Tuesday, March 31, 2015

SAR #15090



Arrogance: Should a company have the right to sue a state or city or nation if that city, state or nation passes a law or regulation to protect the health of its citizens and that regulation prevents the company from profiting from a clearly harmful product? If you answered 'yes', you probably negotiated the TPP. 
 
Previews: Revenues of S&P 500 corporations are expected to fall 2.8% in 2014Q1 – the largest y/y drop in over 5 years. Blame it on the recovery. 
 
Mission Impossible: George Soros is reportedly ready to buy pour $1 billion into Ukraine. Humanitarian. 
 
Heat's On: The temperature on the Antarctic Peninsula reached 63.5°F. Counterintuitively, this is one of the fastest warming areas on Earth. 
 
Timed Travel: Virginia has increased retention time for license plate data gathered by trafic cams and license plate readers from seven days to 60 – because it might come in handy.

Bricks Without Straw: Iron ore has dropped to a six-year low. Strange, the jobless recovery isn't short on irony.

Fine, Just Fines: Nashville's DA has told his prosecutors that they can no longer make mandatory sterilization a condition of a plea deal. “No longer.”

Pledge Drive: Mrs. Clinton (Housewife, NY) wants the US to suck up to Israel. John McCain (Old Guy, AZ) wants Israel to bomb Iran back into the sand age. 
 
Two Rights: When the Iranian Guard in Iraq claimed that a US drone killed two of its advisers, the US said it had only struck militants.

Noted: Don't worry, you're not going crazy; that recovery they keep talking about - that has nothing to do with you.

One Brick Shy: The mayor of Ferguson, MO says it is not fair to him, his administration or the city for the Justice Department to focus on race and not mention the good things about the city. Pressed for an example he...

A Pound At A Time? Germany insists that Greece must flesh out the required reforms.

Pot/Kettle: Israel's Ambassador to the UN is urging the world body support the creation of an independent Palestinian Kurdish state. 
 
Porn O'Graph: Signs of the times.

Monday, March 30, 2015

SAR #15089


Comply or Die” 
 
Freedom To Hate: Nineteen states now have laws encouraging hate crimes discrimination against anyone for anything as long as you pretend it is firmly based in your religious dogma. Does this mean I can put up a sign saying “No Christians allowed”? They are truly anathema to me. Let's encourage the companies and organizations (and the State of Washington) for standing up for America. 
 
Repeat After Me: Abortions are not reversible, no matter what Republicans in Arizona are forcing doctors to say.

Shadow Boxing: Republicans in the Senate have passed a meaningless wish-list budget full of red meat for the Far Right - pretending to cut $5.1 trillion from the working poor, homeless and hungry over the next ten years, while heaping hundreds of billions on defense contractors and cutting taxes on everyone who has donated over a million to a secret PAC. It's all for show, but it does show where their wallets are padded. Ted Cruz and Ron Paul both voted against the budget, viewing it as too liberal. 
 
Is Jobless Growth Inevitable? Yes, as long as the credit bubble lasts.

We're Doomed: After twenty-two years of ever more documented evidence, no more Americans are concerned about global warming/climate change today than they were in 1989. Pay attention, class, there will be a test.

Body Count: Physicians For Social Responsibility, the largest physician-led organization in the US working to protect the public from the threats of nuclear proliferation, climate change, and environmental toxins, reports that in the course of losing the War on Terror, the US has killed over 1.3 million people, nearly all civilians and mostly women and children, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. 
 
Bingo! Somebody should tell Louie Gohmert (R– TX) that he's right, the FCC is “playing God with the Internet” - that's what they are supposed to be doing, regulating. It's nice to see at least part of the government doing its job.

An Ouch Of Prevention: Europeans have been told to close their Facebook accounts if they want to keep their personal information private. Just go cold turkey, or be one.

Roundup: A court has upheld Texas' right to deny federally mandated rights to some families based on the Republican interpretation of the Bible.  Gov. Nixon (Turncoat - MO) plans to cut the state's library budget by 90%. AZ State Senator Sylvia Allen (R- Of Course) wants to make church attendance mandatory. Republicans in Montana want the media to pay $100 for a permit and get a release from the police officer before filming him beating handcuffed prisoners.

Fact File: Israel killed more Palestinians in 2014 than in any year since 1967. 
 
Blackmail: For a fee of $30 to $60 a month, AT&T promises not to spy on your web browsing and TV viewing habits and sell that information to those who want to drown you in targeted advertising. 
 
