Saturday Stuff

Leeja Miller tells us How Philanthropy is Ruining America (interesting) – so many great points, but one of them is how the philanthropy scam (and it is just that in many cases) is really just another means of tax avoidance for the uber-wealthy...didn’t think much about how crooked foundations can be until I watched this, and yeah, they can be sweet deals for family members with the right estate planning...and I’d never heard of ”philanthrocapitalism” until now, truth be told, and I also never thought much before about the importance of mutual aid orgs either, but I can see how important they became during and as a result of the pandemic...of course, the easiest answer is for the rich TO JUST PAY THEIR DAMN TAXES, AND THAT GOES FOR THE POLITICIANS ALSO OF COURSE (NSFW/H)...



...and when it comes to the High Priest, if you will, of scamming people and not paying what he owes, Jesse Dollemore (not him) tells us about Our Treasonous Orange Crapsack attacking the Georgia prosecutor looking to indict him for that infamous phone call to Brad Raffensperger...oh, and #45 made some typically disgusting remark about Biden’s sons...”A sociopath’s stand-up act” indeed, and I’m sure Jesse is totally spot-on about the 2024 elections (and even THIS didn’t satisfy the wingnuts of course)...



...and Beau tells us that the DOJ is looking at another potential area of illegality for the Gropenfuhrer, and that is fundraising after yelling about fraud in the 2020 election, and the “Save America” PAC, with an apparent assist from Bernard Kerik...I had to include this clip to show Beau’s great T-shirt if for no other reason...



...and when it comes to the minions of Dear Leader Fergus Laing, retired Army Major Richard Ojeda (again, definitely not him) informs us that Marjorie Trailer Park Greene’s boyfriend sez there will be a full-scale riot if Trump loses again – so tired of these pitiable life forms braying like sheep to the slaughter...



...and Luke Beasley, sitting in for David Pakman, reminds us of Bo-Bo Boebert taking credit for an infrastructure spending bill she voted against, of course (specifically for wind turbines), along with jabs from “Dark Brandon” at that assclown Tuberville and Mango Mussolini of course, and nice job by Beasley to run down the list of accomplishments from the Biden Administration at the end...good luck trying to get our beyond useless corporate media to pay attention, however...love to see that change somehow (and to do something about Boebert, click here)...



...and here are three more tunes from The Band to conclude my tribute to Robbie Robertson (blistering guitar solo from Robertson on this next number).

Thursday Stuff

Brian Tyler Cohen and voting rights attorney Marc Elias discuss the failure of the anti-abortion ballot initiative in Ohio...and while it's true that the measure was to raise the percentage of votes required to pass a ballot initiative to 60 percent as opposed to 50, it definitely had to do with abortion, albeit indirectly (and even though it went down, look for Frank LaRose to try and use this to energize his campaign to win the Repug nomination and take on Sherrod Brown in that state’s U.S. Senate race)...



...and you’d better believe that the “fundies” are on board with eliminating not just abortion, but contraception, same-sex marriage, and the whole gamut of what you could justifiably IMO call social progress, to the point where preacher Russell Moore, who formerly was a member of the Southern Baptist Convention, is apparently shocked that congregants dismiss quotes from Our Lord as “liberal talking points”...not sure why Moore would be surprised, since that’s the direction they’re going with their adoration of Dear Leader Trump...a lot of important history here about the rise of the evangelicals and the role played by The Sainted Ronnie R, echoing some of the Leeja Miller video from about a week or so ago, though I think this stuff bears repeating...and I think Mike Figueredo is spot-on to equate this with what you could call “late-stage capitalism” (NSFW/H)...



...with another symptom of our de-evolution in this country being the Trumpists ascribing to “the big lie,” as Rayy Vana tells us (and Republicans generally as far as I’m concerned)...yes, I know what these people are, but unfortunately, we need to pay attention to these life forms...



