March 7, 2024 - Biden's Message to America: I'm Not THAT Old!
… Corporate climate rule … Min vs. AIPAC … State of the Union … Alabama Goddam …
Government to Force Corporate Climate Disclosure
The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) yesterday ruled that thousands of public companies have to start disclosing a lot more information about the risks they face due to climate change, and how they’re making it worse.
The rule doesn’t go as far as originally intended. A massive lobbying campaign and fear of costly litigation means we will not be learning corporate secrets about just how much their supply chains contribute to climate change. So we’ll just have to assume it’s a lot.
Who exactly lobbied against this? In a statement last night, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) called out the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and released a letter identifying BP America specifically.
The horrific irony, of course, is that the legal justification for all of this is the protection of investors, as opposed to the planet, which doesn’t have white-shoe lawyers.
The new rules are likely to be challenged in court from both the right and the sane. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said she’s “deeply disappointed” in the SEC for caving to “an onslaught of corporate lobbying.” The Sierra Club and Earthjustice reportedly are considering filing suit to remedy the removal of tougher language from the new rule.
Min for the Win
There wasn’t much daylight between the two Democratic candidates vying to replace Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA). But AIPAC found some.
Neither state Sen. Dave Min nor his opponent Joanna Weiss veered much from the mainstream Democratic Party position on Israel — they weren’t calling for cease-fires or anything nutsy-cuckoo like that. But Min did dare to suggest — along with virtually all of Israel — that just maybe Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was guilty of some security lapses ahead of Oct. 7, as evidenced by the fact that Oct. 7 happened.
And as the Prospect’s David Dayen observes, AIPAC might not have been happy that Min was endorsed by J Street, the Jewish advocacy group that’s pro-Israel in a way that recognizes that Israel is not being helped by Netanyahu.
So AIPAC and other right-wing-funded orgs poured seven figures into defeating Min in the California Democratic primary. Last night, Min won the nomination.
Now, in a district that is very divided politically, and where Porter pulled off upsets to win, Min is going up against Porter’s old foe, longtime Republican Party official Scott Baugh. Not only is Baugh a supporter of D4FRFP1 Donald Trump, and an opponent of reproductive rights, with a public record of campaign dirty tricks, he was graduated from Liberty University, and touts endorsements including that of Christian nationalist Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA).
Min shows no sign of being the next Katie Porter, but last night Weiss pledged to help elect him in November, and with the district so evenly divided, this race is one of the very few that could determine which party controls the House next year.
LIBERTY [sic] UNIVERSITY [sic] NEWS While we’re on the subject of Baugh’s alma mater dei, y’know how the Christian right keeps telling us how unsafe our urban hellholes of crime are? When they’re not urban hellholes of fey brunch?
Well, Liberty [sic] University [sic] just got hit with the biggest fine ever for being a suburban going-to-hellhole of crime. The “school” touts itself as safe, which is easy to do when you treat crime reports like they’re the apocrypha. For underreporting its crimes — and treating victims of sexual violence almost as badly as the Bible does…in the Old Testament — Liberty will now have to pay a fine of 14 million dollars, each of which will say “In God We Trust.”
State of the Union Speech Tonight
For the first time I can recall — and my memory ain’t what it used to be, I think — the presidential State of the Union speech tonight will be more about the state of the incumbent than the state of the union.
As the AP reports, the pundit class, which doesn’t care a fraction as much about what D4FRFP Donald Trump says on purpose — is seeing tonight’s speech as a “prebuttal” to the congressional testimony next week of prosecutor Robert Hur, the special counsel whose report exonerated Biden of criminal wrongdoing in his mishandling of federal documents, but indicted Biden for being old and screwing shit up with his mouth.
So the challenge for Biden tonight is two-fold: Not to screw shit up with his mouth, and also not to die. He has to convince America that even if his mind is going, it’s still in a better place than where Trump’s ended up. And if Biden’s really lucky, Republicans will act like clowns.
In fact, the White House reportedly is hoping they will, so Biden has an opportunity to improvise a verbal smackdown, as he did last year, calling Republicans out for trying to gut Social Security and Medicare. Reportedly, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) in a private meeting yesterday told his fellow Republicans to keep their mouths shut and show some “decorum” while Satan’s agent on Earth outlines his plans to destroy America and smell the hair of every American child.
FWIW, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) reportedly has pushed Biden to draw a stark contrast with his enemies — even if they’re Republicans! — and to speak like a champion for those people still struggling economically even though Wall Street is getting richer.
And it might be nice to hear something about how awesome immigrants are, refuckinggardless of their paperwork status.
Biden can lay out some truly significant, nigh-progressive legislative achievements, alongside metrics showing America’s economic strength, but it’s not clear that facts and number things can convince the pundit class that America is not an impoverished, crime-ridden hellhole that Trump alone can fix.
