In Memoriam

• Herman Andimba Toivo ya Toivo, Namibian leader and activist
• John G. Avildsen, director
• Anita Pallenberg, muse and actress
• Herma Hill Kay, UC Berkeley law school dean
• Stephen Furst, actor
• Helmut Kohl, German chancellor during reunification
• Rosalie Sorrels, folk singer

Mmmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...

Via Shakesville, Greg Sargent of the Washington Post:

House Republicans are now angry at this, Politico reports, because they stuck out their necks making the case for a bill that would leave many millions without coverage and gut protections for people with preexisting conditions. They “explained to their constituents” that the last-minute changes to the bill (adding all of $8 billion) would make it less destructive to that latter group. But Trump has now upended all of this, putting them at greater political risk.

But their anger over this is particularly galling, because Republicans themselves do not want their constituents to actually know what is in the bill they are set to pass. And they are taking active, extensive and possibly unprecedented steps to make sure they don’t. Trump merely made this harder for them to get away with.

[...]

Now Senate Republicans are urgently working to soften the bill, because a number of moderates can’t be seen embracing something that cruel. But, if anything, they are going further than their House counterparts to forestall any kind of serious public awareness of what they are doing. Two GOP aides recently told Axios that there are no plans to publicly release the Senate version well in advance of the vote, because, as one of them put it, “we aren’t stupid.” There have been no public hearings. Even some Senate Republicans have expressed befuddlement about what’s in the bill that they will be voting on.

Emphases added.

Sample scripts for calling Senators.

*cough* *cough* Termites in the Load-Bearing Timbers *cough*

• Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars, this morning.

  Investigators found evidence that hackers tried to delete or alter voter data in Illinois. They also accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state, accessed a campaign finance database.

• Brad Reed, Raw Story, at AlterNet, this morning.

  A new report reveals that Russian hackers breached voting systems in 39 different states, which means that Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election appears far more widespread than what has been previously disclosed.

Full report at Bloomberg (which does not like ad blockers).

Also, Driftglass comes down on both-siderism with both pies.

Call your Senators and tell them to vote NO on repealing and replacing Obamacare (ACA) with their Frankenstein's monster of a bill, and while you're at it, insist that they hold hearings, because they're trying to sneak this through without hearings or the report from the CBO with the actual cost.  Everyone knows or is related to someone this will affect personally.  Everyone.

ETA:

There is exactly one reason for Senate Republicans to do this [forbid filming interviews with Senators in hallways]: They're afraid to own the legislation that strips 24 million Americans of their healthcare. After witnessing the nightmare House Republicans endured at their town halls, the Senate GOP has clearly decided that secrecy and speed are necessary to force the immensely unpopular ACA repeal through. Do I even need to mention the almost unlimited hypocrisy of hiding what they're doing after Republicans spent years screaming the lie that Obamacare was crafted behind closed doors (they had over 100 public hearings)?

Justin Rosario, The Daily Banter. Further:

As of this writing, the official statement from the Senate Republicans says that no one authorized the ban but clearly someone put out the word.

Further corroboration at sfgate.com.

THE MASKS ARE OFF!  The Republican Senators refuse to release a draft of their bill.  They don't want anyone to know precisely what's in it.  Because, y'know, there might be OBJECTIONS!  (via twistedchick)

STEALTH AND SPEED ARE THE ANTITHESIS OF, DARE I SAY IT, THE AMERICAN WAY!

Yes, I am shouting.

Politicklish

(with acknowledgements to Those Who Came Before.  Hi!)

• Note to the "Marketing Community:"  If I really wanted optimized searching at this blog, I would mention the capital of South Korea a lot more often.  I don't.  Capisce?  Also, the fact that I have on occasion, especially before that last November election, mentioned Buttercup by name does not mean that I am in favor of Buttercup, his policies, his party, his people, or anything else pertaining to him whatsoever.  There are reasons I don't accept advertising for this endeavor, one of them being that I'd end up with pro-Buttercup-themed ads when I'm anti-Buttercup.  Also, there are over 700,000 blogs with a greater audience.  There are advantages to being small-time.  I don't have to pander.  
• Blinders and blinkered:

  Roberts asked [R-FL Rep. Francis] Rooney about Paul Ryan's lame excuse that Trump is just "new to government" and therefore didn't really understand that what he was doing.
  
  Here's how Rooney responded:
  
  ROBERTS: When it comes to James Comey referring to the president as a liar, do you think that that is accurate. Do you think that President Trump has ever lied to the American people?
  
  ROONEY: I haven't seen evidence of a lie yet, and I'm really surprised that the FBI Director would use that kind of language, especially after some of the things that he's done.
  
  Thomas Roberts just shrugged it off and moved right along to the next question. The only time he got even the least bit testy with Rooney during the interview or pushed back at him at all was when he attacked the media later in the same segment.
  
