OK, MIPS and vibes request...

I didn't share at the time, but I was laid off and have been back looking for work the few weeks (since end of Feb to be exact).

I've been back with the agency doing a day or so a week, sometimes less, since then. I'm about to go homeless, but I got a call from the agency today with a possibility of something that would last 3 months. Fired off an updated resume and starting hoping again. It's been a bit of a depressing period. Hopefully, I can get this going fast enough and my landlady will be patient enough for things to come together.

C'mon economy.

Just a thought about the minimum wage discussion...

So, it comes to mind that the RWers like to attack the poor and unemployed and blame them for their own fate, so to speak, because they're not ambitious enough or unwilling to work.

Wouldn't raising the minimum wage be an incentive for all those "lazy bums" to get out there and find a job?

I'm waiting for the "but still...." argument...

Forgive me, but I may have made a couple of RWNJs think tonight. The worst one was ranting on about "Obama this,that and the other" and not making any sense and threw in the obligatory "BENGHAZI! BENGHAZI!," so I made a suggestion. Then I walked away, because I refuse to sit there and be yelled at by a drunk RWNJ. No point in that.

My suggestion? Simply Google "Embassy Attacks" over the last 20 years. He tried to yell some more, and even offered to make a bet that nobody had been killed in embassy attacks pre-Benghazi or some such. I declined to bet.

So, a little later, the 'reasonable' one asked me for some help with search parameters and I was happy to oblige. I even printed out one of the graphics posted here about Emabassy and Consulate attacks under Bush and gave it to her. I emphasized she should fact check it, because, yes, it is from a LW site and all.

Loudmouth had some printout, too, but I didn't look at it. He claimed something about it being from an "official" source. Hopefully, I coerced him into looking at a source other than FAUX. They like to sit around listening to that drivel all day. I do my best to keep that on ignore, but it's kind of hard. We're all kind of old and I think they may have hearing problems, because they play it kind of loud.

Any way, maybe I struck a blow for some real info getting across to them. IDK, though. Denial is not just a river in Egypt.

Your Super Bowl XLVIII Champions!

Like most Repub ideas, it's an end around...

You can already "deal insurance across state lines." That's the start of the lie.

What they really want is to circumvent the state insurance commissions that regulate the insurance industry. That way, they can do the typical race to the bottom.

What they want is to force states into competition to relax their insurance regulations so that they can job shop to the state with the most lax rules and sell using those rules in all 50 states. Not a very "states rights" attitude, of course, but when did they ever let their own ideology stand in the way of profits?

So basically, if your state happens to have good consumer protections, Repubs want to be able to get around that.

So, it looks like I've found a place to live....

I haven't been really open about my personal situation around here. It's kind of not natural to me. But I've been staying with family for a couple of years now, trying to find steady work and get on my own two feet.....trying to find my bootstraps, as it were.

First up was a decent job. I posted a month or so ago that I have done that. I've been working through agencies for the past couple of years, but hadn't found a place to actually pick up my contract until the end of this last August. So, step 1 accomplished. I'm still technically on probation, but I've left the agency and am collecting paychecks from a real company now. They seem happy with my work so far. I've worked there since April, so they've had time to evaluate me.

Next step, hunting for a living situation I can afford that lightens my commute. Where I've been staying is a great house, and my sis has been beyond generous, but it's time. She wants to sell the place as a major part of her plans for retirement.

Well, I talked to a lady today who's renting out part of her double wide mobile and it looks like it should go through. I haven't actually seen it yet, but we had a good talk over coffee (well, Starbucks if you call that coffee ). Her old roommate had just moved out and she wanted a chance to get things in order before she shows it. She did say she liked my looks and would not futher advertise until at least next week, after I get a look and we can finalize the deal. It's on just a handshake now, but sounds really promising.

It prices out in my wheelhouse and is a much shorter commute (a couple of miles from work vs the current 20).

So, once again, wish me luck.

I have come to believe that there is something else at play....

Much of it is race-based, of course, because the country as a whole has not fixed that problem yet.

But the hatred of the act comes from the top, who are 'above' such things, I think. The real power brokers behind this reflect, IMHO, a rebirth of the states rights movement.

This doesn't seem to go away. It led to the Constitution, as the new Americans after the Revolution came to realize that the Articles of Confederation just weren't working. After the Constitution was ratified, there was still a lot of dissatisfaction and hatred of the central authority in Washington. Eventually, that led to the Civil War. Once again, we can see its ugly head rearing up.

Consider the rising of secessionist movements in Alaska (remember Caribou Barbie's husband?) and Texas. There are people who take such ideas seriously, and want to emphasize that the United States is not a nation made of provinces, like France, but is a Federated Republic made up of independent states. Corporate power always has a certain dichotomy to work with. Having uniform laws across the country is easier from an administrative sense, fewer differing regulatory regimes to deal with. However, the fragmentation also helps, because the individual states are weaker and easier to exploit than a big national government.

Just something I've been musing on lately.

I've long suspected that much of what' going on....

has deep roots in the whole "state's rights" movement that led to the Civil War in 1860. And as usual, that meme is generally used to 'protect' actions that reasonable people tend to consider abominable. Then, it was slavery. Now, there's still a racist tint to it, and there is definitely a class thing going on, where some Southerners seem to be nostalgic for that antebellum time when there was a society patterened after the English countryside, with 'nobility' and peasants.

There's a libertarian streak in there of people who just don't give a shit about others, and really don't think anybody else does either. I actually had one post on a message board to me this morning, "You're pretending you care in any meaningful way about this fact?" as if because he was a prick, well, everybody else must be, too.

The FGN's are similar, thinking that they need a gun with them always to protect themselves from everybody else, like we're living in Dodge City from the 1870's or something. They won't be happy until the US is some re-enactment of Deadwood or something.

Rant continues another day.....

"He who has the power to destroy a thing, controls it."

Frank Herbert in Dune.

Deficit reduction......fine-raise taxes on fucking millionaires...