Dungeness and Draggings

• Damn.  Another rebuilding year.
• Arpaio convicted.  There's a slight chance he'd actually have to do time.

  Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was convicted of a criminal charge Monday for refusing to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants, marking a final rebuke for a politician who once drew strong popularity from such crackdowns but was ultimately booted from office as voters became frustrated over his headline-grabbing tactics and deepening legal troubles.

• Scaramucci is Out.  Jurassicpork points at the nonexistent chaos at the White House.

  So now we have no:
  Secretary of the Army
  Secretary of the Navy
  Surgeon General
  Deputy Secretary of State
  [...]
  No strategy for defeating ISIS but a great one for combating a street gang and now no
  Communications Director or
  Director of Homeland Security.
  You know, Donnie Dumbo, I'm not as experienced as you in this presidenting business, but I do know one thing: When you're playing Musical Chairs, the idea is to have more people than open seats, not the other way around.

• Let's hope this isn't true.  (Trita Parsi, AlterNet)

  President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this.

  There were no WMDs in Iraq. Anyone remember that?
  

• Tomi Lahren, conservative firebrand, bashes Obamacare while benefiting from it

  It's the headline.
  
• Driftglass.
• Zandar.
• Zandar on hacking the vote.
• ETA:  Shakesville.
• Not The Onion.

I'm trying to imagine all this as a Mel Brooks movie.

In Memoriam

• Jeanne Moreau, actress
• Sam Shepard, playwright and occasional actor

Go On, Guess

When I am reading the national news in the New York Times, I should not be muttering "Put on your Big Boy Pants."

(Almost) The Last Gossip Columnist

No, not Father Guido Sarducci (although I understand that l'Osservatore Romano has an English language edition [subscription] now); Liz Smith, who no longer has a print column but is still alive at this writing.

In Memoriam

• June Foray, voice
• Barbara Sinatra,  philanthropist

Not Guinness

The United States Constitution,  a fairly robust document for 228, has been amended a few times.  Back in 1913 the 17th Amendment was ratified to elect Senators by popular vote (instead of by state legislatures).  From Suburban Guerrilla's Susie Madrak:

Previously, U.S. Senators were selected by state legislatures and political party bosses beholden to powerful industries. The corruption scandals erupting from the wheeling and dealing fueled some of the great muckraking investigative journalism of the early 20th Century. In 1912, progressive Republican U.S. Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette[ ]campaigned for the popular election of U.S. Senators as a means of cracking down on political corruption and corporate control of the democracy. Reformers introduced direct primary elections, ballot initiatives, and recall votes, in the same time period.

(Also, I wanted to highlight that there was a time that "progressive Republican" was not an oxymoron.)

This amendment is in danger from the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (well, the nation is in danger from ALEC--they're meeting in Denver this weekend to sample the marijuana  to further their evil schemes to propose "model" legislation).

As John Nichols, who broke the story for the Nation, wrote: “If successful, they will reverse one of the great strides toward democracy in American history: the 1913 decision to end the corrupt practice of letting state legislators barter off Senate seats in backroom deals with campaign donors and lobbyists.”

The language of this draft resolution, however, frames this in precisely the opposite way. It argues that the 17th amendment, ratified in 1914, did not empower voters but instead disempowered states. As a result, there have been “many unintended consequences, including runaway federal deficits, unfunded mandates, overreach by federal agencies and burdensome impositions by the federal government upon the states.”

(David Daley, AlterNet)

Other matters, some pertinent:

• The Rude Pundit:

  Keep in mind that these were easy questions because the reporters know that if you ask Trump something about policy, like "Can you explain a single fucking thing about how the ACA exchanges work?" or if you challenge him, like "Why did you lie about Medicaid cuts?" he'll just shut down like an overstimulated toddler. Even on the softball questions, he got basic facts wrong and he didn't know when to shut the fuck up. Sure, Trump ought to be interviewed like anyone would Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or, fuck, Mitt Romney, but we all know that he's fucking stupid so get the stupid people to talk about the one thing they feel comfortable with: themselves.
  
  It's not shocking anymore. And we need to be careful about that. The thing about a boxing match is that the fighters can never let it get boring and rote. It might be exhausting or excruciating. But you gotta stay in the moments or you'll find yourself flat on your ass, without health care, with your country at war, with your voting rights gone, and with your environment collapsing.

• Avedon's Sideshow has lots of links.
• Zandar Versus The Stupid:

1. See, for all of Marshall's points here, what Josh simply doesn't get is that Don Jr. and Jared both 100% believe the worst case scenarios for either of them will be a blanket presidential pardon. They know that in the end, Trump simply won't let his eldest son, or his favorite son-in-law go to prison. Period.

2. And man, this story gets brutal from here. Puliafito was a party monster, heavy on both the party and the monster, and a woman nearly paid with her life as a result. It's an astonishing account, and the Times spent months running this story down.
   
   The most gonzo part of the story is that Puliafito kept himself in one piece while doing benders that would make Keith Richards blush and still show up to work the next day...and he was fantastic as both a dean and as an eye surgeon, by all accounts.

Sliding Toward The Downspout of the Slippery Slope

• I thought I'd linked to this article in March; I certainly read it in March, but I just checked March, and no, I did not link it in March.  As it happens, I was looking at Mike's Blog Round Up this morning (instead of getting myself ready to Face the World) and one of the featured articles was one I'd earlier cited, but more eyeballs are more eyeballs, so

  In deep-red America, the white Christian god is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive to introspection, questioning, learning, or change. When you have a belief system built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn’t that coastal elites don’t understand rural Americans. The problem is that rural America doesn’t understand itself and will never listen to anyone outside its bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views will be automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they will not even entertain the possibility that it might be true. Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact that I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal.
  
  At some point during the discussion, they will say, “That’s your education talking,” derogatorily, as a general dismissal of everything I said. They truly believe this is a legitimate response, because to them education is not to be trusted. Education is the enemy of fundamentalism because fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not built on facts. 

  (Forsetti's Justice, AlterNet) Emphasis added.
• Also via Mike's Blog Round Up, Vixen Strangely follows the money behavior of the dramatis personae of this re-boot of The West Wing (paging Aaron Sorkin) and throws out a suggestion of slight skulduggery.  Angry Bear has some musing on the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, who does not seem to understand that:

  Social Security has nothing to do with funding for any of these programs. Social Security is paid for entirely by the workers who will get the benefits. It subtracts not one dime from the federal budget. Except, of course, when the Congress is obligated to REPAY the money it BORROWED FROM Social Security.

• Leaks, firing, optics:  Joy Reid, video.  (Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)

In Memoriam

John Heard, actor (Home Alone, et al.)  Driftglass has a YouTube video of his performance in "A Cask of Amontillado."

Glass Egos

Men who cannot bear to be mocked or laughed at.  (Guess.  Go on, guess.)

That fear of being laughed at lives right at the existential core of toxic masculinity. In his excellent 2004 book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, psychologist Stephen Ducat showed that conservative masculinity is rooted in the idea that penetration—having your body, property, resources, sense of control, or dignity taken against your will—is for women, gay men, and other people who don’t have what it “takes” to secure their own boundaries, and therefore exist to be dominated by those who do. A “real man” is, by definition, one who can and will defend his personal boundaries against all threats at all times—and also has the power, if he wishes, to violate the boundaries of others if he chooses.

Sara Robinson (yes!!!), Rewired.  (Book title links to Amazon in original.) (Just close the pop-up; I do agree, but I've given out my email address too often.)(via Shakesville.)

More Coffee? Why, Thank You

For that Methuselah mood...

(And this is the 3,000th post.  Mostly not-shouty.)

In Memoriam

• Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and dissident
• Christopher Wong Won (aka "Fresh Kid Ice"), co-founder of 2 Live Crew, rapper
• Frances Gabe, the self-cleaning house
• Barbara Weldens, singer
• Chester Bennington, singer (Linkin Park)
• Konrad Reuland, football player (December of last year); his heart lives on in Rod Carew.

Dessert.

Yes, I know.

Heather Digby Parton at Salon about the "voter fraud" commission. (Hullabaloo.)

That’s an outrageous assertion. It is completely impossible that 3 million votes were cast illegally in 2016. In a world that makes sense he would have been fired immediately for casting such a shadow over the electoral results. There have been more than nine major investigations into alleged “voter fraud” and it just does not exist on even a small systematic scale much less something like what he’s suggesting.

[...]

But Trump needn’t worry. Kobach is a conservative extremist whose life’s work is preventing people from voting. That’s what this is about. Trump’s victory will never be questioned by him.

There is one slight mystery about all this, however. With all this talk of our electoral system being vulnerable to fraud the commission isn’t the least bit interested in the subject of Russian interference in the election. That seems odd.

Potpourri

I'd like to say this is a themed collection of links.  Unfortunately, it isn't.  Much.

• Via supergee, 10 easily-disproved falsehoods.  (Close the poll. )
• Clouding their minds.

  Meanwhile Trump, his family and his closest associates are using the presidency to personally enrich themselves. They view it as a personal ATM and not as a means of serving the public good and the general welfare. Except for what he can force by fiat, Trump has accomplished none of his major campaign promises — and in the case of building his “amazing” wall and “draining the swamp” he has all but admitted such promises were snake oil and outright lies to con the rubes.
  
  Nevertheless, Trump’s voters still enthusiastically support him.

   (Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable)
• You know, it is completely unnecessary to twist the words of "right-wing" politicians to cause them to sound off.

  [Caltech geochemist Kenneth] Farley was testifying in his capacity as the project scientist for the 2020 Mars rover, and at the end of Rohrabacher's allotted time, the congressman asked for one extra question.
  "You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago," he told the panel. "Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?"
  "So the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago," Farley replied. "And there would be ... there's no evidence that I'm aware of..."
  Rohrabacher persisted: "Would you rule that out? See, there's some people ... well, anyway..."
  "I would say that is extremely unlikely," Farley said.

• Lance Mannion on David (the Biblical one) and "conservative Christian" cognitive dissonance.

The point is that even a man as flawed and sinful as David can find favor in God's eyes as long as he acknowledges God's greatness and answers to His will. God has been long in the habit of using sinners for His purposes. And as we are all sinners and we are all tools for him to use according to His needs, it's not for us to judge when He decides to use someone as flawed and sinful as Donald Trump. It's all part of the plan. It would seem then that God's plan includes spreading fear and loathing of Muslims and Mexicans, turning away war refugees, deporting people by the millions, breaking up countless families in the process, taking health care away from many millions more, leaving children, old people, the poor, and unfortunate to suffer and die, and in short, having us as a Christian nation ignoring Matthew 25.

• The Smiths -- not Morrissey's former group.  Why Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is trying to buy Tribune Media, is a threat.

  The local TV news giant has been pushing a right-wing slant on local television stations across the country for years. Owned by the Smiths, a family of longtime Republican donors who have all the ambition of News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch but a much lower profile, Sinclair has mostly flown under the radar. But following the election of President Donald Trump, the network has begun adopting the playbook Roger Ailes used to turn Fox News into a conservative media goliath.
  
  Over the last few months, Sinclair has been requiring its stations to run more commentaries from pro-Trump personalities and expanding its reach to greater numbers of unassuming viewers in new local media markets. Now it's defending these clear moves to mimic the aspiring state media over at Fox with warped, brainwash-y logic: The conservative propaganda it pushes on its viewers is necessary because the rest of the media is biased.

  (Pam Vogel, Media Matters, via AlterNet)
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer's religious education.

  That is “what made it possible for him to see the character of the regime Hitler represented when so many others did not.”

  (Fred Clark, The Slacktivist, at Patheos, which I need to add to the blogroll.)
  
• Conscienceless.  (Undercover Blue, Hullabaloo)

  After decades of accusations from conservatives that the American left advances reprehensible moral relativism, this week we saw that the real sin was having morals of any kind. What the Trump family modeled for the world this week is what it looks like to have none. Watergate veteran John Dean warned during the Bush II administration of the rise of "Conservatives Without Conscience."

• AlterNet:

  I wanted to remind my fellow Americans that intelligent people, not so different from ourselves, have experienced the collapse of a republic before. It is one example among many. Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall...A quarter century ago, after the collapse of communism, we declared that history was over—and in an amazing way we forgot everything we once knew about communism, fascism and National Socialism...

• Booman Tribune looks askance (three-fer!) (Walls and Bridges Interviews) 

  1. It is not going to be hard for Democrats to oppose Trump’s wall, and it doesn’t matter if it is a “bollard” wall or a solar energy plant that can power the entire southwest. There will be no votes for Trump’s stupid wall. Perhaps nowhere does President Trump more clearly demonstrate that he’s insane than when he talks about this subject. He wants windows on the wall so people will be able to see the drug dealers on the other side before they hoist 60 lb. sacks of dope over the top and onto their necks. In case you are in doubt about the lunacy of this talk, a typical bowling ball is 15 lbs. Could you throw four bowling balls all at once fifty feet into the air?

  2. Everything in the interview is like this. It’s all funhouse mirrors and mostly false assertions that are as incriminating as they are intended to be exculpatory. If the New York Times were to interview Trump tomorrow and ask all the same questions, all the details would be different but the overall impression would be the same. The president lies so much and has such a distorted idea of what’s happening around him that he literally doesn’t know or care what is true and what is not.
     
