In My Orbit...

Digital Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net As the Beatle's song says, "I read the news today--Oh, boy!" The usual assortment of the good, the bad, the ugly, and even the downright entertaining!

The Kids Are Not Alright

According to an analysis by the nonprofit, nonpartisan group YoungInvincibles, Youth Joblessness will drone on, and prospects of a future upswing look bleak. The bad news, from Yahoo! News:

"The unemployment rate for 16- to 24-year-olds now stands at 16.5 percent, more than double the rate for the population at large (8.2 percent). For Latino youth, the rate is 20.5 percent, and for African-American youth, 30.2 percent. Fewer than half of all young Americans hold any kind of job at all, says the report.

These numbers, while daunting, fail to take include young people who have given up looking for work and dropped out of the labor force altogether."

Youth Joblessness: No End in Sight. All I can say is, welcome to real world, youngins. When you vote for tropes like Hope and Change, you pretty much get neither. My wish is that you choose better this go-round, but I won't hold my breath.

Colored People

Apparently Governor Mitt Romney plans to speak to the NAACP on Wednesday. I ask myself, Why? But, that's a blog post for another day. President Barack Obama cannot break away from his busy fundraising and campaigning schedule to speak to the organization who got out the vote for him in 2008. So who is he sending?... Vice President Joe Biden. That's a comedy sketch ready to be written. A bunch of white progressive liberals decided to make the joke on Romney by dubbing him "too white for Blacks to like." Riddle me this? What do a bunch of entitled media-elite white men know about what is "too white" for Black people? Did they quiz their Black friends? Hire a Black media consultant? Put Dave Chappelle or Chris Rock on retainer? And if they did this, why not give the brotha (or sista) some credit? And they call conservatives and the Tea Party racist? SMH. Still shaking my head over the Morgan Freeman NPR interview. According to Morgan, Obama is not our first Black President. I've been saying that since he was elected in 2008, so big whoop. However, the fact that the President can't get ahead with his agenda is not his fault--it's Republican obstructionism. Can we get some cheese with that whine? The first two years of his Presidential term he had a full Democratic House and Senate, pushed through the Porkulus package that was supposed to keep unemployment below 8 percent #FAIL!, and got Obamacare Obamatax passed. So can we also color Morgan confused? I have loved Morgan Freeman on screen since The Electric Company, but like most celebs, when it comes to politics, he is off his nut.

Obla de Obla da Life Goes On...

I would be remiss if I didn't mention our old friends, the Occupy Movement. There was a National Gathering mounted for 4th of July weekend, appropriately dubbed "The Occupy National Gathering" or #NatGat for the Twitterverse. Occupy just refuses to go gently into that good night, and apparently the event went over like a lead balloon. The skinny from Breitbart's Big Government site:

"The turnout was awful. The Guardian said about 500 people showed up for the National Gathering. There’s no real excuse for that since the event has been promoted for months. Philadelphia was actually a great choice for a location and not just for symbolic reasons; it’s an easy train ride from a number of cities that had significant Occupy presences, including New York City, Washington D.C. and Boston. Even bringing a small percentage of the Occupiers in those cities should have culled a far higher number. If the attendance was pathetic, the fundraising was downright humiliating.  The Occupy National Gathering put up a fundraising page with the modest goal of $15,000. [...] "Total raised for Occupy National Gathering according to their website : $600. Not a typo. Six. Hundred. Dollars.  There are church bake sales in small towns that bring in more ducats than that. "

In Occupy's defense, there was record heat in the East Coast that weekend. On second thought, when there are good barbecues and fireworks going on, why waste your time on an essentially defunct movement? Missing you already, Occupy, missing you already. Now we move from the entertaining, to the ridiculous.

Sitting Doing Nothing

The Wall Street Journal is being its usual helpful self by reporting that Sitting for more than 3 hours a day can cut your Life Expectancy. If this were true, I should really be dead by now! Yet another medical study (published in BMJ Open, an online medical journal) that someone spent millions of dollars to mount. The amount of people who are unemployed and underemployed, and you couldn't spend the money on something more... productive? And how many hours did these researchers spend sitting to research and write this drivel? In protest, I decided to find Couch Potato; Weird Al Yankovic's parody of Eminem's Lose Yourself. BMJ Open can bite my sometimes sedentary, shapely Yoga ass. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oKhsNLWoCSU]

Short People Got No Reason to Live

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the diminutive crusader (at 5 ft 6 inches) against salt, trans-fat, and now Big Gulp sodas is mounting a contest to stir development of 275- to 300- square-foot micro apartments. [Pause here for uproarious laughter] "The ministudios will be just big enough for a bathroom, kitchen and sleeping and dining areas — but Bloomberg said tenants shouldn’t plan on doing much entertaining." Mayor Bloomberg launches contest to stir development of  tiny 300 square-foot apartment for singles. So, what's the point? Or are we trying to create a new generation of clown car? The article also points out that, "Bloomberg’s 12,500-square-foot upper East Side townhouse is about 40 times as big as the micro units." Bet he won't be moving into one of those units, despite being the perfect size for them. One more reason that I am thankful to live in Los Angeles. Smilin' Tony may be the 11 percent Mayor of Los Angeles, but I'll take a do-nothing over a meddler any day.