By David Futrelle
Happy Labor Day, insofar as this can be a happy day considering all the horrendous things going on in the world at the moment. I’m foregoing a regular post today to put up this visual tribute to the Party of Trump. Consider this an open thread to discuss what shits these people are.
Piers Morgan bragged about “manning up” by doing his show with three broken ribs on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/piersmorgan/status/904389024697200643?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fforums.somethingawful.com%2Fshowthread.php%3Fthreadid%3D3751104%26userid%3D0%26perpage%3D40%26pagenumber%3D1172
The comments are mostly people talking about how they’ve done way harder stuff than sitting and talking with relatively minor injuries.
@MrsObedMarsh
So far as I can tell, Piers Morgan’s job is to sit still on a sofa and hold forth on topics of the day in front of a woman humouring him. How is this different from what he would be doing at home?
ETA Maybe the woman at home is less inclined to humour him, as she isn’t on camera.
Are broken ribs not as serious as they sound? I’ve never broken a bone, but from what I’ve heard they’re very painful.
Man, it’s fucking telling that we have a day where office workers can take off, but minimum wage workers are still expected to show up on time so the office workers can have their day-off coffee.
Also, Story Time:
I had an interview scheduled for a temp agency today, so I was really nervous and couldn’t sleep. In fact, I only got like five hours sleep, and most of it was really restless since Sheogorath was kicking my ass with anxiety.
So, I manage to get up, and my roommate (who had the day off solely because it was Monday, not because it was Labor Day), takes me to the office which is a five minute drive away.
Turns out their fucking office was closed and there was no one there.
So I have to call them tomorrow and ask the lady who scheduled me what the fuck was up with that, scheduling me for a day she KNEW the office would be closed for, and I had no idea that it would be.
Of course, I’m going to be polite about it, but I lost sleep and had a huge anxiety episode over this, so I’m a bit salty.
PI,
Well, that was shitty…I know about the “night before” anxiety sleeplessness all too well. Sympathy to you.
KindaSorta,
Yeah, broken ribs hurt, and it’s painful as all one can do is wrap them and watch how one breathes, but I tend to think it was his “For the more fragile snowflakes among you, this is called ‘manning up'” that rankled people, because, well, Piers is awful.
I can’t figure out Piers Morgan, whether he is a paid up establishment shill or not, because he tends to blow with the wind. He appeared in Keith Allen’s documentary ‘Unlawfull Killing’ about the death of Princess Diana, which makes me think maybe he’s not as cut and dried as he seems. Diana, I believe was murdered, the crown did not want an independent woman liaising with a non white man. I think that Piers has MI6 connections, he isn’t just a talk show buffoon.
Broken ribs are painful, but if you’re not moving around too much or breathing too deeply you can sit up and talk.
Mind you, I don’t know what else Mr. Morgan’s job entails, any more than I understand why working in pain is a “manning up” thing. Women do it all the time.
Please let the creepy pictures do their work. Get them all fired! Please!!
Echoing BritterSweet: Katie, recall these individuals from their posts. Bind their power. Place them where they can never hurt anyone or anything again.
Antarctica springs to mind. They can bunk down there with the scientists, maybe bring them hot tea and such. Just a thought.
@Weatherwax:
Or being paid some ridiculous sum of money to do so…
@Paradoxical Intention:
This suggests an obvious tactic: food service employees hold a strike on Labor Day. It would make a strong point. Labor Day should be for the working class, not the freaking bourgeoisie!
Who?
@Brittersweet, David:
I hear the Mueller investigation is closing in, getting more details about the Russians meeting Trumpies during the primaries to exchange “information damaging to Clinton” and about Kushner’s shady business dealings and assorted bits of underwater real estate. I think Kushner’s up to his eyeballs in this, probably owing money to the wrong people (Russian mob etc.) amongst other things. Mueller is bringing in forensic accountants and an IRS task force that focuses (naturally) on tax evasion investigations. They’re following the money.
David, do you take requests? I’m curious to see what that app will do to pictures of Trumpies if the template is Edvard Munch’s “The Scream”. 🙂
@Paradoxical Intention
I can commiserate, about minimum wage workers always having to work on Labor Day, Memorial Day, etc, and only the office workers getting these days off. This always bugged me too, when I was a fast food worker or a supermarket cashier, decades ago. As I remember, businesses used to always get mobbed on these days, and we were always understaffed.
Now, I’m grateful to get these days off. The last place I want to be, is in a department store shopping on a beautiful late-summer day.
That sucks about your job interview.
Totally unrelated, but this thread reminds me of how difficult it was for me to reach up into the cupboard to get a cup when someone broke/bruised my ribs. The day my cup disappeared from the counter (since I could reach it there) was totally devastating.
