Not All Suicides Are Unfortunate. Serial exploiter of female gymnasts commits suicide after being charged. I really think the entire sport of female gymnastics needs to be reconsidered. Sexual abuse, delaying of puberty, anorexia, mental manipulation. Too many horrible bi-products. Is it ultimately good for the participants? I mean, besides the parents with stars and dollar signs in their eyes?
What Is It With Rethugs And The LGBTQ Community? Georgia seditionist tried to adjourn House to stop consideration of LGBTQ rights. Rand Paul loses his shit over nomination of openly trans nomination. You know who they’re afraid of? Themselves. Or maybe their kids.
The Real Reason We’re Not Gonna Get The $15 Minimum Wage:
But Democrats don’t even have their own ranks in line behind a $15 minimum wage. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) opposes the policy, instead supporting a two-year phase-in of an $11 an hour wage, tied to inflation. Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) also came out against a $15 minimum wage.
REV: That’s what I was talking about yesterday. We can possibly upgrade from Sinema in a primary. But we’re stuck w/Manchin unless we get a bigger margin in the Senate.
Interior Secretary Nominee Deb Haaland Can Make A Huge Difference. That’s why all the fossils with fossil fuel ties are so afraid of her. Especially Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso:
John Barrasso of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the committee, said he was “troubled by many of Representative Haaland’s views”, which he characterized as “radical”.
Barrasso, who has questioned whether humans contribute to the climate crisis, also complained about a tweet in which Haaland said Republicans don’t believe in science. What he didn’t say was that the oil and gas industry has bankrolled his political career and he is personally invested in a company that transports a sizable portion of US natural gas.
From 2015 to 2020, Barrasso’s campaign and leadership political action committee, or Pac, took in more than $480,000 from the pacs of oil and gas companies, more than from any other industry, according to data analyzed by OpenSecrets.org.
Not to mention, another energy-dependent senator called Haaland a ‘whack job’.
Which reminds, me–I really think that Jennifer Granholm is gonna kick butt at the Department of Energy.
Is The Republican Party In Its ‘End Stages’? This piece makes a compelling case that the Rethugs are most like ‘the Communist Party of the Soviet Union of the late 1970s’.
I can already hear the howls about invidious comparisons. I do not mean that modern American Republicans are communists. Rather, I mean that the Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes.
No one thinks much about the Soviet Union in the late 1970s, and no one really should. This was a time referred to by the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, as the vremia zastoia—“the era of stagnation.” By that point, the Soviet Communist Party was a spent force, and ideological conviction was mostly for chumps and fanatics. A handful of party ideologues and the senior officers of the Soviet military might still have believed in “Marxism-Leninism”—the melding of aspirational communism to one-party dictatorship—but by and large, Soviet citizens knew that the party’s formulations about the rights of all people were just window dressing for rule by a small circle of old men in the Kremlin.
Talented Delaware Judge With Musical Skills Passes Away. Retired Superior Court Justice led quite a remarkable life. An excerpt:
In addition to his work on the bench, Judge Young was well-known for his work outside of court, particularly his comedic songwriting abilities, according to the Administrative Office of the Courts.
Judge Young authored “The Trial of Elinor Ruttee,” a musical celebrating 300 years of court on The Green in Dover; “Macbeth: A Family Musical; “A Tale of Two Cities: The Rock Opera”; “Moby Dick: A Maritime Musicale”; “An American Tragedy: A Comedy”; “Madame Bovary: Ho, Ho, Ho; “The Crucible: Plymouth Rocks”; “The Public Enemy: Runnin’ Wild”; and “The Tennessee Waltz.”
Nearly all performances involved members of the DSBA, and proceeds of the shows were donated to charity, particularly the Combined Campaign for Justice, which provides legal assistance to the indigent.
“He had a rare combination of historical knowledge of musical theater and an ear for everything interesting before 1975 and a stubborn tenacity to have things done the way he wanted them done,” said Family Court Judge James McGiffin, who frequently performed with Judge Young.
“He had a large measure of creative and comedic genius,” Judge McGiffin added.
Judge McGiffin described Judge Young as a “robust person” who “left a marvelous legacy. He raised two very successful sons (Jeff and Randy) and there was nothing in his life that was as important as his family.
Wayne Kursh, Delaware’s Road-Racing Maven, To Retire. He’s been around for so long that even I ‘ran’ in a couple of 10K’s he organized a l-o-o-ng time ago. A really good person who was able to do what he loved. And raised so much money for great causes. I don’t look for a sedentary retirement for him and Barb. Barb was one of the leading advocates for at-risk youth in Delaware, and has made a huge difference in people’s lives. Good people.
What do you want to talk about?