Friday Stuff

It appears David Keene and John Lott of the NRA ended up giving a commencement address to a whole bunch of empty chairs, each representing a student killed from gun violence who would never see graduation...still can’t get my head around the fact that important statements like this (the chairs I mean) will NEVER shame soulless right-wing cretins like these two into doing the right thing, though I of course applaud this by Manuel and Patricia Oliver, whose son Joaquin “Guac” was killed at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, in 2018 (more here)...



...and Ana of TYT and Emma V. of The Majority Report tell us about a recent collapse of a pedestrian bridge in DC, on the same day that this deal on infrastructure was announced by the Biden Administration, though nobody knows what will happen when the bill is introduced in “the world’s greatest deliberative body” for debate, but of course our elite corporate media will now crow about “bipartisanship” anyway and Manchin and Sinema (quite rightly called a psycho by Emma) will use this as an excuse to do EXACTLY NOTHING about the filibuster...what a damn joke....



...and as we all know, the biggest reason why legislation goes to die in “the upper chamber” is because of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao, who gets the treatment he deserves from The Daily Show (NSFW/H)...



...and this Arizona nut case of course may be the second biggest reason (definitely not Katie Hobbs, but the one with the "F.U." ring) as this More Perfect Union video reminds us...



...and turning to our regularly scheduled plague (more precisely, the deadly Delta variant), Alyssa Bernardino tells us to ”roll up your sleeves, it’s time” indeed – actually, it’s long past time...



...and kudos to Brian Williams for sneaking in this bit of snark at the end of his clip showing assclown Matt Gaetz getting shown up by Gen. Mark Milley on the whole drummed-up phony issue of critical race theory (you would think the Repugs would want to keep Gaetz out of sight given his legal trouble...you would think)...



...and I thought this was a particularly well-done commentary from Beau of the Fifth Column about what Gen. Milley had to say...



...and with the weather warming up a bit in these parts, I think it's time for this tune.

Wednesday Stuff

Thom Hartmann informs us, among other things, that Finland is apparently fighting back against social networking trolls by teaching school kids media literacy – what a great idea (so they grow up being intelligent news consumers and not just automatically ingesting right-wing BS)...good points about this country utterly not caring about this (with notable exceptions I realize) as well as having devalued social studies long ago of course...



...and this is a long but important segment from Cenk and Ana of TYT which pretty much calls it as it is with the U.S. Senate Dems in particular, along with the nonsensical game played by our news media to curry favor with these characters (I don’t know what’s more damning, frankly; Sinema’s crappy ads where she pretended to be a progressive or Manchin’s leaked phone call begging his campaign funders to get U.S. Senate Republicans to throw him a metaphorical bone to at least give the illusion of bipartisanship...unintentionally hilarious to think Manchin would get anywhere on that...and speaking of social media, the whole Sam Seder/Steven Crowder thing really is hilarious - Crowder is such a damn baby...more here)...



...and John and Yasmin Khan tell us that Our Former Tiny Handed Treasonous Russian Operative of a *president sent the DOJ after SNL in March ’19...we can indeed laugh now, but whoever comes after Trump from that party will have learned this lesson and others, and it won’t be humorous in any way...



...and Farron Cousins tells us that it looks like Biden may be getting serious about “packing the courts,” the correct way of course...



...and PA State Rep Malcolm Kenyatta continues to impress me; this time, he’s correctly slamming the attempts of Republicans (of course) in our beloved commonwealth to mess around with our right to vote...



...and maybe this is a little early for Halloween, but then again, maybe not (file this under “Fangs For The Memories” I guess :-).

Tuesday Stuff

It looks like the Gosar family is commendably speaking out again against their idiot sibling and Repug U.S. House Rep from Arizona who has been trying to downplay the 1/6 insurrection, as we learn from this Now This video...



...and this “Meanwhile In” segment from The Damage Report has to do with the ongoing carnage in Yemen at the hands of the government of Saudi Arabia (harking back to this post; I can definitely relate to what Jayar says here about getting distracted, though I don't automatically use that as an excuse – one child dying every 5 minutes...)...



...and returning to this country, Chris Hayes talks with Dem U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown about the Biden Administration’s child tax credit (near-UBI for parents – a good idea for so many reasons)...



...and Cenk and Ana of TYT tell us about airlines (mainly American here) blaming workers for cancelling flights, even though, as Ana notes, these airlines had no problem taking CARES/PPP $$$... yep, pay the workers the way you’re supposed to and they’ll show up all right...



...and Pap and Farron Cousins tell us about private pension funds buying up homes across the country, creating another housing bubble (just what we need, right?)...



...and happy belated 70th birthday to Nils Lofgren.

Monday Stuff

Apparently this is the ad for the John Lewis bill with Orlando Bloom and Katy Perry that is making wingnut heads explode all over the place, as noted here; this is good, but actually I think we need a lot more of stuff like this...



...and Pete Williams on MSNBC reports on the SCOTUS ruling in favor of Catholic Social Services in Philly that decided to not let a same-sex couple adopt a child (Williams says there is a “limiting principle” in this decision to not create broad new precedent, which apparently explains the 9-0 majority...Williams also says this is similar to the Colorado baker who wouldn’t make a gay wedding cake, or something...as far as I’m concerned, it says more than a little bit about CSS that they thought it was a better use of donation money to pay for lawyers to appeal something like this to the SCOTUS than to, y’know, actually do what their supposed to as an organization, which is to provide aid and comfort to the elderly, poor, sick, indigent, minority outreach, transport to medical facilities, etc...and that’s the main reason why they’d better not ever consider hitting me up for a donation again, because they’ll get exactly nothing)...



...and as long as we’re dealing with faith matters, I should also note that that allegedly august group, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, is debating whether to withhold communion from President Biden (a Catholic) for supporting abortion and LGBTQ rights; as dear as my faith is to me, the people in charge of it keep doing their best to try and push me away from it (if they start denying Communion to every pro-choice Catholic – well, I’m not trying to be flip, but let me just say that they’re going to have a hell of a lot of extra wafers)...



Update: I report, you decide (here).

...and John and Jordan Uhl of “The Damage Report” tell us that that wackadoodle (which one, I know) Lauren Boebert in the U.S. House sent our a particularly stoo-pid tweet on COVID (interesting that, according to Uhl, she’s vulnerable on anti-union stuff despite her gun-humping bona fides)...



...and on the subject of our ongoing plague, this CBS News report tells us about trying to get people in the South to get the COVID vaccine, with the Delta variant in the picture (just can’t think of a word for the stupidity of people who either don’t get the second shot or fail to get either one – maybe these people need to see more footage of what happened in India, though I’m still not sure that would get the message through)...



...and I thought this was another good video from Robert Reich, telling us “the truth about immigration”...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less) from 6/20/16, in which we learn about the killing of British MP Jo Cox, who opposed Brexit (presciently, as it turned out, as far as I’m concerned – more here and here)...



...and we recently observed the 50th anniversary of the release of “Blue” by Joni Mitchell; here is a memorable tune from that recording (more here).