Porn O'Graph: Visit Indiana! (Some restrictions may apply.)

Friday, March 27, 2015

SAR #15086



Farm Teams: The US, having completely screwed the pooch in Yemen, is supplying logistical and intelligence support (from afar, having lost their in-country perches and drone bases) to a pickup team headed by Saudi Arabia with Kuwait, Bahrain, Qutar, Jordon, Sudan, Egypt and even Pakistan rounding out the roster, waging war on the so-far victorious Iranian backed Houthi rebels. This religious war between the Sunni (Saudi, al-Qadea et al) against Shiia (Iran and their dependent terror squads). The pending conflagration threatens both oil fields and oil transport routes, causing oil prices to rise and stocks to fall. 
 
Last Grasp: RadioShack is auctioning off to the highest bidder all of the customer personal data it has acquired over the years.

Plain Text: The Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement will permit (actually, encourages) corporations to sue the US government as well as state and local governments for any law or regulation that they feel diminishes the amount of profit they could make if they didn't have to worry about pollution, safety and that sort of thing. The cases would not be heard in US courts, but in extra-judicial investor-state dispute tribunals constituted by and for the corporations under the guise of the World Bank. It makes private corporations the legal equivalent of sovereign states, permitting them to privately enforce a public treaty. The whole thing stinks, especially the part where they call it a trade agreement. The only trade is our sovereignty for their profits.

Fiefdom of Choice: Republicans in AZ have passed legislation barring women using the federal healthcare marketplace from buying insurance that would cover abortion. 
 
Spare Parts: Next month the Pentagon is sending the first increment of US troops to Ukraine, while a bit to the south the US Air Force is flying air stirkes in support of Iranian troops in Iraq, while providing support for air strikes against Iran's designated representatives in Yemen. It's called pragmatism.

The Wilder West: Republican controlled Kansas is joining AL, AR, VT, and WY in permitting any adult citizen to carry a concealed weapon because "Carrying a gun is a lifestyle,"and you never know when you might have to shoot a gay, an abortionist, a stray liberal or an uppity female. 
 
Teaching Points: Representative Ron Johnson (Retard, WI) says Federal loans to students are a waste of taxpayer money because “loans are actually pretty easy to get, and college is a lot of fun.” And college is too expensive; he says it has gone from $1,000 a year in the 1960's to over $18,000 now. Actually, I went to an fairly cheap college in the 60's and it cost more than $1,000 a year, and my grandkids are going to pretty middle-of the road institutions for about $50,000 a year. But they are having fun.

Framing: Over the last few years, home prices in the US have outpaced wage growth 13:1. Home prices are being driven by speculators – hedge funds, institutional investors, international buyers, and gamblers, not by people who want to live in them.

Clause & Affect: Salesforce, a leading cloud computing company, has annoucned it is “canceling all programs that require our customers/employees to travel to Indiana... because of the state's embrace of discrimination against gays, interracial couples, unmarried women without burkas, blacks, midgets and so on... and others who don't measure up to whatever religious yardstick someone wants to use. The NCAA has condemned the Republican Governor and legislature for passing and signing the bill. Keith Olbermann is using his pulpit to urge the NFL to boycott the state until it comes to its senses. 
 
Equal Opportunity: The SEC has decided that it is only right that the average American be permitted (if not actually encouraged) to lose his life savings betting on startups.

Thursday, March 26, 2015

SAR #15085


Think of balance sheet “goodwill” much as the value of a marriage before the divorce.

Gentle Ben Warren: Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway has hired a management company to fire thousands as Heinz is merged with Kraft, creating the world's fifth largest manufacturer of food-like substances. The goal of the merged company is to “create savings of $1.5 billion a year” which is an awful lot of $15 an hour jobs, while protecting Warren's Good Guy Capitalist image. 
 
Last Last Chance: The mandarins running Europe have given Greece five days (until Monday next) to submit a written plan detailing step by step how Athens will make all of the changes (for which read “privatizations”) that the banks want.

