Ever the optimist and I say that as a compliment, Matt Stoller sees a chance at undoing the T-Mobile/Sprint merger through suits by private plaintiffs, including all those independent franchises T-Mobile promptly shut down after it went through. Still, we live in a transitional moment (at best!) in re mergers and monopolies, which is why even folks like Mr. Stoller still write sentences like “(a)fter AT&T was blocked from buying T-Mobile, and prices dropped, executives across the industry became increasingly agitated about competition in the market.” Aren't executives always saying they like competition? Sadly, they do not really like competition. That's because they’re weak.
You knew this was coming: most of the corporations making the biggest deal about paying for their employees’ abortions just so happen to have made big donations to the Republican Attorneys General Association (or RAGA), which “by its own admission, played a central role” in getting Roe v. Wade overturned. And besides, only around 5% of all corporations have even pledged to pay for employee abortions, plus they’re leaving out contractors and students, and besides, what if you don’t have a job? But yeah, all that great PR JP Morgan Chase hoped to get from its pledge should dissipate now that we know they gave $25,000 to RAGA just this past March. The putatively pro-abortion corporation that's lately cut off welfare payments to RAGA? Yelp, if you can believe it. GoPuff has been a major offender, and I bet you can more easily believe that.
Yahoo! News/YouGov poll finds an eye-popping 68% of Fox News viewers actually think the perps of the January 6 attempted coup were liberals trying to make Donald Trump look bad – which, like, Tucker Carlson was saying that that damn night, using a source that even the Washington Examiner soon repudiated – but the poll contains even more interesting results. A third of CNN viewers and a quarter of MSNBC viewers agreed, and more than a third of non-cable viewers (that’d be my category!) also agree, and that’s too damn many. Also, only 11% of Americans blamed the Trump votaries at the Capitol first and foremost. And that would have been my choice! Donald Trump incited a riot, but good Americans are supposed to take good enough care of themselves that they don’t get incited. Seriously! You're supposed to understand that being full of rage all the time is bad for you in at least two ways.
Michigan Republicans want to pass a bill that would allow parents to file frivolous lawsuits against public schools for exposing children to drag queen shows, though no one can cite a single example of this ever happening. I mean, how many of today’s teachers have even seen The Kids in the Hall? It’s not enough to say “well, the lawsuit will fail without evidence,” because the state government will have to pay to defend the suit, and, well, they’ll be using taxpayer money to do that. Bunch of damn drama hounds, right-wingers are, alleging horrors where they don’t exist and thinking it means nothing they can’t defend their position. Can Michigan Democrats run against this stupid crap, maybe? Because I think they'd win, even in the more gerrymandered areas of the state.
Mitch McConnell actually threatens that Republicans will tank a bipartisan semiconductor bill if Democrats take up any version of Build Back Better in the next month or so. And here’s how the fuck you’d deal with that: take the semiconductor bill, add it to the Build Back Better-ish bill, and pass it through budget reconciliation – which means Republicans would get no credit for reviving the American semiconductor industry. Oh, wait, is that uncivil? We’ll never get civility back in American politics until we stop playing pattycake with assholes. Too often Democrats act like they've never heard of boundaries. And seriously, what's Mitch McConnell's problem with lower drug prices? We need to ask that every time he makes a threat like this.
Finally, Bush Mobb Attorney General Alberto Gonzales says our Justice Department could well prosecute Donald Trump for his role in the January 6 coup but before we begin a bunch of sentences with “Even Alberto Gonzales,” remember that Alberto Gonzales comes from an entirely successful fascist regime, and what most likely bugs him about the Trump regime is how stupidly they went about it. I do wonder if “there’s a lot there” is a sly wink to the major complaint about George W. Bush before he became President, which, as you may recall, was “there’s no there there.” Of course, “there’s no there there” is exactly what competent fascists try to make you think.
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