Honestly? Honestly!

Morning golf course:

• Some meta:  John Oliver discusses local journalism.  AlterNet. Video.  Summary by Alexandra Rosenmann.
• Bob Somerby of The Daily Howler on the reportage of the emails.

  (In our view, the question seems to be settled about three "marked" emails—settled in a way which reflects poorly on Comey rather than on Clinton.)
  
  We'd like to know if Hillary Clinton really was "extremely careless" with those 110 emails! That said, the Washington Post still seems unable to produce a clear account of the basic things Comey has said. Could a newspaper which seems so unclear on the basic facts help resolve that question?

• The businessman has no clothes.  Digby, Hullabaloo.  Mostly from an article in the New York Times, but I have obituaries to note.  
• Also from Hullabaloo's Tom Sullivan:  Republican Satanic panic Fear of the manufactured issue of voter fraud goes way back.  With charts and numbers.  Voter ID would not prevent the most prevalent form of fraud, by the way.  

  Fraud hucksters are — and/or they think the rest of us are — gullible enough to believe that, unlike Us, each Election Day hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands of people (you know, Them) go to the polls, not to do their patriotic and civic duty like “real Americans,” no, but to commit felonies punishable by five years in prison and a $10,000 fine for each offense, "plus additional state penalties," Berman adds. All so they can a single extra vote to their preferred candidate's total.

• What's wrong with this headline?
  
  OK, not really. Some tweets with the hashtag KatrinaPiersonHistory which are, let's say, less than complimentary to her instruction in history, her recollection of current events, and her employer.
  
  (If I did Twitter, my entry with that hashtag would be "Obama Built the Berlin Wall.")
• Supporters of the Republican presidential candidate speak.  Have a hot shower and lots of soap ready before reading.  (Zandar Versus The Stupid, who goes there so you don't have to.)
• Ahem:

  For a man who claims he's an incredible rich successful and talented businessman, this ad is an embarrassment.
  
  Also striking is that the Clinton campaign can use Trump's own words, in lengthy segments, to highlight his offensive traits and idiotic exploits; Trump on the other hand, has to ham-handedly edit and misrepresent HRC to come up with what amounts to be middle school level production values.

  John Amato, Crooks and Liars.  "Television advertising is such a graphic business."
• Theology, a point of (Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names):

  Douthat and the killer (a local kid who knew very well who he was attacking) are working together to craft a narrative of ineluctable conflict, to the death, in opposition to the reality of integration and love that Hamel worked so hard to create and for which he did in effect die.

• Speaking of Douthat (were we?  I forgot), Professor Chaos administers a well-deserved (non-kinky) spanking:

  Yeah, no she doesn't.
  She has already expanded her percentage of the non-racist vote. And the non-misogynist vote. And the I-don't-want-a-president-who-gets-into-Twitter-wars-with-Rosie-O'Donnell vote. And the I-don't-want-a-President-whose-only-experience-is-being-a-businessman-who-has-had-multiple-bankruptcies vote. I think she's going to be fine. But thanks for your fake concern.

Intelligence, Comedy, and a Post-Mortem

Not necessarily in that order.

• Bernie Sanders and the Black Vote (Bruce Dixon, Black Agenda Report), or why he didn't get much of it.  (See also this article in Fusion, which the Black Agenda Report is reacting to.)

  [...]. Instead of asking those questions, the Sanders campaign and Mr. Starr’s Fusion article treated the black community as a kind of united corporate whole with no perceptible internal divisions or contradictions, all of it potentially winnable by just putting the right message in front of the right audiences, or throwing enough staff and money at the problem.

• The "intelligence community" is not enamored of Donald Trump.  (Adele M. Stan, AlterNet)
• Really bad writing, sex scene division.  Not exactly safe for work, but maybe sneak a peek in less sensitive locations?

  I cannot speak for others, but for me this scene had all the thrill of an Ikea Chair assembly manual.

  The Rotting Post (I think the number of 'h's was related to the Fibonacci sequence, but what do I know?  [In that case, the last "ahhhhhh" should have only had 5 'h's.]); also check out the comments.

Blueberry pancakes?

Yes, It's Blabbermouth Day

Yet more links to articles about current events; I can't seem to shut up today.

