The Sorensen Monologues
Rental Breakdown
Whenever I look at Airbnb listings, I’m amazed by how expensive some of them are. People are apparently paying big bucks these days for flashy, Instagram-friendly “experiences.” In many tourist areas, long-term renters are getting priced out. Part of this is due to the raging real estate market — though the money to be made these days from short-term rentals can quickly outpace income from traditional tenants. This isn’t exactly helping to stabilize things for working people who just need a home, not an experience.
Viral Spiral
So the Delta variant is surging across the US, with Florida actually breaking last year’s hospitalization records. While the vast majority of those hospitalized are unvaccinated, this variant does have the unfortunate effect of turning people into highly-explosive virus volcanoes. By ending preventive measures prematurely, we’re creating ideal conditions for ever more dangerous variants to evolve.
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She’s so fined
Given the increased respect for women’s sports, it was especially absurd to hear that the Norwegian women’s beach handball team was being fined €1500 by the European Handball Federation for wearing spandex shorts instead of bikini bottoms. To be clear, the team wore shorts at the European championships in Bulgaria, not at the Olympics.
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Back to normal
I’m not suggesting that the climate crisis would end if billionaires abandoned private space flight. I am saying that they are the grotesque embodiment of a sociopathic gilded age, narcissistic pig-men who have a moral obligation to end the system that enabled their stupid fortunes in the first place, as Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott is admirably trying to do.
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Alito Inconvenienced
Arizona has a terrible history of suppressing Native voters that bears more than a little resemblance to the Jim Crow South; it was one of the states required to get preclearance from the Justice Department to make any election law changes under the Voting Rights Act, until that rule was gutted by the Supreme Court in 2013. The laws that were recently challenged forbid ballot collection by third parties (who had assisted Native voters living in remote places far from polling centers) and invalidate all ballots that go to the wrong precinct. This apparently happens with some regularity among reservation dwellers who do not have a regular street address. This Washington Post article about the obstacles faced by Native voters provides some useful background.
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Egalitarian Wave Theory
We’ve seen the right do this over and over, repeating a phrase until it becomes conventional wisdom. Eventually mainstream media outlets and even progressives start using these concocted frames, as Professor Cas Mudde eloquently argued in The Guardian this past weekend.
The GOP has long been at war with academia, and now they seem closer than ever to achieving their dream of shutting down teachers and professors’ ability to teach history, social science, and basic critical thinking skills. Several states already have ridiculous bills pending that would chill academic freedom. It’s beginning to feel a lot like Hungary!
Welcome to Vultureville
This cartoon was inspired by a Wall Street Journal article about big investment firms buying up homes — sometimes entire subdivisions — to rent out or flip. Obviously rentals are necessary as many people cannot afford to buy, especially in places like NYC. But corporations hoovering up whole middle-class or working-class neighborhoods serves no public good — it’s just driving up prices and exacerbating inequality, continuing ye olde wealth transfer to the already well-heeled (and almost certainly well-housed, for that matter).
Stacking the Democracy Deck
The poll watchers in the third panel were inspired by the Texas bill that would, among other affronts to fairness and decency, “empower partisan poll watchers by allowing more access to polling places and threatening criminal penalties against officials who restrict their movement.” Ah, what could go wrong?
Truth be told, I’ve been trying to come up with a cartoon about the nutty Arizona “recount” and similar undertakings around the country for a few weeks now, but there’s only so much you can satirize sheer lunacy. There’s no concept to even argue against — it’s just an ever-expanding bowl of nonsense Jell-O.
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