Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning voting rights and food safety.

You've heard that House Democrats plan, as their first act next year, to pass a "magnum opus" bill covering voting rights, campaign finance reform, and ethics reform? And you've also heard me say they'd be much better off trying to pass something more digestible first? That means now is a good time to call Democrat House leadership (here's phone info for Rep. Pelosi, Rep. Hoyer, and Rep. Clyburn) and tell them to pass the Voting Rights Advancement Act first. The VRAA would ensure that our Justice Department could act on voting rights violations coming from any state or municipality -- not just the Southern ones, which seems to be the problem the Supreme Court had with the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. We may be done with poll taxes and literacy tests, but you see what's going on in Georgia and Florida -- and you also see states passing Voter ID laws, getting rid of early voting periods, moving voting machines out of low-income neighborhoods into wealthier ones, and using the Interstate Crosscheck database to deregister good Americans on mere "suspicion" of "voter fraud." So let's try to get House Democrats to do something we can all understand and support.

Meanwhile, a drug-resistant Salmonella outbreak has plagued raw turkey for over a year now, so far linked to over 160 illnesses (and one death) in 35 states -- and yet we still don't know which turkey brands are making consumers sick, so Consumer Reports helps you tell our USDA to tell consumers which brands of turkey are part of the outbreak. You might be saying, you really want our government to sound an alarm about turkey a week before Thanksgiving? But which is more important: turkey-producing corporations' business or people's health? I mean, if they didn't want the bad PR and lower sales associated with a year-long food poisoning outbreak, then maybe turkey producers should have fixed it before it came to that! It's sad that we even have to say that out loud. (Oh, and not to pile on, but I did say "drug-resistant" Salmonella; with all the antibiotics we pump into our feed animals, we're going to be hearing that a lot more in the coming years.)

Around the table: more lessons about the folly of "bipartisanship."

Our President declares that the California wildfires are the result of bad "forest management," but scientists inform him, gently and not, that he's dead wrong about that, too. "These aren't forests," says one, "(t)his is supposed to be the rainy season," says another, and our government's own National Climate Assessment warned, just last year, of "the increase in wildfire risk resulting from the combined effects of high precipitation variability (wet seasons followed by dry), elevated temperature, and low humidity." Of course, when our President mentioned "forest management," I'm sure he intended to suggest we should sell all of our public forests to big logging corporations. They'll take care of those pesky trees!

Joan Walsh writes that "Yes, There Was a Big Blue Wave Last Week," although I think she's a bit generous to suggest that the pund-idiots who got it wrong on Election Night "unwittingly" fueled our President's claims of "voter fraud." I think it was quite witting, actually! In any case, Democrats have picked up more than a few House seats since Wednesday morning, when I also looked over the results and wasn't particularly impressed, and I certainly should have remembered that it actually takes a long time to count a lot of votes, just like it did in 2016. Despite the apparent failure of high-profile candidates like Beto O'Rourke, Andrew Gillum, and Stacey Abrams, Democrats' popular vote margin also so far exceeds the Republicans' popular vote margins in their 1994 and 2010 wave elections.

But of course Democrats did much better in Republican-inflected suburbs than in rural areas, and though winning in the suburbs seems like an easier task, Matthew Hildreth at the Daily Yonder reminds us that rural voters already support what Our Glorious Elites call "far-left" or "liberal" policy initiatives. This is true even though over two-thirds of rural voters call themselves "conservative" or "moderate." The problem, of course, is that most rural voters think Democrats don't fight for them. There's a solution in there, somewhere -- and when rural support for Medicare-for-All (a healthy 63%) actually lags behind rural support for treating-not-imprisoning drug addicts (77%) and taxpayer-funded community colleges and trade schools (66%), the solution is most emphatically not "acting more like a Republican." (Also, too, Republican policies help big ag corporations crush small farmers. Democrats could actually stand up for small farmers, maybe?)

Sadly, some folks still just don't get it, as a center-right Democrat and a far-right Republican collaborate on an op-ed extolling the need for "more bipartisanship." Guess who that leaves out? I mean, if, say, Barbara Lee and Richard Hanna had written such an op-ed back in 2016, every winged monkey in America would squeal BIAS!!!!! at once. OK, the House should implement the two reforms Messrs. Kilmer and Buck propose in paragraph seven, but their focus on every House Rep getting heard is secondary to our purpose of every American getting heard, and every time I read about the "importance" of "bipartisanship" I'm reminded not only that one party spends all its time stamping its feet and the other party spends all its time appeasing it, but that Americans don't care about "bipartisan" government as much as they care about good government. And that's as it should be.

Finally, even Sen. McConnell (E-KY) is getting on the let's-have-more-bipartisanship train. Given his leadership in totally nullifying the will of the voters for at least the last 12 years, it is hard to listen to anything he says about bipartisanship without either giggling or throwing a shoe at him, but it might actually be a good sign that he's the one mouthing these ridiculous pablums -- I mean, a real mob boss lets his underlings say the truly ridiculous shit so he can pretend to disown it. (Also, too, I wouldn't brag about getting more appropriations bills done before the start of the fiscal year if I were him. That's like schoolkids boasting that they go to school most of the time.)

Action: concerning banksters and facial recognition software.

H.R. 7006/S. 3542, the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act, would (as its title suggests) break up the biggest banksters in America, by requiring that none of them would be able to control assets representing more than three percent of America's gross domestic product (or GDP); currently a mere six banks control assets that equal half of America's GDP, and that is (as a conservative might say) too much power concentrated in too few hands. All those big name banksters who've been running roughshod over our economy this last decade-plus? Yeah, this bill would smite them all. The bill would also prevent banks from using FDIC-insured deposits to indulge in the kind of hifalutin speculation that crashed our economy in 2008, thus re-erecting a Glass-Steagall-style wall between traditional banking and securities speculation. So CREDO helps you tell your Reps and Senators to pass the Too Big to Fail, Too Big to Exist Act.

Meanwhile, Demand Progress helps you tell our Transportation and Safety Administration (or TSA) to shut down its facial recognition program. The TSA has come out and said it wants domestic travelers to get "mugshots" so they can put this program into action! It's like you're a criminal even before you've committed a crime! And, as you know from other corporate antics, facial recognition software ain't good, particularly at identifying women and folks of color -- surely you've heard about that time Google's facial recognition software mistook a pair of black folks for apes. It gets better: TSA doesn't want to tell us what they'll do with their little "mugshots" -- might they share them with other law enforcement agencies without those agencies getting warrants? So, to sum: the technology isn't good enough, and it's also ripe for abuse. Why, that all sounds like it would do the opposite of keeping us safe!

Around the table: Democrats plan another mistake, plus somewhat better news.

Democrats plan a "magnum opus" of legislative provisions for their first bill, one that would address voting rights, campaign finance reform, and ethics. They've got the right idea, but as usual, they've got the wrong size: these all-encompassing pieces of legislation give Republicans too much space for prevarication (remember "death panels"?), and we can get more done with (and get more public support for) smaller bills. I think making H.R. 1 the Voting Rights Advancement Act would be the better idea, not least because we could put Republicans on the spot with it. After all, why do you oppose expanding voting rights? is a much more difficult question to answer than why do you oppose this big bill with all kinds of stuff in it? (Oh, and I'm also pretty sure they can't just overturn Citizens United with a bill.)

60 Minutes runs a lengthy report showing how European nations are actually doing more for their citizens' internet privacy than we are -- but doesn't mention that the FCC actually enacted privacy regulations in 2016, only to see Congress repeal them with a "resolution of disapproval" the next year. It's not like that was beside the point of the report! Anyway, Max Schrems's point about "forced consent" -- that it's wrong for a corporation to sell you a product and then say give us all your data, or you can't use the product -- should be attended by American jurists, maybe? It's not like there's no precedent in American law.

We could make too much of a U.S. District Court judge blocking further construction on the Keystone XL pipeline until our Administration does the proper reviews (and not just environmentally-related ones) as required by law, since our Administration could just show its work and OK I couldn't get through that sentence without spitting tea all over my keyboard. Also, too, if, per our Supreme Court, an Administration agency "cannot simply disregard contrary or inconvenient factual determinations that it made in the past," well, that doesn't bode well for the FCC's net neutrality repeal, does it?

In other good news, our Administration announces that it will stop refueling Saudi planes bombing the bejeesus out of Yemen, though it will still aid the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen with weapons sales and logistical support. This is a good thing, though we'll need to pressure our Administration to do more, and I bet Mr. Khashoggi, now sitting comfortably in the beyond, finds his role in this matter rather amusing. Rep. Royce (R-CA) could use some education, however, lumping the Houthis in with al-Qaeda when the Houthis are some of the world's best fighters against al-Qaeda.

Finally, Axios/SurveyMonkey poll finds that 61% of Democrats think Republicans are "racist/bigoted/sexist," while some 31% of Republicans think the same of Democrats. For the record, I don't believe Republicans are bigots merely due to party affiliation -- in fact, I believe all of us are susceptible to bigotry (calling racism a "virus" that could be "activated" really was the smartest thing Nate Silver ever said), and better public policy, public policy that doesn't merely redistribute worker income upward to executives, would better ensure that fewer folks drink from the cup of bigotry.

Action: concerning trade, clean water, and healthy food.

The governments of the United States, Canada, and Mexico plan to sign the new USMCA trade agreement -- the one that would replace NAFTA -- on November 30; after that, the pact will go to Congress for ratification, so now's a good time to tell our Congressfolk to ensure that we get the strongest USMCA possible, as Public Citizen helps us do. The USMCA would eliminate the "investor-state dispute settlement" system with Canada in three years, and drastically curtail ISDS use with Mexico; these are tremendously good things, because we deserve to know that investors won't be able to nullify our laws and exact tribute from us simply because they can convince some tribunal that our clean air and clean water laws "cost them money." But that doesn't mean we shouldn't demand more, such as the elimination of corporate welfare for big pharma and better enforcement of labor and clean air/clean water standards. So let's get cracking.

Meanwhile, our Administration has proposed expanding offshore drilling in almost all of our coastal waters -- except around Florida, of course, because they need Rick Scott in the Senate that badly. I would naturally have said hey, remember how well the Deepwater Horizon spill went?, but it turns out that the Taylor Energy oil spill of 2004 is about to overtake the Deepwater Horizon spill as the worst oil spill in American history. If you're wondering how a 14-year-old oil spill is still spewing hundreds of barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico every day, well, Taylor didn't even tell anyone about the oil leaking for six years and still claims there's "no evidence" the spill is even happening. And this is the kind of thing our Administration apparently wants more of in our great nation! Hence Penn Environment helps you tell our Interior Department to scuttle its plan to expand offshore oil and gas drilling.

Finally, Penn PIRG helps you tell your state Governor to follow the lead of Arkansas and ban dicamba usage on your state's farms. Arkansas banned dicamba usage during that state's main growing season after finding that dicamba doesn't stay put once it's sprayed on crops -- it drifts away for up to three full days, leaving a trail of destruction in its path, and if it drifts onto neighboring farms -- which, hello, happens all the time -- then it also damages other folks' crops, and therefore their livelihoods, and also therefore our food. Arkansas also found workers getting sick after working with dicamba, which couldn't possibly happen to consumers, could it? Naturally, Monsanto has a version of dicamba it uses with its proprietary soybean crop which it modified genetically to better withstand its dicamba. But our choice is simple here: we can either stand with farmers or stand with big corporations.

