Tuesday, August 14, 2018

Tuesday Stuff (update)


Oops! It looks like Betsy DeVos is BUSTED (as TYT tells us), caught not paying taxes and flying the flag of the Cayman Islands on one of her 10 yachts – womp womp (sometimes David Sirota pisses me off with his CORPORATE DEMS! CORPORATE DEMS! CORPORATE DEMS! CORPORATE DEMS! act, but I have no issues whatsoever with his first-class reporting, and this is an example…Ana is on fire at about 4:20 or so, and Cenk is later, and they’re both spot-on…and as much as this is awful wretched excess on DeVos’s part of course, I don’t favor vandalism either)…



(And by the way, speaking of “Corporate Dems”…no, I don’t like the fact that corporations have an outsized say in our politics either. But like many of you I’m sure, I get BOMBARDED with soliticitations from candidates, and more often than not, I’m unable to throw them anything. Basically, even though I don’t like it of course (and I admit I don’t know from firsthand experience), I don’t know how you can possibly run a political campaign WITHOUT corporate contributions. That’s why, aside from anything related to our health and that of our planet, campaign finance reform and TOTAL PUBLIC FUNDING OF POLITICAL CAMPAIGNS MUST BE the most important issue…but good luck getting the vast majority of the American sheeple to support it. The candidates need to earn my trust, though, to convince me that they won't do the bidding of corporations at my expense.)

…back to the videos – and kudos to Dem U.S. House Rep (and vet) Ruben Gallego for standing up to the right-wing nut jobs out there; this is how it’s done (again, with the recent one-year anniversary in Charlottesville in mind…nice job with a bit of trolling by Gallego, and I think Gallego did a good job of fending off those idiotic Avenatti questions; haven’t we gotten into enough trouble with ONE TV personality already??!!)…



…and I think the prior video (with the Pelosi question) is actually a pretty good lead in to the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 8/12/12 – the next time you hear anybody bitching about the U.S. House Dem Minority Leader (while some in our party wrongly “measure the drapes,” and a GREAT recent column on this from Prof. Krugman is here), keep in mind that she had A LOT to do with the legislative accomplishments Rachel Maddow notes here, the last time Dems ran all branches of the federal government...I know this originally aired late in October/early in November 2010 of course – and by the way, I will NEVER accept the supposed choice between using political capital just for the sake of politics and consolidating power (as Repugs do) vs. using political capital to get stuff done but losing for it at the ballot box (Dems); as far as I’m concerned, use political capital to get stuff done, make the case to the voters that you’re better than the other guy because of it, and see if you win re-election or not…



..and Velshi and Ruhle tell us that it looks like all of this “winning” under the Gropenfuhrer may be slowing down as we get closer to the end of the year – but I’m sure he’ll find a way to blame Former President Hopey Changey anyway…



…and Thom Hartmann talks with Wendell Potter, formerly of CIGNA, about how healthcare interests (pharma and insurers) are trying to scare us out of universal health care – great job by Thom and WP to talk about the $32 trillion vs. $49 trillion health care expenditure in this country over the next 10 years; I think this is an example of the campaign they’re talking about (gee, how about rolling back the exemption noted here for starters instead?)…



…and happy belated 75th birthday to Jim Kale, bassist for The Guess Who; he and drummer Garry Peterson had kind of a nasty legal spat with Cummings and Bachman over playing under the name of the band with just Kale and Peterson…as far as I’m concerned, C&B should let bygones be bygones, but what do I know?



Update: Right now, for what it’s worth, my reaction is shock and horror. The anger will come later.

No wonder they worked so hard to keep the report from being released.

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