Yes,

There's been a bit of tidying up.  Most of the blogs that haven't been updated in a long time have been moved to Archived Blogses.  And I've finally added Colorblind Christians.

Now to squash the urge to buy notebooks and new pens.  School's in!

Waking the Witch

It's Kate Bush earworms all the way down.  "You're like my yo-yo that glows in the dark..."

First:  I have nothing against the note that follows mi and is a long long way to run.  Yes, I know, the Twitter has a character limit.  I am an antifascist.  I am a mature antifascist.  "Antifa" sounds like quack medicine.  No, the coffee is finished.  I am opposed to fascism.  This has to do with fascism is opposed to me.  Yup.  I'm a [Groucho] Marxist (they don't like those, either).

Theodore Sturgeon wrote a fair number of stories dealing with difference, even though he sometimes made mistakes.

1. No More Mister Nice Blog

   You see where I'm going with this? I'm sure there are literally hundreds of young folk calling themselves anarchists and similar names, as there have been for decades, running around the US from demonstration to demonstration, towards whom I have a partially indulgent but critical attitude, because I think even the most systematic anarchist thinking is utopian and sentimental, but can't help admiring the fervor of their engagement; and I think some young people calling themselves anarchists or anti-fascists or what have you showing up for demonstrations have an unfortunate willingness to mix it up with anybody on the right who's looking for a fight, which I think is morally questionable and tactically messed up, a "major gift to the right", as Noam Chomsky is saying; and I know a number of people are using the word "antifa". But I'm starting to think it doesn't add up to being a thing.

2. Mustang Bobby (Bark Bark Woof Woof) on religious con artists.

   When they think “one of their own,” they’re not thinking about someone who shares their religious convictions; they’re thinking about someone who knows how to run a good con and pluck the pigeons. Religious hucksters like Jerry Falwell, Jr. and Jim Bakker see in Trump a fellow con artist and one they admire because he was able to pull off his swindle without having to hide behind a veil of piety and false prophecy. He was even able to get away without paying taxes, the same as they do, but without having to come up with the religious angle.

3. Sarah K. Burris (Raw Story carried by AlterNet) on possible Russian scandalmongering.
4. BooMan Tribune.  Ahooooooogah!
5. Vagabond Scholar.  Because I didn't do a proper Labor Day post.
6. And since I didn't, six women instrumental in the labor struggle from Feministing.
7. The Rectification of Names.
8. Oh, and...

"Pausing for the jet."

The Day before Yesterday is Too Far in the Past

• 40 years of difference in the prospects of janitorial work.
• Megachurch response.
• Evan Robinson at Group News Blog [Warning: Loads slowly] is running a series documenting the Confederacy:  Part 0; Part 1; Part 2; Part 3; Part 4.
• Not disgracing the hat.
• Wonkette.  Why weren't we told?

In Mem-More-iam

• John Ashbery, prize-winning poet
• Walter Becker, Steely Dan
• (Mark Evanier on Shelley Berman)

Cloudbusting

Raw Story:  They're coming for your weekends!

Among the documents is a 10-page fundraising letter dated April 22, 2016 and penned by SPN president and CEO Tracie Sharp. It bluntly describes its $8.39 million “Breakthrough 2016” campaign to advance the alliance’s goals to “defund and defang” unions and “clear pathways toward passage of so many other pro-freedom initiatives in the states.”

Among the so-called victories that have put the “wind at our backs,” Sharp writes, are Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s dismantlement of collective bargaining, and so-called right-to-work laws —which weaken worker protections — passed in Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and West Virginia. It also boasts of its battles against teachers unions and touts the expansion of charter schools as being aligned with the alliance’s “pro-freedom” goals.

They aren't pro your freedom!

In Memoriam

• Richard Anderson, actor
• Shelley Berman, comic (third comic this fortnight)  I believe I mentioned him as a formative influence on my sense of humor.  Maybe $DEITY is having trouble stomaching Trump too.

Bridges, Not Walls

• Oh?

  President Donald Trump is promising billions to help Texas rebuild from Harvey, but his Republican allies in the House are looking at cutting almost $1 billion from disaster accounts to help finance the president's border wall.
  The pending reduction to the Federal Emergency Management Agency's disaster relief account is part of a spending bill that the House is scheduled to consider next week when Congress returns from its August recess. The $876 million cut, part of the 1,305-page measure's homeland security section, pays for roughly half the cost of Trump's down payment on a U.S.-Mexico border wall.
  It seems sure that GOP leaders will move to reverse the disaster aid cut next week. The optics are politically bad and there's only $2.3 billion remaining in disaster coffers.

  Can we run this past the Texas delegation? (I love that "the optics are politically bad."  No fooling?)  Emphasis added.
  
  Also,news about the floods (these paragraphs are part of the updated reports on Houston's situation
• 
  

Occasional Concentrated Stupid

• Fake and wrong and ignorant.
• Fake.
• Foolish.
• "Prank."

I saw An Inconvenient Sequel yesterday.  Houston is mentioned a couple of times (although Harvey hadn't happened when the movie was released). Let's just say that 45 does not come off well.

In Memoriam

• Tobe Hooper, director (horror)
• Thomas Meehan, writer
• Bea Wain, singer
• Brian Aldiss, writer

It's Going to Take Too Long to Pull All My Hair Out

• Chauncey DeVega Show at Indomitable:

  During this episode of The Chauncey DeVega Show, Professor Snyder and Chauncey evaluate the health of American democracy after eight months of Trump as president, discuss how the recent white supremacist terrorism in Charlottesville could potentially fit into Trump's plans for authoritarianism in America, if Charlottesville was a "Reichstag Fire" moment, and how the rule of law is threatened by Trump's regime.

   
• Summary (by Ilana Novick) of Paul Krugman at AlterNet:

  "There’s a word for political regimes that round up members of minority groups and send them to concentration camps, while rejecting the rule of law," he writes in his Monday column. "What Arpaio brought to Maricopa, and what the president of the United States has just endorsed."
  
  It's not hard [t]o understand why Trump would be eager to pardon Arpaio. The president fawns over dictators like Duterte and Putin, and accuses immigrants of being rapists. Of course he'd love the idea of a strongman flourishing in an American county. In addition, Krugman points out, "the pardon is a signal to those who might be tempted to make deals with the special investigator as the Russia probe closes in on the White House: Don’t worry, I’ll protect you."

• ACLU sues over transgender military ban.  (Frances Langum, Crooks and Liars)
• Offshore testing of herpes vaccine:

  WASHINGTON—Defying U.S. safety protections for human trials, an American university and a group of wealthy libertarians, including a prominent Donald Trump supporter, are backing the offshore testing of an experimental herpes vaccine.
  The American businessmen, including Trump adviser Peter Thiel, invested $7 million in the ongoing vaccine research, according to the U.S. company behind it. Southern Illinois University also trumpeted the research and the study’s lead researcher, even though he did not rely on traditional U.S. safety oversight in the first trial, held on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts.

  Because ethical standards are so difficult and expensive and bad for the bottom line, donchano? The university in question is Southern Illinois University
• Anyone check on Galveston?

"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.