Action: concerning war, media, and immigration.

Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end the war in Afghanistan. Their latest email missive informed me that some folks who were pre-teens when the war began in 2001 just got elected to Congress, which I found a bit sobering, but these new Congressfolk are considerably less emotionally-invested in this war than the folks who started it, and now (at last!) they get a bigger say in whether we keep that war going. Which we shouldn't, not least because we got Mr. bin Laden years ago. The forces of evil will try two tactics: 1) ZOMG TEH TERRURIZTZ WINZ!!!!!, and 2) let's privatize the Afghanistan War. Both arguments are moronic -- respectively, fearmongering is a way of announcing that you can't win the argument on the merits, and if we're going to fight wars, we should fight wars, rather than let mercenaries bleed the taxpayer. And taxpayers will be paying out the wazoo for bad results, if past privatization efforts are any indication.

Meanwhile, Media Matters's latest email missive opens with this blunt and completely accurate statement: "Fox News is a malevolent and destructive force." One almost (I said almost!) longs for the day when Fox's on-air "talent" went to some lengths to hide their racism, but now, with President Bigballs as their Personal Lord and Savior, they don't even have to do that anymore. And since we can't buy cable channels a la carte in America, we can't directly hit Fox News where it hurts (i.e., in their pocketbook). But we can tell Fox's corporate advertisers to stop sponsoring Fox News, which Media Matters helps you do. Do not tolerate any guff that boycott efforts like these "hurt free speech." Fox News punditoids have an inviolable right not to be imprisoned for their speech, but they have no "right" to six- and seven-figure TV jobs. Our First Amendment protects us from our government -- not from advertisers, not from activists, and certainly not from viewers.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Department of Health and Human Services (or HHS) that their proposed expansion of the definition of "public charge" will unfairly punish immigrant families, then the National Women's Law Center still helps you do that. As you may know, we've always kept immigrants out if we can establish that they'll become a "public charge," or someone completely reliant on the taxpayer, but HHS has proposed calling anyone who has ever availed themselves of Medicaid or food stamps a "public charge," which would make a lot of folks who work and contribute to society (not to mention pay taxes!) into "public charges." Our Administration is basically trying to deport as many immigrants as possible, which is a stupid way to make policy. And either "public charge" means something or it doesn't; our Administration obviously prefers meaninglessness and nihilism. But we don't have to put up with any of that.

Around the table: more good (and bad) election news, plus our President's latest public tantrum.

"The Needle and the Damage Done" is the article title of the year, describing the return of the New York Times's infamous election-predicting "needle" from 2016 and the damage this "predicting" generally does to our discourse. I'm old enough to remember when the Eastern media outlets called the 1980 Presidential election a few minutes after 8 pm on Election Night and demoralized Idaho Democrats enough (it was only 5 pm there, and they were just getting off work!) that Senator Frank Church lost re-election by a point. But it's so much more sophisticated now, and this year's punditoids took one 8 pm forecast from Five Thirty Eight (of course!) to declare NO BLUE WAVEZ!!!!! while polling places in more than half the country were still open. I'd prefer that our voters stop obsessing over whether it's "worth it" to vote if your "side" can't "win," but maybe our "liberal" media can do less prognosticating and more reporting? This insane zeal to be "first" with a story helps keep our society sick, immoral, and decadent.

Here's another good result from Election Day: Colorado voters outlaw slavery as a punishment for a crime in their state, meaning prison laborers can no longer labor for nothing. We can make a very simple law-and-order argument supporting the Colorado voters' will: once you get your sentence for a crime, you cannot have further punishments heaped upon you. We'd use the same argument to oppose taking away felons' voting rights after they're out of jail (and, really, while they're in jail, too). Of course, if "law and order" only means GET TEH BLACKZ!!!!! to you, you won't see the point. Or much of anything else, frankly.

And here's another good result from Election Day: Louisiana voters amend their state constitution so that all felony convictions will now require a unanimous verdict. Yes, until this week, the state has used the 10-of-12-jurors standard to fill their jails with black folks, which has helped contribute to Louisiana's long standing as (until recently) the state with the most prisoners in our Union, which sure ain't something to yell WE'RE NUMBER ONE!!!!! about. A big part of this victory: Louisiana felons getting back the right to vote after five years out of prison, though I'm certain they don't account for all of the measure's 64-36 margin.

And here's some bad news from Election Day: pro-renewable energy ballot initiatives failed in three states after big fossil fuel corporations dropped over $100 million fighting them. This should remind us who really benefits from the "climate change hoax": big corporations with this kind of money to burn on convincing people climate change isn't really happening, and not scientists reporting that climate change is, in fact, happening. Shame the FCC took away our net neutrality, too, because network neutrality is the greatest tool we've ever devised to cripple the power of campaign spending. I regret having not already figured out how to do that.

Finally, there's really very little to say about our President's insane press conference after the midterms. Except the usual: our President should be ashamed of himself for being a grown man acting like that in public. (And then his press secretary spread an obviously-altered video of a journalist's "outburst" that "caused" our President to revoke his press credentials, because when you can't win the argument on the merits, you lie. It's the only tool they've got left in their toolbox. Well, not the only one, I suppose -- would now be a good time for that terrorist attack?)

Horror and hope, 2018 edition.

First, the good news. Colorado and Michigan voters passed ballot initiatives creating redistricting commissions for their states; Utah voters also mulled the matter, and with 95% of the vote counted at this writing, the "yes" votes have a narrow lead. Idaho, Nebraska, and Utah voters passed ballot initiatives expanding Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, while Maryland and Nevada voters approved same-day voter registration. Florida voters restored voting rights for some ex-felons by a 25-point margin, while Massachusetts voters banned gender identity discrimination by a 40-point margin; Michigan voters legalized recreational marijuana, while Utah voters legalized medical marijuana. So a lot of so-called "purple state" and "red state" voters approved good policy on Election Day -- which they've done a lot in recent years, often over the wishes of their elected representatives -- and that's always a good thing. And the election results broadly instructed us that our President's support for avowed white supremacists remains an anvil around the Republican party's neck. In a nation where too many of us still have too many private racisms, we shouldn't over-congratulate ourselves for that, but at least those morons walking around in their Hitler T-shirts whining about how "oppressed" they are received no mandate whatsoever from the voters this week.

And now, the bad news: for the third consecutive even-year election cycle, Republicans outperformed the polls, such that Democrats took back the U.S. House, but flipped fewer seats than estimable organizations like the Cook Political Report and Larry Sabato's Crystal Ball predicted they'd flip, and Democrats lost seats in the U.S. Senate, which likely guarantees Justice Thomas's retirement in 2020 and makes taking back the chamber later that year a much longer shot. Democrats flipped seven Governor's offices, but flipped only six state legislative houses, gaining around 350 legislative seats, which actually isn't that impressive (America has almost 7,400 state legislators). These gains at the state level will make a right-wing Constitutional convention considerably more unlikely, but they don't assure better redistricting next decade, let alone better policy -- for example, while I'd love to savor Scott Walker's defeat in Wisconsin, and I will, Republicans still have huge majorities in both legislative chambers there.

How did Republicans outperform the polls? By running on their record of good works animated by good policy and skillful communication with voters? Ah, you know me better than that by now. Republicans won, to some extent, with the vote suppression tactics (gerrymandering, Voter ID, Interstate Crosscheck, and the like) that have characterized Republican stamp-out-the-vote efforts since 2012. Obviously we should fight vote suppression wherever we find it (and we have fought vote suppression tirelessly at this blog). But the main reason Republican politicians seem harder to kill than zombies? Democrats just don't seem to have a clue. Republicans all over America have run this vote suppression scheme three times now, and Democrats have been caught flat-footed each time; the higher turnout this midterm no doubt delivered them the House, but we deserve the credit for that, not them.

And this apparent cluelessness goes deeper than their inability to win races on the ground -- they don't seem to have a clue about what to do when they have power, either. When they have power, they piss it away trying not to offend corporatist donors and trying to "build bipartisan consensus" with a party that deserves oblivion. We used to get mad at Tha Bush Mobb for insisting that they "create reality," but the truth is the Democrats do the same thing -- they piddle away the mandates the voters give them, and when Republicans storm back into power, Democrats tell us the landscape is difficult and all they can do is play for time. Well, since we're talking about time, this state of affairs describes the last 38 years of American politics. And how did that era start again? With the 1980 Republican Presidential candidate who decided he was going to change the landscape! I know changing the landscape is an easier task, logistically, when you have big corporate power behind you, as Mr. Reagan did, but surely if this is the greatest democracy on Earth, it's not that big a lift for those enterprising Democrats who can get the American people behind them.

So change is absolutely possible -- if we demand it. Now, you will not find very many echoes of my theses in "liberal" media analyses. They'll proclaim that Democrats ran too many far-left candidates and should have run more "electable" candidates who could "win" (again, in this self-fulfilling prophecy of a "landscape"). Never mind that for every Kara Eastman the pundits can cite I can find an "electable," "mainstream" Democrat who also got the silver medal on Tuesday. Never mind that the Democrats' Senate losers on Tuesday were all "electable" "compromises" with the "harsh realities" of the political "landscape." The fact is this: when you do no good works with your power, people won't work that hard to keep you in power -- and this is as it should be! We beat up on our fellow Americans for not being more engaged with politics, but the sickness, immorality, and decadence of our political class is a far bigger and far more urgent problem. If you fix the latter, you will fix the former. I know it's a big task, but only the big solutions last. And this humble blog will continue to help you push the big solutions on your representatives -- until they have no choice but to follow the popular will, regardless of their party or ideology.

On Election Day.

Today is Election Day, which means you ought to go out and vote, if you haven't done so already. If you have any trouble voting, of course, you should call 1.866.OUR.VOTE (or if, like me, you hate mnemonic devices for remembering phone numbers, 1.866.687.8683). (You can also text "Our Vote" to 97779, or visit 1.866.OUR.VOTE's website here.)

What would be a good reason to call 1.866.OUR.VOTE? Being told you can't vote if you have unpaid parking tickets or child support, getting challenged by official-looking people (or people with guns, even!) who don't have any actual authority to challenge voters, getting a flyer telling you Election Day is on Wednesday for people like you wink-wink. But what if you show up at the polls and the election worker says they can't find your registration? Well, you might be a victim of lousy recordkeeping, or you might be a victim of the notorious Interstate Crosscheck database, which, as you know, helps nefarious state governments deregister voters with the same name as voters in other states, though most names are, as you know, quite common (and Interstate Crosscheck doesn't check middle names or Social Security numbers!) That'd be a damn good reason to call 1.866.OUR.VOTE.

