Friday Stuff

Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report talks about the SCOTUS of Hangin’ Judge JR hearing 2 cases that likely will end up gutting President Biden’s student debt forgiveness program...to paraphrase The Eternal George Carlin, the “R” party wants us to be smart enough to work the machines but too dumb to know anything else, and making college more affordable runs in opposition to that disgusting goal (mildly NSFW/H...and great point about the debt that Mango Mussolini cancelled without a word of protest...and I have a feeling Repugs would have sued even if Biden had used the ’65 Higher Education Act, as Figueredo says)...



...and keeping with the theme of education, Thom Hartmann informs us about #DeathSantis and his attempt to take over public schools in Flori-DUUUH! (yeah, basically you can teach the history of old, dead white guys and that’s about it, as Thom says...and I didn’t know about the “Constitutional Republic” word game played by the wingnuts, but I guess you learn something new every day)...



Update: So, supposedly, I might have to register somewhere in order to criticize "Meatball Ron"? Too funny (here).

...and David Doel found an interesting media nugget of sorts about Politico supporting rail industry propaganda by running ads in their content while this Adam Wren person of that media org criticized David Sirota and The Lever for trying to raise $$ for their journalism, which was perfectly legal the last I checked...and good job by Ro Khanna and Chris Deluzio to step up here with legislation in response...



...and Beau tells us about Eli Lilly capping insulin at $35 a month (and yeah, I think there’s a connection to Biden and the Inflation Reduction Act also...on the one hand, this is great, but on the other hand, what took so damn long?)...



...and in a similar story, Mike Papantonio and Farron Cousins discuss Moderna deciding not to raise the price of the COVID vaccine; this comes after Bernie Sanders said he wanted to bring in the CEO to testify before the Sanders committee about why the drug maker wants to gouge consumers on pricing...



...and Robert Reich asks if there is a worker shortage out there, and he argues that the answer is no; I would call it a shortage of workers who don’t want to be completely screwed over by employers...



...and I know this is a few days old, but Rachel Maddow spoke with Dem State Senator Machaela Cavanaugh of Nebraska, on her state and the country overall losing its damn mind over “drag queen story hour” and other stuff affecting LGBTQ individuals including kids; I wish Cavanaugh good luck in her quest to push back against all of this insanity...



...and RIP Wayne Shorter.

Wednesday Stuff

Awww, let’s shed some crocodile tears for poor widdle Marjorie Trailer Park Greene who just wants a safe space from a woman and her son who supposedly turned into demons (gee, projection much, Margie?) while the GA-14 rep was at a D.C. restaurant...yeah, what goes around comes around indeed (Ana and Cenk of TYT tell us more)...



...and in the latest example of Wingnuts In Disarray, Kyle Kulinski and David Pakman team up to tell us that it looks like CPAC is doing the big swirl in the hopper, as it were, which is fine with me because I thought that gathering of hominid missing links received far too much media attention as it is, but I’m inclined to agree with Kyle that the whole thing with Matt Schlapp grabbing the junk of a male at the conference (allegedly of course) is a bridge too far for people like Mayonnaise Mike Pence, among others (and when even Fix Noise runs for the hills, you’ve got a problem)...



...and speaking of The Roger Ailes BS Factory, Jesse Dollemore discusses Rupert The Pirate letting Wonder Boy Jared Kushner know about Biden ads and giving Combover Caligula talking points during the ’20 campaign; I think Dollemore is pretty spot-on, but I would only say that the GOP works for Fix Noise instead of the other way around...I’m definitely not the sharpest knife in the drawer, so to speak, but I was saying that network was the media wing of the Republican Party 20 years ago, for what it’s worth (not much I suppose)...



Update 3/3/23: Totally deserved (here).

...and Sam of The Majority Report discusses how Our Treasonous Ochre Abomination screwed Biden on the EPA by forcing out about 1,200 scientists, along with that ridiculous CRA bill (more here) which doesn’t help either...GREAT point by Sam about how voting for a person of a particular party is really a mandate to maintain the functions of government, or not in the case of the “R” party...as Sam says, we’ve lost about 3,000 EPA employees total since 2004 thanks to Dubya but mainly Generalissimo Trump, as well as employees at the DOJ and the IRS also...



...and I know I touched on Blackstone yesterday, but this clip from More Perfect Union and Second Thought tells us how insidious Stephen A. Schwarzman truly is, profiting off the misery of others (and it doesn’t matter how much you claim to support the arts and endowments if you’re a scurrilous, rapacious capitalist weasel at your core, as Schwarzman is...and the utterly awful legacy of Pete Peterson lives on in Schwarzman of course)...



...and in the latest news about Flori-DUUUH!, we find out about Sen. Blaise Ingoglia of the “Republic” Party who introduced a bill to ban the Democratic Party; as noted here, though, assuming his joke of a piece of legislation becomes law in Ron #DeathSantis-stan, it definitely could boomerang in a way Ingoglia did not intend...



...and Brian Tyler Cohen brings us the latest on Dem U.S. House Rep Jamie Raskin schooling the clueless mistake of Colorado’s third congressional district; I started this post with the nuttiness of Marjorie Traitor Greene, so I guess it’s only apropos to include “Bo-Bo Boebert” too (and as far as the whole “Democrat Party” thing goes...and kudos to Raskin for pushing back on that...it looks like I need to bring this back also)...



...and happy 65th birthday to Nik Kershaw.