What you’ll hear ad nauseam — if for some unbrainly reason you watch the coverage — is that Biden’s approval ratings are in the toilet. What you won’t hear is that the reason for this is that Biden has lost support from both right and left. Meaning, as you won’t hear tonight if you make that coverage-watching mistake, Biden’s not progressive enough for millions of Americans.
Alabama Republicans Shoot Selves in Embryonic Feet
Gov. Kay Ivey (R-AL) last night signed a new law allowing doctors to murder sweet, innocent babies.
The law is intended to undo the apparently inadvertent outlawing of IVF that resulted from the state Supreme Court declaring that all embryos are people. Because the IVF process often involves creating more embryos than can be implanted, that means doctors and IVF parents end up murdering sweet, innocent babies while they’re still much small than a single Dippin’ Dot™.
The ruling protecting embryos was handed down by Christian Republican judges who, much like embryos, have yet to develop brain parts.
Republican legislators didn’t immediately explain why doctors should be immune from lawsuits and prosecution for murdering sweet, innocent babies who didn’t even do anything because they can’t do anything.
Nevertheless, IVF providers in Alabama are resuming services/sweet-innocent-baby-murdering today. But there’s trouble ahead for the embryos that manage not to get murdered…
The Perversity of University Diversity Adversity
Protesters gathered yesterday outside the Alabama House of Representatives to speak out against a new bill, which already passed the Senate, that would outlaw diversity, equity, and inclusion programs, offices, and efforts at any government agency, including public schools.
The House hasn’t scheduled debate on the measure yet, but The Grio’s Michael Harriot, author of Black AF History, might’ve just thrown a college-baseball curve ball into that debate last night. Specifically, Harriot wrote that, “The 25 white Republicans who wrote Alabama’s new anti-DEI bill may have inadvertently made college football (and all Division I NCAA sports) illegal [in their bill].”
Exhibit A, via Mike: The legislation.
Exhibit B, via Mike: NCAA rules:
In short, the NCAA requires diversity, equity, and inclusion. But Alabama’s anti-DEI bill will prevent its public universities from participating in required NCAA reviews. Which means that if this bill passes, Alabama will deprive sweet, innocent embryos of their God-given right to play college sports, even if they survived the embryo-massacres of Alabama’s IVF providers.
I would like to add to Mike’s canny observation one upside of this Alabama bill. It explicitly prevents schools from compelling affirmation of “a divisive concept.” Know what that means?
Alabama schools won’t be allowed to force embryos to stand for the National Anthem, even after they grow feet!
Forward-Thinking Policies…
Everyone know what this weekend is? That’s right, it’s time to set your clock to one hour ahead ahead and set your wallet to fucked.
In short, Sunday is daylight saving time. At 2am, most of America will set their clocks ahead by one hour, except in Alabama, where the clocks are set back 50 years.
But Saturday is wealth-disparity saving time. Rep. Ted Lieu (D-CA) reminds us that Saturday is the day America’s rich stop paying into Social Security. Because for some reason, we have a bass-ackwards system in which you start paying big chunks into Social Security even if you make poverty wages…but stop paying once you’ve earned made somehow obtained $168,600, an infinitesimally tiny chunk of what’s earned made somehow obtained by America’s richest people.
Four Quickies
U.S. Army Reserve Sgt. Robert Card was suffering traumatic brain injury when he killed 18 people last year in Lewiston, ME, according to an analysis of his brain. Card never saw combat but was a longtime instructor at a hand-grenade training range. His family says he was exposed to “thousands of low-level blasts.” Anyway, guns and the military make us safer.
Thinking of moving to North Carolina? Don’t lie! Well, in this week’s Republican primary, schools superintendent Catherine Truitt, who was conservative to get endorsed by conservative Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), lost to Michele Morrow, a home-schooling activist and former Christian missionary and Jan. 6 Capitol Hill protester. Morrow’s running against the inclusion of race in teaching about history and against the inclusion of anything in teaching about sex. Morrow’s Democratic opponent will be former county schools superintendent Maurice “Mo” Green, not the Moe Green from Godfather 2.
Remember how the door of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 Max made an unscheduled deplaning in mid-air back in January? Well, apparently all of Boeing’s records got sucked out of the plane, too, because the company is refusing to turn over its records, the head of the National Transportation Safety Board said yesterday.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) yesterday endorsed D4FRFP Donald Trump with the weakest endorsement ever: “President Trump has earned the requisite support of Republican voters to be our nominee for President of the United States… [so] he will have my support.” Stirring!
TCB
In case you missed it, your humble Fucking News got a shoutout from CNN.com, which had to use two asterisks to mask our unbashed newsfuckery. Thanks to the treasured Newsfucker who sent me yesterday’s “Reliable Sources” newsletter:
I saw we got some new Newsfuckers clicking their way past those foreboding asterisks, so welcome, new Newsfuckers and Newsf**kers alike! Come say hi on Tw**ter or Faceb**k or Bl**sky or M**todon.
Go get ‘em, kids…!
D4FRFP = Disgraced, quadicted, fraudster, rapist, former President.