• Part 2 of Republic of T's examination of supporters of Trump.
• Unfiltered voices (Zandar Versus The Stupid has embedded New York Times video.)
• Indomitable:

  The heart of my comments on Clinton's speech is my recurring frustration with presenting efforts to confront racism, white supremacy, and other anti-democratic forces in American society as something impossible or magical. The solutions are right in front of us; most people have been conned into thinking they are not.

• Brownback backlash.  Brownback blowback.

Aw, you know the tune:

96 days of the Trump campaign,
96 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
95 days of the Trump campaign.

95 days of the Trump campaign,
95 days of campaign;
Survive today and then you can say
94 days of the Trump campaign.

And so on.  By 80 you should either be sleeping or throwing up on your shoes.

"You Don't Want Me to Vote."

• Politifact runs the numbers on "voter fraud."  (And lists their sources.)

  [Mark Pocan:]  "Let’s put it this way, more people are struck by lightning than commit in-person voter fraud."
  
  Getting struck by lightning might actually be more common than what you’d guess.
  
  What about in-person voter fraud by impersonation -- that is, claiming to be someone else as you cast your ballot?
  
  We’ll note up front that there are various types of voter fraud, but Pocan is citing one particular type.
  
  [...]
  
  Roughly 300 people per year are struck by lightning in the United States. But cases of voter fraud -- someone impersonating another voter -- are documented even less often.

• Nevertheless: (John Amato, Crooks & Liars.)

  In an interview with the Washington Post, Donald Trump continued to promote unfounded claims that if he loses the general election, it will be because it's rigged.
  
  As Politifact reveals, people are more likely to get hit by lightning than participate in voter fraud.
  
  The whole interview is deranged, but [John Amato is] focusing on his "rigged election" nonsense, not only because it appears this will be his strategy as he continues to fall behind, but because he is illegitimizing the election process for a large number of voters. This does damage to our democracy that will outlast the Trump campaign.
  
  Trump believes that opposition to draconian voter ID laws is because people are voting as many as ten times without ID and don't want to be caught. All evidence points to the opposite being true.

  Emphasis added.
  

One almost gets the idea that Republicans like the "voter fraud" canard because "level playing fields" are not really to their taste.

Play That Funky Waltz

• Earth, Wind & Fire is almost as good as coffee.
• "Nativist" (because, unless all of one's ancestors were born in what is now the USA 700 or more years ago, one has an immigrant in the family tree trunk; I'm beginning to think of "nativism" as a third-or-fourth (or beyond) generation mental quirk for which great-grandparents, could they hear that nonsense, would upchuck on their descendants' shoes.  Spectrally, of course.  Have you seen Ghostbusters?) radio host exhibits gluteus maximus maximally.  With (ewww) audio.

  Kobach should realize that Khzir Khan is not just someone who went to law school, but he has also earned a Harvard Masters of Law, which guarantees that he hasn't simply read the Constitution, but has also analyzed and learned it.

  Karoli Kuns at Crooks & Liars, who listens to this stuff so you don't have to.
• Chauncey DeVega on American exceptionalism, coups d'état, and hypocrisy.

  As more information is gathered, these headlines may prove to be accurate, and their warnings about the consequences of the data theft from the Democratic National Committee to be true. But curiously absent from these notes of panic and alarm is any substantial mention or consideration of how the United States routinely interferes with domestic politics and elections in other countries.

• The Emperor has no Inside Voice.
• Terrance, Republic of T on You-Know-Who.

  If that’s how Trump repays those who went out on a limb to endorse him, maybe Republicans are worried about how he will reward the party that gave him its nomination. Maybe that’s why Republicans are scrambling to find a replacement, out of fear Trump might quit or implode. The party can’t force Trump out, now that he’s the nominee, but if he quit the race, that would give the 168 members of the RNC until September to fill the gap. It may seem far-fetched, but a presidential candidate inviting a foreign country to launch a cyber attack on the US and picking a public fight with a Gold Star family also seemed far-fetched, until last week.

• Avedon's Sideshow has many essential links and analyses.  I still haven't run them all down.;-)
• R. Sharp, guest blogging at The Rude Pundit:

  Since the conventions I've been asking my friends and peers what they think of the election and who they would vote for. After countless discussions and a few arguments I've compiled a list of three statements that I constantly hear and, frankly, piss me off.

