Vampires and Dragons Require Both a Stake Through the Heart and Decapitation

We keep casting harsh desert sunlight on Bad Ideas in an effort to sterilize them, and other people take the dried dead things home and water them.

• Cabaret, revived and still relevant.
• Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor, speaking for the underdog.  (Via supergee on Dreamwidth)
• Helmut Monotreme at Sadly, No! on the meaning of "waving the bloody shirt" and a conservative columnist's defense of the indefensible.

  I would invite Rod, as diplomatically as I can, to look up the definition of “oppression”. Because “Not getting to make the lives of LGBTQ people as miserable as possible” isn’t it. Backing up the freedom of LGBTQ people to fully participate in society with the force of law isn’t oppression. Daily reminding Rod Dreher that he acts just like he’s so deep in the closet he’s finding Christmas presents, isn’t oppression. It may be mean but but he deserves that and worse for the fetid bilge he regularly spills into the national discourse. And that really is as diplomatically as I can put it.

• The Rude One goes Full Rude on Trey Gowdy and the eight-hundred-page report signifying that water is wet:

  Yet, it seems, according to every piece of evidence, that when it comes to Benghazi, she's been completely exonerated.

  Note: I am not kidding about Full Rude. Language NSFW, particularly if work is in a school or religious setting.
• ETA:  Speaking of that report...

In Memoriam

New York Times obits:

• "Dandy" Dan Daniel, disk jockey, WMCA Good Guy
• Bernie Worrell, funk keyboardist
• Jim Hickman, original Met
• Scotty Moore, guitarist
• Pat Summitt, women's basketball coach
• Mack Rice, songwriter ("Mustang Sally")
• Bill Cunningham, photographer

Los Angeles Times obits:

• Anton Yelchin, actor (Chekov, Star Trek reboot)
• Michael Herr, chronicled the Vietnam War

Note

Yes. I am behind on acknowledging obituaries.

Yes, I have seen the coverage on Brexit and elsewhere stated something rude about Planet of the Apes.  

No, I am not in mourning for either the Sharks or the Warriors; neither of them play sports I care much about.

No, I don't have enough on the Sacramento violence.  Although, remember, "right-wing" people (and their "left-wing" counterparts) like to stir up anger.  Historical precedents!

Yes, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas had overcurtailed abortion rights in that state.  Predictably, Texas legislators are whining.

And same-sex marriage has been legal in the entire country for a year and no one has reported gay shotgun weddings.  Where are my pearls?!  (CLUE:  It is a logical fallacy to assume that anything not forbidden is mandatory.)

"There Isn't a Human Being Left in Santa Mira."

Soundtrack is Nina Simone.  Deal.

• Dangers of corporate facial recognition tech (Electronic Frontier Foundation).  

  Perhaps it was inevitable that the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act would come under threat, as it’s our nation’s strongest law that protects people from facial recognition technology used by private entities. Enacted in 2008, the law was an initiative of the ACLU of Illinois, in response to an episode when a corporation sold off its database of customer biometric information during bankruptcy proceedings.
  
  The Illinois statute requires private entities to get consent from a person before collecting or disclosing their biometric identifiers. Private entities also must destroy collected identifiers within three years, and sooner if they finish using the identifiers for the purpose for which they collected it. The statute extends to “a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, or scan of hand or face geometry.” The term “face geometry” includes facial recognition. Finally, the statute has teeth: injured parties may sue the private entities that violate these privacy rules.

• Survey says (Echidne of the Snakes):

  Isn't that fun? Because those who are keen to take online surveys could differ from those who are not keen in other ways, too, we cannot tell if the 2014 Harris poll says something about the millennial men in the US. All we can tell is that some unknown number of young men in that specific poll answered certain questions, the exact specification of which we are not told, in a certain way.

