I’ll admit I had trouble imagining why Republicans are suddenly so hot to repeal child labor laws at the state level, and I still have trouble reconciling their loudly-proclaimed “concern” over children’s education with their apparent desire to send them all to mills and mines 10 hours a day. I guess they’re just trying to suck up to their corporate donors at any cost, especially since quite a few of said donors have been caught violating child labor laws lately. More kids in the mines also helps break labor unions. Last I looked, though, I don’t think any normal people think child labor laws are too strict, or lament that they didn’t work more during their own childhoods.
Amanda Marcotte reminds us that Republican’s apparent inability to define what “woke” means “is a feature, not a bug,” because they can pretend it means anything at all at any time. We learn that Gov. DeSantis is particularly good, or should I say “good,” at mining this vein of vagueness, and I totally mention that because he’s trying to criminalize bloggers' criticism of him as we speak. In any case, I suggest we all go ahead and tell our right-wing friends, to the degree we still have them, that once they use the word “woke” in an argument, they’re conceding the point.
In a related note, Sen. Rick Scott (E-FL) claims that our military is too “woke,” and to support this thesis tells a story about a ship that had to stop “following a Chinese ship” so they could “train everybody on transgender.” One thousand U.S. dollars says this incident never happened, even if “a retired, I think, captain” really told him so – which I also doubt. (At present, the U.S. Navy can find no record of such an incident.) This is the same man who says that reducing Medicare costs amounts to “Medicare cuts” and that poor people should pay more in taxes so they have “skin in the game.” Only in the Fascist State of Florida could he keep winning elections.
Something I hadn’t considered about Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News: if Fox News loses – which possibility ain’t exactly far-fetched, given all those Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson texts and Rupert Murdoch’s own testimony – then shareholders will also be able to file suit against them, meaning Fox could lose a whole lot more than the $1.6 billion Dominion wants, or the $2.7 billion Smartmatic wants. I doubt its most-devoted viewers will abandon them, though. Rage is a hell of a drug, but rage mixed with nonsense is even more potent, particularly if they think it pisses off liberals.
Sandpoint, Idaho hospital says it’ll stop delivering babies in two months’ time mainly because of the “legal and political climate” there. You may recall that Idaho has one of them-there abortion bans where relatives may sue medical providers for performing abortions, such that obstetricians have been leaving the state in droves, with no replacements coming. See, when you’re evil to everyone around you, eventually everyone leaves you. Did these right-wingers really think we needed them so badly that we would put up with any and all abuse? I can only hope their loneliness makes them take stock of what they’ve done a bit.
Finally, might I say that I am beyond disgusted with all the “don’t indict Trump or you’ll make him win” talk? Here’s the worst example of that, from “OMFG why does anyone listen to” Mark Halperin. I won’t list every objection I have with this piece, since those objections would total approximately one per point made, but let’s just leave it at these two: he says it’s unfair that folks aren’t spending the same amount of time on Hunter Biden as they are on Donald Trump, which is rather like saying we should have celebrated the scoring prowess of Marty McSorley the way we did Wayne Gretzky, and he also exhorts us to keep Trump supporters’ feelings in mind if the Big Man gets indicted, to which I must say: fuck their feelings. Everyone has to grow up sooner or later, and that includes folks who wallow in masturbatory rage and the pundits who enable them.
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