$5.15 an hour, even if one includes the whole amount as take-home pay (which, of course, it isn't) comes to just over $10,000 a year for a 40-hour work week. No one can live on that. These senators ought to try for even a month and see how they do. Miserable, scum-sucking, tyranical bastards.

The usual GOP talking point about not raising the minimum wage is that employers would not be able to afford it and would have to fire workers. Of course, this is abscene [see my previous post for this word's definition] on its face. First, corporations are currently enjoying record profits at which even the robber barons of the Gilded Age would blush. Second, this idea presupposes that corporations have scads of workers that they just hire out of the goodness of their hearts and could fire at a moment's notice if it would hurt profits. Ridiculous.

To quote Army attorney Joseph Welch's catigation of Joe McCarthy, "Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"

Joseph Welch, utterer of perhaps America's most famous one-liner polemic

Know what the 46 who voted against it have in common? They're Republicans. Every single one of them. To whit:

Alexander (R-TN)
Allard (R-CO)
Allen (R-VA)
Bennett (R-UT)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burns (R-MT)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Craig (R-ID)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Dole (R-NC)
Domenici (R-NM)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Frist (R-TN)
Graham (R-SC)
Grassley (R-IA)
Gregg (R-NH)
Hagel (R-NE)
Hatch (R-UT)
Hutchison (R-TX)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Kyl (R-AZ)
Lott (R-MS)
Martinez (R-FL)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Murkowski (R-AK)
Roberts (R-KS)
Santorum (R-PA)
Sessions (R-AL)
Smith (R-OR)
Stevens (R-AK)
Sununu (R-NH)
Talent (R-MO)
Thomas (R-WY)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Voinovich (R-OH)

Remind people of this the next time they tell you there's no difference betwen the two parties.

Why do we, the American voters, put up with uncaring shit-eyed douchebags? I notice one of them, Mel Martinez, is from my own state. I'll be damned if he gets my vote. With a gun to my head and a right-wing Republican at the trigger, I would still not vote for Mel Martinez. Christ, what the hell is wrong with these mutants? And what the hell is wrong with us, that we continue to put bloodsucking greedheads like this into office, and then re-elect them again and again? ENOUGH! Tar and feather these people and catapult them into the Potomac. There is not a single good, decent thing about any of them, and I'm tired of trying to find it.