There's battle lines being drawn.
Nobody's right if everybody's wrong.
Young people speaking their minds
getting so much resistance from behind

Monday, May 27, 2019

Linkee-poo Memorial Day

Jim Wright with an important service announcement for today.

Go out and thank a veteran (which, btw, this is not the fucking holiday for) by taking your 10% off on all the sales. I'll just note that a certain segment laments the "commercialization" of a certain holiday, but is all for the long weekend of sales this holiday.

As I was saying, "The study confirms what we've been hearing for years: Cooking from scratch and eating 'real food' is better and healthier. The problem is that knowing this doesn't make it any more doable for the average family." Eating "healthy" is more expensive, both in material cost, equipment, and labor. Not everybody can meet those costs. However it is possible to produce less processed foods inexpensively. But in this business environment (coughMBAcough) it'll never happen.

"Americans generally do not have enough saved for retirement and Congress is considering a number of measures to address that… There are a few retirement-related bills of note making their way through Congress."

"Missouri Gov. Mike Parson signed a bill on Friday that criminalizes abortions in the state after eight weeks of pregnancy, the latest in a series of sweeping restrictions passed by Republican-controlled legislatures that now threaten nearly 50 years of federal protections for abortion… The final version of the legislation does not have exceptions for victims of rape or incest. It does have a carve-out for cases of medical emergencies." For those polite Missourians who just "want to get as close to the line as possible", allow me to offer this kinder, gentler, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

How go the Trade Wars? "A report by two trade groups showed U.S. beer-industry jobs dropped 40,000 since 2016 as metal tariffs boosted aluminum-can costs, leading to a drop in investment. The biennial study by the Beer Institute and National Beer Wholesalers Association said direct, indirect and induced jobs fell to 2.19 million in 2018 from 2.23 million in 2016." (Grokked from Jim Wright)

"Orders to U.S. factories for large manufactured goods fell sharply last month, pulled down by lower demand for commercial aircraft and cars, while businesses also pulled back on investment spending."

"Did you get a 7% raise last year? Congratulations, yours was in line with what CEOs at the biggest companies got. But for chief executives, that 7% was roughly $800,000." When some people look at the chasms that divide, they don't think of bridges, they wonder why they can't make it wider.

"He knows he is looking for one thing from the country’s political system: a president who will save the plant (Lordstown) that has meant everything to his family… 'I really don’t care if it’s a Democrat, Republican, male, female, black, white, I don’t care,' he said." Actually he does care. And he can't wrap his head around that he (and most of Trumbull County) got suckered by Trump. He (and others) can't just figure out why life got crappy for them after Trump was elected. Because "he repealed NAFTA" (nope, it's still what we're operating under, and Trump hasn't even submitted the new USMCA or whatever the fuck it's called, and even that is only a slight modernization of NAFTA) and he talked a good game about him being a business man (note the article's focus is only now realizing just how much the CEO of GM was making and how that might be a problem). And he can't accept (even though he knows this) that the black, liberal president did better for him than anyone else. This is why Trump was elected. And this is why there's a good chance he'll be re-elected. Because the electorate is more like Marsh than being an educated, well informed, and thinking electorate. Notice how the major through line of this article is, "He tried democrats and felt disappointed, and then he tried Trump and got screwed over, and now he doesn't know what to do." I got a clue bat for ya, Marsh, maybe support the people who aren't actively fucking you over.

"Roger Severino, director of the HHS Office for Civil Rights, said the proposed rule, released Friday, would revise protections put into place in 2016 as part of the Affordable Care Act that defined discrimination 'on the basis of sex' to include gender identity." Making social regressiveness seem like an advancement.

"Florida state Rep. Mike Hill said the abortion bill he introduced to the state legislature this year was sent to him by God." We used to lock away people who talked like this, now we elect them to office. (Grokked from Michele)

"Senate Republicans and their establishment allies are vowing to blackball any political consulting firm that works to defeat GOP incumbents, a dramatic step likely to further inflame intraparty tensions over 2020 primaries." (Grokked from Brandie Tarvin)

"President Trump has disturbed military leaders and officials in the Department of Homeland Security in recent months for repeatedly requesting that a contract for border wall construction be awarded to a company owned by a Republican donor and frequent Fox News guest, The Washington Post reported." Having worked on government contracts, this is "hellafuckingnope" territory. Not that it doesn't get done in some cases, and knowing people in the purchasing chain is always helpful, but this brazen cronyism is totally out of bounds. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

"President Donald Trump didn’t know that Nepal and Bhutan were countries until an adviser told him, according to a new report from Politico." Our stable genius president, everybody. (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

"The German bank loaned a cumulative total of around $2.5 billion to Trump projects over the past two decades, and the bank continued writing him nine-figure checks even after he defaulted on a $640 million obligation and sued the bank, blaming it for his failure to pay back the debt." And the question is why did they keep loaning him money? (Grokked from Kathryn Cramer)

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