Thinking maybe sports isn’t a healthy outlet for our stress after all? Rick Eckstein at The Conversation discusses “how abuse is baked into American sports.” As you read about how many young athletes don’t speak out about verbal and physical abuse out of fear of getting “benched,” you may recall those Little League Dads who yelled at their kids all the way from the batter’s box after they struck out. You may also recall how news coverage has bled into “liberal” media news coverage in more ways than one, not just in sports news executives moving into straight news divisions, but also in all the horserace coverage. You may also decide that “winning at all costs” is just as toxic an attitude in politics as it is in sports.
Uh oh: Rep. Ted Budd, the Trump-endorsed North Carolina Republican Senate nominee, helped a pair of big banks merge in 2019, and the resulting behemoth not only laid off over a thousand workers and closed a few hundred branches, but it’s also resulted in at least one low-interest loan and tens of thousands of bucks in campaign donations for Mr. Budd!. I guess Donald Trump would call all that “smart”! Seriously, if Democratic nominee Cheri Beasley doesn’t make a whole lot of hay about this, she deserves to lose this race. There’s no “let’s not be too strident about corruption” vote out there to be had.
Ho hum, six of the seven biggest health insurance corporations get more than half their revenues from our government – i.e., the taxpayer, i.e., us – but still jack up prices much faster than inflation just like they were doing before the Affordable Care Act became law. Oh, but expanding Medicare to everyone would be TEH SOSHULIZMZ!!!!! The only people who think of “socialism” as a scare word are far right-wingers who let everything anger them. And even fewer folks get their hackles up at the words “price controls.” A lot of good Americans would like some more price control in their lives! (They’d also like to not be moved from their Medicare plans to Medicare Advantage plans – which deny a lot of claims! – without their consent.)
Wondering why rent prices are going up so quickly? Brace yourself: one corporation’s algorithm might be responsible for most of it. Algorithms ruining things where people might manage them more deftly – gosh, where have I heard that story before? But at least the algorithm isn’t an irredeemable asshole, like the people who promote the algorithm, who are the sorriest bunch of tone-deaf losers I’ve ever heard. They actually celebrate when prices go up beyond what good Americans can afford! They actually encourage landlords to leave units open because the jacked-up prices of their occupied units more than compensate! They actually say that landlords have “too much empathy” compared to the algorithm! If I were the Deity, they would abide in fire for all eternity.
The Center for American Progress describes, at some length, how “Offshore Wind Can Lower Energy Prices and Beat Out Oil and Gas.” Wind power has competed, expense-wise, with fossil fuels for the better part of a decade now, and “spills and cleanup costs are negligible with offshore wind,” (n.b. “negligible,” not “non-existent,” right-wing trolls!). This is all true regardless of the histrionics right-wingers employ about the “noise” (obviously none of them have ever lived in New Jersey!) or the “piles of dead birds” (as a friend of mine said once, it sure is a good thing oil spills have never killed any birds!). Time to kick climate change’s ass!
Finally, dig this simple-minded horseshit poll from Fox News alleging that more Americans want help from our government than they used to. I don’t mind the result, I guess (more Americans want help than don’t), but I do mind the question: whether you want your government to “lend me a hand” or “leave me alone.” Gosh, binary much? Good Americans want more help from their government where they need it and less interference where they don’t; most of us favor expanding Medicare to include everyone, for example, but I bet none of us favor expanded warrantless spying. Those are just the first examples that leaped to my mind! Did anything leap to Fox News’s mind when they formulated their poll, besides goading Americans into being the stupidest version of themselves?
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