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Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza!

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The Late Show: Franzia has a message for bottled wine

Robert Reich takes on replies to his tweets

Jimmy Dore: Mitt Romney’s crazy solution to climate change

Trevor: The subminimum wage disability pay loophole

SNL: Football press conference

Rachel Maddow: Actual audit finds Wisconsin 2020 election was “safe and secure”

Vice News: Joel Castón is the first elected Representative for an incarcerated population

Amber Ruffin: ♫ Facebook values profit over public Safety? duh! ♬

Liars, Cheaters, Traitors and other Dotard Трамп Wannabes:

Al Franken: Al Franken on the “non-partisan” Supreme Court

The Late Show: Facebook’s new name search isn’t going well

Schmoyoho: ♫ Joe Biden sings Spooky Time ♬

The Remix Bros: ♫ Yung Gret—Blah Blah Blah REMIX ♬

AJ+: Why we’ll keep seeing climate disasters even if we “fix global warming”

Vice News: Death threats are creating a mass exodus of election officials

Robert Reich: America is on strike

Trevor: Why are so many workers going on strike?

Mark Fiore: Virtual reality for virtual Democrats

This Week in ТрампPlague:

Trevor: Sen. Tammy Duckworth on why the subminimum wage should be abolished

Jimmy Kimmel: The week in unnecessary censorship

Vox: Why the US is always hitting a “debt ceiling”

Comedy Central’s Drunk History: Revolutionary war stories

Roll Call: Congressional hits and misses of the week

Dulcé Sloan: Why low-income neighborhoods have fewer trees

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

Comments

  1. 1

    Interesting about the Nevada case. The poster child turned out to be the culprit.

    I’m nervous that my ballot has become a victim of DeJoy’s cuts to the postal service. Probably ended up in the wrong mail slot. I get my neighbors mail all the time. Already called KingCo elections.

  2. 2

    This is nuthin’. Wait until it’s time for us to hear what MLK was sayin’ in that hotel room while that girl was gettin’ raped by his friends. I think those docs are released in 2027.

    Biden delays release of JFK assassination records, blaming COVID-19 pandemic

  3. 3

    Railfan @ 1

    If the USPS screws up your mail all the time, why is is DeJoy’s fault?

    The USPS has been one of the worst examples of a government organization for decades. About the only one worse is…

    wait for it…

    Amtrak.

  4. 4

    Out: Trickle-down economics never worked. Rich people save too much.

    In: Y’all rich bitches are spendin’ so much that the economy is stopped up worse than Roger Dumbfuck Rabbit prior to his third enema of the morning.

    The Atlantic
    @TheAtlantic
    Supply-chain problems could be solved more quickly if affluent Americans would stop buying up things they don’t need and often don’t even really want, writes
    @amandamull
    :
    theatlantic.com
    Stop Shopping
    America needs you to buy less junk.
    11:18 AM · Oct 22, 2021

  5. 5

    Great Documentary about the Victoria Cross, Britain’s highest honor for Military Valor. It’s been awarded less than the American equivalent, the Medal of Honor. Although the CMH has been revoked a few times, in the case of the VC, it can’t be, at least since George V was king. They still have the Russian Cannon that the bronze for the first one was made from, and estimate it can produce enough for 80. more.

    https://youtu.be/RbS4Ivl85GQ

    Don’t know if any Americans other than the Unknown Soldier have been awarded it. The documentary was made in 2003, and since then, the VC was awarded at least once for an Iraq et, and one for Afghanistan.When the Queen presented it to the Iraqi vet, an immigrant from Grenada, she actually said it had been awhile since she awarded one. Prior to that, the last time was the Falklands, and posthumously.

  9. 9

    Union Pacific’s 3Q earning were a record, but could have been higher. Couldn’t avoid shelling out some of the money to fix a bridge that burned in the fires. Caused bottlenecks all over the system, with trains on their I-5 corridor as they call the former Southern Pacific line to Portland, diverted via Salt Lake City.

    https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/union-pacific-sets-quarterly-marks-for-operating-ratio-and-profits/

    Also, one of the aspects of Precision Scheduled Railroading is fewer but longer freight trains. Negated by the detour, some were only a mile and a half instead of 3 miles long. They are adding more 15,000ft sidings , but should have done it before they embarked on PSR.

  10. 10

    @6,
    I agree. And I am filled with an inexpressible sense of powerless rage and confusion because the “accessory wand attachment kit” that I neeeeeeed for my Sybian rider will not even ship until after Black Friday.

    The Biden presidency is a post-apocalyptic nightmare in which we wander through an empty wilderness unable to obtain fulfillment from mindless e-commerce.

  11. 11

    In case you find yourself debating the wisdom of Sinema, Manchin, or any Democrat pandering to Trump voters:

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/biden-vulgar-signs-chants/2021/10/22/6071836e-3122-11ec-a880-a9d8c009a0b1_story.html

    And it’s important to understand here that when I use the term “pander” it includes any effort to avoid triggering them or upsetting their sensitive “feels”.

    Biden and any Democrat are a source of hatred and rage to Republicans (all Trump voters – review the voter file data) because they defeated Trump. Trump’s defeat alone defines the grievance now. He has been that successful in redefining the GOP.