   Methodology may have been faulty here, and millenial men may not be more sexist than their forebears.
• David Neiwert (Orcinus) on the similarities of homophobic terrorists across the political/religious spectrum.
• Zandar (Zandar Versus The Stupid) on:
• Trump;
• Ryan;
• Rubio;
• Bevin wrecking Medicaid expansion in Kentucky;
• The background checks.
• Guidelines for fan-produced Star Trek films/videos.
• Scalzi on Brexit, now that it is over.
• President on Supreme Court immigration ruling.  (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars.)  Video with link to transcript.
• You don't need me to tell you that ultimately haters impoverish you and your life, right?  And that immigrants, in many unnoticed and unnoticeable ways, improve life.  (A comment at Obsidian Wings pointed me to the Iron Law of Institutions, which, like the Iron Throne of Westeros, is best understood as something that only makes sense in an inverted kind of power.  Basically, people are wack, and have been so for a long time, and only very rarely do they relinquish power once they get it, and yes, that sounds very much like drug addiction.  Where was I?)  Being anti-immigrant is spiritually akin to mummifying yourself, and unless you've built a convenient pyramid out in the back yard, mummification is a terrible look, toots.

Not a Road I Want to Be On

Trump revokes campaign press credentials of the Washington Post.  (Sarah P, Crooks and Liars)

Well, Jake Tapper asked him to clarify a statement made to Fox News.  (See video.)  (Also, "special gold-plated batphone" will never not be funny.)  That--that's doubt!

Then there's the rest of the article.

Now I am not going to come out and say that Trump is a fascist, but I am also looking at this list and it is pretty clear that he has checked almost every single box, except 11 and 14 (yet).

Today, he took the step of revoking the press credentials from the Washington Post, adding them to the long list of media that cannot cover him at rallies or speeches.

Article list is drawn from.  Article list was compiled from.

Serious.

Bad.

Craziness.

Cogitations and Requests

• On the usefulness of "thoughts and prayers."  ETA:  More.
• WiredSisters (Red Emma) at Noli Irritare Leones on the subject.
• Comrade Misfit (Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I) on a journalist's inaccuracy.  And so far the comments make sense.
• Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station (it's an update).
• Why calling for more love won't work.  (Southern Beale)
• Neocons, hah:

  At least one of Clinton’s advisers realizes what most Americans seem to know instinctually: The neocons are poison. When asked by Politico if Team Clinton would consider bringing on any of the desert-island neocons in an official capacity, the adviser sarcastically responded: “Who is saying, ‘You know what we need to do is pick up the people who got us into the Iraq War! I mean, they’re geniuses!’ They’ve been wrong about everything!”

  The Nation, James Carden, on the fear that neither the Clinton nor the Trump campaigns think much of neocon concerns.
• AlterNet's Janet Allon summarizes Paul Krugman's column on Republicans as the party of grift.
• Jim C. Hines.

General Bradley Turns Over in His Grave

Shooting at nightclub in Florida.

Yanno, if someone (PURELY HYPOTHETICAL!!  NOT ME!!) took assault weaponry and shot up NRA HQ or Congress, there would be calls for gun control so fast one could enter them in the Indy 500.

But of course, both the NRA and Congress have metal detectors and searches.  (Which makes the NRA hypocrites--shouldn't they have people detectors?  After all, guns don't kill people...)

I don't support a total ban; that's like trying to ban drugs.  But short of something like the Compact (which was adopted for much worse weapons than --  oh.  Brief explanation.  "The principle was that anyone wishing to kill an opponent must come within an equal risk death himself. The Compact forbade the use and possession of all weapons capable of striking beyond arm's length."  You don't have to read the Darkover novels. -- guns) or true "smart" guns, firearms in the USA are going to be problematic, and we're going to have weirdos nasty folks shooting people.

No, I don't have a solution, either.

In Memoriam

• Theresa Saldana, actress
• Gordie Howe, Mr. Hockey (Detroit Red Wings)

A Tale of Two S. Kings and Other Stories

twistedchick linked to a brief squib at Daily Kos linking to an interview with Stephen King at Rolling Stone.  One of the commenters misread the headline as referring to Shaun King and linked to an openish letter he penned in the NY Daily News.  Both items express contempt for Mr. Trump.  (A third non-S Mr. King denies endorsing Trump.)

