Seriously?

 So Gropey Joe gave a speech last night and let us know that in a few weeks the goverment would be giving us instructions on "what you can and cannot do" after you get vaccinated for the Wu-flu. With all due respect the the president or whoever is pulling his strings, fuck you. The last thing I'm waiting for or paying any attention to is instructions from the government on what I can and cannot do.

My industry is under attack -- again

Having failed to destroy the temping business with Obamacare, the Obama administration is trying again, this time through the National Labor Relations Board:

A federal labor board voted Thursday to redefine the employee-employer relationship granting new bargaining powers to workers caught up in an economy increasingly reliant on subcontractors, franchisees and temporary staffing agencies.
The decision by the National Labor Relations Board could upend the traditional arms-length relationship that has prevailed between corporate titans such as McDonald’s and its neighborhood fast-food franchises. And it comes as concerns are growing about a generation of new Internet-fueled business such as Uber and Lyft that depend heavily on independent contractors.

 The NLRB's own press release sounds pretty dry, but

In a 3-2 decision involving Browning-Ferris Industries of California, the National Labor Relations Board refined its standard for determining joint-employer status. The revised standard is designed “to better effectuate the purposes of the Act in the current economic landscape.” With more than 2.87 million of the nation’s workers employed through temporary agencies in August 2014, the Board held that its previous joint employer standard has failed to keep pace with changes in the workplace and economic circumstances.

In the decision, the Board applies long-established principles to find that two or more entities are joint employers of a single workforce if (1) they are both employers within the meaning of the common law; and (2) they share or codetermine those matters governing the essential terms and conditions of employment. In evaluating whether an employer possesses sufficient control over employees to qualify as a joint employer, the Board will – among other factors -- consider whether an employer has exercised control over terms and conditions of employment indirectly through an intermediary, or whether it has reserved the authority to do so.

The temporary attorney industry can expect massive upheaval from this. This would make the law firms that the agencies I work for contract with liable for the labor practices of the agencies. What does that mean? Well, since the law firms have no control over the labor practices of the agencies, it means at least one thing: the law firms will quit using agencies, which are one of the great facilitators that make my industry workable. Without agencies, temps will have to register with every law firm that uses temps, and keep track of when those firms need temps. We'll likely get paid a higher hourly rate, but my experience has been that the firms that hire temps directly tend to not do overtime -- they just hire more temps. Overtime, already hard to find, might disappear.

The other downside is that, if law firms continue using temp agencies, they will be targets of unionization efforts of the agency work force, since that is the intent of this decision. Previously, if a union were able to successfully organize at one agency, firms would be free to simply not hire temps through that union shop. Now, the union can force into negotiations any law firm that utilizes a temp agency the union is attempting to unionize. The firm won't have a choice but to negotiate with the union if it continues to use temp agencies, since the unions will be beating on the doors of all temp agencies, not just one or two.

Of course, this isn't anywhere near the first time Obama and the NLRB have acted to further union interests at the expense of employees and businesses. The Hill, a usually reliable lefty publication, provides a pretty good summary of how the Obama NLRB has been relentlessly, and often illegally, pro-union, which is not what the government agency is supposed to do. I can't bring myself to go into it, and The Hill does a surprisingly good job, so you can read it there.  Ultimately, this is just one more case where Obama and his minions pursue ideological policies -- in this case, pro-unionism -- at the expense of the economy and everyday people whose attempts to find work are now burdened by this ruling. Fuck you, Barry. Fuck you.

Badass space dude completely fails at answering dumbass feminist

I guess most folks have heard that the European Space Agency landed a probe spacecraft on a comet the other day. It's a big deal, as no one has done it before. It took a 10-year flight to hook up with the comet. This is a difficult task that took a long time to accomplish. Guess what feminists are worried about?

