**Update: I just got a call from a DL regular. Apparently the Montlake Ale House is closed this evening. Good thing I posted the announcement really late tonight!
Update II: Goldy, N in Seattle and I are heading for The College Inn, 4000 University Way NE
Seattle, WA. Please join us!
Start out the new year right by joining us tonight for an evening of post-holiday politics over a pint at the Seattle Chapter of Drinking Liberally.
We meet tonight and every Tuesday evening at the Montlake Ale House, 2307 24th Avenue E. Our normal starting time is 8:00pm.
Can’t make it tonight? Check out another Washington state DL over the next week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. On Wednesday, the Bellingham chapter meets. On Thursday the Bremerton chapter meets. And on Friday, the Centralia chapter meets.
With 212 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon, and three more in Idaho, chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.
Never thought that I would agree with David Stern on anything, but he had something to say about Rodman in North Korea.
http://www.vnews.com/sports/10.....ern-rebuke
Interesting article on grass roots activism for rail transit in two cities
In Cincinnati, they worked to save a streetcar line that was already under construction, and in Auatin, grass roots activists just want make the line better.
http://www.railwayage.com/inde.....channel=61
“The College Inn”
Hey, does anyone know if Ron Bozarth still owns that place? I was one of the contractors when he renovated the building back in 1980 or so. I hope he’s still kicking. He’s a great guy. We were friends until we lost touch after I took off to Palo Alto in 1985 for a few years.
Dennis Rodman… what happens when liberalism really takes hold. You go nutz!
Butt hey… Jesse HiJackson loves him through Twitter…
Similar mental disease?
HAR HAR HAR HAR HAR!
Robert Gates delivers TRUTH on Obummer and Shrillary…
DUMMOCRETINS… only think about the political calculations, not about the troops!
And Robert Gates clears the air on Joe BiteME!
Maybe Obummer should have given Joe BiteME more plagiarizing assignments!
In USA Today…
Remember how his spokeswoman claimed Obummer killed Osamam Bin Laden?
Been trying to post the NY Slimes Opinion page from Michael Mooron last week admitting Obummercare stinks and the middle class is in for a price shock! System rejects the NY Slimes link. Apparently when certain DUMMOCRETINS admit truth HA Buttheads rejects the entries!
From the PI.
Puddy’s obviously been drinking somewhere. Judging from the content of his comments, I suspect he’s drunk on homebrew.
@10 ….wood alcohol perhaps?
@11 I’m guessing something more toxic, e.g. transmission fluid or drano.
“He was signing letters of condolence to the families of those killed in both wars.”
No better job than that for a Bush holdover. I kind of like it. We should make everybody who served that administration do the same. Bush and Cheney would do it in person, as in on their fucking knees, begging for forgiveness.
Bridgeghazigate!
Considering the fact that both the New York and New Jersey State Attorneys General are seriously considering filing criminal charges in this, I wonder how log it’ll be before someone makes the claim that they were “just following orders”?
@14 About two days.
Frankly, I think the air just went out of Christie’s tires. He’s going to be another flameout in the history of presidential politics, now that he’s exposed as just another GOP bully.
When I write about issues like unions and minimum wage, I often feel like banging my head against a wall, because our society just doesn’t give a damn about workers.
American society has an extremely strong cultural bias in favor of business profit. Profit-worship is even drilled into the collective consciousness of our workers. The prevailing attitude is that we’re willing to sacrifice the environment, our health and safety, our families, and everything else to profit. Wherever the profit motive comes lumbering onto the scene, it shoves everything else out of the way.
Well, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Being a rabbit gives me an advantage, because I don’t have normal human wants. I don’t have an iPod, iPad, cable, or TV. I don’t have “stuff.” Or a job.
And that’s my point — no job. That’s the whole point of my lifestyle — not needing a job, not having a job, telling the whole idea of working to go fuck itself.
