C. Robert Gibson profiles "Eight Democrats and Republicans Who Shouldn't Be Running for President." Gut reaction: only eight? Dominant theme: a lot of these fools are experts in corporate welfare handouts and nothing else, and not just Scott Walker, Chris Christie, and Bobby Jindal either, but also the putatively compassionate John Kasich and the putative Democrat Martin O'Malley, the latter at this moment trying to figure out how he can be the "sensible" liberal alternative to Hillary Clinton. "Not giving away taxpayer money to corporations" might have made him that alternative.
At freaking last, the SEC finally (after two years!) passes a rule requiring corporate disclosure of CEO-to-median-worker pay. And the arguments opposing the rule are painfully desperate -- that it might accidentally spur corporate boards to pay their CEOs more (though pretty much anything does that!), that it would make workers obsessed with how their salaries relate to everyone else's (which might, ah, expose more wage discrimination), that it would cost corporations money to do all that tabulation (because monks with quill pens do that, not computers!), and that corporations would be "shamed" (we can only hope!).
The Consumerist covers the International Trade Commission's 2012 ruling that a largely unknown plastic retainer-manufacturing outfit violated Invisalign's patent on the device -- not by importing not actual plastic retainers, but by importing the computer files used to make them on a 3D printer. You can see why this could be a good thing (we should prevent crooks from using the but we didn't import the actual thing ha ha snort! excuse to avoid just prosecution) and you can also see why this could be a bad thing (as one advocacy group director points out, the ruling could lead to "all telecommunications, including phone calls, audio streams and television broadcasts" becoming "articles of importation").
In an unorthodox and brilliant move, Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent seeking the Democratic Presidential nomination, will accept Liberty University's invitation to speak there. Liberty University is the late Rev. Jerry Falwell's creation, you may recall, and here we will begin to test a theory I've long held is true -- that the marriage between evangelicals and right-wing corporatists is one of convenience rather than conviction. I wish Mr. Sanders luck -- but he won't need as much of it as the "liberal" media would have you think.
Finally, Great and Awesome and Holy Real American Super-President Mitch McConnell accuses President Obama of "demoniz(ing) (his) opponents" by saying hard-line Republicans and hard-line Iranians have the same aim, i.e., to scuttle the Iran nuke deal. Don't like being told you're "with the terrorists"? Well, welcome to my world! He also said we don't need to update the Voting Rights Act because of "how different the South is now." The South is more subtle about its racism now, nothing more -- and the Voting Rights Advancement Act wouldn't target the South per se, but areas demonstrating a pattern of voting rights violations, and if those areas all happen to be in the South, tough toodles.
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