  The Washington Post has been tracking just how much Trump lies, and they're up to 623 lies just in Trump's first 137 days.

  Heather, Crooks and Liars. Including bonus chart of the lies in question.
• Echidne of the Snakes links to Katha Pollitt's article on "empathy, lack of, and who does and does not," and had a couple of questions:

  As an aside, two questions about this conversation fascinate me: First, why is it assumed that if I lean left politically I am not hard-working, self-supporting or resilient? In other words, why do many assume that the stereotypical left and right values cannot be held by the same person?
  
  Second, note the sleight-of-hand in the way the basic problem is so often defined by first constructing all of the left as "elitist" (and not the party of the poor, say) and then demanding that those "elites" -- because they now are viewed as elites -- must attend to the grievances of the down-trodden Trump-voters (who are actually in power)?

  The Pollitt article points out:

  Empathy and respect are not about kowtowing to someone’s cultural and social preferences. They’re about supporting policies that make people’s lives better, whether they share your values, or your tastes, or not.

  Seriously.
  
• And bloody about time!  (NYTimes link.)

In Memoriam

Adam West, actor

So Now They're Trying Stealth Speed, Redux

twistedchick pointed me to this tweet from Sahil Kapur:

It begins: McConnell initiates the "Rule 14" process of putting the House-passed AHCA on the Senate calendar for fast-track consideration.

— Sahil Kapur (@sahilkapur) June 7, 2017

[Embedded tweet.]

Gee, one would think that there must be something extremely smoky, smelly, and suspicious about the haste to get that bill passed.  The Congressional Budget Office's report was not favorable to the "American Health Care Act."  (See Shakesville.)  It's time to call Senators and ask them to vote No, or at least schedule hearings and read the thing.  Especially the 23 million that will be (re-)deprived of  health insurance.

Also, the House wants to water down the financial regulations put in place after the 2007 crisis, because they have learned nothing.

Kansas is ending its "experiment" with deep tax cuts (video).  It didn't work.

The Rude Pundit on Comey's conversations, and the video of the Senate Intelligence Committee hearing at C-SPAN (Flash needed; runtime 2:40.)  Zandar, citing Vox.com and the Washington Post:

The Trump Regime is in trouble, and badly so. Comey will help see to that. He flat-out said that he believed he was fired over the Russia investigation and Mike Flynn, period. What Congress chooses to do with that information, and what voters choose to do as a result, we shall see.

More on everything at Avedon's Sideshow.

Texas

...has had to modify their voter ID law.

The bill signed into law by Gov. Abbott on Thursday night mirrors much of this court order, making similar restrictions on the Texas voter ID law permanent.

Again, this is not a total victory for voting rights. The law still imposes an ID requirement on most voters, and some voters may be intimidated by the fact that they risk jail time if they make a false statement on their declaration of reasonable impediment.

Texas also filed court documents Thursday night claiming that its changes to its voter ID law should erase the federal court’s finding that the state acted with racially discriminatory intent. If the courts ultimately agree with this argument, that will limit the remedies available to voting rights advocates who want to ensure that Texas does not engage in additional voter suppression.

But the new Texas law also locks in place restrictions on the state’s voter suppression efforts that it could have just as easily fought in court.

ThinkProgress, via skippy

In Memoriam

• Jack O'Neill, surfers' wetsuits
• Jimmy Piersall, ballplayer
• Peter Sallis, voice actor (Wallace of Wallace and Gromet)
• Roger Smith, actor

Take Three

Because Yastreblyansky cuts to the heart of Will's bleating:

As I say, I've been preaching the unholy alliance forever, in terms as simple as Boo says: the gross part of conservatism is there because the elegant harpsichord-playing conservatives have to get votes from somewhere. Will can't bear being in the same room with the unlettered, ill-dressed, foul-mouthed yahoos who keep the Republican party alive, but without them conservatism is as dead as it was in 1950.

But the other side is: that college nostalgia has more in common with yahoo conservatism than you might think, because it's a nostalgia for a deeply stratified society in which the young men depend on an unquestioned capital income and an army of servants and attendants and seduceable low-class girls, bookies, drug dealers, musicians, and all that riffraff—while the young men remain cheerfully blind to their privilege.

[...]

Will's shock at the triumph of Trumpism is the shock of being forced to recognize what was there all along, the seamy underside of conservatism, the ugly mass on which his bow-tied, preppy polysyllabic world rests. The nostalgia was for the time before Trump when he could successfully pretend it didn't exist.

