Month: May 2016
Panhandle Slim… Art for Folk…
Quote of the day
https://youtu.be/WsdElAPlipI
“[Donald Trump] fails my commander-in-chief test. I think he is a stunning ignoramus on foreign policy issues and national security, which are the issues I care most about. And he’s said one stupid, reckless thing after another, and he’s shown absolutely no temperament to try to learn the things that he doesn’t know, and he doesn’t know just about everything. …The guy has a chimpanzee-level understanding of national security policy.”
—Republican consultant Mike Murphy, on MSNBC.
The return of Chimpy!
Man Arrested in Target for Shouting ‘America is Going to Hell”
Target has come under fire after issuing a statement that emphasized that the company believed in equality and inclusivity, after a few states began considering and/or passing laws that prohibited transgendered people from using the bathroom of the gender that they identified with. Target’s statement welcomes employees and customers to use the restroom that correspond to the individual’s gender identity, rather than their sex at birth.
The company’s stance has resulted in backlash from those that believe that the company should restrict restroom use by birth gender. Most notably, the backlash includes a boycott sponsored by a conservative Christian organization. At least one man is alleged to have decided that boycotting the store was not enough and opted to express his disapproval inside a local store.
On May 2, 2016, the Bradley Police Department, in Bradley, IL, received a report of an active shooter in a local Target. When the police arrived, there had been no shots fired and the person that was alleged to have caused the panic, Michael Merichko, did not have a gun in his possession. It was reported, however, that Merichko shouted “America is going to hell” before leaving the store. He was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.
Continue reading “Man Arrested in Target for Shouting ‘America is Going to Hell””
New rule will raise income
Not for contractors, of course, but for a lot of people:
The Obama administration will unveil a new rule Wednesday that would make millions of middle-income workers eligible for overtime pay, a move that delivers a long-sought victory for labor groups.
The regulations, which were last updated more than a decade ago, would let full-time salaried employees earn overtime if they make up to $47,476 a year, more than double the current threshold of $23,660 a year. The Labor Department estimates that the rule would boost the pockets of 4.2 million additional workers.
The move caps a long-running effort by the Obama administration to aid low- and middle-income workers whose paychecks have not budged much in the last few decades, even as the top earners in America have seen their compensation soar. The last update to the rules came in 2004, and Wednesday’s announcement is the third update to the salary threshold for overtime regulations in 40 years.
“Along with health care reform this is one of the most important measures that the Obama administration has implemented to help middle-wage workers,” said Jared Bernstein, a former chief economist to Vice President Biden and a senior fellow at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
About 35 percent of full-time salaried employees will be eligible for time and a half when they work extra hours under the new rule, up significantly from the 7 percent who qualify under the current threshold, according to the Labor Department.
How nice
Irate Berne Sanders supporters did not just leave threatening voicemails and texts for state Democratic Party Chairwoman Roberta Lange but also launched an assault on the businesses she oversees, the owner says.
Tom Gallagher, the former Caesars CEO and congressional candidate, said that his son’s tavern, the Porchlight Grille, began receiving threats shortly after the convention ended in chaos Saturday. Lange is the day operations manager there.
“Beginning about 3am on Sunday morning our bartenders at Porchlight Grille began getting non-stop phone threats from Bernie partisans,” Gallagher told me via email. “The level of threats including death threats and vitriol was astonishing. One of our bartenders was actually a Bernie supporter and was stunned at the threats he was hearing on the phone. He began to respond telling people that he was just trying to do his job and pay off his student loans and their tactics were harming his livelihood. It made no difference to the callers. Their goal was to harass and as became clear….to shut down the business and Roberta’s job with it.”
Gallagher said the calls continued during the day Sunday until the eatery disconnected the phone.
“At one point on Sunday before we unplugged the phones, I took a turn at answering and experienced such a nasty call that a Metro officer who happened to be in the tavern as a customer picked up the call and attempted to encourage the woman to stop, explaining that what she was doing was unlawful harassment,” Gallagher told me. “It made no difference. She actually responded that it was her right of free speech.”
And then the social media assault commenced.
From Gallagher: “The Porchlight website and Facebook page were similarly attacked with threats, including by someone who set up a fake ‘Roberta Lange’ ID on Facebook and then posted on the Porchlight Facebook page incredibly slanderous attacks against both Roberta and her husband Ken, including a post by the so-called ‘Roberta Lange’ that accused her husband Ken of crimes against children!”
Also, a Nevada delegate gives his version of events.
Oops! One Of Two Copies Of The CIA Torture Report ‘Accidentally Destroyed’
This really is shocking and not just in a sarcastic way. According to Yahoo! News, one of the two remaining copies of the Senate CIA torture report has been “accidentally” destroyed. The CIA inspector general’s office – the spy agency’s internal watchdog – has acknowledged it “mistakenly” destroyed its only copy of a mammoth Senate torture… Continue reading “Oops! One Of Two Copies Of The CIA Torture Report ‘Accidentally Destroyed’”
WI senators was ‘giddy’ over voter ID law
Madison — A trial over Wisconsin’s voting laws kicked off Monday with a former aide to a Republican state senator testifying that GOP senators were “giddy” over the prospect the state’s 2011 voter ID law could keep some people from voting.
Todd Allbaugh, who worked at the time for then-Sen. Dale Schultz (R-Richland Center), said some senators expressed a lack of enthusiasm to take up the voter ID legislation early that year during a private meeting of Republicans. Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin) then made the case for the bill, he testified.
“She got up out of her chair and hit her fist or her finger on the table and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got to think about what this would mean for the neighborhoods around Milwaukee and the college campuses,'” Allbaugh said.
Schultz said they ought to consider what they would be doing to people’s ability to vote, according to Allbaugh. That elicited a response from Glenn Grothman, who at the time was a state senator and now is a member of Congress.
“Grothman said, ‘What I’m concerned about here is winning, and that’s what really matters here. … We better get this done quickly while we have the opportunity,'” Allbaugh said.
“I’ve characterized it as giddy and that’s part of what bothered me so much,” Allbaugh testified.
Allbaugh named two other senators — Leah Vukmir and Randy Hopper — as being gleeful over passing the bill.
“They were politically frothing at the mouth,” he said of Vukmir and Hopper, who lost a recall election a few months after the voter ID law passed.
Continue reading “WI senators was ‘giddy’ over voter ID law”
Heart of mine
Boz Scaggs:
Falling star
Karla Bonoff: