I know two different bartenders with masters degrees. I always find it funny when people look down on restaurant staff like they are beneath them or something. Actually its typical.
"Those people" make a couple hundred dollars in about a three or four hours, and then go home. If it is a busier bar, like a night club or something, $400 or $500 a night is not uncommon. It's comical actually.

For most people smoking vs not-smoking environment is only a small consideration when choosing a job.

Well if the employees don't care why does the government need to step in?

I don't look down at bar-/restaurant staff.

I can safely tell you, that neither I, nor any of the people I worked with wanted to be there

most of us would have appreciated a cleaner/healthier work environment

Fancy Pants Handle Posted: September 09, 2008
Bar staff typically aren't people that have a huge amount of markatable skills, and it's either take that type of job, or not have one at all. These are exactly the type of jobs, where the govenment needs to protect the employee from the employer (minimum-wage, health and safety etc.). Otherwise, you might as well just go back to the conditions during the industrial revolution.

Fancy Pants Handle Posted: September 09, 2008 at 09:59 PM
Wait? Anyone capable of being bar staff, is likely capable of doing better than haveing a bar job... then why don't they?

Fancy Pants Handle Posted: September 10, 2008 at 01:43 AM
I don't look down at bar-/restaurant staff.

This does seem odd at first blush, but may actually make sense given how viciously hurricanes can uproot even the strongest and oldest trees. To make homeowners liable for any and all damage might make for far more clear-cutting than we'd like.

Time for the gloves to come off and expose this substance-free campaign for the cipher that it is.

It's an old expression, and I'm going to have to cut Obama some slack on that one. I do not think he was referring to Sarah Palin;

And are also irrelevant, even if accurate, which I doubt. Who cares whether smoking bans do or do not hurt revenues at bars?

The "Obama wants your kids to learn about sex before they learn to read" ad (with a photo of Obama smiling serenely, appearing to look over a bunch of kids) is completely false, and needlessly inflammatory.

Seriously - won't people who see this ad just laugh at McCain?

I am going to have to stop writing my blog now. It is called "Lipstick on a Pig"

In a blunt interview with the Associated Press, the star of the Jason Bourne film series also said there was a good chance John McCain would die in his first term in office and the thought of a President Palin is "terrifying."

"It's like a really bad Disney movie — the hockey mom…from Alaska, and she's the president, and it's like she's facing down Vladimir Putin and using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink. And it's absurd, it's totally absurd, and I don't understand why people aren't talking about how absurd it is," Damon said.

"You do the actuary tables, there's a 1-3 chance if not more, that McCain doesn't survive his first term and it will be President Palin," Damon also said, adding later "I think there's a really good chance Sarah Palin could be president, and I think that's a really scary thing, because I don't know anything about her, and I don't think in eight weeks I am going to know anything about her."

"Using the folksy stuff she learned at the hockey rink." So funny.

First of all, 1 in 3 is not a good chance, it's a bad one. Second, according to this site, he has a 1 in 3 chance of surviving two terms, not one. His chances of surviving one are 6 in 7.

Damon is absolutely right and attacking him just because he's an actor is pure ad hominem. We know almost nothing about Palin, and yet there's a decent chance that she'll be President in less than a year. That's terrifying. OF course Damon deserves to know something about her. So do we all.

Yeah, it's not like she has any political experience or anything...

Ya know, she really doesn't.

On the other hand, I know a guy down here who every few years has to, at great expense, hire a plumbing contractor to clear out his septic tank drain field because a neighbor's strangler fig tree roots keep gumming up the system and causing backups.

At least we will not hear about any of this from either side tomorrow, and rightly so.

and yet there's a decent chance that she'll be President in less than a year.

Huh--if I thought I'd have to go through that more than once, after cleaning out the roots I'd have a backhoe dig a trench on my side of the property line between the tree and my drain field, and simply make sure that all the roots were permanently severed.

I would hope, but the imagery in the ad almost makes Obama look like a pedophile; you get a smiling Obama (most ads feature their opponents looking all stern or something) edited to be overseeing a bunch of kids, while the voiceover talks about Obama wanting to teach young kids all about sex (in fact, it refers to a bill to promote awareness of child sexual abuse, among other things). As we all know, any reference to "sex" tends by its nature to become senationalized, and when you tie it to the emotionality (is that a word? It is now.) of anything related to The Children™, and you've got a recipe for misinterpretation and hysteria (manufactured or otherwise). Which, of course, is exactly what the McCain camp is banking on.

Her experience as mayor is irrelevant. 7,000 people isn't a city -- it's a village. She's been governor of one of the smallest states in the union for less than 2 years. I don't think I've ever seen a better example of the emperor having no clothes.

Her experience as mayor is irrelevant. 7,000 people isn't a city -- it's a village. She's been governor of one of the smallest states in the union for less than 2 years. I don't think I've ever seen a better example of the emperor having no clothes.

If the prospect of Palin as president "terrifies" you, I can only imagine you're also "terrified" at the thought of getting out of bed in the morning.

That's cute. Do you want to toss off one liners or actually discuss this on the merits?

Sorry, but no. If Obama had asked Adrian Fenty to be VP I would have been outraged.

I don't see it as a winning argument for either camp.

All course material and instruction shall be age and developmentally appropriate.

Sure it is, for the McCain camp. Once the people attacking Palin for having no experience find themselves actually having to make the case for Obama being more experienced than Palin, McCain wins.

It's not even close to being a wash, and I'm amazed that anyone who supports Obama would say this. We are truly living in bizarro world.

But I call them as I see them.

Do you think if the Democratic nominee were Ed Rendell or Bill Richardson instead of Obama, that people attacking Palin would have to actually stop to make the case that Rendell/Richardson is more experienced than Palin? Or that Republicans would, in the first place, shoot back with "But Palin is more experienced than Rendell!!!"

Ok, but you can spin it the other way just as easily. As Obama said, McCain has been hammering on exp for months--then, when he had a chance to pick a VP, picked an inexperienced candidate, who could, conceivably, be the prez nominee at any time, and McCain now is hammering on "reform." As I also said, if you want to spin this for the Demos, it fits into "judgment." Obama picked an old hand to back him up--good judgment. McCain picked a wild card for political reasons--bad judgment.

What you want to do is try to make a second-order argument, "Experience isn't very important, but McCain thinks it is, so the fact that he picked someone inexperienced shows bad judgment by his own standard. But in fact experience isn't very important, so it's okay to support Obama." That's a little too convoluted for a political ad.

On the merits I don't think it's a close call in any way

Ultimately, you are saying "executive exp in a small state trumps Obama's exp." I disagree, and I don't think you can prove I am wrong.

but it's small beer compared to the blowback that attacking Palin on experience brings.

Ultimately, you are saying "executive exp in a small population state trumps Obama's exp." I disagree, and I don't think you can prove I am wrong.

But there's a big difference between being a legislator, one of many voices with little individual responsibility, and being an executive, where one actually has to make decisions by oneself.

Well, I am saying the Demos should NOT attack Palin on exp. The point, as Yearrrghh says, is that McCain attacking Obama on exp carries less weight now.

And there are big differences between Washington DC and Juneau, and big differences between running against the Clinton Machine for the Democratic nomination and running for Mayor of Wasilla, Alaska.

It's very simple: (a) Palin basically eliminates one of McCain's best arguments re Obama -- experience. Obama is not the one who has to make this argument, McCain does. And Palin makes it much harder for him. (b) Obama can argue that McCain made a rash, purely political decision without fully vetting her. That's a simple enough argument, and experience (no matter what I think about it) doesn't have to enter into it.

how does Obama respond to that, in a way which doesn't hurt him?

Belittling the other's experiences works both ways

Eggs-actly. The very fact that people are having the debate is what hurts Obama. It matters not which side of that debate has it right. Obama has already lost.

And your last comment is totally at odds with reality. McCain has already shifted his argument from experience to change. He's now trying to sell himself as the candidate who will shake up DC. Why is that?

That's not a "shift." That's an "Oh, and by the way, I'm also the change candidate, since he picked Biden and I picked Palin."

Sorry, no sale. You could also say, "If McCain is debating about who will shake up DC, McCain has already lost."

I don't think that makes any sense as a counterexample; in one case you're debating about strengths, and in the other you're debating about weaknesses.

