Bridges, Not Walls

• Oh?

  President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president's border wall.
  The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305-page measure's homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump's down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
  It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week. The optics are politically bad and there's only $2.3 billion remaining in disaster coffers.

  Can we run this past the Texas delegation? (I love that "the optics are politically bad."  No fooling?)  Emphasis added.
  
  Also,news about the floods (these paragraphs are part of the updated reports on Houston's situation
• 
  

Occasional Concentrated Stupid

• Fake and wrong and ignorant.
• Fake.
• Foolish.
• "Prank."

I saw An Inconvenient Sequel yesterday.  Houston is mentioned a couple of times (although Harvey hadn't happened when the movie was released). Let's just say that 45 does not come off well.

In Memoriam

• Tobe Hooper, director (horror)
• Thomas Meehan, writer
• Bea Wain, singer
• Brian Aldiss, writer

It's Going to Take Too Long to Pull All My Hair Out

• Chauncey DeVega Show at Indomitable:

  During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Snyder and Chauncey evaluate the health of American democracy after eight months of Trump as president, discuss how the recent white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville could potentially fit into Trump's plans for authoritarianism in America, if Charlottesville was a "Reichstag Fire" moment, and how the rule of law is threatened by Trump's regime.

   
• Summary (by Ilana Novick) of Paul Krugman at AlterNet:

  "There’s a word for political regimes that round up members of minority groups and send them to concentration camps, while rejecting the rule of law," he writes in his Monday column. "What Arpaio brought to Maricopa, and what the president of the United States has just endorsed."
  
  It's not hard [t]o understand why Trump would be eager to pardon Arpaio. The president fawns over dictators like Duterte and Putin, and accuses immigrants of being rapists. Of course he'd love the idea of a strongman flourishing in an American county. In addition, Krugman points out, "the pardon is a signal to those who might be tempted to make deals with the special investigator as the Russia probe closes in on the White House: Don’t worry, I’ll protect you."

• ACLU sues over transgender military ban.  (Frances Langum, Crooks and Liars)
• Offshore testing of herpes vaccine:

  WASHINGTON—Defying U.S. safety protections for human trials, an American university and a group of wealthy libertarians, including a prominent Donald Trump supporter, are backing the offshore testing of an experimental herpes vaccine.
  The American businessmen, including Trump adviser Peter Thiel, invested $7 million in the ongoing vaccine research, according to the U.S. company behind it. Southern Illinois University also trumpeted the research and the study’s lead researcher, even though he did not rely on traditional U.S. safety oversight in the first trial, held on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.

  Because ethical standards are so difficult and expensive and bad for the bottom line, donchano? The university in question is Southern Illinois University
• Anyone check on Galveston?

"Standing in the Slide Zone"

Put that on the air and it will cost this ministry millions’: Producer reveals Pat Robertson more concerned with money than Jesus

Raw Story, Tom Boggioni.

No surprises.

Some of Them Thought It Was Unnecessary

The Republican National Committee approved the resolution:

"Nazis, the KKK, white supremacists and others are repulsive, evil and have no fruitful place in the United States."

The article stated,

And while the vote was unanimous, some members had grumbled the resolution was unnecessary and reflected unnecessary defensiveness.

In Memoriam

• Dick Gregory, comic and civil rights activist
• Jerry Lewis, comic

Infestation of the alt-Wrong

It may be time to join the underground.

• The Rude One is nasty.  Rude hateful words.

  The most pathetic thing here is how shocked they pretend to be that their views are attacked, as if no one ever told them that slavery and genocide [...] are bad things to support. And maybe that's on all of us.
  
  It's certainly on the media. Every time there was an article or CNN investigation on whether or not Barack Obama was born in the United States, the media made it seem like it was a legitimate story. Led by the nose by right-wing bullshit websites and commentators, the mainstream media gave the spittle-strewn glow of credence to it all, whether it's ACORN or the New Black Panther Party or the thuggish images of black victims of violence, like Trayvon Martin.

• Theodore Roosevelt on criticism of the President and he would know (via Lance Mannion)
  
• Chauncey DeVega:

  Over the last few weeks Trump has played an arena-scale concert where the unifying themes of his music are racism, bigotry, nativism and prejudice.
  
  He has threatened to end civil rights protections for gays and lesbians, announced that transgender soldiers would be kicked out of the United States military, directed his surrogates to launch a full-on effort to end “affirmative action” programs in higher education because they “discriminate” against white people, told America’s police to brutalize suspects (i.e., black and brown people), offered macabre tales about young white women being tortured and killed by Mexican gang members, promised to change America’s immigration policy to give preference to English-speaking immigrants (white people), and continues his efforts to ban Muslims from the United States.
  
  Trump knows his crowd.

• "Blessed Are the Hypocrites" by Wired Sister, Noli Irritare Leones.

