"Standing in the Slide Zone"

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

Raw Story, Tom Boggioni.

No surprises.

Some of Them Thought It Was Unnecessary

The Republican National Committee approved the resolution:

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

The article stated,

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

In Memoriam

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

Infestation of the alt-Wrong

It may be time to join the underground.

• The Rude One is nasty.  Rude hateful words.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Emphases added.
  

In Memoriam

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

Finally

• Finally.
• Steve M, Crooks and Liars:

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

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

Continuing to Call Out Evil

• Not evil, only a little bit bad--

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

• Calls it out.

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

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

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

  Video
  

Calling Evil By Its Name

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

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

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

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

Hate groups --Evil.

Bouillabaise

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

.

Just a Reminder

Today is the anniversary of Nixon's resignation.

Not-Niceness

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

  Jesse Curtis, Colorblind Christians
• Minor hypocrisy.

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

  Lance Mannion
• Völkische Beobachter

Two Points of Stupid

• The Rude Pundit:

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

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

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

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

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

This May Become a Rant

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

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

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

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

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

Meanwhile,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Keeping it Positive

Message from Shakesville:

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

Dungeness and Draggings

• Damn.  Another rebuilding year.
• Arpaio convicted.  There's a slight chance he'd actually have to do time.

  Former Sheriff Joe Arpaio was convicted of a criminal charge Monday for refusing to stop traffic patrols that targeted immigrants, marking a final rebuke for a politician who once drew strong popularity from such crackdowns but was ultimately booted from office as voters became frustrated over his headline-grabbing tactics and deepening legal troubles.

• Scaramucci is Out.  Jurassicpork points at the nonexistent chaos at the White House.

  So now we have no:
  Secretary of the Army
  Secretary of the Navy
  Surgeon General
  Deputy Secretary of State
  [...]
  No strategy for defeating ISIS but a great one for combating a street gang and now no
  Communications Director or
  Director of Homeland Security.
  You know, Donnie Dumbo, I'm not as experienced as you in this presidenting business, but I do know one thing: When you're playing Musical Chairs, the idea is to have more people than open seats, not the other way around.

• Let's hope this isn't true.  (Trita Parsi, AlterNet)

  President Donald Trump has made it clear, in no uncertain terms and with no effort to disguise his duplicity, that he will claim that Tehran is cheating on the nuclear deal by October—the facts be damned. In short, the fix is in. Trump will refuse to accept that Iran is in compliance and thereby set the stage for a military confrontation. His advisors have even been kind enough to explain how they will go about this.

  There were no WMDs in Iraq. Anyone remember that?
  

• Tomi Lahren, conservative firebrand, bashes Obamacare while benefiting from it

  It's the headline.
  
• Driftglass.
• Zandar.
• Zandar on hacking the vote.
• ETA:  Shakesville.
• Not The Onion.

I'm trying to imagine all this as a Mel Brooks movie.

In Memoriam

• Jeanne Moreau, actress
• Sam Shepard, playwright and occasional actor

Go On, Guess

When I am reading the national news in the New York Times, I should not be muttering "Put on your Big Boy Pants."

(Almost) The Last Gossip Columnist

No, not Father Guido Sarducci (although I understand that l'Osservatore Romano has an English language edition [subscription] now); Liz Smith, who no longer has a print column but is still alive at this writing.

In Memoriam

• June Foray, voice
• Barbara Sinatra,  philanthropist

Not Guinness

The United States Constitution,  a fairly robust document for 228, has been amended a few times.  Back in 1913 the 17th Amendment was ratified to elect Senators by popular vote (instead of by state legislatures).  From Suburban Guerrilla's Susie Madrak:

Previously, U.S. Senators were selected by state legislatures and political party bosses beholden to powerful industries. The corruption scandals erupting from the wheeling and dealing fueled some of the great muckraking investigative journalism of the early 20th Century. In 1912, progressive Republican U.S. Senator Robert “Fighting Bob” La Follette[ ]campaigned for the popular election of U.S. Senators as a means of cracking down on political corruption and corporate control of the democracy. Reformers introduced direct primary elections, ballot initiatives, and recall votes, in the same time period.

(Also, I wanted to highlight that there was a time that "progressive Republican" was not an oxymoron.)

This amendment is in danger from the American Legislative Exchange Counsel (well, the nation is in danger from ALEC--they're meeting in Denver this weekend to sample the marijuana  to further their evil schemes to propose "model" legislation).

As John Nichols, who broke the story for the Nation, wrote: “If successful, they will reverse one of the great strides toward democracy in American history: the 1913 decision to end the corrupt practice of letting state legislators barter off Senate seats in backroom deals with campaign donors and lobbyists.”