Note well that if you find yourself deregistered when you know you've done nothing wrong, your disgust will be palpable and righteous, and you may just want to throw up your hands and say to hell with these clowns and then go home. But before you do that, remember that this is exactly what they want you to do. It's the same reason they saturate the airwaves with negative ads the days before Election Day: because they want you to stay home out of disgust, so you won't vote against their cronies. Don't let them manipulate you, and don't let them win. Make the call to 1.866.OUR.VOTE, describe your problem to them, and let them help you take the next step.

Do I have predictions about how today will go? Yes, I have a few: I predict that you, dear reader, are not the kind of person who has been investing their entire identity in a Democrat "blue wave" today. And I also predict that, if Democrats lose Senate seats and only pick up a dozen House seats, you will remember that this is where we were two years ago, and that if the corporatists and the racists and the woman-haters win again, they'll be just as unpopular tomorrow as they were today -- they will have no mandate, and again they will have us to deal with. But here's the most important thing I predict: that you, dear reader, have already spent the last two years calling and writing your Reps and Senators every day -- and perhaps you've even been challenging them at the few townhalls they've held, and bird-dogging them at public events -- and thus you already know that your duty to our country doesn't end today, but begins today. Voting happens one day out of the year, and then Our Glorious Elites want you to sit on your hands the rest of the time. You can confound their expectations, and their nefarious goals, by expressing your will to your representatives every day after today. And this blog will continue to help you do that, as it has done since 2005.

So good luck today, and God bless.

Action: concerning government spying, antibiotic abuse, and cruelty to immigrants.

You may have heard that our military is trying to figure out if they can predict mass protests (i.e., against our President) from social media activity beforehand. Before we get into figuring out exactly which Philip K. Dick short story our government is trying to make into public policy this time, let's step back: why would our government want to know about protests beforehand? I can think of only one reason: because they don't want any good Americans to protest! And I'm sure they felt exactly the same way when Tea Partiers were making asses of themselves in our streets and on our public lands! Hence Free Press helps you tell Congress to pimp-slap any Administration effort to obstruct lawful protest in America using surveillance. Seriously, if they want to figure out when the protests are coming, all they have to do is note when they're about to do something that's going to hurt good Americans. Seems easier to just stop hurting Americans than to do all this hifalutin spying.

Meanwhile, Penn PIRG helps you tell Darden Restaurants to get the antibiotics out of the meat it sells at its restaurants. Darden, as you may know, owns Olive Garden, Bahama Breeze, LongHorn Steakhouse, and the Capital Grille, among others; in total, Darden runs over 1,700 restaurants serving 400 million guests in North America annually, so it's got reach. And its shareholders have, in each of the last three years, put forward a resolution demanding that Darden meats stop relying on animals pumped full of antibiotics; the most recent iteration of that resolution got 40 percent. Add the Big Stick of Bad PR to shareholder pressure Darden's already getting and we may yet get Darden to rid its supply chain of antibiotic-drenched meat, and thus Darden could help us avert a world where antibiotic abuse in feed animals renders antibiotics useless for medical use, which would also be a world in which the next cut could kill us. So let's get to wielding that Big Stick.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Administration not to distend the definition of "public charge" so it can deport more immigrants later, then the National Women's Law Center and the Union of Concerned Scientists still help you do that. We've always tried to prevent immigrants from coming to America if it seems likely they'll become a "public charge," or someone who'll depend entirely on taxpayer assistance, but our Administration would dramatically expand the definition of "public charge" to include anyone who's ever used food stamps or Medicaid, when a lot of good Americans fall on hard times and need to rely on those services sooner or later. I guess it's asking too much for a President who was literally a millionaire before he was eight years old -- and not through his own hard work, but through his father's sketchy inheritance schemes -- to understand that hard-working people face hard times every once in a while. But we're happy to teach him otherwise.

Around the table: our Constitution may not save us! And other sad truths.

Heritage Action executive director pens editorial explaining why we should all vote for Republicans this year. Your jaw will hit the floor when he says electing Democrats will increase partisan bitterness, as if Beltway partisans like him don't already look for any excuse to ratchet up the bitterness; most of the rest of it is better, I suppose, but it'll only move you if you already believe it, and three paragraphs of pablum about health care reform being better at the state level is no answer to the reality that Republicans tried to take away our health insurance. The worst thing about this op-ed, though? How the last paragraph suggests that the "noise" in American politics comes from anywhere other than our President and his votaries. That's some hardcore gaslighting there.

Green Party candidate for state auditor of Missouri writes damning piece about how "liberal" media reporting -- at least as far as his own race is concerned -- only covers "Issues That Don't Matter." Worse than the big media organs' refusal to cover issues brought up by him (and his Constitution and Libertarian cohorts), worse, even, than those organs' fascination with the Democrat and Republican candidates exchanging "jabs" and "harsh words," was the journalist telling him that there just "wasn't room" for discussion of issues in his article, and anyway "we need to write about what interests our readers, and they just want to know what the Democrats and Republicans say." Typical, how journalists think so little of us! They can rest assured that most readers (definitely including myself!) return their contempt in spades. There's a solution in there, somewhere.

Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs warns us to "be careful" about assuming our Constitution will save us from things like our President's efforts to end birthright citizenship for certain brown-skinned babies born on American soil. Long story short: "(c)onstitutions are very important documents," but "(t)heir words do not mean anything, though, if there is nobody in charge who is willing to uphold them," like, you know, the five right-wingers on the Court right now (not to mention the sixth or seventh, if Justices Breyer and Ginsburg pass). Thus even an abjectly stupid argument about what one of the original writers of the 14th Amendment "thought" it meant (an argument Antonin Scalia would have rejected!) could become "precedent" in the hands of unscrupulous folks like Justices Gorsuch and Kavanaugh.

How about some good news? a U.S. District Judge rules that Wyoming's ag-gag laws are unconstitutional. This means not only that folks working to expose animal abuse at factory farms can breathe a little more easily now, but folks testing water downstream from factory farms to expose pollution can also breathe a little more easily, since Wyoming's ag-gag law prevented that, too. One day we'll all take for granted that corporations shouldn't have more rights than people, and this ruling helps bring us one step closer to that day.

Finally, how about some more good news? Our FDA has banned the use of lead acetate in hair dyes. Responding to a petition filed by several groups including Consumers Union and the Environmental Defense Fund, our FDA found the 1980 study allowing lead acetate in hair dyes to be scientifically deficient, but note well that scientists have said for years there is no "safe level" of lead in just about anything. Hair dye may not sound like such a big deal, but a lot of people use it, and you probably don't even know how many! So this is a big deal, and kudos to our FDA for doing the right thing.

Around the table: containing some good news about liberals reaching rural America.

George Lakoff, the author of Don't Think of an Elephant, advises us that relentlessly fact-checking our President's numerous big lies plays right into his hands. If you ever suspected that he seems to do better when everyone's talking about him, you'll find that point sympathetic. I wouldn't say fact-checking itself is useless, but I do agree that reporters would do better to focus on what he's actually doing, rather than what he's saying. Good luck getting lazy reporters to do that, though.

Ryan Grim and Briahna Gray at The Intercept describe several "insurgent" Democrats who are making inroads into rural areas the party has long written off -- by being actual liberals, as opposed to the center-right DCCC-approved candidates who dominate other races. In these areas of the country, folks respond positively to candidates who support clean water, Medicare-for-All, and a higher minimum wage. You and I have been saying this for years, of course, but it's nice to get some solid reporting behind it.

Three men convicted of trying to murder Somali refugees cite our President's anti-Muslim rhetoric and Russian propaganda in an effort to avoid life sentences. Now, did our President set the bombs in those apartment buildings? No, he did not -- the three assholes who are about to get life sentences did that. Getting hung up on who might have influenced someone to do something horribly wrong hurts our fight against evil. And while it's true, and irritating, that "(t)he speaker with the best bully pulpit in the world is never sanctioned for spreading fear and advocating harm," that doesn't justify giving his votaries lighter sentences when they commit crimes.

Fascist ascends to power in Brazil, and naturally our financial papers are creaming their pants over how good he'll be for "the markets." Yes, I imagine Mr. Bolsonaro -- who has said out loud that his political opponents should be exterminated and (like all small men) clearly hopes other folks will do it for him -- will greatly aid the effort of Our Glorious Elites to redistribute all the people's wealth upward to themselves, but Jesus Mary and Joseph they can't seem to mute their giddiness even a little. But selling off public works projects to cronies and hello, being a murderous fascist do warrant a bit more scrutiny than that.

After being the target of an apparent Democratic campaign to paint him as the "true conservative" in this race (and thus deprive the Republican of conservative support), the Libertarian candidate in Montana's U.S. Senate race suddenly throws his support behind the Republican. I'm sure that will annoy those Libertarians who've already voted for him, but I wonder if it'll annoy the rest of them, too -- one of the reasons you become a Libertarian is you don't like people trying to manipulate you, and I bet Montana's Libertarians are even more ornery than that. I could be wrong, though. We'll see soon enough!

Finally, because I know you were waiting for this with bated breath, Kanye West now says he's "distancing myself from politics" because he's been "used to spread messages I don't believe in." Yeah sure -- that whole "slavery is a choice" thing didn't sound like a guy being "used." More likely, he used our President to get some attention for himself, though I can't say our President deserves much better than that.

Action: concerning Administration bullying and campaign finance.

Our Administration's plans to force transgender folks to undergo genetic testing to determine their "true" gender, which presumably will be, by our Administration's definition, the gender they're born with. How does this promote freedom, again? It doesn't -- it promotes the "freedom" of rage- and fear-addled religious bigots to make everyone conform to their vision of how Americans should be. And here you thought being an American was all about everyone's freedom! Luckily, our government contracts out so many of its functions that it'll just about have to depend on various genetic testing corporations, like 23andMe, Ancestry, and LabCorp, and Sum of Us helps you tell those corporations not to cooperate with our Administration's plan to gender-test transgender folks. Transgender folks face enough bulling already; they don't need any more from our Bully-in-Chief.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Federal Elections Commission (or FEC) to ban politicians from using Leadership PACs as their personal slush funds, then Issue One still helps you do that. The FEC prevents candidates from using their own campaign funds on personal expenses -- an offense for which California Rep. Duncan Hunter got indicted in August -- but the FEC does not prevent candidates from using Leadership PACs for limo rides, expensive dinners, and trips to Disneyland, all things I wouldn't imagine even Chief Justice Roberts calling "free speech." Politicians who use Leadership PACs in this manner would likely argue that it's not a "necessity" for "survival" in the mean old political world, but sure ain't the attitude you need to have if you want to bring about a better world.

Action: concerning pollution, lead poisoning, and food safety.

Our President tried to ram through Keystone XL pipeline approval early in his term, but a U.S. District Court judge ruled in April that our State Department had to complete a lawful environmental review before issuing any permits. So now our Administration has apparently issued a draft of said environmental review that fails to fully evaluate the environmental impacts, not least of which is a proposed alternate route through Nebraska. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell our Administration to do a lawful environmental review before committing to build the Keystone XL pipeline. And if doing a lawful review means they can't build the pipeline, well, that's just too bad! Our President doesn't care about climate and clean water; he only cares about swinging his balls in everyone's faces -- which, sadly, resonates strongly among those Americans who blame everyone but themselves for their problems. But they're not a majority, and they don't get all the say about everything.