Especial Ops: US Special Operations forces will be practicing suppressing civilian unrest in “training drills” across seven southwestern states this summer, in a process designed to accustom US citizens to the presence of armed military swarming from helicopters and waving guns around. Commanders explained that exercises like this allow soldiers to train in environments similar to anticipated future deployments, which explains why they've built a mockup of Washington, DC including subway traincars with Metro logos for “realistic practice occupying urban areas.“

Both Sides Now: In Yemen, government troops armed with US weapons are fighting against Houthi rebels, who are also armed with (liberated) US weapons. If you are keeping score at home, Yemen is a US backed Saudi satrapy and the Houthi rebels are backed by our new friends in Tehran. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is also trying to matter.

Goose/Gander: Google thinks that as long as you are watching TV, the TV should be watching you. And tattling on you to advertisers. Well, at least they're not the NSA. Yet. 
 
Snip, Snip: In AK, Kim Hammer, a Republican state representative (and far too representative at that) has introduced a bill that would “give single mothers on Medicaid an incentive to get surgical contraception so they can take “a little bit of a breather to think about their life decisions that are affecting us as taxpayers.” Of course it's just aimed at single mothers because married women have men around to make their life decisions for them.

Party Hearty: In CT, GOP state representative Mike Bocchion noted that “At the end of the day, if there are not witnesses [to date rape and gang rape at college] at least if there are it is a great party.” He says his remarks were taken out of context and that he hadn't given his consent...

Another Damned Thing: Not only do we have to worry about running out of water – that was yesterday's story – the UN says that we have been abusing the soil so badly that within 60 years much of the world's farmland will be exhausted. Which is okay, because we're going to run out of water 20 years before that.

Privacy Acts: At a closed meeting in London, the World Bank, USAID, Syngenta (a seed and biotch firm) and the Gates Foundation met to plan the privatization of African seed saving and swaping, preventing traditional farmers from saving and sharing seeds. No farmers nor farm organizations were permitted to attend the meeting.

Made To Order: Orders for durable goods in the US fell again last month, making it 3 out of 4. The biggest disappointment was capital goods ex-aircraft orders, which were down 7.6%. It's becoming a pray as you go recovery. 
 
Porn O'Graph: Jobs, left and right.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

SAR #15084




Bingo: As part of Ted Cruz's personal sacrifice in his drive to serve the public, when his wife took leave of absence from Goldman Sachs to traipse around with him, the family lost her company-sponsored health care insurance. So, naturally, they've signed up for Obamacare.

Turning Up: In a clever twist on the “paid political announcement”, Liberty University assured Ted Cruz a full house by charging each of its 10,000 students ten bucks if they didn't show up and sit through the show. Paying attention was optional.

It's Good To Be The Cream: Between 2007 and 2013 the US median household lost 43% of its wealth. The 1%, not so much.

Spin Is Spin; IBM's CEO is boasting that the company is not only going to market its products and services in China, it is going to work with the Chinese in building its IT sector. Which will, of course, put IBM out of business there, but that's the idea. The Chinese idea.

Vive la différence. In most of the world the sick are called patients, in the US they're customers.

Self Exam: Why should atheists have to show respect for religion? Damned if I know.

It's Simple: The problem with the homeless is that they are... well, homeless. And the cheapest, most effective solution to homelessness is to give the homeless homes. It is even cheaper than doing nothing at all for them.

Manners: In an attempt to win friends and influence Congress, Israel spied on the US/Iranian talks and related selected bits to their puppets on the Hill in an attempt to torpedo the talks. Obama is not amused. McCain, with or without Israeli or AIPAC help, has threatened to have Congress withhold funding from the UN if the US continues to ignore Bibi's wishes.

On The Road: Martin O'Malley, former MD governor, is running around the country waging Elizabeth Warren's campaign for president.

Picture This: After San Diego cops began wearing (required) body cameras, civilian complaints have dropped 40%, the use of “personal body force” by officers is down 46%, and the use of pepper spray has declined 30%.

Go Away: Ted Cruz's goals: Lower taxes and abolish the IRS (which is redundant). Abolish Obamacare. Completely seal US borders then round up and ship all the undocumented... somewhere. No gay marriage. No abortions. Ignore global warming. Fight religious wars, both in the Middle East and Middle America. And shut down the government from time to time. Go, Ted. Go away.

Porn O'Graph: X marks the spot.

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

SAR #15083


Good government is not possible above the small-village level.

Payback: Obama's Chief of Staff called on Israel to end its “50-year occupation” and withdraw from all occupied Palestinian territories. The White House also suggested that Israel's get-out-of-jail-free card at the UN might expire and that Bibi's “sorry” didn't cut it, John McCain got – and I'm reading from the AIPAC talking points here - “upset”. 
 