  45’s supporters claim to like him because he says what he thinks, and isn’t “politically correct.” The belief that he says what he thinks, of course, rests on the presumption that he does think, about which nothing further need be said right now. They like him because he is willing to call a spade a spade, you should pardon the expression. But the political correctness they decry is the only thing that keeps him from calling the white working-class voters ignorant unwashed hillbilly trailer trash. If he drops that mask (that’s what the word “hypocrite” originally meant), they’re fair game as much as their non-white neighbors. The only thing that keeps him from doing that is that they vote for him.

• Naming your poison.
• From The Daily Banter:  subhead:  It probably sounded better in the original German.
• ETA:  Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars  Guess who spoke.  (with video)
• Another corner heard from (John Amato, Crooks and Liars):

  [Star] Parker quickly turned into an alternate reality person, using alternative facts and full on homophobe.
  
  Parker said, "But you know what's really interesting and really incredible irony here is the same people that are demanding that the Confederate flag comes down are the same people that are insisting that the Rainbow flag goes up. These two flags represent the exact same thing."
  
  I mean, WTF? I'll say it again: WTF?
  
  The Confederate flag represents slave owners who refused to give up their slaves and became traitors to the country, which resulted in a long and bloody civil war which cost the lives of around 620,000 soldiers, on both sides.
  
  The Rainbow flag represents the LGBT community and the pride they have in each other. Gays in America and in many countries have been subjected to violence, imprisonment and death for centuries.
  
  In Charlottesville, the Confederate flag and their southern heroes were being worshiped by white supremacists, who are anti-Semitic in nature, loved slavery and were celebrating their superiority over the black community, as well as all other minorities in America.
  
  Then Parker became an outright Nazi defender.
  
  She continued, "That certain people, groups are not welcome here. So if Nancy Pelosi wants to say that we're going to start shutting down First Amendment rights of a certain group of people, then what what happens next time that the homosexuals want to walk through an American city and protest and counter protesters come out?"

  Emphases added.
  

In Memoriam

• Joe Bologna, actor
• Cathleen Morawetz, mathematician
• Glen Campbell, singer/musician/songwriter
• Barbara Cook, actress/singer

Finally

• Finally.
• Steve M, Crooks and Liars:

  The right-wing media has now been forced to acknowledge what's going on in Charlottesville ... and the response at Breitbart is: Waaaah! You're being unfair to Trump!

• When you declare "moral victory," shouldn't you have morals?  Or at least not be evil?  (I have mentioned that I prefer ethics to morals, right?)

Continuing to Call Out Evil

• Not evil, only a little bit bad--

  KTVN-TV interviewed 20-year-old [I'm redacting the idiot's name--it's in the article] after he was identified online in a photo showing white nationalists marching through the University of Virginia campus carrying torches Friday.
  [...]
  [Idiot] says he didn't expect the photo to spread but that he's a white nationalist who cares for all people and wants to "preserve what we have."

• Calls it out.

  "With the moral authority of the presidency, you have to call that stuff out," Scaramucci said...

• Analysis of why Trump either can't or won't condemn white "supremacists," neo-Nazism, far-"rightists."
• Evil.

  The organizer of a white nationalist rally in Virginia was chased away from a news conference Sunday, a day after the event erupted in violence and left three people dead.
  Blogger [different idiot] had to be escorted by law enforcement into a police station to avoid protesters.

  Video
  

Calling Evil By Its Name

• Calling evil by its name.
• Calling evil by its name.
• Calling evil by its name.
• ETA:  Calling evil by its name.

  And more than that. White supremacy is evil. Nazism is evil. The racism and hate we saw in Charlottesville yesterday is evil. The domestic terrorism that happened there yesterday — a man, motivated by racial hate, mowing down innocents — is evil. And none of what happened yesterday just happened. It happened because the Nazis and the KKK and the violent white supremacists felt emboldened. They felt emboldened because they believe that one of their own is in the White House, or at least, feel like he’s surrounded himself with enough of their own (or enough fellow travelers) that it’s all the same from a practical point of view. They believe their time has come round at last, and they believe no one is going to stop them, because one of their own has his hand on the levers of power.

• Calling (or not calling) evil by its name.  Not calling evil by its name.
• Mysterious helicopter crash.

A "right"-wing group is using the logo of the Detroit Red Wings (hockey teams have left and right wings).

Hate groups --Evil.

Bouillabaise

• Second threat to liberty.  Lance Mannion.  Some things don't change.
• Unions and the "new" realities and Lee Saunders.  Erik Loomis, Lawyers, Guns and Money
• Analysis of the campaign strategy.  Booman Tribune, who will be taking some time off.
• Things that Both Sides Don't Do.  Crooks and Liars, Frances Langum, (aka BlueGal)
• Someone who still supports the current President.
• Lawsuit re: Seth Rich conspiracy story.  Aaron Rupar, ThinkProgress
• One from Balloon Juice.
• And a thwacking of Mr. David Brooks by Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog.   Driftglass administers a set-down.

.

Just a Reminder

Today is the anniversary of Nixon's resignation.

Not-Niceness

• It’s hard for those of us outside the bubble of right-wing nationalist Christianity to understand or even imagine what this administration looks like from the perspective of many white evangelicals. This article gives us a hint. They really believe that this administration is full of godly people trying to restore Christian values to America.

