A1A South

First Coast News has a story about the minimum wage rising by $.42 an hour effective Thursday:

Supporters say the increase is desperately needed because Florida has the highest rate of job losses in the country and 10 percent of all Floridians are on food stamps.

Talk about your non sequitur! WTF?

So, because Florida has the “highest rate of job losses” in the nation, Florida should raise the minimum wage so that even less people will work? The minimum wage should be higher because we want employers that may be thinking about adding entry level positions to say “screw that! I can’t afford to pay around $10 per hour for this position!” and either let it go unfilled or pay an illegal under the table?

How did I jump from $7.21 an hour to $10? Simple. Social security, workmen’s comp, and benefits, if the minimum wage job has any.

Exactly how does an increase of $.42 per hour ($3.36 per day for an 8-hour day, $16.80 per week, before taxes and social security) translate into removing the 10% of Floridians receiving food stamps off of food stamps? If somebody figures out the answer, please let me know.

A minimum wage job was not intended for being the sole support of a family. A minimum wage job is for students, parents that want to earn a little extra for their families with a second, undemanding job, or for seniors that cannot earn too much money or risk losing their pension.

It is a way to learn job skills so that the employed person can move up into positions of more responsibility at the present job, or it will provide good job references if they decide to move on to a higher paying position at another firm.

Economic ignorance is going to ensure that unemployed young people are going to continue to be unemployed.

Without further ado, here are some of Jamie Lee Curtis’ tips for how we should all just lose some weight and move in together:

What I do know is that we are fat. Obese. See WALL-E. That is the future. We have fat lifestyles, fat habits, fat minds and arteries. Last week, Obama said that it was going to get worse but that we would emerge, leaner and meaner..I don’t think lean is mean…it just rhymes. Lean is healthy. Most of us eat too much, super sized lives and meals. My four words to a better life, brand new, self-help/beauty/how-to book is being published right here on the Huffington Post, downloadable for free — right here, right now.

Eat Less, Move More.

What this crisis is going to do is bring us into financial alignment. Families may have to live together again! What a concept. Grandparents will live with their grown children and help raise their grandchildren — even at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Neighbors are going to meal share and carpool and child care for each other and maybe even rent out parts of homes to other families. Less meat, more beans. Might be better for you anyway. Less indoor gym workouts and more walking, more park time, more family outdoor time.

Obama promised change. Change comes from truth, Jung said, “only that which changes, remains true.” but as Jack Nicholson said in A Few Good Men, “you can’t handle the truth!” Can you? Can you handle the change? You can if you understand that you are not alone, but that we can handle anything together.

Okay, everybody, you heard the lady. Time to pull Grandma and Grandpa (or Great Grandma and Grandpa) out of that retirement housing development in Florida, move them in with you, and live together just like the Waltons! While I welcome the idea of living with my parents and in-laws both, SwampMan’s opinions may vary.

All those cozy ideas of several generations living together peacefully under one roof happily raising the children together (and of course there will be no disagreement on how children should be raised) in a tranquil environment (while eating beans) is best left to the vivid imaginations of those who have always been wealthy and have never actually had to live in a household where you had to swallow your pride and run home to momma with husband and kids in tow.

I’m sure that she has a sufficiently large house that she wouldn’t even notice if an extra 10 or 20 people moved in. My house is a bit smaller than that. While I do have the kids’ small bedrooms (now being used for hobbies), they were barely sufficient for teenagers. I don’t think a family of 4 or 5 would be very happy in there.

My mom had to go home to live several times because of an alcoholic husband being between jobs. It wasn’t pretty. Grandma despised that stepdad, and rightly so. It didn’t make for the best family discussions over the dinner table.

I knew a lot of overweight people on the Rez whose diets consisted of beans and rice, so I don’t think that eating beans is going to help out anybody’s weight problem all that much.

H/T Paco.

My lil’ grandson woke up with a cry Friday evening about midnight, and started ejecting prodigious amounts of vomit into his bedding. Ewwww. Guess who was on vomit patrol?

I told myself that it was likely just overindulgence in cookies and that I, who routinely gets every freakin’ childhood disease that comes along, would be safe. I believed it, too.

Today, when I felt a little “funny”, I attributed it to SwampMan navigating through lots of unpaved roads today. (Note: We can get a little lost with a map but to get really hugely lost, we use a GPS navigation system on unmarked rural dirt roads, some of them private logging roads, that are closed down randomly.) That funny feeling persisted and I skipped dinner.

