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Republicans in the Senate succeeded in having a provision that would cap the cost of insulin in private insurance plans stripped from the wide-ranging economic, environmental and tax bill being debated on the floor, CNN reports.

After appealing to the Senate Parliamentarian to exclude the price cap in general, the Parliamentarian ruled that the provision should cover only Medicare and Medicaid programs and could not be applied to non-governmental insurance programs.  With that, it would require 60 votes to be included in the bill, and 43 GOP Republicans voted to allow private insurance companies to price-gorge diabetics reliant on insulin.

The insulin price cap for Medicare programs caps out-of-pocket costs for insulin at $35 dollars per month; life-saving insulin through private insurance plans can cost patients $100 or more per month.

Greene’s fans can just go ahead and forget the time she went off on Lindsey Graham for saying Trump wanting to pardon the rioters if reelected in 2024 was a horrible idea. Or her rallying outside the DC jail where many are being held before trial. Or when she said they’re being treated worse than prisoners at Guantanamo Bay and the other time when she called them “political prisoners”. They probably did forget all of that because the whole right wing belief system is highly dependent on short and selective memories that never question these obvious blatant contradictions.

A violent radical mob opposed to law and order looted and burned former Haitian Senator Yvon Buissereth as he was driving through an upscale neighborhood just outside of the capital city Port-au-Prince on Saturday, the AP reports. Buissereth’s unnamed nephew was also canceled in the attack by the feared “Ti Makak” gang. Their connection to George Soros is unclear.

“His assassins, as well as all the other criminals who sow mourning in the country, will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and must respond for their ignominious acts before justice,” tweeted Haitian Prime Minister/Acting President Ariel Henry, who himself probably kind of sort of had his predecessor President Jovenel Moïse killed by assassins last July.

Dallas County, Texas, home to the state’s second largest city, has declared a public health emergency over a local monkeypox outbreak on the same weekend it is hosting the Conservative Political Action Conference. It is not clear if county health officials, who warned “men who have sex with men and who engage in high-risk sexual activities make up a larger proportion of cases identified to date,” were specifically considering CPAC when issuing the declaration, however it is unlikely to be coincidental given past reports of surreptitious male-on-male sexual encounters during large gatherings of conservatives. In the comments below this article you will likely find at least one or two MAGA trolls calling us “homophobic” for reporting this, as if our antipathy toward the malevolent hypocrisy of closeted gay conservatives somehow makes us anti-LGBT overall. It’s pretty much all they’ve got to work with here, so maybe try not to kick their asses too hard.

On the question “Thinking about this November’s elections, if one candidate favors keeping abortion legal and available and the other candidate favors limiting abortion except to protect the mother’s life, which candidate would you be more likely to support?” of the latest ABC News/Ipsos poll survey, 49% of respondents said they would vote for the pro-choice candidate while 27% supported the forced birther on this “generic ballot”-adjacent question for races at all levels.

Another 22% answered “The abortion issue would not matter in my vote,” so it’s not a crushing, overwhelming advantage for Democrats on the question it might first appear, as putting the latter two together makes it a 49-49 tie. Not hard to imagine a lot of those 22% are Republican voters agnostic on the issue, thinking “Who cares about abortion? The goddamn border’s open and crime and muh gas prices!” That said, surely there are plenty of would-be Dem voters not particularly animated by the issue either, among them older voters watching the GOP do nothing to help them with prescription drug costs, for example. Then there’s also that the question included “except to protect the mother’s life,” a qualifier that is not a hypothetical in quite a few states that have outlawed abortion since the Supreme Court extremists overturned Roe v Wade.

Right wing personalities attending the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas spent their entire weekend working hard to ensure diabetic Americans had access to live-saving insulin without being overcharged by pharmaceutical companies. No wait, that was the Senate Democrats. The CPAC attendees visited a floor booth where the #WalkAway assclown reenacted his experience in the justice system after being arrested for entering the Capitol during the January 6th MAGA riot.