The language of this draft resolution, however, frames this in precisely the opposite way. It argues that the 17th amendment, ratified in 1914, did not empower voters but instead disempowered states. As a result, there have been “many unintended consequences, including runaway federal deficits, unfunded mandates, overreach by federal agencies and burdensome impositions by the federal government upon the states.”

(David Daley, AlterNet)

Other matters, some pertinent:

• The Rude Pundit:

  Keep in mind that these were easy questions because the reporters know that if you ask Trump something about policy, like "Can you explain a single fucking thing about how the ACA exchanges work?" or if you challenge him, like "Why did you lie about Medicaid cuts?" he'll just shut down like an overstimulated toddler. Even on the softball questions, he got basic facts wrong and he didn't know when to shut the fuck up. Sure, Trump ought to be interviewed like anyone would Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama or, fuck, Mitt Romney, but we all know that he's fucking stupid so get the stupid people to talk about the one thing they feel comfortable with: themselves.
  
  It's not shocking anymore. And we need to be careful about that. The thing about a boxing match is that the fighters can never let it get boring and rote. It might be exhausting or excruciating. But you gotta stay in the moments or you'll find yourself flat on your ass, without health care, with your country at war, with your voting rights gone, and with your environment collapsing.

• Avedon's Sideshow has lots of links.
• Zandar Versus The Stupid:

1. See, for all of Marshall's points here, what Josh simply doesn't get is that Don Jr. and Jared both 100% believe the worst case scenarios for either of them will be a blanket presidential pardon. They know that in the end, Trump simply won't let his eldest son, or his favorite son-in-law go to prison. Period.

2. And man, this story gets brutal from here. Puliafito was a party monster, heavy on both the party and the monster, and a woman nearly paid with her life as a result. It's an astonishing account, and the Times spent months running this story down.
   
   The most gonzo part of the story is that Puliafito kept himself in one piece while doing benders that would make Keith Richards blush and still show up to work the next day...and he was fantastic as both a dean and as an eye surgeon, by all accounts.

Sliding Toward The Downspout of the Slippery Slope

• I thought I'd linked to this article in March; I certainly read it in March, but I just checked March, and no, I did not link it in March.  As it happens, I was looking at Mike's Blog Round Up this morning (instead of getting myself ready to Face the World) and one of the featured articles was one I'd earlier cited, but more eyeballs are more eyeballs, so

  In deep-red America, the white Christian god is king, figuratively and literally. Religious fundamentalism has shaped most of their belief systems. Systems built on a fundamentalist framework are not conducive to introspection, questioning, learning, or change. When you have a belief system built on fundamentalism, it isn’t open to outside criticism, especially by anyone not a member of your tribe and in a position of power. The problem isn’t that coastal elites don’t understand rural Americans. The problem is that rural America doesn’t understand itself and will never listen to anyone outside its bubble. It doesn’t matter how “understanding” you are, how well you listen, what language you use…if you are viewed as an outsider, your views will be automatically discounted. I’ve had hundreds of discussions with rural white Americans and whenever I present them any information that contradicts their entrenched beliefs, no matter how sound, how unquestionable, how obvious, they will not even entertain the possibility that it might be true. Their refusal is a result of the nature of their fundamentalist belief system and the fact that I’m the enemy because I’m an educated liberal.
  
  At some point during the discussion, they will say, “That’s your education talking,” derogatorily, as a general dismissal of everything I said. They truly believe this is a legitimate response, because to them education is not to be trusted. Education is the enemy of fundamentalism because fundamentalism, by its very nature, is not built on facts. 

  (Forsetti's Justice, AlterNet) Emphasis added.
• Also via Mike's Blog Round Up, Vixen Strangely follows the money behavior of the dramatis personae of this re-boot of The West Wing (paging Aaron Sorkin) and throws out a suggestion of slight skulduggery.  Angry Bear has some musing on the president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, who does not seem to understand that:

  Social Security has nothing to do with funding for any of these programs. Social Security is paid for entirely by the workers who will get the benefits. It subtracts not one dime from the federal budget. Except, of course, when the Congress is obligated to REPAY the money it BORROWED FROM Social Security.

• Leaks, firing, optics:  Joy Reid, video.  (Susie Madrak, Crooks and Liars)

In Memoriam

John Heard, actor (Home Alone, et al.)  Driftglass has a YouTube video of his performance in "A Cask of Amontillado."

Glass Egos

Men who cannot bear to be mocked or laughed at.  (Guess.  Go on, guess.)

That fear of being laughed at lives right at the existential core of toxic masculinity. In his excellent 2004 book, The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, psychologist Stephen Ducat showed that conservative masculinity is rooted in the idea that penetration—having your body, property, resources, sense of control, or dignity taken against your will—is for women, gay men, and other people who don’t have what it “takes” to secure their own boundaries, and therefore exist to be dominated by those who do. A “real man” is, by definition, one who can and will defend his personal boundaries against all threats at all times—and also has the power, if he wishes, to violate the boundaries of others if he chooses.

