As Sasha Abramsky at The Nation helps us survey "The Hate Behind Donald Trump's Success," I remain stunned that the Republican establishment professes not to know how the hell we got to the point where one of the five still-standing Republican Presidential candidates says, out loud on the debate floor, that the debate resembles a wrestling match. If you remember how the establishment stood by and allowed right-wing rageheads to call Iraq war opponents "traitors" who "hated America" and "stood with the terrorists," or how the establishment decided, in the midst of the worst economic downturn of the last 80 years, to simply stonewall Barack Obama's entire agenda just-because, or how the establishment fiddled while corporate and "liberal" media enablers pretended the Tea Party were something other than bat-guano nuts, then you know how it came to this. And if you can count Republican caucus members in Congress, you also know who benefited -- and who'll benefit, ultimately, from a Trump Presidency.
From the "What's Scott Walker Doing Now?" file: the Wisconsin state legislature has just presented him with a bill that would essentially let debt collectors run wild on the populace, and he actually hasn't signed it. I do wish Wonkette's Matt Carpenter had remembered the bigger piece of weapons-grade PR against "debtor Scott Walker" -- not the debt he ran up in his campaign, but the personal debt National Journal found on his financial disclosures, which included at least two credit card debts over $10,000. Perhaps Mr. Walker will veto the bill, and then it'll magically come back to him with an exemption for government officials, who, after all, need to think solely about serving the people. Yes, he is that cold.
At that most recent Republican Presidential "debate," Marco Rubio reminded the world that Donald Trump has a thing called Trump University over which he's getting sued as we speak, but Casey Quinlan at Think Progress reminds us that Mr. Rubio was a big cheerleader for a far worse "educational" outlet, the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, on whose behalf Mr. Rubio wrote the Department of Education requesting "leniency." And you may recall that when Mr. Rubio was asked about it later, he said he was "helping a constituent," though I'm quite sure many of his real constituents (i.e., the good citizens of Florida) suffered actual pain and hardship at the hands of Corinthian.
Congress finally manages to pass a bill outlawing internet service taxes forever. They even managed to attach it to a must-pass bill, like they suddenly remembered how to do things or something. Now, "internet service taxes" (generally assessed on your internet connection) should not be confused with internet sales taxes -- I'm no fan of sales taxes generally, but banning internet sales taxes may not be the hill I want to die on in the fight against sales taxes, either.
Finally, Nick Surgey, writing at PR Watch, reveals that Arch Coal, now in bankruptcy proceedings, gave money to the nefarious climate change denialists at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute. We don't know how much money Arch Coal shoveled their way, but you do have to wonder if maybe they could have avoided bankruptcy by, oh, I don't know, changing with the times and investing in renewable energy sources, instead of stamping their feet and demanding that they shouldn't be made to do anything any differently.
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