintain this constant flow of cuckoo? A few factors combine to help explain it:

More:
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/florida/features/2013/oh_florida/what_makes_florida_weird_weather_people_tourists_foliage_greed.html

October 10, 2013

#fatshamingweek

From Adipose Activist:


#fatshamingweek

Trigger warning for this post, *extreme* fat hate.

So, not sure where it originated from, but someone with too much time on their hands decided it would be funny/relevant to start the hashtag #fatshamingweek on twitter. So, being somewhat of a glutton for punishment, I took a few seconds to check out some of the tweets. These tweets that I’ve screenshot were all written within 3 hours. I didn’t even have to seach very hard, because there were dozens more like these in the few minutes that I looked.

<snip>

Actual instructions encouraging violating the privacy of a fat person to make them feel badly about themselves:



<snip>

Multiply that by an entire week, and you start to get an idea of how pervasive this has been on twitter. Of course, there doesn’t need to be a week dedicated to shaming people, because if you live in a fat body, you are made to feel ashamed of it every single day. You are made into the butt of jokes and the subject of hatred (mostly from men, you’ll notice) simply for the way your body looks.

<snip>

You might also like to know that being bullied and shamed about your weight is proven to make you more likely to gain weight. And I quote: “Participants who experienced weight discrimination were approximately 2.5 times more likely to become obese by follow-up and participants who were obese at baseline were three times more likely to remain obese at follow up than those who had not experienced such discrimination.”

More:
http://adiposeactivist.wordpress.com/2013/10/10/fatshamingweek/

October 6, 2013

"School the House Rock" by Roy Zimmerman

Published on Oct 5, 2013

words and music by Roy Zimmerman and Melanie Harby
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SCHOOL THE HOUSE ROCK

Hey, Tea Party House members: This one's for you!

You dress up like a Founding Father
So you might think you'd bother
To read the Constitution in your pocket
But you need some schooling, so let's rock it!

There are three branches
Three branches of government
Three branches of government
Like the three corners of your hat

That should make it easier for you to remember.

There's the legislative branch - that would be you
The Executive Branch - that's ... You-Know-Who
And then there's the branch that you call the Ju...
Diciary
And that's necessary for the

Checks and balances
Checks and balances among the three branches
Three branches of government
Like the three corners of your hat

With me so far?

Now, you can pass a bill, and when you do
It's signed into law by you-know-who
Or vetoed, and then it comes back to you
And you might override it,
But once it's been decided it's a law

Yes, it's the law of the land, and all the negotiations and compromises have happened already.

Now you may say the law's "Unconstitutional"
Then the Constitution tells us the solution'll be
To take the question of its constitutionality
To the Supreme Court to decide it's ultimate legality

Now you can repeal a law, unless you try 42 times and you don't have the votes. But you can't find a law unconstitutional; that power belongs to the Judicial Branch. And withholding funding from a law you don't like is, in effect, vetoing that law. And funding only certain parts of the law is an attempt to exercise a line-item veto. You don't have the power to veto; that power belongs to the Executive Branch. So, if the Legislative Branch - that's you - usurps the power to determine constitutionality and the veto power, what's really being vetoed is the Rule of Law. And what's really being compromised is the Constitution. Still with me?

So you can pass a bill, and when you do
If you cry "Boo hoo, it's unconstitu...
tional," then try to veto it, well here's a clue:
Your hat only has one point

That's the School the House Rock
That's the School the House Rock

You're welcome.

October 5, 2013

I think we should close all federally funded harbors to all recreational vessels.

I don't think the harbormasters and Coast Guard should have to spend the money tending to mega yachts and pleasure vessels.

That doesn't sound essential to me.

Keep the private, non-commercial vessels moored in place.

October 5, 2013

If I was the guy in the SUV, I would have thought they were setting me up for a car-jacking.

Deliberately trying to slow me down and surround me?

I would have crushed that first dude like a bug and not felt the least bit bad about it.

That's a terrifying thing to do to someone, even if it's just to "make room for your buddies."

How is someone supposed to know that their intent is just dickishness and not outright assault?

Anyone who thinks this is okay should have a "Share the Road" or "Check Twice" bumper sticker shoved up their ass and out their mouth.

September 9, 2013

STUDY: Very Few Employers Have Actually Cut Workers’ Hours Because Of Obamacare

With implementation of the Affordable Care Act inching closer by the day, there’s been a slow but steady stream of employers claiming that the law is forcing them to cut back workers’ hours and rely more heavily on part-time employees. But for all the talk, very few companies have actually cut hours because of Obamacare, according to a new analysis by the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).

Obamacare requires firms that have 50 or more employees to provide a minimum level of health coverage to their full-time workers — defined as those who work 30 hours or more per week — or pay a $2,000 per employee fine after the first 30 workers. Since the overwhelming majority of companies that size already offer health care benefits, the provision only affects about 10,000 firms. Nonetheless, reform critics have latched onto the narrative that the requirement is a job-killer, citing the example of retail and service sector companies like Regal Theaters that are cutting back hours to avoid paying for workers’ health care benefits.

The CEPR report shows that to be a minority position among larger employers. Since 30 hours per week is the threshold for employees receiving benefits under the law, researchers expected companies that didn’t want to comply with Obamacare to roll back workers’ hours to just below that threshold. But only about 0.6 percent of the labor force worked between 26 and 29 hours per week in 2013. Since 2012, the number of part-time employees working that range of hours actually stayed statistically the same. Furthermore, less than a third of workers say they are working less than 30 hours because of an employers’ decision — most choose to work the limited number of hours. That led the authors to conclude that the trend “is in the wrong direction for the ACA as job-killer story.”

“While there may certainly be instances of individual employers carrying through with threats to reduce their employees’ hours to below 30 to avoid the sanctions in the ACA, the numbers are too small to show up in the data,” the CEPR researchers write. “It appears that in setting worker hours employers are responding to business considerations in much the same way as they did before the ACA took effect.”

More:
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2013/07/25/2353201/few-employers-cut-workers-hours-because-of-obamacare/



Also:

Obamacare Isn't Causing Employers To Cut Worker Hours: White House

...
In May, a poll conducted by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, an organization of human-resources professionals, showed that despite concerns about rising health-care costs, more than two-thirds of companies definitely plan to offer health benefits to full-time employees. The same poll found that only 0.5 percent of companies said they would definitely discontinue health benefits.
...


More:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/06/obamacare-worker-hours_n_3882403.html

September 9, 2013

911 Call: George Zimmerman Tried To Use Stand Your Ground While Threatening His Wife

George Zimmerman was taken into custody Monday after his estranged wife called 911 on him.

According to the 911 call, George Zimmerman kept telling his wife to move closer while he was holding a gun. It sounds like George was trying to set up another case of stand your ground.

Shellie Zimmerman told the 911 dispatcher that a witness sitting in his truck saw the entire altercation. She broke down sobbing saying she was scared and in shock.

...

She told the dispatcher, “He’s here continually trying to shut the garage door on me. He’s in his car and he continually has his hand on his gun, and he keeps saying ‘step closer’ and he’s just threatening all of us with his firearm.”

More:
http://www.politicususa.com/2013/09/09/911-call-george-zimmerman-stand-ground-threatening-wife.html

September 9, 2013

Who won the George Zimmerman betting pool?

How long has it been since his acquittal, and who guessed it?

Shall we start a new pool on how long it takes for him to hang himself in prison?

September 4, 2013

The Incredible Journey II: The Bison and the Grizzly made it home... but where's the Old Emu?

OMG, he made it, too!