Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: grown man acting like that, part 989.

Ho hum, TFG's foot-dragging on signing standard ethics and transparency pledges – which finally ended on Thursday – means that his Cabinet will be behind on its "work," since signing those pledges was a necessary and legal precursor to gaining access to sensitive government servers. You know what's happening here, right? They're going to blame Mr. Biden for all their early mistakes. Because that's what ball-swingers do – blame everyone else for the problems they cause.

Matt Stoller says that TFG will have to "pick two out of three" among high tariffs, high corporate profits, and low prices. My guess: he'll pick high tariffs and high profits, because, after all, his people won't be paying for them! Only us "little people" will! After all, how can you keep stoking rage against convenient "others" if people aren't already miserable? Again, ball-swingers never fix a damn thing; they just cause more problems, in the hopes you'll cleave to them harder.

Factcheck.org expresses a justified skepticism that TFG will be able to pull off mass deportations. Long story short: he likely won't get the shock-and-awe he supposedly wants – for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that coordination between various agencies would be extremely difficult – but then that's not really his aim: his aim, as always, is to look like he's doing his job without actually doing it, and then blame other people when he fails. All of that is apparently just dandy with at least 77 million Americans.

Oh, but TFG doesn't want to stop there! His Administration will continue trying to deport naturalized American citizens, under the guise of rooting out "fraud" in the naturalization process! My guess is naturalization "fraud" is about as prevalent as voter "fraud" or SSI "fraud," which is to say virtually nonexistent, and certainly not proven by hysterical anecdotes or bogus statistics. Will TFG's 77 million votaries protest when the folks they know and love who are obviously citizens also get deported, as always happens with mass deportation efforts? I'd like to think so! But I won't hold my breath.

TFG's Reign of (T)error won't end there, as ProPublica describes how he might simply decide not to spend money Congress has appropriated – as part of his plan to gut our government, of course! Since no "Department of Governmental Efficiency" not actually created by Congress will mean a damn in the eyes of our laws! The plain language of the law and of at least one Supreme Court ruling tell us he's wrong about his plans to use the Impoundment Control Act to his advantage – and again, cutting spending that dramatically would make right-wingers happy, when the whole point is to keep right-wingers enraged. But we'll keep fighting TFG's efforts to make our country his fucking plaything.

Finally, Elon Musk appears to be publicizing the names of certain federal government workers he wants fired, which of course has led to threats against said workers. Of course, I don't blame Mr. Musk as much as I blame the knuckle-draggers who think threatening federal workers gives them large dicks, but he knew this would be the result, because it always is, so he deserves blame for enabling them. This is why you don't put assholes in charge of anything. It's also why a healthy society doesn't let assholes get this rich in the first place.

Action: concerning freedom of the press, health care, and Congressional ethics.

Long story short: tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act and the ETHICS Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Free Press helps you tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, which would prevent our government from putting reporters in jail for not revealing their sources, among other evils. But of course, since this bill would prevent evil – forcing reporters to reveal sources who could be killed as soon as their own being so obvious an evil that our House has already passed the bill in an actual bipartisan manner – our President-elect, who loves nothing so much as hurting people (and has a list of journalists he wants to hurt as we speak), wants our Senate to block final passage of the bill. So many of today's journalists are self-absorbed clowns that we often forget how many journalists have made this country better, so how about we not hurt the good ones? How about we not hurt own country?

More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Pharmacists Fight Back Act. Fight back against what, you ask? Against the Pharmacy Benefit Managers (or PBMs) that are slowly killing them, that's what! PBMs are, you guessed it, middle-men who keep you from getting the drugs you need to be healthy – and keep your pharmacists from making enough money to stay open without being chained to a giant multinational corporation like CVS, which is, of course, firing as many pharmacists as it can so its executives can gild the plumbing in their 19th vacation homes. The Pharmacists Fight Back Act would make PBM reimbursements fairer and keep PBMs from owning pharmacies, and these are good first steps. What, you think TFG will solve this? Ha ha ha ha no! It's up to us, as always.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the ETHICS Act, which would ban lawmakers in Congress from owning or trading individual stocks, and assess stiff penalties for contravening that ban. Because owning individual stocks is an obvious conflict of interest for a lawmaker! It's really not that damn much to ask that they don't trade on their influence and their knowledge of legislation about to pass in order to enrich themselves. And these clowns all make upwards of $174,000 a year; if they can't live on that, maybe they should stop eating avocado toast. The ETHICS Act would prevent Congressfolk from buying new stocks immediately and would make them divest from all individual stocks and related assets by the start of 2027; that's more than enough time to get themselves right with the people.

