Greg Palast writes the best-epitaph-yet for former South African President Nelson Mandela. Long story short: Mr. Mandela ended state-sanctioned apartheid while accepting ongoing economic apartheid -- but that doesn't make his life a "waste" or a "fraud," for "(n)o man is a revolution...From Moses to Martin to Mandela, our prophets never reach the Promised Land. That is for us still to accomplish. The journey is long. Start walking." (And if you've had it up to here with hearing about the "importance of forgiveness," let Right Wing Watch remind you how the religious right red-baited Mr. Mandela during the 1980s. Some things never change -- except that Mr. Falwell, for one, worked a lot harder at his shtick than any of today's squealers do.)
From the "10,000 Ways Big Corporations Screw Taxpayers" file: the Huffington Post finds a big corporate for-profit college mill goosing up its job placement numbers by paying other businesses a couple grand per head to "hire" one of its graduates for 30 days or so before firing them. Thus corporations like Corinthian Colleges, Inc., can feed at the federal funding trough -- and federal funding accounts for 80 percent or Corinthian's funding. Corinthian responds to its critics with the usual -- our enemies take facts out of context, and just look at our testimonials! Clearly they hope anecdotal evidence obliterates statistical evidence.
Uh oh: a study the CDC conducted in ten states suggests restaurants don't practice basic sanitation like they should. Among its findings: over three of five restaurant workers don't wash their hands after handling raw meat, two of five restaurants don't provide separate cutting boards for raw chicken, more than half of managers don't know to cook chicken to at least 165 degrees Fahrenheit, and way, way too many restaurant workers work sick -- which could be alleviated somewhat by the paid sick-leave bills our state politicians keep killing. At least restaurant workers deal with unrefrigerated greens a little better than they deal with meat.
In case you were wondering, Megyn Kelly responded to criticism over calling both Santa and Jesus "just white" by playing the "I was joking" card and decrying the humorlessness of her opponents. Schooled as I was by Monty Python and Kids in the Hall, her "humor" doesn't even work as a Satire of People Like Megyn Kelly. Plus she played the Pity-Me card, too, saying "Fox News and yours truly are big targets for many people." Note well that she lets us know that she's learned that Jesus might not have been white after all -- and I'm sure she'll take guff for that from right-wing nutjobs, too, which will enable her to claim independence, because she's been shot by both sides!
Finally, North Carolina State Senator Bob Rucho claims the Affordable Care act "has done more damage to the USA then (sic) the swords of the Nazis, Soviets & terrorists combined." Then he strikes back at his critics, blaming them for failing to note that he worked that Bulwer-Lytton saw about the pen being mightier than the sword into his little turd sculpture! I guess Dante Gabriel Rosetti is a little too highbrow for him! Now let's never speak of him again, for he gives poetry and dentistry a bad name.