Initiation Ritual: Senate Republicans, needing to pretend they control the Obama White House, will delay confirming Loretta Lynch as Attorney General because... well, they don't really have a reason.

For Sale, Make An Offer: The administration, in conjunction with the states, is undertaking another effort to sell off more US factories, forests and infrastructure to foreign investors.

Q&A: “Is a new political system emerging in this country?” In short, yes. But it is not 'emerging', it is nearly full grown and pushing the smaller, weaker, earlier version called popular democracy out of the nest. Elections are now by and for the 1%. Government has been essentially privatized by Wall Street and the rich. The President and Congress have been marginalized in the new national security state – which makes the Stasi, the KGB and the Gestapo look like children's playthings. Privacy has become a mythic memory. Like global warming, the evidence of democracy's demise is all around and we refuse acknowledge it. Concentrations of wealth lead to concentrations of power and may well soon lead to concentration camps. A new kind of politics, a new kind of governance is being born right before our eyes. We should stop pretending it’s not happening.

Picture Perfect: Apple, a designer of toys manufactured in Asian sweat shops, will soon be valued at more than $1 trillion. Anybody got a clue?

Don't Look Now: As the dollar strengthened against foreign currencies, US companies that make significant profits overseas have seen the value of those earnings drop. Companies that earn half of their profits outside the US are expected to show over a 10% decline in earnings in the first quarter. And those corporations with billions overseas will also find the mice have been nibbling at their cheese – maybe to the extent that it would have been cheaper to pay their taxes in the US.

Protect And Sever: AZ Republicans want to pass a bill to permit the identities of cops who kill civilians to be kept secret, in order to protect the guilty. 
 
Noted: The F-35 is quite possibly the absolutely worst clusterfuck the Pentagon and the politicians have ever engaged in. The $1.4 trillion boondoggle is too big and too expensive to cancel even though it does not work and is not likely to ever do so. It is the epitome of the military-industrial complex's dominant position in American political and economic existence. 
 
Cautionary Tale: FEMA says that beginning next year states that do not have governor-supported climate change mitigation programs will not receive federal disaster preparedness funds. Republican troglodytes will most certainly bellow and stomp and hold hearings and all that jazz.

Nor Any Drop to Drink: The UN says that absent timely actions today, the world will face a 40% shortfall in water within 15 years. And like everything else connected to global climate change, nothing will be done until it is too late.

In God We Thrust; Sam Johnson (Religious Enforcer, TX) wants the USAF Academy to abolish the freedom from religion and force all cadets to include “so help me God” as part of their annual oath of office because the only way to protect religious freedom is to abolish it and force everyone to genuflect to one nation, under GOP.

Monday, March 23, 2015

SAR #15082


In the long term the medium term is far too uncertain to bother about in the short term. Demetrius

Score 35 to 1: The US has officially lost the struggle with China over the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, a Chinese initiative that has now gathered contributions from Great Britain, France, etc. etc. Washington picked a completely unnecessary fight with China over the bank because they saw it as a challenge to the traditionally US-dominated IMF and Word Bank. Which it is. China, in a reverse on the West's one-time Gunboat Diplomacy in China, is demanding its place on the world stage through Checkbook Diplomacy at the expense of the United States which had dominated international finance since World War Two. Even the IMF and World Bank are joining th China-led initiative. This is an historic shift away from US hegemony.  Washington has belatedly conceeded that the AIIB is a Good Idea, but only if "it works in partnership" with the US owned & operated World Bank..

Last Things: Things have gotten so bad in the Greece vs. Germany grudge match that a mere 12 hours after a two days of marathon negotiations the two sides could not even agree on what they had – supposedly triumphantly – agreed on. Greece, quite simply, is both broke and broken and Germany is going to keep kicking the Greeks until the situation improves, which is not going to happen. 
 
Another One Bites The Dust: The US has retreated evacuated troops from a base in south Yemen as our enemies consolidate their defeat and humiliation of yet another US puppet. 
 
Bootleg Option Play: After six months of coquettish bumblilng about the timing of interest rate hikes, soft and softening US economic data may lead to the Fed trotting out QE4 instead of boosting interest rates. Someday, perhaps way in the distance, an acknowledgement will have to be made that QE's 1 -3 failed. This, in turn, should not do Draghi's attempts in the EU much good. Additional currency warfare, behind polite smiles, will continue; beggar not just the hindmost, but most likely, all. 
 