Action: concerning government spending, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and food stamps.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to hold on to their Constitutionally-mandated spending functions and not to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, or food stamps. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Bowers News Media helps you remind your Congressfolk that they, and not some extra-governmental "Department of Governmental Efficiency," initiate and approve all spending legislation. Our Constitution is pretty plain on that! Of course it could get even worse: our incoming President-elect could simply refuse to spend funds as Congress has appropriated, and use the Impoundment Control Act to demand that Congress rescind those funds. All so a bunch of assholes can ram through spending cuts to hurt hundreds of millions of good Americans and protect billionaires. How about we throw sand in those gears?

In a related note, Social Security Works helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Social Security or Medicare, while the Juggernaut Project helps you tell your Congressfolk not to cut Medicaid. They'll claim America's broke – hell, they'll make America broke! – and then claim we just "have to" cut programs that help tens of millions of Americans, instead of, you know, bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income that created the greatest middle class in history. Those 77 million self-absorbed Americans who hate being told they're wrong about anything will see very shortly that their pet monster only hurts people. I hope their pain is instructive.

Finally, the Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen, not cut, food stamp benefits. Right-wing politicians have such a hard-on for cutting Medicaid and food stamps, don't they? It's like they know they're good programs that help a lot of people. They impose all these work requirements and felony requirements on them under the guise of "stopping fraud," but these things don't stop fraud but mercy. Seriously, what a leader would to is a) make sure everyone has what they need and b) put fraudsters in jail. No one seems to understand what leadership is anymore. And they watched Joe Biden for four years, so they have no excuse.

Action: concerning Social Security, food for poor seniors, and confirmations.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act and fully-fund the Meals on Wheels program, and tell your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible and re-confirm Lauren McFerran to our NLRB. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Alliance for Retired Americans helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Social Security Fairness Act, which would allow good Americans to collect Social Security benefits and government pensions or pensions and disability plans from employers that did not collect Social Security taxes. Seems to me if you've earned all of these things, you should get them, without some boss somewhere pretending to worry about "double-dipping." No, they're pretending – all they really worry about is "saving money," which is all bosses worry about, since they have no vision for making money other than cutting pay and services to the bone. This is actual bipartisan legislation, by the way, the kind we're not going to see for a while, so let's get it done.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to save the Meals on Wheels program by fully-funding the Older Americans Act. Meals on Wheels delivers over 250 million meals to over two million seniors every year, but now virtually all Meals on Wheels programs report challenges to completing their work, and one in three programs report waiting lists of 90 days or longer, so clearly Congress needs to do more. I'm sure Meals on Wheels will be the target of much Musk/Ramaswamy meme-based ridicule in the coming months, but they're ridiculous human beings from whom no one should get guidance about moral or spiritual matters. I'd rather adhere to the Baltimore Catechism, which instructs us that "feed(ing) the hungry" is one of the seven Corporal Acts of Mercy. And our government should do the same.

Finally, MoveOn helps you remind your Senators to confirm as many judges as possible before TFG takes over, while the Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerran. Confirming judges ensures that at least some judges will listen to us over the next four or so years, while re-confirming Ms. McFerran to our NLRB ensures TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to that board until the end of 2026, meaning our NLRB, too, might listen to us a little better than the Insane Clown Posse TFG will install in our Executive branch agencies. Things will get very, very uncomfortable for good, decent, and moral Americans over the next four or so years, but that doesn't mean we should neglect the civilization we've built over the previous 250 years.

UPDATE. I experienced some mild annoyance trying to sign the MoveOn petition from the previous paragraph, but it worked on the second attempt.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” Presidential nominees, and taxes.

Long story short: tell your Senators to kill the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act and refuse to rubber-stamp our President-elect's nefarious nominees, and tell your Congressfolk to keep funding our IRS so it can keep going after rich tax cheats. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Our House passed the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act last week – though with fewer votes than expected – so both Common Cause and 350.0rg help you tell your Senators to kill that damn bill. No President – especially the monster the American people elected earlier this month – needs the power to declare non-profits as "terrorist-affiliated" because he doesn't like them, but this bill would give him that power, so our Senate must kill the bill. Do not admit the "but the bill gives American hostages in Israel a break on the taxes they can't file" argument. They could have made that its own bill. You already know why they didn't.

The National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Senate to refuse to rubber-stamp TFG's awful nominees who will all hurt good Americans with their evil acts. I hope I'm being perfectly clear about how I feel about all of this! People tell me I hold back on my emotions a lot! We're telling our Senate not to be a rubber-stamp because a) a rubber-stamp is about all that'll get these clowns confirmed and b) our House may well be planning to make a motion to adjourn in advance of our Senate, which would (per Article 2, Section 3 of our Constitution) give TFG the authority to adjourn both Houses indefinitely. Your Senators need to hear from you that this is evil – and that no President should be so afraid of the popular will that he resorts to such evil.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop cutting funding for our IRS. Let it be known that nobody voted for TFG so that our IRS could have less funding; if that were true, surely Republicans would have done better in the 2022 midterms, when they whined about increased IRS funding non-stop. But more than that, we need to communicate as clearly to our Congressfolk as possible that we want to make rich people stop cheating on their taxes, and increased IRS funding collects $6 more in unpaid taxes for every $1 spent. Taxes pay for things we all need, after all! Even when right-wingers call that socialist! You know, there’s another name for cutting IRS funding: defunding the police. Go ahead and use their words against them.

