Friday Stuff

Trae Crowder tells us about wingnuts losing what little exists of their actual minds over the FAA grounding flights recently and how that, as far as they're concerned, absolutely had to be the fault exclusively of Biden Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and nobody else, and of course those screeching the loudest are using this as another projection festival...an update is here...



...and this TYT Investigates clip shows that the “party of Lincoln” hasn’t learned a damn thing about trying to cram anti-abortion bills down the metaphorical throat of this country...



...and Thom Hartmann tells us what this new U.S. House Committee chaired by Gym Jordan could be up to, basically giving the McCarthy treatment to anyone opposing the treasonous 1/6 insurrectionists, with Hartmann giving us some background on the “Hollywood 10” and potential parallels to now (and as Thom says, who knows what other “fishing expeditions” such a committee could launch, and against who, especially since we’re talking about a character like Jordan)...



...and Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report discusses the Glacier v. Teamsters case before the “shadow docket” SCOTUS (with a tweet thread by Elie Mystal...cement workers went on strike and the cement hardened in the process, and the company is going after the workers for the cost of the hardened cement...yeah, it’s definitely a “tell” unfortunately that “Strip Search Sammy” Alito and “I Like Beer” Kavanaugh and their pals are involved, trying to take over from the NLRB)....



...and Jesse Dollemore discusses the U.S. House Repugs going after BLM and pride flags – “The Old Glory Only Act”...yeah, I’m surprised this Jeff Duncan character didn’t include a display of a cross burning in the press release from his office announcing this joke of a bill (mildly NSFW/H)...



...and this is probably the most clear-eyed commentary I’ve heard yet on all of the debt ceiling BS gamesmanship from the unruly children in charge of the U.S. House of Representatives from Beau – challenging this nonsense in court based on the precedents Beau sites here is a great idea, and I think the "trillion dollar coin" is another alternative as noted here (and I haven’t said much on the “Biden secret documents” stuff because I don’t think there is a “there” there)...



...and here are two more tunes as a tribute to Jeff Beck.

Thursday Stuff

In this video from More Perfect Union, we learn about Moderna raising the price of the COVID vaccines by about 400 percent and how we, as a result, are getting utterly ripped off as taxpayers (full disclosure: I got the first 2 COVID shots and both of my first two boosters from Moderna and the bivalent from Pfizer...the first booster knocked me on my ass, but I know that, in some cases, that’s what the "jab" is supposed to do)...



...and Chris Hayes brings us the latest source of wingnut umbrage, namely, the utterly preposterous claim that the Biden Administration is coming for our gas stoves...as usual, the issue isn’t the veracity of the talking point, because there isn’t any, but the attempt by the “party of Lincoln” to drive their BS narrative (more on that here)...



...and Ana of TYT brings us more details on the Brett Favre scandal in Mississippi ($5 million for the volleyball arena which we knew about), taking $$$ from the TANF program, which makes it even worse of a slap in the face I know given that we’re talking about the most impoverished state in the country...total cost of the alleged abuse of the program is $70 million – people need to go to prison, and I don’t care if that means Favre too...



Update 2/9/23: In addition to being elitist and nepotistic, this move is also a really stoo-pid legal strategy because it opens the door for all kinds of stuff I’m sure Favre doesn’t want to bring out as part of discovery.

...and John and Yasmin Khan of The Damage Report discuss the protests going on in Brazil in response to the attempts by Jair Bolsonaro and his crowd (including Steve Bannon of course) to overturn a free and fair election...looks like another case of the rich and powerful in this country who are up to their elbows in criminal behavior who may end up skating for it...love to be wrong...



...and in the latest episode of Utterly Clueless Rich White Guys Displaying Their Entitlement, Sam Seder (not Sam) discusses Larry Summers and his analysis that unemployment basically has to go up (despite the fact that we’re at a 50-year low, or maybe because of it - ??) to bring down inflation (which is going down already) and rebuild our economy from COVID, or something (and of course Lars con-vee-niently fails to mention corporate price gouging, as the ocean waves gently lap and foam behind Summers in the background)...