Two Takes on That Will Thing

George Will, who is irrelevant now that the Chicago Cubs have actually won a World Series, wrote a column lamenting the coarsening (the words "soiled" and "vulgarians" figure in the essay) of the conservative "movement" (which involves moving backward) and extolling the "brio" of William F. Buckley.  Booman Tribune reminds us what a reactionary weirdo Buckley was and then goes on to explain:

These new Republicans were the furthest thing from Bach aficionados and most of them had only seen yachts on television. But they served as the bodies that business interests needed to prevail politically and begin to beat back a New Deal that was no longer working as well as it had. Buckley and his allies didn’t give a damn about prayer in school or restricting abortion rights, but they needed an army that would back them on opposing federal regulations, high marginal tax rates, and strong antitrust enforcement.

Conservatism was always about raising an army of vulgarians to serve the interests of a new conservative elite in which folks like Buckley would “play the harpsichord.” That’s it. That’s all of it.

There's more. Driftglass contributes a filk quatrain:

Don’t let it be forgot
That once there was a spot
For one brief shining moment that was known
As Scam-a-lot.

Because conservatism has never been "cool" or particularly tasteful or highminded.  (I'm stopping here ahead of an impending rant.)

What Junction?

• Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars (who probably didn't write the headline):  "Joe And Mika: Trump Like A Child 'Pooping His Pants'"  with video and partial transcript.

  If Joe and Mika hadn't applauded every day for an entire year every single time Donald Trump defecated (and thrown clumps of poo every time Hillary Clinton did or said anything), we might not be having this laugh fest right now.

• Mmmmmmmm-hmmmmmmmmmmmm.
• Addicts in West Virginia (via Just an Earth-Bound Misfit, I).
• Fraudster sued for fraud.  

  The Intercept reports that Democracy Partners has filed a lawsuit against O’Keefe and his organization Project Veritas, which it alleges falsified documents to get access to the group’s members.
  
  The suit accuses Project Veritas member Allison Maass of concocting an elaborate cover story and using forged documents to get an internship with the group, with the goal of secretly recording members’ conversations and using them in political propaganda videos.

  Brad Reed, Raw Story.  "Veritas," my foot.  Children, Mission: Impossible was a TV show.  You know, fiction.  Although I suppose since lies are their stock in trade, they probably feel more comfortable presenting false faces to the world.  What empty shells they must be.  By the way, what happened to all those tapes allegedly made at CNN?
  
• ETA:  Opera seized up and I'd forgotten about these:  
• Video about the Voter Fraud Lies, presented by Frances Langum at Crooks and Liars.
• Cutting anti-discrimination enforcement (Zandar Versus The Stupid)

  This is something Attorney General Jeff Sessions has wanted all his career, a federal government neutered on civil rights, without any personnel to deal with more than a handful of issues, while states decide what civil rights enforcement means because of course the feds don't have the resources to actually enforce anything.
  
  It's the tried and true Republican formula: destroy the federal government's ability to do its job, then declare it a failure and zero out the budget for it. The damage from this will be generational, but of course that's the point.

Eve of Distraction

Actual Memorial Day is tomorrow; today is Designated Memorial Day.  Remember those who died in wars; work toward eliminating the wars, especially the stupid ones.  Remember that 20% Off sales are not the reason for the holiday.

• George Takei smacks down "trolls" who don't like the new Star Trek series' diversity (Star Trek Discovery stars (ooooops) Michelle Yeoh as the Captain.  The "trolls" should maybe take their complaint to Gene Roddenberry's ghost).  (David, Crooks and Liars)
• No, Twitter isn't really "reeling," nor was the remark particularly "scathing," but John Cleese did get off a good one.   The tweet, background, and responses, at AlterNet from Raw Story. 
• The headline of the AlterNet article (repeating the headline at BillMoyers.com) says "Donald Trump to Hungry Seniors:  Drop Dead."  (Trudy Lieberman, BillMoyers.com at AlterNet)
• Headline:

  On Fox News, Gutting Social Safety Nets Is ‘Restoring The Dignity Of Work’

  On this planet, gutting the safety net is called "Sticking it to the poor."  It apparently needs to be said that when "conservatives" and that ilk talk about the "dignity of work," they're not talking about jobs that pay a living or better wage.  They're talking about labors that may or may not make their lives easier but that they don't want to have to do or think about.  I don't see too many "conservatives" bragging about starving themselves.  A diet of "pride" doesn't go very well with working.  Food is better.  (NewsHound Brian, AlterNet [from News Hounds])
• Net neutrality threatened again:

  Under its Trump-annointed chairman, Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission decided last Thursday to revisit its net neutrality ruling. The agency has reopened a docket for public comments on Pai’s proposal to undermine the safeguards needed to protect people from having their internet service providers block, throttle or de-prioritize the online content they want to see.
  
  The last time the agency did this, in 2014 and 2015, it unleashed a torrent of public comments in support of the idea that the open internet should have basic protections under the law. Four million people voiced their concerns via the agency’s beleaguered website. The vast majority of these comments supported meaningful net neutrality protections.
  
  That’s just what the FCC put in place: It responded to the public outcry and reclassified ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act.
  