Apparently Pat Buchanan is still alive.  (Ed Kilgore, New York Magazine.  Link via Mark Evanier.)

Threading the needle:  Republic of T reports on denouncing racism while supporting racists.  With several videos, statements by Republicans, and

As WaPo’s Jennifer Rubin wrote, the GOP has managed to turn what Republicans once claimed was a bad rap that Republicans are racists into a “accurate, deadly analysis, ” that too many Republicans harbor racist views and/or don’t recognize racism when its right in front of them."

Oh, they recognize it, alright. Just like a duck recognizes another duck. It’s just that when a candidate looks like duck, walks like a duck, and sounds even more like a duck than a duck, Republican can’t bring themselves to call him a duck — because they knew who they were endorsing.

quacking.

That's more than enough about Mr. Trump.  Well, maybe this.  But I wouldn't want to spoil your dinner.

I've Seen All Good Peop -- Hey!!

Sorry; earworm.

• Fisking a parody:  Professor Chaos (The Daily Irritant) dismantles a conservative rewriting of the President's proclamation of Gay Pride Month.  (Link to original [on WND.com] at end of post.)

  Yes, it is the gays causing societal upheaval. It is the gay rights activists, for instance, that cause so many children to be born out of wedlock to teenage girls. [...] It is clearly the fault of the gays that much of rural America is in the grip of Meth and opiate addiction.

• The Rude One on recognizing a historical moment:

  This is just a pause to acknowledge that Clinton's nomination is a big fucking deal. As President Obama said, she is eminently qualified for the job. She was a great senator, and her tenure as Secretary of State actually involved more than Benghazi and her email server, although that's all the fuck you hear about. We have plenty of time to complain about her coziness with Wall Street, with her hawkishness, her coziness with tyrants, and more.

• Workfare reality.  (Via the sidebar at the Daily Irritant, just because.)

  ...[T]his bullshit of forcing people to work for pennies? It's dehumanizing, it's devaluing their labor. It's telling the poor they're worthless, or close to it. If their work had any meaning, the program would calculate the hours differently, make it a closer match between a legal wage and the amount they're going to receive. But when it's the equivalent of $1/hour or less? Then it's pretty obvious the work doesn't mean anything; it's the punishment part that's important.

Ilyushins

Via No More Mister Nice Blog, Pat Cunningham (Applesauce) on demographics and reality, which is a commentary on this article by Jed Kolko at fivethirtyeight.com, which in turn was a rebuttal to an op-ed by Jim Vandehei in the Wall Street Journal, for which you must subscribe or sign in.  Cunningham wrote:

In her own way, Sarah Palin tried to invoke these images during the presidential campaign of eight years [ago] when she told the folks in small towns that they were the “real Americans” — as if residents of big cities were aliens of some sort.

As an alien of some sort who has lived in cities most of my life, I am going to say here that I have heard about the wonderfulnesses of small towns for most of my life (from movies, TV, books, music, and the general sort of propaganda one absorbs as a young person).  The small-town values of friendliness and self-sufficient neighborliness have been extolled well into mythical territory.

I don't believe in small towns.

Probably because other small-town values are conformity/aversion to difference.

It turns out that statistically (see Mr. Kolko's article; he uses statistics and explains his metrics) the average American lives in medium-sized cities.

(In which case, the average American might understand more viscerally why real-estate magnates should not have power.  But I digress.)

So politicians talking to what they think are Normal Americans are Wrong.

(I submitted a mail-in ballot, so I'm covered, but if your state is throwing an election today, please vote.)