The shirt worn by one of the scientists responsible for this accomplishment:

Yesterday the European Space Agency landed the Philae spacecraft on a comet, a powerful step forward for humanity and science alike. However, slightly before the big moment, coverage of the event reminded us how much progress remains to be accomplished back on Earth.
A number of the scientists involved on this incredible project were interviewed in the hours leading to contact by Nature Newsteam. One of those Rosetta scientists was Matt Taylor, who chose to dress, for this special occasion, in a bowling shirt covered in scantly clad caricatures of sexy women in provocative poses.
"This is going to be a very long day but a very exciting day," said Taylor. "I think everyone should enjoy it because we're making history."
No one knows why Taylor chose to wear that shirt on television during a massive scientific mission. From what we can tell, a woman who goes by the name of Elly Prizeman on Twitter made the shirt for him, and is just as bewildered as he must be that anyone might be upset about her creation. Taylor apologized on Friday during a live ESA broadcast for wearing the shirt, stating that "the shirt I wore this week... I made a big mistake and I offended many people, and I'm very sorry about this." Still, Taylor's personal apology doesn't make up for the fact that no one at ESA saw fit to stop him from representing the Space community with clothing that demeans 50 percent of the world's population. No one asked him to take it off, because presumably they didn't think about it. It wasn't worth worrying about.
This is the sort of casual misogyny that stops women from entering certain scientific fields. They see a guy like that on TV and they don't feel welcome. They see a poster of greased up women in a colleague's office and they know they aren't respected. They hear comments about "bitches" while out at a bar with fellow science students, and they decide to change majors.

Guess what? Science is fucking hard. Yeah, most scientist are men. Is this because most scientists wear "offensive" shirts, or make comments about "bitches," or otherwise make women feel unwelcome? No. There are lots of reasons. But a shirt is not one of them. In science, you put forward an idea -- a hypothesis -- about something you think might be so. The scientific method then requires every other scientist in your field to try and rip your idea to shreds and prove how fucking wrong you are. Usually, they do. Then you come up with another hypothesis, and it all starts again. If you can't handle what kind of shirt the dude ripping your life's work to pieces is wearing, do you seriously think you can handle the same dude ripping your life's work to pieces, regardless of what he's wearing?

People, women or otherwise, do not choose against entering the scientific fields because of fashion choices. It's because they aren't suited for the work. Period. The shirts worn by scientists are the least of the problems facing potential scientists. The sciences are brutal. They are not for the faint of heart, because your work will be attacked. If your main concern is what your intellectual attackers are wearing, you are in the wrong business.

Matt Taylor should not have cried and apologized. He should have said something like this:

I wore a shirt that some people didn't like while I helped achieve something historic. My shirt is not why there were not more women in the room. If you think I'm wrong, fuck you. Go to MIT, get your damn astrophysics or whatever degree and prove me wrong. Oh, wait, you can't handle a shirt, so I know damn well you can't handle what it takes to get an advanced science degree. So I guess we're back to fuck you.

Just a reminder that the NSA is reading your email

In the course of my daily stuff, I send links from my personal email account to the Raised By Wolves account. My personal account is with Yahoo, for no particular reason. Anyway, recently, Yahoo, apparently as part of an anti-spam effort, has started requiring some kind of text in every email -- you can't just send a link. Naturally, because I know that National Security Agency director James Clapper is reading everybody's email -- or at least his minions are -- the text I now include with the links I send to myself reads "Fuck you, Clapper."

What are the odds I get audited by the IRS next year?

Wow, even I don't spell it out

I'm sure it's just a coincidence, but the Obamacare call-in number is, shall we say, a little interesting:

Sometimes, you just have to laugh. Yesterday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius made the MSM blitz by announcing the website, glitches and all, and the national call-in center, which is 1-800-318-2596. Now to make this work, you have to skip the 1, because on a phone keypad, no letters are assigned to the number 1. But spell out the rest, and this is what you get.
1-800-3(F) 8(U) 2(C) 5(K) 9(Y) 6(O).

Too bad for Obama phone numbers don't have one more digit. Could have gotten that "U" in there, too. Kind of let's you know where they stand, doesn't it?

Of COURSE no one wants to take your guns from you

Unless, of course, you live in Missouri. Democrats there are really eager to take your guns. Please stop with the shit that confiscation is not on the table and that gun owners are just paranoid about government wanting to take their guns. If someone is out to get you, you aren't paranoid to think someone is out to get you. New York also would like to take your guns. So enough already with telling me no one wants to take my guns. Everybody on the other side of the aisle wants to take my guns. Good luck with that.