#Robyn Pennacchia

[the-cimmerians]

In 2022, Massachusetts residents voted in favor of a Fair Tax ballot measure to extra-super-duper-tax those earning more than one million dollars a year and to spend the revenue from that on education and transportation initiatives.

Naturally, there were the naysayers. Those who warned that all of the state’s rich people would move away to their very own Galt’s Gulch or whatever, if they were forced to pay a four percent tax on anything they make over a million dollars. The implication there, of course, is that raising this tax would, ironically, lead to the state collecting less revenue overall.

That didn’t happen! In fact, the state has already raised $1.8 billion in revenue so far for this fiscal year — which is $800 million more than they expected, and they still have a few months to go. The vast majority of the surplus will go to a fund that legislators can use for one-time investments in various projects.

The revenue has already been invested in universal school lunches, in more scholarships to public colleges, in improvements to the MBTA, and to repair roads and bridges. These are all things that will improve the quality of life for everyone, including the “ultra-rich” who happen to live there. The fact is, it’s just nice to live in a society that is more civil, that takes care of its people and its children and that fixes things when they are broken.

[ ]

Elizabeth Warren, Pramila Jayapal, and others have introduced bills in the House and Senate for a nationwide millionaire’s tax of two percent — two cents on the dollar for all wealth exceeding $50 million and six percent on all wealth over a billion dollars. This would bring in an estimated $3.75 trillion over 10 years, which we could use to improve the lives of all US citizens. We could have so many nice things!

It’s time to stop living in fear of what millionaires and billionaires — who have made their fortunes off of roads we’ve paid for and employees we’ve paid to educate — will do or where they will move if forced to pay their fair share. That’s no way to live. If they have some place better to go that won’t force them to contribute to improving their community? Let them. Other people will come along and be more than happy to pick up where they left off. But more than likely, they won’t do jack shit because they’re rich, and if they wanted to live someplace else, they’d be there by now.

[soapdispensersalesman]

Interesting thread about making friends, aome do it by asking for a lighter and striking up a conversation, but if you're like me and don't smoke this obviously wouldn't work.

The "third places" concept in which you have a place you regularly visit is something I'd love to explore further as well, it's been tricky as much is going on in Utrecht if you're not a student in their early 20s and train tickets have gotten much more expensive. Not much of an organizer myself so that's on me.

I do somewhat disagree with her stance on introverts though despite not being an introvert myself, I do understand them well and having social anxiety is a real thing, especially if you like being around people like me.

It was a nice read, curious to learn more about approaching strangers as I'm bad at reading people.

[imkeepinit]

Rep. Gosar censured over anime video that depicted violence against Democrats

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette:

One thing I have always known, very deep in my bones, is that the whole “We’re totally the anti-war party now!” thing Republicans have been doing for the last few years was always disingenuous bullshit. Why? Largely because they’ve always been the pro-war crowd, but also because it doesn’t line up, in any fashion, with the whole rest of their ideology. Republicans love war because it makes them feel tough and manly, and because it usually causes an increase in rampant nationalism that allows them to get away with pretty much anything they want (see: PATRIOT Act). They also don’t care about other people, so there’s no real downside for them. Plus, they can usually get enough feckless Democrats to go along with it that they can blame it all on them when it all goes wrong.

In fact, the only “war” they’ve ever opposed has been the war in Ukraine, which we are not actually fighting. It’s not really that they hate war so much as they love Putin — which is why you don’t see them getting too het up over the military aid we provide to other nations or the fact that we’re literally the world’s largest arms exporter. There’s a very big difference between a nation fighting back against invaders and actually being the invaders. Trump has been talking for weeks now about his plans to invade Greenland and the Panama Canal and maybe Canada. Earlier this week, during a press conference, he refused to rule out using military force to do so.

[...] The only reason any of them even started this “we’re anti-war now!” bit was because they needed something valid with which to attack Hillary Clinton, and the one big, glaring thing that everyone understood was bad was the time she went along with Republicans and voted in favor of letting Bush start the Iraq War. There’s never been any sincerity around it, they can’t explain why they oppose any military intervention. They claim it’s because “America First!” — which would be believable if they believed in spending money to make things better for Americans, which they do not. It’s not as if they’re saying, “Hey, let’s spend less money on war and more money on universal health care or the social safety net or housing programs!” like common liberal scum — the only things they support spending money on are the military, the police and prisons. Oh, and they’d like to send some tax money to homeschoolers, but that’s just so they can break the public schools. Trump’s own characterization of himself as an “anti-war” president was similarly bullshit. He lied about not supporting the Iraq War, which he did. As president, while he didn’t start any new conflicts (technically), he escalated the ones we already had. He dropped a record number of bombs on Afghanistan, he escalated the drone war, he vetoed bipartisan congressional votes to end our involvement in Yemen, he dramatically increased the already-excessive Pentagon budget, expanded the military-industrial complex, and was otherwise quite bloodthirsty.

