If your heart has swelled that Republicans are now saying that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" probably won't pass Congress in 2016, Dave Johnson at the Campaign for America's Future warns you that Republicans are really mad that the TPP doesn't cause even more chaos and destruction. The main sticking point for Republicans these days? That the TPP doesn't allow tobacco corporations to use "investor-state tribunals" to nullify anti-smoking laws. When some Republican goes on about how much he hates the TPP but won't tell you exactly why he hates it, remember that the reason he hates it is most likely because it's not evil enough.
FAIR asserts that "Credulous Reporting of Deceptive Propaganda Made Planned Parenthood Attack Inevitable." I won't go that far -- assholes like Robert Dear are always one pathetic excuse away from going off -- but this is the place to draw a line from the ACORN video to the Shirley Sherrod video to the NPR fundraiser video to the Planned Parenthood videos, and it's also the place to wonder how so many "elite" "journalists," all at least as trained in semiotics as I am, somehow didn't understand that editing a video creates an entirely new video.
Heather Vogell at ProPublica describes how private corporations caring for the disabled bend politicians to their will, particularly when someone's died under their care. She tells a sad tale -- children dying of neglect and abuse, facilities using restraint techniques outlawed in other countries over a century ago, campaign money coincidentally popping up when states attempt reforms. Remember when someone tells you that the rich need more money to create jobs that the rich are just as likely, if not more likely, to use their unearned largesse as hush money when they foul up.
You knew WalMart's forays into China displaced good American jobs, but here comes the Economic Policy Institute to try and determine how many: over 400,000 jobs between 2001 and 2013, and that's a "conservative" estimate. EPI says over three-quarters of those were manufacturing jobs, which of course they were, since Chinese wage slaves get paid in dung pellets to do what Americans used to do for a wage they could live on, support a family on, and send kids to college on. Keep in mind, also, that WalMart's just one corporation -- overall, "(t)he growing goods trade deficit with China displaced 3.2 million U.S. jobs in the United States between 2001 and 2013." That's a drag of 20,000 lost jobs every month. Is this a good time to remind you that China's only one country?
Finally, Charlie Renville, of Fargo, ND, wants his son's principal fired because his high school, enforcing school policy, wouldn't print a photo of his son with his favorite rifle in its yearbook. Even better, the dad says "so begins the fight for freedom." "Begins"? Such drama -- too many Americans want to be mentioned in the same breath as Frederick Douglass without actually doing any of the hard work of being Frederick Douglass. And "(t)he rifle is a rifle he built and it is his favorite rifle"? Should I get Zombie Gilbert and Sullivan to put that to music? Let's never mention this fool again.
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