• Bad Idea Theater.  (A/K/A "Villagers" being stupid.  Sorry.)
• Hmmmmm...Following Earth, Wind & Fire with Prince does the trick.

Waiting for the Electrician...

Via Avedon's Sideshow, Erik Levitz in New York Magazine:

Both Republican and Democratic administrations entered trade agreements designed to put downward pressure on the wages of domestic manufacturing workers. This was a deliberate choice and not a foregone conclusion — these same governments did not subject professional workers to similar international competition. As economist Dean Baker notes, our trade deals could have established clear standards that would allow “students in Mexico, India, and China to train to U.S. levels and then practice as professionals in the United States,” thus providing enormous savings to consumers in the form of cheaper health care and legal fees. But policymakers decided that maintaining the living standards of our professional workers was more important than consumer savings. They reached the opposite conclusion about the living standards of our blue-collar labor force.

At the same time, these governments did little to compensate the “losers” of globalization; made it more difficult for workers to unionize; and further decreased their leverage over employers by cutting the social safety net. This policy framework has left non–college educated workers — a group that makes up 65 percent of our labor force — with a median wage $1.30 lower than it was in 1980.

And there you have it.

...Or Someone Like Him

Donald Trump is a balloon and everyone is a pin.

• Actual billionaire Warren Buffett talks about Trump and cites the Army-McCarthy hearings and uses the Joseph Welch quote "Have you no sense of decency, sir?"  (With video.  Partly transcribed by Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars.)
• Terrance of Republic of T summarizes Khizr Khan's speech, Trump's reaction, and other reactions; a reporter at the Washington Post also quoted Joseph Welch, because despite the last twenty or so years decency is still a respected value.
• The Trump solution to sexual harassment.  (AlterNet.)
• Comrade Misfit brings the sarcasm (with bonus Mother Jones graph!)
• Yastreblyansky laces into the apologist for the Racist/Stupid Party.

  The real issue isn't that phony anti-intellectualism anyway, it's the work of those Republican intellectuals, all in the same Straussian bad faith, constructing rationalizations and panderings in one direction and another as whatever this year's "true conservatism" turns out to be, as a mask for the basic aim of keeping their own taxes low and their businesses unregulated. Because in the end that's all they really care about. And the ones like Boot hate Trump mostly because he's going to lose so badly, either before the election or after it, depending how unlucky we are, and discredit them all for a generation.

• Ann Telnaes writes in the Columbia Journalism Review about editorial cartooning and social media.

  Pett’s experience, and mine, underscore how social media has changed the landscape for editorial cartooning—how it is being used as a tool of intimidation by interest groups and campaigns to try to silence criticism. Through social media they can quickly mobilize their supporters and distribute misinformation, allowing mob mentalities to spread as soon as a cartoon is posted online. The medium is lightning fast and provides the protection of anonymity. Add a news media that seems to value clickbait over presenting context about the editorial cartooning craft and often parrots the inaccurate characterizations the campaigns’ supporters spread, and you might as well paint a red bull’s eye on the cartoonist’s back.

• Guest post by Jon Green at The Rude Pundit on voting rights and the lengths gone to in order to disenfranchise people.  Language NSFW, so read at home.
• And since porn came up recently, here's an article about virtual reality porn.  As a palate cleanser.  Sort of.

More Dangers

Dave Neiwert asks a question.

All of this stands in stark contrast to media and public response to the single greatest threat to the lives and well-being of police officers in the United States over the past decade and longer: the sovereign citizens movement.

[...] In the succeeding years, it has not gone away – and indeed has been picking up strength in the past decade, particularly fueled by right-wing reaction to the election of Barack Obama as president in 2008.

In the eight years since, sovereign citizens have killed nine police officers and injured more than a dozen others in 16 separate incidents, many of them violent responses to ordinary police actions such as issuing traffic tickets or serving warrants. Other incidents involved plots to kidnap, torture and murder police officers, or armed standoffs in which law-enforcement officers were threatened.

And yet...

Nah, that leads nowhere.  Better just eat the ice cream.

Help Me, Rhonda-wan Kenobi

• Booman Tribune has opinions:
• Trump's taxes
• Trump (or his campaign manager) and Russia
• Republican transformation into the "Stupid/Racist" Party
• Here comes conspiracy theory:

  Trump once again attacked voter integrity by telling his supporters that the elections are all rigged and that the November election will also be rigged.
  
