Last Call

"Papa" John Schnatter, of Papa John's Pizza fame, says Obamacare is going to jack up the price of his pies, so get ready to fork over more green, America.

On a conference call last week, CEO and founder John Schnatter (a Mitt Romney supporter and fundraiser) said the health care law's changes — set to go into effect in 2014 — will result in higher costs for the company — which they vowed to pass onto consumers.

"Our best estimate is that the Obamacare will cost 11 to 14 cents per pizza, or 15 to 20 cents per order from a corporate basis," Schnatter said.

"We're not supportive of Obamacare, like most businesses in our industry. But our business model and unit economics are about as ideal as you can get for a food company to absorb Obamacare," he said.

"If Obamacare is in fact not repealed, we will find tactics to shallow out any Obamacare costs and core strategies to pass that cost onto consumers in order to protect our shareholders best interests," Schnatter vowed.

Meanwhile, the cost of that 20 cents is Papa John's employees get affordable health care.  Gosh, how horrible that must be for them.  Most employers would be thrilled with that and say "We're looking forward to helping our Papa John's employees stay healthy through affordable health care, including preventative care and checkups, so that people will consider our pizza chain a great place to work."

Nope.  It's "It's your fault we have to give our slutty pizza drivers birth control pills, so we're going to make you customers pay for it.  You should probably foment REVOLUTION as a result."

Sigh.

Remember, employees are the enemy.

Today In Village Idiocy

Has National Review's Ramesh Ponnuru ever had a decent idea in his entire life?

Cable-television shows about politics are often blamed for polarizing Americans. To this way of thinking, they are responsible for much of the incivility of today’s political culture and have made it harder for us to work together to solve our problems.

This concern seems overblown to me. While the shows don’t help, their effect is probably small. The main sources of polarization lie elsewhere (especially, I would argue, in the way that courts have put social issues at the center of national politics). 

Hey nimrod, which side keeps constantly suing to try to have the courts overturn established precedent on Roe v. Wade or to curtail the Civil Rights Act?   Asshole.

The real problem with the cable-TV shows is that so much of the discussion on them is dumb, one-sided or both. (I trust that readers don’t need me to supply examples.) Their main function seems to be to provide Team Red and Team Blue with their daily talking points and with fresh causes for outrage at the other side. A lot of people seem to like this kind of thing, and it has its place in a robust democracy.

There is a way to elevate the political debate a little bit, though, and it’s simple: One of the cable networks should bring back “Crossfire.” Yes, that’s the CNN show that Jon Stewart attacked in 2004 for “hurting America,” shortly before its 23-year run ended. 

Yes, because the real problem in America is not enough cable TV news shows where one side lies, the other side points out the obvious lie, and then the conclusion is "Well, both sides are probably guilty here."

What we need is far fewer cable TV shows and referee calls from the Village, where news is presented as factual, not to fit whatever ideology that happens to be in vogue.  The Village is incapable of it.  We need less of you pundit jagoffs, not more.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Bereft of actual policy points he can make that don't involve releasing his tax returns and not wanting to blow the one shot he has at changing the subject with a veep pick right now Romneybot flips through Newt's Contract With America playbook and comes up with this gem of an ad campaign. First, the President's policy fixes:

Changes to welfare pushed by President Barack Obama's administration are providing his Republican challenger Mitt Romney with material for a new round of attacks, including a television ad released Tuesday. The changes, which would allow states greater flexibility in administering their welfare-to-work programs, came in a directive issued by the Department of Health and Human Services in mid-July. At the time, some Republicans claimed the new rules amounted to a "gutting" of work requirements for welfare recipients, which were a central element of the bipartisan welfare reform law signed by President Bill Clinton in 1996.

Let's pause for a minute here.

The changes would relax paperwork and reporting requirements for these programs, allowing the states to put more money towards actually helping people move from assistance programs to gainful employment, giving more power to the states to run the programs as they see fit to adapt for employment conditions in their general areas.  This seems like EXACTLY THE KIND OF THINGS REPUBLICANS SCREAM ABOUT WANTING TO DO.  But because Republicans can't possibly resist being racist chunderdouches, they derive this nonsense from the new requirements:

In Tuesday's ad from the Romney campaign, an announcer points to Clinton's achievement, and claims Obama's directive would "gut welfare reform by dropping work requirements." "Under Obama's plan, you wouldn't have to work and wouldn't have to train for a job. They just send you your welfare check," the announcer continues. "And welfare to work goes back to being plain old welfare."