  [...]
  
  As the Trump FCC moves forward with this misinformation campaign, it’s worth highlighting the six things its chairman doesn’t want you to know:
  
  1. The American public overwhelmingly supports net neutrality protections

  Extra emphasis added. Read the rest.  And then make your views known.
  
• Why The Handmaid's Tale should frighten you.
• Why the Democrats don't win more often, as summarized by the Orgtheory.net blog and reposted to Sociological Images.
• Remembering history and why that's important.  (Rebecca Gordon, TomDispatch) (Also "There...are...four...lights!" [video])
• More on White Evangelical Christians and the Civil Rights Movement.  (Colorblind Christians)

  This is a good example of the white evangelical self-critique because the writer is insisting that racial justice was not only a complicated political question—as the moderates would have it—but actually cut so close to the heart of the Gospel that it affected one’s final and eternal judgment (in which any good evangelical believed). This was hard-hitting.
  
  Ok, so there was diversity of thought. The harder question to begin to answer is this: if this self-critique was so widespread, why was it so impotent? (Or was it?)

Don't Give Them Any Ideas.

Why not?

AlterNet's Kali Holloway, in enumerating a few of the current president's faux pas during the Middle East-European tour, wrote:

He literally threw his weight around like an attention-starved problem child, and he broadcast his every move to the world via his cellphone, which would be a security risk if we had a president anyone wanted to kidnap.

And I finally dredged from memory the appropriate story: "The Ransom of Red Chief."

Yeah.

In Memoriam

On Saturday, too.

• Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter and father to Mika (TV reporter)
• Jim Bunning, Hall of Fame pitcher (perfect game) and (*sigh*) conservative Senator from Kentucky
• Gregg Allman, musician (Allman Brothers Band). Full story as it unravels.

Memorial Day is Coming; Here Are a Few Things to Remember

• Lance Mannion on the haters:

  They hate the poor, that's obvious. They hate and despise and fear the poor, especially if they're brown. But they hate the sick too. And the old, at least everyone irresponsible enough to get old without having put together a $500,000 portfolio. They hate children. Other people's children, of course. They dote on and spoil their own. But other people's children are coddled and raised to think life owes them so those kids need to be taught a lesson. They hate mothers. They hate women! They hate veterans. They hate anybody---anybody who isn't rich---who has ever looked to the government for help. They hate everybody who isn't rich because we should be rich. That's what life is for. To make money. Lots of it. And if you didn't do that you've wasted your life. If you didn't do it it's a sign you didn't try, you didn't work or work hard enough. It's a sign of your bad character and moral failure. And that's what we all are in their eyes, moral failures who expect them to bail us out when our bad character gets us in trouble. Even if we aren't constantly coming to them with our hand out in one way, we're doing it in another, demanding we be paid more than we're worth, demanding benefits we haven't earned or deserved.
  
  [...]
  
  And out in Montana, Greg Gianforte, the Republican candidate for Congress, who last night auditioned for the WWE using a reporter for his sparring partner, wants to end Social Security because he’s against the whole idea that people should ever retire. Noah was still working when he was 600, you know. Noah lived to be 950, going 300 years without, as far as I know, building another ark, but never mind. The bible doesn’t specifically mention retirement, so Gianforte thinks God’s against it. The bible doesn’t mention the United States, the state of Montana, or millionaire ignoramuses with anger management issues getting elected to Congress either, so I hope that means God is against at least the last one, but it’s not looking that way, according to the polls.

• ThinkProgress:

  Fox News journalists were key witnesses to the violent incident that occurred on Wednesday in Montana involving Greg Gianforte, Republican House candidate in Thursday’s special election, and Guardian reporter Ben Jacobs. But you wouldn’t know it from watching Fox and Friends.
  
  Jacobs accused Gianforte of assaulting him after the reporter asked him for the candidate’s reaction to the Congressional Budget Office’s score for the American Health Care Act. Audio of the incident supports Jacobs’ account, but Gianforte’s campaign released a statement telling a very different story — one that actually painted Jacobs as the aggressor.
  
  [...]
  
  Gianforte’s story was demolished by eyewitness accounts from Fox News reporter Alicia Acuna, field producer Faith Mangan, and photographer Keith Railey. They actually make the incident sound even more violent than what Jacobs initially described. Acuna authored a story on Fox News’ website that details how Gianforte, without any physical provocation, “grabbed Jacobs by the neck with both hands and slammed him into the ground behind him.”

  Have I mentioned that the masks are off? The masks are off.
  
• See also Welcome Back to Gotham City, who quotes Mark Twain about Congress being the criminal class.  ETA:  More on the story.  The Guardian on Gianforte's apology and win.
• Indomitable:

  Because [name redacted] is a white man, certain questions will not be asked. Who radicalized him? What types of news media did he watch, read and listen to? Is there a moral leadership crisis in White America? What is going on in the homes and communities of the white people who join right-wing hate groups or who find themselves attracted to the white supremacist and white nationalist “alt-right” movement?

