Friday Stuff

I know I haven’t checked in with John Oliver in quite awhile, but he recently gave us this segment on the plight of farmworkers that I found to be particularly well done (NSFW/H). – so, two people die from falling into a manure vat and all they rate is $5 grand apiece? And yeah, wasn’t that reaction great from the farm owner (I guess that’s what he was) when Dolores Huerta was mentioned? And the other family of the guy who yelled at a bunch of workers using the “N” word was a trip also; can only imagine what happens when the cameras aren’t rolling (the segment makes me recall when we used to air programs like this)...



...and when it comes to bottom feeders trying to subvert our democracy, Brian Tyler Cohen gives us this recent recording of Cleta Mitchell talking to other traitors about how to disenfranchise primarily younger voters...Mitchell, in addition to playing political footsie with the Gropenfuhrer, is also buds with Ginni Thomas, wife of our thoroughly compromised SCOTUS justice (one of them anyway) as noted here...



...and Ana and Cenk of TYT discuss corporations going back to bribing attorneys general (this RAGA group it seems, who no doubt made common cause with Mitchell and her pals), despite the fact that many at these corps said earlier that they wouldn’t do that if any of the AGs were found to have anything to do with "the big lie" and the 1/6 insurrection...more great work from ProPublica – and yeah, Comcast is acting typically sleazy here again...once more, these two find a way to blame Democrats, and yes, I realize the “D” party is also pretty slimy in taking corporate dough, but when it comes to the attack on our government on 1/6, that’s a different discussion and Ana and Cenk should treat it as such...



...and when it comes to undermining our government, Jesse Dollemore (not him) tells us about barely sentient life form Lauren (“Democrat Party”) Boebert, who keeps screeching that we’re a “Constitutional republic” and not a democracy...here is my take on what’s going on with that; that phrasing is deliberate, because the end game for the wingnuts is to hold their utterly awful Article V “Constitutional convention” and tear our most important founding document to shreds, rewriting it for the benefit of Charles Koch, Peter Thiel, the Sacklers, and all of the other plutocrats in this country (many of whom chose to donate to “big lie” proponents and insurrectionists that Ana and Cenk noted earlier)...if that catastrophic development ever happened, then yeah, we would be a “Constitutional republic” and NOTHING like a true democracy...of course, Boebert is way too dumb to realize how she’s giving away the game here with her inane phrasing (Jesse makes something like that point at around 7:00 – her idiocy is typical for someone associated with stuff like this)...



...turning to more people-powered stuff, Robert Reich tells us about the impact of junk fees (kind of a boomer “tell” to refer to a Dolly Parton “record,” which is pretty “analog” of him, but his points are spot-on otherwise)...



...and this New York Times video essay tells us how non-compete agreements are abused by employers in all manner of industries which often have absolutely nothing to do with retaining intellectual property and more to do with controlling workers trying to seek gainful employment (info on the FTC proposal to ban non-competes is here)...



...and when it comes to individual action on a “grass roots” (or asphalt?) level, John and Jayar of The Damage Report tell us about “the Governator” saying hasta la vista, baby to a pothole near his residence (road repair is indeed an issue that crosses political lines...plenty of work to do in that regard near Le Manse Doomsy)...



...and given that tomorrow is Earth Day, I should note that I usually include the video for “If A Tree Falls” by Bruce Cockburn, but I’d like to change it up this year with the following selection...I’m kind of hot and cold on Dave Matthews to be honest, but it seems that, when it comes to politics and important causes, he’s a pretty good dude.

Thursday Stuff

Beau of the Fifth Column tells us about Dominion settling its lawsuit with The Roger Ailes BS Factory...typically great point about how this settlement could lead to a flood of additional litigation from people involved with the 1/6 insurrection, as well as anyone else who could have been impacted by that network’s attacks on Dominion, and as Beau notes, the Smartmatic lawsuit is a whole other mess that that propaganda network will have to deal with...also, this should give more of an impetus to trying to get that network banned from military bases...