In Memoriam

• Peter Shaffer, playwright (Amadeus)
• Helen Chavez, widow
• Victor Korchnoi, chess grandmaster
• Phyllis Curtin, soprano

Link Salad

• Neil deGrasse Tyson in video on education.  (At AlterNet; from Bill Maher's program)
• Benjamin Dangl at AlterNet on the failure of neoliberalism and how long it has taken to be admitted.  (IMF does not really stand for Impossible Missions Force.)
• Professor Chaos (hi!) of The Daily Irritant allows Rep. Louis Gohmert of Texas to demonstrate comprehensive foolishness.  CNN video.  Bonus Duck Amuck gifs.
• Jurassicpork on the late Muhammad Ali.
• The state of the City University of New York (Cory Robin, Crooked Timber) is not so good.
• Sarah Guppy, designer of bridges.  But modest (spits).
• ETA because I had forgotten the tab was still open:  Jesse Curtis asks whether Americans can be honest about our history.  And cites some of that history.  And addresses the elephant the candidacy of Donald Trump.

  What's remarkable about this is that whole swaths of the nation's institutions cannot even describe it. They are compelled to resort to euphemism and obfuscation. Politicians and pundits avoid using hard-edged words like racism not because they are inadequate descriptors of the matter at hand, but because, a priori, one simply doesn't describe contemporary America in this vein. To admit that Trump is running a racist campaign is to admit that America is not what we thought it was. It is to admit that progress has not been as easy, facile, or comprehensive as our national myths tell us.

In Memoriam

Muhammad Ali.  With video.

Heavyweight champion, poet, resisted draft (Vietnam), converted to Islam.  Fascinating life.  Lived with Parkinson's disease.

In Memoriam

Dave Swarbrick, Fairport Convention, et al.

"Here We Stand, Hurls a Park, Housebroken and Too, Too, Too."

Yes, it's a mondegreen.  Deal.

• Lance Mannion is on fire lately.
  
  • Essay about the campaign of Bernie Sanders and impossible dreams.

    There’s another lesson for all of us, if we’re to avoid finishing our lives as Don Quixotes. There comes a time when we have to accept that our time has passed and the world doesn’t need us anymore or, any rate, not in the way we used to think it did. We have to come to terms with the ways we failed to be the heroes and heroines of our own lives we dreamed of being. We have to come to terms with the fact that we are going to die and life will go on without us as if we didn’t matter---as if we never existed.
    
    We have to find a way to live with this fact without retreating into fantasy and self-delusion or giving in to bitterness, anger, resentment, and despair.

  • Essay about trying to freeze Hillary Clinton at an early stage and why that's foolish.

    What you can’t argue, with any intellectual honesty, is that none of that experience matters as much as her having once upon a time, years before she was even old enough to vote, she put on her cowgirl outfit and proudly called herself a Goldwater Girl.
    
    But while the Goldwater Girl meme is an attempt to do just that, in fact an attempt to pretend she hasn’t achieved anything or accomplished anything at all since she was in high school, David Brooks thinks the problem with Hillary is that she has too impressive a resume. She’s achieved too much, accomplished too much, racked up too much experience. In fact, she’s too qualified.

  • (Also, he's fundraising.  Send some if you can.)
• The Rude One is examining Donald Trump:
  • An excerpt from an article detailing an attempt to sell a Trump University scam scheme to a Canadian reporter.  (Article linked to is here.)
  • Queries as to what Trump's fans think.

    For instance, do the revelations about the sales practices of Trump University have any effect on your thinking? How much do you need beyond the sworn testimony of salespeople and the marketing guide that said that the elderly and single parents should be targeted because they are vulnerable to a get-rich-quick pitch?

• Why I keep telling people they ought to have or start a union.  (Except for the part about being a fool.  That's more One-True-Wayism than I like.) (Erik Loomis, Lawyers, Guns & Money.)
• George Takei uses a football metaphor.  (Not a video.  Excerpted.  Facebook posting, and you know what I think of Facebook.  Via attn.com.)

As to what's going on in my head: curry chicken with spinach and maybe a blueberry pancake. It's lunchtime.