     What shines through it all, though, is his unapologetic intention to obstruct justice. He didn’t want Sessions to bow out of his appointment because he was compromised. He didn’t want Sessions to testify truthfully. He wanted Sessions to kill the investigation and he recused himself instead. For that, he cannot be forgiven.

  3. I believe, although cannot prove, that they had sent Manafort to Trump with a hard offer to refuse. Manafort would work on his delegate count for no pay. Michael Flynn was already compromised because he hadn’t notified the Pentagon that he was taking tens of thousands of dollars from the Kremlin to make appearances on the Russian Today (RT) network and badmouth the Obama administration. The Trump campaign was therefore compromised six ways to Sunday by the time the summer had begun.
     
     [...]
     
     The overall picture is clear. Russia wanted Trump to win and Trump wanted Russia’s help. The collusion was explicit, some of it is well-documented, and the defense is now that anybody would have done the same.

• Maneuverings that need watching.
• The People's Filibuster (Red Painter, Crooks and Liars)
• Working conditions of California port truckers.  

  Those willing to answer questions said they have never used truck leases as a way to mistreat drivers. Several insisted that truckers’ allegations have been manufactured as part of a union organizing campaign by the Teamsters. The union has for years helped drivers file labor complaints and lawsuits.

  Dunno. The Teamsters would be making a lot more noise.
• Echidne of the Snakes somewhat agreeing with Jennifer Rubin.
• And it's only Thursday.

Coming Unarmed to a Battle of Wits

Eric Trump tried to dispute Keith Olbermann's statements about his charity.

Oooops.

(Yes, I seem to be getting verbose today.  Probably the dissipation of the rant.  It'll pass.)

Further Information

Stonekettle Station, which people I read link to occasionally (ETA:  and which I've previously linked to thrice apparently), has researched the Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity.

The most fervent believer in voter fraud after the most diligent and thorough investigation can’t produce more than one or two fraudulent voters, let alone millions. And they’ve tried. Goddamn have they tried.

This whole thing is nonsense.

He found interesting data.  Read the rest; it's really long and names names and cites their histories and spells out their agenda.   Informative and detailed.

The Thing With Feathers -- Not Just a Shuttlecock

• Redneck Revolt --  worth keeping an eye on.
• Jacob Sugarman (AlterNet) on Paul Krugman on the "'Better' Care Reconciliation Act." Or, y'know, "Trumpcare."

  It's really very simple. If the GOP manages to pass its health care bill, millions of Americans will be deprived of insurance, while those who manage to keep theirs will pay considerably more for less. As Krugman sees it, this is what Republicans have wanted all along.
  
  "Conservative ideology always denied the proposition that people are entitled to health care; the Republican elite considered and still considers people on Medicaid, in particular, 'takers' who are effectively stealing from the deserving rich," he concludes. "So what we’re seeing here is supposed to be the last act in a long con, the moment when the fraudsters cash in, and their victims discover how completely they’ve been fooled."

Report on Cake

Ugh.

Maybe it needed the lemon zest.  Maybe it was just a lie.

In Memoriam

All New York Times obits

• George Romero, filmmaker (Night of the Living Dead, et al.)
• Martin Landau, actor (AETA:  Mark Evanier on his first career)
• Maryam Mirzakhani, mathematician
• Meechy Monroe, natural hair tutorials on YouTube
• ETA:  Bob Wolff, long-time sportscaster

Specialist Pound Cake

• I'm thawing/softening a stick of butter which may take forever.  
• I begin to suspect that God did, in fact, create perfect people to populate the planet, and then got Bored.
• Looking at Tom Price, who doesn't understand why the insurance companies don't want to return to pre-Obamacare practices:

  "But if you look at the Republican plan to modify it and replace it, more than 10 medical groups are against it. Thirty-two cancer organizations oppose it. And on Thursday, in a rare joint statement by the biggest insurance companies in the country, called the Cruz Amendment unworkable in any form and warned it would lead to, quote, 'widespread terminations of coverage.'
  
  "So, Dr. Price, why this wall of opposition?"

  (Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)
  
• Looking at Rand Paul:

  So you're talking about fighting insurance companies in fifty different states -- often in states where those companies are based. Good luck with that!
  
  You're also talking about underwriting and administering all these smaller groups -- groups that won't save that much money because their risk pools aren't large enough.

  (Also Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)
  
• The Rude Pundit:

  Republicans are saying, in word and action, that they hold their constituents in contempt. The voters are disposable. In fact, they are saying, let's help them along, whether by starving them or taking away their health care. And then let's make them thank us because, we can say, we kept our promises.