  Jesse Curtis, Colorblind Christians
• Minor hypocrisy.

• ...it’s probable that most of the white members of Father Babiuch’s congregation voted for Trump. Which is to say they voted to have their fellow parishioners deported. That doesn’t mean that’s what they wanted. But they have no excuse for not knowing it would happen. And they were told by the Pope that good Catholics invite strangers in. Actually, he came as close as he dared to telling them good Catholics shouldn’t vote for Trump. But this is how he’s winning. Turning Americans against their neighbors.

  Lance Mannion
• Völkische Beobachter

Two Points of Stupid

• The Rude Pundit:

  Look, we know Trump is racist. We knew it for years, from the Central Park Five to birtherism to the Muslim travel ban. It has been one of his most consistent traits. And we know that Trump has surrounded himself with racists, with people who are directly connected to white nationalist groups. And we know that Trump's supporters are racist (yeah, you are, fuck off).
  
  And now we're seeing the policy implications of that. Trump used to ask various non-white groups, "What the hell do you have to lose?" in electing him. It's pretty clear that the answer is "a future."

• Incompetent cultural appropriation.  (Allessandra Maldonado, Salon, at AlterNet)

  Later that month, Bieber swapped the original lyrics for a more expressive line during an Instagram live story: “na ba da ba da ba da ba da ba de bo.” And just one month later, the Biebs proved — yet again — his inability to respect the culture that practically gave him his latest hit single. In June, he refused to perform the song during Sweden’s Summerburst Festival, explaining to fans he “can’t do ‘Despacito’ because I don’t even know it.”

  Y'a know, I think Pat Boone is still alive... Also, he seems to have had slightly more respect for his sources.
  

Also, Pharma Bro found guilty of fraud. Anyone surprised?

This May Become a Rant

Yastreblyansky mentioned Rod Dreher (understudy "conservative" columnist at the New York Times) who seems to believe that "American Christianity" requires saving by something analogous similar to St. Benedict's Rule.

There is a reason that I tend not to subject myself to the mumblings of "conservatives."  Entirely aside from their lack of respect for me (and I am everything that fascists hate, including intelligent), their "arguments" tend to be baseless.  Unfortunately, because Yastreblyansky did not directly quote Mr. Dreher, I actually had to read that thing.

(No, I'm not going to do a line-by-line fisking; that's more effort than the thing is worth.)

Let's begin with the headline: "Trump Can't Save American Christianity"  I have not gotten the impression from any of Trump's pronouncements that he ever intended to save "American Christianity." Frankly, most of the Republican legislators have spent the last ten years giving the impression that they have never read nor understood the Gospels. They do get rude language, though.

But four days after Anthony Scaramucci's filthy tirade went public, Team Trump's evangelical all-stars – pastors and prominent laity who hustle noisily around the Oval Office trying to find an amen corner –- still had not figured out what to say.

Meanwhile,

the Christian Broadcasting Network ran a puff piece proclaiming that a 'spiritual awakening is underway at hte White House,' thanks to a Bible study with what 'has been called the most evangelical cabinet in history.'

I know that "Oh, really!!" is at the back of your throat.  And then Mr. D. says:

The truth is, Christianity is declining in the United States. As a theologically conservative believer,I take no pleasure in saying that. ... the waning of Christianity will be not only a catastrophe for the church but also a calamity for civil society in ways secular Americans do not appreciate.

He cites a 2014 Pew study (link in original article) concluding that about one in 3 millenials "refuse to identify with a religious tradition."  He believes Americans are becoming more like Europeans or *gasp* Canadians, embracing what a sociologist at Notre Dame (Christian Smith) calls "Moralistic Therapeutic Deism."  He believes this is a bad thing.

(I of course don't think that conservative moralism is anything to embrace, but I am so much not a conservative.)

And then he brings up St. Benedict of Nursia, who fouded the Benedictine order (link in original).

I always suspect that what "conservatives" really want is to slot everyone into a monastery or convent.

Know why millenials are avoiding "traditional religion?"  Because they can see that a fair number of those moral mouthpieces are, ahem, speaking out of both sides of their mouths (I am not the only one with an expectation that virulent homophobic leaders have simply not been caught with the live boy in bed).  So-called "pro-lifers" have no objection to sending the born off to "wars of opportunity;" to denying poor (but born) children food,  medical services, schooling;  to trying to return women to the 1940s.  Good morning.

Conservatism remains the ideology of death if you're not a conservative.

No, actually, Trump is probably driving people away from "American Christianity."

(Yes, I am aware that this is not a coherent or cogent argument, either.  But this writer ignited peevishness.  Feh.)

Edited to add:  Echidne of the Snakes on the subject of "right-wing" Christianity.

Keeping it Positive

Message from Shakesville:

If you'd like to wish Obama a happy birthday, or reminisce about what it was like when we used to have a president who was a deeply ethical, intelligent, competent, hardworking, compassionate, flawed but fabulous human being,