The conservative fan-con goers together voted on a policy initiative to make sure big corporations pay their fair share in taxes after decades of non-contributions to the bottom line of the federal government. Actually again that was the 50 Dem Senators. The CPAC attendees gave a standing ovation to deeply racist and anti-semitic Hungarian dictator Viktor Orban after his speech.

Republican voters at CPAC also advanced a climate-focused energy reform package including home energy efficiency and electric vehicle rebates for consumers, grants for energy efficient affordable housing construction, and tax credits for domestic production of wind turbines, batteries, and solar panels. Well no. That was Senate Dems. The CPAC crowd instead cheered disgraced former President Trump when he said in his speech that former White House doctor and now Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson “loved looking at my body. It was so strong and powerful.”

Our bad. We try our best to report the news accurately but sometimes we get kind of confused when major events generating a lot of coverage and social media chatter happen simultaneously. Silly us for thinking that two gatherings of politically important personalities would both be producing a shit ton of policy initiatives to benefit the American people, not just one of them.

With a 50-50 vote with Vice President Kamala Harris casting the tie-breaking vote, the wide-ranging Inflation Reduction Act passed a key step in the Senate to bring it to the floor for debate, taking it one step closer to President Joe Biden’s desk, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The bill will allow Medicare to negotiate drug prices; promote clean energy initiatives that will cut fossil fuel emissions by up to 40% by 2030; and implement a 15% corporate minimum tax, all while lowering federal deficits.  All 50 Democrat Senators have committed to supporting the bill with no further changes.

West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin stated that he would not support any efforts by Republicans to alter the bill or offer any amendments to the bill, saying that the bill is properly design and will accomplish many important goals.

While the residents of Eastern Kentucky dig out from the mud and landslides that destroyed their homes and communities after heavy rains hit the area, many are pointing to irresponsible mining practices as an exacerbating the problem, NBC News reports.

Coal companies had literally shifted mountains in the region, with stripped mountaintops becoming hills of compacted soil after the companies harvested the coal from the land.  The heavy rain turned these into massive flows of mud wiping out everything below them.

Lawyers point out that many of the coal mines that operated in the eastern Kentucky region did not comply with the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act, which required coal companies to restore areas impacted by strip mining or mountaintop removal mining to conditions prior to their mining operations.

In his first public broadcast since he was ordered to pay more than $40 million in punitive damages to the survivors of a 6-year-old murder victim at Sandy Hook Elementary School, conspiracy theorist and troll who wants to be a real man Alex Jones makes some peculiar claims about evidence from his cell phone that was turned over to the plaintiffs by his attorneys.

…and of course, where’s the crack pipes, where’s the whores,” Jones goes on, without mentioning the reported child pornography that was turned over during earlier proceedings.  “Sorry… there was a photo that I sent my wife of her naked.  Okay, they got that.  So–my wife looks pretty good–alright, so the point is, is that, there’s one naked picture of my wife in there, so that’s what they’ve got, and it’s just… no dick pics, no nothing.  So, so, so, so wha- wha- I mean, I’m a hard workin’ guy, guys, I’m like runnin’ around party-time here, wa-, I wish I was, but that’s what’s so insane about this, is they tell you that and they act like that, oh, January 6th has got it….

Why would Jones send his wife a naked picture of herself?  And the embarrassing things in his text messages was evidence that he committed perjury in not just the case recently closed in Austin, but in various other lawsuits brought on by Jones defaming the families of children and teachers killed in Sandy Hook.

In a bizarre incident, a retired DC Metropolitan Police lieutenant conducting a training session on the proper use of batons for members of the DC Library Police Department when he fired a gun, killing one of the trainees, USA Today reports.

At the end of Thursday training session being held at the Anacostia branch, 58-year-old Jesse Porter’s handgun discharged, striking 25-year-old DC Library officer Maurica Manyan, who died later at a hospital.  The DC Metropolitan Police has a special branch of armed police who secure the city’s 26 library locations.

Porter has been charged with involuntary manslaughter.  The shooting is mysterious for a number of issues, the least of which is not the question of why a retired officer, working as a contractor, was carrying a weapon loaded with live rounds during a training session.

.@Twitter @facebook @instagram, when Republicans retake the majority, you will pay the price for silencing Americans.