...and I’m planning to include some selections as a tribute to guitar legend Jeff Beck, including this number.

Wednesday Stuff

Ana and Cenk of TYT talk about the Biden Administration notifying the archivist that they accidentally came across some classified docs from something called the Penn Biden Center that they apparently found out about last November...you could say there are YUUUUGGGE! differences between this and what the Gropenfuhrer did (Cenk kind of goes off the rails with the Pelosi/McConnell stuff IMO; not saying he doesn’t have a point, even though you should also consider the legislation and policy differences between them, but I think those remarks belong in another video)...



...and gosh, whaddaya know? “All hat, no cattle” Greg Abbott is now begging for $$ from Biden after the Texas guv’s immigration busing stunts (the number I heard on what Abbott did was $12 million, but I suppose it could have been $20, and I forgot about the cost of getting the National Guard forces from other states involved in this nonsense)...



...and Thom Hartmann speaks with Greg Palast about the “secret history” of the 1/6 insurrection, including a lot of discussion about this Ali Alexander character and his rants about violence coming dated from 1/5/21, when he was in Georgia for the runoffs...I think Brazil and Lula offers a lesson in contrasts at a minimum, given this story and the fact that our DOJ (still under Our Ochre Abomination, I realize on 1/6) basically let everybody go home and put Merrick Garland in the position of having to chase these culprits after the damage was done...



...and I know this item is probably about a week old or more, but I’m still pretty disgusted by it, to the point where I checked up on this Cory Mills character a bit, and I found this clip with Jayar and Rick Strom...yeah, I like the “Radical Left Protestors, Philadelphia” thing in his ad where, of course, you can’t verify who it is he’s referring to (and the “Hillary Clinton Protestors” thing is about what you’d expect I guess from a cave man like Mills)...we’re supposed to just take his word for it...uh huh...and as Jayar correctly notes of course, how con-vee-nient that 1/6 protestors aren’t included in that little clip of his with that rock music soundtrack...yep, this sounds like another case of #DeathSantis gerrymandering a Dem out of existence to make room for this troglodyte...something tells me that somebody is going to get the goods on this guy one day, and he’s going to be in a bad way when that happens...we’ll see...



...and the latest from Second Thought tells us Why Corporations Are Evil, or something (on the “B Corp” certification scam...and good job to go after Salesforce, which has been in the news lately as noted here, but not for good reasons...”Under a capitalist system, you cannot be unprofitable, and that will always take precedence over any concern for social and environmental justice.” and “You can always just ignore a protest when you’re in charge.”...yep)...



...and on this day 100 years ago, insulin was injected for the first time to treat diabetes (here)...makes me think of this tune (a bit of a tangent I realize :-).

Tuesday Stuff

I call this a terrific opening ad for Lucas Kunce, running against Josh Hawley in Missouri for the U.S. Senate...more here (and as far as I’m concerned, one of the MANY failures of Sean Patrick Maloney, head of the DCCC, in the last election cycle was to not funnel more resources to Kunce running against Trudy Busch Valentine...TBV won the Dem primary, ran against Repug Eric Schmitt and lost...Busch didn’t even know what the issue was with Citizens United)...



...and speaking of Dems running for the U.S. Senate, David Doel brings us some GREAT news about Katie Porter, running for that chamber from CA; wouldn’t it be awesome to see her doing her thing with the whiteboard right in the face of Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao? And I’m genuinely sorry to hear about Di-Fi, but that’s all the more reason why she needs to retire...and with all due respect to Ro Khanna, I hope he stays out now also, and though I respect Barbara Lee and Adam Schiff too, I hope they remain on the sidelines as well...



