Get Cynical

Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!

From The Daily Beast:

We can all agree that it’d be great if every adult in America possessed a high-school degree or at least a GED equivalent.

But to deny unemployment benefits to those who didn’t finish high school?

It seems a crazy idea, yet that’s precisely what might happen, depending on negotiations between the House and Senate as the two sides work to decide, by month’s end, whether to extend both unemployment insurance to cover people out of work for up to 99 weeks and also a 2 percent cut in the payroll tax. As it stands now, the House version of the extension bill includes a provision that would deny unemployment benefits to any person without a high-school diploma or a GED unless they can prove that they are enrolled in a high-school equivalency program.

Police brutality. I’m too tired tonight to watch something that is just going to infuriate me before bed.

It’s all so simple! And who doesn’t happen to have emulsifying salts, carrageenan, and a silicon mold lying around their kitchen.

Update:

And THE RIGHT (or at least, non-douchey) way to do it:

From The Concord Monitor:

Mark MacKenzie, the state’s AFL-CIO president, yesterday told Rep. JR Hoell of Dunbarton to give him a break.

Repeal the law requiring half-hour lunch breaks for employees after five straight hours of work?

Trust all bosses to do the right thing, all the time?

MacKenzie, who once fought fires and now fights for workers’ rights, said pass the salad, not this bill.

“Quite frankly,” MacKenzie said, “considering this is 2012, and I’m talking about the repeal of the lunch hour, this is outrageous.”

MacKenzie, addressing the House Labor, Industrial and Rehabilitative Service Committee, spoke out against legislation sponsored by Hoell and backed by Rep. Kyle Jones of Rochester. He spoke about the heart he believed made up the core of most employers, about the sense of fairness and humanity that dominates the state’s working landscape.

He acknowledged that most employers treat workers fairly, but he didn’t think that was any reason to do away with a longstanding protection. Abolishing the lunch-break law – enacted 36 years ago as insurance against unfair working conditions – would be naive and impractical, MacKenzie said.

(via Poor Mojo)

From Business Insider:

In an interview this week with Connecticut Magazine, Cardinal Edward Egan, withdrew his 2002 apology for the Church’s handling of the sex-abuse scandal, which was once read in all New York parishes.

A decade after that letter, the former archbishop of New York, and former bishop of Bridgeport, now describes the handling of the priest-abuse crisis under his watch as “incredibly good.” He said of the letter, “I never should have said that,” and added, “I don’t think we did anything wrong.”

“I never had one of these sex abuse cases.” he said, before adding pompously, “If you have another bishop in the United States who has the record I have, I’d be happy to know who he is.” He also claimed that the Church had no obligation to report abuse to the civil authorities.

These are lies, strutting around with pride.

The Church is required to report abuse, according to laws on the books since the 1970s.

From The NY Times:

SOMETIMES it’s hard to tell how much coffee costs, even if you know what you spent. At least that’s the case with many of the single-serve brewing machines that are soaring in popularity.

For example, the Nespresso Arpeggio costs $5.70 for 10 espresso capsules, while the Folgers Black Silk blend for a K-Cup brewed-coffee machine is $10.69 for 12 pods. But that Nespresso capsule contains 5 grams of coffee, so it costs about $51 a pound. And the Folgers, with 8 grams per capsule, works out to more than $50 a pound.

That’s even more expensive than all but the priciest coffees sold by artisanal roasters, the stuff of coffee snobs.

An exclusive single-origin espresso like the Ethiopia, Gedeo Single Origin Espresso from Sightglass Coffee costs $19 for a 12-ounce bag, or about $25 a pound. La Cima beans for brewed coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters, a Grand Cru selection grown at Finca el Injerto, a renowned farm in Guatemala, is $28.50 for a 12-ounce bag, or $38 a pound.

In fact, most high-end coffees cost less than $20 a pound, and the coffees you find on supermarket shelves are substantially cheaper. A bag of Dark Espresso Roast beans at Starbucks is $12.95 a pound, and a bag of Eight O’Clock beans for brewed coffee at the Food Emporium is $10.72 a pound.