Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

If rights aren’t universal, they are privilege, not rights.

Museums are not America’s attic for its racist shit.

Donald Trump found guilty as fuck – May 30, 2024!

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Relentless negativity is not a sign that you are more realistic.

Today’s gop: why go just far enough when too far is right there?

Wow, you are pre-disappointed. How surprising.

If you cannot answer whether trump lost the 2020 election, you are unfit for office.

Republicans got rid of McCarthy. Democrats chose not to save him.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Innocent people do not delay justice.

Most of you should go to bed and try to be better Jackals in the morning.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Someone should tell Republicans that violence is the last refuge of the incompetent, or possibly the first.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

Fuck these fucking interesting times.

People are weird.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

With all due respect and assumptions of good faith, please fuck off into the sun.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

“A king is only a king if we bow down.” – Rev. William Barber

This really is a full service blog.

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Archives for 2014

Don’t Like That Page On Contraception In Your Bio Book? Just Rip It Out.

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A school board in Arizona reacted to a page covering contraception in a high school biology book that they disgreed with much like a small child would–by ripping it out:

After a crusading religious group showed up at the Gilbert, Arizona school board meeting with three Republican state senators to complain about the presence of a mention of abortion in an honors biology text book, the board voted to get rid of that material. It was determined that the most efficient way to remove the offending material is to literally remove it – as in, tear the whole page out of the book.

We get it–you start telling kids about abortions, and then they start having them for fun. Cause, you know, kids will be kids.

Team Blackness also discussed a Florida man serving jail time for trying to start a “race war” and the questionable motives of Domino’s Pizza’s founder.

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Distilling the problem down

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Similar to Kevin Drum and the link between lead and crime, Josh Marshall has started building an extended narrative in support of a simple but powerful idea. This time it has to do with why Democrats keep underperforming in the midterms and to a lesser degree elsewhere as well. He kicked it off with a lengthy must-read including plenty of data but the nut comes down to this.

[Y]ou cannot make middle class wage growth and wealth inequality the center of your politics unless you have a set of policies which credibly claims some real shot at addressing the problem.

I don’t know, maybe it seems complicated to other people, but as a native Pittsburgher the answer seems pretty clear to me. Unions created the middle class. As unions die the middle class will die with them.

Those bosses who paid Pinkertons to mow down Homestead strikers in 1892 wanted the same thing Kochs want today. Keep the workers divided and insecure and you can do anything you want. Guess why Republicans throw their bodies on the tracks to stop the Affordable Care Act or any other plan to guarantee health coverage. When it comes to keeping drones loyal the constant fear of sickness and bankruptcy works better and costs less than an employee gym or paid family leave.

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Breaking the Law and Not Giving a Shit

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Jump

***

And the banksters continue to screw us all:

In the netherworld of consumer debt, there are zombies: bills that cannot be killed even by declaring personal bankruptcy.

Tens of thousands of Americans who went through bankruptcy are still haunted by debts long after — sometimes as long as a decade after — federal judges have extinguished the bills in court.

The problem, state and federal officials suspect, is that some of the nation’s biggest banks ignore bankruptcy court discharges, which render the debts void. Paying no heed to the courts, the banks keep the debts alive on credit reports, essentially forcing borrowers to make payments on bills that they do not legally owe.

The practice — a subtle but powerful tactic that effectively holds the credit report hostage until borrowers pay — potentially breathes new life into the pools of bad debt that are bought by financial firms.

Now lawyers with the United States Trustee Program, an arm of the Justice Department, are investigating JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Synchrony Financial, formerly known as GE Capital Retail Finance, suspecting the banks of violating federal bankruptcy law by ignoring the discharge injunction, say people briefed on the investigations.

The banks say that they comply with all federal laws in their collection and sale of debt.

Still, federal judges have started to raise alarms that some banks are threatening the foundations of bankruptcy.

Judge Robert D. Drain of the federal bankruptcy court in White Plains said in one opinion that debt buyers know that a bank “will refuse to correct the credit report to reflect the obligor’s bankruptcy discharge, which means that the debtor will feel significant added pressure to obtain a ‘clean’ report by paying the debt,” according to court documents.

I mean, it’s only a court order, right?

