Tag: unemployment

Goodbye Kitty

If you have known me for a while, you probably know that I have been a Hello Kitty fan for a number of years. Alright, decades. I’m not one of those fanatics such as this man’s wife, but I do have some household Hello Kitty items, a few Hello Kitty T-Shirts, and yes just a little bit of Hello Kitty jewelry. There’s a little Hello Kitty hanging from my rear view mirror, along with a Starfleet Academy dogtag.  Ok, and yes, I have a Hello Kitty/Chococat tattoo. So something I enjoy doing when I happen to get to the mall is wander up to the Sanrio store. In fact, I was there yesterday afternoon.

Sanrio used to make its money selling cheap stuff like coin purses and pencils to schoolgirls. No more! The target demographic has grown up, and now you can purchase everything from baby towel sets to garnet pendants. I kid you not. I guess you don’t have to sell very many $3500 watches to be wildly profitable.

But has this backfired? The cute little handbag that I might have whim purchased for $20 was $80, a price at which it better be leather and not have a cartoon cat on it. As it turns out, that was a bargain; it would run me $120 plus shipping online. It’s just as well I didn’t even see the $500 Hanamo limited edition 35th anniversary commemorative handbag. Sorry, these are prices at which I’m just not buying. Have they priced themselves out of their core audience, or are they taking advantage of the fact that there are many women my age who are willing to shell out this kind of money?

I guess the economy can’t possibly be as bad as it seems if these products are actually selling. So then the question remains: at 35, is Hello Kitty having a midlife crisis, has she jumped the shark, or is she crazy like a fox?

In closing: American maternal mortality rates are appalling; imagine there’s no government; nearing retirement, and unemployed or underemployed; loan modifications delaying the inevitable; food stamps and obesity; Howard Dean and Karl Rove set to debate, live!; why don’t we use some stimulus funds to, you know, renovate crumbling infrastructure?; should police really be arresting people they think might be planning a crime, particularly without anything like a warrant?; Why “liberal” ideas die in Washington (ha, not many real liberals up there anyway, just a lot of “moderates” whose opponents paint them as liberal); Cheers and Jeers; the “Screw the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions at the Same Time Act of 2010“; and PC World officially doesn’t get the iPad. It doesn’t need any of that crap for business, because it’s not meant for business at all! Saying it needs alternative browsers to Safari is like saying the iPhone really ought to run Windows Mobile.

Shorties Todd

Well, “free” does appear in the title: someone is suing FreeCreditReport.com for charging them a monthly fee for credit monitoring in order to get that “free” credit report.

“How can payrolls and the unemployment rate both go down at the same time?“: More than you want to know about how those figures are manipulated and tortured.

Data bears out common sense: Layoffs are often very bad for the companies that make them. Not only are there severance costs and bad morale (duh), it’s harder to hire back good people when market conditions improve.

Speaking of employment: The President is still of the opinion that small business hiring can and must get us out of this recession. Specifically, he said “Government can’t create these businesses, but it can give entrepreneurs the support they need to open their doors, expand, or hire more workers.” And what does he want to do about it? He wants to expand a couple of SBA programs designed to help well established businesses that already have debt. You know what would really help small businesses? Leveling the playing field with large businesses when it comes to taxes. Dave’s point is that only profits get taxed, which benefits large companies rather than small ones; tax cuts benefit big businesses while shafting the government that needs taxes to run. But let’s face it, Joe’s Hardware Shop has no leverage with city hall, but Wal-Mart can threaten to open in the next town over unless it gets tax breaks.

5th Amendment takes a beating: apparently the Obama Administration reserves the right to assassinate Americans overseas with “special permission.”

Makes me wonder why I bother to pay my mortgage: Here’s your real “phantom inventory,” banks refusing to foreclose on homes where the owner is well over a year in arrears. People are paying credit cards ahead of the mortgage now, which makes sense in a way. Financial planners have always said to pay down your high interest rate debts first! And, well, if the mortgage company is unlikely to foreclose, what incentive is there to pay?

Shackleton’s Whiskey: it’s been freed from ice near the south pole, and sent off for analysis and hopefully recreating lost liquor formulas.

Speaking of drinking: did you know that a 7-11 Double gulp is twice the size of what your stomach should reasonably be able to hold? And, at 64 oz, it’s the equivalent of 8 servings of soda.

And speaking of serving sizes: the FDA wants to crack down on misleading serving sizes on nutrition labels. You know, the ones that say a bowl of cereal is 2 servings, or 6 chips is a serving?

Glad to see someone holding the banks accountable: Cuomo has filed a lawsuit against B of A and several of it’s executives, charging that they hid information from shareholders and lied to the Feds to get bailout money.

And last but not least: a lesson about inflation.

Stay warm and dry, wherever you are.

The Violent Shorties

Obligatory Health Insurance Reform front and center: Health care and the denial thereof as a way to control the masses; the good, the bad, and this POS reform bill (no, doesn’t mean “point of service” in this context, sorry).

Not as overt as Quiverfull: religion and women is an interesting read. And I don’t know what to make of this.

Study confirms what most of us knew: When Wal-Mart comes to town, the number of low-wage jobs they create are roughly equal to the number of decent jobs they destroy.

Most Americans are Idiots: Most approve of the use of full body scanners. These scanners are much like a virtual strip search with a side order of radiation. Oh, and they would not have found the Undiebomber‘s stash. Pfeh.

On Employment: America’s Low Wage Future; Are the Baby Boomers starting to retire?; Who are the unemployed?; 6.4 job seekers for every open job.

Mighty Joe Rollino: how many people can lift 635 pounds with one finger? The answer is now zero. Joe has passed away at the amazing age of 104 (insert obligatory comment about fitness and long life here).

Conan is classy: (No, not this Conan). Conan O’Brien’s resignation letter.

This is not news: I seriously do not give a shit where Bill Clinton hides his sausage. I can think of few bigger wastes of journalist time. Enough already!

And one last thought: Airplane accidents.