Donald Trump’s claim to be “anti-war” is full of malarkey, as we are witnessing in recent times. And Trump once cheered on the Iraq War.

[rjalker]

[ID: Screenshots of tweets by "Salem @aWildSalem" that read:

"People really built a society with no third spaces, made it illegal or unsafe to be outside, and then blamed phone use for making teens depressed.

I've had this conversation with multiple parents. They want the phones to be the source of the problem because they don't want to admit that we have created a physical environment that is hostile to teenage existence.

The digital world has now become the main (or sometimes only) third space that a lot of kids can escape to. Even in healthy families, kids need somewhere to hang with friends and make new ones without adult surveillance.

These parents approach this by trying to put hard limits on screen time but they don't provide an alternative! So they end up creating more conflict because children have needs that have to be met. Without another source, the kids end up sneaking more screen time."

This is followed by a tweet by "Robyn Pennacchia - @RobynElyse" that reads:

"Have been saying this for years.

People make jokes about kids not being hanging out at malls anymore? Kids are banned from malls. They're banned rom parks, they're banned from parking lots, they're kicked off streets."

End ID.]

Your kids need independence.

[diaryofabookgirl]

Women are also rejected. Women also spend their teen years pining after dreamy boys who will never love them back. You don’t see us going around murdering people over it. You don’t see us setting up internet communities for the purpose of talking about how evil and shallow men are for not taking us to pound town. Women don’t go around killing men who don’t like them, because if you’re a woman in this society, a boy not liking you is the least of your problems. It is nowhere near the shittiest thing you’re going to be expected to “just deal with” in your life – one of those things being the fact that we are expected to “just deal with” how men are sometimes going to murder a bunch of people because they felt entitled to romantic attention from women. We are expected to “deal with” that, while never bringing up the terms “male privilege” or “male entitlement” or “toxic masculinity” and why those things so often lead to mass murder, on account of how that might really hurt the feelings of the men who have been gracious enough to not go on killing sprees.

This Is Not What ‘Lovesick’ Is, Robyn Pennacchia | Published on March 23, 2018 at Wonkette (see source for full article)

[calicojack1718]

James Randi Outed Some Truly Heinous Frauds, And For That We Should All Be Grateful - Wonkette

James Randi Outed Some Truly Heinous Frauds, And For That We Should All Be Grateful – Wonkette

James Randi Outed Some Truly Heinous Frauds, And For That We Should All Be Grateful — Wonkette

Somehow the news of James “The Amazing Randi” Randi’s death got past me on the crowded news cycle. Luckily, it didn’t get past the good folks over at Wonkette.

Crowding out really important news stories like this with their BS and constant whining is another reason to decry the Ol’ Pussy Grabbér’s…

[howwelldoyouknowyourmoon]

Mike Pence Is A Moonie Now, Practically

Wonkette    Robyn Pennacchia

March 06, 2021 04:00 PM

Hey! Remember the Moonies? Probably, since they're still around and they still own the Washington Times (but not Entenmann's, which was apparently a rumor back in the 80s). The Rev. Sun Myung Moon may be dead, but the church is still going strong under the leadership of his wife, Hak Ja Han Moon, and his daughter, In Jin Moon.

This week, the Unification Church held their 5th annual Rally of Hope — starring none other than former Vice President Mike Pence. This seems like a weird choice for our very holiest vice president, given that the Moons think they are gods (and their followers believe them), which one would think would go against his Christian beliefs.

In the speech, Pence praised Hak Ja Han Moon and the Washington Times, which he described as a model of "fair and accurate reporting."

Of course, given that he's persona non-grata in the Trump cult now, he may just be lonely and looking for a new place to belong. After all, the church pretty much invented the term love bombing.