Action: concerning government subversion, working families, and law and order.

Long story short: tell your House Reps to refuse to collaborate with our President-elect's plans to ram his Cabinet nominees through without Senate confirmation, tell your Senators to re-confirm Lauren McFerren to our NLRB and pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Apparently President-elect TFG has been concocting a scheme – one blessed by our Constitution, apparently – to adjourn Congress indefinitely so he can ram his repugnant Cabinet nominees without a Senate vote, and he'd need the help of our House to do that. Could it be that nominating actual piles of dung to important government positions is a bad look? I was starting to think nothing, no matter how disgusting, was a bad look to Americans anymore. Anyway, Bowers News Media helps you tell your House Reps to do their damn jobs and foil TFG's plans to ram his Cabinet through without our scrutiny. (Senators work for us, after all. Right?).

The Labor Force helps you tell your Senators to re-confirm National Labor Relations Board Chair Lauren McFerren now. Why? Because then President-elect TFG won't be able to appoint anyone to our NLRB until 2026! (NLRB members get five-year terms.) And then our NLRB might actually be able to defend working families from corporate predators while TFG sets fire to everything else! Our NLRB recently outlawed "captive meetings," in which employers force employees to sit through anti-union propaganda. I've got a damn job to do, bossman; maybe stop interfering with it? Seems reasonable – to everyone but a boss.

Finally, Demand Progress helps you tell your Senators to pass the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act, which would prevent private data brokers from selling our personal data to law enforcement, so that law enforcement can skip getting a warrant for that data. What kind of Kafkaesque hell is this, where our government can use our taxpayer money to buy our data so they can oppress us? It's so Kafkaesque, apparently, that our House has already passed the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act; we only need our Senators to act, and we will get ourselves some breathing room from government oppression. You may have heard that America elected an asshole to the Presidency again, so of course we’re worried about that.

Action: concerning the debt limit, non-profits, and federal judges.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to raise the debt limit without drama, tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, and tell Democratic Senators to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

We hit the debt ceiling again on January 2, so today is a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to lift the debt ceiling before then without any poison pill drama. Why? Because, as Dave Troy reported in the Washington Spectator back in July, the incoming Administration might allow a government default to happen, simply because it might financially benefit one of the Vice President-elect's pals, the notorious Peter Thiel. You'd hate to think the incoming Administration would simply ignore the calls of literally every corporate executive in America that a default would lead to depression, millions of lost jobs, and trillions of dollars of wealth disappearing. But you would also be a fool to count on the incoming Administration to be rational! Best to count on ourselves and our good works.

We thought the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act died an ignominious death last week, but now Republicans (and way too many Democrats!) want to bring it back — because what zombie don’t they want to bring back? Thus Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the "non-profit killer" bill. Our President-elect just spent an entire election cycle telling everyone that he would get revenge on anyone who had ever wronged him; why would we give him more power to do that, specifically by letting him revoke tax-free status from certain non-profits he would designate as "terrorist-supporting"? And anyway, what the hell is "terrorist-supporting"? What a mealy-mouthed term! And one we certainly shouldn't leave up to TFG to define.

Finally, the Juggernaut Project helps you tell Senate Democrats to confirm as many judicial nominees as possible before TFG takes over. Because you don't want him filling judicial vacancies! And it's not like Senate Democrats have anything else to do, and I would want to distract them from all the navel-gazing they're doing about what went wrong with the election. Here's what went wrong: 77 million Americans voted for selfishness, venality, and drama because that's what gets them hard, and at least six million other Americans wouldn't vote for the Black woman because she's a Black woman. How do you make all that meaningless? Oh, I've only been telling everyone how to do that for almost 20 years now – you pass policies that actually help working families and that keep rich sociopaths from hurting them. Democrats won't be able to do any of that for at least two years, so they ought to give us some judges who will at least consider the inevitable lawsuits over the evil TFG is about to do.

Action: concerning pollution, bogus spending commissions, and tax cuts for the rich.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to repeal Biden Administration rules that benefit all of us, ignore the Musk/Ramaswamy cost-cutting commission, and let the bad parts of the 2017 tax "reform" expire. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

The Lever reminds us that the incoming Congress would just love to repeal as many Biden Administration rules as possible, so now would be a good time to call your Congressfolk and tell them to oppose any effort to repeal said rules. These include our EPA's lead pipe rule (which would result in cleaner water and less brain damage for our children) and methane emissions rule (methane, as you recall, packs a much bigger climate change punch than coal emissions). Republicans hope you don't remember that, you know, you hate pollution, and you like clean air and water and a non-burning planet. But will remind everyone if we have to.

