Farron Cousins gives us the gory details on the massive bribery scheme that is the whole White House ballroom mess; I guess we kind of knew it was some big pay-to-play grift to benefit Our Tangerine Toddler, but the AMOUNT is staggering...two-thirds of the 24 known donors having received $279 billion in federal contracts as the clip says...I’ve heard that this ridiculous testimony to greed by the one percent should be renamed for Barack Obama (nothing personal against #44 I wish to add), but turning it into a soup kitchen and/or a free clinic is a great idea also...
...and this video from More Perfect Union brings us the sordid tale of Norfolk Southern’s potential merger with Union Pacific, creating yet another monopoly, this time for railroads, rewarding stockholders and private equity and endangering the rest of us of course (and I hope you won’t be shocked to find out that Union Pacific donated to that ridiculous ballroom, to curry regulatory favor on the merger no doubt)...clip tells us about the Staggers Act signed into law by Jimmy Carter that deregulated railroads, which was the first big domino to fall – I supported Carter, but he made a few deregulatory moves like this that ended up hastening the electoral victory of The Sainted Ronnie R in 1980...Wall Street got into the game in the 2010 decade (whatever that’s called), with CSX taken over by some financial outfit called Mantle Ridge, though the report focuses on Union Pacific trying to merge with Norfolk Southern...we learn the Dem Robert Primus of the Surface Transportation Board that would approve the merger was fired by Cantaloupe Capone in favor of another Repug to make a 3-1 “R” majority on the board, making U P and Norfolk Southern merger approval just about inevitable; good for Primus for suing in response here...to contact your U.S. Senator or member of congress to try and halt this merger, click here...
...and echoing the prior two clips a bit, Thom Hartman tells us how billionaires built a welfare system for the rich and we barely got the scraps...looks like our one percent cretins figured out a way to get their grubby hands onto SNAP, TANF and Medicaid (terrific) partly by pushing for work requirements, even though 80 percent of the recipients already work, but those running these companies paying crap wages know their employees will likely qualify for these programs because the workers make so little...I’ll have to look into David Ricardo’s “Iron Law of Wages”...not to rain on anyone’s parade, but yeah, I’d also like to see Dems speaking out about how the three programs I just mentioned are basically subsidies to low-paying employers (though I support the programs of course, I should emphasize)...and by the way, Senate Repugs already killed the filibuster as noted here; as much as I’d like to see the filibuster killed for real, I don’t share Thom’s vision of how the Dems would rally in response to what the Repugs would do (passing all the garbage they could without enough of a Dem majority to fight it...I mean, I wish the “D” team would indeed respond the way Thom says, but Mr. and Mrs. Scar and company on MSNBC would probably say it’s a bad idea and that would likely stop them unfortunately)...
...and I've been meaning to get to this next clip all week, and I just want to make sure I do that now...this segment from the PBS Newshour informs us that 75% of researchers polled think they’ll leave the US b/c of funding cuts, including Terence Tao, called the “Mozart of math” (poll from the journal Nature)...Ph.D. student Daniella Fodera is also profiled; it appears that she may go to Europe to continue her research in uterine fibroids affecting a sizeable female population...Anna Darling is another individual contemplating leaving our shores, along with biochemist Stephen Jones (yeah, let’s just kill the dreams of these devoted, talented individuals just to dole out more stinking tax cuts to the “pay no price, bear no burden” bunch...what a cunning plan!)...and a 30 percent increase in applications out of our country overseas – I can’t blame these individuals (and I realize that conflicts a bit yesterday with what I said about Timothy Snyder – I’m definitely not omniscient, people)...and oh yeah, we also learn that, of the six U.S. Nobel Prize winners, half are immigrants (but let’s drive them all out of here because of “DEI” and the fact that they’re “woke”... tell me when we’ve made America great again, you Trumpist assclowns)...
...and Jordan Klepper of The Daily Show gives us a recap of last Tuesday’s victories...and woo-hoo, THE GEORGIA PUBLIC SAFETY COMMISSION, BITCHES!!! (and no, I don’t know what they do either)...and I love the guy cussing out Curtis Sliwa (typically New Yaawk, but it would be Philly too if the guy were standing in line at Geno’s)...and yeah, wingnuts; you want out of The Big Apple? Maybe I can contact somebody to set up a shuttle service for you...and I would say that Eric Adams has been “stuck on stoo-pid” for a good while already, as evidenced in that great clip (mildly NSFW/H)...
...and apparently, Warren Zevon will get long-overdue IMO recognition and will be introduced into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow (under the “musical influencer” category; nice touch to let David Letterman do that as noted here...hopefully Zevon will see that in the great beyond where I’m sure he resides).
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