Report on Cake

Ugh.

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

In Memoriam

All New York Times obits

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

Specialist Pound Cake

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bright Makeup-Melting Klieg Lights

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

Diverse Subjects and One Rant

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

So let me throw out some links.  First.

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

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

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

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

OK.

I promised a rant.

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

The Fight for Net Neutrality

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

Cranky Pants Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reappearing

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

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

The Problem With Satire

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

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

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

Miscellany

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

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

• Ainsi soit-il.

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

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

In Memoriam

Heathcote Williams, poet and radical.

Fallout

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

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

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

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

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

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

  (AlterNet, reprinting RawStory). From Shakesville:

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

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

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

Protecting Us From Zombie Voters. Suuuuuuuuuuuure, He Is.

John Amato, Crooks and Liars:

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

Video clip and partial transcript of interview at Media Matters.

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

Oh...One More Thing...

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

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

And Incidentally...

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

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

• Jack Moore at GQ's take:

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

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

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

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

Furthermore

*ahem*

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

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

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

Toddler

• Non-compliance:

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

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

Nits

Nits are the eggs of lice.

I swung by Eschaton this morning.  I think because The Rectification of Names's blogroll listed it as having something entitled "Everyone With A Name Match Will Be A Vote Fraudster," and as I wrote a couple of years ago:

Even 2,000,000 (that's two million; you wouldn't want to scan that data by hand) names are going to have duplicates and triplicates, not from fraud, but from the fact that people have names, not numbers. And get named after their parents and may live with said parent, y'know, at the same address. Or have common first names paired with common last names. Not everyone names the baby after characters in movies and operas, and some people legally change what they're called. And I seem to remember that an awful lot of people whose only crime, you should excuse the expression, was having the same names as convicted felons were stricken from voter rolls in Florida in 2012.

Mr. Kobach, who was the [pejorative noun] involved with Interstate Crosscheck, is now vice chair of the voter "integrity" commission and has called for states' voter databases.

In their letter, they request states provide "the full first and last names of all registrants, middle names or initials if available, addresses, dates of birth, political party (if recorded in your state), last four digits of social security number if available, voter history (elections voted in) from 2006 onward, active/inactive status, cancelled status, information regarding any felony convictions, information regarding voter registration in another state, information regarding military status, and overseas citizen information."

(Karoli Kuns, Crooks and Liars)  In the comments appeared a press release from Virginia's Governor McAuliffe refusing the request for data, which said:

“I have no intention of honoring this request. Virginia conducts fair, honest, and democratic elections, and there is no evidence of significant voter fraud in Virginia. This entire commission is based on the specious and false notion that there was widespread voter fraud last November. At best this commission was set up as a pretext to validate Donald Trump’s alternative election facts, and at worst is a tool to commit large-scale voter suppression.

“The only irregularity in the 2016 presidential election centered around Russian tampering, a finding that has been confirmed by 17 of our intelligence agencies and sworn testimony delivered to several congressional committees

(National Review believes Gov. McAuliffe is soft on voter fraud.  Consider the source.)

Shakesville points at the slippery slope to voter suppression.

It's the Bermuda Dodecahedron

I've been hunting wabbits accumulating links for a week.  Those things are indigestible.

• wendelah at dreamwidth has some links for the disastrous Senate version of a "healthcare" bill.
• Feministing supports saving the ACA before it gets destroyed.
• Echidne of the Snakes comments on the "free market religion" of conservatives and how that really doesn't help with healthcare.
• How "conservatives" are robbing you of health care and how "corporate media" have been "aiding and abetting."  (Adam Johnson, AlterNet)
• An actual shortfall problem which the Senate bill does not address.
• "Civic illiteracy" and how we got there. (Henry A. Giroux, Salon)

  I am not referring here to only the kind of anti-intellectualism that theorists such as Richard Hofstadter, Ed Herman, Noam Chomsky and Susan Jacoby have documented, however insightful their analyses might be. I am pointing to a more lethal form of manufactured illiteracy that has become a scourge and a political tool designed primarily to make war on language, meaning, thinking and the capacity for critical thought. Chris Hedges captures this demagogic attack on thoughtfulness in stating that “the emptiness of language is a gift to demagogues and the corporations that saturate the landscape with manipulated images and the idioms of mass culture.” Freedom now means removing one’s self from any sense of social responsibility so one can retreat into privatized orbits of self-indulgence, unbridled self-interest and the never-ending whirlwind of consumption.
  
  This updated form of illiteracy does not simply constitute an absence of learning, ideas or knowledge. Nor can it be solely attributed to what has been called the “smartphone society.” On the contrary, it is a willful practice and goal used to actively depoliticize people and make them complicit with the political and economic forces that impose misery and suffering upon their lives. At the same time, illiteracy bonds people: It offers the pretense of a community bound by a willful denial of facts and its celebration of ignorance.

• Senator Franken talks about the Senate "health care" bill (the header is a little misleading).  (Alexandra Rosenmann, AlterNet) on Morning Joe.
• Speaking of Morning Joe, he noticed the President has called the "health care" bill "mean."  (Travis Gettys, Raw Story at AlterNet)  "Jedi Mind Trick," indeed.
• Paul Ryan may be vulnerable (politically). (Capper, Crooks and Liars)
• Authoritarianism creeps in on little cat feet.  Time for the squirt bottle.  (MJ Stephan and T Snyder, The Guardian)
• In Memoriam:
• Glenne Headly, actress
• Bill Dana, comic
• Gabe Pressman, TV journalist
• Pete Flynn, Mets groundskeeper

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.