Common Cause helps you tell your Congressfolk to ignore the so-called Department of Governmental Efficiency (or DOGE), particularly since such a Commission would have no Constitutional power to do a damn thing (since spending laws can only come from Congress). Even our President-elect says it will "provide advice and guidance from outside of government," which sure doesn't sound like big talk. And isn't it strange that our President-elect promised to put Elon Musk at the head of the DOGE – and then put Vivek Ramaswamy at the head of it, too? Putting two egomaniacs at the head of a commission sure sounds like a recipe for disaster! Still, we can't count on fantasies of realpolitik; we can only count on ourselves speaking out.

Finally, More Perfect Union helps you tell your Congressfolk to let all the worst aspects of the 2017 tax "reform" bill expire. They weren't all bad – expanding the personal exemption was good, and we should expand it further – but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and massive corporate tax cuts and tax cuts for the rich (all of which were bigger than any tax cut you or I got!) were terrible. These people don't need more tax cuts! They already have enough money! And cutting their taxes will mean one thing down the road: a manufactured "crisis" leading our government to try to take everything from us, like our Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. If we don't speak out, we can kiss all of that goodbye.

Action: concerning our military, press freedom, and tax enforcement.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to stop our President-elect from convening a military review board designed to make our military loyal to him rather than the American people, tell your Senators to pass the PRESS Act, and tell your Congressfolk to fully fund our IRS so we can keep catching rich tax cheats. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

With news that our President-elect plans to convene a "review" board supposedly to remove generals who "lack leadership" but which we all know means "aren't loyal to President Bigbaby," now's the time to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to oppose this vigorously, because Presidents who want to make everyone take loyalty tests should be stopped. Furthermore, he could create a military who'd bless an unconstitutional third Presidential term, and we had better err on the side of caution where that's concerned. Strangle this baby in its crib, before President Bigbaby gets his way.

Defending Rights and Dissent helps you tell our Senators to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitive State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would prevent our government from forcing journalists to hand over the identities of their sources (except when our government can prove it's necessary to stop an imminent attack). Because usually our government demands sources just to harass journalists and sources! And surely we don't think our government will do less of that under President Bigbaby! Our Senate must pass this bill, not least because our House, in a fit of actual bipartisanship, has already passed it! You never see actual bipartisanship anymore, especially for good! So let's grab that while we can.

Finally, Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to ensure they fund our IRS to it can continue to catch rich tax cheats. Because we need to spend money to do that, since rich tax cheats will spend big money on lawyers! But for every dollar we spend on enforcement, we get six dollars back – to the tune of over $1.3 billion in back taxes just since last fall. And not just that! Average phone wait times are down from 28 minutes to 3 minutes and our IRS now handles 65% more phone calls than it did before; doesn't customer service mean something to conservatives? I kid, of course – there are no conservatives in the Republican Party anymore.

Action: concerning good judges, real disaster relief, and education funding.

Long story short: tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible in the time left to them, and tell your Congressfolk to enact real disaster relief and reject education funding cuts. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to confirm as many good judges as possible before Big Baby Ball-Swinger takes over. We need halfway-decent judges who might actually apply the law and show some humanity, not cruel mindless automatons who just do whatever Dear Leader tells them to do. And we're only going to get that as long as we have 51 Democratic Senators, which we'll have for about another month and a half. So they've got to get to stepping.

The Coalition on Human Needs helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass real disaster relief for good Americans still suffering from the effects of Hurricanes Helene and Milton. Real disaster relief would include a food stamp expansion for hurricane victims (hurricanes do throw people out of work, after all), so don't brook any cruelty about how "people need to fend for themselves." And certainly don't brook any poison pill spending cuts. A lot of bad Americans screwed this election up for the rest of us, but we will not be their hostages.

Finally, Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect public education funding. Admittedly actually abolishing our Department of Education would be difficult, even for Big Baby Ball-Swinger, but we must also stand our ground against the idea of education funding cuts, because no doubt the evil bastards float the former so we get used to the latter. But we don’t have to get "used" to a damn thing. This is our country, no matter what Dear Leader wants.

Around the table: the continuing follies of our Big Baby President-elect.

Our big baby President-elect still plans to use our military against immigrants and protestors in contravention of our laws. Will our military refuse to obey illegal orders, as is their duty? Depends on whether or not our President-elect purges all the "disloyal" generals first, I suppose! See, all you suddenly tariff-skeptical voters? Actions have consequences, especially when they feel good.

Speaking of which, quite a few military observers absolutely hate our President-elect's pick for Secretary of Defense, noted misspelled white supremacist tattoo-wearer/germ skeptic Pete Hegseth. Recall that our President-elect also wants to get rid of "disloyal" generals and you might think nominating someone like Mr. Hegseth – a man who seems almost designed to provoke decent and competent people – was a mistake. But then a compliant "liberal" media could help him get away with it anyway, and given how they ran Joe Biden out of the race and "covered" that shitshow of a Republican campaign, they sure look awfully pliant.