Piece Movement: The US Army Europe (the occupation force left over from 1945) will dispatch “columns of Stryker vehicles” on a road march across Easten Europe this spring in a novel exercise designed to reassure American's allies and to piss off Putin. Win-win.

Mouths of Babes: Senator John McCain excused Netanyahu's racist diatribes during the closing hours of his re-election campaign as “just politics” and reminded reporters that politicians cannot be held to everything they say just to get elected.

Magic Act: The Republicans have a new & improved Magic Asterisk Budget, based, like its predecessor, on the irrational and disproven belief that tax cuts for the rich improve the lot of the poor and result in balanced budgets. Dishonesty on this scale is new even for the current crop of Republicans. “The simplest way to understand these budgets is to suppose that they are intended to do what they would, in fact, actually do: make the rich richer and ordinary families poorer.” And they are grounded in the equally firmly held Republican belief that they can fool the American public at least one more time. It is another “enormous, destructive con job, and you should be very, very angry.”

Healthy Caring: California has stripped Blue Shield of its non-profit status. The insurance giant has $4.2 billion in the bank and pays its CEO $5 million a year to deny as many claims as possible.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
 
Scientific results are always provisional, susceptible to being overturned by some future experiment or observation. Here's the current crop of observations from the frontiers of global climate change. 
 
Broken Record: February 2014 was the second warmest February on record and, despite a a couple of blizzards here and there, was part of the warmest winter on record for the Northern Hemisphere. 2014 was also the warmest calendar year on record.

Nor Any Drop: As their available supplies of water decline, San Francisco Bay Area water agencies are planning to charge more for the diminishing amount they have, in order to cover lost income from the absent water. In Nevada, it's the Gamblers verses the Mormons
 
The Anthropocene: Humanity is the most powerful force on the planet, shaping the environment more than water, wind, or plate tectonics. Unless something on the scale of a giant meteor impact or massive volcanic activity intervenes, the earth will carry the geologic evidence of mankind's impact for tens of thousands if not millions of years. It is quite possible we'll attain this goal through nuclear war, but far more likely that we'll peacefully (all things are relative...) provoke sufficient global warming to change the earth beyond recognition – and beyond human habitation.

They're Baaack: NOAA confirms that El Niño has officially arrived, and is likely to boost global warming to new record levels. Simultaneously, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation reached record levels this winter and, along with El Niño could kick off a surge in global warming lasting 5 to 10 years. 
 
Down South: The Totten Glacier in East Antarctica is melting from below as warm ocean currents reach further into Antarctic waters. The glacier acts as a stopper to restrain 538,000 square kilometers of ice from flowing into the ocean. Scientists now say that this inevitable and irreversible collapse will raise the world's oceans by 11 feet over then next couple of hundred years. Joined with the collapse of the West Antarctic ice sheet – which will add its own 11 feet of sea level rise and is also now deemed to be inevitable and irreversible – the six to ten feet Greenland's melting ice cap is going to contribute becomes just a footnote.

Peak Peek: This year's maximum extent of winter sea ice in the Arctic is the lowest on record.

Saturday, March 21, 2015

SAR #15080


What if blacks and native Americans really insisted on reparations? 
 
Easy Come, Easy Go: The ever stronger US dollar stubbed its toe Friday, losing the most against the euro in over three years and sparking a rally in stocks and oil as investors celebrated the weakening of the US economy. Go figure.

Ghost Of Crisis Past: Nationwide, the percentage of underwater homeowners has been flat for the last two quarters (after 10 consecutive quarters of decline) and homeowers repeating the foreclosure process jumped 11% m/m. Both new and repeat foreclosures hit a 12-month high during January and housing starts fell 17% m/m in February. Nationally, 17% of all houses with a mortgage are underwater – worth less than the amount owed. Twenty-seven percent of those on the lower end of the price range are underwater.

Water Soluble: All we have to do in the face of California's drought is to completely change where and how we grow our food.

Reloading: Speaker Boehner has been summoned to Israel to receive his latest marching orders from Netanyahu, “further strengthening the bond between Wall Street, Congress and Israel's right wing government." 
 
Noted: “If economists and their statistics were right, you would have had a raise by now.”

One Shoe: The administration has issued regulations requiring hydrofrackers to disclose the chemicals they use. Republicans will be rushing to the podium to denounce this new overreach by the dictator in the White House as soon as lobbyists for the fracking industry get the talking points written. 
 