Unification Church members are smiling all of the time, even at four in the morning. The man who is full of love must live that way. When you go out witnessing you can caress the wall and say that it can expect you to witness well and be smiling when you return. What face could better represent love than a smiling face? This is why we talk about love bomb; Moonies have that kind of happy problem. — Rev. Sun Myung Moon

No word yet on if he's leaving Mother to go get mass married in a Unification Church ceremony, but anything can happen.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A5Wx-muGUg&t=3266s

Mike Pence speaks at 54:30

https://www.wonkette.com/mike-pence-is-a-moonie-now-practically

___________________________________

Hak Ja Han speaks at: 2:01:20 

“Following World War I many material and ideological challenges arose and in the midst of these challenges heaven prepared someone to bring the completion of the 6,000 year history of the providence, the Only Begotten Daughter. Heaven sent the Only Begotten Daughter and this providence took place. Jesus, before walking the path of the cross, prophesied that he would come again to host the Marriage Wedding of the Lamb. In other words the purpose of the Second Advent of the Christ is to meet the Only Begotten Daughter and form True Parents. Without the Only Begotten Daughter the dream of the Second Coming True Parents cannot be fulfilled. The situation at the time of my birth was difficult because Korea was liberated but a few years later Korea would be divided into the pro-Soviet North and the pro-democracy South. At that time had America understood the importance of Heaven’s providence the course of history in the Korean peninsular might have been different....”

_____________________________________

In 1985 the Washington Times sponsored a fund for the Contras who committed atrocities, and trafficked drugs to the US

_____________________________________

Missing Pieces of the Story of Sun Myung Moon by Frederick Clarkson    September 8, 2012 The reporting and punditry in the wake of the death of Sun Myung Moon has left a lot to be desired. Even long, seemingly comprehensive treatments of Moon’s life and empire, such as the one that ran in The New York Times, did not delve deeply into Moon’s profound far right and criminal involvements; antidemocratic politics; or even the mysterious sources of foreign cash for The Washington Times, and extensive political operations in the U.S. for decades, let alone the Moon organization’s broad, insidious affects on American culture and democracy.

_____________________________________

“Moon’s Law: God Is Phasing Out Democracy” by Frederick Clarkson

Kim Sang-In has, since at least 1982, been executive Vice President of the parent company of Moon’s Washington Times newspaper, News World Communications (NWC). Bo Hi Pak is President of NWC, as well as CAUSA, and the still existent Korean Cultural Freedom Foundation (KCFF). Han Sang Keuk later became the Korean Ambassador to Norway,6 and is currently involved in CAUSA’s International Security Council.

_____________________________________

Money and Power and Moon’s Washington Times by Rory O’Connor

_____________________________________

The church recently ran a two-page ad in the Moon-owned Washington Times, asserting that 36 U.S. presidents from George Washington to Richard Nixon endorsed Moon during a series of “spirit world” conferences

U.S. Presidents Endorse Sun Myung Moon From ‘Spirit World’

[mostlysignssomeportents]

#1yrago Square dancing was a racist hoax funded by Henry Ford to get white people to stop dancing to black music

Wonkette writer Robyn Pennacchia went on a brilliant Twitter rant about the strange history of square dancing, which is not an old American tradition, but rather a 20th century hoax that Henry Ford and Dr Pappy Shaw created to get white people to stop dancing to music made by black people.

Ford even got school districts to teach square dancing in gym classes, and convinced 27 states to make square dancing their official state dances.

https://boingboing.net/2017/12/08/dr-pappy-shaw.html

[the-cimmerians]

Vice President Kamala Harris announced this week that the Biden administration is looking to lessen the burden medical debt has on people by purging it from their credit report. This means that even if people have piles of medical debt — one in five Americans say they do — it’s not going to affect their ability to get a mortgage or a car loan. So they will at least have a place to rest their head and a car they can drive to work every day while paying off their medical bills.

Via AP:

Harris said that would make it easier for them to obtain an auto loan or a home mortgage. Roughly one in five people report having medical debt. The vice president said the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is beginning the rulemaking process to make the change. The agency said in a statement that including medical debt in credit scores is problematic because “mistakes and inaccuracies in medical billing are common.” “Access to health care should be a right and not a privilege,” Harris told reporters in call to preview the action. “These measures will improve the credit scores of millions of Americans so that they will better be able to invest in their future.”

It only seems fair that high medical bills for an emergency or serious illness shouldn’t affect one’s credit rating anyway. It’s not like we’re talking about someone irresponsibly dropping several grand at Versace and then never paying off the credit card bill. Fifty-seven percent of Americans could not afford a surprise $1000 emergency, so the inability to pay off massive amounts of medical debt is hardly a fair reflection of an inclination to default on normal payments — payments you can budget for — on something like a mortgage or auto loan. “Way to be irresponsible by getting cancer, lady! You should definitely be punished for that by not being able to find any place to live!” seems pretty harsh, no?