Our President-elect can't stop whining and yelling as he says he'll seize the endowments of colleges "illegally" promoting DEI initiatives and give that money to "wronged" white people. You know DEI must be doing good, or else right-wingers wouldn't throw such tantrums about it! And would white people ever get reparations from Dear Leader? Of course not! That might make them happy, and the whole point is to keep them enraged!

Here's some good news, at least for the moment: our National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) has ruled that bosses can't force employees to attend meetings about how bad unions supposedly are, since that's basically coercion. The bad news? The next President's NLRB could reverse the decision. The good news? That'll take a new case before our NLRB. The bad news? Big corporations no doubt already have a new case or 20 ready to file as we speak. BTW, no corporation has "First Amendment rights." Corporations are things, not people.

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes says hell yes she's going ahead with her prosecution of the alleged fake electors scheme in that state in 2020. And since it's a state trial, Dear Leader can't legally stop it from happening, nor can he pardon any of the defendants if they're convicted – though, again, if Dear Leader manages to purge our military of "enem(ies) within," I suppose he could send troops down there to intimidate her.

Finally, It Begins: our President-elect "jokes" that he could serve a third term if our House decides "he’s so good we got to figure something else out." Not a joke, and not just because it's not funny. The 22nd Amendment to our Constitution is quite plain, and frankly Dear Leader's 75 million-plus supporters don't have the guts to force their will on the rest of us – but, again, if he reshapes our military in his image, he could serve additional terms until he's a brain in a jar. Remember, folks: once he's out of office, jail remains a very real possibility.

Action: concerning taxes and law and order.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to extend tax cuts for the rich and to pass the Clean Slate Act so good Americans can get back on their feet after paying their debt to society. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to renew the President-elect's infamous tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-corporations law. It used to be hard to get rich! That's because we taxed millionaire income at 91%, so the rich couldn't compound their power without end! During the New Deal era we had one billionaire; now we have hundreds, and none of them contribute a damn thing of value to this world. Meanwhile health care workers and first responders and store clerks and baristas – not to mention scientists, philosophers, and artists – all go hungry, and our nation becomes so sick, immoral, and decadent we elect an overt fascist to the Presidency. Tax the rich like we used to and we stop all of that dead.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Clean Slate Act, which would seal federal records for criminal case dismissals and acquittals and – most importantly! – convictions for nonviolent offenses, so the good Americans who've paid the debt they owe to society can get on with their lives and contribute to civilization again. Also, if these folks can get on with their lives, they'll be less likely to go back to jail, though our private prison-loving President-elect might not see that as a good thing. I've long tried to turn law-and-order talk on its head – stop detaining drunks and street fighters and drug-users indefinitely, and start putting real sociopaths like polluters and pension-raiders in jail. The Clean Slate Act will contribute toward that worthy end, so we should support it.

Around the table: love lives forever, hate consumes the hater.

Why won't MAGA ever let America "bring down the temperature," according to Amanda Marcotte? Because "Trump needs 'enemies' that he is forever threatening to conquer. But he can't actually conquer them, because if he ever achieved the alleged paradise of conformity he promises, his followers wouldn't need him anymore. So there will always be a new made-up baddie that is supposedly threatening the good white straight Christians." Why hasn't half of America figured out they're being played after all these years? Because they don't want to. So let's stop trying to "reach out" to them, to "understand" them. We already understand them. They whine because it makes them feel good.

Ruben Gallego wins the Arizona Senate race, and naturally right-wingers smell election fraud. I was going to respond, "an alternate explanation would be that Kari Lake is a fool," and she is, but (as I think we all understand a little better now) Ms. Lake also lost because she's a woman.

Shasta County, CA pays $300,000 to 11-year-old girl after shooting her pet goat. The girl thought she was taking her goat to an exhibit, but instead it was an auction! And a state Senator "won" the goat! And even after said state Senator said he wouldn't try to take possession of the goat if the girl really didn't want to give it up, the county sent two cops to seize and kill the goat! Remember that the cops who did this are exactly the kind of person our President-elect wants to empower even more – the kind of person who cares about nothing but their own feelings.

Ho hum, big home oxygen corporation Lincare has been defrauding Medicare (and therefore you and I!) for over 20 years, but Medicare can't seem to put it to a well-deserved death. Read the whole thing, and then remember that Lincare is exactly the kind of corporation our President-elect wants to empower even more – his "Department of Government Efficiency" would kill thousands of federal jobs but enable more corporate criminals to steal your money.

Finally, Fox News's Jesse Watters alleges that his own mother has not invited him to Thanksgiving dinner. Thus has Jesse Watters added his name to the list of people who'll die alone and unloved.

Action: concerning “terrorism,” freedom of the press, and poverty.

