Open Thread #145

Sperwer — That must have been one long weekend. There were 60 episodes of The Wire, and I seem to recall they were longer than the standard 40 minutes of broadcast television. Still, even if they’re only 40 minutes, 60 episodes is a full 40 hours of television.

Sperwer — Hey, you don’t have to justify yourself to me. I just wouldn’t have imagined you able to watch 40+ hours of television. How did you stay awake? Are you using methamphetamine? Or is it simply the result of all that workout. The Wire‘s good TV, sure, but 40 hours of it would tax the endurance of a lesser man.

NetizenKim — So you’re not just naive about Korea. Interesting.

NetizenKim, you reallly need to watch some K-drama. I can forsee nothing but a tragic end for you with this girl if you don’t get in at least a couple episodes a week. They’ll at least get you set up with the basics. See, these programs do count for something.

That’s right — Korean dramas will get you ready for the only two forms of intra-family communication that seem to be allowed by Korean culture: screaming rage and moody sulking. Good luck, sucker.

Here’s a link to reporting on the Constitutional Court’s decision last fall regarding the breach-of-promise crime. There’s currently a government drafting committee also working on abolition of the crimes of adultery and abortion, although I have some doubts whether ultimately Korean society is libertarian enough for either of those.

The entire Group decided that too many people were not using all of their vacation days, and that paying for the unused vacation days was too expensive.

I’m not so sure that the company is screwing anybody — at least not in respect of this annual-leave issue. Check Arts. 59 and 59-2 of the Labor Standards Act.

The Labor Standards Act has always had a “use it or lose it” provision, but historically the Supreme Court adopted an interpretation that was the opposite of what was plainly written in the statute — this is why employers had to allow limitless “banking” of leave and payment for unused leave balances.

The National Assembly amended the LSA in September 2003 to reinforce the use it or lose it principle, and expressly provided in Art. 59-2 for a system to warn employees of pending leave expiration before the leave is lost. The law phased in application of this method from 2004 to 2011; your company’s got more than 1000 employees so this leave-expiration policy should have become effective from July 1, 2004.

Seems to me payment of four years’ additional leave is over and above what’s required of the company. For example, even if the company were wrong in its past practice, wage claims (which include claims for unused leave) are subject to a three (3)-year time bar.

There’s a really interesting story somewhere in the Korean-language press today about GM-Daewoo being subject to a 1000-worker, W70 billion group action demanding some sort of back wage, which I think was annual leave but which may have been severance pay. Anyway, I should look for that again, maybe for my own blog.

Why I’ll never vote for another Democrat again: Median household income in America, US$50,893; total state and Federal government spending per household, US$47,000. But good news: Only $31,088 of that is Federal spending, and Congress is borrowing 42% of that money anyway. Don’t worry! Your grandchildren will pay for it all. Or we can pay it all back with Weimar greenbacks after the collapse.

One of the myriad detestable things about Barack Obama is that, having taken over the wheel of a bus careening toward the edge of a cliff, instead of doing anything — anything! — to arrest the advance of the bus, ol’ leadfoot Barack has stepped on the gas despite his promises to the contrary during the election.

Floor it! he now says. He tells the passengers if he accelerates enough toward the cliff, somehow the laws of gravity will be repealed and he can fly the bus across the chasm. That never worked for Wile E. Coyote and it won’t work for America. Personally, I think this driver Barack may be mad and is trying to kill us all.

Many Republicans aren’t doing us any favors either. This is why I favor the insurgents within the Republican Party — the Michele Bachmanns, the Paul Ryans, and yes, the Sarah Palins. I will support any candidate who tells me Sorry, they stole your Social Security and it’s all gone. I know it already — just tell me the truth and let’s face it together!

America must find a way to roll back the entitlement state or the Republic is surely finished. And Korea, with its still-nascent entitlement state, has a chance to see the unraveling and to avoid repeating our mistakes.

cmm — Why don’t you do your own research instead of expecting me to respond to your snark?

cmm — The short answer is yes, collective terms and conditions of employment apply equally to you and your buddy as they apply to the Starcraft ranger.

CNN goes well out of its way to find such people where it can, or to otherwise distort or misrepresent events in order to shape perceptions. CNN is not a reliable source at all.

Here’s CNN on a Sarah Palin-headlined Tea Party rally in Searchlight, Nevada: “Hundreds of people, at least dozens”, giving the impression of a modest turnout for a disregarded fringe figure. Luckily there are some aerial photos of the actual turnout. Dozens? A thousand dozen, perhaps two, in a town with a population less than 1000, with traffic backed up for miles and miles as people hike down a desert highway to get to the rally. (Meanwhile, the liberal “Coffee Party” counter-gatherings don’t seem to have much trouble getting friendly coverage.)

How does a thinking person reconcile the description from CNN with the actual event? And knowing how CNN lies and distorts even the most mundane details, how can anyone uncritically accept sensational reports from CNN or other media sources that the Tea Party is full of racists and other yahoos? Especially when one is confronted with directly contradictory information like the nice Idaho Tea Party lady’s appearance on Letterman, or blog reports from black reporters attending Tea Party rallies looking for the racist angle who are surprised at the friendliness and kindness of the “racist” mob. (They are, after all, comprised of a broad cross-section of America, and fully 40% of Tea Partiers self-identify as Democrats or independent voters.) Doubly so when we know that the Left’s agents provocateurs are now actively infiltrating these rallies.

America’s mainstream media lies, straight up. Our journalists have abandoned the function of being a check on state power, and have voluntarily adopted the supine posture of Pravda and Izvestiya of old to serve the interest of the Party and the One. “Fake but accurate” is just okay with them, but not with me. No, thanks, to the Situation Room; I’ll pass.

I want New Jersey’s fat Republican governor as my President in 2012.

And we wonder what keeps the Birthers so interested in their seemingly-quixotic pursuit…

Hot news among the conspiracy set! Apparently, the current Kenyan Minister for Lands on March 25, 2010 made an official statement, a throwaway reference in a parliamentary debate, to the effect that Barack Obama was born in Kenya as the Birthers allege:

If America was living in a situation where they feared ethnicity and did not see itself as a multiparty state or nation, how could a young man born here in Kenya, who is not even a native American, become the President of America? It is because they did away with exclusion. (Official Report of the National Assembly, March 25, 2010 at p. 31)

Obama’s background is in fact shrouded in mystery and he’s expended considerable resources and effort toward keeping it that way. For example, we know nothing of his performance at Occidental College, Columbia University, or Harvard Law School other than his election to the law review presidency. (By contrast, American voters know from the 2004 election that both George W. Bush and John Kerry were “C” students at Yale, with Bush’s grades slightly better.) Obama’s birth certificate remains quite well-hidden.

I wish the guy would come clean and clear up these inquiries. I, for one, have doubts whether he was in fact born in the United States (if he was, why keep everything cloudy), and don’t know whether that would have had any effect on the transmission of citizenship from his mother under US nationality law as it existed in 1961 when he was born. My kids are also born overseas to a single US citizen parent, and under current law they are “natural born citizens”. But shouldn’t we have a right to know about Obama?

Or maybe he was visiting his home planet of Krypton. Either way, I’m curious.