And if you like to watch ants all day, you know what'll help?

End corporate whining

The campaigns to raise the minimum wage and to organize fast-food and grocery workers deserve support.

America's largest employer, Wal-Mart, for example, pays such low wages that its employees are the largest group of food stamp and Medicaid recipients. A report from Congressman Alan Grayson estimated that Wal-Mart employees receive $1,000/month on average in public assistance payments. Another example of how sorry Wal-Mart's wages are: This week a Wal-Mart in Ohio held a food drive for its own employees.

America's second-largest employer, McDonald's, tried to produce a budget showing how its employees could live on the minimum wage -- and failed. A study this year found that "52% of families of fast food workers receive assistance from a public program."

Don't believe corporate shills whining and puling that these profitable companies can't afford to pay a living wage (Canada, UK, New Zealand, Belgium, Australia, France, Netherlands, Ireland and Luxembourg all have higher minimum wage settings than the US -- some countries, like Sweden and Germany, that don't legislate wage minimums, encourage collective bargaining instead). Elizabeth Warren calculates that if the US minimum wage had kept pace with inflation it would now be $22/hr. The activists campaigning for an increase are asking for a $15/hr minimum. Meanwhile, the White House's embrace of a $9/hr minimum is shameful and pathetic, designed more to head off a meaningful increase than to solve the problem.

Impractical Proposal #2,567,043

If white men over 50 are so angry and bitter about not being employable that they're willing to ruin the country, how about this? 

Draft them into the military and dispatch them to the 700 U.S. military garrisons around the world where they can keep busy shooting at people unlike themselves. 

Bring home the able-bodied youth now in uniform, give them educations, and put them to work. 

Good for everybody. 

Win win.

Faux News

"Having failed electorally and failed in the courts, Republicans are hell-bent on destroying the Affordable Care Act in Americans' minds. A document circulated among House Republicans (revealed in today's NY Times) contains talking points to be repeated continuously: 'Because of Obamacare, I Lost My Insurance.' 'Obamacare Increases Health Care Costs.' 'The Exchanges May Not Be Secure, Putting Personal Information at Risk.' Fox News and right-wing radio amplify them. The mainstream media reports them as news.

"Admittedly, Obama played into their hands by botching the roll-out of the Act. But keep in mind the larger reality: Private for-profit insurers have wrecked the American healthcare system. Ours has been the only system in the world designed to avoid sick people. A single-payer system would have been preferable, and we'll eventually get there. But the Affordable Care Act at least sets minimum standards, requires insurers to take people with preexisting conditions, bars them from dropping coverage of people who get sick, and extends insurance to the poor and working class. These are huge accomplishments relative to where we've been. Initial problems with the website, and cancellations of some policies by insurance companies that can't meet the standards, are small potatoes." -- Robert Reich

Watch the feet not the mouth

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Sen. Brown to Neoliberals

The situation for seniors is only going to get worse, because the assault on pensions and wages is making it more and more difficult for a worker to save for the future. Why are we having a debate over how much we are going to hurt seniors? The debate should be over how we should structure a pension for seniors that will help them. Why would we play on their playing field? Democrats need to play offense here. Force Republicans to say what it is they really want to do. Republicans just don’t like social insurance. -- Senator Sherrod Brown (Washington Post, 2013-11-5)

Correction

The Times, keeping it real: "An earlier version of this post misidentified Boniface VIII as Boniface VII."

From the Watch the Feet Not the Mouth Desk:

"In his journey to the White House, Barack Obama made much hay railing against his predecessor’s supposedly go-it-alone mindset and penchant for foreign policy unilateralism. With memories still fresh of the

spectacular rupture between Washington and its traditional European allies over the Iraq war, Obama’s claim to be the 'anti-Bush' garnered him a euphoric welcome in Berlin in July 2008. Speaking before a massive crowd assembled in the 'Tiergarten' (speech text here; video here), he grandly vowed to 'remake the world once again,' this time in a way that allies would 'listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all, trust each other.' A year later, this sort of rhetoric earned him the Nobel peace prize for single-handedly creating 'a new climate in international politics' and restoring multilateral diplomacy to 'a central position.'

The rest of the story:
U.S. Smart Power is Taking a Beating by David J. Karl (Foreign Policy blogs)