Long story short: tell your Congressfolk to reject the Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, pass the PRESS Act, and help our seniors better avoid hunger. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or, if you're on a cellphone, the bottom of this page) to find your Congressfolk's phone numbers and/or use the email/petition tools in the following paragraphs.

MPower helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act, which would let our President designate non-profits as "terrorist" organizations and revoke their tax-exempt status more easily. The President-elect, you may recall, has vowed vengeance against anyone who's ever wronged him, and this bill would help wreak that vengeance when he should be working for us. The bill would also postpone tax deadlines for American hostages held abroad (i.e, by Hamas), but obviously Congress can pass such a tax deadline postponement without the poison pill attached.

Civic Shout helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass the Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying (or PRESS) Act, which would make it harder for our government to force journalists to give up their sources. Again, the man-child about to take office in January would stop at nothing to intimidate journalists, so this bill, if it becomes law, would at least put another law between him and his desires. The fact that we haven't made him pay for his law-breaking doesn't mean "laws are worthless" – it means we don’t have enough laws between an evil man and his evil deeds.

Finally, Care2 helps you tell your Congressfolk to strengthen the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (or CSFP), which helps over half a million senior Americans avoid hunger. If Congress expands this program now, they would also pre-empt Elon Musk's rein as Secretary of Cruelty or whatever, since he'll no doubt tell us in 2025 (after much "study") that we can't give food to hungry people if we want to stay afloat as a nation. Of course, that'd be evil – we can be both fiscally-responsible and humane. Particularly if we tax the talentless rich a lot harder than we're doing now.

UPDATE. The Stop Terror-Financing and Tax Penalties on American Hostages Act has failed — our House tried to pass it more quickly with a suspension of debate rules, but under those conditions a bill needs two-thirds of the vote, not a simple majority, and this bill didn’t get that. The circumstances, of course, allow some folks to brag about voting for the bill they knew wouldn’t pass anyway, which is cynical, but we can always use their cynicism to our advantage. Let this be the first of many victories.

Around the table: we are so sick of this shit, part 811.

Ho hum, plenty of big tech executives professed to be very, very upset about the January 6 treason but they all congratulated the President-elect who fomented it this week. Are they cowards or were they lying? Doesn't matter. There is no relationship between wealth and talent.

A few of our President-elect's voters may be wondering whether they should have voted for the guy, as evidenced by their post-election"are tariffs bad" web searches. Not being a “free” trader I'm agnostic about tariffs myself, but maybe do your homework before you vote? Voting for that man is a lot like masturbating, and that apparently includes the post-orgasm ennui.

Five masked individuals wave Nazi flags outside of a Michigan production of The Diary of Anne Frank. So there's five more people who'll die alone and unloved.

Losing Wisconsin Republican Senate candidate Eric Hovde whines about Democrats boosting a right-wing third-party candidate who may have taken votes from him. Instead of whining, though, he could wonder whether I can't tell you what I'm going to do as your Senator until you give me the job was a good thing to say to the voters. Only one Wisconsin politician was ever going to get away with that, and that was Ron Johnson in the middle of a Republican wave.

Oh, look, a "scoop" from Axios! Sen. Tom Cotton (E-AK) has secured the necessary votes to become the #3 man in GOP leaderszzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Finally, you may have heard some right-wingers disparage ballot initiatives – like the minimum wage/paid sick leave/abortion initiatives that reflect well on the Americans who passed them – by saying "they all win with out-of-state money." Jesus Mary and Joseph maybe if you guys put forth ballot initiatives that didn't hurt people, you might attract some of that out-of-state money for yourself! Right-wingers have already bought all the Congressfolk and state legislators – which is why good citizens need ballot initiatives in the first place! Just as there is no relationship between wealth and talent, there is also no relationship between power and talent.

A few thoughts about the election.

First, we have some good news.

Missouri voters enacted Proposition A, which raises the state minimum wage to $15/hour and guarantees five to seven paid sick days annually from most private employers. Workers can get five days at employers with 15 or fewer employees; I'm pleased that Prop A didn't simply give big corporations the opportunity to pretend they're small businesses because they might have fewer than 15 employees at a particular location. Nebraska voters also voted to mandate private employers to provide paid sick leave; voters here mandated five days at employers with 20 employees or fewer and seven at larger employers. And while the tally isn't final yet, Alaska voters have apparently voted to mandate paid sick leave, raise the minimum wage to $15/hour by 2027 and a prohibit captive audience meetings at workplaces, so that your employer can't force you to sit through political or religious meetings if they don't actually relate to your job.

Massachusetts voters approved a law allowing "transportation network drivers" (i.e., Uber/Lyft drivers) the right to bargain collectively for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. And Nebraska voters weren't done, as they also repealed a state law using taxpayer money on private school scholarships by a 15-point margin. They weren't the only ones, either! Kentucky voters rejected a state constitutional amendment that would have permitted taxpayer money to flow to private schools. I am heartened that, even in this sick, immoral, and decadent society, good citizens like those in Nebraska and Kentucky agree with the common-sense notion that we ought to use public money on public schools (and certainly we should stop pretending that charter schools are somehow a way out of whatever problems we have in public schools, problems that do not result from CRT or whatever but from our refusal to fund them properly in the first place).

