I'm 99% certain my last words will be "Are you fucking kidding me??"
If you meet the Migraine Fairy on the road, kill her
It’s Friday night, Erin’s out of town on a business trip, and I’m trying to figure out how to convince the Migraine Fairy that she’s overstayed her welcome. So far, this is Day Three of a bitchin’ headache (which comes and goes), dizziness (which has stuck around the entire time), and some nausea (which I’m trying, with varying degrees of success, to ignore).
As might be imagined, this has left me in a decidedly less-than-jovial mood. Even Magnus is ignoring me, curled up asleep on the couch by the front door. So, I’m going to try to maintain my sense of humor as much as possible as I find someone and/or something I can have some fun with.
3rd Republican joins motion to oust Mike Johnson as House speaker:
Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ), another (not) titan of democracy from the House Republican Freedumb Caucus, has signed on to the effort to oust American Taliban mullah Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) from his position.
Speaker Johnson’s crime? Doing his damned job for once.
A third Republican House member has signed onto the effort to remove Mike Johnson as House speaker.
"We need a Speaker who puts America first rather than bending to the reckless demands of the warmongers, neo-cons and the military industrial complex making billions from a costly and endless war half a world away," Gosar said in a statement late Friday morning.
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene filed the motion to vacate resolution nearly a month ago, in part over disputes with the speaker on how he handled a $1.2 trillion appropriations package. Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie co-sponsored that motion earlier this week.
Sadly, between Reps. Greene, Massie, and Gosar, one couldn’t scrape together a functional intellect or moral center. Yet these three clowns are inches away from holding the House of Representatives hostage.
It would seem the inmates are close to running the asylum.
Holy War Breaks Out Over The Future Of Speaker Mike Johnson:
You’ve heard of the separation of Church and State, right? It’s that wonderful thing that keeps America from being a Christian version of Iran or Saudi Arabia. Not that there aren’t those who wouldn’t love to see their flavor of God be made the official state religion and the KJV Bible (preferably the Old Testament) to be made the basis of statute law in this country.
If you want a preview of what America might look like if Church and State were to merge, check out the fight over Mike Johnson’s position as Speaker of the House. It has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ, but you can rest assured that the people mixed up in the fight are all about temporal political power.
As any REAL, God-fearing White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Patriot knows in their heart of hearts, their God is a kill-’em-and-grill-’em Conservative Republican who hates abortion and wants prayer in schools.
Trump Media shares surge after a miserable run. Pros say stay away:
Truth Social is a case of- to quote Dorothy Parker’s description of Oakland- there being no “there” there. It has a small user base and little growth potential, and it’s essentially a closed-loop echo chamber for angry White Conservative Christian Cisgender Heterosexual Patriots who hate those not like themselves.
The only thing Truth Social has to offer is its star user, Donald Trump, who’s used the platform to air his grievances free from being hassled or edited by others. It’s his plaything, so he gets to do and/or say what he will.
Truth Social’s IPO was, to put it mildly, an unmitigated disaster. Now the stock is showing signs of life for reasons no one can explain.
Shares of Trump Media & Technology Group surged 26% on Thursday, marking a second consecutive day of strong gains.
The rally over the past two days marks a rare reprieve for the company behind the Truth Social app, which is trading under the stock symbol DJT. The stock ended up more than 15% on Wednesday.
Trump Media shares are still down sharply since their spectacular stock market debut in late March. The declines have wiped out billions of dollars in value, including for former President Trump.
Nonetheless, the recovery in shares over the past two days was cheered by Truth Social members who identified themselves as small shareholders.
"In a couple years I will be really rich or really broke. I chose to believe that free speech and Truth will win out in the end," said @snowblazer on Wednesday afternoon. "I have no plan to sell anytime soon. It's been a painful rollercoaster of a ride but my conviction is still strong!!"
The company has put guardrails in place to make it more difficult for small shareholders to short-sell Truth Social stock, but whatever happens, the long-term prognosis for the stock isn’t promising.
Despite the latest share gains, professional investors cautioned the outlook was not good for Trump Media, putting some of the small investors who are holding onto the stock at risk.
"It's only a matter of time where they become disillusioned," says Julian Klymochko, CEO of Accelerate Financial Technologies.
It’s only a matter of time before the schmucks realize they’ve been fleeced like all of the other suckers who’ve invested in Trump’s schemes.
Because everything Donald Trump touches eventually turns to shit.
Ron DeSantis Thinks His New Plan To Force Religion Into Schools Is Satanist-Proof:
There’s one very important question that I need an answer to because I haven’t been able to find one:
WTF IS WRONG WITH FLORIDUH????
