CNN is not only starting up its own PR hackery shop, it's calling it "Courageous." No, this is not an Onion article -- "Courageous" (and I suspect I'll always put that in quotation marks) will deliver "news-like content on behalf of advertisers," but they promise they'll be "clearly labeling that and differentiating that." Remember back in 1996, when Roger Ailes promised everyone Fox News wouldn't be a right-wing news outlet just because a guy like him helped create it? Then you already know how much that promise means.
Excellent news: the Department of Education, after much pressure from good citizens like you, has decided to expand debt forgiveness to Corinthian students. Corinthian, you recall, is the for-profit college chain that folded in April after DOE assessed record fines. Personal to those who screech ZOMG TEH TAXPAYERS HAZ TO PAYZ FOR TEH LOANS!!!: where were you when our government gave out these loans? Cheering them on, probably -- or calling the Obama Administration's modest efforts at reforming federal student loan programs "socialism." No, I don't think I'm exaggerating about that.
North Carolina's reactionary state legislature overrides a Pat McCrory veto of an ag-gag law Vice suggests might be "the worst in the nation." That's right, it was too tough a pill even for Mr. McCrory, arguably the most reactionary Governor in America and that's saying something, to swallow. If the legislature wants to know why folks can't just go to the police when they see something (hint: because the law they wrote cites "duty of loyalty to the employer" as if that means a damn), then I want to know why existing laws against theft don't protect corporations from "espionage."
Ho hum, Scott Walker's Wisconsin also ranks dead last among U.S. states in "business start-up activity," which is exactly the sort of thing a man trying to sell his competence would hang his hat on. Here's what happens next: a) Scott Walker blames Obama, though the nation's economy as a whole is doing better than Wisconsin's; b) Scott Walker laughs and says his critics are always out to get him (even if these critics now include the Ewing Marion Kaufmann Foundation), and c) if the "liberal" media gets up the nerve to report it (once they're done fellating him for riding a Harley in Iowa), he'll complain about how campaigns are so "negative." How to avoid negativity: don't do evil.
Finally, Minnesota native/abject moron posts, to Barack Obama's new Twitter account, an image of the famous "Hope" photo with a noose around Mr. Obama's neck. Then, naturally, he suggests it's everyone else's fault that they didn't understand he was really complaining about Mr. Obama's "communism" -- because, as we know, hanging Communists is a much more vivid image from American history than hanging black folks. Several quite justified Secret Service visits and at least one job loss later, it pleases me to note that we will never have to speak of Jeff Gullickson again.
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