The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

 

The good:

... For the better part of an hour Saturday, dozens of teenagers and their parents snaked around the towering stacks of tomes inside Kutztown’s Firefly Books and sometimes spilled onto the sidewalks of this quaint Berks County college town — most of them clutching the book that conservatives on the local school board didn’t want them to read.

Calliope Price, 14 and in the eighth grade, came out to meet Alan Gratz — author of the “banned” young-adult novel about climate change, Two Degrees — after hearing about the controversy and realizing that Gratz had also written her favorite book, which is called, ironically, Ban This Book. Holding her now-signed copy, she weighed in on Kutztown Area Middle School canceling a planned “One School, One Book” program amid conservative complaints a climate book would somehow scare or indoctrinate adolescents.

“I think it’s really stupid,” she said.

Price has a good point. Right-wingers who thought they’d scored a victory by canceling the middle school program only ensured that more young folks in Berks County would actually read Two Degrees — a tale of teens dramatically fighting catastrophes brought on by climate change. They were helped by the progressive grassroots organization Red Wine & Blue, which raised money to buy 200 copies to give away to Kutztown youth. Gratz, who’d long planned to come to Kutztown University for its annual conference on children’s literature, arranged to hold both afternoon and evening book signings to meet as many young fans as possible.

Saturday was the day that the book banners lost in Kutztown...

They're going to go down all over the country, because people are standing up and speaking out.

The bad:

Over the last two decades, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has reported on required financial disclosure forms that his family received rental income totaling hundreds of thousands of dollars from a firm called Ginger, Ltd., Partnership.

But that company — a Nebraska real estate firm launched in the 1980s by his wife and her relatives — has not existed since 2006.

That year, the family real estate company was shut down and a separate firm was created, state incorporation records show. The similarly named firm assumed control of the shuttered company’s land leasing business, according to property records.

Since that time, however, Thomas has continued to report income from the defunct company — between $50,000 and $100,000 annually in recent years — and there is no mention of the newer firm, Ginger Holdings, LLC, on the forms.

The previously unreported misstatement might be dismissed as a paperwork error. But it is among a series of errors and omissions that Thomas has made on required annual financial disclosure forms over the past several decades, a review of those records shows. Together, they have raised questions about how seriously Thomas views his responsibility to accurately report details about his finances to the public...

"Missstatement"??  Sounds more like it could be a money laundering scheme to hide income from the Harlan Crows of the world. 

The ugly:

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s new debt limit negotiating proposal set to be unveiled Monday morning will include broad moves to restrict food assistance for millions of low-income Americans. His GOP colleagues in the Senate aren’t optimistic any of those measures will survive.

McCarthy’s initial list calls for expanding the age bracket for people who must meet work requirements in order to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Food Assistance Program or SNAP, while closing what Republicans say are “loopholes” in existing restrictions, according to two people who were granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations.

Cutting spending on federal food assistance programs is a perennial Republican target, and House conservatives are eager to make it part of any agreement to raise the debt ceiling, which the country must do later this year to avoid a default crisis. But Senate Democrats have said such measures are dead on arrival in the upper chamber, and with the help of key Senate Republicans, they have killed off a series of similar House GOP efforts over the years — including a 2018 push involving McCarthy and his current top debt limit lieutenant Rep. Garret Graves (La.). The early response from Senate Republicans this time around does not bode well for a different outcome in 2023...

Let's say it together:  Afflict the afflicted, and comfort the comfortable.  That's the eternal Republican ethos.