Meanwhile, as schools are finding lead in their drinking water all the way up and down the state of California -- including half the schools in San Francisco, which really should be collecting enough money in property taxes to fund solutions to this problem -- Cal PIRG helps you tell your local school boards to protect our children from lead in drinking water. The state of California allowed lead in plumbing fixtures until the year 2010, which wasn't that long ago, even if it feels like it. That means a lot of schools there (and plenty of other states!) still have lead in their water pipes, and if you've got lead in your water pipes, you're probably going to have lead in your water sooner or later. And, as you know, any amount of lead in drinking water can cause brain damage in children. And children are literally our future! It wasn't just a Whitney Houston song! So let's tell our school boards to get on the stick with getting the lead out.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big food-producing corporations to get the glyphosate out of their food, then Only Organic still helps you do that. As you may know, the Environmental Working Group found the cancer-linked glyphosate (the main ingredient of Roundup, Monsanto's most famous herbicidal product) in two out of three of the oat-based foods it tested, and at a much higher level than scientists would call safe -- and a lot of our biggest food-producing corporations, like Quaker, Kellogg's, and General Foods, make these foods. And kids eat them in cereal and oatmeal and granola bars! The World Health Organization and the state of California have declared glyphosate a possible carcinogen, and the European Union has banned it from their crops entirely -- and yet our society just chugs along, our leaders in business and government saying their hands are tied. So let's give them some incentive to untie them.

Around the table: Presidential actions both meaningful and meaningless.

Our National Labor Relations Board (or NLRB) rules that San Francisco janitors broke the law by picketing in front of their place of employment. By what labyrinthine reasoning did they arrive at this conclusion? By concluding that the janitors really worked for one of the subcontractors their workplace used to get workers -- and thus the janitors were picketing the "wrong" place! But given that the NLRB's attempt to repeal the joint-employer standard (which should have saved the janitors from this particular chunk of Kafkaesque fecality) hasn't been finalized yet, the courts may yet have the last word.

Hoo boy, our President thinks he can simply issue an executive order to deny birthright citizenship to those children of undocumented immigrants born on American soil. Personally I think the 14th Amendment refutes that notion so clearly even Chief Justice Roberts would disagree with our President, but then our President probably doesn't care whether his gambit works or not -- his gambit will inflame the flammable yet again, and that's the only thing he's good at. Like that's a thing to brag about! Yeah, that setting a pile of kerosene-drenched rags on fire, I was aces at that. Sadly, inflaming the flammable (though, as I've said many times, the flammable don't constitute more than 25% of the electorate) remains our President's best midterm strategy.

Alex Ward at Vox informs us what sending a military force to the border to meet the coming "caravan" will mean, i.e., very little. Soldiers won't be able to confront or detain immigrants (because that'd be illegal!), but they'll be able to help Border Patrol agents get to their destinations more quickly and give medical attention to whomever needs it. So, our President wants to issue an executive order he almost certainly can't enforce and is sending the military to our border to do things they can't do -- are you sensing a theme here?

Jim Hightower describes, in considerable detail, the Republican party's efforts to suppress the vote over the last decade or so. Mr. Hightower takes six paragraphs reminding you (and we don't get reminded enough of this) that efforts to actually prosecute voter fraud have yielded bupkus as far as results -- Kris Kobach, who's gotten quite rich off his efforts to find voter fraud, found a total of nine fraudulent voters in eight years as Kansas's Secretary of State. Mr. Hightower's list of actual vote suppression tactics, while fairly comprehensive, does leave off the notorious Interstate Crosscheck, which I bet does more than anything else to de-register folks without their knowing it until Election Day.

Finally, in a peripherally-related note, Administration press secretary Sarah Sanders says our President won the 2016 election "by an overwhelming majority of 63 million Americans," though virtually everyone who isn't willfully ignorant knows Mrs. Clinton won almost 66 million votes. They just keep lying; what else can they do? If we were a little more arithmetic-literate in America, we would also see that 63 million people isn't a majority (let alone an "overwhelming" majority!) of just about anything, not in a nation of 200 million registered voters. "63 million," in this context, is just a scare number, and we must expose all scare numbers.

Around the table: on "civility," "top talent," "voter fraud," you get the picture.

Yes, Virginia, Meet the Press did in fact have Erick Erickson on this past Sunday to discuss civility in politics. John Whitehouse does an excellent job tabulating the many things Mr. Erickson has said which would lead one away from calling upon him to discuss civility in politics, though he leaves off all those times Mr. Erickson called Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester," perhaps out of politeness. Odd how quickly the extremists become mainstream in America. Why, it's almost like Our Glorious Elites are constantly cranking out new extremists so that yesterday's extremists can look moderate!

Surprise, surprise, Amazon tried using an AI program to hire "top talent," but their AI tool showed a disquieting bias against women. And I'm not sure the male-dominated nature of the tech industry explains that, or else their little AI machine wouldn't have docked women for running a women's chess club. And I don't think developing an AI tool that "focuses on diversity" will do the trick, either -- don't people value developing top talent by, you know, meeting and interacting with other people? I guess that's why these big corporations need to pay out absurd bonuses to executives who don't do anything to earn them -- because actually developing the top talent to replace them simply isn't part of their skill set anymore.

Texas Attorney General "Ramps Up Voter Fraud Prosecutions," so far prosecuting as many cases of voter fraud just this year as the state prosecuted over the previous twelve years. But the numbers are still laughably small -- 33 total defendants for 97 prosecutions, in a state with over 15 million registered voters, and that's before we get to the fact that "prosecutions" doesn't mean convictions. But I guess dutiful right-wing liars are already typing out ZOMG TEH VOTUR FRAUDZ IN TEH TEXUZ IZ UP BY TEH 1200 PERCENTZ!!!!!!

Rep. Paul Ryan (E-WI) says that our President "sometimes" foments division with his rallies and "sometimes" fails to try to unify people. Easy to say Mr. Ryan is like the guy who brings a couple of wine coolers to the party two hours after it's over, but then he's also one of the folks who've been causing division in this nation for many years, and the fact that he's not as obnoxious about it doesn't excuse him. In fact, it indicts him further: anyone can pretend to be civilized while acting uncivilized, even if our President seems to find that double game difficult, and Mr. Ryan's meek criticisms exist mainly to promote the fatuous notion that right-wingers disagree with each other in any significant way.

Finally, this lengthy profile of Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krassner -- who, as an opponent of mass incarceration, plans to "reinvent the role of the modern prosecutor" -- has, by my count, at least two major insights. The first, from Mr. Krassner himself, explains that most prosecutors and judges don't change their ways quickly because that would involve "look(ing) back on their entire careers and say(ing) to themselves, did I get it all wrong?" I mean, you or I would have (and perhaps have had!) trouble with that. The second comes from a prosecutor who did do that looking back, and says prosecutors are "judged internally and externally by our convictions and our trial wins, so (they) aren’t really incentivized to be creative or to take risks on people we might not otherwise." Once you know what to fight, you can figure out how to win.

Action: concerning clean water, moral pension investing, and worker rights.

Food and Water Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 5609, the WATER Act. What would the WATER Act do? The WATER Act would fund improvements in clean water infrastructure with a 3.5 percentage-point increase in the corporate income tax. You and I would probably jack up the corporate tax rate a lot more than 3.5 points, but at least no one could reasonably ask where we're going to get the money. Really, though, no one should be asking that anyway -- clean water is the bedrock upon which a civilized society stays healthy. And that money we'd "save" in (for example) not getting rid of lead pipes and not updating water well systems in rural areas? We'd lose all of that, and more, in rising health care costs when folks can't drink or wash in clean water. And here you thought planning for the future was a conservative value! Sadly, today's "conservatives" only seem to care about what makes some crony unearned cash.

Meanwhile, Pennsylvania workers, take note: payday lending is (praise the Lord!) illegal in Pennsylvania, but Pennsylvania state pension funds still invest in payday lending operations in other states where it's still legal. Payday lenders, as you know, prey on poor working families in need of a quick influx of cash, trapping them in three-digit loans that all too frequently roll over automatically so that folks can't dig out fast enough. That sure doesn't sound like the kind of thing you'd like to make your retirement money off of, does it? Don't fall for fund managers telling you that they just can't make money for you unless they invest in payday lenders, because that's what? A hostage situation, folks -- don't make me invest in people who conduct their business morally, or your retirement gets it! So Penn PIRG helps you tell state pension boards to divest from payday lenders.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our National Labor Relations Board to stop trying to weaken the joint-employer standard, then the National Employment Law Project (among others) still helps you do that. Our NLRB strengthened the joint-employer standard in 2015, quite reasonably surmising that corporations were using franchise arrangements to avoid accountability when they hurt their workers. But it's even worse than that: too many large corporations hire workers through employment agencies, mistreat them, and then try to claim that they need to redress grievances through their employment agencies! Naturally, right-wingers call the strengthened joint-employer standard an "attack on small businesses," though it's obviously aimed at large corporations hiding behind small businesses. If you get as tired of that bald lie as I do, then you know what to do.

Around the table: tragedy doesn't bring out the best in everyone, part 544.

The Center for Media and Democracy has found that the state of Wisconsin has purged over 700,000 voters from its rolls since the 2016 election -- and (get your surprised face ready) purged more of them in Democratic-leaning counties than Republican ones. That still didn't help Republicans in various state special elections in 2018, but note well that Wisconsin has fewer than six million people to begin with. And yes, they used the old respond-to-this-postcard-to-prove-you-haven't-moved trick. If this "blue wave" doesn't materialize, I sure hope our "liberal" media starts covering vote suppression more vigorously. The alternative is hearing pundits say well, I guess Americans just wants to be racist and there's nothing we can do about it.

Straight-ticket voters in six Texas counties report problems with voting machines failing to report or even changing their votes for U.S. Senate. You have to hit two buttons simultaneously to produce the error -- which seems a little like unnecessary effort to me, but it's also should be harder to flummox a voting machine than that, and we didn't have this problem back when we had paper ballots. And of course government officials cry poor when it comes to replacing nine-year-old voting machines. They could tax the rich and corporations a little harder, maybe?

Fox News mistakenly yeah-sure shows a couple of still photos of Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) -- who could, I suppose, be our next President -- during an alert about a shooting suspect/sex offender on the loose in Utah. Because who doesn't get the two mixed up? Fox News ran a correction 45 minutes later, but they know as well as the rest of us that nobody hears the corrections, and their millions of rage-addled viewers all got to associate Kamala Harris with criminal behavior, so mission accomplished! That's why we need to be able to pay for cable channels a la carte -- you may not have liked what Fox News did, but you still paid for it, and they won't stop doing it until they're staring at the possibility of losing lots of money.

Speaking of The Worst of the Very Bad Cable News Networks, a Fox News host claims that the pipe bombs sent to various liberal and pseudo-liberal political figures last week were actually "threatening-looking devices" and thus not "actual threats." Uh, no: if it looks like a threat, it's a threat, and the act of concluding that it only "looks like a threat" does not actually prevent it from going off. Such post-modernists they have at Fox News -- I mean, it's not even the difference between a mound of dung the flies have found and a mound of dung they haven't found yet! (Her right-wing guest disagreed with her, but big whoop -- Fox News loves playing up all the hair-splitting differences between right-wingers so as to help ward off charges of marching in jackboot lockstep agreement about everything.)