• Cornered?  (William Rivers Pitt, Truthout,  via Alternet)
• Sounding an alarm for conservatives:

  One of the reasons why the radical right was able to overcome conservatives back in the 1930s was that the conservatives did not understand the threat. Nazis in Germany, like fascists in Italy and Romania, did have popular support, but they would not have been able to change regimes without the connivance or the passivity of conservatives.

  (Timothy Snyder, The Guardian, via AlterNet)Also, some parts of them were in unspoken agreement with the fascists.
• Yastreblyansky tweets about the meeting with the Russians.  The comments are of interest, too.
• More efforts to reduce the number of registered voters (via twistedchick on dreamwidth).  In the name of Republican Satanic panic "voter fraud" "prevention," of course.

Bright Makeup-Melting Klieg Lights

Keeping them trained on Senator McConnell as he doctors the next version of the "health care" bill.  (Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet)

Diverse Subjects and One Rant

First things first:  Inspiration for the rant portion is The Daily Irritant's "So Many Things."  (There are other flashes of thoughts lying around.  Theodore Sturgeon, for example.)

So let me throw out some links.  First.

• Book review and long essay on Mike Piazza.  (Greg Prince, Faith and Fear in Flushing) Mike Piazza is well after my time as a Mets fan, but of course, he's one of the greats.  He went into the Hall of Fame last year.  (This year's induction ceremony is July 30.)
• "Trump Voters Admit They're Terrified of the President's Obamacare Replacement."  (Alexandra Rosenmann, AlterNet)

  A woman identified only as Jackie, who also backed Trump in November, admitted she thought Trump was bluffing when he repeated this claim.
  
  "He promised he was going to replace it with something better, and I just figured Congress isn't going to go along with him, so he's just saying something people want to hear," she explained. "I was wrong."

• More on that Pew Research poll from Echidne of the Snakes.
• Diversion (and cat behavior).
• Mmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

  OF COURSE Trump was part of the conspiracy. OF COURSE he was. And those emails are the smoking gun, along with the sudden decision to schedule a formal speech to trash his opponent.

OK.

I promised a rant.

Apparaently I have cooled down somewhat.  Sorry.  Except -- am I the only person who wishes that the ticket had been Hillary-Bernie (or Bernie-Hillary) because I don't think Trump could have trumped that?  Even though it wouldn't have been Pure...

The Fight for Net Neutrality

There are widgets and code and so on, but this is the basic deal.

Cranky Pants Day

• Yes, there is a forthcoming rant, but right now, I'm listening to Thelonious Monk's "Epistrophy," and slapping down stupid can wait.
• Liberals v. Leftists.  Yes, like Batman v Superman:  Dawn of Justice, only without the noise and special effects and probably without the justice.

  [...] Since the election, leftists and conservatives have also seen eye to eye when it comes to denouncing liberals like Markos Moulitsas, the founder of liberal website Daily Kos, who gleefully cheered when it was reported earlier this year that people in red states would be disproportionately hurt by Trumpcare. “Be Happy for Coal Miners Losing Their Health Insurance,” declared Moulitsas on his blog. “They’re Getting Exactly What They Voted For.” In another instance, the liberal blogger earned bipartisan condemnation (so to speak) when he tweeted in response to the Trump administration denying North Carolina hurricane aid: “There’s your reward for voting Republican, North Carolina.”
  
  Liberals like Moulitsas have almost become caricatures of the smug and unsympathetic liberal elite that right-wingers have long depicted; it’s as if liberals have gradually come to adopt the ridiculous qualities that Republicans have assigned to them over the years. Which brings us to an important point: Leftists haven’t suddenly jumped on the liberal-bashing bandwagon because it’s the hip thing to do in the age of Trump, but because many self-described liberals have become the obnoxious and out-of-touch liberal elite that conservatives have long claimed them to be, while simultaneously shifting toward the right on various economic issues. (To be fair, obviously the right doesn’t see it this way.) Saval touches on this in his Times Magazine essay, observing that to call someone a liberal today “is often to denounce him or her as having abandoned liberalism.”
  
  [...]
  
  In response to the left-wing calls for class politics, liberals have frequently argued that leftists have an unhealthy “obsession” with economic issues, and that they disregard social issues like LGBTQ rights or women’s reproductive rights. Some liberals have even implied — absurdly — that left-wingers are closet cultural reactionaries. It was sometimes claimed during the 2016 primary campaign that progressives who favored Sanders didn’t like Hillary Clinton because of her gender, rather than her politics. But this kind of deflection simply reinforces the leftist critique of liberals, who, as Saval puts it (in summarizing the left’s perspective), “shroud an ambiguous, even reactionary agenda under a superficial commitment to social justice and moderate, incremental change.”

