02/20/2011
Wisconsin, home of the 40 hour work week, unemployment compensation and worker's compensation to name a few
I saw a woman interviewed that called the 50 to 60 thousand people in the street "Babies that insisted on getting their own way." She said she had a small business and why should public employees get such extravagant benefits when she had to pay though the nose? To her I ask, what would the average salary be if for the last 40 to 50 years it would have kept up with the cost of living since 1960 when 35% of the work force was unionized? Maybe if she understood the numbers and how the middle class has been sucking hind teat for the last 50 years, she'd be on the anti-Republican Governor Scott Walker and anti-Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald side.
In 1960, again when union membership was in the 35% range, according to the 1960 Bureau of Census, Department of Commerce the average wage was 5600 dollars. If, according to Tom's inflation calculator, the wages in 1960, under the cumulative inflation rate (CPI-U annual average), which is one way of averaging yearly rates, would be today 41,906.
Using the option feature on Tom's calculator, under the, US medical cost inflation heading, if wages went up at the same rate as medical expense since 1960, the average wage today would be 101,120.
If you want to take the next logical step and average those two out, the average wage, in order to keep up with inflation since 1960 would be, 71,513. Put that in your pipe and smoke it Mr. and Mrs. Average Tea Party, because my bet is you don't make anything near that.
Since our right wing Supreme Court has ruled in the Citizens United decision that corporations can give unlimited campaign contributions anonymously to politicians, the influx of campaign money to republicans has increased exponentially according to BlueNC, a community-driven website, promoting progressive values and critical thinking that rely's on community members for contributions, content, criticism and collaboration.
* In 60 out of 75 congressional races, the candidate benefiting most from outside spending won the race -- a remarkable 80 percent win rate.
* The source of the money flooding into elections after Citizens United largely hidden: Because many of the independent groups aren't required to disclose their donors, barely a third -- 34 percent -- of the groups reported which people and groups gave them money.
Maybe the woman I quoted doesn't care that rationality bespeaks a different reality than hers, maybe she's like the tea party people that show up and echo the things that they've heard from Fox News or from Limbaugh or from Sharron Angles, or from Sarah Palin or from Michele Bachmann or Ann Coulter, they, tea party people, only want to cut government spending until they see that they too have a dog in the fight, that it's not some ideological, mythical dog, it's one having its teeth and claws sharpened right now and it's being trained to attack them as well. Gene
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02/19/2011
Between the Folds
Thanks to Beth,
I haven't watched the video yet but intend to. This was done with one piece of paper.
"Between the Folds," a 60-minute documentary that profiles the world's greatest origami artists. And not for the origami. For the artists. For the inspiration. [To buy the DVD of "Between the Folds" from Amazon, click here. To buy or rent a download of the movie and watch it now, click here.]
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02/17/2011
Dueling fuckups (insert banjo music here)
Lately, two aspects of my life have mirrored one another in their fuckedupedness, meaning, they are equally fucked up. One is going though the steps necessary to give a computer away and starting a new, different style computer. In other words, cleaning up and uninstalling crap from a Dell with a Microsoft operating system and doing all the things that you have to do so your daughter doesn't know you frequent porn sites, plus transferring your records: bills, correspondence, mostly consisting of irate letters, quotes and stories off the Internet that I thought someday may be useful to me, things I've scanned and my photos to a flash drive and reinstalling them in my new iMAC.
The second is getting a big, old, heavy and heavy duty band saw that I bought for a song and dance through Craigslist up and running. I've spent hours on each. It's really not a fair comparison because I've spent much more time doing the computer thing.
About a month ago, it may have also been 3 months ago, I bought a disk that overwrites the hard drive so nothing is recoverable. You can use it to erase everything or just eliminate and overwrite by a hundred times, if that's what you want, traces of anything left in the free space created when you uninstall the garbage and mysterious programs that you thought were free but weren't and so you downloaded them only to be left holding the bag filled with spyware, malware and viruses, etc.
I vacillated on spending the 63 dollars for what I guessed would be large enough capacity flash drives, they were suprisingly expensive. After searching Consumer Reports for ones that were supposedly of good quality I accidentally bought three 8 gigabit flash drives.