Finally, Tucker Carlson wrings his hands on Twitter asking "(h)ow'd we get to a place where it's normal that two parts of the country despise each other?" Gosh, I don't know -- because you and your kind have been complete assholes to everyone who disagrees with you for years? But here's the good news: when right-wingers start whining like this, they're on their heels. Let's keep them there.

Action: concerning political prisoners and war in Yemen.

The government of Iran has imprisoned Atena Daemi for four years now. What did she do? The government says she's guilty of "assembly and collusion against national security," "propaganda against the state," "insulting the Supreme Leader and the sacred," and "concealing crime evidence." OK, so you recognize these as bullshit charges governments come up with when they know they could never rule without fear, so what did she really do? Put social protest songs on her cellphone, make jokes about the Ayatollah on Facebook, express her opposition to the death penalty, and fail to provide a social media password for another friend who's also now in jail. So in the Bizarro World that is Iran, that means six months of detainment followed by a 15-minute trial followed by seven years of prison! What time is it? Time for the Big Stick of Bad PR! Hence Amnesty International helps you tell the government of Iran to free Ms. Daemi.

Meanwhile, you've heard all about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey? The one the Saudis have told a lot of stories about? Well, now's a good time to recall that Saudi Arabia has been leading a war against Yemen which has put over 13 million good Yemeni on the brink of starvation and helped enable al-Qaeda, and that our government has given weapons and logistical support to this effort. Don't protest that we don't have enough allies in the Middle East, not unless you're ready to honestly account for how all our other allies (the Shah, Mubarak, Assad, Netanyahu, Hussein) have acted and where that's gotten us. We must stop treating the world's citizens as obstacles to stealing their resources -- and we must also stop treating dictatorial regimes as vehicles with which we can steal those resources more easily. Hence Stop the War helps you tell your Congressfolk to end our involvement in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen.

Action: concerning nuclear weapons and immigration.

Our President has announced his intention to withdraw from the Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty signed by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in 1987. Why? Partly because our NSA chief, John "The Mustache of Evil" Bolton, hates all arms treaties, and also partly because our President hates any and all constraints on what he perceives to be his rightful absolute power as our 46% President. Hence his whining that Russia and China (the latter not even a party to the INF) get to "do weapons" while we don't, though you don't necessarily throw up your hands and build "usable" nuclear weapons just because someone violates a treaty. But luckily for us, our President can't build "usable" nukes without our Congress funding it, and our Congress wouldn't even fund Mr. Bush's bunker-buster nukes in the afterglow of his 2004 election victory, so Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk not to fund our President's latest wet dream of "usable" nuclear weapons.

Meanwhile, Demand Progress helps you tell Amazon to stop trying to sell its facial recognition software to our Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (or ICE) agency. ICE's separate-all-the-families-at-the-border approach is notorious enough, but Amazon's Rekognition software, like some white folks, can't even reliably tell folks of color apart from each other; now imagine the two joining forces! Look, reducing illegal immigration to America is actually pretty easy: you make it impossible for big corporations to exploit immigrant labor, you amend the National Labor Relations Act to let farm workers unionize, and you adjust immigration quotas so that they acknowledge the reality that nations closer to us are going to send us more immigrants. But I guess Amazon would rather make money off of immigrant detention camps, and thus (like some Amazon employees have already done, and good for them!) we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR.

Action: concerning cruelty and corruption.

As you likely know, our Administration has proposed narrowing the definition of gender under Title IX of the Civil Rights Act as, and I quote, "a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth." Yes, that sure looks like a fairly obvious swipe at transgender folks, who are apparently TEH NEW GAYZ!!!!! for the religious right in America. The word "immutable" in that formulation almost suggests self-sabotage -- given that so many "biological traits," even those "identifiable by or before birth," are now mutable (indeed, this is what gets the religious right's shorts in such a bunch!), but there's no use taking a chance that Justice Gorsuch will see it that way or that Justice Roberts will remember to be compulsively literal in this instance, so People for the American Way helps you tell our Department of Health and Human Services to reject its plan to erase transgender folks from federal policy.

Meanwhile, if you're feeling a bit stunned that the freaking President of Turkey is outclassing our President on the subject of the Jamal Khashoggi killing, recall that our President has deep and lucrative business ties to the nation that has now admitted that Mr. Khashoggi died in its Istanbul consulate, albeit after a "fistfight" which (as Sen. Rand Paul said earlier this week, who knew he had zingers?) somehow led to "dismemberment with a bone saw." Hence Public Citizen helps you tell our President to immediate divest himself of his business holdings; he would, of course, fight to the death before doing such a thing -- since making money is, for him, a feature not a bug of being President -- but the more our politicians are beholden to outside financial interests, the less they'll do their job, i.e., to serve the people. And do you think his business ties are helping keep us in the Saudi/UAE war on Yemen? It's a question worth asking!

Around the table: describing our President's plan to win the midterms.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) writes a USA Today op-ed saying that his Republican counterpart, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has essentially "made the case for a Democratic Senate" by promising to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid benefits and giving another go at Affordable Care Act repeal. It's nice to see the Democrats' leader in the Senate saying all that stuff out loud, rather than mouthing yet more pablum about how we all have to work together, but it would make more of a difference now if Democrats had spent 2009 and 2010 doing good works with their near-total power, rather than telling everyone we had to try to get along with the same Republicans who had just got done almost ruining our country.

Surprise, surprise, our President has indulged in a lot of hysteria over a purported "caravan" of would-be immigrants descending on our border, but our Administration's agencies have, wouldn't you know, taken approximately zero action to actually deal with such a thing. After all, the best course of action in the face of a crisis is no action, so you can blame other people for it, let the crises keep happening, keep blaming other people, and stoke your votaries into a state of rage! And they say our President isn't a real Republican.

Of course, when our President has a saucepan he's going to bang a hole in it, so naturally he says this "caravan" has "unknown Middle Easterners" in it. Suggesting that our Southwest border is a secret conduit for Middle Eastern terrorists is an old argument, of course -- remember when Tom Cotton rode his claims of ISIS/Mexican drug cartel collaboration all the way to a U.S. Senate seat in Arkansas? Good times! -- but too many folks still have a problem telling the difference between something they've heard and something that is, as well as the difference between a suspect and a criminal and the difference between something we "just know" and something we can actually prove.

But fear isn't the only arrow in our President's quiver as the midterms approach -- he's also got lies! Our media call his sudden tax cut proposal a "mystery," given that Congress would have to pass another tax cut and won't be back in session until after the elections, but it's really not a mystery at all, if you assume he just says whatever he thinks will get him the most attention without worrying about whether he'll actually do it. He's hoping to drive turnout in favor of Republicans, with the help of his votaries who'll moronically intone HE CUT YOUR TAXES! I'm feeling charitable, so I'll suppose, this once, that our media's problem in decoding the ploy has to do with its sheer nakedness.

At least one other observer thinks this "middle class tax cut" "plan" will backfire on Republicans, since it'll remind voters that Republicans have already passed a tax "cut" that went mostly to rich folks and corporations. I can see where Mr. Newmyer's coming from, but he clearly hasn't anticipated our President saying I WANT A TAX CUT FOR THE MIDDLE CLASS BUT THE DEMOCRATS WON'T LET ME!!!!!, at which point we'll all be talking about this new BS tax cut, and not the tax "cut" they already passed that we all see through. I mean, you don't expect him to tell the truth about Congress being out of session and legislation taking time to pass, do you?

Finally, Rick Hasen at the Harvard Law Review blog describes just how much worse it could get for state-level redistricting efforts. Voters in several states are trying to pass ballot initiatives that would taking redistricting away from (highly self-interested!) legislators and give it to independent redistricting commissions, and even though our Supreme Court just said (in 2015) that such a process would be part of the legislative process and thus Constitutional, you can just imagine the newly-emboldened five-member right-wing majority (led by that compulsive literalist, John Roberts) overturning that precedent and saying that a legislature either is a legislature or it isn't. (If our Court doesn't want to appear too partisan, I suppose, it could rule that a legislature could cede its redistricting responsibility to an independent commission through law.)

Action: concerning immigration and humane treatment of animals.

After getting in so much trouble with the American people for its "zero-tolerance" family separation policy, our Administration has proposed a fix to the problem -- by essentially terminating the Flores settlement that keeps our government from separating immigrant children from their parents in the first place! Then it'll be Super Happy Indefinite Detainment Fun Time Land in America again! But since our Administration's plan involves the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic) and the Department of Health and Human Services to issue new regulations, they must take comments from the public on the matter before moving forward -- which I'm sure angers them! -- so the ACLU helps you tell our Administration not to terminate the Flores agreement with new regulations. We have until November 6 to leave comments; as fate would have it, November 6 is also Election Day. Leave your comment now and you won't have to worry about doing both on the same day.

Meanwhile, Joann Burrows, of Yonkers, NY, has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell the Bronx Zoo to release an elephant named Happy to an elephant sanctuary. Why? Because the Zoo currently has Happy in a form of solitary confinement, after two newly-acquired elephants charged at her lifelong roommate (named Grumpy) and killed him in 2002, and her next roommate, named Sammy, passed in 2006. The Zoo decided at that point not to acquire any more elephants, which left Happy all alone, since they weren't going to have her live with the two elephants who killed Grumpy. But elephants need to be social, and Happy can't be, now -- the Zoo says she has "tactile and auditory contact" with the two elephants with whom she doesn't get along, but why would anyone think that's good enough? Better to find a place with other elephants for her. But they won't do it, of course, until we wield the Big Stick of Bad PR.

Around the table: concerning workers, taxes, defense, drama, campaigns, and yet another novel moral argument from Pat Robertson.

Mike Konczal at The Nation suggests that bank workers could do a lot of good if they organized into unions and bargained collectively for better pay and working conditions. And by demanding, say, an end to the kind of insane sales quotas that helped the Wells Fargo scandal along, they could even "regulate from below," which would be a help, since regulation sure ain't coming from above. You'd think conservatives would love unions more, since they represent a way for businesses and workers to solve their problems without a whole lot of big government involvement. You'd also think, of course, that the labor movement would have organized workers like these a long time ago.

It's time for the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy's "Who Pays" report, and surprise! Lower-income folks get hit a lot harder by state and local tax systems than higher-income folks do. When you hear that lower-income people pay six times as much of their income in taxes as higher-income people do, don't be the one who says well that figures, because higher income people make more money ha ha ha ha snort. Setting aside the math-illiteracy of such a statement ("paying a higher percentage of your income in taxes" is a lot different than "paying more money in taxes"): don't we all deserve a shot at moving up in the world? Isn't that what America is all about? Well, sales taxes, flat income tax rates, and corporate welfare keep good Americans down.