Romney campaign spokeswoman Andrea Saul said the welfare ad was one piece in a larger push to highlight the Obama administration's changes to ways states administer welfare. "Middle-class Americans are working harder and harder to make ends meet," Saul wrote. "Under President Obama, they have fewer jobs and less take-home pay. And now, President Obama wants to take their hard-earned tax dollars and give it to welfare recipients without work requirements." Romney, she wrote, "would restore the work requirement in the welfare law so that recipients know the dignity of work instead of the dependency of a handout."

BLACK PRESIDENT CRISPUS GETBUCKS IS GIVING YOUR HARD-EARNED WHITE WELFARE TAX DOLLARS TO SHANIQUA AND TYREEK AND BEBE'S KIDS.  Clearly impeachment is a requirement, so you might want to RSVP now before the Unemployed Nubian Shock Troops arrive and drink up all the Hennessy you got on your shelf and make more Halfrican-non Americans with your chunky blonde daughters.  Soon they'll be EVERYWHERE and the only growth industries will be nail salons, check cashing joints and hair weave factories and the national language will officially be changed to Ebonics.

At this point, the ni-CLANG! Clock is at like 11:58 and 55 seconds, and it's first week of August still and we've got Romney busting out the Welfare Queens And Strapping Young Bucks card.  Where's he going to go next, showing White Man's Burden as a documentary on a possible second Obama term?

Let's keep in mind that the directive actually says that if the states submit a plan that lowers the work requirements, the plan will be rejected by the feds.  And a number of Republicans in red states have been eager to get behind waivers for these bureaucratic and reporting requirements as a money-saving tool for cash-strapped state governments because hey, let's not forget that the majority of welfare benefits go to white people, because white people are a majority of the population in most red states still. 

President Obama is going "You know what, these reporting requirements really are burdensome at this point in our path forward on economic progress, and I'm going to make things easier on people." But no, once again a moderate Republican move is fine until Obama does it, then it becomes "President Pootie Tang is giving free shit to lazy negroes while an out of work, frustrated broke white guy is staring in the mirror going "He hate me."  That's all that matters as the Romney campaign hits a dismal new low and we're still 90 days or so out from the election.

The knowledge that Romney will have to go even more negative and more awful with three months left makes me wonder just how far we're going to get.  Romney in blackface?  Romney with dancing Mammies?  Romney smashing watermelons in front of a Church's Fried Chicken?  Romney re-enacting episodes of The Wire?  Where's he going to go next?

Because wherever it is, it's going to be worse than this disgusting, awful piece of racist garbage.  You can count on it.

Bad Bosses Suck... Now With Scientific Proof

Psychologist Robert Hogan, an expert on personality assessments, has seen them all.

"Every employed adult reports some significant time working for an 'intolerable boss' and those (employees) that try to defend themselves are gone," Hogan, ofAmelia Island, Fla., told a session this weekend at theAmerican Psychological Association annual conference. The meeting, which drew more than 10,900 psychology professionals, wrapped up Sunday.

"Seventy-five percent of working adults say the worst aspect of their job — the most stressful aspect of their job — is their immediate boss," Hogan says. "Bad managers create enormous health costs and are a major source of misery for many people."

Companies that take care of employees get better results.  There is a line, but more care given to employees yields benefits for everyone.

As for our workplace satisfaction bearing on our health, that's a no-brainer.  Work is a major component of our lives, and our satisfaction and happiness are important.  I can vouch for it on a personal level.  I hadn't been happy with my career for a couple of years and my stress was incredible.  Now that I have found a great job that works for me on all levels, my blood pressure, diabetes and overall well-being have improved dramatically.

Do what you love.  You'll be happier and healthier if you do.

Oops! Airline Fluke Bills Passengers Repeatedly

DALLAS — Southwest Airlines says it has begun filing refunds to customers who were accidentally billed multiple times for a single flight, after a half-price online ticket promotion backfired.

The special sale designed to celebrate Southwest's reaching the three million mark in Facebook fans was supposed to give customers who booked flights on Friday a 50-percent discount on certain fares.

Instead, hundreds of frustrated would-be fliers wound up posting stories on social media about how their credit and debit cards were being repeatedly charged, in some cases 20 or more times.

