In Memoriam

• Arthur Blythe, saxophonist
• Christine Kaufmann, actress
• Darlene Cates, actress
• William T. Coleman, Jr., lawyer and transportation secretary in Ford's Cabinet
• David Storey, playwright and novelist
• Roger Wilkins, civil rights activist
• Carl Clark, war hero
• William Powell, author, The Anarchist Cookbook

"Send More Chuck Berry"

Chicago Guy remembers.

(The Voyager capsule actually went up-and-out in 1977.  Also, the disc was not a plastic 45.  Other than that...)

In Memoriam

Colin Dexter, mystery writer (Inspector Morse)

"...And Maybe We'll Do In a Squirrel or Two..."

• I have a Knitting Project, which I hope will actually be finished this time.
• The Rude One on why demonizing the undocumented is a Bad, Bad Mistake.

  As with most of Trump's policies, the approach to undocumented immigrants is irrational, short-sighted, blindingly ignorant, and symbolic rather than grounded in, you know, reality. It will do far, far more harm than good.

• "Populism" as a result of gross economic failure. Not necessarily agreeing.
• In memoriam:  Jean Rouverol Butler, blacklisted screenwriter.
• Also, the official baseball season is next week!

Sing It! Sing It!

Colorblind Christians on the health care vote today.

Many of them will respond, “But it’s not the government’s job to provide health care.” If that’s their belief, they have a responsibility to explain why people must die for the sake of their abstract principles.

Spelling It Out

• Robert Reich at AlterNet:

  Meanwhile, Congress is in the hands of Republicans who for years have only said “no,” who have become expert at stopping whatever a president wants to do but don’t have a clue how to initiate policy, most of whom have never passed a budget into law, and, more generally, don’t much like government and have not shared responsibility for governing the nation.
  
  As a result of all this, the most powerful nation in the world with the largest economy in the world is rudderless and leaderless.
  
  Where we need thoughtful resolve we have thoughtless name-calling. Where we need democratic deliberation we have authoritarian rants and rallies. Where we need vision we have myopia.

• Mmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmm...a proposed funding cut for the National Institutes of Health.

  For years the National Institutes of Health have received bipartisan support. Unless the voting public has gotten distorted beyond the point of even faint recognition, political reality dictates that no congressperson can go back to his or her home district and proudly proclaim to have cut funding for medical research into grandma’s cancer, mom’s heart disease, baby’s developmental disorders and Trump’s mental illness. The White House’s NIH cuts are likely to face stiff opposition from both parties. And it pays to remember that congress is the one who passes the budget.
  
  Yet the question remains, if both parties support the NIH, whom is Trump representing when he cuts it? Big Pharma. That’s who.

  Julianna Forlano, Crooks and Liars.
  
• Another massive case of voter fraud. That is:

  On Tuesday, Colorado prosecutors threw a wrench into that already dubious theory, accusing Curtis of voter fraud for allegedly filling out and mailing in his ex-wife’s 2016 ballot for president, Denver’s Fox affiliate reported.
  
  Curtis, 57, was charged in Weld County District Court with one count of misdemeanor voter fraud and one count of forgery, a Class 5 felony, according to local media.

  Derek Hawkins, The Washington Post, via Comrade Misfit.  Oddly, "voter fraud" seems to be largely perpetrated by Republicans.  Projection much?

Ah-Huh...

FBI is in fact investigating Trump and his Russian connections.  (I think that leaves me with either 3 or 4 articles this month.)  Via Shakesville, Toronto's The Globe and Mail runs a piece by Sarah Kendzior on just how weird this is, and how lying and spin won't help.

Last week, someone posted video of the mighty speech [Audio and text] given by Barbara Jordan during the opening of the House Judiciary Committee hearings on impeaching Nixon, and I had to marvel and mourn that none of the current representatives of the state of Texas in Washington are fit to warm her chair.

...and Statistics

• BooMan at Booman Tribune on the New York Times' David Leonhardt's use of the three-letter word for dishonest narrative:
  

  It’s refreshing to see a New York Times opinion writer state things so frankly, but it’s also a disturbing sign of the times we’re living through. No one seems to know quite what to do when the country is being run by people who will lie so brazenly and unapologetically that there seems to almost no agreed facts upon which you can have a conversation.

• On Narratology:

  Rather than suggesting he's clairvoyant, anyhow, I think we ought to say his sources were good enough that he knew in advance what was going to happen—the dealing of Page and Sechin, the stolen Democratic campaign documents laundered by passing from Russian agents through WikiLeaks and others, the startling insistence of the Trumpians on altering Republicans' Ukraine policy (which was originally very McCain-style belligerent, criticizing Obama for not being tough enough on the Russians), and the documents starting to appear online right after the Republican convention and then the Rosneft, as if somebody were saying, OK, you, Page and Gordon and Sessions with Ambassador Kislyak, have done your part, now we do ours.
  
  What Schiff was doing there, it struck me, was very carefully putting together the things Comey won't say but at the same time won't dispute, the framework Comey won't provide in which the answers he gives make a coherent sense.

  (Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names)
  

• The reason this is so important is that the simple and ethical view in Smith (and many other classical economists if we were to read them) that it was wrong to let the poor starve because of manipulated grain prices, was replaced by a more mechanical view of society that denied human intelligence except as calculators of self interest. This is a return to the Hobbesian world leading to a destructive society: climate, inequality, corruption. Today, the poor are hemmed in by so many regulations and procedures (real estate, education, police) that people are now starved. Not having no food, but having bad food, which along with all the new forms of privation add up to a seriously starved life, is not perceived by a blinded society to be suffering. Economics in its current form — most economics papers and college courses — do not touch the third rail of class, or such pain.

  Douglass Carmichael, guest-cross-posting at naked capitalism on Adam Smith, with Yves Smith suggesting that Prof. Carmichael is mistaken.  Oh.  Mostly, therefore, linked as a thought exercise.
  
• Professor Chaos posts videos of bands covering Chuck Berry songs.  (A long time ago, I had to do a bit of research because I only remembered Chuck Berry songs from childhood radio listening.  He was a singer/songwriter before almost anyone--it's what Dylan admired.)

Maybe They've Discovered the Power of Unions

Humpback whales congregate (for dinner).

Side Dish

• Remember that joke about how the Republican health plan was "Die quickly"?  Ever suspect it wasn't really a joke?  Southern Beale provides some evidence:

  But after the laughs died down I remembered my November panic attacks about being old and fat and weak and I realized,
  

  Oh my god. Alexandra Petri is right. They are culling the herd.

  And it’s not just Trump, it’s the entire Republican Party. It’s the entire ethos of conservatism: if you’re poor or weak or sick, get outta the way. You’re dragging the country down. You are dead weight on American greatness.

  (Link to Alexandra Petri's Washington Post article transferred to this quote.)  Did someone just mutter "Social Darwinism" out there?
  
• Why wait until college?  Shouldn't something that important be taught starting in first grade?  (What's that you say?  We have to preserve children's innocence?  They shouldn't have to learn that everyone lies to them that early? What about Santa Claus?  What about [*gasp*] advertising?)
• (Well, what about Santa Claus?  Most children figure that out before they turn 10.  It's adults who need to believe that their kids believe in Santa Claus.  As for advertising, finding that sort of hyperbole credible is the mark of a fool, or someone who would take politicians at their word.  Really, one can be open to new experiences and beauty and still distrust out-and-out untruths.  But maybe Americans really can't handle the truth¹.)
• (This also feeds into the demand, usually by con artists and swindlers and, generally, Persons Who Mean You Harm, that they be trusted.  Not merely believed, but trusted.  People don't like to hear this, but the correct answer to a wheedling "Don't you trust me?" is "NO."  Preferably loudly enough to be heard a mile away.)

¹ In your dreams, Charlie. Return to text.

Breaking News: Water is Wet

• Billionaires' stealth attempts to quash university student protests and dissent. Because one should keep an open mind about hate. Not.  (Alex Kotch, AlterNet)
• Video:  CNN's Fareed Zakaria calls out the 45th president's most notable quality.  (Scarce, Crooks and Liars)  Warning:  Uses the unbleeped term for falsehoods, so NSFW or where such usage might be alarming.

In Memoriam

• Bernie Wrightson (loads slowly), illustrator (via Mark Evanier)
• Jimmy Breslin, New Yorker, journalist, writer, columnist (The Daily News gives his age as 86; the New York Times lists him as 88. We'll see who has to print the correction.) AP obit at sfgate with more details.  [ETA:  Daily News  flinched; they have him now as 88; the URL given here is slightly altered and redirected.]