    It isn’t even enough to be a Republican anymore. Republican voters hate Liz Cheney now as much as they hate Joe Biden or any other Democrat. If you are not 100% a defender of Trump and 100% opposed to Democrats they hate you. Most of them have probably lost the ability to experience much of anything other than hate and rage.

    If you are a Democratic campaign running in any election, or even a non-partisan campaign running in a local school board they hate you. Seeking to please them or just hoping not to upset them is a total waste of effort.

    If McAuliffe loses this will be why he lost. Every single bit of energy and resources that he spends trying to soothe these freaks is counterproductive.

  12. 12

    @ 11

    Biden and any Democrat are a source of hatred and rage to Republicans (all Trump voters – review the voter file data) because they defeated Trump. Trump’s defeat alone defines the grievance now.

    Trump and any Republican are a source of hatred and rage to Democrats (all #CrookedHillary voters and particularly women – review the voter file data) because they defeated #CrookedHillary and the DNC. #CrookedHillary’s defeat alone defines the grievance now.

    QoS McHillbilly, if you believe you see anything different you are fooling yourself. Only the uniforms have changed. Oh, and we don’t see photographs of devout Democrats who just happened upon Hillary and Bill while they were taking a pensive walk through the forest near their Chappaqua home.

    In 2016 the most disliked candidate in history beat the second most disliked candidate in history. We don’t see a reversion to normalcy after dustups like that – not for awhile. We should not expect to.

  14. 14

    Maine CD-2 Dem Rep Jared Golden, about one part of the reconciliation bill:

    While I support child care assistance for working- and middle-class families, I do not support extending this program to wealthy families who do not need it. This is not a fringe position within the Democratic Party. The Chairman of the House Education and Labor Committee, Congressman Bobby Scott, originally introduced this bill with a household eligibility cap at 200 percent of state median income. That eligibility cap was eliminated by an amendment adopted in the Committee’s markup of the bill. While Chairman Scott voted for that amendment, he has stated publicly that he only did so because if the amendment was rejected, other Democrats on the committee had threatened to tank the entire bill. As currently designed, this entitlement has no income limit — it is only technically closed to households with more than $1 million in assets, and all a household needs to do to meet that test is self-certify that they meet it. This is not a meaningful or effective test to ensure that the benefit goes to the families that need it.

    https://bangordailynews.com/2021/10/21/politics/jared-golden-says-dems-need-to-better-target-budget-bill-to-gain-his-support/

    QoS McHillbilly, next time you choose to shame Democrats for threatening to blow up bills if they don’t get their way, make sure you succeed at shaming everybody, not just the two you know about.

  15. 15

    Re @ 14, I had written an earlier spew about Golden’s objection, and what it means to Pelosi, but it apparently didn’t make it onto HA.

    Jared Golden represents Maine’s purplish second congressional district. So consider him a moderate/centrist Democrat. I think Trump won that district, and its EV, in 2016 but lost it in 2020. Not gonna check but I think so.

    There is a link to an article @ 14 in which Jared Golden’s 5-page letter to state legislators outlining his objections to the reconciliation bill is embedded. It’s not something hurriedly thrown together like Manchin’s one-page document signed by him and kinda-sorta countersigned by Schumer. It’s a detailed list of some of the components, costs, and income limitations in the reconciliation bill that moderate Democrats find problematic.

    I learned a few things by reading it. It’s way over the heads of YLB and The Even Bigger Fucking Moron, but others will get it. It’s worth your time.

    It’s also the most useful thing I have posted for quite awhile.

  16. 16

    In response to Bob’s generalization of the 30% more cost of living in NYC.

    Today’s electric bill $53.00. From 9/10 to 9/30. Moved into new place on 9/10.

    One bedroom. Don’t use a lot of electricity but have 5 night lights on to keep roaches at bay.

    What’s you electric bill for the barn Bob?

  17. 17

    I never had problems with my mail, only recently within the past year or more have I had any problems, so yes DeJerk should be to blame.

  18. 18

    More from Golden’s letter:

    The SALT limitation, if repealed, will cost $88 billion per year.

    Eliminating the SALT cap, as some have proposed to do, would come at an enormous hit to the Treasury: the Congressional Budget Office estimates this would cost up to $88.7 billion per year.

    That’s a restored Schedule A tax deduction, 97% of which will go to the highest-earning 20% of taxpayers, of whom I am proud to say I am one.

    Schumer is desperate to insert the SALT limitation repeal into the reconciliation boondoggle. We’re hearing that, what, $1.75 trillion is now Manchin’s top line number?

    $88 billion x 10 years is $880 billion. That’s half of the whole reconciliation bill.

    YLB, you are cheerleading for a bill that will cost $1.75 trillion, will cost a bunch of House Democrats and a couple of Senate Democrats their seats in Congress, and half of that money will go to the top 20% of wage-earners in this country.

    Think about that, girlfriend. Then think about that in 2025, when President DeSantis nominates Breyer’s replacement for confirmation by a GOP-majority Senate.

    YLB wants to pay me to replace Breyer with a conservative SCOTUS justice. Who am I to turn her down?

  19. 19

    Shorter Cuomosexual G-clown @ 16

    “I make so little money I am forced to sleep with cockroaches.”