[berf-a-smurf]

I did, during which I found this fantastic write-up:

I urge you to follow the link and read the rest!

[Picture IDs:

Original tumblr post by whitepeopletwitter contains a screenshot of a twitter post by The Debt Collective (@StrikeDebt) saying “good morning to everyone except these two - Alexander Taylor and Myra Brown - who sued over student debt relief and got it struck down.” The tweet includes the portrait photos of Alex (left) and Myra (right).

My reblog contains two photos: a tumblr user’s rb tag in whitepeopletwitter’s post’s notes reading “# i did not fact check this”

Followed by my “I did” line.

Followed by the second photo: a screenshot from Wonkette.com. Headline “Look At These Twerps Who Ruined Student Loan Forgiveness For Everybody”. By Robyn Pennacchia. Under that, the same side-by-side picture of the two’s portraits. The article begins with the paragraph: “Meet Alexander Taylor and Myra Brown, two people who definitely spent a lot of time in school reminding teachers that they forgot to assign homework.” That’s where the screenshot ends.

End Picture IDs.]

[scottiestoybox]

Is Jim Jordan Planning To Kill Us All?

Is Jim Jordan Planning To Kill Us All?

https://www.wonkette.com/is-jim-jordan-planning-to-kill-us-all Robyn Pennacchia December 07, 2021 09:36 AM       Rep. Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, has been on something of a roll lately. Last week, he announced to the world that Real America was done with COVID-19. It was a fairly premature declaration given that the areas of the country Jordan likely considers to be “Real America”…

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette:

Last week, Louisiana lawmakers empowered child rapists by voting down a bill that would have allowed an exception in their abortion ban for their victims. This week, they’re looking into classifying abortion pills as a Schedule IV “controlled substance” so that they can harshly prosecute people for helping to distribute them to those in need. The provision was added as an amendment to SB276, a bill that “creates the crime of coerced criminal abortion by means of fraud to prohibit a third-party from knowingly using an abortion-inducing drug to cause, or attempt to cause, an abortion on an unsuspecting pregnant mother without her knowledge or consent and amends various abortion criminal laws to add the crime of attempted abortion.”

It is deeply concerning that Louisiana legislators are wholly unaware that all of this is already illegal. It is illegal, except in some emergency situations and even then only by medical professionals, to give anyone any kind of medication without their knowledge and informed consent. If they think this is legal, well, I wouldn’t leave my drink around a single one of them, is all I’m saying. It’s also clear that they don’t really understand what controlled substances are, why some drugs are scheduled and others are not, nor anything about the specific drugs they are trying to control. Misoprostol, for instance, is primarily used to prevent ulcers from NSAIDs, as well as to help stop postpartum hemorrhaging after a miscarriage. Mifepristone is sometimes used during labor, during IUD placement, during cancer biopsies, for Cushing’s syndrome and uterine fibroids.

[...] The bill’s sponsor, Republican state Sen. Thomas Pressly, introduced it partially for personal reasons, because his sister’s ex-husband actually did secretly dose her with an abortion drug, and was not, in Pressly and his sister’s estimation, punished severely enough for it. He served 180 days in jail, and the bill would raise that to 10 years and up to $75,000 in fines. It would be one thing to increase the penalties for dosing anyone in any kind of way, but there’s a reason they’re specifying abortion drugs. What they want is to prevent people from getting them for women who want to take them voluntarily but cannot because of their state’s gross law, and to institute major penalties for this. What they want is to be able to better track doctors who may still be prescribing these pills to abortion-seeking patients for reasons other than abortion.

Louisiana's SB276 bill to classify abortion pills such as mifepristone and misoprostol as "controlled substances" are an attack on reproductive freedom and family planning.

[nodynasty4us]

If Joe Biden bears any responsibility for the way this turned out, it's due to having voted for the war as a senator, not for withdrawing as president.

Robyn Pennacchia in Wonkette

[trendingnewstracker]

Saturday Night Owls: Lame duck White House occupant eager to kill Californians with Medicaid cuts

Night Owls, a themed open thread, appears at Daily Kos seven days a week 32 DAYS UNTIL JOE BIDEN AND KAMALA HARRIS TAKE THE OATH OF OFFICE Robyn Pennacchia at Wonkette writes—Well This Is Just A Swell Time For Trump To Cut Healthcare Funds To California Over Abortion: California is having a difficult time. It’s…

https://is.gd/ByWmhV