Sara Robinson (yes!!!), Rewired.  (Book title links to Amazon in original.) (Just close the pop-up; I do agree, but I've given out my email address too often.)(via Shakesville.)

More Coffee? Why, Thank You

For that Methuselah mood...

(And this is the 3,000th post.  Mostly not-shouty.)

In Memoriam

• Liu Xiaobo, Nobel laureate and dissident
• Christopher Wong Won (aka "Fresh Kid Ice"), co-founder of 2 Live Crew, rapper
• Frances Gabe, the self-cleaning house
• Barbara Weldens, singer
• Chester Bennington, singer (Linkin Park)
• Konrad Reuland, football player (December of last year); his heart lives on in Rod Carew.

Dessert.

Yes, I know.

Heather Digby Parton at Salon about the "voter fraud" commission. (Hullabaloo.)

That’s an outrageous assertion. It is completely impossible that 3 million votes were cast illegally in 2016. In a world that makes sense he would have been fired immediately for casting such a shadow over the electoral results. There have been more than nine major investigations into alleged “voter fraud” and it just does not exist on even a small systematic scale much less something like what he’s suggesting.

[...]

But Trump needn’t worry. Kobach is a conservative extremist whose life’s work is preventing people from voting. That’s what this is about. Trump’s victory will never be questioned by him.

There is one slight mystery about all this, however. With all this talk of our electoral system being vulnerable to fraud the commission isn’t the least bit interested in the subject of Russian interference in the election. That seems odd.

Potpourri

I'd like to say this is a themed collection of links.  Unfortunately, it isn't.  Much.

• Via supergee, 10 easily-disproved falsehoods.  (Close the poll. )
• Clouding their minds.

  Meanwhile Trump, his family and his closest associates are using the presidency to personally enrich themselves. They view it as a personal ATM and not as a means of serving the public good and the general welfare. Except for what he can force by fiat, Trump has accomplished none of his major campaign promises — and in the case of building his “amazing” wall and “draining the swamp” he has all but admitted such promises were snake oil and outright lies to con the rubes.
  
  Nevertheless, Trump’s voters still enthusiastically support him.

   (Chauncey DeVega, Indomitable)
• You know, it is completely unnecessary to twist the words of "right-wing" politicians to cause them to sound off.

  [Caltech geochemist Kenneth] Farley was testifying in his capacity as the project scientist for the 2020 Mars rover, and at the end of Rohrabacher's allotted time, the congressman asked for one extra question.
  "You have indicated that Mars was totally different thousands of years ago," he told the panel. "Is it possible that there was a civilization on Mars thousands of years ago?"
  "So the evidence is that Mars was different billions of years ago, not thousands of years ago," Farley replied. "And there would be ... there's no evidence that I'm aware of..."
  Rohrabacher persisted: "Would you rule that out? See, there's some people ... well, anyway..."
  "I would say that is extremely unlikely," Farley said.

• Lance Mannion on David (the Biblical one) and "conservative Christian" cognitive dissonance.

The point is that even a man as flawed and sinful as David can find favor in God's eyes as long as he acknowledges God's greatness and answers to His will. God has been long in the habit of using sinners for His purposes. And as we are all sinners and we are all tools for him to use according to His needs, it's not for us to judge when He decides to use someone as flawed and sinful as Donald Trump. It's all part of the plan. It would seem then that God's plan includes spreading fear and loathing of Muslims and Mexicans, turning away war refugees, deporting people by the millions, breaking up countless families in the process, taking health care away from many millions more, leaving children, old people, the poor, and unfortunate to suffer and die, and in short, having us as a Christian nation ignoring Matthew 25.

• The Smiths -- not Morrissey's former group.  Why Sinclair Broadcasting Group, which is trying to buy Tribune Media, is a threat.

  The local TV news giant has been pushing a right-wing slant on local television stations across the country for years. Owned by the Smiths, a family of longtime Republican donors who have all the ambition of News Corp.’s Rupert Murdoch but a much lower profile, Sinclair has mostly flown under the radar. But following the election of President Donald Trump, the network has begun adopting the playbook Roger Ailes used to turn Fox News into a conservative media goliath.
  
  Over the last few months, Sinclair has been requiring its stations to run more commentaries from pro-Trump personalities and expanding its reach to greater numbers of unassuming viewers in new local media markets. Now it's defending these clear moves to mimic the aspiring state media over at Fox with warped, brainwash-y logic: The conservative propaganda it pushes on its viewers is necessary because the rest of the media is biased.

  (Pam Vogel, Media Matters, via AlterNet)
• Dietrich Bonhoeffer's religious education.

  That is “what made it possible for him to see the character of the regime Hitler represented when so many others did not.”

