A now-former VP at Kelloggs, referring to the 10-week strike this past fall, told a meeting of lawyers and union-busters last week that "the union leadership" at his corporation "were behaving more like terrorists than partners." I said they'd call us all "terrorist" one day and I was right, but I feel compelled to note that "terrorists" and "partners" is one hell of a dichotomy to present when discussing labor negotiations, and not just because the other, truer word for "partners" is subordinates. Labor negotiators should of course be civilized, but being "civilized" may not even require civility, depending on the situation. And what are the specific "terrorist" tactics of Kelloggs workers? You won't learn that from Mr. Hurley's audio remarks, but you'll hear a lot about Joe Biden making an "inappropriate" statement and certain social media outlets being too powerful for arguably the biggest name in breakfast cereal and, of course, George Soros, because apparently right-wingers can't perform a whining rant without bringing him up.
You've heard of folks going north of the border for affordable prescription drugs? Now meet the family that went south of the border, to Mexico, to avoid yet another several-thousand-dollar health care bill. The kicker, of course, is that the Fierro family of Arizona has health insurance! Which costs them $1,000 every month! So you can see the attraction of spending $5 to get a doctor to pop your son's dislocated shoulder back in place. Recall that almost half of Americans don't have the money saved to cover a several hundred-dollar expense, and none of them are saving their way to health care happiness by skipping coffee and avocados.
Now Texas Gov. Greg Abbott thinks he can "invoke war powers" by declaring the migration of refugee-seekers from other lands an "invasion," which supposedly would comply with Article I, Section 10 of our Constitution. But words mean things, and folks running from oppression to seek sanctuary don't constitute an "invasion" unless you can prove they're all fronting, which he can't. So this looks to me like just another Greg Abbott drama, one where he flexes his muscles and accomplishes nothing, like his mass inspection of trucks coming through the border that (per Texas's own Agriculture Commissioner!) caught exactly zero would-be immigrants and produced exactly zero drug seizures.
Laura Ingraham opposes student loan debt forgiveness by saying her mother worked as a waitress until she was 73 to pay off her kids' college bills so why can't yours? Other Twitter users dunked on her in ways you might easily expect ("You let your mom work until she was 73 to pay your debts?"), though not too many pointed out the most pertinent fact -- that college cost a lot less when Ms. Ingraham went to Dartmouth. Which gives the lie to "(l)oan forgiveness just another insult to those who play by the rules." Ah, folks who took out loans to go to college whose tuition went up 600% in 35 years also "played by the rules," and a lot of them took out loans that actually cost more to pay off after 10 years, even after you "play by the rules" by making all your payments on time. By charging this much for college, and charging this much for loans, we have profoundly betrayed all those who played by the rules. Loan forgiveness would right that wrong. And if we can't right wrongs, what's the point of America?
Hoo boy now Sen. Ron Johnson (E-WI) says it "may be true" that COVID vaccines cause AIDS. That should be weapons-grade PR against the Senator, no matter how many ads he runs in which he plays catch badly with his grandson, but that man has been spewing out filth for decades now, and Democrats keep underestimating him. Well, by "Democrats" I really mean Russ Feingold, and he's not running this time, thank God, so maybe now they have a shot, so to speak, at defeating him. (How do vaccines "induce AIDS," you ask? Google it and you'll find a line of "reasoning" that rivals QAnon for sheer stupidity, plus is full of big scare words. Naturally "America's Frontline Doctors" also figure in the drama.)
Finally, anyone else think the "leak" of a draft of a Supreme Court ruling that would overturn Roe v. Wade was an inside job? An "attack" by the "radical left" my ass -- any liberal in a position to leak the draft not only knows it would have intimidated exactly zero of the five (or six!) right-wing Justices prepared to endorse it, but also knows that even though more Americans support abortion rights than oppose them, the other side has more folks who'd run through a wall for their position. Right-wingers would totally leak the draft for three reasons: one, to keep the base ginned up; two, to give independents six months to forget all about it before Election Day, and three, and most importantly, to remind the base that they've actually done something for them. People like it when you do something for them; it's well past time for Democrats to commit to that lesson, rather than whine about how they "just can't get to yes" on things 80% of Americans want. (As an aside, Alexander Cockburn used to say that the day our Supreme Court actually overturns Roe v. Wade, Republicans will wander in the wilderness for decades. I sure hope he's right.)
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