Ho hum, three big banks that "partner" with WalMart made literally all of their 2019 and 2020 profits from overdraft fees extracted from working families. Nice work if you can get it! Seriously, that's not work, and every time a right-winger defends the "free" market, that's what they defend. As an aside, while I don't expect the acting Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to tip his hand in an investigation, his vow to use "the full range" of "our supervisory toolkit" doesn't exactly inspire confidence, either.
When I hear that "the biggest labor rally in Alabama history" last week was also the most racially diverse, I'm reminded that racial diversity hasn't always been a given in the labor movement -- all too often, labor has sided against non-white folks, particularly immigrants. The rally was also politically diverse, with "Trump guy(s)" peacefully coexisting with BLM supporters, reminding us of what we can accomplish together -- as long as the other side doesn't stage coups, try to overturn elections, or keep the pandemic going with their refusal to vaccinate.
The Senate's "debate" on the "bipartisan" "infrastructure" "deal" grinds on, briefly interrupted by a desperate right-wing attempt to root out "politically correct virtue-signaling" in the bill, in the words of Sen. Toomey (E-PA). Sen. Toomey's lame joke about "racist escalators" reminds us that he's no "moderate" merely because he doesn't scream at everyone like Donald Trump does. Right-wingers should also know that we hardly use the term "woke" anymore -- basically, we only use it to describe people who make a show of being "woke" without actually doing anything useful about racism, sexism, and fascism.
Did Nancy Pelosi's yammering about how nobody can just cancel student loan debt seem to come out of the blue to you? Well, Ken Klippenstein and Ryan Grim at The Intercept suggest it may have had something to do with a couple of billionaire constituents bending her ear. Just because people think the Bay Area is full of rich tech bros doesn't mean middle-class working people don't live there, and a lot of those folks have massive student loan debt, but their will means little or nothing to Ms. Pelosi, apparently. And thus we are reminded, yet again, that House Democratic leadership really needs to get out of the young bucks' way.
They're calling the results in the Ohio 11th House district Democratic primary a lesson in how Democrat voters want "stability," but Natalie Shure at In These Times sees other lessons to learn. One of them you already know from the last paragraph -- the Democratic House leadership might hate Republicans, but they definitely hate fierce liberals who might actually do some good with the power they have. Another lesson you already know is the power of dark money. But a third lesson? AOC and Cori Bush won by emphasizing the need to make Democrats "live up to their full potential." People would rather be inspired than angered, after all.
Finally, color me unimpressed that Dick Cheney has apparently professed to be "deeply troubled" about the state of the Republican Party, because he played a big role in bringing all of this about! Stupid wars, lawless government spying, collapsed economies, attacking the patriotism of folks who disagree with you, not to mention the accelerated decimation of our manufacturing base -- what part of this does he not recognize? What part of this has he not enabled? And if Bernie Sanders had won the 2020 election, would he have leaped to defend the "peaceful transition of power"?
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