You know what's even worse than Rep. Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) explaining how tax brackets work pretty thoroughly and our "liberal" media refusing to understand it? Right-wing fools calling the "Green New Deal" a "leftist fantasy program." Folks actually do want less pollution and more renewable energy in their lives, so calling their sincere hopes and dreams a "fantasy" is pretty insulting. Oh, but it's even worse than that: in an era where solar and wind production costs have almost achieved parity with coal and oil costs, calling renewable energy a "fantasy program" is also pretty insulting.
Ari Paul catches a New York Times op-ed asserting that pot is actually extraordinarily harmful. The Times probably thinks it's doing its due diligence in presenting "opposing views," but I only want opposing views that actually make good arguments, not "arguments" that present anecdotes as evidence and cherry-pick the data so obviously it'd make the Cato Institute wince. And people have been known to do evil after drinking a lot of booze, and that hasn't lately spurred a whole lot of righteous anger against legal alcohol.
If you're wondering why it's taken so long for Rep. Steve King (R-IA) to finally suffer for the racist claptrap he's been saying on the national stage for 15 years, well, I can't really tell you, and not just because "tipping points" like these really seem to come and go without very much changing. It's not like Republicans have never condemned his remarks before, but it's also not like they've done very much about his mouth before now, either. And I don't think Republicans were trying to get ahead of Democratic-sponsored censure resolutions, because don't they normally just ignore Democrats when they talk about racism? (As an aside, I bet Mob Boss Mitch is hopping mad about having had to say something about this.)
Researchers develop a font (which they've called "Sans Forgetica") that supposedly helps you retain more of what you read. It probably does put more markers in your mind than you'd get from Georgia or Trajan Pro III (my two favorite fonts, if you haven't noticed), but the size and smell of a good book put those markers in your mind, too, and anyway you can't read a whole book in Sans Forgetica because it'd hurt your head. The best way to remember what you've read is to read it more than once, and don't task yourself reading things you don't enjoy. And better it be a real book than an e-book (see "size," "smell").
Finally, because you deserve some good news, two federal courts effectively block our Administration's attempt to allow just any old corporation to cite just any old "religious" belief to deny birth control to its employees. You'll recall that our Supreme Court's infamous Hobby Lobby decision wouldn't expand such "religious conscience" exceptions beyond closely-held corporations, and while I suppose it's possible the two relatively new far right-wingers on our Court might be looking to widen these exceptions, this could wind up being the second time our Administration has failed to roll back the mandate. Don't think our Administration is trying to do everything badly, though, not just because that's 13-dimensional chess and you should avoid it, but because incompetence might really just be the better explanation.
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