  A terrorist by any other name ... still stinks.
  
• The Rude Pundit:

  And, again, it can't be said enough, this was a ceremony dedicated to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the way that nations came together under Article 5 of the NATO treaty, the T in NATO, to help the U.S. after 9/11, nations that lost soldiers in the war they joined under Article 5.

  Read at home, or wait until the boss and/or the office tattletale is out for lunch. The Rude One has a very low opinion of Buttercup.
• "Did Comey Knowingly Act On A Bogus Piece Of Russian Intelligence?"  Apparently, yes.  (Crooks and Liars and Shakesville, respectively)
  
• Driftglass:

  No, Mr. Gerson. No and no and no.
  
  Donald Trump is not destroying your conservative movement. He is just throwing a very inconvenient, million-candle-power spotlight on the rotting, squirmy, midden pile of racists, con men, imbeciles and demagogues that your conservative movement has always been.
  
  Donald Trump is not "changing the party’s most basic moral and political orientations". He is simply putting your party's longstanding-but-carefully-camouflaged obscene "moral and political orientations" front-and-center in a way that is visible from the orbit of Jupiter.
  
  And "eventual exile"? Oh please, Michael, we've been through all of this before. Remember Operation Endless Clusterfuck? Ring any bells? It was big news for awhile. In fact, as I recall, it was men like you who put so many clever words into Dubya's mouth explaining how imperative Bush's Iraqi Debacle was, and how quick and ouchless it would all be, and how swimmingly it was all going...
  
  ...right up until it all went tits-up.
  
  Then do you remember what happened? Because we here on the Left sure as shit do.

  Read the whole thing; it is a righteous jeremiad. A J'Accuse. An indictment of liars and grifters in high office.
  
• From AlterNet:
  • Jacob Sugarman summarizes Paul Krugman.
  • Robert Reich on the Scylla and Charybdis that is Trumpcare.

Sustained/Overruled

• Congressional Budget Office examines the "American Health Care Act" and finds it wanting.  As it were.  (Los Angeles Times document copy of report.  Via Karoli Kuns at Crooks and Liars, with Bernie Sanders video.  See also David Leonhardt's column at the New York Times:

  Distraction is a tactic of the politicians who are trying to take away health insurance from people. These politicians can’t sell their proposals on the merits. That’s why both the House and, thus far, the Senate have refused to hold any hearings. They know that virtually every expert across the ideological spectrum — including groups representing doctors, nurses, hospitals, patients and senior citizens — opposes the bill.
  
  Unable to win a debate on its merits, Republican leaders need to change the subject. They can’t let their proposals be judged on whether they improve the American health care system, because they don’t. They need to create a lower standard by which the plan will be judged.

  [Emphasis added by me.]
• John Lewis opposes proposed federal budget and cuts. Report by Alexandra Rosenmann at AlterNet, with video.
• The masks are off, people.

Irrelevant, Incompetent, and Immaterial

• Booman Tribune:
  

  Most people are going to gravitate to the second possibility because it’s less grave in its consequences. Perhaps the misdeeds Trump is hiding are not so serious. Maybe he doesn’t want to admit that he didn’t properly vet Flynn or he is trying to hide that he asked Flynn to interact with Ambassador Kislyak because he wanted to start his relations with Russia with a clean slate. Perhaps he’s acting loyally to Flynn in part because Flynn only did what he was told to do and in part because the truth would expose that he’s told some rather extraordinary lies.
  
  Even if we allow for this more innocent explanation, however, it’s really very damning. Trump has repeatedly acted to stymie and shut down an investigation of Flynn, committing clear acts of obstruction of justice that would result in imprisonment for anyone not shielded by the Office of the Presidency’s protections against prosecution. If he did all this to avoid mere embarrassment and survivable political headaches, that’s kind of incredible.
  
  [...]
  
  And it’s true, there’s something inexplicable about Trump’s behavior because it mixes such a clear consciousness of guilt with actions that would only be taken rationally be a person who feels innocent. More and more, his only defense is a kind of bottomless cluelessness that caroms off in every direction. He’s a dupe of the Russians rather than a witting participant. He doesn’t understand when he’s been used and betrayed even when it’s staring him squarely in the face. He has no clue what was done by his operatives, so his sense of innocence is real. He thinks the people who he asks to clear him can do so truthfully because he’s got no attachment to anything approximating reality. He erroneously thinks the president can do whatever he wants because he has a misimpression of how the Constitution and our system of checks and balances are designed to work.

  Please read the whole thing; it's long and cites sources. This is just a taste.
• Child accidentally shot; sheriff deplores while still defending gun rights. I'm not making that up.  Spocko's Brain.  

