Another Rebuke to Texas

"Because I told you befo--ore, You Can't Do That."

It amounted to the second finding of intentional discrimination in Texas election laws in as many months — a separate court in March ruled that Republicans racially gerrymandered several congressional districts when drawing voting maps in 2011, the same year the voter ID rules were passed.

[...]

The Texas law requires voters to show one of seven forms of identification at the ballot box. That list includes concealed handgun licenses — but not college student IDs — and Texas was forced under court order last year to weaken the law for the November elections.

Mercy and Subsequence

I stopped by a website of quackery early this morning; fortunately I'm not gullible (at least in that direction), so I just had a good laugh and avoided clicking on anything.

• I hadn't heard of "lunch-shaming" before, but it sounds straight out of Dickens.  Have I mentioned that to "conservatives," "Dickensian" (as long as not applied to them and theirs) is a term of approbation?  New Mexico has made the practice illegal.

  The reason shaming happens, it seems, is that many schools carry lunch debt forward and cannot be reimbursed with federal dollars for it. As a result, they come up with ways to shame children into paying debts for which they have no means to do so.
  
  This bill is a step forward, but it needs to be adopted in every state. No child should go hungry in this country. No child should be shamed for wanting to eat. And the idea that a child should have a hot meal tossed rather than be allowed to eat it just defies all understanding at all.

   (Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)
• Follow-up:  Alabama Governor Robert Bentley resigns before impeachment and is booked on lesser charges.  (Crooks and Liars; see updates)  AL.com has more details.

Oh, And...

Remember the Alabama Voter ID/DMV office closing story?  Because it turns out that there's more there than met the eye.  Zandar reports:

So yeah, the Governor's mistress very much wanted to keep black people in Alabama from being able to vote, and wanted to do so in a way that "protected" her lover. Nice lady, huh. Meanwhile, the impeachment proceedings against Bentley continue, and the former state AG? He's now Senator Luther Strange, Jeff Sessions's replacement.

Full article Zandar is citing, with more links.

ETA (4/9):  Bentley's been a bad, bad boy, even by Alabama standards.

De-Evolved

• The switch that flips when The Leader does something military.  (ETA:  Nicole Belle, Crooks and Liars,)

  Why, you'd almost have to believe that the media collectively gets hard-ons for the kabuki theater of pre-cleared military strikes. Shocking!
  
  Do they never get tired of being useful tools of a corrupt administration? Did they not learn this lesson after Iraq? What the hell is wrong with them?

  Barbara W. Tuchman noted this phenomenon in the last chapter of The Proud Tower.  Also, see Sappho (Noli Irritare Leones) for a further take.
• In memoriam: Tim Pigott-Smith, actor

In Memoriam

• Gilbert Baker, the Rainbow Flag
• Katy Feeney, baseball executive
• Don Rickles, "Mr. Warmth," comic

"Standing at the Crossroads, Believe I'm Sinking Down"

• Missed Opening Day this year.  Oh well.  But at least they're breaking even.  So far...
• Via skippy:  Device weirdness.  (Ian Bogost, The Atlantic)

  Technology’s role has begun to shift, from serving human users to pushing them out of the way so that the technologized world can service its own ends. And so, with increasing frequency, technology will exist not to serve human goals, but to facilitate its own expansion.
  
  This might seem like a crazy thing to say. What other purpose do toilets serve than to speed away human waste? No matter its ostensible function, precarious technology separates human actors from the accomplishment of their actions. They acclimate people to the idea that devices are not really there for them, but as means to accomplish those devices own, secret goals.
  
  This truth has been obvious for some time. Facebook and Google, so the saying goes, make their users into their products—the real customer is the advertiser or data speculator preying on the information generated by the companies’ free services. But things are bound to get even weirder than that.

• What Bernie Sanders and others get "wrong" (Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable):

  Chasing the largely mythical “white working-class voters whose loyalties went from “Obama to Trump” will not win future elections. The white working-class voters they covet are solidly Republican.
  
  Alienating people of color and women by embracing Trump’s base of human deplorables will not strengthen the Democratic Party. It will only drive away those voters who are the Democratic Party’s most reliable supporters.
  
  Sanders has unintentionally exemplified the way that both white liberals and white conservatives are heavily influenced by the white racial frame. As such, both sides of the ideological divide are desperate to see the best in their fellow white Americans, despite the latter’s racist behavior.

• Echidne of the Snakes:  Patriarchy makes its move.

  Well, Bernie Sanders is still in politics. Donald Trump ran for president three times. Newt Gingrich is still mouthing on television. And so on. But there is something very different about presumed female ambition. As an aside, there is no evidence at all that Hillary Clinton would consider running again. She has simply given a few speeches, but that is too ghastly for words.

• Body Impolitic:  Police/Jail Violence

  This series [Undisclosed podcast], now five episodes in, is very painful to listen to. When I want to turn it off, I remind myself that Freddie Gray didn’t get to turn it off, and neither did his family, friends, and neighbors. Nor do they still. Besides, if you can hear anything through the pain, it is also fascinating.

• On the Republican dislike of poor people (The Hunting of the Snark):

  When you don't, all your complaints about the new system don't mean anything. You wanted the system broken. You demanded its failure. You fought tooth-and-nail to kill it. You don't get to just walk away from that and shrug your shoulders and go back to your well-paid career rat-fucking the poor. You are responsible for your actions.
  