On the site that I bought them I somehow had "one click shopping" turned on. You don't have to confirm the sale when it is and, seeing how much they cost, I thought that even though they were in my virtual shopping cart the sale wouldn't go through because I never confirmed it.
To my surprise, a few days later I received an email confirming that I had bought them. I bitterly complained but to no avail since they had already been shipped. I didn't contest the sale and because I had spent a reasonable sum buying them, I felt obligated to use them.
Figuring how to use them to download from Microsoft wasn't hard. It was pretty much cut and dry and I was satisfied that maybe I could someday claim to actually know what I was doing when I used a PC. Then my printer went out. No matter what I tried to print off the Internet it printed in some kind of code that only 3 people in the whole universe can understand. I farted around for days. I went to Best Buy and talked to their Geeks, they seemed as mystified as me but one of them ask a question that was later to become the key that unlocked the whole enchilada.
He ask what browser I used. I told him I had tried several browsers and nada. He then said the two magic words; Firefox, which is really one magic word. I went home, downloaded Firefox, did a google search for nothing in particular, hit print, and, WHALA! Hahahahahaahah Yeah ME!
Lost in the telling is how my free aol email program completely stopped working, how I uninstalled and reinstalled HP Photo Premier and Word perfect at least 3 times, downloaded useless drivers from the internet and even bought a stupid registry cleaner. The Geeks said unequivocally, every registry cleaner that you buy off the Internet is a scam, that the " search for errors" thing that they do is also bogus and that it's more than likely to infect your computer with something and/or steal your personal information.
Satisfied that I had done the best I could in trying to return the computer to it's virgin state, I did one last thing to complete the cycle. I bought a antivirus download and installed it. I have been anti-anitvirus ever since I uninstalled the free Norton program that Comcast offers and found that my computer ran faster without it. I spent 30 bucks for something I'll never see or use again, what a sucker...
The band saw that had been competing for my attention had all but given up. I stroked it and said, "Didn't I take your motor out to disassemble and completely clean it ? Didn't I have plans to go over every nut and bolt and either tighten it or replace it if it were bad? Didn't I have plans to paint the whole thing? It was an old Craftsman, and like a true craftsman, it understood and knew I would do my best to restore it to its former glory but, like the computers, this road too was fraught with unforeseen difficulties and obstacles.
To make a long story short, for a change, one of the main shafts that holds the pulley that drives the blade is galled and for years(?) the pulley has been slipping, digging in, and destroying this shaft. To make it right will require substantial time and effort and, I hope, not money. For the lack of tightening a set screw I got screwed.
Two more paragraphs about the computer issues, starting up the Apple iMac, I could not get online. I called Comcast, I called Apple, I stood on my head and recited the Battle Hymn of the Republic, Finally, my last call to Apple, the tech suggested that the Ethernet cable might be bad. I've heard shit like this all my life, translated, it means: I don't have a clue as to what's wrong and I'm grasping at straws here, hoping to get you off the phone for now, and you'll become so aggravated, you'll have a heart attack and die and I won't have to deal with you again.
I looked in my forgotten box of computer junk, sure enough, there was an Ethernet cable brand new still in the package. I tired it and it worked. I was elated. I figured out how to upload my flash drives into my computer and I was set. I was, once again, the King of the World. Bill time rolled around, as it does this time of month and so, haven the day before packed all my troubles in and old kit bag and smiled, smiled, smiled, I attempted to open my personal finances where I record check numbers, amounts paid, dates and anything that, later, I might need to verify a bill was paid when the postman either lost my mail or had thrown it in the trash so that could go home early.
A message appeared, "this file is read only." WTF %&#^$^%R*#(@*&$^#^%%@%^$&%*(#)*^(#)#(*%))%$*#&%$*^&$*&$% Sickening bastard, Motherfucker, lousy two bit whore, I hope your balls rot you ignorant piece of shit computer!
Until then, happy trails to you.... Gene
06:38 Posted in Leisure | Permalink | Comments (1) | Email this