I grew up in the 1960s, and verbal memes were significant in my black experience. Conversational shorthand was prevalent, with words like solid, psych’, and even rap having a different meaning then than now. Solid could take on multiple meanings depending on context; it could mean I understand, you are...
Insurance
For Christmas (and Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa), Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders wants to give working-class West Virginians a child tax credit, child care assistance, free preschool, two free years of community college, lower health insurance premiums, expanded Medicare, home health care assistance for the elderly, an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit...
Tim Burchett is an actual U.S. representative from the state of Tennessee, and he apparently has no idea how unemployment insurance (UI) works. As in, we don’t (very rarely, anyway) pay people who quit their jobs. The people who are quitting are frequently applying early for Social Security and/or living off...
Rising seas that inundate coastal properties cause billions of dollars in damage and essentially have bankrupted FEMA. You and I ( the country's taxpayers) fund the National Flood Insurance Program, and the program heavily subsidizes waterfront homeowner's flood insurance most of whom are extremely wealthy. But starting October 1 of this year, those subsidies...
It begins…more likely prosecution of Trump corporate tax fraud coming first because it’ll always be about strong cases. Trump Organization facing possible criminal charges, sources say https://t.co/yfzrKV0jGu — Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) June 28, 2021 The Trump Organization is expected to be hit with criminal charges as soon as next week...
This is not a joke. This is what Texans must live through. A governor and his party that has Texas in a state of disarray. Texas Governor needs electricity, not a wall See full episodes here. It was just a few months ago when Texas suffered one of its worst...
Former President Trump ordered the Pentagon to release all of its information on “unidentified aerial phenomena” (UAP) within 18 days in his last coronavirus relief bill in December 2020. More inexplicable sightings of unidentified flying objects (UFOs) will be released for public scrutiny in June — including a UFO that broke...
A few years ago, I wrote the piece titled “Boomers Must Take Some Blame And Help Fix Generation Y Unhappy Problem” without any malintent. I was raked over the coals by my boomer friends who accused me of agism and much more. Some said I was pitting generations against each...
It depresses me to acknowledge this, but the Republicans’ commitment to blatant and serial lying, and Orwellian “make believe” governing, pose a real threat by overwhelming the public debate and individual’s efforts to stay grounded. While a bit well-worn (and of uncertain provenance), this quote is fundamentally true: “A lie can travel halfway around...
Among the countless examples of inane “Washington group-think” is the notion that only Democrats have to “pay for” their legislative priorities (i.e., enact corresponding tax increases and/or spending cuts to match the costs of new programs). Republicans do not remotely consider themselves so constrained — in part because they also are...
Received this e-mail today from Democracy for America: On March 9th the United States House of Representatives passed H.R.842, Protecting the Right to Organize Act of 2021, known as the PRO Act. The PRO Act vastly expands labor protections related to employees' rights to organize and collectively bargain in the workplace....
I step back to reflect on many things, including this strangest year of my more than 2 ½ decades as a classroom teacher. It is also as I approach what I suppose is a milestone of sorts, my 75th birthday on May 23. And of course since my major course...
The raison d'être of the Republican Party for much of the past 100 years has been to slam the brakes on anything that would make the poor and middle class feel more secure and prosperous. Look at the list of popular government programs and initiatives they’ve decried as “socialism”: unemployment insurance, Social Security,...
Whether it’s soccer teams or sandwich shops, financialization was there before the pandemic, only making some of its supply-chain hijacking yet another example of an impending capitalist disaster. Re-regulation must remain important as crises loom in the post-pandemic recovery. A 2017 interview with UMass’s Gerald Epstein points to the need to...
Ending qualified immunity for police officers would certainly fill the gap in insurance company revenues created by universal healthcare in the US. There’s plenty of other liabilities that insurance companies can cover including civilian firearms liability insurance on the model of auto insurance. Forcing individual officers to bear more individual liability...
Wait, I’m confused. I thought we lived in a free-market democracy in which corporations are “people” with sacrosanct “opinions” (which, for some reason, usually come in the form of gobs and gobs of campaign cash). So when corporations literally write their own legislation, it’s A-okay. That’s just what the Founding Fathers...
“As in the Times Op-Ed from which the book originated, the title refers to the results of studies conducted in Germany from the mid-nineteen-eighties onward, which reported, among other intriguing findings, that eighty per cent of East German women always experienced orgasm during sex, compared to sixty-three per cent of...
No. No. We don’t need infrastructure bills in America . We are fine according to republicans. Well, that state of mind is being changed I bet as I type. (or maybe not according to Republican thinking) Manatee County Florida is under mandatory evacuations and every homeowner can expect higher homeowner...
Here’s some big news today out of Pennsylvania: .@JohnFetterman announces he raised $3.9 million in the first quarter for his Pennsylvania U.S. Senate run, through 140,000 contributions. A big haul of 💰 at an early stage. — Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) April 1, 2021 Lt. Gov. John Fetterman said he raised...