Jeffrey St. Clair at Counterpunch describes how the Lockheed-Martin corporation has achieved a near-monopoly over defense contracts in America. Long story short: our government has enabled them to do it over the last few decades. And that means Lockheed-Martin gets an outsized say in defense policy, such that they continue to rake in the taxpayer dough for planes they can't seem to make work. That might be a worse outcome than the outcomes we rightly fight against when big media corporations get their monopolies.

In times past we would have been aghast if we heard that our President's Chief of Staff and our National Security Advisor got into a lengthy shouting match outside the Oval Office, but now we either excuse it by imagining Richard Nixon's explosive temper or we shake our head and say this proves they can't run a country. But this is the way our President wants it -- he wants us to get more emotionally involved in the dramas his Administration creates so we'll be less emotionally involved in the reaper's scythe he's cutting through regulations protecting our clean air, our clean water, our internet freedom, and of course our freedom from financial predators. Also, too, we should be running our country, not them.

Rep. Dave Brat (R-VA) abruptly tells a recovering drug addict "(y)ou think you're having a hard time? I've got $5 million of negative ads going against me. How do you think I'm feeling?" Between this and his apparent inability to stop saying Nancy Pelosi's name -- a habit which finally prompted his opponent to tell him "Abigail Spanberger is my name!" during a debate -- I'd be very disappointed if he got re-elected. But at least he rid us of Eric Cantor, whom I still assert is worse, since he's far more able to mask his madness than Mr. Brat.

Finally, Pat Robertson informs us that we shouldn't be "screaming blood for the Saudis" over their apparent torture and murder of a journalist, because "these people are key allies" and "we’ve got an arms deal that everybody wanted a piece of," meaning "a lot of jobs, a lot of money come to our coffers." And you recognize that argument, right? It's a rhetorical hostage situation -- as in, don't demand justice for the state-sanctioned torture and murder of a journalist, or the jobs get it! What does he imagine Jesus would do here?

Action: concerning sentencing, working families, and methane emissions.

Jacqueline Cooney has started a petition on Change.org with which you may tell our President to pardon her mother, Patricia Cooney, sentenced to 100 years in prison for a first-time drug offense almost 20 years ago. She's served 18 of those years and (thanks to sentence reductions, which, at least, testify to her status as a model prisoner) has 14 more years to go, but she's also 65 and very ill now, and might actually have a shot at getting her various illnesses (including lupus, hypertension, and hyperthyroidism) under control if she can get out of prison and actually get some good medical care. She sure seems to deserve mercy -- and though our President isn't exactly known for his mercy, he has been known to let people talk him into being merciful to folks caught up in long prison sentences now and then. OK, so we're not Kim Kardishian. But this is America, so why should that matter?

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell NBA teams to stop booking Marriott hotels while Marriott workers strike. About 7,000 Marriott workers have been on strike since late last month, after their contracts expired over the summer, demanding such things as enough pay so they don't need a second job to make ends meet and enough say over Marriott's automation plans that they could at least blunt its impact. These are not unreasonable demands -- particularly the second one, where you would expect a corporation to automate its functions long before the technology actually supports that. But NBA players have been staying at Marriott hotels, though NBA players are, as you know, some of the most successful labor union members in the country. But the Big Stick of Bad PR can find everyone eventually, and my guess is that the NBA can find other hotels for their players to stay in, so that they can at least claim some solidarity with workers trying to make a better life.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to reject its proposed plan to scuttle methane emissions rules, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. What argument will penetrate this thick-headed Administration? We've told them, many times, that methane packs a climate change punch far more potent than even coal emissions do. We've told them, many times, that letting oil and gas drilling corporations leak more methane into the air not only lets them waste usable energy but also lets them waste taxpayer money if they're drilling on public lands. I mean, our government should be about saving the taxpayers' money and saving energy, right? OK, I'll admit this is rather like banging your head against a wall. But don't bang your head against a wall -- just do your duty and communicate your will to your government. If they keep ignoring us, they won't be our government that much longer.

Action: concerning worker rights, education, and Chaco Canyon.

A few years ago, our National Labor Relations Board made it easier for workers to hold parent corporations accountable for wrongdoing -- which meant, among other things, that fast-food corporations couldn't pretend their franchises were completely independent actors. Of course, the Presidency has changed parties since then, meaning that a whole new NLRB is in town, meaning they're trying to repeal the joint-employer standard as we speak, because RULEZ ARE TEH BADZ!!!!!! Repealing the joint employer standard wouldn't just hit fast-food employees, of course -- it'd also hit temp workers, since a lot of corporations love using temp workers instead of hiring full-time workers like their forbearers did. But our NLRB still by law must take public comments on its proposal, hence Jobs With Justice helps you tell our NLRB to reject its own proposal to repeal the joint-employer standard. Of course, I don't think a corporation should ever own another corporation, particularly for the purpose of evading its responsibilities under the law. But that's another fight, for another day.

Meanwhile, you know that our schools face funding crises -- largely because of our failure to tax rich people hard enough and our willingness to continue indulging the charter school scam, but I digress -- and this makes schools more vulnerable to corporate money. Case in point: McDonald's sponsors McTeacher's Nights, during which our teachers serve junk food to students. I bet it's rather popular with the kids, as they say, but our children don't need any help from our schools choosing to eat 1200-calorie meals that'll contribute to obesity and all the health care problems that go with it. But wait, there's more! Putting teachers behind the food counter also denies work and pay to McDonald's own workers (who make rather less than teachers), and, as it happens, the schools don't get a whole lot of money out of these events. Hence Corporate Accountability helps you tell McDonald's to stop with the exploitation of schools and teachers already and end their McTeacher's Nights. The Big Stick of Bad PR can find all bad actors eventually, if we will but wield it.

Finally, our Administration still has a jones for drilling for gas and oil in the Chaco Canyon area of New Mexico, despite the damage oil and gas drilling does to our clean water, despite the thousand-year-old Anasazi ruins and roadways and rock engravings revered by Pueblo and Navajo -- that latter item suggesting, again, that for this Administration, your heritage only matters if you're white. Our government has, over the years, leased most of the public land outside Chaco Culture National Historical Park for gas and oil drilling, but not the land inside the park -- even our current Interior Secretary seems a little cowed by all the public pressure against drilling inside the park. And there's no reason not to keep up that pressure, particularly since our Interior Secretary is eyeing the midterms just like all the rest of us are. (Note: we'll continue fighting the way we fight regardless of the results.) So Food and Water Action helps you tell our Interior Department to reject gas and oil drilling leases in the Chaco Culture National Historical Park.

Around the table: who really gets away with what, part 253.

McKay Coppins at The Atlantic writes about Newt Gingrich, a.k.a. "The Man Who Broke Politics." I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't get more crass in Congress than Newt Gingrich, but now it seems like everyone in Congress is an obnoxious jerk, and Mr. Gingrich helped start all that, as he "pioneered a style of partisan combat —- replete with name-calling, conspiracy theories, and strategic obstructionism," as part of "an effort to strip American politics of the civilizing traits it had developed over time and return it to its most primal essence." Surprise, surprise -- the man who constantly claims he defends civilization actually destroys civilization! And naturally (pun intended) he uses isolated examples from the animal kingdom to justify it!

Our President criticizes the "rush to judgment" in blaming Saudi Arabia for the torture and murder of a dissident journalist, saying it's a case of "guilty until proven innocent." But, ah, those NFL players protesting the peculiar police habit of killing black folks before even charging them with a crime? Still "sons of bitches," according to our President. As his votaries understand, "innocent until proven guilty" is only for the right people.

In a related note, violent right-wingers beat liberals in the New York streets, while the New York police look on. Maybe there'll be some blowback now that the video's gone viral, but right now, here's how it is: violent white criminals rampage in the streets and don't even get arrested, while black men in their family's backyards who pull out a cell phone get shot to death.

Ho hum, our Administration reports America's biggest budget deficit in six years, a deficit of nearly $780 billion for the fiscal year that ended September 30. And with no economic Armageddon to justify deficit spending, either -- only another Republican tax-cut-for-the-rich, which has, get your surprised face ready, resulted in a lot less money in taxes coming from corporations. Naturally, Republicans don't blame their own evil budgeting, but rising Medicare and Social Security costs -- and three weeks before the midterms, too, they must be feeling confident! Why, this is all rather like Tha Bush Mobb years, without the 9.11. I expect our Administration has discussed this amongst themselves.

I'm not sure how much of the elephant dung I need to see in re our President's 60 Minutes interview, but don't give him credit for saying climate change isn't really a hoax after all, particularly not when he won't say we're warming the planet, and certainly don't ignore him saying that scientists "have a very big political agenda." This is worth saying again: think of how much money scientists would gain from convincing us that we must address climate change if we're to survive, and then think of how much money big fossil fuel corporations would gain from convincing everyone of the opposite. The second pile of money is much, much bigger, meaning it's not the scientists with a "political agenda" any more than it's a "scary time for young men."

Finally, D.C. District judge forces our Department of Education to start enforcing the 2016 borrower defense rule, meaning that students defrauded by their colleges can now get actual relief. Our DOE has tried to delay the rules since the change in power, but of course our government can't do that just because it feels like it -- our government would have to go through a new rule-writing process and get public comments all over again, because that's how civilized people do it. Victories like these can help sustain us through all our multitudinous hardships as patriotic Americans.

Action: concerning vote suppression, immigration, education, and gas mileage.

You've no doubt heard by now that Georgia's Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, has refused to process over 50,000 voter registration applications because liberals -- or maybe because blacks, as the Associated Press has found that these registrations come disproportionately from black folks. A Kemp spokeshack says the Secretary is using "exact-match" criteria which would put a voter registration on hold for something as small as a hyphen dropped from a last name. Just like Interstate Crosscheck, which catches voter fraud through vigorous matching of folks with the same middle names and Social Security numbers! I kid, of course -- Interstate Crosscheck isn't so rigorous, but hey, whatever gets the job done. Who's running for Georgia Governor this year? Well, Stacey Abrams is one, and the other one, let's see here, wouldn't want to get his name wrong -- oh, yes, Brian Kemp! What a coincidence! Color of Change helps you tell Mr. Kemp to process the damn applications already. I mean, if he's really the best candidate, he should be able to win without tricks, right?

Meanwhile, our Administration, always looking for ways to diddle the rage glands of its votaries, would like to make it much, much harder for immigrants to gain citizenship if they've ever relied on public assistance. We have always tried to prevent folks from immigrating to America if it seems likely they'll become "public charges," or folks we'd have to completely support forever, but our Administration wants to make immigrants into a "public charge" if they've ever used Medicaid or food stamps, which a lot of good Americans have to use at some point or other. If someone said out loud that six months on food stamps makes you a hopeless "taker," we'd call that person a narrow, or even cruel. What would we then say of a government that held this position? We'd certainly say they don't give people enough of a chance to make something of themselves, when we as Americans assume that anyone can make something of themselves. The Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you tell our Administration to reject yet another cruel immigration proposal.