Tuesday Stuff

Farron Cousins gives us the latest developments in Flor-DUUUH!, and that would be a typically unconscionable law making it easier for #DeathSantis to sue his critics for libel and defamation (with the help of this Alex Andrade wingnut as noted here)...and yeah, wouldn’t it be sweet to see this boneheaded stunt boomerang on Repug-friendly media the way Cousins describes?...



...and this clip from TYT Indisputable with Sharon Reed and Jeff Wiggins discusses the “Karen” in Hatboro near these parts who lost it over some kind of Spanish language thing at a pizza parlor; I guess they were watching soccer on TV, which was perfectly legal the last I checked (I don’t think the possibility that this outburst was premedicated should be discounted either, partly because of her claim about “I have so-and-so followers” – the curse of social media strikes again, and I’m removing my tongue from my cheek as I say that...well, everybody knows what type of person this woman is now...ugh!)...



...and John and Rayy Vana of The Damage Report tell us about Margaret Brennan of the “third eye” network trying to claim that, by legitimately criticizing journalists and their news coverage, Bernie Sanders is “targeting” them somehow – good push back by Bernie as usual... definitely NOT the same as the Gropenfuhrer and his caterwauling about “fake news,” and marking the fourth estate for violence...kudos to John for working in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs...



...and for the sake of idiot Ukraine war “truthers” out there such as noted here (I honestly didn’t know that was a thing, but I guess I should never underestimate this country’s ability to be totally stoo-pid), I give you this from the German network DW and correspondent Mathias Bolinger (more here)...



...and Emma V. tells us about horrific child labor conditions at a meat packing facility involving dangerous sanitation practices (some outfit called PSSI, bankrolled by the Blackstone private equity firm); great report for Julia Ainsley of NBC News...yeah, typical for these corporate criminals like Blackstone to leverage themselves with debt into oblivion, then use that as an excuse for “belt tightening” to the point where kids are hired for work like that described in the video...a shame that we don’t have enough “muckraking” journos like Upton Sinclair or Jacob Riis these days, who probably would be vilified 24/7 by Fix Noise, Newsmax and others (and no, I’m not giving “Dark Brandon” a pass on this either as opposed to Mango Mussolini)...



Update 3/1/23: Kudos to President Biden for this.

...and with the prior clip in mind, I should note that we recently observed the 75th anniversary of Wood Guthrie’s song “Deportee,” performed here by his son Arlo (more here).

Monday Stuff

I realize this story is a couple of days old at this point, but I think it needs to be mentioned again; Jesse Dollemore tells us of “Dilbert” cartoonist and Trumpist wingnut Scott Adams basically setting probably his most important revenue stream on fire (i.e., the syndication of his lame-ass comic) because he couldn’t keep his racist pie hole shut, and a slew of newspapers dropped Adams in response as noted here...as someone who works ostensibly in IT, I can tell you that there was a time when the whole “Dilbert” thing was a bit of an interesting novelty, but at this point, Adams’s work is pretty tired hackery making fun of lazy, “woke” workers more than anything else (maybe it was always that and I just realized it a bit late...que sera sera...NSFW/H)...



...also, it looks like “Senator Snowball” is going to hang it up because he’s dealing with long COVID as noted here – sorry to hear that, but I think this is a bit of karma for a guy who opposed COVID relief for others (and profiting off the pandemic too as noted here...and I don’t think Di-Fi should get a pass here either)...Inhofe appears at about 2:12 in this clip; somehow, I don’t think he’s making jokes about ‘Rona now...



...and Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report brings us this clip of residents of East Palestine, OH (Jim Stewart in particular, as well as others) confronting Norfolk Southern CEO Alan Shaw on the destruction his company caused with the rail disaster that pretty much contaminated the town (and let’s not let guv Mike DeWine off the hook either; I believe it was his decision to do that burn of the leftover chemicals on the rail cars that completely fouled the air...personally, I’d like to know what the hell was supposedly so damn funny in that clip of DeWine ostensibly drinking the water...and yeah, the “Cult 45” homages to Our Treasonous Orange Pustule on display in that town are pretty sickening all right)...



...and the latest from Second Thought discusses American Fascism and the “groomer” panic (a very minor “nit” to pick...I wish he hadn’t included Mehdi Hasan in the beginning, since he definitely is not part of the crowd yelling about this, though maybe to refute it; another very small nit to pick is that I wish he’d found a way to go after Matt Walsh also, but he hits the major points for sure (including going after Chaya Raichik)...and I think it's correct to equate the “moral panic” over LGBTQ individuals with being left-handed, which was anathema for a time – and to me, the stuff at about 20:42 drawing a straight line between the “groomer” panic in this country and the Nazis was a real punch in the gut – kudos to J.T. Chapman for pointing that out in particular, and for doing his best to make these videos interesting and engaging...and I agree that signing up for Nebula is a great deal...all the best with the ways he’s trying to upgrade this content, though it stands pretty well on its own IMO)...



...and this Majority Report clip with Emma V. and Olayemi Olurin tells us about drag queens fighting back in Tennessee against ridiculous attempts in that state to put them out of business; I don’t know of a drag queen who every spread COVID or was responsible for a mass shooting (also NSFW/H...I have a creepy feeling that we can expect something like COINTELPRO 2 under a Republican government to go after African Americans, LGBTQ people, and anyone considered to be “woke,” whatever that means...these TMR videos go on a bit long at times, but usually that’s OK as far as I’m concerned)...



Update: I would call this an interesting bit of karma.

...and you can, in part, consider this clip my response to that racist idiot Scott Adams, and my contribution for Black History Month I guess; I always thought that was a stupid idea mainly because African Americans should be celebrated every month, along with everybody else.