Look, we all know how this is going to play out. They’ll be investigated, determined to be guilty, they’ll make a deal where they pay a pittance in fines, and maybe, if we are lucky, stop the practice for a while and move on some new and novel way to screw us, and then get back to business as usual. Meanwhile, the fines will come nowhere near to the profits they made, and all the while bankster friendly politicians will re-write the laws to make what they were doing legal or to further weaken regulation so next time they won’t get caught or we won’t have the means to investigate them. All the while, we’ll be heaping praise on human detritus like Jamie Dimon.

If you are a sociopath, what the banks are doing make complete and total sense. They’re just responding to the incentives we have created for them.

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Mwarriage and cross subsidies

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My wife and I are going to the wedding of two close friends this weekend. Tammy and Emily have been together almost as long as my wife and I have been together. Together they have adopted a cat, bought a house, kept each other from punching family members who were curious if the lesbian thing was just a phase, put up with annoying parents who wanted grand kids five years ago, cheered each other on, bitched about bad bosses, been a source of calm and comfort in times of stress, and otherwise helped each other to be the best person that they want to be. And they do it together with a smile, a laugh and an easy grace.

We are looking forward to their wedding as both a night out without kids, and as a means of celebrating two really good friends being really happy together.

Over the summer, we talked about health insurance. It looks like it still makes sense for them to keep seperate employer sponsored policies as both of their employers will pick up most of the cost of the employee but provide little subsidy to a spouse. During that conversation, I started to think about pricing models.

Same sex marriage, at least in the states that allow it, and under the condition that both members are sero-negative, is a decent employer sponsored health insurance subsidy to the breeders.

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Plenty of Ebola Challenges Still to Be Overcome

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NYC Dr. Craig Spencer has gone home, virus-free, even if the media didn’t pay as much attention to his recovery as it did to his diagnosis. Thomas Duncan’s family has reached a settlement with Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital — “Terms of settlement were not disclosed, but the family’s lawyer said it would be enough to care for Duncan’s parents and his four children, NBC News reported. The attorney also said the hospital wouldn’t charge the family for Duncan’s treatment…” Some of his family members still sound a little bitter. So does this guy..

But the epidemic has not yet been smothered in Africa. From the Washington Post, “Governments, groups striving to become as agile as the Ebola virus“:

The news out of West Africa in recent days — good and bad — has demonstrated a fundamental challenge in the fight against Ebola: The virus is more nimble than the human response to it. The landscape of infection and disease has changed dramatically in recent weeks, even as institutions have largely stuck to blueprints drafted months ago…

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Why do Democrats Lose?

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This is why we lose:

Senate Democrats are working on plans to hold a vote authorizing construction of the Keystone XL pipeline — approval that Democrats believe might bolster the chances of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), who faces a tough runoff election next month.

It was not immediately clear Tuesday night whether Republicans would consent to proceeding with such a vote during the lame-duck session that begins on Wednesday — especially given the high stakes surrounding Landrieu’s reelection race. Such a move would also draw howls from the environmental movement who had hoped that President Obama would resolve a years-long dispute over a long-awaited energy project in their favor.

Several Senate Democratic aides confirmed on Tuesday evening that talks are underway to allow for a vote authorizing construction of the pipeline in the coming days. The aides, who were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter, said that details on language of the bill authorizing and its timing were not yet settled, but likely would be among the topics of conversation as Congress reconvenes Wednesday.

Landrieu is expected to make a formal announcement of plans to hold a vote later Tuesday or on Wednesday, the aides said.

Well, that makes a shitload of sense. The Senate is out of our control until the next election when we might pick up a few seats, so Landrieu’s seat really isn’t that important now (although I do agree that every seat is important). The DSCC has basically pulled the plug on the campaign, and the polls show her behind. She’s not going to win, and really, no one is going to notice.

So why on earth would the Democratic party cave on Keystone? Why? What is the possible point? It will not do anything for the economy, it is not going to have an impact on domestic fuel prices, this is Canadian oil drawn from the most environmentally damaging way possible, and it is going to infuriate environmental groups. Allowing this vote does nothing but show the Democrats are spineless and many of them don’t stand for anything.

Trust me, we don’t need this stunt to provide us more proof.

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