  (Conor Lynch, Salon, via AlterNet)
  
• Rachel Cohen's (The American Prospect) conversation with Maia Szalavitz on drug addiction as a learning disorder.

  There is no reason other than racism that marijuana is illegal, and it’s very clear from the history that that’s the case. [...] But all of our drug laws, including alcohol prohibition, resulted from racist or anti-immigration panic, or a combination of the two.

• Might be related; might be bunnies:
• Libertarian roots of the right-wing grasp at power.

  In a nutshell, he studied the workings of the political process to figure out what was needed to deny ordinary people -- white and Black -- the ability to make claims on government at the expense of private property rights and the wishes of capitalists. And then he identified how to rejigger that political process not only to reverse the gains but also to prevent the system from ever reverting back. He sought, in his words, to "enchain Leviathan," which is why I titled the book Democracy in Chains.

  (Mark Karlin, Truthout via AlterNet)
  
• "Russiagate" not likely to help "progressives." (John Feffer, Foreign Policy in Focus, via AlterNet)
• A Pew poll indicates that Republicans believe higher education is Bad for the nation (with graph).  (Noor al-Sibai, Raw Story, via AlterNet)  I saw this yesterday with various responses.
• Power may cause brain damage.

  “Hubris syndrome,” as he and a co-author, Jonathan Davidson, defined it in a 2009 article published in Brain, “is a disorder of the possession of power, particularly power which has been associated with overwhelming success, held for a period of years and with minimal constraint on the leader.” Its 14 clinical features include: manifest contempt for others, loss of contact with reality, restless or reckless actions, and displays of incompetence. In May, the Royal Society of Medicine co-hosted a conference of the Daedalus Trust—an organization that Owen founded for the study and prevention of hubris.

  [Emphasis added] (Jerry Useem, The Atlantic)
• Conspiracy ... or military control?

  It is impossible to know exactly how widespread this military censorship of entertainment is because many files are still being withheld. The majority of the documents we obtained are diary-like reports from the entertainment liaison offices, which rarely refer to script changes, and never in an explicit, detailed way. However, the documents do reveal that the DOD requires a preview screening of any project they support and sometimes makes changes even after a production has wrapped.
  
  [...]
  
  In all, we are looking at a vast, militarised propaganda apparatus operating throughout the screen entertainment industry in the United States.

  Plays spoooooooky theremin.
• In memoriam:
• Sheila Michaels, helped popularize "Ms."  (Did a lot of other stuff, too.)
• Elsa Martinelli, actress
• Nelsan Ellis, actor

Reappearing

• As usual, I missed the ninth birthday of this blog thing, even as skippy celebrates his fifteenth anniversary.
• What did I tell you?  What did I tell you?  

  He is at the epicenter of a budding movement, one that’s coming for your books, movies, God and mind. They’re thousands strong — perhaps one in every 500 — and have proponents at the highest levels of science, sports, journalism and arts.
  
  They call themselves Flat Earthers. Because they believe Earth — the blue, majestic, spinning orb of life — is as flat as a table.
  
  And they want you to know. Because it’s 2017.

The Problem With Satire

SBS, an Australian news service I linked to once before, is phasing out its comedy (SBS Comedy and The Backburner) division.  It leaves with an article, "Why Satire Needs To Up Its Game," for serious.

Too often, satire has become about satiating the online community’s desire to have their rage validated through a witty takedown or giant rant, rather than expressing a complex idea that might explain, or encourage us to examine, the systemic mechanisms that act as the petri dish for the ideas of those we disagree with. It also sees satire getting cornered into the same topics over and over again, as these get the most traction online. There’s a demand and satire is repetitively meeting it rather than branching out into more exciting territory.

The Satirists and Surrealists Union is taking this report under advisement.

Miscellany

• Spider-Man's webs and the physics thereof.
• Cartoon with potty-mouthed cry-babies.
• The Rude One on requesting "horror" stories and getting affirmations of effectiveness:

  By the way, even the questions the IN-GOP asks are bullshit. Here's one person responding to the last one, about small businesses: "Before the ACA, my company didn't offer insurance benefits to the hundred or so employees at my location. Now, we have a choice of plans. Amazing what a little pressure can accomplish."

• Ainsi soit-il.

  We have enough data and research that says that most of the people who voted for Trump were motivated by racial resentment. In their eyes, everything that’s wrong in their lives – and by extension, America – is a direct result of the upward mobility of black folks; the influx of immigrants; and also, the belief that Christianity in America is under attack by Muslims.
  