  And make no mistake: [Megan] McArdle doesn't care about the people who need insurance. She doesn't want the Republicans' greed and incompetence to ruin Republican political success.
  
  [...]
  
  McArdle gives the reasons why she is against the Republicans' plans, which are mixed in with her usual lies and deceit about Obamacare and too tedious to discuss. Then she tells us that she simply can't understand why Republicans decided to pull down Obamacare without having a replacement.
  
  [...]
  
  She should have thought of that when she was predicting that Obamacare would destroy health care and must be stopped immediately. She watched Republicans do nothing viable to replace Obamacare with a functioning market yet for seven years yet she yelped constantly to kill it. Now she shakes her head and fumes that her political party will be hurt by their and her actions.
  
  [...]
  
  After eight (or more?) years of Republicans rat-fucking Obamacare, McArdle became convinced that it was damaged enough to die on its own and she is not best pleased that her ego or career might be dinged by a loss of Republican power. The sick, dead and suffering are beside the point.

• ETA: Lance Mannion: They want people to die.

  They want people to die. I’ve preached this sermon before, and I know I’m preaching to the choir. But it’s the unholy truth. They want people to die. That’s the explanation for this. The AHCA was---is still---wildly unpopular and one of the reasons is it would take away guaranteed coverage for people with pre-existing conditions. But that’s the part the Freedom Caucus wants to bring back. They want people with cancer to die of it. Poor people, first, but not just poor people. Anybody who isn’t rich enough to pay top dollar for tests, treatment, operations, and medicine. They---we---should all die if we aren’t smart enough, strong enough, virtuous enough to not ever get sick.
  
  Their religion requires human sacrifice. They pray by offering other people’s suffering to their wicked demon of a god. It’s how they feel virtuous. By being tough. Cruel. Impulses to kindness, charity, common decency are signs of weakness, failures to be tough enough to carry out God’s will.

• Yastreblyansky:

  You start the unmasking procedure not because of the identity of the person, which you don't know, but because of their behavior, which makes you want to know it. Flynn, Stone, Manafort, and Page were just Male X when whoever it was got interested in them, their identities hidden by the NSA rules; they were unmasked because somebody at some agency, NSC or elsewhere, needed to find out who it was that was doing the stuff they were doing.
  
  I should add that what the story as it's unfolding really shows, in addition to the willed psychopathic incoherence of rightwing storytelling, is further evidence that the techies of NSA who collect the material do indeed follow the rules of minimizing and masking the identities of US persons with excruciating rigor. Whatever bad eggs at FBI and CIA may end up doing with them.

• Colorblind Christians:

  It will be a bleak future for American democracy if the poles of political debate range from racist/incompetent populism to technocratic liberalism to leftism. There must be a place for thoughtful conservatism. Do you believe in the value of reasoned debate and the vigorous airing of dissenting opinions? Then support conservatives of integrity.

  Yes, I did observe the date.
• Still trying to destroy health care. (Zandar Versus The Stupid)  Keep up the vigilance!

Do Not Go Cashless into That Good Night

Why cash is good and trying to do away with it is wrong (note who benefits from pure digital transactions).

A taste:

If we are going to refer to bank payments as ‘cashless’, we should then refer to cash payments as ‘bankless’. Because that’s what cash is, and right now it is the only thing standing between us and a completely privatised money system.

As in the case of previous privatisations, we’ll hear suited TV pundits arguing that if the digital payments companies don’t work for people they will be outcompeted by better private systems. Yeah right. When did you last see a credible competitor to the likes of Mastercard and Visa? They preside over huge network systems, subject to intense network effects. It’s in no shopkeeper’s interest to use a competitor to Visa when it’s so utterly dominant already.

Brett Scott, Aeon

In Memoriam

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

"Send More Chuck Berry"

Chicago Guy remembers.

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

In Memoriam

Colin Dexter, mystery writer (Inspector Morse)

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

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

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

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

Sing It! Sing It!

Colorblind Christians on the health care vote today.

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

Spelling It Out

• Robert Reich at AlterNet:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ah-Huh...

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

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

...and Statistics

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

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

• On Narratology:

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

  (Yastreblyansky, The Rectification of Names)
  

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

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

Maybe They've Discovered the Power of Unions

Humpback whales congregate (for dinner).

Side Dish

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

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

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

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

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

¹ In your dreams, Charlie. Return to text.

Breaking News: Water is Wet

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

In Memoriam

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

In Memoriam -- Chuck Berry

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

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

In Memoriam

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

...Maybe Later

*the blahs*

Y'Know,

Microwave?

Seriously?

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

Yahrzeit

Yahrzeit.

Cumulative Effect of Lies

Robert Reich, AlterNet:

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

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

In Memoriam

Robert Osborne, cinemaphile/face of Turner Classic Movies.

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

Now That's How You Do It!

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

"HE HAS SCISSORS," indeed.

Driftglass For the Win

Because he's correct.

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

Emphasis added.

Quelle surprise!

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

Gee, ya think?

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

Including the Underwear (*Yeuccccchhhh*)

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

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

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

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

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

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