In the News

Here is some stuff in the news today!

Welp, at least someone stands to benefit from the impending shutdown: Threat of federal shutdown is windfall for political fundraisers. And if there's anyone who really needs a break these days, it's definitely political fundraisers, so good for them! Ha ha just kidding. They're fine.

The US stock market is reacting to the impending shutdown, and I bet you can guess what's happening! If you guessed "it's probably not good," give yourself one million points! The cool thing about that is how most non-wealthy people invest in the stock market, if they do at all, only through their retirement plans, so it's super neat how the same rich fucks who fund the Republican Party are now freaking out about the Republican Party behaving like they are able to behave only because rich fucks keep funding their elections, and their stupid panic will drive down the value of the retirement savings of ordinary people who have no control over any of this. Free markets for everyone!

In same-sex marriage equality news, a judge in New Jersey "ordered state officials to allow same-sex couples to marry starting October 21, saying the current civil union system unfairly deprives them of federal benefits available to married couples." Woot! Meanwhile, in Virginia, Ted Olson and David Boies, the lawyers who took California's Prop. 8 case to the US Supreme Court, are challenging the state's ban on same-sex marriage.

The US Justice Department will be filing a lawsuit to challenge North Carolina's new voter ID law, which is antidemocratic garbage.

I know you will be SHOCKED to hear this, so I hope you're sitting down and preemptively fanning yourself, but it turns out BP "misled federal officials and withheld information about the amount of crude spewing from its blown-out well" following its 2010 oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm sure they'll be severely punished with a modest fine for which they will pay by firing hardworking people who had nothing to do with the spill or the cover-up.

[Content Note: Misogyny] Sheikh Saleh bin Saad al-Lohaidan, a conservative Saudi Arabian cleric, says "women who drive risk damaging their ovaries and bearing children with clinical problems, countering activists who are trying to end the Islamic kingdom's male-only driving rules." That would be hilarious if it weren't for the fact that this is the kind of shit being used to deny women the right to drive.

This is neat: "Nasa is planning to launch a 3D printer into space next year to help astronauts manufacture spare parts and tools in zero gravity."