Ho hum, Republicans cherry-pick job growth rates in six states in order to claim that their tax "reform" law is creating jobs. Of course they're doing differential calculus (measuring the growth in the growth of job creation!) and presenting it to you as arithmetic -- in a nation that must add 140,000 jobs monthly just to keep up with population growth, hearing that Nebraska has added a mere 7,000 more jobs over the first six months of 2018 than over the first six months of 2017 isn't that impressive, which is why Republicans said ZOMG THATZ 250 PERCENTAGEZ HIGHERZ!!!!! And Democrats could just as easily twitter to the effect that the tax "reform" law is slowing job creation by citing, "for example," the negative "job growth acceleration figures" in Idaho, Montana, Kentucky, Minnesota, and Nevada.
From the "Technology Can-So Connect People" file: Fran Quigley at TruthOut describes T1International, a group of actual grassroots activists and diabetes sufferers connecting with each other to protest the absurdly high cost of the life-saving drug insulin. No one can say for sure exactly how the price of insulin has gone up 1,000 percent over the last quarter century (cough evil cough), but if folks in relatively well-off America are actually risking death by rationing their insulin (and, er, dying by rationing their insulin), you can guess how it is for folks in the developing world. But please, right-wingers, tell us again how Big Gummint fouls everything up, how the "free" market always provides a solution, and how someone who uses spreadsheets to count her carbohydrates is completely to blame for all her problems.
Surprise, surprise, our Administration's uncivilized policy of separating families who cross our border is taxing our Justice Department's ability to do almost any other meaningful work. Meaning, among other things, that now is a pretty good time to smuggle drugs or beat your wife and kids. And all so our President can diddle the rage glands of his most devoted worshipers! But here's a lawsuit I'm pretty sure will succeed no matter which knuckle-dragging federal judge hears it: that our Administration's willful interpretation of federal law has resulted in our Justice Department abrogating its duties that our laws say they must discharge.
I'll admit I'm not that emotionally-invested in our Administration revoking former CIA Chief John Brennan's security clearance after Mr. Brennan slammed them -- like John Brennan was some sort of hero before he proved the Stopped Clock Rule against an Administration that stops all clocks! -- but I notice that our Administration's PR brain trust, such as it is, hopes to roll out more security clearance revocations at "optimum times" so they can serve as "a distraction during unfavorable news cycles." Meaning they could release them pretty much any time at all, then, right? For this clown car of an Administration, everything's a nail and creating some new drama is the only hammer.
Finally, Travis Lupick at Yes! magazine writes a wide-ranging article about depression and mental health called "The Surprising Links Between Your Mental Health and Everyone Else's." You may recognize the key takeaway -- that people are "communal creatures" now living in a world that "erodes communities and isolates people" -- from Johann Hari's writings about fighting drug addiction by giving drug addicts more stuff to do and more people to connect with, and you'll hear from Mr. Hari here (he's faced down some demons of his own), as well as Dr. Gabor Maté ("(j)ust about every mental affliction is actually an adaptive response that then becomes a source of problems later on"), a Black Lives Matter activist, the founder of the Trauma Center in Boston, and a community activist who saved himself from drug addiction only after finding a community of other recovering drug addicts.
Comments