Is the Sunshine State so hopped up on margaritas and cheap weed that it’s no longer even paying attention to what its Governor, Ron DeSantis is doing? Or does no one care what happens in Tallahassee because no one can pronounce it or find it on a map?
Gov. DeSatan’s latest assault on the freedumbs of Floridians is astonishingly egregious, but no one in Floriduh seems to have noticed.
Ron DeSantis has signed an absolute whirlwind of psychotic bills into law this month, from 30-year prison sentences for shoplifting to barring cities from requiring businesses to give their employees water and access to shade on extremely hot days. Because how do you even know that you’re doing capitalism right if no one dies of heat stroke?
Several of these laws affect public schools — including a bill to require students to learn about “the history of communism and why it is bad” starting in kindergarten and another to allow religious chaplains in schools for “soul craft,” which I assume is like Minecraft in that I don’t know what the hell that is, either.
“Soul craft” sounds like something you’d teach kids at summer camp to keep them from smoking weed and drinking Thunderbird at night, doesn’t it? Either that or some weird cultic ceremony that involves cutting the still-beating hearts out of young virgin girls…and then eating them.
Eeeewwww….
“It’s totally voluntary for a parent or a student to participate. No one’s being forced to do anything. But to exclude religious groups from campus, that is discrimination. You’re basically saying that God has no place. That’s wrong. That’s not what our Founding Fathers intended,” DeSantis said.
Our Founding Fathers also intended for us all to own slaves and for women to not be allowed to vote, and while surely both of those things would be fabulously enjoyable for Ron DeSantis and those like him, times change! One of the things that changed is that, starting with Engel v. Vitale in 1962, the Supreme Court has determined that prayer in schools violates the Establishment clause. The one in the Constitution.
Now, as we’ve seen, every time Republicans try to force religion into public schools, helpful Satanists come round and ruin it for them. Want to have After School Christian Clubs? Fine, but you also have to have After School Satan Clubs. But this time, DeSantis says it will be different!
Of course, plenty of folks have tried to put ASS clubs in schools, but because they too often involve pedophile teachers with a back-door fetish, the efforts tend to go nowhere. That’s not a path I’m prepared to travel down here.
“Some have said that if you do a school chaplain program that, somehow, you’re going to have satanists running around in all our schools. We’re not playing those games in Florida. That is not a religion. That is not qualified to be able to participate in this. So, we’re going to be using common sense when it comes to this. You don’t have to worry about it.”
Except it is a religion. It is legally a religion, according to the IRS, which is literally the only arbiter in this country of what is and is not a religion.
It doesn’t matter if Gov. DeSatan considers a group to be a religion or not. It turns out that his definition of “religion” doesn’t matter. So, whether or not he’s using “common sense” or not, we still have to “worry about it.” Because the IRS is the one charged with deciding which groups do or don’t qualify as religious. Gov. DeSantis, while free to his opinion, has no power.
Not that the reality of there being boundaries to his power has ever stopped Reactionary Ron from stepping out of his lane.
(E.C. Segar via
)Louisiana Republicans vote to end lunch breaks for child workers:
I don’t know about you, but I’m beginning to lose track of the myriad Republican efforts to inflict gratuitous cruelty upon the American people- in an election year, no less. WTF is wrong with these people? Have they no decency?
As if we don’t already know the answers to those questions.
It’s been difficult to keep up with the number of Republican efforts in recent years to roll back child labor laws. The Guardian reported in the fall that GOP policymakers at the state level “have led efforts to roll back child labor protections, with bills introduced in at least 16 states.”
To be sure, not all of the measures are identical. In some states, Republicans want to scrap age verification requirements for employers. In other states, they want minors to be able to serve alcohol. A Washington Post report last year noted some state GOP officials also eyed proposals to allow kids as young as 14 to “work certain jobs in meatpacking plants and shield businesses from civil liability if a child laborer is sickened.”
Evidently, related efforts are underway again this year, and this NoLa.com report out of Louisiana stood out as especially striking.
A Louisiana House committee voted Thursday to repeal a law requiring employers to give child workers lunch breaks and to cut unemployment benefits — part of a push by Republicans to remove constraints on employers and reduce aid for injured and unemployed workers.
The idea, of course, is that child workers are overhead, and if they’re injured or sickened, the employer shouldn’t be burdened with a lot of costs taking care of them when they can plug in another child to replace them.
In that respect, they’re the same as adults- interchangeable parts. So why should they be treated any differently?
Remind me why y’all keep voting for Republicans….
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The lunch break ruling mystifies me, unless they figure most child workers are non-white, in which case it just makes it all look more like slavery, which is a good thing, right?