  20. 20

    The reconcilation bill will give us the next Associate Justice Thomas.

    Justice Thomas Fan Account
    @JusticeThomas
    ·
    3h
    Today marks the 30th anniversary of Clarence Thomas’ confirmation to the U.S. Supreme Court.

    Justice Thomas’ three decades on the Court are a testament to both his dedication to the Constitution and the opportunity our great country provides.

    We’re missing an important demographic on the Court, still. We need someone of Asian or Asian sub-continent heritage, amirite?

    YLB, what do you think of replacing Stephen Breyer with, say, Neomi Rao? Does that make you moist, girlfriend?

  21. 21

    The Bernie/AOC/QoS McHillbilly reconciliation bill will providev:

    • $1.75 trillion more federal debt for YLB’s kids to service
    • $880 billion for Bob and his friends to divvy up
    • Lotsa child care tax credits for Bob’s friends to share in, even though they don’t need it.
    • A GOP-controlled 2023 House
    • A GOP-controlled 2023 Senate (or maybe even 2022!)
    • A GOP-controlled 2025 White House
    • A 7-2 SCOTUS conservative majority, if you count Roberts, starting sometime after January 1, 2025.

    Sounds great. Where do I sign?

  24. 24

    @ 22

    “that certain day” that will be good for my kids..

    Depends on what can be accomplished with estate taxation. Keep in mind that there is an increasing number of wealthy black and Hispanic families, who won’t appreciate being fleeced by the IRS in order to benefit the children of The Unserious YLB.

    A line from The West Wing I will always remember:

    What is more, many Americans, including Democrats, dislike the estate tax. If you believe that you may become rich one day, you do not want to curtail your own opportunity to build inheritances. Even if that means allowing someone else to advance his horrid offspring ahead of the rest. Such a triumph of hope over envy is the popular recognition of the very real successes of the 1980s and 1990s. This is what Mr Beach, Mr Norquist and the others divined. So did television screenwriters, who made the point in a scene about the Congressional Black Caucus in The West Wing:

    Character A: “Can you think of any reason why they’d oppose the estate tax?”

    Character B: “Sure. The first generation of black millionaires is about to die.“

    YLB, tell me that my wealth will be confiscated upon my death and I will give it away to avoid that, taking a tax break in the process. If I give it away it will help your kids much more than if the IRS confiscates it and wastes it on the stupid shit that is in the reconciliation bill.

    Either way your kids benefit, YLB. And it’s a good thing, too. They’re gonna need the money, the poor fucks.

  25. 25

    YLB, you are cheerleading for a bill..

    Nope, not at all impotent vacuous one. It’s a disappointment but an understandable one.. Too many sellout corporate Dems. Manchin is a disgusting fossil fuel shill and Sinema is a self-styled “maverick” careerist.

    We’re going to be fine impotent, vacuous troll.. At least in the short term. However, too many Americans are going to be worse off because of corporate sellouts and fascist repukes.

    You’re incapable of being careful of what you wish for always impotent vacuous troll.. Watch out when worse off Americans double down on fascist drumpfism..

    They might come for you, cuckservative.

  26. 26

    Depends on what can be accomplished with estate taxation.

    Are you truly so clueless impotent vacuous one? You babble(d?) endlessly about a SS check that you have yet to receive standing on the neck of my kids.

    without giving one “thought”…

    to how that comes to a certain end..

    Limbaugh is dead.. Adelson is dead.. Every day repukes die..

    According to you.. that’s good for my kids..

    AMIRITE?

  27. 27

    Seems to me that the corporate sellout Dems are perfectly fine with repukes running the show. They’re offended by their authoritarian social agenda sure..

    But as long as they’re financially and materially comfortable they’re fine with waiting them out to be eaten by their own base.

    Which happens time and time again.

    Every repuke and drumpfist tool blindly supports cutting the taxes of “leftist” billionaires and millionaires….. How does the typical corporate dem see anything wrong with this?

  28. 28

    It’s nice to know that leaks continue now that Trump is out of office.

    U.S. officials are providing exact figures on the number of Americans who are still stranded and want to leave—although they are doing so in private, off-the-record forums—according to two senior congressional aides, who relayed the contents of the non-public call to the Washington Free Beacon.

    The United States is in touch with 363 Americans who are stuck in war-torn Afghanistan and around 176 U.S. permanent residents who are asking to be evacuated immediately, Biden administration officials said on the call with congressional staff, according to the source, who requested anonymity to discuss non-public information. These figures demonstrate that senior Biden administration officials routinely misrepresented the number of stranded Americans to the public and Congress for nearly two months.

    And this is after the US has removed an additional 218 citizens from Biden’s debacle. So back when they were telling us that around a hundred were still stuck there, there were really about 600.

    State Department knew it, too.

  29. 29

    A majority of Americans now strongly disapprove of First Vegetable Joe Biden.

    Not just disapprove. Strongly disapprove.

    How weak is Terry McAuliffe, to see no choice but to bring ball-and-chain like First Vegetable Joe Biden into Virginia to campaign for him in the final week before the election?

  30. 30

    @ 26

    According to you.. that’s good for my kids..

    A rising tide lifts all boats, YLB. Even the floating turds that are your kids.