...and as Ana and John of TYT tell us here, the same forces behind the garbage I noted previously are coming for your kids too, and this clip tells us about what’s going on in Flori-DUUH!, in essence banning Shakespeare... “Tempt not too much the hatred of my spirit, for I am sick when I do look on thee.”...and for those of you keeping score at home, that’s from “A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” appropriately enough.

Oh, and OF COOURRSE PragerU is somehow involved...that video which I think has to do with “Christopher Columbus” is as ridiculous as you’d expect, as is the one with “Frederick Douglass”...surprised the video doesn’t mention the Bowling Green Massacre too (a minor issue with Ana is that I don’t know of anybody on our side trying to dumb people down through education; if she has evidence of that, I wish she’d let us know).

Meanwhile in the world of reality, do you want to know what the REAL Frederick Douglass thought of slavery? I give you the following (from here)...

“What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July?

“I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy—a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages.”

Anyway, here is the TYT clip...



...and as a tribute to Robbie Robertson of The Band, I offer the following...



...along with this Robertson solo tune.

Wednesday Stuff

David Shuster discusses some Fix Noise hairdo named Julie Banderas twisting herself into figurative knots trying to defend Combover Caligula, saying being a narcissist and hatching schemes to stay in office isn’t a crime...hate to break the news to you cupcake, but where the first may not constitute illegality, the second definitely does (here)...



...oh, but the Gropenfuhrer wants his D.C. trial moved to a supposedly “diverse” location like West Virginia, as David Pakman tells us (which is about as “diverse” as the difference between alabaster and mayonnaise...I can’t take credit for that line – forget where I first saw it, but I think it fits... and the alleged “free speech” defense is typically pathetic, coming from a character who’s little game of “three card monte” is just about up...more here)...



...and Mehdi Hasan tells us about the great unwashed (led by their thrice-indicted former *president) trashing the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team, including Megan Rapinoe, for their recent World Cup loss (with you-know-who ATTACKING THE WOMEN IN ALL CAPS ON “TRUTH SEPTIC”...I can recall when an alleged "man" doing something like that would be scorned en masse, but I guess those days are over, sadly)...



...and even though Our Treasonous Orange Crapsack is no longer occupying An Oval Office (and, God and the voters willing, never will again), his wretched legacy lives on in the person of wingnut judges and justices, including this loon Brantley Starr, who ordered lawyers for Southwest Airlines to attend “religious liberty” training...a lot to unpack here, but apparently a Southwest flight attendant named Charlene Carter sued her employer because she alleged that she was terminated for expressing her views opposing abortion on social media...sounds like Southwest fumbled it a bit in handling this case, leading to her winning an award...that’s how the system works I realize, but making the lawyers attend an 8-hour class from the Alliance Defending Freedom, identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “hate group,” over a minor wording mixup is beyond parody (Mike Figueredo tells us about it...NSFW/H)...



...and I now give you the latest installment of “This Day In Doomsy History” from 8/9/13, in which we learn about the role of the Koch Brothers in the climate change denial machine (and yes, David Koch now resides in some kind of an afterlife we can only imagine, but the awful legacy of he and his brother Charles live on in Project 2025, mentioned here)...



Update 8/10/23: As far as I'm concerned, blood is on the hands of every climate change denialist over this.

...and RIP Robbie Robertson – another musical icon leaves us; I’ll plan to feature some more tunes by The Band over the next day or so.

Tuesday Stuff

Jesse Dollemore tells us that it looks like attorneys will seek a restraining order against the Gropenfuhrer and his attempts to intimidate witnesseses and other social media nonsense, as well as the antics of #45’s attorneys...and I think Jesse makes a great point that this behavior should come as absolutely no surprise...yeah "Trumpty Dumpty" isn’t acting like a third-rate mobster, is he? Not much he isn’t...



...and Kyle Kulinski tells us how Mango Mussolini robs his supporters yet again, this time to keep Melania well-pampered apparently (and I have to admit that I’m getting a little tired of ANYBODY being politically infatuated with “Governor Bully” who has NO POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS ON A DAMN THING TO HELP ANYBODY! “Oh, but he’s so courageous for coming out against Our Treasonous Orange Crapsack”...freaking spare me! He’s STILL polling in the single digits last I checked)...