  "I'm afraid the election's gonna be rigged, I have to be honest." he then tried to say that his primary was rigged also, but his mind veered off into a different direction.

  (John Amato, Crooks and Liars)
• Two-fer.
• Trump promises to crack down on Internet porn.
• Maybe he missed this.  (Yes, I know I linked that last week.)  Was there a comparable bump during the Democratic convention?  I'm not doing that sort of primary research.
• News-Observer says XHamster is blocking access to that site from North Carolina.  Mmmmmmm-hmmm.
• Federal judge just a leetle skeptical about the purpose of HB2 (North Carolina) since it doesn't seem to be about safety...  (Box Turtle Bulletin)
• As others see us.

  To be clear, the focus of my mission was not race or discrimination. My mandate concerns the enjoyment of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association. But it is impossible to discuss these rights without issues of racism pervading the discussions. Racism and the exclusion, persecution and marginalization that come with it, affect the enabling environment for the exercise of association and assembly rights.

  It's a long report by the UN Special Rapporteur. The full report will come out next year.

In Memoriam

NYTimes obituaries.

• Sandy Pearlman, producer, manager, and lyricist (Blue Öyster Cult) and critic
• James Nederlander, theater owner

Lynx in "The Chain"

So yesterday was interesting; I met a nice couple at the street fair and we fell to talking about cars and the local economy and politics and music and religion and stuff.  They were kind enough to buy me a humongous glass of wine and we toasted in several languages, and then talked more politics and religion and life in general.  The fun of holding a conversation in a bar is that you cannot hear it.  (You can, actually, but you lose a lot of the fine points.)

So, Justin and Sarah, we shall see.

I was reminded of Cosby's "200 MPH" routine, which was the source of several family in-jokes back in the day...I could probably look it up, as I did in, er, 2006 or so.  But I won't.  It'd be itchy.

On the way home (I was not nearly as loaded as I thought I was, and I could still feel my face), I got to be Professor Rox, the Rock 'n' Roll Historian in a game of "Who's Dead?"  Apparently there was some kind of rumor that Little Richard had died, but the article is on a hoax site.  Otherwise, I was able to update the database of a total stranger except for not remembering Otis [goes to Wikipedia] Williams' last name.

• No surprise here (although "sexually explicit video" could be anything).
• Next level of the coming election and a call-back to the Brexit vote (Daisydeadhead's tumblr).

  If you have no trouble seeing through the Big-Daddy-Bossman-Emperor-come-to-save-us-from-ourselves archetype, you should have no trouble seeing through Lady Macbeth either. Stop collaborating with it. If you disagree with HRC, as I often do, say why. But painting her as some horrible witch lurking in the West Wing, trying to drink the blood of infants? Lighten up.
  
  I mean it isn’t like she started a fake university to squeeze money out of illiterate poor widows or anything like that.

  [Emphasis in original.]
  
• Combat vet schools conservative commentator.  The ACLU is making available the pocket constitutions that Khizr Khan brandished at the Democratic convention (Crooks and Liars). Trump is not covering himself with glory here.  Ghazal Khan weighs in (and she called Trump ignorant.  Fainting couch, stat!).  Background.
• Jesse Curtis examines an article by Wayne Grudem.  (Referenced article linked in first paragraph.)

  I would like to see an intellectually honest defense of Donald Trump from an evangelical Christian. I imagine it would go something like this: "I'm voting for the dangerous racist because he might appoint justices who might reduce abortions." Or, "I'm risking war and global turmoil in hopes that Trump will make the abortion rate, which has trended down during Obama's presidency, go down faster." As much as I would disagree with that choice, it has a coherent internal logic and accords with reality. It's a plausible scenario. And if that's where you're at, I haven't thought of a good argument to convince you otherwise. But I've yet to hear anyone make that argument. And I think that's telling. Grudem was either unwilling or unable to make an honest defense of voting for Trump. Why?

  Strong language without profanity or obscenity.
• The Terrible Sacrifices *choke* of Donald Trump.  (Slideshow, and if someone's storified it let me know!)
• Bad ideas that refuse to die, via skippy.

I think that's enough for one day. (I came close to having coherent essay material! Where are my pearls?)