  31. 31

    Keep in mind that there is an increasing number of wealthy black and Hispanic families, who won’t appreciate being fleeced by the IRS..

    Laughable with an current exclusion of 11.7 million.

    Folks lucky enough to have more than that do a million things to work around it and minimize it if they want to..

    Just bury your fookin’ munee with your miserable remains and have all that shit set on fire. If you want it that much, you can have it.

    Forever.

    You can’t take the chance that your spawn won’t spend it on liberal causes or over pay their taxes so “poor fucks” will benefit. You’ll roll in your grave.

    No one fucking cares about your fookin’ munnee impotent vacuous troll.

  32. 32

    @ 31

    No one fucking cares about your fookin’ munnee impotent vacuous troll.

    Here’s what you miss, Massengill: Minority business persons care about theirs. They worked hard for it, and they see a greater threat to it in the Democrat party with each passing day.

  33. 33

    He’s a dude. What else are we supposed to call a dude?

    Mary Margaret Olohan
    @MaryMargOlohan

    NEW: Twitter has censored @RepJimBanks for calling HHS’ Rachel Levine a man. He will be locked out of his account until he deletes the tweet, “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”
    5:17 AM · Oct 23, 2021

  34. 34

    Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-vax and weirdly I’m OK with most, if not all, aspects of a mandate. Despite my suspicions that they wouldn’t pass constitutional muster.

    If we’re going to go full pro-vax, we need to be comfortable with study numbers as small as these:

    Researchers concluded the Pfizer shot was 91 percent effective at preventing symptomatic infections, according to the study, calculated based on 16 cases of the virus in children given placebo shots versus only three cases among those who were vaccinated.

    Which I’m not. But right now they’re all we’ve got.

    It’s shit like this that bothered the left until the election, and it’s shit like this that bothers the right these days.

  35. 35

    @ 33

    “The title of first female four-star officer gets taken by a man.”

    In 2016, the title of First! Woman! President! was taken by a man, too.

    Heh.

  37. 37

    @ 36

    It’s hysterical to see a lifelong beneficiary of white privilege pretend to advocate for people it never gave a shit about.

    It’s hysterical to see a lifelong leechbeneficiary of the taxes overwhelmingly paid by white people dismiss concerns of black and Hispanic people she never gave a shit about, unless she needed their votes for someone who would ensure that she could continue to leechbenefit.

  38. 38

    @37 triggered. Wealthy minorities just gotta do what the white folks do..

    Hire the right accountants and tax lawyers. Minority money is just as green. That is, if those darker skinned folks are comfortable with using the back door when they come to call.

    Fancy outfits can’t risk scaring off their best clients.

    beneficiary of the taxes overwhelmingly paid by white people

    of privilege.. ftfy.. damn, little self own there vacuous one. little bit of white pride…

  40. 40

    Mary Kay is a lock to survive the always feckless, impotent vacuous troll..

    Fun fact about the estate tax:

    Assets spouses inherit generally aren’t subject to estate tax.

    Long live Mary Kay!

    How to avoid or minimize the estate tax:

    If you want to reduce your estate taxes before you die, there are some tactics you might use to protect your property. They include:

    Spending your assets. If you’re not afraid of running out of money before you die, enjoy your wealth.

    Spreading your assets. You could give away part of your estate as gifts to loved ones while you’re still around. Many states don’t tax gifts. (Learn how the gift tax works.)

    Giving away your assets. If you leave property to a qualifying charity, it is deductible from the gross estate.

    Shielding your assets in a trust. Properly created irrevocable trusts could provide a way to legally shelter some of your assets from state and federal estate tax. [The trust “industry” is booming in red states.]

    Moving to a more favorable tax environment. Since most states don’t have estate tax or inheritance tax, you have many relocation options.

    The always feckless and impotent vacuous troll seems to believes wealthy minorities can’t read and absorb such material and plan accordingly without getting mad at Dems.

  41. 41

    A tax deduction, 97% of which will go to the highest-earning 20% of taxpayers, of whom I am proud to say I am one.

    Well I’m seeing the individual 80th income percentile starts at $87,600..

    So we’re there too.. Eh… It’s no big deal from our perspective.

    Big yawwwwn…

    50th percentile is $44,225. It’s super tough to get by on that income in Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma.

  42. 42

    @12 I hate Hitler for what he did. I don’t hate Trump; I simply want to keep him from returning to office, so he doesn’t have a chance to do it, too.

  44. 44

    @15 “I had written an earlier spew …, but it apparently didn’t make it onto HA.”

    You have to click on the “Post Comment” button, or it won’t. What time of night or early morning were you trying to post? How much had you had to drink?

  45. 45

    @34 “Don’t get me wrong, I’m pro-vax and weirdly I’m OK with most, if not all, aspects of a mandate.”

    Then either you’ve been kicked out of the GOP, or you’re lying to either (a) us, or (b) them.

  46. 46

    @41 “starts at $87,600”

    That’s all he makes? I wonder if I should send him a food donation.

  47. 47

    I dunno. Biden averaged this in his campaign events and still got elected. Running against the most unpopular candidate in the history of the universe. Barely. Probably.