  This was the reality.
  
  [...]
  
  There’s no room for finding common ground with people who see my humanity as an impediment to their daily lives. Again, as a person of color, my humanity isn’t afforded the benefit of the doubt. So much so, that they supported a candidate who sold them on the idea that non-white people and folks who look like me are seen as the problem. Changing that misconception – otherwise correctly identified as racism – doesn’t rest with me.

  (Rippa, The Intersection of Madness and Reality)
  
• "Readings for Juneteenth," Jesse Curtis.  History rewritten.
• Ancient Ashkenaz.

In Memoriam

Heathcote Williams, poet and radical.

Fallout

• From Bluedot Daily:  Pastor John Pavlovitz addresses "embarrassed for the past 8 years" of some voters.

  Were you embarrassed by his eloquence, his quick wit, his easy humor, his seeming comfort meeting with both world leaders and street cleaners; by his bright smile or his sense of empathy or his steadiness—perhaps by his lack of personal scandals or verbal gaffes or impulsive tirades?
  
  No. Of course you weren’t.
  
  Honestly, I don’t believe you were ever embarrassed. That word implies an association that brings ridicule, one that makes you ashamed by association, and if that’s something you claim to have experienced over the past eight years by having Barack Obama representing you in the world—I’m going to suggest you rethink your word choice.
  
  You weren’t “embarrassed” by Barack Obama.
  
  [...]
  
  But I don’t believe it had anything to do with his resume or his experience or his character or his conduct in office—because you seem fully proud right now to be associated with a three-time married, serial adulterer and confessed predator; a man whose election and business dealings and relationships are riddled with controversy and malfeasance. You’re perfectly fine being represented by a bullying, obnoxious, genitalia-grabbing, Tweet-ranting, Prime Minister-shoving charlatan who’s managed to offended all our allies in a few short months. And you’re okay with him putting on religious faith like a rented, dusty, ill-fitting tuxedo and immediately tossing it in the garbage when he’s finished with it.

  The whole thing is pretty pointed; the original is on the pastor's website.  With 1,000 + comments.  (Apparently I accidentally closed the originating tab.  Sorry.)
• So.  Some folks at Faux News are "concerned" that the Obamas are vacationing.

  If you thought that becoming a private citizen meant that former President Barack Obama could take a vacation without being scolded by Fox News, think again.
  
  Fox’s excuse this time is that it’s “just reporting” on left-wing criticism. Recently, on FoxNews.com, reporter Christopher Wallace (who does not appear to be the Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace) wrote an article titled, “Obamas under fire from the left for never ending, sizzling ultra-luxury vacations.”

  (News Hound Ellen, Crooks and Liars)
• Meanwhile:  Golf vacation infomercials??
• In Department of You Didn't Really Want the Answers, So You Shouldn't Have Asked the Question:  Indiana Republicans asked for "Obamacare Horror Stories."

  The Hill quoted one commenter who said that the “only horror story is that Republicans might take it away.”
  
  “I love OBAMACARE! It has helped our family. Shame on the REPUBLICANS wanting to get rid of it… BLOOD will be our your hands!!!” said another commenter.

  (AlterNet, reprinting RawStory). From Shakesville:

  My favorite coverage of this debacle is, naturally, the Indy Star's, where Ryan Martin writes with perfect Hoosier kindness that "The responses were unexpected" and "Many seemed to relish that the post didn't receive more horror stories." Ha.

  Remember to continue to contact your Senator.
  
• 44 states are refusing to hand over voter data to the Kobach "voter fraud" commission.  (Yes, it is Little Green Footballs.  Deal.  Zandar pulls together some of the state objections.

  The Trump regime's plan to assemble a national database of voters under the guise of "voter integrity" has run into not one but two buzzsaws: blue states understand full well that the information will be used for targeted voter suppression purposes, but red states know that voter registration systems have been completely compromised by the Russians. Neither group trust the incompetent Trump regime and now 44 states have rejected participation in the scheme.

Protecting Us From Zombie Voters. Suuuuuuuuuuuure, He Is.

John Amato, Crooks and Liars:

There is no verifiable evidence to suggest the U.S. has a voter fraud problem by any measure imaginable, b[ut] frauds like Kobach are only interested in purging voters from the state rolls and enacting Voter ID laws so they have come up with their "dead people" nonsense to try and give them some leverage to proceed.

Video clip and partial transcript of interview at Media Matters.

(My father still gets [junk] mail, and he's been dead for over 10 years, but I rather doubt he's still voting.)