  (Fred Clark, The Slacktivist, at Patheos, which I need to add to the blogroll.)
  
• Conscienceless.  (Undercover Blue, Hullabaloo)

  After decades of accusations from conservatives that the American left advances reprehensible moral relativism, this week we saw that the real sin was having morals of any kind. What the Trump family modeled for the world this week is what it looks like to have none. Watergate veteran John Dean warned during the Bush II administration of the rise of "Conservatives Without Conscience."

• AlterNet:

  I wanted to remind my fellow Americans that intelligent people, not so different from ourselves, have experienced the collapse of a republic before. It is one example among many. Republics, like other forms of government, exist in history and can rise and fall...A quarter century ago, after the collapse of communism, we declared that history was over—and in an amazing way we forgot everything we once knew about communism, fascism and National Socialism...

• Booman Tribune looks askance (three-fer!) (Walls and Bridges Interviews) 

  1. It is not going to be hard for Democrats to oppose Trump’s wall, and it doesn’t matter if it is a “bollard” wall or a solar energy plant that can power the entire southwest. There will be no votes for Trump’s stupid wall. Perhaps nowhere does President Trump more clearly demonstrate that he’s insane than when he talks about this subject. He wants windows on the wall so people will be able to see the drug dealers on the other side before they hoist 60 lb. sacks of dope over the top and onto their necks. In case you are in doubt about the lunacy of this talk, a typical bowling ball is 15 lbs. Could you throw four bowling balls all at once fifty feet into the air?

  2. Everything in the interview is like this. It’s all funhouse mirrors and mostly false assertions that are as incriminating as they are intended to be exculpatory. If the New York Times were to interview Trump tomorrow and ask all the same questions, all the details would be different but the overall impression would be the same. The president lies so much and has such a distorted idea of what’s happening around him that he literally doesn’t know or care what is true and what is not.
     
     What shines through it all, though, is his unapologetic intention to obstruct justice. He didn’t want Sessions to bow out of his appointment because he was compromised. He didn’t want Sessions to testify truthfully. He wanted Sessions to kill the investigation and he recused himself instead. For that, he cannot be forgiven.

  3. I believe, although cannot prove, that they had sent Manafort to Trump with a hard offer to refuse. Manafort would work on his delegate count for no pay. Michael Flynn was already compromised because he hadn’t notified the Pentagon that he was taking tens of thousands of dollars from the Kremlin to make appearances on the Russian Today (RT) network and badmouth the Obama administration. The Trump campaign was therefore compromised six ways to Sunday by the time the summer had begun.
     
     [...]
     
     The overall picture is clear. Russia wanted Trump to win and Trump wanted Russia’s help. The collusion was explicit, some of it is well-documented, and the defense is now that anybody would have done the same.

• Maneuverings that need watching.
• The People's Filibuster (Red Painter, Crooks and Liars)
• Working conditions of California port truckers.  

  Those willing to answer questions said they have never used truck leases as a way to mistreat drivers. Several insisted that truckers’ allegations have been manufactured as part of a union organizing campaign by the Teamsters. The union has for years helped drivers file labor complaints and lawsuits.

  Dunno. The Teamsters would be making a lot more noise.
• Echidne of the Snakes somewhat agreeing with Jennifer Rubin.
• And it's only Thursday.

Coming Unarmed to a Battle of Wits

Eric Trump tried to dispute Keith Olbermann's statements about his charity.

Oooops.

(Yes, I seem to be getting verbose today.  Probably the dissipation of the rant.  It'll pass.)

Further Information

Stonekettle Station, which people I read link to occasionally (ETA:  and which I've previously linked to thrice apparently), has researched the Presidential Advisory Commission on Electoral Integrity.

The most fervent believer in voter fraud after the most diligent and thorough investigation can’t produce more than one or two fraudulent voters, let alone millions. And they’ve tried. Goddamn have they tried.

This whole thing is nonsense.

He found interesting data.  Read the rest; it's really long and names names and cites their histories and spells out their agenda.   Informative and detailed.

The Thing With Feathers -- Not Just a Shuttlecock

• Redneck Revolt --  worth keeping an eye on.
• Jacob Sugarman (AlterNet) on Paul Krugman on the "'Better' Care Reconciliation Act." Or, y'know, "Trumpcare."

  It's really very simple. If the GOP manages to pass its health care bill, millions of Americans will be deprived of insurance, while those who manage to keep theirs will pay considerably more for less. As Krugman sees it, this is what Republicans have wanted all along.
  
  "Conservative ideology always denied the proposition that people are entitled to health care; the Republican elite considered and still considers people on Medicaid, in particular, 'takers' who are effectively stealing from the deserving rich," he concludes. "So what we’re seeing here is supposed to be the last act in a long con, the moment when the fraudsters cash in, and their victims discover how completely they’ve been fooled."