Tuesday, December 4, 2012

SAR #12338

Precocity provides much to be sorry about later.

Datapoint: The polar ice sheets are melting three times faster than they were 20 years ago and now exceed the 'high end’ of the IPCC's 2007 forecasts.

Happy New Year: Starting January 1st, WalMart will no longer provide access to health insurance for new employees working less than 30 hours a week. Managers, whose continued employment depends on their ability to control costs, set work schedules.

Inconvenient Coincidence: Profit margins for US corporations are at an all time high while wages are the lowest portion of GDP ever. It's enough to give leftists like me credibility.

Ante Up: A new item in Nature reports that five degrees Celsius (9F) rise in average global temperature by 2100 is inevitable given the current rate at which we are dumping CO2 into the atmosphere. And the temperature will continue to rise for a long, long time thereafter. There is a long list of very bad things that will happen as a result, which can be summed up as 'game over'.

This Much Is True: The old, well-off white guys did not win the election. Women, the poor and the lower-middle class, the blacks, Latinos, and the children of immigrants did.

Gift Exchange: For 12 years, 1991 - 2003, Saudi Arabia shipped crude to US refiners "at a substantial discount". It amounted to about $8.5 billion over the years, and put the Kingdom at the top of the list for military equipment and political support from the US.

Click Your Heels: A bill by Patrick Leahy that would extend the protection of probable cause search warrants to email has escaped to the full Senate from the Judiciary Committee.

Pure Meanness: Starbucks, which isn't happy selling 20 pence worth of coffee for £3.80, got so hacked at the idea of paying taxes on their profits that they revised the terms of employment for their baristas. Their paid 30 minute lunch breaks were gone, as was sick leave pay starting on the first day of an illness. Some will have their pay rates frozen. Sign or you're fired. Might as well work for Wallyworld.

Uphill All The Way: Only 46% of Republicans who experienced Hurricane Sandy in New York think it was the result of climate change. Wouldn't want to believe their own lying eyes.

Put That In Your Pipe!It is now illegal to sell “branded” cigarette packs in Australia – everybody gets to use one of a selection of standardized packaging, taking away the advantage of identifiable colors and logos and (theoretically) diminishing the effectiveness of advertising in profiting from customers' addiction, sickness and death.

Huh? Prime Minister David Cameron says there is no need for a public “naming and shaming” of large multinational companies which fail to pay their fair share of British taxes.

Silly Question: Can the politicians fix climate change? Based on current performance, I'd not trust ours to fix lunch.

Reminder: Thanks to Republican parsimony and their desire to privatize everything, the National Weather Service's ability to forecast things like track of Hurricane Sandy will degrade because they can no longer afford to maintain the satellite system. Don't worry, your home will be destroyed in a good cause – private profits and lower taxes for the 1%.

Porn O'Graph: Causation...

The Parting Shot:

121204

5 comments:

Sukh Hayre, CGA said...

Got to believe that, in time, Walmart employees will form America's biggest union, and healthcare will be a benefit they win. And for Walmart, the cost of providing it will be cheaper than if the future union had won the benefit without "Obamacare" in place.

Sukh Hayre, CGA said...

Medicaid is just a band-aid, as change takes time.

Keep the faith.

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

I certainly harbor not-too-secret hopes that Walmart serves as a catalyst for the revival/reinvention of the American labor union.

And I also subscribe to the hope (not quite suspicion) that Medicare/Medicaid/ObamaCare are the advance footholds for single-payer universal health care. Who knows, it might eve lead to somewhat more universal health - which is the goal of the exercise, no? - ckm

Anonymous said...

"The old, well-off white guys did not win the election. Women, the poor and the lower-middle class, the blacks, Latinos, and the children of immigrants did."

Wrong. Your beloved chocolate 'messiah' WORKS for the likes of such old, well-off white guys as Goldman Sachs and a handful of other, select, international corporations. Hence they won AGAIN and I find it simply amazing that at this late stage of the game you still haven't figured that one out yet. Nor probably ever will at this rate either. Which is why massive financial fraudsters and war criminals need never fear prison nor punishment in the United States of America; the MORONITY of the American people protects them!.

How is it that an apparently smart person like you cannot see that Mobamba is nothing but a CONTINUATION of all the exact same policies of his mentally-retarded predeccesor? Drone bombings, legalized torture, lack of Constitutional rule of law, unbridled massive financial fraud, currency devaluation, presidentiaslly-ordered ASSASSINATIONS of U.S. citizens, disappearance of Habeus Corpus, continued global warming, ...I mean REALLY. What the fuck? Is it something in the food that makes you people so incredibly stupid & obtuse? Thank God I have dual citizenship and can FLEE this sinking craphole of a country when it finally COLLAPSES like a cheap cardboard box under a torretial summer rainstorm. Fuck YOU, fuck the Republicans and fuck the Democrats ...oh, and fuck the war criminal shithole known as the United States of America.

Hasta la victoria, siempre!

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

Did somebody leave the door open? ckm