On Monday, a week begins again. The country inches ever so slowly toward an essential infrastructure bill. The U.S. is striding forward in creating a more just country, a goal that seems to be getting closer while remaining far away as we slowly march out of the darkest days of the previous administration.
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell has been having a rough go of it. Hitching your huckster caboose to the Trump-train and riding it off the tracks into the land of baseless election fraud claims has led to big losses for the conservative former business fraud-settler. His most recent move is the promise of launching his own social media platform called FRANK.
Happy Friday! There are plans for the weekend to make, there are appointments for vaccinations to be searched for, and there’s a Republican Party continuing its efforts to gum up the works. A lot of news happened today.
President Joe Biden’s nominee for U.S. assistant attorney general began going through the very partisan vetting process of a Senate committee hearing Wednesday. Kristen Clarke will become the first woman of color to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division in its 46-year existence.
It’s Friday! The week has been filled with the hopes of change and the tough fact that Rep. Matt Gaetz is a super gross dude, and the news cycle will likely continue to remind us of this for the foreseeable future.
Remember Alex Jones? He is the guy that runs InfoWars, the conspiracy-smothered, fact-free dreck-machine that people like Donald Trump and the Republican Party rely on to confuse and obfuscate reality for them. Unlike Fox News’ Tucker Carlson—who spews very similar BS—Jones comes in a repellent package that embodies the hedonism, corruption, and narcissism of the conservative movement in our country.
On Tuesday night, Alabama Secretary of State John Merrill denied allegations that he carried on a “sordid” affair with a Montgomery woman named Cesaire McPherson. McPherson detailed “a number of sordid accusations” about an affair she and Merrill had that lasted at least 16 months. McPherson also accused the Alabama Secretary of State of making racist comments.
Greg Gutfeld has always been Fox News’ version of Greg Gutfeld. He has positioned himself as the funny person at Fox News, which is sort of like being the best-smelling dung beetle in a pile of manure. He has a new show on Fox, and boy is it a … hoot? Called Gutfeld!, Greg takes on Fox News’ versions of the day’s events and lampoons the Biden administration and the illiberal media.
For many years news trickled out warning that the National Rifle Association was bleeding money. Lots and lots of money due to things like overspending on all kinds of political maneuvers promoting their continuously unpopular positions. They also found themselves in the middle of a power struggle between the various corrupt executives from both the NRA and their piggy bank: PR firm Ackerman McQueen.
A lot of news comes down the pipe during a Friday, even in a post-incompetent administration. Much of this news is positive as our competent administration works to help hundreds of millions of Americans adversely affected by the previous administration. Some of this news is negative as the Republican Party’s lack of popular policy ideas means their entire identity is based on the belief that we should not be a democracy.
Did you know that for 28 years, Alabama has had a ban on teaching yoga in the Yellowhammer State? Well, it’s true. Since 1993, the Alabama board of education has blocked yoga, hypnosis, and meditation from public schools. According to Newsweek, the state’s guidelines explain it this way: “The State Board of Education specifically prohibits the use of hypnosis and dissociative mental states.
On March 14, Marvin D. Scott III, a 26-year-old Black man, was arrested at a Texas mall for misdemeanor possession of marijuana—less than two ounces. A few hours later, Scott was dead inside of a Collins County, Texas, jail cell—restrained in a bed, with a spit hood over his face.
On Nov. 22, 2014, 12-year-old Tamir Rice was killed by Cleveland police officer Timothy Loehmann. Rice was playing with a black airsoft toy gun when Loehmann and Officer Frank Garmback drove up to Rice in a public park. Loehmann shot Rice dead seconds after opening the door of his squad car.
Maria Bartiromo’s Fox News gig has been a long march into the bottom of an ocean awash in fearmongering, bigotry, and misinformation. Like most Fox News programming this past year, Bartiromo’s programs have been showcases for easily debunked conspiracy theories, all racist and anti-China by nature.
On Monday, CNN reported Eric Spinato, a senior Fox News employee who’d been with the network for 20 years, died from COVID-19 complications.
On Tuesday, eight people were shot and killed and one more was injured in a string of murders at three separate spa businesses in Georgia. Four people were killed at Young’s Asian Massage in Acworth and four more people were killed at Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa in Atlanta. The suspect is 21-year-old Robert Aaron Long, who has reportedly confessed to the murders.
