Bill Nye is having NONE of your shit lady.
“I think about my mother, who, as a little girl, went to segregated schools in Chicago and felt the sting of discrimination. I think about my husband’s grandparents, white folks born and raised right here in Kansas, products themselves of segregation. Good, honest people who helped raise their bi-racial grandson, ignoring those who would criticize that child’s very existence. And then I think about how that child grew up to be the President of the United States, and how today that little girl from Chicago is helping to raise her granddaughters in the White House.”
—First Lady Michelle Obama, speaking in Topeka, Kansas on the 60th anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education.
President Barack Obama at the White House Correpondents’ Dinner.
OBAMA HAS TOTALLY STOPPED GIVING A FUCK AND IT’S THE GREATEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN
this shit was brutal
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There was a lot of talk today about the media’s failed coverage [read: non-coverage] of the 234 Nigerian girls, thus came the #234WhiteGirls hashtag.
No, none of us wants any white girls to go missing. We just want these Nigerian girls to get the same amount of coverage that white girls get (or would get), because EVERY girl matters.
#BRINGBACKOURGIRLS
Can we please stop pretending it is possible to live on minimum wage?
As somebody who started grocery shopping for all meals in 2000, when I was earning twice the minimum wage, I think 1998’s a bit of an exaggeration. But 2013 is not.
1998 and 2005 are both crazy exaggerations. The idea behind the graphic is 100% correct, but the illustration is ridiculous.
Want to hear real stories directly from people who have been subjected to the tyranny of “Obamacare”? Look no further than Ted Cruz’s Facebook page. After he posted an impromptu poll more or less begging people to shit on the Affordable Care Act, nearly 50,000 people have chimed in - and the grand majority of them are saying, “Yes, I am better off than I was before the ACA.”
Whoooooo needs health care? You. Here’s 5 things you need to know for the last 5 days of Obamacare enrollment:
1. Everyone has to have health insurance, and if you aren’t enrolled by March 31, you’ll be fined $95 or 1% of your income (whichever is more money).
2. Some people...
America’s prisons are dangerously overcrowded, and the war on drugs is mainly to blame.
Over 50 percent of inmates currently in federal prison are there for drug offenses, according to an infographic recently released by the Federal Bureau of Prisons (see chart below). That percentage has risen fairly consistently over decades, all the way from 16 percent in 1970.
The second-largest category, immigration-related crimes, accounts for 10.6 percent of inmates. This means that people convicted of two broad categories of nonviolent crimes — drugs and immigration — make up over 60 percent of the U.S. prison population.
Jon Stewart compares the media’s treatment of Justin Bieber and Rob Ford to the treatment of Seattle Seahawks cornerback Richard Sherman.
LTMC: nailed it.
Can we please stop pretending that it’s impossible to live on minimum wage?
Basic math that I knocked out last night:
$820 per month for rent (apartments in Austin can be found as low as $665)
+
$290 per month for groceries (the average american spends $287 on groceries)
+
$120 per month for bus (assuming that the bus is being taken 4 times a day - twice there and twice back)
=
$1230 per month for living expenses.
Currently on minimum wage:
$7.75 x 40 = $310 per week
$280 x 4 = $1240 per month
(Assuming no bonuses, raises, or overtime.)
Is money tight? Yes. Is it difficult? Yes. But it is possible to live on current minimum wage.
Thank you.
You can tell somebody still relies on someone else to pay their bills. Let’s do a little bit more math.
Above wage/month =/=$1240 first of all. There’s this little thing called taxes that the government likes to get; drop that $1240 to $906 (about 27% which goes to social security, unemployment, federal and local taxes).
Your awesome apartment probably covers water and garbage, but they don’t likely cover electricity. There’s another approximately $80/month. Do you need a way for your employer to get in touch with you? A basic cell plan is about $50, if you drop all the texting, etc.
We’re already underwater here, but let’s figure a few other things. Even getting all your clothes from thrifting, you’re going to need a few dollars a month for sundries: cleaning supplies (and you can’t forget the cost of laundry itself, another $10/month assuming you do a load a week in a laundromat in your building), hygiene supplies, specialized uniform maybe (things like steel-toed boots can set you back $150 alone).
God forbid you get sick; even if your minimum-wage job includes insurance you’ve probably got a $25/visit copayment. If it doesn’t, which most don’t, it’ll be a $90 ZoomCare visit or in the upper hundreds for the ER, if you wait too long.
tl;dr - don’t do bullshit math until you have *all* the numbers down, son.
Not to mention most people on minimum wage aren’t getting 40 hours a week from one job. Most places bar people from working over 30 hours because a whole tier of benefits kick in if you’re considered full time.
Oh, and do you have kids who are under 5? Because people don’t watch kids under 5 for free, so unless you’re lucky enough to have a relative who also doesn’t have to work and is willing to watch your kids every day for free, you’re looking at, oh, at least another $200 a week gone right there. And if your kids are over 5 but not old enough to look after themselves and you don’t work school hours, welcome to paying for after care! Not as expensive as full daycare, but still $$$.
America!
Federal investigators have ordered a probe into whether Gov. Chris Christie’s administration improperly spent millions of dollars of relief meant to encourage tourists to New Jersey after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy.
The probe comes as Mr. Christie is struggling with the most difficult crisis of his political career after it was revealed that people in his administration schemed to close local lanes onto the George Washington Bridge as political punishment for the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee. On Monday, New Jersey Democrats announced a new committee to investigate the closings.
This is not the first time Mr. Christie has come under criticism for the Hurricane Sandy funds: Many of the television advertisements used in the campaign, called “Stronger than the Storm,” prominently featured the governor and his family, which drew complaints from Democrats around the state who said it was more focused on promoting Mr. Christie than the Jersey Shore.
The commercials were paid for with money from a federal disaster relief package New Jersey received that included $25 million for a media campaign. The audit by the Department of Housing and Urban Development will look into how the contract was awarded.
An investigation by The Asbury Park Press last year found that the public relations firm that won the contract, MWW Group, based in East Rutherford, charged $2 million more than a competitor that submitted a comparable proposal.
A key difference in the bids, the newspaper reported, was that the MWW Group proposal prominently featured the governor in the ads.
Following the reports in The Asbury Park Press, Representative Frank Pallone, a Democrat and longtime critic of Mr. Christie, sent a letter to the Department of Housing and Urban Development asking the agency to looking into the matter.
“While promoting tourism at the Jersey Shore in the wake of Hurricane Sandy is certainly a worthy endeavor, recent reports have led me to believe that the state has irresponsibly misappropriated funding allocated by Congress from the Sandy aid package and taken advantage of this waiver for political purposes,” Mr. Pallone wrote in August.
The New York Times, “Christie Faces Inquiry Into Use of Hurricane Relief Money.”
The hits just keep on comin’.
(via inothernews)
thinkprogress.org
Chris Christie Vetoes Bill Allowing Transgender People To Amend Birth Certificates
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie doesn’t want transgender people to obtain amended birth certificates without undergoing sterilizing surgery.
i think i’m just going to reblog a bunch of stuff about why chris christie is terrible.
antique-romantic
