FRIDAY 'ROUND-THE-HORN.

I had this soundtrack as a teenager and loved it -- not just because of the movie but also because the eclecticism was very cool to me (even though I didn't know what "eclecticism" was.)

•   I am titrating the free access to Roy Edroso Breaks It Down in hopes some of you free-riders will take the hint and subscribe. Today's freebie is an account of my trip back to the homeland last weekend and the deep thoughts it stirred. Go on, live it up. If you want more of my prose stylings, I've started doing short bits on the front of my homepage -- updated at random, not even saved, in a spirit of wanton generosity and as an offering (as Kia liked to say) of cheese and crackers on the altar of the gods. 

•  I can either drink or I can weep, as Art Carney says in that great Twilight Zone episode. No fewer than 24 Republican-run states have blocked the extra federal unemployment payments the Biden administration had extended to their constituents.  And they'll probably suffer no ill electoral effects from it either, because while polls show voters of all kinds approve of stimulus payments, they also show that a lot of voters simply don't know that the Democrats support such payments and that Republicans don't -- per a Rural Objective PAC survey:

Americans have so far received three direct payments from the federal government in response to the coronavirus. The first two were distributed under President Donald Trump’s watch, but while not a single Republican voted in favor of the third round, only half of rural voters in a new poll gave Democrats any credit.

Oh, and remember those power outages in Texas that had residents freezing in the dark because the semi-privatized (that is, private profit/public risk) power companies didn't bother to plow their receipts into winterization? Texas is going to fix it by letting the power cos raise rates:

Most Texans will likely have higher charges on their power bills for years to come to cover gas utilities', electric cooperatives' and electric companies’ financial losses from the storm and prevent customers from having to pay huge bills in a short time.

Lawmakers are close to passing bills that would allow companies to seek billions of dollars in state-approved bonds backed by charges on customers’ bills to stabilize the state’s distressed energy market.  

See, this was a big reason why I always voted for Bernie Sanders -- at least when people listened to him, they weren't confused about whether he wanted to soak the rich or not. 

I keep thinking eventually the honkies in at least a few of these GOP states will figure out that the cheap thrills they get from the GOP's racism-and-culture-war sideshows aren't worth their every-increasing immiseration, but the 2020 Georgia results suggest the only reliable clapback is to get more black people to the polls, which is why the Republican-run states are also trying to stop that. 

And now the Republicans are also blocking the January 6 commission with the filibuster, that sacred institution Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are too dainty to touch. I tell ya, if Democrats don't start acting like Democrats, even I'm gonna forget what they're supposed to be in favor of.