Like Martin Luther objecting to Pope Leo X selling indulgences to raise money for a variety of excesses, the environmental costs of carbon markets far exceed the benefits. Austerity would have denied us Renaissance art which is less at risk in an age of non-fungible tokens. Today the consequences for the planet...
The stuck ship does tell us something about the fragility of global trade and the flow of capital. Fungible Space Logistics, that concept popularized by United Parcel Service is also about the spatial problems of concrete versus abstract global networks. x Everyone is talking about the big ship getting stuck...
These kinds of stories drive me up the wall. There’s nothing heartwarming or cute about this, but it’s the kind of thing people in this country slurp up like syrup. Nothing against the journalist who brought this grotesquerie to light, but my takeaway from this tragic tale is that we...
Texas really is full of dumb GOP fuckers: x NEW: Texas AG Ken Paxton left the state during the deadly power outages last week to meet with his counterpart in Utah. Paxton's spox did not answer Qs about when he left or returned and why the trip was not postponed....
Here’s some big news on health care: Sen. Michael Bennet is leading the drive for a public health insurance option in the U.S. The Colorado Democrat and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine first introduced their public option bill, Medicare-X, three years ago and reintroduced it on Wednesday. Under the bill, Medicare-X...
Kitchen Table Kibitzing is a community series for those who wish to share a virtual kitchen table with other readers of Daily Kos who aren’t throwing pies at one another. Drop by to talk about music, your weather, your garden, or what you cooked for supper…. Newcomers may notice that...
The best explanation of short selling (as it applies to GameStop) that I've read pic.twitter.com/o9ZL5HqsKf — John M. Cunningham (@jmcunning) January 28, 2021 1/2Short selling means borrowing shares and immediately selling them. When the price goes down, they buy them back for cents and return them to the lender. This...
You will not believe what I was told by a manager in a Winn Dixie tonight. I am so ticked off at people running around with no masks in the middle of a pandemic I called a manager tonight because people have to get milk and bread and not everyone...
No doubt there are Trump pardons, but the cluster falls close to the _____. Apparently Trump has been advised that the optics of guilt are greater exposure to his soon to be mounting legal woes. This includes even the Trumpian small insults, a hastily assembled 1776 position paper to prescribe...
I live in Virginia, where we have now entered phase 1b for vaccination. On Sunday notices were sent out as to who was eligible. As a teacher in the Pre-K through 12 range, I was included. Our medical care is through Virginia Hospital Center, where my wife’s cancer was largely...
There is a Wall Street Journal report that Trump’s pressure on a top federal prosecutor in Atlanta to resign was part of a broader push by President Trump to overturn the state’s election results. x Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA): “This is a very narrow article of impeachment … it is focused on...
M-i-c-k-e-y, Why because we like it. M-M-MMT. “We collectively decide just what counts as a resource, economic base, or productive work.” OTOH, it could all be trippin’ on bong hits. The superlative science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson’s latest novel, The Ministry For The Future, is essentially about using MMT to...
Just because he wanted a spectacle that could have resulted in mass casualties and even death doesn’t change the event. Race has little to do with it, yet. Motive still needs further investigation, despite the mass of CTs and disinformation. It seems more likely that the bomber did not die...
From The Huffington Post: For weeks, the couple had done almost nothing but sell. Loeffler was one of several senators who faced public outrage for unloading millions of dollars in stock before most Americans understood the towering threat posed by the coronavirus pandemic. Then shortly before the CARES Act, a...
Trumpist anti-certifying efforts for the remaining states seem a fools’ errand but Trump and Giuliani seem to be the best fools for it. Regardless, they are chasing some version of an apocalyptic conclusion. x And Bannon talking about it openly on his insane Alex Jones-level podcast. — S.V. Dáte (@svdate) November 18,...
I am overjoyed that Joe Biden won the presidency, but am also aware of the serious damage presented by the Republicans potentially controlling the Senate, giving them a major blocking tool. We all know this. The key to understanding the Republican Party, and its serious threat to the nation, is that they...
Don’t dangle Twitter threads like this in front of me when my heart is already bursting with schadenfreude. Are you trying to kill me, Twitter? It’s too much! Quick, someone show me a Chachi tweet to bring me down! Or some Jon Voight gibberish. I can’t safely hold this much joy...
The lawfare against the ACA now being heard in SCOTUS now resembles the attempts to reverse the results of the 2020 election. Scorched earth and total lawfare, total landscaping. Schrödinger's ballots. Sources close to Trump described his unsupported accusations as a desperate way to save face x Memo to my...
Apparently, with four days left, time has run out for the 2016-style October Surprise. Only a major terror attack(s) could make a shift in what looks to be a trending Biden victory. There’s plenty of spookery in how Giuliani and Bannon developed the pre-impeachment attempts to sway the 2020 election. Lots...
Some very good news today out of Georgia courtesy of PPP’s latest poll: PPP’s newest Georgia poll finds Jon Ossoff right on the cusp of avoiding a runoff in his race against David Perdue. Ossoff is at 47% to 44% for Perdue with Libertarian Shane Hazel at 3%. Ossoff’s 3...