It seemed like Biden was breaking away from that toxic bullshit that crippled so many Democratic campaigns and candidates. Sadly, no.

What the Heck Is Joe Biden Thinking Lately?

After his historic midterm wins, he’s suddenly tacking right. A new hire may be why.

Perhaps that’s no surprise: These Obama-style policies have coincided with a major change atop the White House hierarchy of personnel. In late January, progressive ally Ron Klain announced he’d be stepping down as chief of staff; he was replaced by former corporate consultant and Obama apparatchik Jeffrey Zients. Zients has also brought Obama alums Anita Dunn and Steve Ricchetti—both effectively former lobbyists who have been criticized for evading the ethics constraints put on lobbyists—into greater decision-making positions.

Lauren Witzke is a disgusting piece of shit. I can say that because the truth is an absolute defense to defamation.

Couple sues Lauren Witzke for saying birth of their surrogate twins is ‘human trafficking’

…”Rather than congratulating Plaintiff on one [of] the happiest moments in his life, or perhaps just ignoring Plaintiff’s happy post, Defendant instead decided to spew hate and lies on the internet in an unprovoked and harmful manner,” Vaughn’s lawsuit said. “Defendant’s allegations of pedophilia and trafficking of human persons is so vile and obviously harmful that Plaintiff’s reputation may never recover.”

Thanks to Andrew C for pointing us to this story.  

Last week I poked fun of LBR for being wishy-washy, but it is a thorny issue.  Kevin Munger at Crooked Timber makes a pretty good case. 

The United States Should Ban TikTok

…There is no reason to give TikTok the benefit of the doubt. The major US platforms have consistently failed to be responsible stewards of the awesome power they have appropriated over our media and politics, and TikTok has demonstrated the same irresponsibility — except that they are far more vulnerable to pressure from the Chinese regime.

In a Congressional hearing in late October 2021, a TikTok executive said that TikTok “does not give information to the Chinese government and has sought to safeguard U.S. data.” Like so many other tech company executives, they were lying. Buzzfeed News released a major investigation in June 2022 that found that:

“engineers in China had access to US data between September 2021 and January 2022, at the very least…nine statements by eight different employees describe situations where US employees had to turn to their colleagues in China to determine how US user data was flowing.”

6 dead, including 3 kids, in Nashville school shooting; female shooter dead

TNHighwayPatrol are assisting local law enforcement & first responders at the scene. As we continue to respond, please join us in praying for the school, congregation & Nashville community.

https://abc7.com/nashville-school-shooting-covenant-active-shooter-tn/13027564/

Not a surprising result when you consider the fact that Senator Chris Coons likes to show off being horrible, whereas Carper has a more ho-hum, workaday approach to being one of the two worst Blue State Senators in congress.

As for this week’s poll. I’ll be curious to see how Karen Hartley-Nagle fares. Whoever read her the riot act after her constant fuckups early on deserves an award of some sort. I’ve never seen a Delaware politician rescue their viability by simply shutting the fuck up.

Marcus Henry Vs. Karen Hartley-Nagle who do you THINK WILL WIN? Not who do you want to win.

Universities and businesses closed.  Millions in the street…The protests in France and Israel remind me of the all out  (all in?) protests that would have followed Pence caving to Trump and preventing the EC vote count.   

If mere “minority rule” turns into something even worse, I suppose we’ll still get our chance.  

Tens of thousands of Israelis have taken to the streets to protest after Benjamin Netanyahu fired his defence minister over his opposition to a planned judicial overhaul.

Yoav Gallant had called on the prime minister to scrap the proposals which have divided the country, led to mass protests and sparked growing discontent within the military.

Related:

Has anyone checked to see if the 14th amendment’s “equal protection” clause can be used to tear down the Electoral College and/or US Senate?  That would be sweet.

The state-by-state aspect of the current system starts by dividing the nation’s more than 158,000,000 voters into 51 separate state-level silos. The current state-by-state winner-take-all system regularly enables a few thousand votes in a small number of states to decide the presidency — thereby fueling post-election controversies. The fact that a few thousand votes in a handful of closely divided states regularly decide the presidency is a recurring feature of the current system.

