General #StrikeFastFood on tap today

It might a little difficult having your fast-food lunch today.

Fast-food workers in more than 150 U.S. cities are planning protests on Thursday to press for a wage increase to $15 an hour and allow them to unionize jobs from the fry-basket at McDonald's to the cash register at Burger King.

"We're going to have walkouts all over the country," said Kendall Fells, organizing director of the movement called Fight for 15. "There are going to be workers who don't show up to work or who walk off the job at 12:01 a.m. or at noon."

Yeah, screw the King from two weeks ago.  They shouldn't be under consideration for your business anyway since they're treasonous anti-American deserters...

The protests come as cities across the United States propose minimum wage increases while Democrats in Congress seek to raise the federal minimum wage ahead of November's mid-term congressional elections.

A recent report by the Economic Policy Institute think tank found the typical worker in the restaurant industry makes $10 an hour compared to $18 an hour typically earned in other industries.

One in six restaurant workers, or 16.7 percent, lives below the official poverty line, compared to 6.3 percent of those working in other industries, the report said.

Fast-food workers are even poorer, earning an average of less than $8 an hour, according to the Service Employees International Union, which supports the fast-food workers' protests.

"Nobody who works 40 hours a week should be living in poverty," U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont, said on Twitter. "I applaud the fast-food workers all across the country who will be striking on Thursday to raise the minimum wage to a living wage."

Good ol' Bernie Sanders. I hear he might run as a Democrat in 2016.

Anyway, have lunch at a Mom-and-Pop today.  That would be ten times better for everybody than giving any money to that Rick Perry-loving CEO of Carl's Jr.  Besides, that fast food crap'll kill ya.

I'm lovin' this typo.

Update: Arrests galore today across the country, five in Houston.  And this was the scene at the McDonald's headquarters outside Chicago.

Obama: Bush 2.0

Dan Froomkin, re-introducing himself at  at Glenn Greenwald's The Intercept, has enunciated the reasons why I never looked back after jumping off the Obama bandwagon five years ago.

In some cases, Obama has set even darker precedents than his predecessor. Massively invasive bulk surveillance of Americans and others has been expanded, not constrained. This president secretly condemns people to death without any checks or balances, and shrugs as his errant drones massacre innocent civilians. Whistleblowers and journalists who expose national security wrongdoing face unprecedented criminal prosecution.

In a few cases, Obama publicly distanced himself from Bush/Cheney excesses, but to little effect. He forswore torture, and promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. But by actively covering up what happened in the U.S.’s torture chambers, and by refusing to hold the torturers and their political masters in any way accountable, he has done nothing to make sure that the next time a perceived emergency comes up, it won’t all happen again. And Gitmo, which he treated as a political rather than moral issue, is still very much open for business.

It's pretty damning stuff IMO, and the reason as we know that Democrats nominated Obama in 2008 is because he wasn't Hillary Clinton.  So brace yourselves for Bush 3.0 in 2016.

As surely — if not as enthusiastically — as his predecessor, Obama has succumbed to the powerful systemic pressures that serve the needs of the military-intelligence-industrial complex.  Secrecy is rampant. Politics drives policy. There is no accountability. Congressional and judicial oversight have become a bitter joke. And the elite press gets tighter and tighter with those to whom it should be adversarial.

I really don't want to spend any more time mentioning anything about 2016 for a couple more months.  It is simply worth noting that one of the most powerful voices for holding our leaders accountable just got himself a new soapbox.  I'll be following along.