...and Farron Cousins tells us more about Matt Gaetz almost getting his ass kicked last Friday night from Mike Rogers of Alabama before some Repug named Tim Burchett intervened on Gaetz’s behalf...yeah I know I’ve had the pic of this around for a day or so with a link to a story, but here is more on exactly what happened...



...and John and Brett Erlich of The Damage Report discuss a school district in Flori-DUUUHH! using a #DeathSantis law to ban a book about gay penguins...smh (good point about how self-defeating this idiocy is by drawing attention to a book that would probably be largely ignored otherwise)...



...and the prior story is mildly amusing, albeit in a truly stoo-pid way, but this one is dangerous; Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report tells us about Oklahoma (of course) trying to enact an anti-trans bill eliminating gender-affirming care for anyone under 26, in a state where bigotry is “as high as an elephant’s eye,” you might say (you can Google it :-)...



...and I neglected to mention the story of the 6-year-old in Newport News, VA who shot his school teacher (here)...yeah, just chalk this up as another example of a hand-wringing problem in this country that EVERY SINGLE DEVELOPED NATION ON EARTH has managed to solve except us...



Update 1/13/23: Beyond belief (here)...

...and with the proper amount of righteous outrage, I bring you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” (more or less), and we’re taking just a short trip today back to 1/8/21, in which Vaush (in a very NSFW/H clip) gives a commentary in response to the 1/6 insurrection in this country...I had this video in mind given what just took place in Brazil and what is likely to be the total cluster of a Republican-run U.S. House for the next two years...



...and this may be a bit of an incongruously upbeat tune given the prior videos, but I still thought it was pretty good.

Monday Stuff

(Something about “George Santos” displaying the white power symbol here makes me laugh unintentionally. Why do all of these life forms doing the “OK” gesture hold their hands low the way they do? Do they honestly think they WON’T be seen making that gesture if they do that?)

John and Brett Erlich of The Damage Report tell us that the NY-03 U.S. House Rep pictured isn’t exactly getting off to a good start as he begins his career of constituent service, allegedly...office not set up yet, nobody taking calls or responding to emails/texts, etc...and yeah, I get Erlich’s tongue-in-cheek response - more here...



...and David Doel tells us about supporters of election-loser Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil staging their own 1/6-style insurrection...my hope is that this gets linked back to Bannon and Miller and those two cretins end up getting the justice that has escaped them in this country (GREAT point about the Repugs screeching about criminals illegally emigrating to this country over our border...well, what the hell do you call Bolsonaro... mildly NSFW/H...more here)...



...and it looks like the “party of Lincoln” in the U.S. House REALLY has a problem now, not because they care about the 99 percent of this country, but because their donors are apparently mad over last week’s ridiculous attempt at governance from the new Repug majority – Farron Cousins tells us more...



...and Sam, Emma and author and filmmaker Astra Taylor talk about right-wing judges tying to kill Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan – sounds like there are 2 trial cases, one in Missouri and one in Texas (of course) that have bubbled their way through the appeals courts to sympathetic conservative judges who have allowed the cases to proceed even though, in at least one, the plaintiffs don’t appear to have standing...but why bother with trivial details like actual legality when you’re trying to screw Democrats? And Sam makes a great point about how our “shadow docket” SCOTUS is looking for ANY possible excuse to take away any possible benefit from non-rich people (and why does it not surprise me in the least that this nonsense is funded by reactionary corporate assholes like the Mercers and Bernie Marcus of Home Depot...and with that in mind, isn’t this interesting)...



...and here is a compilation of clips from Rebel HQ...first, David Shuster brings us some Republican women being somewhat informed on abortion and others not having any idea of what the hell it is they’re talking about; next, Max Burns focuses on “Christian” preacher Jonathan Shelley wishing for Biden to die and opposing ANY woman running for office, and then back to Shuster discussing the spat between 1/6 insurrection organizer Ali Alexander and Marjorie Traitor Greene (should just lock the two of them in a cage and let them do their worst to each other)...



...and happy belated 75th (!) birthday to Kenny Loggins.