In Memoriam -- Chuck Berry

Chuck Berry. Mr. Rock and Roll. He was 90, but it's still a shock. Peter Guralnick appreciation.  The BBC's obit.

His was the music I grew up on, that got filtered through generations of musicians, that was recognizable even disguised as reggae.

In Memoriam

• Derek Walcott, poet, Nobel laureate, playwright
• James Cotton, blues harmonica master

...Maybe Later

*the blahs*

Y'Know,

Microwave?

Seriously?

Nobody has to lift a finger or twist a lip to make those people sound stupid.

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Cumulative Effect of Lies

Robert Reich, AlterNet:

Trump and his administration aren’t just telling big lies. They’re also waging war on the institutions we depend on as sources of truth.

In so doing, they’re undermining the basic building blocks of American democracy.

In Memoriam

Robert Osborne, cinemaphile/face of Turner Classic Movies.

"If I wasn't doing it (on TV) I'd be doing it as a hobby," Osborne said, "so I might as well get paid for it."

Now That's How You Do It!

Stephen King (the real one) gives le snicker juste to the accusation of wiretapping.

"HE HAS SCISSORS," indeed.

Driftglass For the Win

Because he's correct.

The terrible truth that no one can bring themselves to say out loud is that Modern Conservatism has been a scam from the start. A massive fraud, gathering speed and careening down a steep and terrifying road towards Trump for the last 30 years. A corrupt cult that hired men like David Brooks for the same reason the mob hires pricey lawyers: to rig up alibis for their despicable enterprise and explain away their loathsome behavior.

Emphasis added.

Quelle surprise!

A study has found that "moral outrage" may be a way to assuage guilt.

Gee, ya think?

Abstract here.  Reason's take is here.  (Let's just say Reason has a [libertarian] dog in this fight.)

Including the Underwear (*Yeuccccchhhh*)

Clear non-reflective vinyl, held together with fishing line.  That's what the Emperor and his minions are wearing.  Hope you haven't just eaten.

• Deep background:  The long-term effects of the slave trade on the African side.  With graphs and statistics.

  The study undertook a number of different statistical tests to identify the presence and strength of the two channels. They found that each of the tests generated the same answer: both channels are present. The slave trades negatively affected domestic institutions and governance, which results in less trust today. In addition, the slave trade also directly reduced the extent to which individuals were inherently trusting of others. We also found that, quantitatively, the second channel is twice as large as the first channel.

  There's more. (naked capitalism.)
• Garrett Epps at the Atlantic on "Papers, Please" (more on this story):

  After days of research, I can find no legal authority for ICE or CBP to require passengers to show identification on an entirely domestic fight. The ICE authorizing statute, 8 U.S.C. § 1357, provides that agents can conduct warrantless searches of “any person seeking admission to the United States”—if, that is, the officer has “reasonable cause to suspect” that the individual searched may be deportable. CBP’s statute, 19 U.S.C. § 1467, grants search authority “whenever a vessel from a foreign port or place or from a port or place in any Territory or possession of the United States arrives at a port or place in the United States.” CBP regulations, set out at 19 C.F.R. § 162.6, allow agents to search “persons, baggage, and merchandise arriving in the Customs territory of the United States from places outside thereof.”
  
  I asked two experts whether I had missed some general exception to the Fourth Amendment for passengers on a domestic flight. After all, passengers on flights entering the U.S. from other countries can expect to be asked for ID, and even searched. Barry Friedman, the Jacob D. Fuchsberg professor of law and affiliated professor of politics at New York University, is the author of Unwarranted: Policing Without Permission, a new book-length study of intrusive police investigation and search practices. “Is this remotely constitutional?” he asked. “I think it isn’t. We all know generally the government can’t come up and demand to see identification.” Officers need to have statutory authority to search and reasonable suspicion that the person to be searched has violated the law, he said. Andre Segura, senior staff attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, told me that “I’m not aware of any aviation exception” for domestic passengers.

• One has to marvel about wonder at all the compulsive prevarication in the current regime administration.
• Sessions denies meeting with Russians.
• Journalist baffled.
• "Cover-up"
• Evidence preservation
• And there has been an upswing in anti-Semitic activity (Comrade Misfit cites one such incident) and apparently nothing will be done about it.  Because 70+ years ago didn't really happen.