Thursday Stuff

Thom Hartmann wonders what will happen when the treasonous lunatics behind the 1/6 insurrection decide to try again (and yeah, there sure is a common thread among these crazies, and you’ll never guess what it is)...



...and since it’s a day of the week with a “y” in it, it’s time to talk about another mass shooting...and another one in Colorado...and another one involving a right-wing lunatic making common cause with the traitors noted in the prior clip...and while I have issues with Joe Rogan, I hold him to a lower standard than I do The Swanson TV Dinner Heir, employed with what purports to be a “news” network (Cenk tells us about it...more here)...



...and I’ll admit that It takes a lot for me to be PO’ed with the Biden Administration, but I think they F’d up on the CDC’s decision to shorten COVID quarantine time after the airline industry started complaining about “personnel shortages” and “workforce disruptions”...that decision affects all manner of service employees, including nurses, and I think that group in particular should, at a minimum, have the flexibility to decide for themselves how long they should be out if they’re exposed to the virus since they’re front-line health care workers...



...and Farron Cousins pretty much takes apart Lauren Boebert, who admits that she doesn’t know what government really does...big surprise, I know...



...and I need a minute or two to set up this next clip (inspired by this recent Daily Kos post).

It’s something pretty much accepted in our beloved commonwealth of PA that the type of education your kids will receive is based on the zip code where you live. No, I most certainly do not think that is fair, and we need to come up with a more equitable funding solution. And yes, if that involved a few more dollars every year in state taxes to fund early childhood education in poorer areas of the state, I’m for that, partly because it’s better to invest in kids early on as opposed to not doing that and having them end up in our corrections system later (in addition to making financial sense, it’s also morally the right thing to do IMO).

Well, there is currently a lawsuit pending over this issue. And the Daily Kos post noted above discusses it, and gives us the following excerpt:

During Week 4 of the proceedings in the William Penn School District, et al v. Pennsylvania Department of Education lawsuit...Republicans, in their infinite wisdom, argued that Dr. (Steven) Barnett’s point (that preschool programs can benefit students long after they’ve entered kindergarten, especially those living in poverty) makes it clear that Pennsylvania shouldn’t even bother with preschools to begin with if students are destined to fail due to lack of resources.

“What use would someone on the McDonald’s career track have for Algebra 1,” (attorney for Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman) John Krill argued during week four proceedings. He then went even further in his musings: “The question in my mind is, thorough and efficient (school funding) to what end? To serve the needs of the Commonwealth. Lest we forget, the Commonwealth has many needs,” Krill said. “There’s a need for retail workers, for people who know how to flip a pizza crust.”

Hey asshole, guess what? I worked at McDonald’s for two years and was graduated from Temple University about 40 years ago (not that I’m “all that,” because I definitely am not).

Not all of us are lucky enough to be born Republican. And if that isn’t a joke, I don’t know what is.

With all of the ridiculous antics going on at school board meetings about kids allegedly being taught critical race theory – which isn’t an actual thing – the focus instead, at least in PA, should be on the school funding inequities studied in this clip; it’s from May 2020, but it pretty much captures our ridiculous status quo on this issue...



Update 1/4/22: And just to show you that Dems can be assclowns also on issues like this, I give you the following here.

...and RIP Les Emmerson of the group Five Man Electrical Band (another COVID casualty); what follows is their signature hit.