Aggravating, but it happens.  They're making good on it, so while I can understand the frustration it will come out okay in the end.  Still, I can't imagine what I'd do if I checked my bank balance and saw I'd been billed twenty times for a flight.  I'm pretty sure I would faint after a long stream of poetic naughty phrases.

School Of Hard Knocked Up

Louisiana GOP Gov. Bobby Jindal's disastrous experiment with turning the state's education system into a for-profit charter school nightmare funneling taxpayer education dollars to religious schools while destroying the state's remaining public schools  and destroying public libraries continues unabated, and the latest revelation in this monstrous mess is the fact that one of these public charter schools taking taxpayer money is in clear violation of the Constitution and Title IX with a policy that expels female students for being pregnant.

If an administrator or teacher suspects a student is pregnant, a parent conference will be held. The school reserves the right to require any female student to take a pregnancy test to confirm whether or not the suspected student is in fact pregnant. The school further reserves the right to refer the suspected student to a physician of its choice. If the test indicates that the student is pregnant, the student will not be permitted to attend classes on the campus of Delhi Charter school.
...
Any student who is suspected of being pregnant and who refuse to submit to a pregnancy test shall be treated as a pregnant student and will be offered home study opportunities. If home study opportunities are not acceptable, the student will be counseled to seek other educational opportunities.

In other words, get with child, get thee hence.  No section of the rulebook about Baby Daddies however, apparently that behavior is too difficult to stop enforcing, even though teenagers magically get pregnant through osmosis or something.

Needless to say, now that these assholes are taking state taxpayer money, they are subject to federal laws, including the Constitution and Title IX, which expressly forbids expelling a student for being pregnant.

The ACLU is giving these guys time to completely rewrite their rulebook before they drop the hammer on them in what could be the shortest federal case in national history.  Me, I'd still pay to be in the courtroom for the whole 7 minutes it took to decide this case.

PS, Jindal's plan is coming to a country near you should Romney and the GOP gain control of Washington and then use tax dollars for religious charter schools to teach complete nonsense.

Fact Check Yourself before You Fact Wreck Yourself, Again

Scott Lemieux notes the PolitiFact people are throwing boatloads of red flags on Harry Reid, the Most Awful Senator ever.

Give the most useless website in the known universe this: they’re consistent. Once again, they have awarded a “pants on fire” award, in this case to Harry Reid, despite providing no evidence whatsoever that Reid lied. Here’s the problem:

Many readers asked us to put Reid’s claim to the Truth-O-Meter. We conclude that Reid, despite repeating the claim on at least two occasions, has not produced any solid evidence it is true.

This is not, in fact, constitute a “lie.” If it is, than Romney has told “pants on fire” lies about what he’s paid in taxes as well. And PolitiFact is double-pants-on-fire-with-an-additional-Pinocchio lying, since they haven’t provided the slightest evidence that Reid wasn’t told by someone that Romney hasn’t paid taxes. As always, PolitiFact simply doesn’t understand what facts and lies are, which is kind of a problem when you purport to be a fact-checker. 

Doesn't matter.  POLITIFACT CONFIRMS SEN. REID IS "DIRTY LIAR" is all that matters in our Village media.  Mission Accomplished for the Fact Checkers, because after all there's no way that anyone can prove Harry Reid isn't lying.  No documents exist that we could check to see if Harry Reid's statement about Mitt Romney's tax returns is true or not, so clearly this is a "both sides do it" moment and Harry Reid should probably resign.

Or he should accuse the Obama administration of being infiltrated by the Muslim Brotherhood  See, it's possible that's true, so we can't give that a Pants on Fire.  It's not like there's a clear set of documents that could swing this argument decisively.

But we'll never know the truth, so it's probably best that the Democrat lose all credibility and be driven from office.  What can you do?

StupidiNews!

• Tropical Storm Ernesto may reach hurricane strength as it angles for the Yucatan and the Gulf of Mexico after dumping a foot of rain on Jamaica.
• Sikh community leaders say Sunday's deadly terror attack on a gurdwara in Wisconsin is the result of "collateral damage from 9/11".
• President Obama has signed a law giving health care to thousands of ill Marines and their families exposed to contaminated water at Camp Lejuene, North Carolina over a 30 year period.
• Hong Kong trading house Standard Chartered faces suspension of its US division after evidence of a quarter of a trillion in financial transactions with Iran have surfaced, violating US sanctions.
• It's the return of the video arcade as Generation X is sharing a hip, retro pastime with "barcades" and a new generation of gamers coming of age.