– To protect and serve, I guess.
– Melissa Harris-Perry was right to apologize.
– I grew up as a Southern Baptist, where gays weren’t just sinners — they were a donation strategy.
– The website for the campaign for the $15 minimum wage is up now.
– Congrats to Boeing on the occasion of forgetting that you get what you pay for.
– Are we glad the Seahawks will face the Saints?
Responsible gun ownership at its best.
Well, if this is a slow Monday for news and talk .. how about this, Coming into his male menopause, Knute Berger think there is something phallic about the machine drilling Seattle’s Tunnel and is upset that the machine is called Bertha!
For that matter, while Knute is at it … I noted that Crosscut is no longer using their logo on the front page … seems to me Big Bertha NEEDS a logo and the old Crosscut logo looks a lot like what they need!
@1 He’s practicing to be a high school shooter.
The next big fight in Congress, which begins today, is unemployment benefits. Democrats want to extend them. Republicans claim unemployment benefits cause unemployment.
That’s right, Republicans believe taking what little income the unemployed have away from them creates jobs. Republicans believe the only thing standing between America and full employment is disincentives to work. You know, giving food to the starving.
How can anyone with a conscience vote for these assholes?
@4. Renewing Unemployment Insurance is the wrong question.
How do we change the rules of our American economy so that we have living wage jobs for the unemployed?
But should America bother? Do we have any responsibility to provide jobs to the unemployed? Especially if is inconvenient or might require a raise in taxes?
If we extend the benefits, will it be enough for those unemployed folks to find work? Would an extension of, say, two more years be enough? Do you think that’s enough, or should we go for three or four more years of unemployment benefits? What do you think?
Another cold-blooded execution of a mentally ill kid. Welcome to the National-Security State.
SpittlePuddles and MOT must be so proud of the country their tribe has built.
Let’s just end the death penalty and have life without parole instead. That will simplify things a bunch!
@7 Yep, America’s support system for schizophrenic teenagers is a police bullet through the heart.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_new.....nager?lite
@8 If the death penalty is good enough for mentally ill kids, it’s good enough for cold-blooded killers, too.
@6 I think America is rich enough that no one has to starve when capitalism suffers another of its periodic collapses.
The purpose of unemployment insurance isn’t to provide work for the unemployed. It’s purpose is to tide over the unemployed until there’s work for them.
What part of that don’t you understand? All of it, it seems.
There are misguided people who believe government should do nothing for its citizens. That individuals should be responsible for everything. There are many flaws with that reasoning. I’ll mention just one. Running one unemployment program for millions of people is much more efficient than millions of people each trying to run their own individual unemployment program. It’s analogous to building millions of cars on an assembly line, or leaving it up to each individual to build his own car as best he can with the tools, materials, and facilities he has at hand. Libertarians are idiots. A libertarian society is what we had when people lived in caves. A caveman society is what we will have under a libertarian government.
@5 No, it isn’t the wrong question, because we will always have unemployment. We simply have more of it, and it lasts longer, during recessions.
Sen. Rand Paul (how did he ever get “Sen.” in front of his name? what were Kentucky voters thinking when they elected him?) argues that unemployment benefits destroy the incentive to work.
I have a simple answer for him. Unemployed people with no income can’t look for work. They don’t have gas to go to job interviews. They don’t have phones where employers can call them. They’re not thinking about finding work because they’re preoccupied with obtaining food and shelter. The idea that you can put unemployed people back to work by taking away what little financial means they have left is not only cruel, it’s stupid, because it doesn’t work.
@13 Actually, it could be viewed as a marketing ploy in behalf of the law-enforcement industry. The more desperate people become, the more they’re reduced to thinking they have nothing left to lose, the more people who might have spent their lives as law-abiding citizens will turn to extralegal activities for survival. Many will in turn be dealt with by the police (and the variety of commercial enterprises that provide them with weapons and other tools of their trade) and finally wind up in the hands of the increasingly privatized penal system.
To the dickhead racist @7, if this was a city cop action… odds are it’s a DUMMOCRETIN issue. DUMMOCRETINS own American cities and act the fool. The Feds had to deal with Seattle cops last year.
Suck on that moron!
“The idea that you can put unemployed people back to work by taking away what little financial means they have left is not only cruel, it’s stupid, because it doesn’t work.”
They apparently care even less about putting people back to work than they did about putting those same people out of work. Better for the GOP to demonize the victims of the Great Republican Recession as it’s a nice diversion from the devastating damage their failed policies have caused to the lives of millions of our nation’s citizens.
What would we need to change to get Americans employed again at living wage jobs?
Make Off Shoring of jobs no longer cost effective? If so how?
Re imposing tariffs so manufacturing it over seas become cost prohibitive?
If automation had erased a percentage of jobs through efficiency, the jobs have gone the way of the buggy whip manufacturer or hand sign painter, eventually the economy will reach a point where the jobs are just gone, and those bodies will just never be needed again.
Bad Analogy, the US economy has become a 1 liter bottle but we have a gallon of workers. The remainder will never find meaningful work again.
Do we want, or have any obligation, to create a scheme to support the extraneous percentage, to keep them from starving or turning to crime?
Cause with ever increasing automation, this a question more and more of us will face, either as victims of automation or victims of the starving hordes.
Not gonna argue with the post @15. You’re too obtuse and unintelligent to understand the point.
@19
I was going to say something like that, but there really isn’t a point – it’s the charter he’s playing.
@15 The LOON now wants us to believe cops are Democrats because they work in cities where the majority of voters are Democrats. He has a strange concept of cause-and-effect relationships.
It’s probably a safe bet that cops who behave like the Ku Klux Klan aren’t Democrats.
@17 “Make Off Shoring of jobs no longer cost effective? If so how?”
1. Repeal the tax incentives for sending American jobs abroad.
2. Make offshoring American jobs a criminal offense punishable by huge fines and long prison terms.
JP Morgan Chase has agreed to pay $2.6 billion in fines and restitution for looking the other way while Bernie Madoff stole $65 billion, but no bankers will face prosecution or go to jail. JP Morgan was the bank that Madoff used to facilitate his Ponzi scheme. They’re getting off easy. According to CNBC, that’s less than two weeks of revenue for them.