Robert Verbruggen at the National Review compares the trend of Republican-run states refusing enhanced unemployment benefits to those years Republican-run states refused the Medicaid expansion. In that they're both unpopular? Why, no! He thinks refusing enhanced unemployment benefits is an "opportunity" for Republicans! That's cynical horserace-speak, of course, but it also ignores the plain reality that folks notice when they're making less money. He can't even bring himself to evaluate the possibility that employers can't find workers because they won't pay more, and says on two occasions that he wished the research was better, which does beg the question then why even write the article? Almost refreshing, it is, to find so-smart-they're-dumb types somewhere other than the Democratic Party.
Ho hum, Republican Congressdolts are still promoting the Big Gummint relief they all voted against. This ain't a matter of simply informing your constituents what help our government offers, as one spokeshack hilariously tries to spin it, but a matter of bragging about it like you didn't do your damnedest to kill it, as Rep. Malliotakis (R-NY) does in calling one slice of that bill an "achievement()" of hers even though she, like every other Republican in Congress, voted "nay." Just wait until they run re-election ads talking about the things the American Rescue Plan did (and, if we're lucky, the American Jobs Plan and the American Families Plan) like they voted for any of them! I hope Democrats have the minimal courage to point that out; otherwise, they may find a Republican House that refuses to certify a 2024 Biden landslide.
President Biden announces he'll support waiving COVID-19 vaccine patents so more people can get vaccinated, and the big pharma corporations respond with their usual assholery, with one CEO saying the move will "disadvantage patients by undermining existing incentives to develop vaccines and therapeutics for future pandemics," by which I guess she means she's smarter than you because she knows more big words than you and can string together endless prepositional phrases. I kid, of course -- the waiver really won't "undermine existing incentives," not just because it'd be an emergency waiver that would end when the pandemic ends, but also because the primary "existing incentive" -- dead people don't spend money on health care -- ain't going away.
Julie Hollar at FAIR instructs us that "In Media Framing, Trans Kids Are Problems to Be Solved -- Not People With Rights." Which means a) not letting very many trans people speak, even in stories that purport to be about them, and b) swamping trans people beneath a "debate" that's all about the drama. When I read that our "liberal" media finds trans issues "vexing," I'm reminded how often they used to present AIDS as an issue that mainly affected heteros struggling with how to feel about it, rather than the folks suffering and dying from it.
Bank of England Governor says that cryptocurrency has "no intrinsic value" and that folks who invest it in should be "prepared to lose all (their) money." Don't understand cryptocurrency? That's because they don't want you to understand it! In a world where we can use an ATM almost anywhere on Earth and can pay bills without writing and mailing checks, it's hard to see why a thing like cryptocurrency needs to exist. Except, of course, so some people can con other people out of their real money.
Finally, the lawyer for one of the January 6 seditionists has advanced the argument that his role in the attempted coup was really kinda Fox News's fault, because his client did almost nothing but watch Fox News for the previous six months. I actually don't think "watching Fox News non-stop" is an addiction, certainly not the way, say, alcoholism is, so my response to all that would be ah, no, asshole, you're on your own. I mean, we can't just stop blaming people who do evil merely because Satan whispered repeatedly in their ear.
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