  Have you supported laws that required gun owners to keep guns locked and out of reach of children? If not, why not?
  
  Going forward will you support gun storage laws? If someone doesn’t follow them, and there is a death or injury, do you support felony charges? Remember, you just complained that you could only charge the father and son with a misdemeanor.

• To use an ancient Internet term:  Keith Olbermann gets shrill!  With video.  At AlterNet, via Raw Story.
• A little bank conspiracy.  (PeakProsperity, via peristaltor at Dreamwidth, who brings up a point or two and also invokes "Brownshoes," though not directly.)

In Memoriam

3 NY Times obits if you're keeping track of your permitted articles.

• The victims of the Manchester bombing.  (BBC.com, which also has updates)
• Sir Roger Moore, actor (he had many roles besides James Bond)
• Dina Merrill, actress and philanthropist (last week, I was wondering whatever had happened to her and was cheered to find she was still alive, though not acting anymore)
• Anne R. Dick, memoirist (also started poetry magazines)

Immaterial, Irrelevant, and Incompetent

• Innocents Abroad?

  Can you imagine how the media would cover any other president if they exhibited the temperament and behavior that Trump has shown? If a slide show had been made for foreign dignitaries, telling them to keep it simple and blow up Obama's ego, how denigrating would the entire right wing noise machine have been?
  
  They attacked President Obama for actually being too smart.
  
  The bar is set so low for our "King baby" that the media is already saying if he doesn't cause an international incident on this trip it'll be a success!

  (John Amato, Crooks and Liars)
  
• Past performance not a guarantee of future earnings.

  So don’t count on some moderate Republican or some high-minded career prosecutor or some unimpeachable judge or some FBI leader or some administration whistle-blower or the Supreme Court or the Constitution or even Rube Goldberg to save us from Trump. We got lucky once — very, very lucky. We aren’t likely to be that lucky again.

  (Neil Gabler, AlterNet)
  
• How the field of medicine debunks fake "facts."

  We don’t yet know whether this method will work because the results haven’t been published — but whether or not the trial fails, it’ll bring us closer to answering an important question about information right now: How do you prevent dubious claims from catching on in the first place?
  
  Stanford University professor John Ioannidis also sees the most hope in early childhood education, and agrees children should be empowered with basic skills on critical thinking. He told me that waiting to teach clinicians the standards of evidence-based medicine late in their training doesn’t always work.

  (Julia Belluz, Vox)
  
• Article on tech feudalism.

  Tech companies are run by a feckless leadership accountable to no one, creating a toolkit for authoritarianism while hypnotized by science-fiction fantasy.
  
  There are two things we have to do immediately. The first is to stop the accelerating process of tracking and surveillance before it can do any more harm to our institutions.
  
  The danger facing us is not Orwell, but Huxley. The combo of data collection and machine learning is too good at catering to human nature, seducing us and appealing to our worst instincts. We have to put controls on it. The algorithms are amoral; to make them behave morally will require active intervention.
  
  The second thing we need is accountability. I don’t mean that I want Mark Zuckerberg’s head on a pike, though I certainly wouldn’t throw it out of my hotel room if I found it there. I mean some mechanism for people whose lives are being brought online to have a say in that process, and an honest debate about its tradeoffs.

  (Maciej Ceglowski, Idle Words, posted at naked capitalism)
• Some of these games go way back...

  He didn’t vote for Goldwater because he supports racism, but because he supports conservatism. Sound familiar? Then, as now, if he had taken the time to understand perspectives other than his own, he might have realized that this was only a roundabout way of saying that the rights and safety of others are expendable in pursuit of one’s ideological goals.

  (Jesse Curtis, Colorblind Christians)
  

In Memoriam

• Chris Cornell, musician (Soundgarden)
• Powers Boothe, actor
• Lloyd Cotsen, collector and business executive (for Neutrogena, the stuff I've been using since 1975 and at one point owned three shares of their stock)

Incompetent, Irrelevant, and Immaterial

• Via Mike's Blog Round-Up:  Mustang Bobby's blog Bark Bark Woof Woof:
  

  I think what we’re seeing here is the result of Trump taking on a job he thought would be so easy — after all, Dubya and Obama did it — but is not only much harder than he thought but it requires a skill set that he doesn’t have: the ability to get along with people, listen to them, and actually follow their advice, even if it goes against his instinct. All signs, either now or in his past, indicate that he’s never had to do that, and even when faced with defeat, bankruptcy, or defiance, he’s managed to absorb it not as a failure or mistake on his part but as a betrayal or failure by someone else.

• Via driftglass:  David Brooks (no!!) discovers the Dunning-Kruger effect,  as applied to certain current Presidents.  Drifty reminds us that This Is Not News.

