At least 10 have been shot at the DC Navy Yard. Here’s the Post liveblog.
Update: Police believe there were three shooters. (2nd update: Navy can’t confirm or deny.)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 262 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
At least 10 have been shot at the DC Navy Yard. Here’s the Post liveblog.
Update: Police believe there were three shooters. (2nd update: Navy can’t confirm or deny.)
by $8 blue check mistermix| 41 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Last week, Washington, DC’s mayor supported Wal-Mart by vetoing a law that would raise the minimum wage in DC to $12.50/hour. The bill targeted big-box retail, so it wasn’t a straight wage increase. Still, Kathleen Geier wonders why Democrats (and she lists a lot of them) are so reluctant to make a stand against Wal-Mart:
As always, I completely understand why Republicans and conservatives love them some Walmart. But when liberals support pro-Walmart policies, there is a huge disconnect. They say they want one thing — a higher minimum wage! a guaranteed minimum income! good jobs! decreased economic inequality! And yet they are strongly supporting policies that will virtually ensure that they will get the exact opposite: jobs with miserable wages, no benefits, and no prospects for advancement; the further immiseration of working people in this country; and the tragic, slow-motion obliteration of one of the most powerful politically progressive institutions this country has ever known.
In other minimum wage news, California’s legislature voted to push the minimum wage into double digits: $10/hour by 2016. That’s still below what it would have been if the March on Washington had gotten its goal of a $2.00 wage, which would be $13.39 in 2013 dollars. It is more than the maximum minimum wage, which peaked at $1.60 in 1968, which is $9.44 in inflation-adjusted 2013 dollars.
One of the justifications given by wage supporters in California is that 3 of 5 minimum wage earners are over 25 years old. True, but so what? There are lots of 18 year-olds (and younger) supporting families, paying their way through college, and doing the same things older adults do. They all deserve a decent minimum wage.
This post is in: Music, Open Threads
Via Andrea DenHoed at the New Yorker:
Dolly Parton must be one of the only singers around whose voice could undergo such extreme manipulation and sound not sadly distorted but, rather, beautifully remade. Her baby-high soprano has always seemed slightly unreal anyway, a record played a little too fast. As it happens, one of her longtime stage stunts is mimicking a 45 r.p.m. record played at 78 r.p.m.: she goes into full Chipmunk mode, not missing a syllable or a wave of vibrato—an offhand joke at the expense of her own voice, as well as a flourishing exhibition of her impressive control of her instrument…
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Wow, did the Seahawks get hosed there by the jackass in the stands with a whistle, but they just got a touch of justice picking off the SF QB whose name I can not spell.
This post is in: C.R.E.A.M., Open Threads, Proud to Be A Democrat, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment
I think this is one possible answer to the questions raised by DougJ’s last thread. Via Billmon, ThinkProgress:
As his fellow panelists sought to sidestep criticisms of the financial industry on the five-year anniversary of the bank failure that kicked the financial crisis and Great Recession into full swing, former congressman Barney Frank asked a simple question that brought Wall Street’s defenders up short. “To your question about those poor beleaguered bankers who have been forced to do so much,” Frank said, “why are they paying themselves so much money? Where did these enormous salaries come from if they were in fact in such serious trouble?”…
Transcript at the link. It’s not that Larry Summers has the self-awareness to realize that Barney Frank signals a willingness among “rogue Democrats” like Elizabeth Warren to raise uncomfortable questions about the Wall Street banksters. But the people propping up his normination may have come to understand just how “toxic” it would be for their own interests to give DFHs like Barney an opening.
This post is in: Open Threads, Sports
Couldn’t access the website for a while there…
Oh, and for your viewing pleasure, here is a Boston Terrier in a summer dress riding a scooter:
Why not?
by Betty Cracker| 165 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads
Sneaky buggers. Please feel free to discuss whatever.