Now free from the horrible tether of net neutrality, Verizon throttles California firefighter data in the midst of that state's wildfire -- and then has the cojones to suggest that if Santa Clara County firefighters don't like it, they can switch to a data plan that costs twice as much! I admit I feel a little ashamed for arguing that you should support net neutrality because you support the freedom to go where you want on the internet, and not that you should support net neutrality so that corporations can't hinder firefighters' attempts to talk to each other in the middle of a fucking wildfire.
In case you were wondering how right-wing news hacks were dealing with all those Paul Manafort convictions and Michael Cohen guilty pleas from last week, well, they're dealing with it about as well as you can expect -- saying the convictions are for "non-crimes," they're evidence of a "witch hunt," that further charges are "fake news," that Mr. Cohen was "coerced" into implicating our President, and also too WHAT ABOUTZ TEH DEMON-CRATZ!!!!! Pimps gotta pimp, I guess. (As an aside, I don't really care that some Fox News reporters are apparently leaving out of disgust, since they really should have been disgusted with their employer many, many years ago.)
But the rot has also reached the "liberal" media! No, really, I'm not impressed that a CNN host pointed out on-air that a pro-Trump "analyst" also advises our President's 2020 re-election campaign and is thus contractually obligated not to say anything bad about our President, because a network with actual ethics would never have hired such an individual in the first place. And therefore we can't dismiss the possibility that CNN knew of Mr. Astorino's conflict, and decided outing him on the air would be "great" drama. If only we had an a la carte cable packaging law -- say, one that would force our cable provider to refund us at cost for the channels we wouldn't watch -- we would have a way of punishing channels that make a mockery of American journalism.
Homeless advocate reminds us that simple charity toward the homeless -- by, you know, giving them food -- is against the law in so many areas of our great land. The folks who whine about TEH EIGHTY ZILLYUNZ GUN LAWZ!!!!!! might want to attend all the laws on the books that actually prevent acts of charity, but sadly, I bet a lot of them don't want to see homeless people around, either. Would it be worth it to retort that they ought to work toward some non-awful homeless policy if they don't want to see them around? No, it probably would not be worth it -- hate is a lot easier than love.
D.C. district court judge strikes down most of three Presidential executive orders that supposedly aim to get "underperforming" employees out of our government more quickly, but actually just harass federal workers. I was about to say "don't a lot of these things violate whatever contracts these workers have with our government?" But it's almost beside the point to say so, since we only have a year or so before our Supreme Court gets its grubby mitts on this case and concocts some pretzel logic to justify our President's actions.
Finally, Randolph County (GA) elections board smacks down a proposal to close seven out of nine polling places in the county, after weeks of public agitation against the proposal. But, ah, WSB, there's a better word than "controversial" for a plan to suppress the vote of mostly rural and black folks. And that word is evil. And if we pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act, we can fight this kind of evil a lot better than we can now.
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