Game of Throwns

• Mike Lux (Crooks & Liars) on the Hillary he knows.
• North Carolina Voter Suppression law overturned by Federal court. (Daily Kos, via AlterNet.)  It seems that

  Crucially, the appeals court found that the legislation, which created a strict voter ID requirement, ended same-day registration, out-of-precinct voting, and pre-registration, was “passed with racially discriminatory intent.” And unlike recent rulings against new voter ID law in Texas and Wisconsin, which only ameliorated the impact of those laws, this decision blocks North Carolina’s entire voter ID measure.

  Emphasis mine, added. 
• Zandar has more to say about this ruling.

  the 4th Circuit found that this was deliberate racism on the part of North Carolina Republicans, designed specifically to limit black turnout. Practices like analyzing voter data to see that black voters took advantage of the first week of early voting in the state, and then Republicans specifically eliminating the first week of early voting. This isn't something that was being done in the state's dark past or during Jim Crow, this happened two years ago after Republicans took over the state in 2010 in the backlash against a black president winning the state in 2008.

• Sometimes the good guys win.

Don't Mess With Me; I Haven't Had My Coffee Yet.

The major parties' conventions are almost over (if you wonder why this allegedly political blog has not covered the conventions gavel-to-gavel, it has to do with the fact that the interesting stuff is surrounded by acres of soporific chatter that puts me to sleep.  Also, all the interesting stuff is reported the following day, just like the Academy Awards.  So I know who the candidates are and what they espouse and what they look like and who is more likely to screw up my life), so have some distilled glimpses:

• The Rude Pundit:

  Here is what former president Bill Clinton did last night. Without even saying his name, he shrunk Donald Trump to a size where he could be drowned in a tub. By both humanizing and superhumanizing Hillary Clinton, he wanted the nation to ask, simply, "What the fuck has the other guy done? Financed a few buildings and hosted a game show and said stupid shit?"
  
  You can pretty much bet that Trump couldn't find Dothan, Alabama on a map with a giant arrow pointing at it and some assistant saying, "Sir, that's it, right there, where the arrow is pointing." But Hillary Clinton went there in the early 1970s, to one of the most racist places in the country, and went undercover to discover if schools were still segregated. People got killed for that kind of shit. Bill could have started his speech by saying, "Donald Trump isn't fit to clean the toilet the Secret Service uses at the White House."

  Usual warning for comparatively mild language.
• Zandar Versus the Stupid to a conservative pundit in the wake of the Republican convention:

  There's a lot of that going around these days, and I'll say what I always say to Republicans looking for absolution: you will never find it from me. You created this monster and did everything you could to empower it with the ability to destroy this country and 99% of the people in it, including yourselves.
  
  You lost control of the Rough Beast and once again you are looking to the rest of us to clean up the mess it made. I'm wholly uninterested in your confessions, Mr. Roy, or your apologies. What I want you to do is to have the good grace to shut the hell up and sit the hell down while the rest of us fix this country, and then the wisdom to stay silent while we make your miserable failures into a country worth being proud of.
  
  Most of all, you preyed on this country and gave voice to the hatred, the bigotry, the divisive rancor and the outright racism that fed and watered an electorate that gave rise to Trump. You made them powerful. We have to deal with that now because of people like you.

• The Hunting of the Snark, disassembling the bleating of Megan McArdle:

  The Republicans did this to themselves, which McArdle will never admit. They whipped up anger and resentment against the liberals to get conservatives to the voting booth and they destroyed respect for authority to undermine liberal leaders and policies. They have had a clown's car full of candidates for years but only this year do they have Trump. The right voted for the lesser of two evils for years, and now they are voting for pure evil, in the political sense. Eventually, that's always what happens when you vote for the lesser of two evils.

• And how could I forget Margaret and Helen?

  Salty language and a strong opinion don’t bother me. Saying what’s on your mind is usually a good thing. Usually. But what’s on Trumps mind isn’t fit for human consumption. It’s just hatred, fear and plain old racism. He put together a carnival in Cleveland to make the case that America has become a horrible place that no longer has time for political correctness. But I am here to tell you that speaking your mind and being politically correct are not mutually exclusive. Political correctness is having the emotional intelligence and decency not to use language, evoke images or take actions that marginalize, offend or otherwise insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against. Kind of sounds like something Jesus would support if you ask me.

