Motley Moose – Archive

Since 2008 – Progress Through Politics

Archive for June 2013

The Daily F Bomb, Tuesday 6/11/13

Interrogatories

It’s Corn on the Cob Day. How do you prepare/prefer it? Grilled, boiled, roasted? With butter, or mayo and chile powder, or something else or not at all?

Have you switched from incandescent bulbs to CFLs  yet? If you switched, did you notice a difference in cost?

A lot of people I know have nasty summer colds now. Do you know any good home remedies?

How careful are you with your information online? If a website wants to know your location, for instance? Or if they want access to your Facebook account (if you have one)?

The Twitter Emitter

Well Oops! Darrel Issa has a problem

That fiendish Obama has been working across the aisle again:

A self-described conservative Republican who is a manager in the Internal Revenue Service office that targeted tea party groups told investigators that he, not the White House, set the review in motion, the top Democrat on the House watchdog committee said Sunday.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., released a partial transcript of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform interview with the unnamed manager in the IRS’ Cincinnati office. In it, the employee said the extra scrutiny for tea party groups’ tax exempt status was an effort to be consistent in reviewing applications and not driven by politics. http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_n…  

Updated to add additional info:

In an official interview transcript released on Sunday by Democratic Representative Elijah Cummings, the manager said he and an underling set aside “Tea Party” and “patriot” groups that had applied for tax-exempt status because the organizations appeared to pose a new precedent that could affect future IRS filings. http://www.rawstory.com/rs/201…  

Homemade hummus!

Do you remember the first time you had hummus? Maybe it was at a friend’s house, or at a Middle Eastern restaurant. Its mild nutty flavor, enhanced with lemon and garlic, probably accompanied pita or raw veggies.

If you were hooked, you noticed it in the grocery after that, and you may have picked up an 8-ounce tub for between three to four dollars. It comes in several flavors at the store, with extra garlic, hot stuff, black olives… You may have tried a different kind each time.

But if you’re cheap like me, or if you like making food from scratch so you control what goes in it, like I do, you might hesitate to buy it very often.

You can make hummus from scratch, and pretty easily, too, if you have a food processor. And if you want to step back one more step and use dried garbanzo beans instead of canned, you’ll also need a slow cooker.

The Daily F Bomb, Monday 6/10/13

Interrogatories

Iced tea – sweetened or unsweetened?

What are your favorite musical genres?

Have you ever solved Rubik’s Cube?

Patios or decks?

Ocean, lake, or swimming pool?

The Twitter Emitter

Our Moral Foundations and Decisions

I was very involved in the 2012 Obama campaign as a local volunteer and neighborhood team leader. As such, issues constantly came up that forced me to question why I supported or opposed them. Is it right? Is it wrong? Doesn’t it depend on a lot of other things? I needed to feel I understood them internally. Only then, could I use them as talking points to potential voters in my neighborhoods.

I constantly asked myself how the conservative right could be so diametrically opposed to what I believed. I don’t consider myself to be unusually liberal. In fact, I’m very conservative is some things. How could conservatives feel so absolute and certain that they held the high ground morally? It was frustrating. I couldn’t think that way.

I pondered the possible reasons. Some insight came after listening to a Bill Moyers program with Jonathan Haidt. Here is the link to the full 56 min. program on Vimeo. It is worth the time to view it. The main content of this diary does not require it.

In it…

Bill and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt talk about the psychological underpinnings of our contentious culture, why we can’t trust our own opinions, and the demonizing of our adversaries. Compromise becomes a dirty word.

At last some insight. Social psychology is not my area of expertise. I am a teacher and scientist. Logic and clear thinking are a big deal for me. I saw none in the way our political system was behaving. Haidt pointed out how people are basically very similar when it comes to which guideposts they use as foundations for moral judgement and behavior. But, they differ significantly on which of those foundations are held in highest importance to them. It is testable and measurable.

Granted, this information is not new. Haidt has spoken about it on TED, among other places, since 2008. Do a search with Haidt and you find several instances of his work and talks. I would like to share what I found in looking into this issue of moral foundations. It was very revealing and explained a great deal about the differences in liberals vs conservatives.

I’m with you. Show me more.

Motley Monday Check in and Mooselaneous Musings

Good morning Motley Meese! Hope your weekend was lovely. Remember to let your peeps know where you are!

Welcome to Motley Monday, the road trip edition! We will be driving all day so may be least in sight. We will try to pop in now and then from our phones.

photo roadtrip3_zps248d5d4f.jpeg

Odds & Ends: News/Humor

I post a weekly diary of historical notes, arts & science items, foreign news (often receiving little notice in the US) and whimsical pieces from the outside world that I often feature in “Cheers & Jeers”. For example …..

By Request SEPARATED at BIRTH from Tonga 23 – NRA president Wayne LaPierre as well as Stephen King the noted author.

       

OK, you’ve been warned – here is this week’s tomfoolery material that I posted.

Key Facts Wrong in Rush to Report NSA ‘Scandals’

Last week there was report after report about a supposed bombshell with respect to NSA surveillance and data collection operations against Americans on American soil.  There is a major problem with those reports:  It seems much of that early reporting was wrong.  Bob Cesca at The Daily Banter summarizes it thusly:

To summarize, yes, the NSA routinely requests information from the tech giants. But the NSA doesn’t have “direct access” to servers nor is it randomly collecting information about you personally. Yet rending of garments and general apoplexy has ruled the day, complete with predictable invective about the president being “worse than Bush” and that anyone who reported on the new information debunking the initial report was and is an Obamabot apologist.

That, of course, is not really the end, but only the beginning.

Confessions of a Retail Worker: Clopen

Hello everyone,

Long time no chat. I saw Melanie’s diary today, and thought I would try harder to be better Moose member. 🙂

Confessions of a Retail Worker is a series about the worklife of low-paid, non-managerial staff in the retail industry.

The reality is that life in retail is getting harder for many. Hours are being cut, and last-minute scheduling is now the norm throughout the industry. Even though Big Retail has systems in place preventing “over scheduling” of staff, those systems can be (and frequently are)overridden by management on the ground.

The worst though, is the uptick in clopening.

If you check the hashtag #clopen on twitter, you’ll see a fair number of employees from retail and food service lamenting the clopen. So what is it?

It’s when you’re scheduled for the closing shift as well as the opening shift the next day. In my case, this has meant working until midnight and then coming in by 5AM the next day. For others, it might be a 12 hour shift ending at 10pm and coming in a 4am. It varies, but it’s tough, no matter what.

The best way to identify bad management in the industry (besides poverty wages), is to see how often they require clopening.

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