Oh...One More Thing...

Colorado baker who refused to bake wedding cake for gay couple:  "I don't believe that Jesus would have made a cake if he would have been a baker," Phillips said. "That would have contradicted the rest of the biblical teachings."

I don't recall Jesus actually asking whether the people he was healing, rescuing, having intellectual discussions with, or feeding were gay.  Maybe this baker thinks that Jesus had the disciples refuse to feed loaves and fishes to any of the 5,000 after the Sermon on the Mount that felt gay at heart.  Or turned the wine back into water at the wedding if the guests were gay.  Hey, I think we need the time machine for a research investigation!

And Incidentally...

• Via Zandar Versus the Stupid:
• Caitlin Owens, Axios, notes that Ted Cruz has proposed health insurance deregulation such that:

  The bottom line: That would give Republicans a better idea of the impact of his proposal, which would let insurers sell health plans that don't meet Affordable Care Act standards — including, potentially, waiving the pre-existing condition rules — as long as they also sell plans that comply with all of the ACA insurance regulations.

• Jack Moore at GQ's take:

  Anyway, Cruz, in his typical pompous ass way, believes he has solved the Senate's health care bill. His proposal is designed to allow moderate Republicans who are still on the fence to claim they saved the Obamacare protections that are popular with voters while simultaneously allowing insurers to offer plans that don't include such protections, thus costing the government less and pleasing hard-line right-wingers like Cruz. If you're thinking to yourself, how the hell would that work? The short answer is that it wouldn't.

• Robert Reich minces no words.
• Alison Lundergan Grimes, Kentucky Secretary of State, bluntly dismissed "voter fraud" commission.

  Lundergan Grimes was well prepared to discuss Trump's phony voter fraud commission at length and replied, "If Donald Trump asked for not only your address but date of birth, political affiliation and entire voting history along with last four digits of your social security number, would you give it to him?"
  
  She continued, "The answer from Kentucky and states around the United States is a resounding no. There is no state fully complying with what has been a request from a sham commission that the president set up to try to create and find evidence to back up a lie that has simply been disputed..."

  (John Amato, Crooks and Liars)
• Ilana Novak at AlterNet summarizes Paul Krugman's Monday New York Times column, which suggests that Trump is trying to start a trade war.  Not good.
• Real headline at the SF Gate.com:  Trump accuses Clinton of colluding with Democrats to defeat 'Crazy Bernie Sanders'
• Zandar, citing New York magazine, says Justice Anthony Kennedy may be retiring next year, and why that is bad.
• More Zandar:  Lowered rates of unemployment and disparate electoral results.
• Jesse Curtis:  "On Taking Action For Black Lives"  Read this or stop pretending to be an activist.
• Annoying Anti-Feminists.  (Alas, A Blog)

Furthermore

*ahem*

While the rest of the Sunday shows spent the bulk of their time focusing on Trump's tweets (thereby justifying the distraction technique perfectly), Joy Ann Reid had on writer Ari Berman to discuss Trump's voter fraud commission, headed by Kris Kobach.

Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars.  Video of Ms. Reid talking to Mr. Berman, who writes for the New York Times magazine.

There are more Martians in the State Department than cases of voter fraud.

Toddler

• Non-compliance:

  Given the mishmash of information Trump's commission will receive, it's unclear how useful it will be or what the commission will do with it. Trump established the commission to investigate allegations of voter fraud in the 2016 elections, but Democrats have blasted it as a biased panel that is merely looking for ways to suppress the vote.
  
  New Hampshire Secretary of State Bill Gardner, a Democrat who is a member of Trump's Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, defended the request Friday. He said the commission expected that many states would only partially comply because open records laws differ from state to state.
  
  "If only half the states agree, we'll have to talk about that. I think, whatever they do, we'll work with that," said Gardner, adding that the commission will discuss the survey at its July 19 meeting.
  
  He said he has received calls from unhappy constituents who said they didn't want Trump to see their personal information.
  
  [...]
  
  [caption for video] President Trump has geared up efforts to investigate voter fraud, across the country, however according to Buzz Feed News more than 20 states as of Friday are refusing to participate. Mississippi Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann, a Republican, said in a statement Friday regarding a request for data on voters by the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity: "My reply would be: They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from.
  
  "But this is not private, and a lot of people don't know that," he said.

• Buzz Aldrin looks askance.  Raw Story via AlterNet and Crooks and Liars, respectively.
• Actually, the correct response to this sort of thing is "You need to read less Philip K. Dick, you credulous ass."