There have been screams about Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Democratic party officials being "in the bag" for Hillary Clinton. This is only an issue because she won the nomination. The Republican National Committee has been half-heartedly "in the bag" for Jeb Bush for years, but until this last primary season, he had the good sense not to run.  This is not an issue because he, um, lost.

I don't mind reading dystopian fiction.  I resent the idea that I should live in dystopian fiction, though.

In Memoriam

• James Alan McPherson, Pulitzer Prize winning writer
• NYTimes obit for Jack Davis.

In Memoriam

 Jack Davis, cartoonist/caricaturist.

Well? Is It?

Down With Tyranny has one answer.  (The question is whether it is fair to label Trump a racist.)

In Memoriam

• Marni Nixon, singer and "ghost voice"
• Melvin Durslag, sportswriter

Foreground Reading

• Mr. Scalzi.
• ThinkProgress, via Skippy:  Not bothering with statistics, just lies and damn lies.
• Driftglass uses a video to comment. (PS: The scene is from The Best Man; get over any "old movie" prejudice you may have and see it.)
• AlterNet's Adele M. Stans summarizes Trump's speech, and Robert Reich really disliked it.
• Echidne of the Snakes.
• Southern Beale.
• Susie Bright turns it into a stage play.
• Trump reviews Fitzgerald (actually Yastreblyansky in the Sherman Oaks review of Books, but who's counting?).
• Terrance Heath reviews the entire convention.
• Zandar Versus The Stupid.
• ETA:  Chauncey DeVega (Indomitable) likens Trump to Emperor Palpatine (see also his more analytic article at Salon).

But the good news is that apparently the Republicans watched a lot of porn.  (Via Crooks and Liars.)

I Blame Driftglass

In the last week, Drifty linked (by way of commenting on Ted Cruz's speech at the Republican National Convention) to the Purple Wedding scene from Game of Thrones, which ultimately led me to a page of videos on YouTube with all the various murders, slayings, executions, and the rare natural deaths.  Good grief!  Grand Guignol to the max.

To take the taste (eewwwwwwwwww) out of my mouth:  Via News From ME, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, together again.

Still to come: Reviews and analyses of Trump's speech, because I avoided it live.

Distractions

• Via Zandar Versus The Stupid, the news that the 2017 NBA All-Star Game will not take place in Charlotte, NC.  

  The issue is centered on North Carolina’s House Bill 2, a law that mandates transgender people use public restrooms corresponding to the sex listed on their birth certificates. The law also omits LGBT people from North Carolina’s anti-discrimination protections, forbids local governments from widening LGBT protections and excludes all forms of workplace discrimination lawsuits from North Carolina state courts.
  
  “While we recognize that the NBA cannot choose the law in every city, state, and country in which we do business, we do not believe we can successfully host our All-Star festivities in Charlotte in the climate created by HB2,” the league said.

• Two items from Sardonicky, who is on Driftglass's blogroll:
  
  • "Kindergarten Fascists of the GOP," which contains prime snark:

    They're obviously thinking back fondly to the only school setting in which many of them excelled: Recess.

    and then it gets mean.
  • "Kleveland Klux Konvention," which is examples of Republicans displaying their backsides, one of whom squats in his own poo.
• "Black People Are Ordinary People," which everyone needs to read.
• Because this stuff happens, and even though it was non-fatal, it shouldn't have happened at all.  I mean, if we're dealing with Star Trek alien energy vampires, we should start laughing now, yes?  Because if not, we're in trouble.

Two Things

• Sadly, No! has tasty linkspam with Shorter X right-wing pundits being stupid.  And by "tasty," I mean emetic.
• Video of Lewis Black Stand-up Comedy in 2014 at the National Press Club.  Just short of an hour long.

(No, I refuse to experience the Republican convention first-hand. My stomach is not what it was.)

More Music, More Music, More Music...

The New Yorker has noticed that rock artists don't like their music being used by Republicans.

There are many things to find befuddling about the internal mechanics of the Republican Party, but its insistence on deploying countercultural rock anthems to soundtrack its rallies—even now, after so many lawsuits—is especially flummoxing. But I suppose therein lies a truth: in this particular context, it doesn’t matter if there’s a staggering fissure between what a thing really means and what someone else wants it to mean. All that matters is that it sounds cool.