...and Stephen Colbert tells us more here, along with an “apology” from Fix Noise, and also including more NFTs from Combover Caligula, Iowa’s child labor bill passed at 4:52 AM and King Chuckie’s coronation plans...



...and continuing with still more antics from Mango Mussolini (one of these days, he’s actually going to be behind bars...), the watchdog group CREW sez Our Treasonous Orange Pestilence made $160 mil from foreign governments as prez (doesn’t consider how much $$ he made domestically), as Jesse Dollemore tells us...



...and color me shocked (well, not really), but U.S. Senate Repugs are hoping Our Ochre Abomination stays the hell out of ’24 races (that’s why EVERY Dem for Congress, including the U.S. House, should make their GOP opponent disavow the Gropenfuhrer, if they’ll do that of course)...



...and I know I’ve taken plenty of well-deserved IMO shots at Flori-DUUH! recently, but Sam of The Majority Report tells us about a navy commander in Martin County, FL who had some commendable words about fanaticism, religious or otherwise, within our borders...props to him for standing up, this time as a civilian (he references Adm. Hyman Rickover, who said we should be exposed to different ideas, something he has apparently communicated to his son...spot on)...



...and going in exactly the opposite direction, Ana and Cenk of TYT tell us that wingnuts are launching a “woke” phone app to let conservative snowflakes know what products to avoid if they hurt their precious fee fees – I thought Ana stumbled onto a good point that too many people in this country think the only power they have is through consumerism, which is definitely not the case...



...and taking the “anti woke” stuff to a thoroughly ridiculous extreme, Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report informs us of some guy in Topeka, Kansas arrested for destroying cases of Bud Light and exposing himself, apparently (NSFW/H, especially towards the end), leading to another idiot melting down at a LEGO store, as well as this other assclown at “Build a Bear” (and somehow I don’t think that idiot at the end with the Biden 2024 shirt is actually a Biden voter...and yeah, I think “clout chasing” describes it, sadly - more here)...



...and I thought this was a neat newer tune; I haven’t had anything from Seth Meyers in awhile I know, not because I dislike him I hasten to add, but mainly because I just haven’t paid much attention to his clips lately...they’re either too long or cover redundant topics; I’ll see if I can work him back into these posts...also, maybe I should have something pot-related given the date, but I got nuthin' on that for now.

Wednesday Stuff

This More Perfect Union “Classroom” clip with F.D. Signifier tells us the tale of “Neutron Jack” Welch, who (according to the clip) invented mass layoffs in the ‘80s, though I think “Chainsaw Al” Dunlap at Sunbeam and Unisys disaster architect Michael Blumenthal deserve dishonorable mentions also...the clip focuses on how Welch basically destroyed the family-and-union-friendly atmosphere of General Electric in pursuit of the proverbial “bottom line,” buying up assets that led to massive shareholder wealth including insurance companies...the clip also focuses on executive largess from stock buybacks, which used to be illegal until they were allowed by The Sainted Ronnie R...Welch’s practices played a big role in mergers and acquisitions, and when it comes to the “business roundtable,” I think the supervillain analogy is perfectly apt (NSFW/H)...



...and continuing with the theme of misbehaving CEO’s, David Doel brings us Andi Owen of MillerKnoll, who recently got mad in a Zoom meeting or whatever about employees wanting a bonus after she gave herself one for at least two years running of over a million dollars each year – video also points out how unions raise wages for members and non-members...



...and Brian Tyler Cohen discusses Repug congresswoman Nancy Mace actually making some sense when talking about abortion and women’s health care (atypically for her party), though I think Cohen is spot-on to say that Mace is only saying this stuff out of concern for her electoral prospects, and you can tell that Mace is on the right track because this Fix Noise hairdo is trying to get her to shut up (Cohen, as usual, commendably "brings the receipts" to show where the "party of Lincoln" really stands on this stuff)...



