Chuck Norris is a secessionist and quite possibly a terrorist. Why do right-wing extremists hate America so much?
I haven’t posted anything about the most recent unemployment numbers, but was reminded this morning why I need to. The most cited figure from February was 8.1% – a 25-year high. That sounds impressive and all, but as I’ve written about in the past, it doesn’t reflect the reality workers are facing. The number was just tossed out on a CNN morning show where the speaker said, “At least 92% of us do have jobs – that’s good news!” No, no it’s not. That quote gets at the heart of why the oft-cited number should be different. The real unemployment number went all the way up to 14.8% last month. That means only ~85% of Americans that want a job actually have one. The 8.1% number only counts people who are available for work and actively looked for a job in the prior four weeks. If they still don’t have a job after four weeks, they’re still unemployed. It’s disingenuous, at best, that the corporate media pushes the lower number down our collective throats every month. It’s not a stretch to say they do it quite purposefully for this reason: outraged workers demand real changes; irriated workers don’t rock the boat. When 1 out of 5 Americans are unemployed, will more of us figure that out?
The first question I had when I heard about the Alabama massacre this morning was what ethnicity was the man? Recent mass killings have been perpetrated mainly by middle-aged white men, but I haven’t heard about that side of things from the corporate media. I’ve only done a quick search on this situation and haven’t found an explicit answer. That works out to be pretty definitive to me: if the shooter was non-white, you know that information would be found in the opening sentence, if not the headline. I’ll keep watch and update or correct this hypothesis as more information (like a picture) becomes available. [Update]: It’s as I suspected. He wasn’t a minority. What are we going to do about these psychopathic, mass-mudering white people with assault rifles? Talk about a menace to society…