    Matthew Hurtt
    @matthewhurtt
    ·
    Oct 22
    Two dozen reporters. A dozen paid staff. Half-dozen elected Arlington Dems.

    The rest are paid SEIU folks and maybe two dozen voters.

    In Arlington.

    If I’m @TerryMcAuliffe, I’m thinking the wheels are coming off my campaign bus. #VAGov
    Quote Tweet
    Arlington GOP
    @goparlington
    · Oct 22
    Super lame showing by the @arlingtondems for low-energy @TerryMcAuliffe in Courthouse. #VAGov

  49. 49

    I don’t hate Trump

    When drumpf was making noises about running to hijack the Oval Office, people close to me told me I hated him.

    No, I said, I despise him. For the birther shit. There’s a difference.

    That was when I and so many others thought there was no way a klown bullshit artist like that would hijack the repuke party much less the White House.

    Let’s just say familiarity over the subsequent months bred shitloads more contempt.

  51. 51

    James Bible, a donor to Gonzalez, just came out against her.

    …a new attack ad aired by González’s campaign, which accuses Harrell of siding with sexual abusers including ex-Mayor Ed Murray — a late hit that was blasted as desperate and racist by Harrell and allies including Black community leaders.

    At a virtual news conference organized by Harrell Saturday, speakers demanded González pull the ad, which juxtaposes images of Harrell with media accounts of the Murray sex-abuse scandal. The ad features a white rape survivor who says she could never vote for Harrell.

    James Bible, a civil-rights attorney who donated $550 to the González campaign, called the ad “gut-wrenching” and “a race to the bottom” at the news conference. He added: “Lorena, you just demonstrated you would do anything to win.”

    Yabbut would she fellate Willie Brown to advance her career?

  52. 52

    Bruce Harrell’s in good company.

    González refused to pull the ad and doubled down in a statement from her campaign Saturday afternoon.

    “Bruce Harrell has a troubling history of discrediting survivors of abuse and harassment. As Council President, he used his position to defend Ed Murray, even after multiple, credible accusations of child rape. His response to this ad is another example of him denying the facts and discrediting a victim,” the statement sent by campaign manager Alex Koren said.

    There was some spirited defense of Ed Mole on HA, before the accusations started piling up.

  53. 53

    As I was mentioning in the past, the reason the two Canadian Class Is were trying to acquire Kansas City Southern was it’s Mexican Traffic. Traffic that dragged it down in the 3rd Quarter. Protests hampering traffic out of the Port of Lazaro Cardenas, and Auto Traffic stalled by the global chip shortage. For now Canadian National might be glad the guys in Calgary had a better shot at the merger.
    https://www.trains.com/trn/news-reviews/news-wire/auto-woes-mexico-protests-crimp-kansas-city-southern-earnings/

    Will be interesting to see if KCS locomotives will stay in the Southern Belle colors.

  55. 55

    @51 “Yabbut would she fellate Willie Brown to advance her career?”

    She won’t do it for you. Everybody has their limits.

  56. 56

    @54 He’s afraid they’ll come for Whidbey Island, too. That’s why he lets Three Percenters use his barn for meetings, but only when the horse is in the pasture. He doesn’t want to share the horse.

  57. 57

    Germany’s upstart FlixBus has acquired Greyhound. Maybe they’ll do a better job than the Scots who only bought the previous parent Company Laidlaw for it’s school buses. Over the past two decades I’ve seen Greyhound retrench, first dropping towns and cities, and later, whole route segments. Right now, traveling Greyhound on I-90 requires a transfer to Jefferson Lines at Spokane . JL is a good company, started in Minnesota like Greyhound, but unlike Greyhound, they stayed centered in the upper Midwest even as they expanded. At the rate Greyhound was going under FirstGroup, they may have gone the way of Rimrock Stage Lines..

    https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-flixbus-acquires-us-greyhound-bus-company/a-59572295

  58. 58

    I sure hope Desperately Poor Bobby got in on the ground floor of the Truth Social pump-and-dump.

    Now that it turns out the source code was stolen from an open source licensor.
    Monday will be a bad day.But not for the con artists who sold late in the day Friday.

    Suckers.

  59. 59

    Also, FlixBus was operating here with MTR Western. Guess back to being a charter carrier for the company started by the Fraudster. Say, was he ever re-captured?

  61. 61

    I had not heard of the term “Lost Cause” myth, invented after the South lost the Civil War. Though aspects of it I been exposed to. It’s been a fascinating read.

    In The Lost Cause myth, the first and most important part is that secession had little or nothing to do with the institution of slavery.
    In their myth, Southern states seceded to protect their rights, their homes, and to throw off the shackles of a tyrannical government, it was never about the seceding to protect their ability to keep black people as living unpaid farm equipment. They were instead trying to conserve their agrarian way of life resisting the North’s industrialization. The South was not traitors, they were the real Americans resisting a tyrannical North telling them what to do.

    The fiction lets the people of South pretend that they were and are the victims, the righteous Americans in doomed struggle against the forces of evil authority.

    Both the reality and myth display a desperate need desire to avoid change, to avoid adapting to a changing world.

