I am glad to see her speak her mind. She is a much needed voice.

But we will do it.

and soulless person! Just like the one she is voting for.
We were very surprised and proud of Melissa for the exceptional rant. I emailed her and told her so.

Go Melissa!

I spent my evening yesterday feeding and dining with risk takers. I was at the homeless shelter. I have been doing this for 15 going on 20 years. I make the food, bring the food, serve the food and sit down to dinner with them.

Yes, there are some interesting characters. However, I meet a number of people each month with a track record of working various jobs who took a big risk. They moved here from other parts of the country because they heard there was work to be had. Many found jobs but were subsequently laid off, some took the risk and only found day labor. They are out there everyday turning over the rocks looking for something, anything to turn a buck, and they aren't at all that picky about it either.

It is the same story every time. Folks who scraped together their last few dollars, threw what few things they owned into the back of some beater car, and drove here hoping to find work. This is risk taking in a manner a wealthy person or a business owner will never get.

Sure there is risk in business, but most smart folks who go into business form an LLC, put a slice of their own money into it and borrow the rest. Only the really unwise go naked sole proprietor and mortgage the house to pull it off, and those few often enough end up in a shelter at some point.

The RW woman, goes on about losing 220,000 small businesses. Most small business startups go broke in the first 5 years, roughly 80 percent of them. So "losing" small businesses is not a surprise. Losing more than usual during this economic slump is even less of a surprise. Some people are just not very good at running a business, and some concepts for small business were simply always a bad idea. I have watched a series of owners attempt to make a go of a convenience store in a location that is on my way home from work.

7/11 abandoned the site a couple of decades ago. The site has poor visibility and bad traffic flow. So every year or two the place closes and reopens under new management. The current new management make a very decent sub sandwich fresh to order, perhaps they will make it, but probably not. It is a good enough idea, but the wrong place. Business is like that. There is risk in it, but very few put their survival on the line for it. The people I meet at the shelters make that sort of bet weekly if not daily.

I saw her rebuttal against a conservative on welfare as well. She does not anyone intimidate her. I think she is becoming my second favorite person on MSNBC now, next to Rachel of course.
On Twitter, you can look up #nerdland to see any discussion of her show.