In other news, people who think technology is the answer to every conceivable problem (and, ah, people who think technology is a good way of diverting taxpayer money away from public schools and into the coffers of private corporations) have been pushing online pre-K schools as a way of "helping" underprivileged kids, but I bet I don't even need to tell you why that's bunk: because if there's one thing kids need even less than junk food, it's screen time, and if there's one thing that today's "bright," "bold" "innovators" don't seem to get, it's that kids need real-life interaction with other kids and with adults in order to grow. Well, soda taxes funding universal pre-K doesn't seem so bad now, does it? (Full disclosure: soda taxes are still bad.) But seven states now run a "pilot" program involving online pre-K, and you can guess where that's going to end up even if it doesn't do these kids any damn good: "we're broke, so we have to keep doing it." Hence the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell your state education committees to fund real universal pre-K.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to stop trying to roll back our Clean Car Standards, then the Environmental Defense Fund still helps you do that. Stronger fuel efficiency standards means lower prices at the pump and less pollution in our air -- so what's the problem our Administration has with all of that? None of that makes oil CEOs richer, that's what, and if you've been attending our Administration's doings, you know that the only people they think deserve any say about anything in America are bosses. Forget you and your desire to pay less for gas and breathe clean air! Our EPA knows they don't have a leg to stand on, of course, or else they'd never have argued for lower fuel emissions standards by claiming that higher standards cause people to drive more and thus put them at a higher risk of car accidents. I mean, that's a cluster bomb of stupid right there. And we Americans deserve better than that from our public servants.

Action: concerning law and order, taxes, immigration, and media consolidation.

You've heard of banks being "too big to fail"? Our SEC has lately advanced the notion that certain CEOs are also "too big to fail," in refusing to remove Elon Musk from Tesla for securities fraud because, get this, Tesla wouldn't survive without Musk. Well, SEC Chair Jay Clayton actually said "holding individuals accountable is important," but that you also have to consider how "the skills and support of certain individuals may be important to the future success of a company." After all, it's not like Mr. Musk has underlings or anything. It's not like America is full of hungry people willing to work hard and reap the rewards of their work or anything. But our sick, immoral, and decadent society won't punish wrongdoing, and won't reward work -- and our "Best and Brightest" think it's someone else's job to train others to carry on the work of maintaining our civilization. If you value work and civilization more than that, then Demand Progress helps you tell the SEC to start doing its job and prosecute wrongdoers.

Meanwhile, you no doubt know by now about that New York Times report alleging that our President has broken the law repeatedly in order to avoid paying his taxes, and so Americans for Tax Fairness helps you tell our Congressfolk to investigate our President's alleged tax-related fraud. Recall that our President refused to release his tax returns while campaigning, even though every other major party candidate since Richard Nixon has done so; perhaps this (and not, for example, actual poverty) was what he was actually hiding? It'd be hard to know for sure without a Congressional investigation, but certainly such an investigation would be relevant, not just to our duty to ensure that everyone pay their fair share of taxes, but also to our duty to know whether our President has broken the law. Might we even find out that he's continued to break tax law as our President? Yes, we might. But only if we investigate.

In other news, our State Department has started denying passports to certain brown-skinned Americans who live along our border with Mexico -- and has even detained some of them! Apparently, our Administration thinks the existence of a handful of midwives who have admitted providing fraudulent citizenship documents for some of the babies they helped deliver means they can detain or deport anyone these midwives might have helped deliver, but the notion that someone committed a crime on someone's behalf does not mean they committed a crime on behalf of everyone they worked for, and absent evidence that would meet the probable cause standard, you would want to avoid denying passports and detaining and/or deporting people on such "suspicions." Or you would, at least, if you weren't constantly diddling the rage glands of your most devoted supporters. A group of good-government organizations helps you tell our State Department to stop its unwarranted harassment of certain American citizens.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our FCC to reject the proposed Sprint/T-Mobile merger, then Free Press still helps you do that. Sprint and T-Mobile have been trying very hard to convince everyone that their merger would actually be pro-competition -- in that they'd be better able to compete with AT&T and Verizon if they were one corporation instead of two, I guess -- but we can all count, and three corporations dominating our cellphone market is worse than four. Sprint and T-Mobile have also been offering more options to low-income consumers than they're likely to do once they become one of the big three. I guess it's progress that they haven't been spending large amounts of money and time trying to convince everyone that their merger would "create jobs," but that doesn't change the reality that a merger would kill jobs -- nearly 29,000 of them, by the Communications Workers of America's estimate. If 29,000 jobs doesn't sound like a lot to you, remember that you won't feel better about that if your job is one of them.

Action: concerning law and order, nuclear waste storage, and "free" trade.

You've been on a Greyhound bus, right? Well, Greyhound has lately gotten justly-bad PR by announcing that it'll continue to let Border Patrol agents board buses and harass non-white citizens without probable cause. Don't let right-wingers tell you TEH LIBRULZ WANTZ TEH IMMIGRANTZ TO RUN TEH FREEZ!!!!!, because if Border Patrol boards a Greyhound bus with a warrant, of course Greyhound should cooperate. Why do you suppose they'd come on board without a warrant? Because our government, from Tha Bush Mobb forward, has pretended that warrants are just an impediment to law enforcement doing its work. Hello! Getting a warrant is law enforcement doing its work! And using the spectre of TEH IMMIGRANTZ AND TEH CRIMEZ!!!! to justify breaking down protections that have helped sustain a civilized society for over two centuries is short-sighted at best and racist at worst. Hence the ACLU helps you tell Greyhound to (in the ACLU's colorful phrasing) "stop throwing passengers under the bus."

Meanwhile, our nuclear regulatory commission (or NRC) plans to start a federal nuclear waste dump in Andrews County, Texas. The NRC floated this plan once before, only to decide (after multitudinous negative public comments) not to pursue it, but in These Interesting Times, no idea is so awful that it can't pop up again and again like a zombie in desperate need of a head shot, so here we are again. If you're wondering how they're going to have a nuclear waste dump in one spot when we have nuclear power plants all over our country, well, they're going to transport nuclear waste by rail, which would be a splendid idea if trains never got into accidents. But wait, there's more! The Ogallala Aquifer, which provides drinking water to millions of heartland Americans, ain't far away from the proposed dump site, so add "anyone who wants to drink clean water" to the list of Americans who should oppose this plan, which Public Citizen helps you do.

Finally, the USMCA trade agreement, which would replace the hated NAFTA, does some good -- particularly in its (eventual) dismantling of the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" (or ISDS) system between the U.S. and Canada and the drastic curtailing of the ISDS system with Mexico. ISDS, as you know, allows foreign investors to take us to court whenever they claim our laws have "cost them money," and allows them to nullify our laws and exact tribute from the taxpayer when an ISDS tribunal finds in their favor. That's the sort of thing that should be offensive to any law-abiding citizen, particularly now that we are acutely aware of how little work investors actually do anymore. But USMCA could be better -- it could push for better enforcement of its clean air/clean water/worker safety provisions, and could eliminate corporate welfare handouts to big pharma corporations. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk to make a better trade deal with Canada and Mexico.

Around the table: including rare notes on hot Senate races.

As a hideous far-right politician stands on the verge of taking power in Brazil, Glenn Greenwald says that "many, probably most" of those who'd support far-right politicians aren't virulent racists/sexists/homophobes. I'd say about half myself, but that's close to hair-splitting -- right-wingers they only win because they can get non-racist/sexist/homophobic folks to cast their lot with them, and when Our Glorious Elites do nothing but destroy our institutions and redistribute our income upward to themselves (and, more importantly, when our alleged "opposition" party kowtows to the same elites), we'll always have a lot of folks who may not find racism/sexism/homophobia compelling, but find "anti-establishment" politicians compelling -- and then those politicians keep the cycle going! Why, it's almost like that's the plan.

Ho hum, our President's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, probably paid close to zero federal income taxes between 2009 and 2016. And they say Mr. Obama was bad for rich people! The sad part is that Mr. Kushner appears to have broken zero federal laws -- the law generally assumes that buildings depreciate in value every year, like they're cars or something, when even a glancing acquaintance with websites like Zillow will suggest that the truth is precisely the opposite. Naturally, the Republican tax "reform" passed in late 2017 made this problem considerably worse. (Hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but Mr. Kushner bought most of these properties with borrowed money, even though he obviously doesn't have to borrow money, meaning he doesn't have to pay very much up-front and he can take more mortgage interest deductions. Nice work if you can get it!)

Arizona Democratic Senate candidate Kyrsten Sinema comes under "scrutiny" for past association with liberal anti-war groups. And if I were her, I'd say: you say that like it's a bad thing. Sure, right-wing goblins might (might!) be able to do something with some of her past comments, but the Iraq War is so unpopular now that we've long had Americans who supported it saying they never supported it, and if Ms. Sinema's going to run away from opposing a war any sane and reasonable person would have opposed, then she deserves to lose.

Texas Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke has apparently raised $38 million in the third quarter of 2018 -- taking zero dollars from PACs and corporations. That's a nice haul, but it hardly guarantees victory (he's behind Mr. Cruz by more than the margin of error, last I looked), and even if you're praising your supporters while bragging about money you're still bragging about money. And if he uses that money to pay Democrat consultants to find microfractures among right-wing voters instead of putting workers on the ground to turn out the vote, then he deserves to lose.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) worries there'll be an "assassination" in this "political climate" -- but of course he's more upset about Sen. Booker (D-NJ) telling voters to get up in politicians' grills than the garbage we routinely hear from right-wing politicians. And what a message for our youth -- don't speak passionately about the issues facing the country we love, or it'll be your fault if someone dies! And they say liberals always blame the wrong people! (Also, too, his own assault by his neighbor didn't happen because of "our deep divisions," or he would have said so, rather than just hope you think so by mentioning it right after the Steve Scalise shooting.)

Finally, on the heels of polling suggesting that (again!) folks under 30 are far less likely to vote (still!) than folks over 65, Adam Eichen at Yes! reminds us that young folks have got a right to think there's no point to voting, what with 9.11 and the PATRIOT Act and climate change and ballooning student loans and the bankster Armageddon of 2008 and the Republican Party going completely bat-guano insane. Better, he suggests that the older folks who know how to change the system do a better job training those who don't yet. I'm not so old that I don't remember what being under 30 was like -- I was obsessed with personal transcendence rather than contributing something lasting to our civilization, among other things -- but Mr. Eichen's analysis is a lot more helpful than throwing up our hands about the youngs.

Action: concerning the right to protest, copyright law, and food safety.

So liberals get out in the streets to protest our government, and now our National Park Service wants to make it harder for good Americans to protest on public lands. Like our heritage as a people isn't based on protest! Like public lands don't, you know, belong to the public! The NPS would make protestors pay for the cost of barricades and "monitoring," would close off large areas around our White House to protests, and would give our government the right to shut down a protest for most piddling of reasons (rather than using the current "clear and present danger" standard). You know that famous photo of '60 civil rights protestors on the National Mall? Yeah, that won't happen under the new rules, and it's almost like that's the idea. You can pimp-slap the NPS by leaving a public comment opposing their new anti-free speech regulations, which Defending Rights and Dissent helps you do. But get to stepping, because deadline for comments is Monday.

