Tim Scott for the Workers

I'm not sure which weekly email is funnier, The Borowitz Report or Tim Scott's weekly message.  I know which one is more accurate, and kudos to Andy Borowitz for that.  Whoever is doing Tim Scott's messaging apparently thinks his audience not only will believe anything, but won't notice when he leaves out important things, like facts.

I was excited when I read today that Senator Scott is going to bring back the 40-hour work week.  And then I though, gee this is Tim Scott, I'd better read the fine print.  So I clicked on the link that said "Read more about the Amendment here," and I got what amounts to more nonsense about Obamacare and how requiring employers to provide health insurance to employees is destroying full-time employment, here.  So, to summarize, no guarantee of a 40-hour work week, just another way to keep employees from being guaranteed health care.

Of course, Tim Scott has a lovely paid health insurance plan, paid for by us, who I guess theoretically are his employers.

What I would like to say is that it is insulting for Scott to lie to his constituents.  He is not introducing a bill that will bring back the 40-hour work week.  If guaranteeing health insurance was the thing that was killing full-time employment, everyone would have had full-time employment before the Affordable Care Act.  In fact, when I got my first full-time job in a supermarket way back in the last century, in 1971, months into that job "time-study experts" descended.  Of course that means the harder you work the fewer people you need, and my full-time job was cut to part-time.  During the halcyon days of Ronald Reagan there was another wave of job killing, again nothing to do with requiring health insurance, but with increasing profit.

Here are a few more reality based comments on requiring employers to provide health care:

There has never been a correlation between employers cutting hours in order to avoid paying health insurance.  Now, that doesn't mean that they won't whine and threaten.  And I'm sure there are some employers who will actually follow through.

But employees with health insurance (and benefits like sick pay) are more reliable, and yes, healthier.  Employers who provide decent health insurance coverage (not Walmart) tend to have more respect for employees.  A business that is large enough to fall under the Obamacare mandate should have an employer that is savvy enough to understand that accessible health care is important to a smoothly running business, and able to budget insurance for employees in as an expense.

Chris Haire had a little fun with Tim Scott's nonsense.  I think we should all thank Scott for pretending to care about his working constituents.  After all, unlike his predecessor Jim DeMint, he at least cares enough to lie, whereas DeMint just pretty much ignored us.  Of course, just as with Scott's health insurance plan, his disinformation campaign is brought to us by us, the taxpayers.

Pardon My Cynicism, But I'm Exhausted

I tried watching the third debate last night, I really did.  But let's be honest here, this whole thing has gone on way too long.  We've all heard the same questions, and seen the same tap dances around those questions, way too many times.

It feels like it's been y-e-a-r-s.  Oh, that's right, it has been.

Meanwhile, all those millionaires and billionaires who won't allow a penny to be squeezed out of their tight fists so that a child can get health care have been throwing buckets of cash at -- again, let's be honest -- all the candidates.  Yes, some have been targeted by more of this generosity than others, and we all know who they are.  The Rove's and the Koch's and all those other weasels have been waltzing around tossing hundred dollar bills at candidates like Little Orphan Annie cartoon characters.

Barack Obama has been a good president, probably as good as any we could have gotten in this catastrophic post-W. era.  But he's no 98-percenter, anti-Wall-Street liberal.

And so many of us are supporting candidates who could be heros, if they can only spend enough money to be heard over the sound of all the corporate speech that's going on.  So we give our $5, $25, $100 or more whenever we can and whenever they ask.

And boy do they ask.

Think of all the good things we could have done with that money.  We could have paid down some of our own personal debt.  We maybe could have taken our kids on a vacation.  We could have done a couple of car or house repairs that we can't afford.  We could have had that doctor's visit that we keep putting off.  Or just gotten a haircut.

But we need to keep feeding this god-awful monstrous campaign machine.  How on earth did we get here?  Why do we tolerate this enormous drain on our time, on our wallets, on our country?

And yet, on November 7, those fools in the media are going to start to conjecture on who's going to run in 2016, and damn if it doesn't start all over again.

So last night, after five minutes of same old/same old, I went back to the DVD I had been watching, George Harrison: Living in the Material World, by Martin Scorsese.  I think I made a good choice.

Only one thing might have convinced me to stay tuned to the debate:

DEBATE ENDS ABRUPTLY AS OBAMA PUNCHES ROMNEY IN FACE

Posted by Andy Borowitz