Many restaurant owners predicted a crash in their business when Seattle passed its groundbreaking $15 minimum wage law last year.
Well, it’s been half a year since the law's first pay raise took effect, and Seattle’s restaurant count has climbed — up and down the food chain. As Jeanine Stewart reports in the Oct. 23 PSBJ, some of the chefs who are opening restaurants at a dizzying pace are the ones who had issued dire warnings of empty tables and shuttered rooms as a result of the wage law.

http://www.bizjournals.com/seattle/morning_call/2015/10/editors-picks-restaurant-openings-soar-after-wage.html

Republicans and right wingers wrong as usual!

Iowa Republicans appreciate retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson's more controversial comments, according to a Bloomberg Politics/Des Moines Register poll released on Friday. The poll found Carson leading Trump by nine points among likely Iowa Republican caucus goers.

According to the survey of likely Iowa Republican caucus goers, 81 percent approved of Carson's comment that Obamacare is the "worst thing that's happened in this nation since slavery;" 77 percent said they liked his statement that Hitler's rise could have been stopped if German citizens had had guns; and 73 percent liked his concerns about a Muslim becoming president.

Among the respondents, 96 percent said they find Carson's "common sense" attractive, and 89 percent said they like that he is guided by his faith, according to the poll. Only 32 percent of those surveyed believe Trump is a committed Christian.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/polltracker/iowa-republican-ben-carson-hitler

The internet couldn't stop talking about Hitler on Friday afternoon, all thanks to The New York Times Magazine.

The magazine provided a perfect diversion for the internet's Benghazi-adled minds with the ultimate quandary: if you could travel back in time, would you kill an infant Adolf Hitler?

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/baby-hitler-nyt-magazine-twitter

I always think about that when I hear forced birth proponents saying "Oh, that fetus could be the next Einstein!"

Yes and that fetus could be the next Hitler or Stalin or Pol Pot.

Can the 1% really pay for “free stuff” for everybody else?

For years, the idea that higher taxes on the rich could pay for renewed social spending was a punchline. Republicans have thought it lunacy to ask “job creators” to pay more; until Obamacare, Democrats gave up on new programs after the 1960s. The common assumption was that soaking the rich was a feel-good move that wouldn’t raise any real dough.

...But it’s different now.Maybe the first serious shot at a political economics of redistribution came in a provocative New York Times piece last week, arguing that relatively modest tax increases on the top 0.1% to 10% of all earners actually can pay for spending promises made, mostly, by Democratic candidates for president.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/can-the-1-really-pay-for-the-free-stuff-democrats-want-2015-10-22?dist=beforebell

And this appears on a business website

In court briefs, neither Kelly's nor Baroni's attorneys accept that there weren't any notes, and they want all the computer metadata showing when, how, and by whom the documents were written.

Now Mastro is offering a new explanation. His team didn't take notes because we were watching. In a letter dated October 9 to U.S. District Court Judge Susan Wigenton, Mastro wrote of his firm's "experience with extremely sensitive investigations and matters." He went on to say that his team had "in mind the additional reality that a legislative committee investigation and related -- and often intense -- news media inquiries were ongoing."

Assemblyman John Wisniewski, co-chair of that legislative committee, boiled it down. "They didn't create that material so as not to turn it over," he said in a phone interview.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/christie-bridgegate-lawyer-we-didnt-take-notes-because-intense-media-interest/

Members of the House Freedom Caucus -- the conservative hardliners who have been roiling GOP leadership in recent weeks -- emerged from a meeting Wednesday on Rep. Paul Ryan's speaker candidacy willing to give him their "support" as a group. In a caucus vote, about two-thirds of the members said they were comfortable supporting Ryan as speaker, according to those present. However, they did not reach the 80 percent support line that the caucus requires to give its endorsement. After the meeting members also said the group would not concede to the conditions Ryan has given publicly to accept the speakership.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ryan-freedom-caucus

Let them descend into chaos...

Jingoism never seems to go away. When Hillary put down Bernie by saying "this isn't Denmark" she encapsulated the stupidity that keeps the one percenters fat and happy.

Why should we look anywhere else for systems that work and people are happy with? Of course we shouldn't because we built "the greatest middle class in the world."

These same arguments and chest thumping have been used by right wingers for the past century to deflect us from national health care, family benefits, affordable education and decent wages.

Kim Davis may claim she doesn’t plan on resigning from her job as Rowan County Clerk any time soon, but she just received a job offer she may not be able to refuse.
Adult film production company The Dogfart Network, which claims to be “the leading online destination for Adult Interracial content,” has offered Davis $500,000 to participate in an interracial lesbian porn scene.

http://www.queerty.com/kim-davis-offered-500k-offer-to-do-interracial-lesbian-porn-20151007

http://a5.img.talkingpointsmemo.com/image/upload/c_fill,fl_keep_iptc,g_faces,h_365,w_652/cnvhn6jv8lvhdzgdj7vv.jpg
http://imgur.com/SSbXwUa
The sheriff in charge of investigating a mass shooting at a community college in Oregon removed a video that raised questions about the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre from his Facebook page on Friday afternoon.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/john-hanlin-removes-sandy-hook-video

We can tell John Ellis Bush, "Hey dude, stuff happens!"