Huffy Flounce

Ol' Beau Watkins was once mauled by finance.

Right after he was hit by that van.

I convalesced in a German hospital back when the exchange rate was three marks to the dollar. It was practically free.

Jubbers wrote:Ol' Beau Watkins was once mauled by fiance.

Woman on man violence is kind of funny.

That's man-on-man violence unless you add another "e."

Woman on man violence is kinda funny as long as you don't defend yourself.

Something tells me you're trying to get me to find and embed that scene from Wicked Lady where Faye Dunaway and Marina Sirtis get in a whip fight.

I didn't even know it existed until you told me.

Look at Dalty, over here, playin' the ingénue.

I don't even know what one of those is.

Look at Dalty, over here, *still* playin' the ingénue.

I am not over there. I am over here.

The Yanks are coming, Dalty.

Feels good.

The Swollen Goiter of God wrote:Something tells me you're trying to get me to find and embed that scene from Wicked Lady where Faye Dunaway and Marina Sirtis get in a whip fight.

I haven't seen that scene in a long time. Now where's my box of Kleenex....

It's kind of ironic that people working at Walmart and McDonalds are condoning slavery.

Between the factory farming and the Asian sweatshops, yeah kinda.

Condoning? Or condemning? I am confused? What has happened?

Wage slavery?

Do you guys have a legal minimum wage or the concept of a living wage? Or is it just being damned lucky to have a job whatever it pays?

We have a legal minimum wage. It's often pointed out, though, that the cost of living has risen way faster than the minimum wage and that it's pretty difficult to live on this minimum wage.

It's also pointed out that a number of America's biggest employers have system that makes the securing of a full-time job difficult. Larger retailers move into town, lower the prices of their wares to such a degree that smaller businesses are forced to close, and offer the majority of their workers part-time employment. This was one of the reasons for the big socialized healthcare push. These part-time employees were often working three different jobs, were barely making enough to scrape by, and didn't have enough left over at the end of the month to swing privatized insurance costs.

I think Adam may currently be in this boat. I was in this boat three years ago when I was working three part time jobs and trying to finish my dissertation. Jubbers was at home with a newborn. We were making a couple trips (occasionally more) to the ER every month because Jubbers had a mysterious and painful illness that we're still not sure has been identified. Because we didn't have proper insurance, the costs of these visits could be brutal.

It's not just the uneducated masses who are having trouble securing full-time employment with benefits. A lot of people with master's degrees and doctorates are forced to accept part-time and/or adjunct employment in fields that aren't the fields for which they received their higher-ed training.

We do have the Affordable Care Act in place, so it has helped some people finally get something resembling affordable health insurance. I've benefited from it. Unfortunately, it's a Frankenstein's monster of a thing. It was passed back and forth between the democrats and republicans so much that it was stripped of a lot of its usefulness and universal affordability. You are now required to read it like a hawk to make sure you don't fall down a series of trapdoors when you're filling out the paperwork. You can end up paying way more than someone in your specific financial position should or should have to. There are also tons of weird and unfair-seeming cutoffs. A person who makes five dollars more a year than some other dude might end up having to pay hundreds more for insurance than the other dude.

The insurance, itself, can be kind of shitty. You have to seek out doctors who take your specific insurance. They're often far out of the way, and they're often maybe not the person you would choose or who would be best to address your specific malady. The insurance also doesn't necessarily cover the thing you need covered. There are often ways to pay more than you're paying to get it to cover these things, but doing this can mean it ceases to be affordable.

If the U.S. had gotten either of the universal healthcare packages drawn up by the (pre-presidential candidate) Romney and Obama teams, a lot of these things would not be a problem. There would still be some problems, I'm sure. No universal health care system is perfect.

Again, some people are clear beneficiaries of the new system. I am. We're finally able to afford my asthma medication. It was $250 a month without insurance. It took years and years for it to be available as a generic. It finally became available as a generic last year, but even the generic was $125 a month. It's only $10 a month, now.

When you're making $1,500 a month, putting down $1,000 on rent and utilities, paying $200 or more a month for various medications, spending $100 or more on gas to get to work, and spending $200-ish a month on groceries, that doesn't leave you much of a financial security blanket--especially if you're a family of three or more. You can forget going on trips or buying yourself fancy seven-dollar boxes of Belgian chocolates. You just cross your fingers and hope from month to month that your ancient, piece-of-shit car never breaks down.

I'm not so good with finance talk, and I admit freely that I barely understand our system, so the above may be a lot of gobbledygook and half-truths.

Yup, sounds exactly like "Zero Hours Contracts" over here. Kinda hard to swallow when the companies in question are domiciled in the Cayman Islands to pay as little Corp Tax as possible.

This was a pretty interesting story to read:

"Our Phones Rang Constantly": Former Gov. Jim Folsom, Jr. Recalls Taking Confederate Flag off of Alabama Capitol in '93

I have a vague memory of Folsom doing this, but I had more or less forgotten it happened.

Roy Moore: Alabama Judges Cannot Issue Same-Sex Marriage Licenses for 25 Days

If you're wondering how this is possible, it's because there's a period of twenty-five days during which the Supreme Court ruling can be appealed for rehearing. This is how Moore sees it, at least. In other words, twenty-five days is the absolute most a state can stall, so Moore is ordering Alabama probate judges not to issue same-sex marriage licenses for the full length of it. It's a meager defiance, but it's the most defiance the law permits him.

In the words of that Disney Princess and Henry Jones Sr - let it go!