    This was version of the Civil War I learned in High School in Oregon in the late 70s. The South tried to secede for “Freedom” and freeing the slaves was an afterthought, a punishment by the North for challenging them

  62. 62

    @59. Well, that’s nasty. Another example where Republicans do not think government works and then set about make sure it doesn’t.

    Don’t you worry, Republicans in congress and the 1% can get fresh PPE so why change anything? It’s making someone a profit.

    This is why republicans have to cheat to get elected. The Majority doesn’t trust them.

  63. 63

    Shorter Cuomosexual G-clown @ 16

    “I make so little money I am forced to sleep with cockroaches.”

    Shorter Fuck Troll @19 “I am a Dumbfuck that is a unpatriotic insurrectionist supporter who cares less about killing cops”.

  64. 64

    The price of gasoline is determined by the following factors
    Crude oil prices.
    Cost of Refining.
    Marking.
    Distribution.
    Taxes.
    None of the factors are determined by the President of the United states.

    Sadly, these facts will not stop conservatives from lying about gas prices.

  66. 66

    @63 In 2014, Saudi Arabia set out to eliminate a new competitor in the form of the burgeoning U.S. shale oil industry, by flooding the market with oil to drop prices below U.S. shale producers’ breakeven cost.

    Remember how there was so much oil that Cushing ran out of storage, ships were used as storage facilities, and at one point oil contracts went negative, i.e. people would pay you to take the oil off their hands?

    Oil companies’ cash flow fell off a cliff. Within 2 years, their revenues were halved and profits fell by 80%, compared to 5 years earlier. Consequently, E&P budgets were slashed, rig counts plummeted, wells were shut in, and production fell.

    Then the pandemic came. Millions of vehicles were parked or driven less. Demand dried up. Now oil companies were losing money. They also faced a new risk that E&P investments might become sunk costs in stranded assets because of a societal shift away from fossil fuels.

    The result was massive disinvestment in E&P, which inevitably would constrict supplies a few years down the road. And then Saudi/OPEC cut production to push prices back up, because they need the money. So now supplies are tight again, and oil prices have quadrupled in the space of a year or so.

    It’s really very simple. Drivers enjoyed $2 gas for a while because of below-market crude prices. Now they’re paying $4 for gas because of above-market crude prices. Long term, it averages out, and that’s the sustaining cost of gas, not the temporary low price. In rough back-of-envelope terms, let’s say it averages out to $3. The $2 pump price was never going to be permanent, because $20 crude wasn’t going to be permanent, not when average production costs are in the $40-$50 range.

    The Saudis subsidized drivers for a few years by selling oil below fair market value. Now they’re clawing back those subsidies by selling oil for $80. For them, it’ll average out to about $60, give or take, which is where they wanted to be all along.

    There’s no free lunch. Motorists are now paying a surcharge to make oil producers whole for the subsidized gas they got during the 5-6 years or so of suppressed oil prices.

    Really has nothing to do with Biden, or Trump for that matter. Conservatives will try to argue that opposing certain drilling projects (ANWR, offshore, federal lands) contributed to the shortage. Nope. The Saudis had a price target, and they would’ve offset that production with deeper production cuts at their end. Plus, it takes 10 or 15 years to turn drilling permits into barrels produced. If Biden had let Trump’s ANWR go-ahead stand, environment be damned, that oil would start coming on line in the 2030s.

    But let’s suppose Biden decided to pump ANWR’s oil. Estimates of how much is there range from 7.7 to 11.8 billion barrels. The world consumes 100 million barrels a day. Drilling ANWR doesn’t supply the world for 100 years, 20 years, or even 1 year. Its reserves are equal to about 77 to 118 days of consumption, i.e., about 4 months at most. So ANWR is not, and never was, a permanent solution to high oil prices caused by limited supply. It’s also not cheap oil; arctic oil has high production costs, it’s probably barely financially viable at today’s crude prices, which means developing ANWR wouldn’t — couldn’t — lower pump prices, because that oil would go off market if crude prices fell.

    And if you’re not talking about drilling ANWR, or permitting more offshore, or opening up federal lands, or releasing oil from the SPR, then what exactly do Biden’s policies have to do with gas prices? Exactly nothing.

    The only reason Republicans are blaming Biden for rising gas prices is because they can profit politically from doing so, and fact-checkers and the reality won’t stop some voters from believing it.

  67. 67

    @60 There was indeed a political conflict between North and South. The industrial economy of the North and agricultural economy of the South called for different, incompatible policies. That conflict would have occurred with or without slavery. And slavery eventually would have died out without secession, the Civil War, or emancipation; killed off by mechanization of agriculture and the greatly reduced need for human field labor. But to argue that slavery wasn’t at the heart of the Civil War is spurious. The political battles leading up to secession and war were fought over whether the western territories would become slave states or free states. The immediate trigger for the war was the Harper’s Ferry raid, staged by John Brown to seize a federal armory to get weapons to arm a slave rebellion. Outnumbered by slaves, the southern whites always lived in mortal fear of slave uprisings. The Dred Scott case, another major political conflict leading up to the war, was about slavery. All the major conflicts and triggers leading to secession and war involved slavery. The “southern rights” component isn’t a myth, but is an incomplete description; what southerners fought for was not some vague “right,” or slightly more specific concept under the rubric of “states rights.” Those are merely purposely obscured descriptions of the “right to own slaves.” So, while the root cause was perception of a threat to the southern economy, and by extension to the southern way of life, in reality slavery was deemed essential to the southern economic model and the war was fought to preserve, protect, and defend slavery. And after the war, white southerners tried to revive slavery in a modified form, the sharecropper system, and called by a different name, the Jim Crow system. Both of which would persist well into the 20th century, and the associated racist attitudes still linger in our society and lie at the heart of our political divisions even today. America remains a racist country with its racism roots in slavery. See, e.g., a white cop pulling over a black motorist driving a nice car because it “looks suspicious.” What’s a slave-person doing driving a BMW or Mercedes? It must be stolen. What’s a slave-person’s life worth in a confrontation with police? Very little. We don’t have slaves anymore, but we very much have slave-persons. And we’re still fighting the Civil War, which has moved into a guerilla phase on a different kind of battlefield.

