They really don’t get it

I was hanging with some friends this weekend who just don’t get why their ideology is doomed. One was the usual “He’s a Muslim because his dad was a Muslim and so …” where so is never filled in. More detailed was an exec friend who was bummed because his entry-level employees are unmotivated to try for a bonus he devised because “They’re all moochers who worry they won’t qualify for WIC or food stamps if they make any more money”. The bonus was an extra fifty cents to a dollar on top of the nine dollars an hour they make. Now, he’s a got a point: if only there were no food stamps or WIC he would have even more power over his employees miserable lives because they would have even fewer options on how they manage their bleak, endless poverty. [Read more…]

God skews Pat Robertson

Pat Robertson is confused, in a lot more ways than the obvious. Lately he’s confused because the magical voice that is either 1) in his head suggesting dementia or schizophrenia, or more likely 2) that he’s making up in a transparent cynical ploy to enrich himself, skewed him. Here’s my question to conservative god bots who may not be too far gone to see good and evil for what they plainly are: by your own arm waving claims an underdog from modest Christian roots overcame the might of a zillionaire religious heretic backed by dozens of fellow zillionaires and endorsed by modern day pharisees, despite what god fear’n unskewed pollsters found, and then riding high on the shoulders of a once in a century hurricane, aka Act of God, went on to crush the money changers and heretics, sweeping into power in what is in your minds a miraculous upset by preaching a message of healing the sick and helping the poor. Umm … which side are you and your pastor on again?

Let’s play good meta bad meta

In the last post or two the topic was woe is me. To be clear, I’m just an example, there are millions of people who don’t have a site to commiserate on located on the same page as mega blogger traffic grabbers like PZ Myers and Butterflies and Wheels. When I moan and groan I do it secure in the luxury that thousands of people will read it and dozens will offer constructive criticism and encouragement, some even offered money which was quite touching. FWIW, I don’t need money, I have expenses under control. Besides, in a few days I’ll put up my annual bleg, any amount is welcome including single digit bucks. If it adds up to a few hundred when all is said and done I’ll use it to get a new cheapish laptop to replace my limping smoking computers. They’re so old they mostly run in safe mode these days when they work at all. Thinking about how casually I used to buy new electronics got me to thinking about all the things I used to take for granted before unwillingly joining the vast numbers of hard-working poor in the richest country on earth. [Read more…]

I will quit, eventually

It’s Thanksgiving Week. I’ll try to ignore the seemingly intractable violence in the Middle East, Cranky Old Man McCain who thinks an under secretary of state should be releasing raw intel on Al Qaeda on Meet the Press or face a Watergate style tea bagger inquisition, and some AS symptoms that are making idle TV watching and world-changing blogging difficult even though they are tangentially related to my plight, not to mention the many, many issues more important than me and my day job such as it is.

In one year and one month and a week and three days, there will be healthcare for all. Until that day I can’t seriously think about going freelance. Just getting another job and waiting out the three months until I qualify for healthcare benefits, plus the month or two it takes for it to get set up, get in front of docs, and get my medicine is a risk. I have a serious chronic health condition that virtually disappears when treated but returns and rules my every waking moment when it’s not. [Read more…]

I won employee of the year

At my very first job decades ago in a long since vanished barbecue joint making $2.50/hour, I learned a valuable lesson that served me for three decades: stamina. I found out on the first day of my very first job, I could work my peers into the ground, hell I could work my bosses into the ground! I don’t know where it came from, it was innate and I was blessed — for lack of a better word — to have it. For years that one characteristic was all that was required for me to make a decent living. If I was smarter here and there or had some latent talent in a random situation, it was just icing really. Stamina and stamina alone was all it took for me to succeed at every entry level job held and move up, fast. Stamina, along with its kissing cousin persistence, even went on to define my personal life as an athlete in high school and college, a dedicated rock climber as a yuppy, and now as a middle-aged guy getting into serious physical shape after three-year lapse on the heels of a life changing health issue.

Now I’m forced to face a new reality, one I may be unequipped to survive in: stamina and persistence don’t matter much any more. [Read more…]

We may have a brand new war in the Middle East

I don’t know where you come down in the Israeli Palestinian issue. To me it seems like one of those intractable problems that has existed since the day I was born and will outlive me and everyone else in my generation. The Camp David Peace Accords demonstrate incremental and significant progress is possible, but the glowing coals of the fundamental conflict were never extinguished. From time to time they rekindle a flame that threatens the entire delicate region, with potentially dire consequences for the entire world. Today that flame burns again: [Read more…]