Another week down in the new world of government trying to work for the people. Here are some of today’s stories you might have missed while you didn’t have to worry about whether or not the current administration had set fire to a hospital.
In November 2018, the Department of Justice announced that four St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department officers had been indicted by a federal grand jury in connection with an assault on undercover Black St. Louis police detective Luther Hall. The assault on Hall, a 22-year veteran of the force, took place during Black Lives Matter protests on Sept. 17, 2017.
Former Kansas secretary of state, “birther,” and xenophobic voter suppression person Kris Kobach is in the news again. This time it is his most recent endeavor to make money off of the fear of Kansas denizens. Back in October—along with his Wichita-based business partner, CEO of MoJack Distributors Daniel Drake—Kobach pitched legislators in Topeka two magical COVID-19 sanitizer machines.
With the Republican Party’s only identity at this point being white identity politics, and white people having all of the rights afforded them in the Constitution, they find themselves at a loss. Unable to muster up the vroom needed even to vote for the overwhelmingly popular American Rescue Plan, the conservative world has launched back into their tried and true culture war rhetoric.
Today marked the first day in an America where the American Rescue Plan is officially law. It was such a tough pill to swallow for the policy-less conservative movement that Fox News reached a new existential low as they tried to spin away from the hopeful news the Biden administration offered Americans last night.
Rep. Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina, like many politicians (and people for that matter), has embellished his personal history at points. Cawthorn, unlike most people, has seemingly generated an almost entirely fact-free mythology about himself. He’s lied about being accepted into schools. He’s lied about anonymously running a racist website that attacked his opponent in the North Carolina District 11 elections. He’s lied about his pursuit of Olympic excellence.
On Friday, March 5, 2021, after 24 years in prison, the Hon. Judge Joseph A. Zayas of the Queens County Supreme Court overturned the 1996 convictions of Gary Johnson, 46; George Bell, 44; and Rohan Bolt, 59. The three men were finally released from Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York to waiting family, friends, and media coverage.
On Friday, March 5, 2021, after 24 years in prison, the Hon. Judge Joseph A. Zayas of the Queens County Supreme Court overturned the 1996 convictions of Gary Johnson, 46; George Bell, 44; and Rohan Bolt, 59. The three men were finally released from Green Haven Correctional Facility in upstate New York to waiting family, friends, and media coverage.
Have you heard of Robert Brockman? He’s a billionaire. Brockman is the former CEO of Reynolds & Reynolds, a software company based in Ohio. He’s also the focus of an investigation into a $2 billion tax fraud scheme. It has been called the “biggest tax fraud scheme in U.S. history.” It is the largest tax fraud case ever filed by the government.
Every year, the American Conservative Union’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) is a who’s who of corrupt officials, big-money donors, crummy human beings, morals-free religious zealots, and self-styled whining—lots and lots of whining. Last year’s CPAC made it clear that the whining would happen inside of the convention hall as only VIPs were tipped off to very real COVID-19 hazards.
Right-wing salacious-lie peddlers Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman got hit with some bad news on Monday, when senior U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero denied the two men’s attempts to have their civil case delayed until after their criminal proceedings are done.
When video of George Floyd being killed under the literal weight of Minneapolis law enforcement officer Derek Chauvin surfaced, it touched off months of protests across the country.
Nzambi Matee of Kenya is one of the 2020 “Young Champions of the Earth” winners selected by the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Matee’s young company, Gjenge Makers, takes plastic waste and turns it into building materials. According to Matee, using sand and a mixture of plastic waste can produce bricks, manholes, and tiles that are stronger than traditional concrete materials used for construction.
Decades of inaction by corrupt politicians, groveling at the oily feet of the fossil fuel industry led to a natural disaster-turned epic disaster in Texas. A winter storm took advantage of an archaic fossil fuel-soaked energy grid. Then conservative officials, their party, and their media propaganda machines attempted to place blame for this failure on renewable energy—which makes up less than 20 percent of the grid.
The Fox News machine, along with the Republican Party, has spent the last 24 hours attempting to place blame for the power outages and electrical grid failures in Texas on environmentalism and “green energy.