...and I have to admit that I thought Justin Pearson was already back at the Tennessee state house along with Justin Jones, though apparently not, and it also seems that Pearson and his constituents are getting threats from the governmental body where Pearson serves that is getting a lot more attention from voters and the media than it could ever want, as noted here (John and Francesca of The Damage Report tell us more..."we've got to stand for something or fall for everything" indeed)...



Update 1 4/20/23: And it looks like a member of GOP "leadership" who voted to expel the "Tennessee Three" is now accused of sexually harassing interns - heckuva job! (here).

Update 2 4/20/23: Womp womp...

...and the threats in Tennessee seem to be more political in nature, but Rachel Maddow discussed a recording that was a lot more overt when it comes to bodily harm...it seems that a newspaper publisher in McCurtain County, Oklahoma left a voice-activated recorder at some kind of local government meeting because he thought stuff was going on away from public scrutiny, and boy, did he ever turn out to be right about that...racist conversations, “killing and burying reporters,” and on and on, with laughs and jokes aplenty over it...I see a trail of criminal and possibly civil litigation resulting from this that could last for years...



...and Thom Hartmann asks if civil rights are getting cancelled for African Americans, which unfortunately is a pertinent question... and yeah, he’s right about how this tracks with the rise of the Gropenfuhrer (scary stuff about how African American history is getting erased from textbooks and school curricula, but yeah, that’s typical for Trumpism, which is just the latest flavor of GOP intolerance...and given the role that Oklahoma Repug Governor Kevin Stitt is playing here, his indignation over the McCurtain County stuff in the prior clip is merely a bad joke as far as I’m concerned)...



...and Farron Cousins, sitting in for David Pakman, tells us that millennial and Gen Z voters have pretty much had it with the GOP for all of the reasons Cousins points out (can’t blame them one bit...guns, climate change, abortion, being saddled with ridiculous debt before entering the workforce, to say nothing of the racial intolerance on display in the prior videos)...



Update: More here.

...and today marks the 20th anniversary of the passing of choreographer Cholly Atkins, who taught dance moves to a whole bunch of Motown acts “back in the day,” including The Temptations as shown in the following clip.

Tuesday Stuff

Once more, I know what The Lincoln Project is, but I thought this was an apropos little clip about 15-vote House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his antics with manufacturing a debt ceiling crisis – once more, this NEVER happens when a Repug is in the White House, but only when there’s a Dem and the “loyal opposition” is in charge of the U.S. House...



...and I know this related clip from Ali Velshi is about three months old, but I don’t think a lot has substantively changed on this issue since then of course; Velshi gets into the “nitty gritty” of how bad a default by this country would be, and he draws a parallel to this and what happened under President Obama about 12 years ago...



...next, David Doel discusses Dem U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein’s health issues (I don’t think Ro Khanna should be on Fix Noise – and leave it to this hairdo to try and attack Fetterman in the process even though he isn’t part of this discussion; I wish Khanna had found a way to mention that Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao has been away also, as Kirsten Gillibrand did – but Khanna is right when it comes to Feinstein...I think we all know people who’ve dealt with friends or family members in declining mental health, and I don’t say this to “pile on,” but Feinstein needs to step down and get the help and support she needs...and I still have an axe to grind with Gillibrand over Al Franken, so no, I definitely don’t take her seriously...in that Klobuchar clip, what was more telling to me, aside from the spat with Feinstein, were the empty seats on the Repug side of the conference table; anyone missing from that hearing should have a damn good explanation for it...and of course, leave it to #MoscowMitch to try and exploit a situation against Democrats any way he can as noted here and here)...



...and John, Cenk and Jordan Uhl of TYT bring us the story of some wingnut in Nebraska, State Sen. Steve Edrman, who basically echoes the “great replacement theory” from Tuckums on abortion, pretty much saying that those who were aborted could have been working in jobs, or something (as opposed to those nasty foreigners who got the jobs instead...what a train wreck of an alleged human being this guy Erdman is...he wants a six-week abortion ban like Flori-DUUUH! of course...makes me recall “human capital stock” Kevin Hassett...”strip the state for parts” indeed...I guess the emerging new line from the GQP is that abortion is bad because it deprives workers for the corporate machine, which is a variation of what the equally-useless Tim Scott also said recently – and no, I don’t believe that that will be a winning strategy either)...