The point is that Palin doesn't have very much experience, so if there's a question as to whether Obama has more than her, he's in bad shape. (Plus, once again, Palin's only running for vice president; any debate which revolves around "My presidential candidate is better than your vice presidential candidate" is a loser.) But Obama does have change credentials, so if there's a question as to whether McCain has more than him, that's a good debate for McCain.

(And Palin helps bolster McCain in that area; she's about as much of an outsider as you can get -- as Democrats keep helpfully reminding people when they belittle her and her experience.)

McCain is the top of the ticket--there is no question about who the change candidate is--unless you are in the tank for Palin.

Give my regards to both friend and foe on the board. ... until the return of the crazy one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2HQ7dkJfeo

Later,

alex perros

Sorry, I don't think so. I think you are just being a Repub spinner. Obama has pointed out that McCain has shifted message--he's just a BSing politician.

But Obama does mind people debating whether he or Palin is more experienced, and does have something to lose from it.

As profoundly disturbed as I am

Fine...IOW, picking Palin is a pretty obvious acknowledgment that he's abandoning the experience argument and trying to fight on Obama's turf.

The disappeared speaks

But Obama does mind people debating whether he or Palin is more experienced, and does have something to lose from

it.

The point is not that McCain-Palin represents more of a change ticket than Obama-Biden. The point is that McCain doesn't mind having the debate, because he has nothing to lose from it.

btw, if any of you nice guys who were sure that McCain was going to run anything like a reasonably clean campaign would like now to say, "ark, we defer to your superior judgment of Republican campaign strategy", I'd be fine with that.

McCain is arguing that she is experienced.

I mean, aside from the fact that Obama's not very experienced himself, you can only repeat "she's been a mayor of a small village for x number of years, and governor of a low-population* state" so many times. OTOH, the stuff about leaching per diems for extended homestays, lies about her role in supporting/later kaiboshing the "bridge to nowhere," etc. might actually have some traction, and are more substantive critiques of her anyway.

Did he get banned or something?

because the men of this world here pass the word around in their 'perisprit': rubbing of their full balls, along the canal of their anus nicely caressed and nicely grasped, in order to pump out my life.'

When it comes to Strangler Figs, there's no such thing as permanently severed roots while the tree lives.

Me, I'd poison the tree and happily pay the fine if caught and convicted.

We know :-)

370. robinred: Didn't he vote with Bush 90% of the time?

In 1999, Barack Obama was faced with a difficult vote in the Illinois legislature — to support a bill that would let some juveniles be tried as adults, a position that risked drawing fire from African-Americans, or to oppose it, possibly undermining his image as a tough-on-crime moderate.

In the end, Mr. Obama chose neither to vote for nor against the bill. He voted “present,” effectively sidestepping the issue, an option he invoked nearly 130 times as a state senator.

Obama, 46, rejects the notion that he is trying to move to the center.

``The people who say this apparently haven't been listening to me,'' Obama said today during a campaign stop in Powder Springs, Georgia. ``The message I want to send to everybody is: You're not going to agree with me on 100 percent of what I think, but don't assume that, if I don't agree with you on something, that it must be because I'm doing that politically.''

Lawmakers and other Illinois officials said the present vote was devised to enable lawmakers to recuse themselves from voting on bills that present personal conflicts. In at least 45 instances, Mr. Obama voted with large numbers of fellow Democrats as part of the tactical skirmishing with Republicans over the budget.

Seven other times, he voted that way as part of a broad strategy devised by abortion rights advocates to counter anti-abortion bills.

Didn't he vote with Bush 90% of the time?

Didn't he vote with Bush 90% of the time?

On Red Juice's claims, they're just non sequiturs. You may find it a bad thing that Obama voted present on a number of difficult votes in Illinois, but that seems totally unrelated to whether he brings change. It seems pretty clear that after eight years of Republican governance, voting for Democratic governance is a change. Given that both McCain and Obama are running from policy positions smack dab in the mainstream of their party, one represents substantive change and one doesn't. That's really basic stuff. Obama's not claiming that he's not a Democrat, he's claiming that his (Democratic) policies will bring change after eight years of Republican governance.

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