  69. 69

    According to Twitter’s hateful conduct policy, hateful conduct can include “targeted misgendering or deadnaming of transgender individuals.”
    The greedy racist incel has been banned from Twitter by that standard.

  70. 70

    Wall Street Journal calls out Biden’s vegetableness.

    White House handlers shield President Biden from the press as much as possible, and Thursday’s town hall on CNN shows why. Even with a friendly audience and softball questions, Mr. Biden’s performance revealed why so many Americans are losing confidence in his Presidency.

    One big problem is that Mr. Biden often doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about.
    …
    We take no pleasure in pointing this out, since the U.S. needs a President who can handle the strains of the job. Mr. Biden was never Demosthenes, and all Presidents stumble in speech. But Mr. Biden’s frequent public confusion about the major issues of the day is a reason for the growing public concern.

    Meanwhile, last night SNL treated Biden’s incoherence as a joke.

    Three more years of this, libbies, if he lasts that long. He won’t.

  71. 71

    Cuomosexual G-clown uses cockroaches for rectal stimulation. Hey, where he lives they’re free! Not to mention present in large quantities.

    Best of all, it’s good for the gerbil population.

  72. 72

    Cuomosexual G-clown has won the New York City Cockroach Felching Championship three years running.

    It’s like the Coney Island Hot Dog Eating Contest. ‘cept different.

  73. 73

    There once was a Cuomosexual named G-clown
    Who excelled at cockroach-felching and keeping it down
    He said with a grin
    As he wiped off his chin
    “It’s the only sex I can afford since my AGI is down.”

  74. 74

    It’s even funnier ’cause Abrams can’t bring herself to admit that she lost to this guy fair and square.

    Brian Kemp
    @BrianKempGA
    While Stacey Abrams and the MLB stole the All-Star Game from hardworking Georgians, the Braves earned their trip to the World Series this season and are bringing it home to Georgia.

    Chop On, and Go
    @Braves
    !
    8:46 PM · Oct 23, 2021

    Cue Jane Fonda and Ted Turner doing the Tomahawk Chop.

  75. 75

    Greyhound’s new owners are an interesting new twist on a bus company. They don’t own buses or employ drivers. Local Partners do the day to day operations, FlixBus does the branding, route planning, pricing, and customer service.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flixbus?wprov=sfti1

    One of their subsidiaries in Germany would not work here, FlixTrain. In Germany, the rail network is a separate part of the state holding company that owns Duetsche Bahn. In the U.S, they would have to negotiate with privately owned rail companies for track access, which they does have to grant. Amtrak has the right of access, as part of it’s enabling legislation. The Brightline in Florida is a special case, developed when Fortress Investments also owned the Florida East Coast Railway. As part of the sale, the FEC Granted Brightline perpetual access.

    Still, going to be interesting if the Dog will be disappear from the American Icon that Greyhound was. Although for the last 30+ years, it was a virtual monopoly. I remember when they launched BoltBus, hailed as a new low-cost operation, but was basically Greyhound competing against itself. Figured somebody would buy it, with subsidiaries being dumped in recent years, even before the Pandemic. Especially their Canadian subsidiaries, First Northern BC, then all service west of Sudbury, Ontario, and then lithos year, what was the left.

  76. 76

    When it came to what passed for competition for Greyhound, it was a mix of small companies throughout the country. Some are well run like Jefferson Lines and Peter Pan Coach Lines, others like Rimrock Stage Lines, we’re not. Must have had their last horse die.(A joke my father made when arranging a Greyhound ticket for my brother when he was attending college in Montana in the early nineties.)

    https://youtu.be/C9RZRpk2dBQ

  77. 77

    Sounds like dimfuk is trapped in the house by bad weather. Or perhaps a tree fell across the path leading to the barn.

  78. 78

    I live in an outskirts of St Louis, There is no transportation system outside of cars. Maybe at one time the train stopped or there was a greyhound stop, but those are long gone.

  79. 79

    @ 77

    I live in an outskirts of St Louis, There is no transportation system outside of cars.

    I have flown, direct, to St. Louis from SEA. The Even Bigger Fucking Moron, your stupidity is mind-boggling.

  80. 80

    77)Got a Light Rail system in St. Louis now. Although their is also the Delmar Loop Trolley that didn’t last long. wished we could get the 2 ex Melbourne cars we sold them back.