...and turning to health care matters, this clip of “The Classroom” from More Perfect Union tells us how United Healthcare rips off both doctors and patients...a family member in the Doomsy household is in the health care biz (and make no mistake...it IS a business, though it shouldn’t be that IMO), and United Healthcare are truly one of the VERY WORST corporate actors in existence, particularly in this space (with Sean Morrow and correspondent Alec Opperman)...



...and now for something completely different, as somebody once said, and that is the very latest on manatee orgies in South Flori-DUUUH!, with Francesca, Cenk and Jordan Uhl of TYT (God, how “woke” can manatees get...and yes, I’m kidding...”if the manatees are rockin’, don’t come a-knockin’” indeed...I’d like to think that “pudding fingers” #DeathSantis would know not to say anything about this, but yeah, on second thought, he probably would, especially since the brother manatees were apparently letting nature take its course...more on manatees is here and here, probably more than you’d ever want to know :-)...



...and RIP acclaimed film director William Friedkin, who helmed “The Exorcist” and “The French Connection,” among other movies...concerning the latter of the two, I though this was a great story about getting permission to film the legendary scene with Gene Hackman driving the car chasing the elevated train...



...and I always associate this tune with summer - hope it provides a nice mid-week respite.

Monday Stuff

Thom Hartmann discusses some truly disturbing info buried in Jack Smith’s multiple-count indictment of Our Treasonous Orange Pestilence, and that is the plan for what could have been basically another version of the Kent State massacre, but on a national scale (The Sainted Ronnie R’s remarks as CA guv led to the bloodbath Reagan wanted in Ohio on 5/1/70...I didn’t know the Kent State carnage led to an explosion of membership in The Weather Underground, but it doesn’t surprise me...frightening to realize how close we were to losing our government, and that’s not hyperbole - I mean recently...and of course Rojo and Sen. Grasshole are allegedly involved, and Tuberville also...feel like I’m picking up with this asshat from Alabama where I left off last Friday...and it looks like Jamelle Bouie noticed the same thing as Hartmann based on this)...



...and Chris Hayes speaks with PA Dem U.S. House member Madeleine Dean, who rips Senate Repugs who acquitted #45 (and silence from Bri-Fi too of course...I give Dean a lot of credit, but it’s almost quaint at this point to expect Sen. Mr. Elaine Chao to act in any kind of an honorable way)...



...and Beau tells us about the latest social media mess with Combover Caligula – he just can’t stop trying to grift, and he also can’t stop yelling and acting up like the demented toddler that he is (as I type this, there’s probably some stuff going on with the Obama-appointed judge...we’ll see of course)...



...and when it comes to Trumpist sycophants, it looks like the “mayor of 9/11” is in legal trouble too (“your tits belong to me,” huh? God, I feel like I need to be de-loused after this, and also for the anti-Semitic stuff too, and I mean no disrespect to Jesse Dollemore) – NSFW/H...



...and when it comes to the competition for the Repug Party nomination for preznit next year, it looks like Flori-DUUH! guv #DeathSantis is into “slitting throats”...(good one about not getting his hands dirty unless it involves pudding...and not to quibble with Cousins, but really, it’s only 45 people since Grover Cleveland served two non-consecutive terms...I think Cousins is completely spot-on with the rest of his commentary, though)...



...and David Doel tells us about CNBC’s Jim Cramer quaking in his metaphorical boots over UAW President Shawn Fain and a potential strike (Cramer remains an unbelievable tool...and more on former UAW head Walter Reuther is here, by the way)...



...and for anybody in Ohio who may be reading this, I would just like to remind you of how important tomorrow’s vote is (more here)...



Update 8/8/23: Sweet! (here, and yeah, I think this about says it).

...and I’m continuing to work my way down the list of summer selections with this tune.