My own suspicion is that the assumption made by Republicans is that people absorb the choruses of songs and don't take the trouble to hear or know the lyrics.  But don't quote me.  Quote Bruce Springsteen on "Born in the U.S.A." instead.

And Once Again

Oh yes he did.

Included is a bonus link to fivethirtyeight.com, with the history of Don't Play My Music (as of 2015).  Note the total number of Democrats on the list.  It's not a Both Sides thing.

In Memoriam

Nate Thurmond, basketball player.

Regular snarking blogging will resume once the world settles down.

Bastille Day

Or "La Fête Nationale," which is the official name.

I'm going some place with food to celebrate this year.  You?

I need to go dig up something I saw in A Distant Mirror, which is on the opposite coast at the moment.  Sorry.  I'm thinking of medieval parallels.

A Brief Hello

to the 6 AM (EDT; 3 AM PDT) readers.  Do please have a cup of coffee, cocoa, or tea and a croissant or biscuit and charge it to my account.

Oh, right, I don't have an account.

Um.  Wave to the others, then.  We're a secret club, we are.

"[Television advertising] Shows It to You. And It Shows It to You, and Shows It to You, and Shows..."

Shelley Berman on television advertising, 50 years ago.  I wouldn't expect anyone younger to get the gags.

Zandar Versus The Stupid's Sunday Long Read (misspelled in the title, and I so itched to correct it) excerpts the article by Rebecca Traister in New York Magazine on Hillary Clinton's campaign.  (Read the whole article, by the way; it's full of interesting detail.)  Zandar's conclusion:

[...]Clinton looks like a terrible, weak candidate on TV, when in person she's not. What bothers me is that Democrats have been running folks like that for years: Dukakis, Bentsen, John Kerry, Walter Mondale[;] the two guys who were different, Obama and Bill Clinton, won because they looked good on TV as well.

Trump is the opposite: if you see the guy at a rally he looks like a lunatic (and is) but on TV the guy comes across as less insane, if not "exciting" compared to "dull" Hillary Clinton (and to an extent, Sanders is the same way.)

How Clinton can start coming across as the reasonable choice in this media environment that constantly rewards Donald Trump and makes excuses for him daily because he's good ratings?

Yes, my mind floated directly to "The Girl Who Was Plugged In," why do you ask?

There is what's telegenic, or what looks good on TV, and some things that look good on TV are off-putting in real life.


[ETA:  Wrote this back at the beginning of June and either forgot about it or needed another piece of research.  Who knows?]

And Again

Yes, I know; it's been used.

When I heard about the case of Alton Sterling this morning, my first thought was to wonder whether Louisiana was a concealed carry state (it is, but one needs a permit).  That was probably because the fact that the body cams of the officers in question apparently "fell off" sounded too much like pre-meditated murder.  (The convenience store's video has already been impounded, and the owner didn't view it.)

The owner of the convenience store where Sterling was killed said he's sure the shooting was caught on his store's surveillance cameras, though he hasn't seen it. Police took the video later Tuesday, he told CNN.

What about body cameras?

State Rep. C. Denise Marcelle, who said the police chief briefed her, told CNN affiliate WAFB-TV that the officers were wearing body cameras, but the cameras fell off during the struggle and did not capture the shooting.

Um.

Y'know, I read "The Jigsaw Man" forty years ago, in which the death penalty had been extended to traffic violations so organs could be harvested.  This guy seems to have been executed (yes.  I went there) because he was black, selling CDs in public, and possibly defending himself, if the call to the police dispatcher is accurately reported.  This, and Ferguson, and Staten Island, and Chicago, and Oakland, is forcing me to consider that the only people allowed to be cops should be Buddhist monks.  (Which probably will get me in trouble with Buddhists; they get angry and frightened and adrenaline-rushy just like everyone else.)

God is merciful.  We fall short of that.

[ETA:  Zandar Versus The Stupid has better sources and a better essay conclusion:

What I know is that I'm bone weary of this happening, and that there's little I can do in order to try to stop it.]

In Memoriam

• Alvin Toffler, Future Shock
• Elie Wiesel, Holocaust survivor, Nobel Peace Prize winner, and writer
• ETA:  Caroline Aherne, actress
• Michael Cimino, director (The Deer Hunter)