    The St. Louis-K.C. Missouri River Runner looks like it could go the way of the Hoosier State, although there was a special case where the Hoosier State should have been exempted from the States picking up the tab, being that it hauled rolling stock from other corridors needing maintenance, repair, and overhaul to Amtrak’s maintenance shop outside Indianapolis.

  81. 81

    @78 What did you do for ground transportation after you got there? Or are you one of those stateless persons who live in airports, and when you’re told to “move along,” you fly to another city ?

  83. 83

    Dozens of planning meetings are now confirmed to have taken place between multiple GOP House members and GOP terror attackers, including promises of “blanket pardons” given to the planners from White House representatives via Texas Rep. Paul Gosar.

    I don’t know about you guys, but I always arrange blanket pardons before I do any “tourism” stuff. Pretty much a normal thing for me and all the dudes I hang with. /s

  84. 84

    @78. I guess I should have been more clear for the slow kid . We have been talking about Greyhound bus system. My small town outside of the STL metro doesn’t have a greyhound stop, train stop, ferry boat landing, teleportation circle OR regional airport. Cars are the only option.
    Once you fly here, it will take you 9 hours and 15 minutes to walk from the STL airport to my house. Be careful. Most surface roads here have no shoulders.

  85. 85

    Jan. 6 Protest Organizers Say They Participated in ‘Dozens’ of Planning Meetings With Members of Congress and White House Staff
    https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/exclusive-jan-6-organizers-met-congress-white-house-1245289/

    Along with Greene, the conspiratorial pro-Trump Republican from Georgia who took office earlier this year, the pair both say the members who participated in these conversations or had top staffers join in included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

    It’s just an attempted coup, it’s not like republicans did something really bad, like selling loose cigarettes or having a gram of weed in their pockets or voted in the wrong district. That would been bad! THAT would get jail time.

  86. 86

    84,
    They will dispute all of it.
    GOPers will argue that it’s okay to plan and coordinate to assemble a violent mob.
    That it’s just “demonstrating” the same way the hippies and “The Blacks” do.
    That it doesn’t “cross the line” until you show them a GOPer beheading a police officer.

    Then why arrange in advance for pardons?

    In the criminal law this is called “mens rea” – very clear evidence of criminal intent.

  87. 87

    …included Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Rep. Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas).

    Subpoenas being drafted.

  88. 88

    Everyone know that conservatives plotting to overthrow the government is just the same as liberals protesting cops murdering black people.
    See, both sides are the same.

  89. 89

    The Planning Meetings were jokes. Plotting to over throw a liberal government is funny! Yeesh, you liberals have no sense of humor.

  90. 90

    I’d feel more comfortable with the Rolling Stone piece if its author was someone other than Haven Monahan.

  91. 91

    Conservative centrist Sen. Angus King (I-ME) who sits on the rules committee has proposed changing the debate rules to require a real, talking filibuster, wherein a Republican member who wishes to hold open debate to prevent floor vote on legislation like the Freedom to Vote Act would be required to address the chamber and remain at the speaker’s podium.

    This is the original formulation for debate rules when the “open debate” rules were first enacted in the Senate. There was never any intention that a single member or a minority should be empowered to overrule the entire country. But in the spirit of open, intellectual debate and engagement, in the Senate they wanted to adopt the most liberal possible rules for parliamentary style debate over a bill.

    So as long as a member wished to address the chamber and had something to say about the proposal (or in fact anything at all) they would be allowed to do so under normal rules – potentially forever. Historically a few semi-legendary performances took place in which members gave marathon addresses. But as time demands grew and members grew weary of the threat of being bored to death, they adopted a subsequent rule allowing for ongoing debate to be curtailed through a “cloture” vote. It was this “cloture” vote that required a 60 vote majority. Speakers still had to hold open debate by addressing the chamber. But this allowed a super-majority to terminate a “speaking” filibuster by a vote. Thus the “strongly held” beliefs of any single member or small group of members would be balanced against the wishes of a much larger majority. If any objecting member wanted to hold open debate and prolong negotiations by addressing the chamber the rules allowed them to do so but only if they could find 39 other members to support that effort or at least support their right to delay.

    This is the way it should be. And King is right to offer this incremental step as a return to the normal rules out of respect for the basic principles of democracy.

  92. 92

    89,
    The overpowering feelings of grievance toward “cunts” is an evergreen template that can be applied to every situation.
    Even treason.

  93. 93

    89. You would like Steve Bannon or Ben Shapiro to rewrite it to be more fair to the insurrectionists?

  94. 94

    The Rolling stone piece was not told to them by a fictional character for 2016 but researched by a actual live reporter in 2021. Stop projecting your rescue fantasies. It’s embarrassing for you.

    Hunter Walker is the author of the politics newsletter The Uprising. He previously spent the entirety of the Trump administration as a White House correspondent for Yahoo News. Walker has also written for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, NBC News, Vanity Fair’s HIVE website, and New York Magazine, among others.

  95. 95

    @ 90

    Historically it was two-thirds and was calculated based upon the number of senators present and voting, not the number who serve in the Senate.

    Things change.

  98. 98

    95)Would be great to see. Saw Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, although he was protesting his own expulsion.

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