Why? Because workers get shit on, badly, from every angle. I don’t need to go into the details, you know what they are. Our profit-oriented society sanctions and facilitates the exploitation of workers. The whole idea is to get as much as possible from workers while giving as little as possible in return. Low pay, long hours, vanishing benefits, no job security, onerous demands, abusive bosses, and disrespect are the lot of today’s workers. All in the name of maximizing profits.
Not needing a job is a big deal, because it means I don’t have to put up with any of that. But I also realize that you stupid humans will never give up your “stuff,” therefore you will be wage slaves until you drop dead, and you’ll never get to be a lazy rabbit like me. It would be easy for me to say, “that’s your problem,” and decide that trying to educate you is a fruitless endeavor.
Yet, I keep trying, because I believe nobody should work. Capitalists don’t work, so why should you? The rich don’t work. The fact is, working isn’t how you get things in our society, despite all the propaganda about “work ethic” etc. The people who have the big houses, nice cars, nice vacations, country club memberships, comfortable retirements, etc., have no work ethic. Their ethic is to make you work so they can live of life of prosperity and ease. I’m sorry, but that’s how things actually work in America. We’re a capitalist utopia, not a worker’s utopia.
Because I’m a rabbit, and rabbits don’t want “stuff,” I’m psychologically liberated from “stuff” slavery and free to collect what’s really worth something: A slice of all those fat profits workers are creating for their capitalist masters.
Not only that, stocks are free. I’m not kidding. It’s harder than hell to make stupid humans grasp this, but it’s true. I didn’t pay a cent for 95% of the stocks I own. They were given to me. Here’s how I did it. At the start, I bought a few stocks with my own money. When companies gave me dividends, I used it to buy more stocks. When I flipped stocks for capital gains, I used the profits to buy more stocks. Sometimes companies “split” their shares and give you more shares simply because you already own their shares. Back in 1996, I bought 100 shares of Starbucks, and eventually I owned 800 shares because the company gave me another 700 shares. Free. They just showed up on my brokerage statement when the company handed them out to shareholders. Starbucks closed today at $78.03 a shares. Could I persuade you to buy 800 shares of Starbucks stock for $1736? That’s exactly what I did. Are you beginning to understand how I spent only $19,908 of my own money over the last 30 years and ended up with $385,000 of stock?
I can’t understand why you humans chain yourselves to shitty wage jobs, and then throw away what little money you have on “stuff.” Our system worships corporate profit like it’s some kind of damn god, and shits on workers in godawful ways. Just look at how ballistic half the American population goes if someone suggests raising the minimum wage from $7.50 to $9. Who the fuck wants to live on $9 an hour, but our poor suffering minimum-wage workers can’t even get to $9. If you slave away in a sweatshop for 40 hours a week, 52 weeks a year, at $7.50 an hour, you’ll make $15,600 a year — before commuting expenses, before taxes, before work expenses, etc. Hell, I get almost that much from my dividends, and I do absolutely nothing to get them. The dividend income just shows up on my brokerage statement every month, automatically.
I don’t get you humans. You created this godawful system that worships profit and disrespects and exploits workers. Then you go trotting off to slave away in the sweatshops you’ve created for yourselves. Then you throw away the little money you’re paid on useless “stuff.” If someone tried to give you free stock, you’d probably shoot ’em. You humans are dumber than bricks. I don’t understand you humans at all. But then, I’m only a rabbit.
Public service announcement from a beer nerd:
Montlake Alehouse is closed permanently. According to various beer blogs it will re-open sometime in February as Montlake Traveler by the owner of Leary Traveler. No word on if the toddler thunderdome will still be there.
Rabbit @17:
If someone tried to give you free stock, you’d probably shoot ‘em.
Not me! I’d take it. Even penny stocks.
Have you noticed?
Our middle class is losing jobs and collapsing into the the jobless poor. In China the poor are finding good manufacturing jobs and moving into the middle class.
But don’t you worry any. Our filthy rich are still getting richer so we must be doing something right. Right?
Everybody’s not gonna be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
ten @21
Everybody’s not gonna be Bill Gates or Warren Buffet.
Or middle class.