This year's pro-abortion initiatives met with some success, as voters in seven states expanded abortion rights at the ballot box, while voters in three others did not. The Missouri initiative, which guarantees a right to an abortion up until fetal viability in that state's constitution, will get most of the ink, largely because Missouri was the first state to ban abortion in the wake of the Dobbs ruling, but don't sleep on Montana voters, either – a 1999 state Supreme Court ruling locates the right to an abortion within the right to privacy, but precedents never change until they do, so enshrining abortion in the state constitution was a smart move on their part. I suspect initiatives like the ones that failed in Florida, Nebraska, and South Dakota might succeed in future years when some other Republican candidate is at the top of the ticket. (The one in Florida only failed because Florida required a 60% threshold for passage; clearly Florida politicians don't like it when good Floridians tell them what to do.)

Not every good ballot initiative succeeded, unfortunately, as Ohio voters rejected an amendment that would have created a bipartisan redistricting commission to start undoing decades of right-wing gerrymandering of that state's Congressional seats. Don't be too quick to blame Ohio voters for that – Secretary of State Frank LaRose wrote the amendment misleadingly in an obvious attempt to make it fail, and in any case Ohio Republicans have simply ignored previous directions from the electorate that would have compelled them to draw maps more fairly. What could they be afraid of? (Do go ahead and blame Ohio voters for replacing one of our Senate's finest human beings, Sherrod Brown, with Bernie Moreno, who clearly aims to threaten Tommy Tuberville for the title of "America's Stupidest Senator.")

I have little else to say about the national election. Somehow the whiny, traitorous asshole is back, so those Americans who want to threaten immigrants, beat up transgender folk, sling racial slurs, grab a woman's breasts in public, taunt Muslims on trains, and whine about all their clearly deserved rejections once again have a guardian angel who'll bless their every noxious urge. I pray that America survives another four years of this disgusting drama.

Where we are now.

So a man goes to the doctor and says, “doctor, recent events in American politics have left me feeling really depressed.”

The doctor says, “you should go read Thieves in the Temple; it’s a blog by this guy Alec Mento. It’s really incisive about politics, it’s funny, and he has this unlikely, irrepressible optimism about the American people no matter what happens! Go read it right now; you’ll feel better about everything!”

“But, doctor,” the man says, “I am Alec Mento.”

Action: vote!

Today is Election Day, though many Americans (in states that allow it) have already voted, either in-person or by mail. So if you have any problems voting today – including (but not limited to) finding your polling place, voter intimidation, accessibility issues, voting machine problems, and provisional ballot issues – call 1.866.687.8683, a.k.a. 1.866.OUR.VOTE. (In Spanish, that phone number is 1.888.839.8682, or 1.888.VE-Y-VOTA. See other phone numbers at the Election Protection website.) You may also call the U.S. Department of Justice's Voting Rights Hotline at 1.800.253.3931. I remain worried that bad Americans will harass good Americans at the polls, but if our enemies are smart (and, despite appearances, they are) they'll also try to obstruct the vote-counting wherever it happens, so you may want to go to your state's Secretary of State website, find out where they're counting the votes in your area, and call 1.866.OUR.VOTE if you see anything untoward. Don’t be skittish about making such calls, because our enemies sure aren’t skittish about preventing good Americans from voting.

Voting, as I've often said, is a citizen's minimum duty in America – this is our government, no matter how little it resembles a good government, and we must make it a good government, first on Election Day and then on every day thereafter. Our politicians would prefer that you vote for them on Election Day and then just shut your yap, but over the years, more and more of us have hounded our elected officials the way we should, and they listen more than they used to – certainly more than they did during the Bush/Obama years. The last four years have seen monopolies take a body blow from which they won't recover for at least six more years (when our FTC updates antitrust enforcement guidelines again); it was the right battle for Joe Biden to pick, and he most certainly paid for it by being hounded out of the Democratic Presidential nomination by his own party and by our "liberal" media. The last four years have also seen major climate change and health care reform legislation pass, as well as bipartisan infrastructure legislation that has at least made "government spending money to build good stuff" possible again, and a virtual neutering of House Republicans' ability to hold everyone hostage to stupid legislative demands. I wish I could say America is a more perfect union than it was four years ago, but only we can make it one, and I know for a fact it's a more perfect union than it would have been if we'd simply given up after 2016 – or "let Biden handle it" after 2020.