Because I Said So: That hypoallergenic cream on the counter isn't really hypoallergenic because the term is meaningless. Expensive but meaningless.

Criminalizing Hope: House Republicans have proposed making being an illegal alien a federal crime (currently it is a civil offense) and giving every cop in the country the power to enforce federal immigration law, arresting anyone they suspect of being an illegal who cannot produce residence papers. Absent proof of legal status, the individual would immediately be put into the deportation chain. This, like most of what the Republicans in Congress do, will not become law, nor is it intended to; it is just red meat to toss to the crazies on the far right.

Freeloading: Republican Bruce Rauner, Governor of Illinois, has instructed all state agencies to stop giving money from non-union workers to unions, because parasites vote Republican. 
 
And On The Seventh Day: Currently, the law in feudal Wisconsin requires that workers employed in a “factory or mercantile establishment” must receive “at least 24 consecutive hours of rest in every 7 consecutive days” unless the worker and employer jointly seek exemption. In order to reduce the burden of government paperwork on employers, Republicans in the state legislature plan to remove the requirement, essentially allowing employers to demand workers show up seven days a week forever.

Mental Health Coverage: Florida state employees who talk about climate change or global warming are suspended from work until a mental health evaluation verifies their “fitness for duty” in Rick Scott's utopia. 
 
Not News: The world's forests continue to be cut into ever smaller tracats, encouraging and enabling mass extinctions.

Porn O' Graph: Recidivism.



Friday, March 20, 2015

SAR #15079


Every act has a context, so does every reaction.
 
Das Finger: The sociopaths at the tone-deaf European Central Bank opened its new 1.3 billion building this week, flaunting its presumed power even as the economy it is not-so-slowly ruining continued to rack up victims. What does a bank do that requires a 1.3 billion monument?

California Dreaming: With Sierra snowpack at 12%of normal, after last year's 28%, regulators have ordered the state's water agencies to restrict their customers' use of water on landscaping. California is also preparing a $1 billion plan to make the desert bloom again, make water appear from nowhere, and – for over $750 million of the fund – building “flood control structures” . And next year, how much? 
 
Clip And Save: The US EIA now says that oil production from the three largest US shale areas is now in decline. Because shale wells have very steep first year decline rates, the EIA expects that total US oil output will begin to decline in the third quarter and that global demand for petroleum products will grow by at least 2 million barrels per day by the 4th quarter.

Victory: In celebration of Netanyahu's re-election, Israel sent dozens of bulldozers and other military vehicles to an Arab village near Nablus, where they uprooted 300 olive trees and razed over 3 miles of stone walls. Israel has uprooted over 800,000 olive trees in the occupied territories since 1967.

Tribute: In a moving tribute to Texans right to shoot whenever, whomever and wherever, the Republican-controlled Texas Senate has passed the Whitman Act which would encourage the carrying of guns on college campuses, buildings and towers. 
 
Flocking Around: State health and safety officials from MN to AR are going farm-door to farm-door, issuing quarantines in an attempt to stop the largest outbreak on record of bird-flu in the US – without upsetting the massive and massively profitable poultry industry.

Equal But Separate: Texas, leading yet another display of righteous idiocy, is suing the US Labor Department in an attempt to keep same-sex couples from taking family medical leave, because gays shouldn't be allowed to take time off to care for their sick children. 
 
About That Bridge in Selma: A 54 year old black man has been found hanged from a tree in Claiborne County, Missippi. Next door in Tennessee, the Baptists have put up a sign reminding us that “Satan was the first to demand equal rights.” At Fort Wainwright, Alaska, the US Army's 21st Infantry Regiment gives soldiers permission to use racial slurs without fear of consequences onRacial Thursdays”. 
 
On Getting That Education: After adjusting for inflation, surveys show that only 36% of college grads have jobs that pay at least $45,000, a sharp decline from the 1990s. Over 20% of young people make below $25,000 a year, far lower than in 1990. It's one hell of a recovery.

Ready, Set... The inestimable Louie Gohmert (Irrational, TX) says “It’s time to bomb Iran.” Well, at least we spelled his name right, which seems to be what he was after. Again.

Evidence: All those in favor of profit-driven charter schools say “The Walmart Waltons!”, say “Bill Gates!” say “Hedge Funders!” Now say goodbye and go away.