  And all of these clowns have come once again to this same tragic place having learned absolutely nothing because, as I have noted on this blog more times than I can count, it is psychologically and financially impossible for Mr. David Brooks -- or any other Conservative/Both Siderist Beltway creature -- to make the simple and glaringly obvious observation that President Stupid is nothing more or less than a perfect manifestation of the ignorant, paranoid, racist, Fox News-drunk base of Mr. Brooks' Republican party.
  
  Because that simple and glaringly obvious observation would destroy the entire professional political pundit ecosystem which makes it possible for Mr. David Brooks and every other Conservative/Both Siderist Beltway creature to make a handsome living by lying to the American people.

  Bonus: Video clip from Blazing Saddles. You know the one.

Satirists and Surrealists Union Going On Strike!

Target of satire outperforms possible ridicule!  (The Onion ran the linked story on May 11, 2017.  Events have caught up with them.  Ahem.)  Susie Madrak at Crooks and Liars, with video, reports on the tweets admitting the sharing of classified information with Russian officials.

Former CIA analyst Ned Price said the other thing the White House did yesterday is "they requested that the Washington Post omit key details. And in doing so, the irony here is, the Washington Post showed more discretion than President Trump did in his discussion with the Russians over this threat."

Price said the president has done this morning is "absolutely undercut the denials and the carefully worded statements we have heard yesterday. not only from H.R. McMaster, not only from Dina Powell, not only from Secretary Tillerson, but all of this administration's surrogates claiming that there's nothing to see here, this is more fake news."

And Stephen Colbert (video):

"The entire week has been a messaging disaster, and sources say Trump is 'frustrated and angry at everyone' and that he's considering a 'huge reboot,'" he said. "Yes, it's yet another '70s reboot, Watergate 2: Resign Harder — this summer, he is a crook.

Via Alexandra Rosenmann, AlterNet.  ("The squirrel is in the basket," indeed.)

The pies are flying...

Telegraph, Telephone, Tell-a-Trump

• Headline news:
  

  Trump revealed highly classified information to Russian foreign minister and ambassador

  Brief excerpt:
  

  The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.
  The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump's decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State. After Trump's meeting, senior White House officials took steps to contain the damage, placing calls to the CIA and the National Security Agency.

• Analysis.

Both items from SFGate, reprinting from the Washington Post.

Echidne of the Snakes is, as usual, succinct:

But at least we didn't get a president careless with her emails!

Wisconsin Voter ID

"Not a single voter in this state will be disenfranchised by the ID law," Lazich promised.

Comedy gold.  As usual, a lie.

Dos Equis

1. Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable:  "The Republican Party's Efforts to Take Healthcare Away From the American People is an Act of Political Terrorism"

   Their decision to take away affordable health care from some of the most vulnerable Americans is an act of political violence and a form of terrorism. Once again the Republicans are showing their contempt for the “useless eaters.” While the leaders of the ruling political party have convinced themselves that they are heroes, in reality they are villains and enemies of the American people.

2. FBI Director Comey was fired by The Apprentice's host the President, and everyone was reminded of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre (resignations and firing).  

Postscript

Game, set and match to Sally Yates.

Full transcript of the hearing, via the Washington Post.  The Rude One is characteristically Rude, describing Yates' testimony as "calm evisceration."  Crooks and Liars' John Amato points out her responses to Ted Cruz.  Karoli Kuns cites her replies to John Cornyn.  Red Painter reports that Al Franken suggested larger issues with Flynn.  (Remember Flynn?)  James Clapper also acquitted himself well.

Bumpty-Bumpty-Bump

Not channelling Trashcan Man...

(Aside:  I managed somehow not to have heard that song until the late '90s, which meant I lost the aural background of a fair piece of The Stand).

• To begin:  Lesley Stahl interviews the last living prosecutor from the Nuremberg (Nürnberg in German) trials.

  The Nuremberg trials after World War II were historic -- the first international war crimes tribunals ever held. Hitler's top lieutenants were prosecuted first. Then a series of subsequent trials were mounted against other Nazi leaders, including 22 SS officers responsible for killing more than a million people -- not in concentration camps -- but in towns and villages across Eastern Europe. They would never have been brought to justice were it not for Ben Ferencz.
  
  [...]
  
  But Ferencz knew they were guilty and could prove it. Without calling a single witness, he entered into evidence the defendants' own reports of what they'd done. Exhibit 111: "In the last 10 weeks, we have liquidated around 55,000 Jews." Exhibit 179, from Kiev in 1941: "The city's Jews were ordered to present themselves… about 34,000 reported, including women and children. After they had been made to give up their clothing and valuables, all of them were killed, which took several days." Exhibit 84, from Einsatzgruppen D in March of 1942: Total number executed so far: 91,678. Einsatzgruppen D was the unit of Ferencz's lead defendant Otto Ohlendorf. He didn't deny the killings -- he had the gall to claim they were done in self-defense.