This evening, as I was dozing through the evening news to keep SwampMan company, my eyes suddenly snapped open. Everything that I had eaten during the last week seemed to want to egress now! I knew I didn’t have time to make it to the nearest bathroom but hoped I’d be able to make it off the porch. Nope.

Poor Odie stood there and watched me vomit on his bed with the look of disgust that only an old dog whose bed is being vomited on can give. He stalked away. I washed the bed down with a hose but he was not impressed as now his bed was wet in addition to being vomited on. Good thing it’s a warm evening.

I think I’m going to get the stink eye from Odie until I buy him a new bed.

As y’all know, I was a little rushed this holiday season and did not get around to putting up the tree. When I say “put up the tree”, it means decorating everything that isn’t moving. Putting up the tree really means putting up the tree, decking it with at least 10 strings of lights, several hundred ornaments that have been lovingly collected through Christmases past, putting lights around the entire interior of the house, putting out all my collected Christmas Teddy bears and handcarved old world Santas and angels and…well, a lot of stuff. So, when I was running behind and SwampMan generously offered to help me out by putting up the tree, I was delighted that I could concentrate on cooking. I also thought that we were talking about the same thing when discussing putting up the tree.

My mom arrived early and after bringing in all the food she had prepared, she immediately took over the stove while I kept an eye on the yeast rolls in the oven while mashing the potatoes. Neither of us had time to leave the kitchen. The guests started arriving, and I directed them to drop off the presents under the tree in the formal living room. I heard the tree being discussed.

“Well, that’s certainly interesting” said the son-in-law. “It doesn’t look bad, not at all.” Nobody else expressed that opinion.

Uh oh. What did he do?

I went into the big living room to see what had transpired. He had put up the tree. It had one string of lights. That was it! No tinsel, no garlands, no hundreds of ornaments lovingly placed. No Teddy bears or angels. No Christmas pillows and throws.

“That way, it’s really easy to take down, too!” enthused my husband to the son and son-in-law, who seemed to think that was perfectly reasonable. The women seemed less impressed by his thinking.

What the heck. That is one more string of lights than the living room would have had because I wouldn’t have done it this year!

Oooh, and Santa SwampMan left a new tactical shotgun under the tree for me, and a case of shotgun shells. Woohoo!

He’s also insisting that I get a concealed carry permit so that I can carry my concealed weapon(s) legally.

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours. God’s blessings, peace and good will towards all!

Pecan pies, pumpkin pies, and a pumpkin cheesecake are going into the ovens now.

I have had the news on this morning as I worked (I know, big mistake!), and over and over and over I hear reiterations about how bad it is out there….shoppers aren’t shopping, people are losing their jobs by the thousands, the auto workers are all laid off, and various pundits punditing about which businesses will go teats up this year, and how soon.

Could you just maybe STFU for a day or two and let us enjoy Christmas with our families and friends without having to stress over impending doom? Perhaps you could maybe even find some happy news–oh, right. George Bush is still the President. WHAT was I thinking? We’ll get happy news as soon as Obama is inaugurated.

Read the entire story here.

I consider PETA a bunch of morons. They can all kiss my butt.

I think it is well worth reading. Of course, it is quite sensible, so the elected (insert pejorative of choice here) won’t be instituting any such policies.

Excerpt:

In 2008 America, after going through the shock of September 2001 — memorialized as “9/11” and signaling the launching of a new phase in the emerging war of survival between militant Islam and the West, was hit in 2008 with three more 9/11s, within three months: (1) soaring oil prices that topped $4 per gallon, thus swelling the coffers of countries whose national interests substantially differ from those of the United States; (2) Russia’s sneak invasion of Georgia, invoking a justification — protection of ethnic kin under foreign rule, extending Russian control over energy supplies from the Caspian Basin, en route to Europe, that transit south of Russia; and (3) the credit freeze that triggered calamitous collapse in financial markets and threatened total global financial meltdown.

Absorbing any of these blows is a daunting challenge. Coping with a trifecta, on top of a continuing set of conflicts stemming from the first 9/11 and its aftermath, strains the resources even of a superpower. And all these challenges come at the very time we have a new administration taking power come January, facing a trillion-dollar federal budget deficit. Read the rest here.

My analysis of the article: We’re in very deep shit, and Roto-Rooter is nowhere in sight.