But while voting is our minimum duty, our work on every day thereafter will be much harder if we don’t turn all the bad politicians out of office we can. And there are only bad reasons for not voting. Negative campaigning is an especially bad one, though, frankly, the choice has been made easier by the major political parties this year, as Republicans have run mostly negative, empty, and angry ads and Democrats (perhaps having learned from Hillary Clinton's failed "just let Trump's ramblings write our ads for us" strategy) run mostly positive, substantive, and uplifting ads. So let's get out there and vote today – and then tomorrow, let's get back to giving our elected leaders, whomever they may be, the what-for they most definitely deserve. Sadly, that task will probably also include having to keep fighting for the electoral victories we’ve already won, as the Trump campaign plans to contest any vote-counting that doesn’t go their way. I expect, in fact, that their efforts will be worse than last time. But at least we can be prepared.

Penny Rants for November 4, 2024: special “you know what to do” edition.

So why is Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krasner suing Elon Musk and AmericaPAC over their plans to give away $1 million to various petition-signers? Mr. Krasner's complaint alleges that the Musk/AmericaPac lottery is "plainly not a lawful lottery," in that the state of Pennsylvania doesn't regulate it – and also hasn't published "a complete set of lottery rules or shown how they are protecting the privacy of participants’ personal information," as Commonwealth consumer protection laws require. The suit also alleges that they're not selecting winners randomly, as they promised. Well, Mr. Musk is the guy who broke Twitter, so I hardly find this complaint outlandish – I'll bet he even anticipated all the complaints in this lawsuit and just figured he'd spend his way out of them (or his Personal Lord and Savior Donald Trump would somehow intervene). But I think he'll have a tougher time with all that. Now cue the Musk dittoheads who'll insult Mr. Krasner's masculinity and call that an argument.

Donald Shaw at Sludge asks: "What Does Mark Cuban Want?" He's been a Republican most of his life, after all, and yet now he vehemently supports Kamala Harris for President, so it's a question worth asking! Particularly since he's invested in blockchain (sigh) and AI (sigh), he runs a Pharmacy Benefit Manager at a time when PBMs are extremely unpopular, and hates the Biden Administration's antitrust lawsuit against Google because it means some other country might develop AI faster. Jesus Mary and Joseph if someone else gets to AI faster maybe it ain't worth it to get there at all! And "but it's an emergency" doesn't justify enforcing antitrust laws selectively. Why, he even gives a shout-out to a fellow whose corporation faces a federal antitrust lawsuit as we speak – and praises him by saying "he can pretty much define what's going to happen by how he prices things." Does he not understand why people would be upset with that – or does he just want you to think that? Either way, file under "With Friends Like These."

Ho hum, America's biggest health insurance corporations often outsource medical reviews to other corporations that operate on a "denials for dollars" scheme. And the biggest one, EviCore – did you originally read that as "EvilCore"? I sure did – uses, double ho hum, an algorithm called, of course, "the dial" that can of course be adjusted to send more claims to doctors, which generally results in more denials – particularly since EvilCore EviCore makes its doctors review a case about every four minutes. And EvilCore EviCore execs did adjust "the dial," per employee testimony, when their clients weren't "saving enough money." And their PR hacks brag about denying care! Which one could only get away with in a civilization that worships mammon. Hate to pile on, but Cigna owns EvilCore EviCore (and Elevance Health, the Artist Formerly Known as Humana, owns the second-biggest denials-for-dollars corporation, Carelon); think maybe there might be a conflict of interest there? Say it with me: it's a question worth asking!

In a related note, Eric Gardner at More Perfect Union explains "Why Crypto Hates" Securities and Exchange Commission (or SEC) Chair Gary Gensler. Long story short: because Mr. Gensler has moved aggressively against cryptocurrency – a phenomenon described by at least one observer as "fake money for criminals" – using existing law; crypto barons claim that crypto is so ground-breaking that it needs all new laws, though fraud is fraud pretty much anywhere you go. Naturally Mark Cuban also thinks Gary Gensler is doing a bad job – as with Lina Khan and AI, he says Mr. Gensler is "pushing the crypto industry overseas," to which I'd say Godspeed! – and Donald Trump, who said just three years ago that our government needed to regulate crypto "very, very high," has now seen the light, and I'm sure his own (desperate?) crypto venture which he helped launch just last month has nothing to do with that.

Finally, also peripherally-related to many of the above-described matters, Matt Stoller reminds us that the real problem the rich have with folks like Lina Khan and Gary Gensler is that, in G.K. Chesterton's words, "(t)he poor have sometimes objected to being governed badly," whereas "(t)he rich have always objected to being governed at all." Dig the rage coming from these contemporary robber barons! What is Jamie Dimon's reaction to our Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (or CFPB) telling banks to give a good American's personal data to another bank if said good American requests it? Not regulators don't understand how hard that is, or we need a light touch toward these things, or even nanny state! – it's literally "I've had it with this shit." And his attitude (and potty mouth!) are endemic with his kind. It's well past time good Americans said I've had it with this shit – to the rich.