Recent Comments

1. about 1 hour ago on Aunty Acid

   I still get mail with my maiden name on it, a name I haven’t used in 63 years, before I had any credit cards, a bank account etc.

2. about 1 hour ago on Aunty Acid

   It’s very handy when you can’t find your phone, because you can call yourself and follow the ringing.

3. about 1 hour ago on Moderately Confused

   You are probably paying less than I am. I can do any carpentry that doesn’t involve lifting something I can’t lift, can do any electric easier than a 3 way switch, and anything plumbing wise. But, cars have engines? That explains why pushing the button makes it move.

4. about 1 hour ago on Frazz

   Cute joke, but totally unrealistic.

   About 40% of those people who major in education, get a teaching job and start teaching find another job before their tenure year. Very few who survive that five years are poor teachers. I have taught and I have worked in an office. The major difference is that when you are working in an office you do not have to be paying 100% attention 100% of the time. This isn’t a demand from the front office. It is necessary to maintain the classroom discipline and get the job done. A poor teacher pays for it in student disrespect, and they pay for it heavily.As for summers off, there are mandatory inservice classes and meetings that take up a lot of time. And, time will be needed to work on your graduate work, since most districts have the bachelor’s track set up so that raises after about 5 years don’t keep up with inflation. The masters is pretty much necessary for a living wage. Another option is to work a summer job. A friend of mine started mowing lawns and within three years was making too much to make it sensible to come back to teaching.And, when you leave work, you leave work. Each class requires about 20 minutes of prep time if you are revising lessons you have done before. If it’s a new lesson, an hour or two is more likely.After getting a total of 6 1/2 years of college and working for 32 years, I was making about 75% of what my nephew was two years into a sales job.All of the ideas for improving education add about 20% to the classroom hours, and no additional money seems to be available to get extra people to help with the job. Paying the people who are doing it more might make them happy, but it’s not going to increase the quality, because it would be an overwhelming amount of work. Eventually, they are going to get to the point where no one with the intelligence to do the job is going to be dumb enough to take it.
5. about 1 hour ago on Flo and Friends

   While employers squeeze workers and their unions for cuts to health care and other benefits, the CEOs of major corporations now make nearly 400 times more than their average employees, the largest employer-worker gap in our history. While 60 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck– with three multi-billionaires owning more wealth than the bottom half.

   If you are wondering why we continue to pay, by far, the highest prices in the world for prescription drugs, you should know that Pfizer has increased its profits by 42 percent so far this year to $26.4 billion.

   Gasoline? Profits of Exxon Mobil, Chevron, BP and Shell skyrocketed by 169 percent so far this year to $125 billion. They are spending over $73 billion not to reduce gas prices at the pump but to buy back their own stock and increase dividends to their wealthy stockholders.

   Groceries? Global food prices skyrocketed by over 33 percent last year and are expected to go up another 23 percent this year. Billionaires in the global food and agri-business industry became $382 billion richer during the pandemic.

6. about 1 hour ago on Flo and Friends

   WRONG! There was sound until about 10 years ago. Now there is no point in my going to the movies because they don’t have closed captioning, just strange mumbling.

7. about 1 hour ago on Mike Luckovich

   Trump’s first impeachment was because he was holding aid to Ukraine hostage until Zelensky provided some dirt on Biden.Zelensky still has not provided any of the imaginary dirt on Biden that the MAGATs, so Republicans are still doing Trump’s bidding, doing their best to hold aid to Ukraine hostage, just as Trump demanded.

   Of course, they will try to hem and haw and spin and obfuscate and make up all kinds of other excuses for stabbing an ally in the back, but we all know it is all about doing the bidding of Trump and Trump is following his besty Putin.

   The once-respected Republican Party of the 1950’s all the way up until 2015 — when they were merely greedy in their aggressive efforts to REDISTRIBUTE wealth from the working people who produce it to the few richest elites who own and control the productive resources but were not traitors aiding and abetting our adversaries — was deeply opposed to Russian aggression.

   Today’s Republican Party, which has become nothing more than the MAGAT cult hates Zelensky because, unlike the Republicans, Zelensky has enough character and fortitude to refuse to surrender to Russian domination the way they did.Chamberlain will go down in history as a traitor, or at least a weak kneed moron. But we haven’t learned from his mistakes.

   If you think standing with our allies is expensive, wait until you see the cost of abandoning them.

8. about 1 hour ago on Ted Rall

   My brother in law was a cop in a small Texas town. He was a bully in high school to the point of exhibiting psychological issues in the stuff that he did, and he was able to turn that hobby into a profession by joining the local police department.

   Our police should be carefully chosen, required to wear cameras, and any complaints should be reviewed by a citizen’s committee, elected by the citizens of the community. I can assure you he would have never been a cop, because he would never have applied for the job under those rules. I said he was evil, I didn’t say he was stupid.

9. about 1 hour ago on Henry Payne

   My Dad’s war stories got better the older he got. The four Japanese Zeros that damaged his plane and left shrapnel in the left side of his body when I was in grade school had somehow grown into about a dozen by the time he died. And, this is one person, remembering one event.

   It would be even better with no eye witness to remember the facts:

   Official Notice 1943 Captain )(&’s airplane failed to return from a bombing raid on June 7, 1943 and the crew has been listed as MIA.

   Captain’s Mom 1943: They never found his body, so we are hoping that he somehow made it to land and will return when the war is over

   Captain’s cousin 1944: His mom said they could have made it to land, so we are still hoping he will be OK

   Captain’s aunt 1950: There are reports that he made it to land so there’s a chance he is still alive somewhere over there.

   Captain’s younger sister 1955: They were saying he made it to a small island, but then nothing after that.

   Captain’s son 1960: He was a war hero, and he was rescued by natives and taken to a small island in 1944.

   Captain’s son’s cousin 1962: Since we know he made it to land, possibly something killed him on the island.

   Captain’s grandson 1965: Natives helped him get to land, but then we don’t know what happened. There are rumors that some south Pacific islanders are cannibals, but, of course it would be a stretch to figure he was eaten by cannibals, after they had rescued him. After 20 years, we have to assume he is dead, but no way to know what happened.

   Captain’s grandson’s wife 1972: From what I have heard of the story, he was shot down over the south Pacific during War and eaten by cannibals.

10. about 2 hours ago on Clay Jones

    I taught reading for 28 years, from pre-K to college at different points, and was always proud of what I was doing, except when I stood in line at the grocery store and read the front of those tabloids. Made me wonder in how many cases the reading ability I worked so hard to develop was wasted on that nonsense.