• Via skippy: Paid protestors. When "conservatives" claim that protesters are paid by various shadowy leftist financiers (there are leftist financiers? Where?), it's because that's how they roll, and they are so unimaginative that they can't believe anyone would take sufficient exception to acts unless money was involved.  (Tommy Christopher, Shareblue.  Which may be biased.)
• Following the money...  Because it's indicative of the man's character.  (The Rectification of Names)
• Stealth oppression of poor people.  Because their lives are still insufficiently Dickensian.  (Kai Wright, The Nation, and I've hit my limit of 6 articles.)
• Why Republicans hate sick and/or poor people.  A streak of libertarianism holds that a person attracts those pre-existing conditions on purpose.  (Another reason to distrust libertarianism.)

  In reality, people exist in a society where their life trajectories are largely determined by impersonal social and political systems. Nevertheless, the just world hypothesis can be compelling. It allows the privileged, the powerful and the rich to rationalize their opportunities: “I earned it! Those people are lazy!” “Good things happen to good people! Those people are immoral and made bad choices unlike me!” “Their problems aren’t my responsibility!”

  (Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable)
• An illustration
• Joy Reid's staff could not get one Republican to come on and defend health care vote.  (Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)  Yes, I know I've mentioned it before.
• A fuller explanation

  It's unlikely that the Republican House bill ends up used as the real blueprint, but if that happens the most likely outcome would be that many individuals with pre-existing conditions would be priced out of the insurance markets altogether, and a certain number of them would die earlier than would have been the case under the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). Those early deaths are a bizarre way of saving money, and so is a plan aiming at insuring only the healthy against the expenses of illness.

  (Echidne of the Snakes)
• Lance Mannion on the health-care bill fight:

  I mean the Republicans civic religion, their belief that all government spending is bad for the economy and bad for the character of the nation. The road to serfdom is paved with liberals' good intentions and paid for by conservatives who---another article of faith---are the only people in America who work and pay taxes. How can we call ourselves a free people if most of us are imprisoned by our dependency on the government for food, shelter, and health care while the hardworking rest of us are held captive by our obligation to foot the bill for the lazy, entitled, irresponsible mobs demanding and collecting free stuff?

• Eschaton: the "It's better than nothing, but" defense of Obamacare.
• Three from driftglass:
  • Conservatives co-opting liberal positions and erasing liberals at MSNBC
  • About "centrism" (with bonus Star Trek clip)
  • Bankruptcy of both-siderism (with bonus dance clip from Dragnet [movie])
• Meanwhile, back at the ranch... Michael Flynn is still a problem.  (Zandar Versus The Stupid)  UPDATE!  Sally Yates testifies.
• Southern Beale:

  This is part of a larger flaw in white Southern evangelical Christianity. There’s this belief that material success is the outward manifestation of spiritual worthiness. It’s proof that one has been “chosen” by God. It has to be that, right? To concede that it might more accurately be the result of privilege and decades of the cards being stacked in your favor at the expense of others would be to concede complicity in an unjust system. Few have the moral courage to admit that. Better to believe that the system is fair and success a sign of righteousness.

And that closes all the tabs. But there are probably outrages I've missed.  Oh, and Emmanuel Macron defeated Marine Le Pen.  (Video)  Whew!

I have 8 tabs of political stuff open and a powerful urge to mail postcards with the word "SHAME!!! in large red letters printed on them, and the only reason I don't is money the fact that the putative recipients are beyond shame, although I understand they are refusing to defend their vote publically.

Straws in Wind Update

• I have a fair number of obsolete Apple products.
• Icelandic language "does not compute."
• Not a real quote:  "Or I'll hold my breath until I turn blue!"
• The President wants to be able to sue the press for saying stuff he doesn't like libel without understanding that amending the Constitution is difficult.
• What the press still doesn 't get.
• Was it "disruption of the proceedings," or was it that the devil cannot bear to be mocked?

(Say no more.) I can say no more.

Mayday! May Day! Mae Dea!

Local protests recorded.  (I helped march for about a block.)

I had a metaphysical flash, but my brain ate it.

No.  And while we're on the subject, loyalty to country is not the same as loyalty to its "leaders."

ETA:  History of labor movement and May Day, from Homeless on the High Desert, via The Rectification of Names (which has an announcement of the nuptials of Ms. Snyder and Mr. Brooks.  2 snide notes:

1. He's a couple of decades older than she is, and recently was divorced, and is still maundering about morals and traditions and institutions.  I am now old enough to call this situation a cliché.
2. Driftglass, a week or so ago, linked to their gift registry, which among a lot of other things that neither of them seem to have, like potholders and oven mitts, listed an apron.  An apron.  That's symbolic for somebody.

I wish them great happiness and total silence), in case this history wasn't covered in your school.