Walmart Workers Stage Black Friday Pickets At 1,600 Stores: They're demanding $15 an hour and full-time employment. Mother Jones:
The nation's largest employer, Walmart employs 1.4 million people, or 10 percent of all retail workers, and pulls in $16 billion in annual profits. Its largest stockholders—Christy, Jim, Alice, and S. Robson Walton—are the nation's wealthiest family, collectively worth $145 billion. Yet the company is notorious for paying poverty wages and using part-time schedules to avoid offering workers benefits. Last year, a report commissioned by Congressional Democrats found that each Walmart store costs taxpayers between 900,000 and $1.75 million per year because so many employees are forced to turn to government aid.
"Family values" conservatives should be backing the strikers—particularly all those "defenders" of marriage—as living wages, access to health care, and regular, full-time employment strengthens families by lifting them out of poverty. Spoiler alert: They're not. Stephanie Coontz called bullshit on social conservatives who argue that marriage all by itself lifts families out of poverty in this 2012 op-ed for USA Today: "Nonmarriage is often a result of poverty and economic insecurity rather than a cause. Unemployment, low wages and poverty discourage family formation and erode family stability, making it less likely that individuals will marry in the first place and more likely that their marriages will dissolve." Go read the whole thing. (I had to watch a Walmart ad before I could watch the Black Friday video at the top of the post.)
Alice Walton Is a Shameless Piece of Shit: Walmart stores ask their poorly paid "associates" to donate canned food so that "associates in need" don't starve to death between their meager paychecks. "It’s that time of year again when the the magnanimous folks at Walmart ask the company’s hard-working employees to dig deep into their low-wage pockets to give, give, give to each other, on account of how hard-working employees of Walmart can’t even afford to eat that bargain Walmart food on their Walmart wages," writes Wonkette. So protesters set up a canned food collection station outside the Park Avenue condo of Walmart heir Alice Walton (estimated worth: $39.7 billion). The idea: shame Alice Walton. The question: Can a Walton feel shame?
Shooting Spree: A gunman wearing a bulletproof vest and a helmet went on a shooting spree in Austin, Texas. But get this: He only shot at buildings. No dead kids, no dead adults—well, except the gunman. He's dead. A nice change of shooting-spree pace, huh? The guy shot up a courthouse, a federal building, and a police station, and there's no word yet about motive, but my money is on Emperor Obama's immigration executive order. Place your bets in the comments.
Don't Get Your Kid a Toy Gun: "If you've seen the classic movie A Christmas Story, you know that Ralphie really, really wanted that BB gun," says Nancy Shute at NPR. "And you know that his mother, his teacher, even the department store Santa all said: 'You'll shoot your eye out.' They're right, the nation's ophthalmologists say. And though BB guns still top the eye doctors' list of way-too-dangerous toys, each year there are new contenders for that dubious prize." Black kids with toy guns also run the risk of having their heads blown off by the police.
Four Minutes: That's how long Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy who was shot by a Cleveland cop for waving a toy gun around (in an open-carry state), lay bleeding on the ground before anyone began administering first aid:
Cleveland officials said Thursday officers waited close to four minutes to administer first aid after Tamir Rice, 12, was shot. Deputy Chief Ed Tomba said a detective and FBI agent who were in the area responded to the call for help and began giving medical help to Rice three minutes and 49 seconds after he was shot by rookie Cleveland patrol officer Timothy Loehmann. NewsChannel 5 Investigators asked Cleveland officials why the two officers involved in the shooting did not immediately administer first aid.
I have a theory. Add your best guess to the comments.
Nothing to See Here: Just some Russian warships in the English Channel. Russia has resumed Cold War–era bomber flights near the US, Russian submarines are popping up in places where they're not supposed to be, and Russian military aircraft—including nuclear bombers—were intercepted by NATO fighter planes after conducting "significant military manoeuvres on the edges of NATO and European airspace."
Finland Legalizes Gay Marriage: Same-sex marriage is now legal in Finland—they're the 12th European state to legalize same-sex marriage—and will remain legal until Russia invades. (Finland gained independence from Russia in 1917.)
The Seahawks Had to Work on Thanksgiving: Yay! They won! Go drink the bitter tears of 49ers fans at NinersNation! Try not to think about this!
It's Giuliani Time: It's time for Rudy Giuliani to remind us that he's a total fucking scumbag.
Anderson Cooper vs. Billy Corgan: Hard to believ,e but... Cooper is feuding with Corgan over pussy.
Pagliacci vs. Jamjuree: Thai food is more popular than pizza in Seattle.
Some Star Wars Bullshit: After the jump...
