15 Real-Life Ghost Stories Likely Inspired By 15 Real-Life Beers. Tabs, Mon., July 26, 2021
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House Rep. Adam Kinzinger will join fellow Republican Liz Cheney on the 1/6 committee. I'll have more to say about this later. (CNN)
Texas man busted for his involvement in the Capitol siege after bragging about it on a dating app. Insurrections don't get you laid like they did in the pre-woke days. (Washington Post)
How a hiker survived for 17 days lost in the Oregon wilderness with the help of a plastic magnifying glass and an underwear hat. (The Oregonian)
The next time my wife suggests we go on a hike, I'll say, “Hell, no" and instead take a brisk walk through Alberta Park in Portland, Oregon, where I can clearly see all the exits.
Some folks have waited to get vaccinated against COVID-19 because they are natural procrastinators not anti vax jerks. Let's give a shout out to the procrastinators who are finally getting their act together. (New York Times)
Let's hope no one delayed getting vaccinated because they were busy organizing their kitchen cabinets. (Salon)
Fox News could be sued for killing its viewers, this time from COVID-19. (Slate)
You could say that the American Rescue Plan was a bold shot into the nation's economic arm. I mean, you could say that. (The Nation)
Amazon has agreed to investigate accusations of racial and sexual discrimination in its cloud services division. It almost makes you want to cancel your Prime membership. (Seattle Times)
The pandemic has demonstrated that we might not need the whole cash bail racket. (Mother Jones)
Climate change has made wildfires occur more often and more intense. And they're spreading. (CNN)
Restaurants have fully reopened to a stampede of obnoxious assholes.
At Vanessa's Bistro in Berkeley, owner Vi Nguyen recently encountered a customer who stood in her kitchen doorway to yell at her after a server made a simple mistake.
"Not talk, yell," Nguyen emphasized, sounding increasingly exasperated as she told the story. "This was the beginning of the reopening, and we had a line of takeout orders. Her husband stood at the doorway and was like, 'She's hungry! She needs her food right now!'"
These people should have their stay-at-home orders extended. (San Francisco Gate)
Gymnast Simone Biles deserves better scores for regularly defying gravity. She's like a superhero out there. (Vox)
New study links alcohol to 740,000 cancer cases last year. It could drive you to drink. (NPR)
On a related topic, my favorite new summer beverage is the Paloma.
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Woman Who Doesn't Actually Hate Workers To Lead National Labor Relations Board
A refreshing change of pace from the last four years!
Today, Jennifer Abruzzo was sworn in as the general counsel of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB).
Yesterday, the Senate confirmed Abruzzo as the NLRB's top lawyer, 51-50, with Kamala casting the tie-breaking vote — so you know just from that that she must be good!
This one was a straight party-line vote, with the ever-milquetoast Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski toeing the Republican line. Richard Burr flipped out during Abruzzo's hearing in front of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee because Abruzzo is a decent human being who champions workers' rights.
Abruzzo is an NLRB veteran who has worked for the organization for more than two decades, as deputy assistant general counsel, deputy regional attorney in Miami, supervisory field attorney, field attorney, and acting general counsel. Before Biden appointed her to his transition team for labor agencies, she was working for the Communication Workers for America (CWA).
As an independent agency, NLRB general counsel appointments are different from ordinary executive branch appointments. The NLRB's general counsel is appointed for a four-year term that does not necessarily align with presidential election years. Trump-appointed NLRB chief Peter Robb was supposed to stay in his seat until November, but the Biden administration was not having it. Getting rid of Rob was apparently a top priority for Biden, who fired Robb on Inauguration Day.
For the last seven-plus months, NLRB career employee Peter Sung Ohr has been serving as the agency's acting general counsel. A bunch of anti-worker asshats Republicans have filed various challenges to Ohr's authority, but Abruzzo's confirmation may nullify basically any remedy sought in those cases. Even if the acting general counsel didn't have authority to make agency decisions, now that Abruzzo has been confirmed, she certainly has that authority and, if she want, could ratify anything Ohr did while serving as acting gc.
Like a labor expert told Bloomberg Law,
"She clearly was approved through the proper measures," said Jeffrey Hirsch, a labor law professor at the University of North Carolina and a former NLRB attorney. Hirsch said the Senate's approval could make a court-ordered remedy—such as one nullifying Abruzzo's future actions as general counsel—more difficult for challengers to obtain.
The NLRB's general counsel has a lot of influence over federal labor policy and it's great to see someone who is actually on the side of labor in this role! In her position, Abruzzo will select which cases to investigate and prosecute, and supervises all of the NLRB field offices around the country.
Abruzzo will be working closely with Seema Nanda, an Indian-American woman who was confirmed earlier this month as the Department of Labor's Solicitor. Nanda has served as Acting Deputy Special Counsel in the Office of Special Counsel for Immigration-Related Unfair Employment Practices (OSC) in the DOJ's Civil Rights Division, the NLRB's Division of Advice, the Department of Labor under Obama, and CEO of the DNC. The general counsel and solicitor are separate from the five-member NLRB board, which adjudicates cases.