— Lauren Boebert (@laurenboebert) August 6, 2022

The Curiosity rover, an exploratory mission to the Red Planet launched in November 2011, is celebrating its tenth anniversary roaming the surface of the planet and making astounding scientific discoveries along the way, NPR reports.

Landing on the surface August 5, 2012 (Earth time) at a location dubbed the Bradbury Landing Site–named after Ray Bradbury who wrote “The Martian Chronicles” and who died the day the spacecraft landed on Mars–and Curiosity was deployed to the surface the following Earth Day, August 6, 2012.

Since it landed, Curiosity has cruised the surface of Mars for 3,555 sols–Martian days, which are slightly longer than Earth days–even though its expected mission duration was just two Earth years.  With its array of cameras and equipment, Curiosity has made discoveries regarding the soil of Mars, potential underlying water, and even Martian weather; it’s processes to keep its solar panels function over the decade has dictated processes for future probes to the planet.

Conservatives will come to regret their “shut up and dribble” (or “manufacture” or “sell”) retorts to people and corporations that won’t like their policies, because their hostility to public opinion will cost them.  Just ask the GOP-dominated Indiana legislature:  major employers in the state have announced their intentions of shifting operations from Indiana because of their newly-passed law banning abortions, the New York Times reports.

On Friday night, the Republicans in the Indiana passed and signed into law a virtual complete ban on abortion in the state; GOP Governor Eric Holcomb signed the bill, SB 1, into law after it was rushed through the legislature in one day, with both the state senate and the state legislature voting on the bill after 3 p.m. local time, and Holcomb signing it in early night.

Pharma giant Eli Lilly, the state’s largest private employer, announced Saturday that it will have to shift operations out of the state because it does not feel it can attract and keep the quality and quantity of employees it needs to run its operations in the state.

Cummins, a major manufacturer of engines for cars, trucks and other machinery which has 10,000 employees in Indiana also made a similar statement.  “The right to make decisions regarding reproductive health ensures that women have the same opportunity as others to participate fully in our work force and that our work force is diverse. There are provisions in the bill that conflict with this, impact our people and impede our ability to attract and retain top talent,” said Jon Mills, a spokesman for Cummins, noting that the company informed state Republicans that their actions would have detrimental effects.

“Don’t have sex with strangers” is really good life advice for everybody, but today’s woke health officials are unwilling to say it. 🙈🙈🙈 https://t.co/GMXWPODXno

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) August 6, 2022

The murders of two Muslim men in Albuquerque, New Mexico in the last week have been linked to the November killing of a third Muslim man, leading police to believe a serial killer is targeting people based on their race and/or ethnicity, Reuters reports.

Twenty-seven-year-old Pakistani Muhammad Afzaal Hussain, a city planner for the neighboring town of Española, was shot and killed outside his Albuquerque apartment Monday.  That killing was immediately linked to the shooting death of Aftab Hussein, 41, a member of Albuquerque’s Afghan community.  Both men were ambushed outside their residences and shot without warning.

Police were able to connect the two men’s murders to the November shooting death of 62-year-old Mohammad Ahmadi outside a halal market and cafe in the city.  Two of the men were members of the same mosque, police say, although they would not specify which mosque and which two.  Albuquerque and New Mexico police are working with federal agencies including the FBI on the presumed hate crimes.

After rebounding for a week with the Trump-Xi virus, President Biden tested negative on Saturday, his vigor renewed for a campaign of kicking some serious MAGA ass, the New York Times’s Peter Baker reports.

More than 1,000 people are stranded in Death Valley National Park after flash flooding washed out roads and trails, leaving 500 visitors and 500 staff without the ability to get in or out of certain areas, CNN reports.

“All roads into and out of the park are currently closed and will remain closed until park staff can assess the extensiveness of the situation,” the National Park Service said Friday evening.  Debris covered cars at the Inn at Death Valley, and in other areas, vehicles were stuck in at least a foot of mud that was swept into the area by near-record rainfall.

A meteorological station at Furnace Creek measured 1.46 inches of rainfall in the previous 24 hours, nearly topping the record of 1.47 inches recorded.