...heading south, David Shuster of Rebel HQ tells us about a cop in Pensacola, Flori-DUUH! who pulled over an African American counselor for the apparently criminal offense of TRYING TO DO HIS DAMN JOB! And yes, I know that the statute on that state of allegedly “fleeing” police is ridiculously strict, but that doesn’t in any way justify the actions of this cop, and good for this counselor to sue the police, all of which happened in 2020...



...and continuing with cataloging Republican stupidity (and I acknowledge that I end up doing an awful lot of that around here), South Dakota Repug guv Kristi (“Unsafe At Any Speed”) Noem recently bragged about giving her two-year-old daughter a hunting rifle...oh, but the NRA isn’t a cult...just keep telling yourself that (more here)...



...and I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m doing it again now; this Now This clip discusses the case of Daniel Perry, for whom Texas Governor Greg (“All Hat No Cattle”) Abbott has pledged a pardon when Perry is sentenced for killing a Black Lives Matter protestor (more here and here, including a defense of Perry from “Killer Kyle”...sorry if it's hard to read the text in this video; might be better off watching the clip from YouTube)...



...and RIP Ahmad Jamal.

Monday Stuff

I apologize for including so much idiocy from South Carolina Repug senatorial mistake Tim Scott (who somehow is operating under the delusion that he could actually be president), but it is instructive in a way to see his utterly nonsensical answers to the question of supporting a nationwide abortion ban (Janet Yellen? Really??)...Chris Hayes is exactly right in that the “R” party wants the courts to inflict a nationwide ban so political bottom-feeders like Scott can try to escape from this issue, even though it shouldn’t be hard for a Dem to tie extremist judges to Scott and the “party of Lincoln”...one can hope so anyway (and yeah. #DeathSantis couldn't wait to free his fingers from pudding long enough to sign that horrible 6-week ban into law as noted here)...



...and frequent Fix Noise contributor and former detective Ted Williams goes off script while talking to Neil Cavuto after the Louisville shooting and points out that IT’S THE DAMN GUNS!!!, as Brian Tyler Cohen tells us (NSFW/H...as does this guy, amazingly enough)...



Update 4/21/23: Yeah, I think this says it.

...and Ana of Cenk of TYT discuss some Trumpist loon named Seth Weathers launching “woke free beer” aimed at Bud Light of course...and $20 for a six-pack? Too damn funny (more here, and from the “’f’ around and find out” department, I give you this)...



...and Mike Figueredo of The Humanist Report discusses nutball state senator Mike Moon in Missouri, who says it’s OK for 12-year-olds to get married...I linked to this a few days ago I know but I think it needs to be mentioned again (Moon is confronted by Dem Peter Meredith in the clip...and yeah, I love that “California values” remark from this assclown, or whatever that was, as if his lunacy is somehow the fault of an accursed blue state...NSFW/H also)...



...and John and Francesca of The Damage Report bring us up to date on the latest illegality with SCOTUS justice Almost Silent Clarence Thomas and retro-Klan-member-named-guy Harlan Crow...Michael Beschloss reminds us here that liberal Abe Fortas was driven off the court way back when for a hell of a lot less than this (paging Merrick Garland? Can anybody find a pulse?)...I thought this was a good related column from Jamelle Bouie in “the old gray lady”...and believe it or not, there’s more, as noted here...



Update 4/18/23: And this sure was a predictable response from the “party of Lincoln,” wasn’t it? “That Democrat Party is trying to smear a great American again! Corruption in six-figure amounts happens all the time in Washington! SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP YOU FILTHY LIB!”

...and like last year I believe, the tax filing day was moved to tomorrow 4/18; hope you all end up OK – we did all right, fortunately.