Perry Bible Fellowship does Edward Gorey.

On Minimum Wage.

The cheap-labor people, led by chambers of commerce everywhere, never admit that their motive is to beat down the wages of their lowest-paid workers. Their voices drip with concern as they warn that any increase in the minimum will cost the jobs of the most vulnerable, especially black, workers.

Those arguments happen to not be true. Reputable economists say that a reasonable hike in the minimum wage does not seem to job losses: It may even make businesses healthier.

A recent study by the Fiscal Policy Institute in New York confirms this view. It found that small businesses actually grew faster in states that kept their minimum wages above the federal level. From 1998 to 2003, job growth for small businesses in states with higher minimum wages was 6.7 percent, versus 5.3 percent in states stuck at $5.15 an hour.

Surprisingly, job growth was even more robust in the retail sector, where the wages tend to be low. And the total number of small retail businesses grew 0.6 percent in high-minimum-wage states, while they actually fell 0.3 percent in states that relied on the federal standards.

What is the explanation? Part of it is that higher wages lead to higher productivity. That is, the workers get more done in the same amount of time. The better pay encourages them to stay at the job and gain experience. And employers don’t have to waste resources finding and training new people.

The report also notes what economists call the “Henry Ford effect”: If you pay workers more, they can buy more. That boosts the overall local economy. And the biggest winners are the small retail businesses, who, according to the propagandists, are supposed to be hurt most.

Wherein I repost another's article wholesale

"Jesus Bitch Slaps Teen Agents of the Radical Homosexual Agenda"

The Rev. Flip Benham, leader of a modest little outfit called Operation Save America, wishes to alert the media to his group's stirring smack-down of yet another Threat to America, the Gay-Straight Alliance club of South Rowan High School, near Charlotte, North Carolina. "Our city and government officials," writes Rev. Flip, "continually tell us, ‘Our hands are tied.’ We continually remind them that the hands of the Church of Jesus Christ are not!"

Rev. Flip's description of OpSavAm's battle with the "weaseling" group of tolerant teens posseses a certain poetry: "More than 700 gentle Christians converged on the Rowan-Salisbury School Board last night to stand for Christ and say, 'No,' to the radical homosexual agenda that is weaseling its way into our public schools. The preachers preached, the singers sang, the prayers prayed, and the theology of the church house became biography in the streets of Salisbury, North Carolina."

No word on the subsequent biographies of the godless gays, but the school board heard the message and voted unanimously to shut down the America-threatening organization in recognition of what Rev. Flip describes as the club's "bullying tactics." Seems it was the same old sad story at South Rowan High -- mobs of gay football players pushing shy heterosexual boys into lockers, the lesbian in-crowd sneering "breeder" at lonely straight girls. It's all too familiar.

With the exception of an appropriately named blog called "Raw Story," the liberal media, of course, is covering up the America-saving spiritual warriors' victory. Seven hundred adult Christians teaming up to shout a couple of queer kids and their friends into silence just isn't news in this country.

Part of our work here at The Revealer is encouring the press to cover overlooked religion stories. This surely qualifies, and fortunately, Rev. Flip has volunteered his very own telephone number in his press release. So if you'd like to report on Rev. Flip's fight against gay teens and their friends -- or just thank him for saving America -- here's the number to call: 980-722-4920.

Awesome.

(no subject)

This statement was made to his commanding officer by Second-Lieutenant S. L. Sassoon, Military Cross, recommended for D.S.O., Third Battalion Royal Welch Fusiliers, as explaining his grounds for refusing to serve further in the army. He enlisted on 3rd August 1914, showed distinguished valour in France, was badly wounded, and would have been kept on home service if he had stayed in the army.

I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority, because I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it.

I am a soldier, convinced that I am acting on behalf of soldiers. I believe that this war, upon which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I believe that the purposes for which I and my fellow soldiers entered upon this war should have been so clearly stated as to have made it impossible to change them, and that, had this been done, the objects which actuated us would now be attainable by negotiation.

I have seen and endured the sufferings of the troops, and I can no longer be a party to prolong these sufferings for ends which I believe to be evil and unjust.

I am not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors and insecurities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed.

On behalf of those who are suffering now I make this protest against the deception which is being practiced on them; also I believe that I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realize.



July, 1917. S. Sassoon.

Siegfried Sassoon’s declaration of war against the war appeared in the Bradford Pioneer on July 27, 1917. In disgust with the war, he threw the ribbon of his Military Cross into the sea. Thanks to the help of his friend Robert Graves, Sassoon was declared to have shell shock instead of being court-martialed. The British army placed him in a hospital at Craiglockhart, near Edinburgh, for the duration of the war.

CVS pharmacies doing their part to encourage abortion and STDs.

When experts call condoms a barrier method of birth control, this isn't what they mean.

In Washington D.C., the CVS chain of pharmacies are putting condoms behind lock and key, with a button that pages the store staff to the condom case over the PA system. This is the only way to purchase condoms in their stores.

"Skylight" onto a lava tube.

Ash from Mt Etna

Easter celebrations in the Phillipines.

( Warning, here be blood. )

Arizona Governor apparently literate.

Gov. Janet Napolitano on Tuesday vetoed legislation that would have required doctors performing some abortions to tell women that their unborn children might feel pain.
HB 2254 would have mandated that a woman who is at least 20 weeks into her pregnancy be told that her unborn child "has the physical structures necessary to experience pain."

Napolitano, in a three-sentence veto message, called the legislation "an unwarranted intrusion by politicians" into the doctor-patient relationship. "The Legislature should not attempt to substitute its judgment for that of trained physicians with respect to professional advice given to patients," the governor wrote.
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It appears that the Governor may, in fact, be literate enough to have noted that the "fetal pain" morons have just about the same scientific support as the creationists.

My nephew needs one.

The plush necronomicon!

(no subject)

The Screaming Jelly Baby Experiment

(no subject)

A piece of resume etiquette.

When one is contracted to a company who is contracted by another company who is contracted by a third, and when one deals solely with the co-workers in the same situation and the users, systems, and networks of this third company, who does one put as the "employer" on their resume?

And what is the best way to express this relationship, especially when the second company has remained static but both the first and third companies have changed over the course of a single employment?

Just sayin'

(Stealing from pnh today)

Friday tradition!

This one was chosen by the classic method of putting the playlist on random and picking the first cover that came up.

Limp Bizkit covering George Michael: Faith.