The presidency has been decided by an average of a mere 287,969 popular votes spread over an average of three states in the six presidential elections between 2000 and 2020. Inevitably, some of these battleground states end up being extremely close on Election Day. These close results, in turn, generate post-election doubt, controversy, litigation, and unrest over real or imagined irregularities.

In contrast, the winner’s average margin of victory in the national popular vote in these six elections was 4,668,496 — more than 16 times larger than 287,969. The danger posed by these post-election controversies in extremely close states is heightened because the country is currently in an era of consecutive non-landslide presidential elections.

Weak ass Dems will be weak ass Dems.

Biden’s FAA nominee bows out, after senators waver

…just days after the Senate Commerce Committee, which is vetting his nomination, postponed a vote to advance Washington to the Senate floor. Two senators who caucus with Democrats on the panel, Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) have been undecided on his nomination — and the committee only has a one-vote majority.

I do like how the writer mentioned that Jon Tester caucus’ with Democrats.  Let’s be honest, shall we? 

1. Collect premiums
2. Make getting claims paid impossible
3. PROFIT!!!  Yeah, baby!

How Cigna Saves Millions by Having Its Doctors Reject Claims Without Reading Them

If you don’t like thinking or having your thoughts provoked, don’t listen to this Highlands Bunker episode.  

Better get out and enjoy this beautiful day.  You don’t have many beautiful days left. 

Just before Christmas, federal health officials confirmed life expectancy in America had dropped for a nearly unprecedented second year in a row – down to 76 years. While countries all over the world saw life expectancy rebound during the second year of the pandemic after the arrival of vaccines, the U.S. did not.

Then, last week, more bad news: Maternal mortality in the U.S. reached a high in 2021. Also, a paper in the Journal of the American Medical Association found rising mortality rates among U.S. children and adolescents.

“This is the first time in my career that I’ve ever seen [an increase in pediatric mortality] – it’s always been declining in the United States for as long as I can remember,” says the JAMA paper’s lead author Steven Woolf, director emeritus of the Center on Society and Health at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Now, it’s increasing at a magnitude that has not occurred at least for half a century.”

Across the lifespan, and across every demographic group, Americans die at younger ages than their counterparts in other wealthy nations.

The toxicity of worldview, and malevolent energy of this list is impressive.

The Florida Legislature, a body controlled by Republicans for over two decades, has ceased to function as an independent body and instead serves as a rubber stamp for Ron DeSantis. The result of this one party rule now completely steered by the whims of a single right wing fanatic is a slew of unhinged fascist legislation that targets vulnerable communities, diminishes our freedoms and serves special interest groups at the expense of working people.

The barrage of bills filed by Florida Republicans is hard to believe so I will list them below, one by one, to illustrate just how extreme these proposals truly are.

I’m not trying to be alarmist, but a trillion-dollars federal bail out of the insurance industry seems inevitable. 

Insurance company profits must be protected, because …reasons.

Greed, racism, outright lying, treason, punching down… of all the things that Trump has normalized, this post from the Rude Pundit got me thinking the least toxic thing Trump has normalized for Republicans might be porn.

It is no secret that the DEGOP is trying to partisan-ize Delaware school board elections and thereby turn Delaware school districts into Florida-style racist, right-wing, homophobic and transphobic ideological gulags.

So far they’ve met with little success, but white christian nationalism never sleeps.

Big elections in Red Clay school board this year.

13th Republican Carlucci Coelho (whose whole campaign against DeShanna neal was calling them a socialist and a bad parent for having a trans kid) is running against Jose Matthews. Throw Jose some money. This could get dirty. http://www.jose4redclay.com

AJe English Wynn is running for the other seat in Red Clay. It’s currently held by the awesome Adriana Bohm, who is not running for reelection after a decade on the Board. One candidate John Shulli’s Twitter seems to be a dumpster fire of Trumpism. Another candidate Jing Han doesn’t seem to have much out there. Throw AJe some money http://www.ajeforredclay.com

There is something obscene about religious zealots being allowed to make healthcare decisions for the entire country.