High overcast and way-quiet this early Thursday on California’s northern coast, with the silence so compelling, the noise from the Pacific only a mile or so away, can barely be heard above all the hush-hush.
And finally even beyond doing anything, we are again on the gates of the weekend — time flies no matter.

Flight of the imbecilic — Michele Bachmann won’t be around after next year ’cause she’s quiting, crazy-loon of the earth, Christmas card-son-shine and all: “Chick magnate [sic] needs wife to put him through med school, clean house, pay bills and run his life. Must be willing to gamble against onslaught of socialized medicine diminishing return on investment.”
Wild-eyed Bachmann was dribbling about her son, Lucas, who apparently needs a woman — or something.

And from the likes of the way economic life has ballooned-out of normal the last few years, maybe women don’t want a shit-piece of a man around the house — she can do it better by herself, thank-you.

(Illustration found here).

Which also derails George Carlin’s notification: There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.
Nowadays, body size ain’t important, neither is the liquor.

This report came out yesterday and I wanted to do something on it then, but got way-laid — no, you nasty minded bozo, I’m way-too old that shit — but this, a study from the Pew Research Center indicating a record 40 percent of American mothers are the primary breadwinner for their families, up from 11 percent in 1960.
A finding that reveals the true nature of US personal economics — via the Christian Science Monitor:

The report, based on US census data, shows a dramatic change in women’s role as earners, as more women are single mothers or outearn their husbands.
It reflects the growth of women in the workforce and could be due in part to the elimination of manufacturing and other traditionally male jobs during the Great Recession, analysts say.
“This change is just another milestone in the dramatic transformation we have seen in family structure and family dynamics over the past 50 years or so,” said Kim Parker, associate director of the Pew Social & Demographic Trends project.
“Women’s roles have changed, marriage rates have declined – the family looks a lot different than it used to.
The rise of breadwinner moms highlights the fact that, not only are more mothers balancing work and family these days, but the economic contributions mothers are making to their households have grown immensely.”
…
Women make up 47 percent of the US labor force, and the percentage of married mothers who are working has increased from 37 percent in 1968 to 65 percent in 2011.
…
Since 1960, the percentage of mothers who are single has tripled, from 7 to 25 percent.
And the share of married mothers who outearn their spouses has nearly quadrupled, from 4 to 15 percent.
…
The median family income of married mothers who earn more than their spouses was about $80,000 in 2011, nearly four times the $23,000 median for families led by a single mother.
In comparison, the national median family income for all families with children is $57,100.

Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology and public policy at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore: “Many of our workplaces and schools still follow a male-breadwinner model, assuming that the wives are at home to take care of child-care needs. Until we realize that the breadwinner-homemaker marriage will never again be the norm, we won’t provide working parents with the support they need.”

One of the major employment problems is breaking the mold — a new world requires a new approach

Yet assholes are are still alive on Wall Street, despite the 2008 meltdown.
Paul Tudor Jones, a billionaire hedge fund manager, claims women can’t be real financial professionals because of, well, the baby thing, and is a focus “killer” — Jones blubbered last April to an audience at the University of Virginia: As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it … Every single investment idea . . . every desire to understand what is going to make this go up or go down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience . . . which a man will never share, about a mode of connection between that mother and that baby.
A response from US News and World Report:

Setting aside the antiquated and slightly creepy description of motherhood (a “girl?” The imagery of a baby’s “lips” on a woman’s breast?), Jones misses the mark in several ways.
First, the idea that having a baby in the house does not interfere at all with a man’s focus is absurd.
(The men at the office who looked like they haven’t slept in months? There’s a good chance they are new parents.)
Secondly, Jones, not being one of those unfocused women himself, can’t possibly know the effect of the bond between mother and child.
It’s simply a gender-based narrative that fits his agenda.
What if a woman were to say men shouldn’t be traders because they are too easily distracted by the sight of female bodies in the office and therefore can’t “focus?”
But what is most galling about Jones’ diagnosis is that it is coming during the painful aftermath of the Wall Street meltdown, a fiscal crisis for which investment bankers – focused or not – are largely to blame.
If men hold the vast majority of the high-level jobs in trading, and are more able to focus than women, then how did such a disaster occur in 2008?
What’s their excuse?

Being an asshole?

Despite all the data and the real-life/real-time reality of women working, those who have children are even more in hot water. Even as the family’s life hinges on the female working, the employment situation sucks.
Lori Sokol at the UPI takes a look:

The United States is one of the few industrialized nations that doesn’t provide paid family leave for new parents, even though almost 61 percent of women with children under 3 years old, and almost 56 percent of women with children under 1 year, were in the labor force in 2011, according to a 2013 report by Catalyst, the business research group focused on women.
Further, the federal government has yet to put uniform standards or goals in place to provide much needed child care services for working parents, the weight of which falls upon the working mother as a primary caregiver immediately upon the baby’s birth.
…
Imagine if, in the same way, after birth, paid maternity leave and federally funded child care, for example, were provided to mothers.
Just think of how much more supported that mother would feel and how much more quickly her emotional and physical health would recover.
Republicans have shown signs they are thinking about this issue.
On the heels of losing women as a critical voting group during the 2012 presidential election, they are now attempting to support a mother’s need for job flexibility, or so they say.
The Working Families Flexibility Act is a bill that House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., introduced in April.
He says it would provide for flex-time so a “working mom could work overtime this month and use it as time off next month without having to worry about whether she’ll be able to take home enough money to pay the rent.”
But before you celebrate, first read the fine print.
The bill would weaken the longstanding right to time-and-a-half overtime payment for these workers by allowing employers and workers to work out deals in which comp time is exchanged for overtime.
Workers would not have any power to decide when to use their comp time; that would be set by employers.
And if employers fail to allow the workers to use the accrued comp time, the company still has 30 days to provide overtime payment for the hours already worked.
If the employer does not provide that overtime compensation by the deadline, the workers are not allowed to file a complaint with the U.S. Department of Labor, as they can do now.
This kind of GOP double talk on working families is familiar.
During his presidential campaign, George W. Bush made a theme out being “for the family.”
But during his first term, his Labor Department proposed complex regulations concerning the reporting, certification and medical requirements of families trying to make use of the Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) benefits.
He also vetoed an expansion of the FMLA that would have provided up to 26 weeks of unpaid leave to workers who are caring for a wounded service member in active duty.

One must always, and all-the-time always, read the fine print off anything proposed by any kind of Republican, especially major nit-twit ass-jerks like Cantor.
And the job situation has changed — like in manufacturing, where there’s tons of jobs but few women.
U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and the feminine future: “Manufacturing has long been viewed as the three D’s: dark, dirty, and dangerous,” said Klobuchar. “But this isn’t your grandpa’s factory floor anymore. It’s now cleaner, safer, and the skills are higher.”

And  women nowadays are smarter, and really don’t put up with idiot-shit any more.