I mean, broken ribs are painful and all, but I think the doctor’s advice is “Don’t do any heavy lifting”, not “Stay off the sofa”. LOL
I’m so sorry about that interview, Paradoxy, that’s awful! You dun wanna work for those people 😐 I mean, any income is good, but wowww.
@RosieLa
I’m sorry to hear that someone hurt your ribs. I hope that it was an accident.
I can relate to the difficulty of moving through life when a bone is broken. I’m getting over a broken wrist and am really happy that I can now lift heavy pots and otherwise fend for myself.
Stay well.
Do workers in the US get paid more for working on a public holiday? Here if you work on Labour Day you get paid time-and-a-half plus get a paid day off in lieu.
Since I work in an office, but I’m a contractor rather than an employee, I have to take the day off since the office is closed, but I don’t get paid since I can only bill the hours which I work. Frankly I’d rather get paid than have the day off.
Depends on the office. I never did; my brother-in-law does. But then, he works in a hospital, where he makes gadzillion dollars an hour for handing out breathing treatments and standing in the room while the person uses the inhaler. I was working fast food.
I will say this about getting the day off: when I was working manual labor, I did not want the day off. I did not get paid when I had the day off. December was particularly hard, being closed so frequently. Until hourly employees get paid time off for holidays, it is often a bad thing for them when the business is closed; I was trying to raise a teenager on my own with no other income, and losing a day made it impossible. So the problem is that we don’t treat hourly labor well in any way at all – no paid leave, no paid holidays, often no insurance, rarely overtime (I found when working for Taco Bell that there are ways you can count time that can allow you to work people overtime without actually paying any overtime. It depends on how you count the hours).
You used to be able to reasonably be expected to get a bonus, time and a half, or something for working on Labor day. No more. ‘Cause, Capitalism.
No paid holidays? What manner of barbarism is that! Quebec law is pretty clear that employees get paid holidays (which by and large means you get paid for the holiday — and if you work on the holiday, you also get paid to work.)
Depends on the job. My mother has in home health care workers come in three days a week, she didn’t have one come in today since the company doesn’t have holiday pay.
Not in my lifetime. For the past 40 years at least, hourly workers were at the mercy of their boss as to whether they got anything extra for Labor Day. And I can tell you from personal experience that none of the following did then (and almost certainly do not now): McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, Sirloin Stockade, or Dillard’s. In addition, I never knew a small mom and pop business to pay time and a half for labor day, and in many cases didn’t even pay minimum wage because they had an exemption. And that was in non-tip jobs, so there was no “make your minimum wage from tips”. You made $1.65 an hour, and that was that. (Minimum wage at the time was, I think, $3.50).
Hospitals often give generous bonuses for working on holidays, because they have to be staffed. But they make up for it by the enormous costs they pass on to the patients.
Apologies all. I did not mean to make light of the pain of broken ribs. I meant to make light of being Piers Morgan.
ETA See also making Susanna Reid (if I’ve got her name right) sound vain. She deserves every penny she earns for her astounding self-control in the face of awfulness.
Folks, what do you suppose will be the ultimate direction or fate of the Republican Party in the next few decades? Do you believe that we really are in the midst of an extinction burst? That the West-wide outburst of right-wing vitriol since 2008 is because they know that their days are unstoppably numbered? That it’s true that the decline of white rural areas and the growth of the Latino and Millennial voterbases will eventually render it unelectable? And if so, do you believe it will try to reform itself in order to become viable again?
Or, do you believe that it’ll exploit gerrymandering and voter suppression to remain in power indefinitely, suppressing progressivism and gradually eroding taxes and regulation until America has essentially became a Gulf state oligarchy? Or, even worse, do you suppose it’ll become fully infiltrated by the neo-Nazi/white nationalist/MRA/MGTOW/PUA/incel/gamergater/alt-right/edgelord/neoreactionary/tradcon crowd and transformed into a full-blown fascist party, that not merely implicitly but explicitly endeavors to either kill or expel non-whites and repeal women’s rights, instigating a Handmaid’s Tale-esque society?
By all means, have a tab in your browser open to r/Resist, but it might also be wise to have one open to the Canadian office of immigration…
@abars
They’ll try for the second (with their unstated goal being the third), and’ll even succeed in the short term, but given that everyone from Pence to Priebus is increasingly on the hook for their parts in Trump-Russia, in the long term, the only direction the GOP is headed is towards Leavenworth and the history books.
@Virgin Mary
He’s a fraud and a liar and presided over a huge amount of illegal phone hacking during his time running a british tabloid before running away to america to a new audience who wasn’t so contemptuous of him. He’s an awful person regardless of whether or not he’s an “establishment shill”.
Do you also believe that fluoride in water is there to pacify you, jet aircraft spray population controlling chemicals into their air behind them, or that members of the democratic party run a child sex ring from the basement of a pizza place?
Its funny that you think he has any value at all, let alone as a government asset.