Restaurant workers across America go on a wage strike and say they won't go back to work until they get paid a living wage, and I say good for them! Everyone in America wants to go back to eating in a restaurant again, so workers might as well use their leverage! Note well that if unemployment really pays better than restaurant work, maybe instead of demanding our government stop making unemployment benefits better or imagining workers are "lazy" for not wanting to work their asses off for dung pellets, we should demand that restaurant work pay more. It's what a free market would demand, is it not?
Just when I thought I'd permanently soured on social media, along comes Payal Dhar at Yes! magazine to remind us that "Social Media (Has) Become() a Lifeline During India’s COVID Crisis." In a sane, moral, and decent society, you shouldn't have to take to Twitter just to find an oxygen cylinder, but in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, well, at least you can actually do that and find someone who gives a crap. Hopefully these horror stories remind us that social media is actually pretty good at connecting people, although the corporations running them would prefer that we spend all our time distracting people.
Actual election observer informs us that some 75,000 Republican voters in Maricopa and Pima counties in Arizona did not vote for Donald Trump in 2020, even though they voted mostly Republican in other races. The big story, I guess, is that Joe Biden won Arizona largely because Donald Trump lost it -- recall that Mr. Biden's margin of victory there was around 10,000 votes -- but the data also suggests that a little over 6% of Republican voters wouldn't vote for Mr. Trump, meaning roughly 3% of the electorate in Arizona could have voted for some other Republican for President. Perhaps not coincidentally, anti-Trump Republican Michael Wood, despite his best efforts, got 3% of the vote in Texas's 6th House district. Now I wouldn't call my thesis scientific fact, but I'd say it's strong enough to advise Democrats, yet again, to stop fantasizing about getting large numbers of Republicans to vote for them, and instead inspire, with good works, liberals and independents who'd otherwise stay home.
When I hear that our "liberal" media is also bad at covering border issues, if not quite as bad as right-wing news organs hyping a "border crisis," I stand ready with a proposal: next time we hear of a "border crisis," or a "caravan," or whatever, we should ignore it, because it's utter bullshit. In America, we do actually have the armed forces to respond to an actual ground invasion, not to mention the intelligence personnel to discover it's coming before it gets here. But what's actually happening at the border ain't that, so let's refuse to feed the right-wing drama machine.
I did not know that former Trump spokeshack Jason Miller had been accused not merely of cheating on his wife, but of slipping an abortion pill to his mistress, which nearly caused her death. I guess he thinks, like his former boss, that "rules are for little people." And I bet no cable news "personality" will ask him about it, because then he'll throw a fit and never go on their show again, like losing "access" to that particular "source" of "news" would be such a bad thing. Oh, no, no more Jason Miller on the TVzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.
Finally, alleged "libertarian" Charles Koch has funded efforts to clamp down on protests -- not just the ones that'd criminalize protests around "critical infrastructure," which you'd figure he'd support, but also the bills that let you off scot-free if you run over a protestor. Thus does a decade of talk about the importance of criminal justice reform prove utterly meaningless. Remember: never listen to a guy who has always acted like "rules are for little people."
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