How can they be so dense?

The NCAA, the body that governs US athletics at the college level, has long had an unsavory reputation of enabling the exploitation of students so that everyone profits handsomely from certain college sports except for the athletes themselves. You would think that such a big operation would have at least the minimum awareness of public relations. So it is hard to explain how they could not have known that the way they treated the women’s teams in the college basketball tournament compared to the way they treated men would undoubtedly come to light and show how much they devalue women’s sports.

Samantha Bee described what happened.

Evangelical churches should stop trying to have it both ways

It turns out that the pastor of the evangelical church that the shooter who is accused of killing eight people including six Asian women in Georgia attended has some rancid views about women.

In recorded sermons that have since been deleted from the church’s web site, lead pastor Jerry Dockery decried “radical feminism” and criticized recent shifts in gender roles as the work of Satan.

“Radical feminism has engulfed our culture like a tsunami,” Dockery told his congregation on September 20, 2020. “We’re now striving for gender neutrality, for gender fluidity, you name it. It’s just gender whatever-you-want. And I would say to you that this is a blatant, a blatant—I will say it one more time—a blatant guidance, direction and strategy of Satan to oppose and usurp the authority of God.” 
[Read more…]

Bernie Sanders, soothsayer

Eight days before the election on November 3rd, Bernie Sanders warned Jimmy Fallon about what he feared might happen if Trump lost. In fact, his prediction was so spot-on and that I am not sure why the Trumpers are not using it to claim that he was the mastermind behind the plan to steal the election.

That is exactly what happened. The reason that Trump’s plan went agley in a big way was that Fox News, along with AP, called Arizona for Biden at 11:20pm on election night, giving Biden 264 electoral college votes, short of the 270 required for victory but close enough that Trump’s claim to have won immediately rang hollow. This is why he was so furious with Fox and tried unsuccessfully to try and get them to retract.

The person in charge of their decision desk who made the call was later fired and described the ‘murderous rage’ that he was subjected to from conservative viewers.

Great moments in hyperbole

A 65-year old woman was arrested because she refused to wear a mask inside a bank in Texas.

Police issued a warrant for the arrest of Terry Wright, 65, of Grants Pass, Oregon. The incident on Thursday at a Bank of America in Galveston was captured by the officer’s body camera, the Galveston County Daily News reported.

Police said they had obtained an arrest warrant on resisting arrest and criminal trespassing charges.

Greg Abbott, the Texas governor, has ended statewide orders requiring people to wear face masks in public places, declaring businesses should decide for themselves what Covid-19 precautions to take on their properties. Many businesses have kept their own mask rules in place.
…

Wright told the officer the law said she didn’t have to wear a mask. As the officer took out handcuffs, she pulled away and began to walk toward the door. The officer stopped her and forced her to the ground. After she was handcuffed, she complained her foot was injured.
…

Police said Wright suffered minor injuries during the struggle and was taken to a hospital for treatment.

Wright told the Washington Post she has never covered her face inside stores, even when the statewide mandate was in place.

[Read more…]

John Oliver on how badly the US handles unemployment

Losing one’s job is not only a traumatic experience, it often leads to a cascade of disasters such as losing one’s home. Unemployment insurance is meant to tide people over until they find another job. But some political leaders, especially Republicans, seem to view it as a reward for lazy people. He describes how hard it is for people to get unemployment benefits and how some states like Florida cut the premiums that companies are supposed to put into the unemployment fund and then go out of their way to make things difficult for people to apply for relief.

What happens when you elect a smug know-nothing

You know how it is when a small child is bored and they discover something that annoys people and repeatedly do it just to get attention? That seems to be what is happening with Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon). After being stripped of all her committee assignments for being an unreconstructed conspiracist, she has decided to use one of the procedural rules to slow down the work of Congress. Her choice of tactic is to put forward a motion to adjourn, something that has to be dealt with before business can continue and can take up to half an hour. She has started using it so often that even some of her Republican colleagues are getting fed up at the waste of time with nothing to gain, and more and more of them are voting against her motion. Her latest effort was opposed by forty Republicans, double the week before. Basically, Greene is generating bipartisanship!

[Read more…]

How Kyrsten Sinema went from progressive to Washington swamp dweller

How Kyrsten Sinema went from progressive to Washington swamp dweller

When Kyrsten Sinema was first elected from Arizona to the House of Representatives back in 2012 and later to the Senate in 2018, she broke through several barriers

Freshly elected to the Senate, Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D) represents a slew of “firsts.” She will be Arizona’s first female senator. She was the first openly bisexual person elected to Congress and carries that first with her to the Senate. And the former Mormon was the first person sent to Congress to claim no religion. After winning her congressional seat in 2012, she was sworn in on the Constitution, forgoing the Bible chosen by Christians – the dominant religion for members of Congress, especially those from Arizona.

[Read more…]

The bogus outrage about Dr. Seuss

(This Modern World)

This cartoon gets it exactly right. Fox News and the other members of the nutty right wing echo chamber go on and on about the estate of Dr. Seuss withdrawing six of his earlier books because they have offensive images but they never show the images they are defending. If you want, you can find these images on the internet, like here.

This is so obviously offensive by today’s standards that even the whitest Fox News viewer would cringe at seeing it. And that would ruin the whole schtick. If Fox viewers realized that the images in question actually were offensive, and not just the fever dreams of some lefty social justice warriors, they’d realize that Fox was duping them.

So no pictures for Fox! Much better to rail endlessly and let their audience assume that this is just some ridiculous liberal freakout over nothing. That’s much better for ratings.