According to Richard Burr, Nanda also tweeted very mean things about Susan Collins, pointing out after Collins' vote to confirm Kegs Kavanaugh that she doesn't care about sexual assault survivors. The audacity! (But, wait a second, I thought the GOP was full of people who love freezepeach and just hate cancel culture?!)
We are very excited to see these ladies kicking ass and taking names in defense of workers' rights!
[ Bloomberg Law ]
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Forrest Dumped (Nathan Bedford, That Is, From Tennessee's Capitol)
Look upon his works, ye mighty, and puke.
Yet another monument to treason and enslavement came down today, and it was a significant one: Tennessee legislators and visitors to the state Capitol in Nashville can now go about their business without walking past the bust of slave trader, Confederate general, war criminal, and early Ku Klux Klan leader Nathan Bedford Forrest. The bust was hardly a precious part of state history, having only been placed in the Capitol in 1978; the Capitol itself dates back to shortly before the Civil War.
The treasonous murderer's bust is gone, and will be moved to the Tennessee State Museum. Unfortunately, it will not be converted into a urinal in its new location.
After years of public calls for the bust to be removed from its place of honor, and of Confederate confederates insisting the horrid thing stay, last year Gov. Bill Lee said it was time for the bust to go. The State Building Commission voted yesterday to move the bust, the last formal requirement necessary. Workers hauled it away this morning.
In a remarkable development running counter to the dire warnings of those who still have a hard-on for the failed state that was the Confederacy, no Americans have been rendered incapable of remembering the history of the Civil War. This is hardly a surprise, given that most moderately successful TV shows have longer runs than the Confederate States of America. "Perfect Strangers" ran for eight seasons, and nobody wants a statue of Mark Linn-Baker. (Bronson Pinchot doesn't need any more, either.)
Following the vote yesterday, the Tennessean reports, members of the legislature's Black Caucus gathered near the bust to celebrate the decision.
Other monuments will also be relocated with Forrest, as part of a general retreat, as the Tennessean notes:
[The] state will also relocate the busts of U.S. Admirals David Farragut and Albert Gleaves to form a military exhibit at the state museum. The measure was approved last summer by the State Capitol Commission, and then overwhelmingly in March by the Tennessee Historical Commission.
Someone is no doubt very pleased with what a clever move it was to move a Union Navy admiral like Farragut. See? Nothing to do with which side they fought on!
Tennessee's idiot Lt. Gov. Randy McNally, who was apparently named because he was conceived on a road atlas in the back of a Buick, posted a lengthy whine on Twitter yesterday in which he complained that the removal of Forrest's bust to an actual fucking museum where it will remain on display marks the start of some sort of statue genocide, because that's just how Those People are:
Without historical context, we would have no Tennessee heroes, only villains. No Christian saints, only sinners. The left-wing activists who are pushing an anti-American, anti-history agenda here in Tennessee and across the nation will not stop with Nathan Bedford Forrest.
The woke mob means ultimately to uproot and discard not just Southern symbols, but American heroes and history as well. This is not the end. It is the beginning.
The left will move on to the next figure or monument and demand that we again kneel at the altar of political correctness. While the governor and the constitutional officers did not stand with me today, I hope they will next time. Because more fights are coming.
Perhaps the state where Dolly Parton lives, and where the nation's first abolitionist newspaper was founded, will manage to find a hero again someday. It'll be tough, but we believe that someday, even Mr. McNally might find something to celebrate in people who didn't murder surrendering Union soldiers, both Black and white, and who didn't help lead a hate group.
Also, in a potential sign that people's heads are already clearing in the Volunteer State, Tennessee's top health official today announced that the state will resume outreach programs recommending childhood vaccines. Last week, the state's director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs, Dr. Michelle Fiscus, was shitcanned because she was too eager to vaccinate teenagers against COVID-19. That firing was inexplicably followed by a halt to all vaccine information programs, including for routine childhood vaccines.
Who knows, perhaps at some point the sole remaining memorial to the Confederacy will be that completely batshit fiberglass statue of Forrest on private land in Nashville. It's both hilarious and terrifying, and a fitting monument to a terrible idea. Oh yes, and maybe Donald Trump's fake civil war battle marker.
Of the visual horror in Nashville, Stephen Colbert said, "Apparently the Confederacy was founded by skirt-wearing nutcrackers riding wet lizards."
How true this is.
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It's Psaki Ptime Again!
Congratulations, US Olympians! No spoilers!
It's time again for your daily installment of "What Dumb Shit Will Peter Doocy Say Today," featuring White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki brooking no idiocy, as usual. No, we kid, Doocy isn't even the third or fourth banana in the Jen Psaki Show. Enjoy your WonkTV!
Yr Wonkette is funded entirely by YOU, the readers! Or by like one percent of you. Become a true member of the elite with a $5 or $10 monthly donation, if you can!
[Photo: Michel Curi (cropped) Creative Commons License 2.0]