Meanwhile, they call H.R. 1695 the Register of Copyrights Selection and Accountability Act; if you note the incongruous presence of the word "accountability" in the title, you already know something's up, and if you note the massive support this bill has from big entertainment corporations and big entertainment trade associations, you know something else is up, too. Currently our Library of Congress appoints a Register of Copyrights, but H.R. 1695 would make that position a Presidential appointee to be confirmed by the Senate. Meaning what? The position would become a political position, and, at present, would be filled by a President who thinks getting all kinds of unearned tax breaks for yourself is just "smart," but who also thinks that whatever big corporations think should be copyright infringement should maybe get your hands cut off. Hence the Electronic Frontier Foundation helps you tell your Senators to reject H.R. 1695.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell big corporations to get the glyphosate out of our food, then Just Label It still helps you do that. As you may recall, an Environmental Working Group study found glyphosate in oat-based foods at considerably higher levels than what most scientists would call safe, and scientists have long linked glyphosate to cancer, childbirth issues, and cell function. It's bad enough that four European nations have suspended Monsanto's license to use the most popularly-known glyphosate, Roundup, on their farms -- but here in America, we douse our crops with glyphosate in the hope it'll kill all the nearby weeds, though those weeds have long been developing a resistance to glyphosate, which means we'll heap more of it on, which means they'll get more resistant and we'll get sicker, ad nauseam. This could be yet another one of those disasters "no one sees coming." So, as usual, it's up to those of us who do see it coming.

Action: concerning war-making and pollution.

Win Without War helps you tell our Congressfolk to end the war in Afghanistan now. I know, I know, it's only been 17 years! And tolerate no backtalk from your Congressfolk (and, remember, we heard this from both parties in 2007!) about how "ending the war" would put our troops in harm's way, as if there's just no way to get soldiers out of a war zone. Wow, that phrase "ending the war would put our troops in harm's way" really is a cluster bomb of stupid. Also tolerate no hifalutin rubbish about how privatizing the war --as Erik Prince would like to do, his corporation (The Artist Formerly Known as Blackwater) having done so much for the Iraq war effort! -- would sate the public's desire to get out of the Afghanistan War without, you know, actually ending the killing and destruction. Certainly don't tolerate anyone saying the private sector does everything better than the public sector, not when the malicious and the weak take turns controlling the public sector.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our Administration to scuttle its plan to weaken fuel efficiency standards, then Environmental Action still helps you do that. Again our Administration wants to get all law-and-order on black folks, but pretends that making cars pollute less and get better mileage is a hardship. They also act like cars costing less because they're less fuel efficient (you can click your heels together three times for that one if you like) is somehow better than gas costing less for the entire life of the car. And recall, also, that our Administration actually thinks that lower gas mileage will save lives because folks will drive less and thus die in fewer car crashes. I suppose not being able to breathe the air reduces the chance you'll die of cancer, too, but what sane person would say that with a straight face?

Around the table: downhill rolling, part 295.

Lawyer/Administration critic Michael Avenatti has apparently proposed a mixed martial-arts fight with our President's namesake son, for charity, of course. While I loathe the drama that surrounds our Administration, what I really hate about this is that it allows us to pretend our President and his offspring are just part of the human family, when we should be casting them out of the human family until they start acting human again.

Buried in this report about our White House getting ready for a subpoena storm if Democrats retake the House is this nugget from an official who worked in the Clinton and Obama Administrations: "Subpoenas flowing into a White House create paralysis...The White House doesn't operate optimally, and the policymaking process doesn't receive its due attention." How generous of him, to think this particular White House is "operating" very much at all.

You remember all those fake anti-net neutrality comments the FCC did less than nothing about? Karl Bode at TechDirt reminds us that sending fake comments to our federal agencies is not exactly a new thing. So when they say the public writes stupid comments and only the experts can write good ones, remember that too often "the experts" are so unsure of their expertise that they have to resort to un-American shenanigans like fake public comments to get their way. Yeah, "un-American" is a good way of describing it, in a democracy that's supposed to run on reading, understanding, and doing the people's will.

Multitudinous right-wing jerks compare what Brett Kavanaugh "went through" on his way to a lifetime appointment on our Supreme Court to a lynching. And here you always thought a lynching had to have actual ropes, actual trees, actual rifles, actual murders! After you read about National Review's editor pretending that To Kill a Mockingbird had nothing to do with race, you might want to remember that Review founder William F. Buckley, Jr. was himself an avowed white supremacist at least through the mid-'60s.

Meanwhile, in the real world that doesn't touch the beautiful brains of right-wing jerks, Christine Blasey Ford still can't go home because she's getting too many death threats. Gosh, why don't they come forward sooner? And, seriously, cowards: you got your way. This is like all those folks who painted swastikas all over America after their man won the 2016 Presidential election! Nothing's important to them but diddling their own rage glands. May God have mercy on their immortal souls.

Finally, we could quarrel or not with Sen. Mitch McConnell's assessment that the Kavanaugh controversy was a "gift" to Republicans in that it stoked up their base -- I'm more skeptical about that than I was, frankly -- but note well that a man who calls any group of organized citizens a "mob" reveals himself to be a man who thinks "the right people" should run everything and most people should shutup and listen to their "betters." And a man who doesn't call Tea Partiers a "mob" when they proudly parade their ignorance in public reveals himself a hypocrite as well.

Action: concerning clean water, social media, and methane emissions.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: Penn PIRG helps you tell Gov. Wolf to do his damnedest to keep lead out of our drinking water. Finding lead in your drinking water isn't something that only happens to "those people" in Flint, Michigan -- Detroit's public schools just shut off their drinking water after they found lead in it, and our Government Accountability Office (or GAO) found over one-third of school districts that had tested for lead found elevated levels of lead in their water. And remember: there is no safe level of lead consumption -- any amount of lead can cause brain damage and can stunt a child's growth and/or brain development. This is one of those things we actually need to be zero-tolerance about, but too many of our leaders act like they can do nothing about it. But that sure in hell ain't the American can-do spirit in action. And it's well past time our leaders get right with the American can-do spirit.

Meanwhile, Facebook's Messenger Kids app isn't just an app that exposes our youngest children to all the problems older kids already have with social media, like depression and bad body image -- it's an app that apparently breaks the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act! Nobody could have predicted! Apparently Messenger Kids lets folks approve children's accounts without actually proving they're the parents and also lets Facebook disclose children's data to members of the "Facebook Family of Companies," both of which would contravene COPPA protections. Of course this is the sort of thing our President talks about as being "in the way of companies making money and trying to serve people," but when you hear such a thing in the context of protecting children's private information, I hope that kind of statement sounds like the lame excuse it absolutely is. The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood helps you tell Facebook to abandon its Messenger Kids app.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell our EPA to continue to require strong methane leak rules, then Penn Environment still helps you do that. Hey, weren't we just talking about those pesky regulations stunting our economy and forcing corporations to follow a lot of rules boo-hoo? Well, those "pesky" regulations forcing gas and oil drilling corporations to emit less methane not only protect us from pollution and climate change, they also keep usable energy from leaking into the atmosphere -- usable energy, I should add, that means royalties for the American people when it occurs on public lands. But our Administration just wants you to think it's thrown up its hands, what with the NHTSA's assessment that global temperatures would go up a staggering seven degrees by the end of the 21st century. But perhaps our Administration also needs to get right with the American can-do spirit.

Action: concerning trade and tax loopholes.

Public Citizen has released an analysis of the new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, but contrary to early news reports stating that the hated "investor-state dispute settlement" system remains intact (which I apologize for having relied upon), Public Citizen finds that the USMCA would terminate the ISDS system between the U.S. and Canada (though not until three years after the deal gets ratified) and narrow the scope of the ISDS system between the U.S. and Mexico. I won't lie to you, that's a big deal -- all ISDS systems do is nullify our laws and exact bailouts from taxpayers. But the deal also needs stronger labor and clean air/clean water enforcement mechanisms, and must scrap welfare handouts for big pharma corporations. So Public Citizen helps you tell your Congressfolk how they can improve the USMCA trade deal. Don't let anyone tell you that you should just "let the negotiators work." The negotiators work for us, after all.

Meanwhile, our IRS is proposing changing a federal charitable deduction so that the rich won't be able to take so much advantage of it. Long story short: in some states, when folks donate to private school voucher programs, they're able to turn a profit on those deductions by claiming both state and federal tax credits, such that (for example) an Alabama resident could collect over $67,000 in deductions on $50,000 in donations. That kinda flies in the face of the whole definition of charity, doesn't it? The IRS's proposal could be stronger -- you and I don't get to simply deduct our charitable donations from our tax bill, but the IRS proposal would still allow someone to get 100% of their private school donations back. Our IRS is still taking public comments on their proposal, but only until Friday; you can click here to leave a comment.

Around the table: concerning the, ah, *strained relationship* between wealth and work, and wealth and law and order.

Brett Stephens at Wired describes the threat coming from the "digital ID." A unified digital ID has benefits (for identifying refugees and for delivery of services for which taxpayers pay) but also has easily-imaginable drawbacks (oppression by governments, hackers, and Black Mirror-style "social credit systems"). Just so happens that some of the things that would protect us from these drawbacks -- i.e., the Fourth Amendment protections of the probable cause warrant -- have been under attack for decades now as part of the "war on terror." Why, it was almost like that was the whole idea.

U.S. District Court judge blocks our Administration's attempts to deport Temporary Protected Status (or TPS) immigrants from four nations -- and cites our President's own statements as evidence that he tried to end TPS status out of racism. I can't say I'm hopeful for this case going to our Supreme Court -- though I also can't say I'm any less hopeful now that the quite-overrated Anthony Kennedy has been replaced with Anthony Kennedy the Thirty Years Younger. They totally ignored his racist statements when evaluating the Muslim travel ban, even as they dug deep to prove an "animus against religion" during Masterpiece Cakeshop.

Our Supreme Court mulls whether trucking corporations can call truckers "independent contractors" and not regular employees so they can push them into arbitration more easily, and for once at least two right-wing Justices seem skeptical that "independent contractors" aren't employees. Shame on CNBC, though, for letting one source go on for several paragraphs about how supporting these truckers would result in higher prices for the consumer, because that is what, class? A rhetorical hostage situation, that's what -- don't do right by these truckers, or the low prices get it! (Also, too, when a guy says prices could go up "10, 15, 20 percent," he sounds like he's making it up, and that's not a good look.)

Briahna Gray at The Intercept reminds us that we tend to demand a "presumption of innocence" for "privileged men" like Brett Kavanaugh, but we don't demand that presumption for others who deserve it -- like Laquan McDonald, shot to death by Chicago police before being charged with a crime, and the Central Park Five, ultimately found innocent of a 1989 rape and murder despite our President's best efforts. I guess if I were more (or less?) spiritually-advanced, I'd find it amusing that right-wingers have gotten all "presumption of innocence" about Mr. Kavanaugh, when he's not even on trial! And if you "just know" Mr. McDonald or the Central Park Five or (fill in dead black person's name) "did something to deserve it," then you're not doing this law-and-order thing right.

Paul Krugman reminds us that the New York Times report on our President's apparent lifelong tax avoidance may do America a great service: it may explode the myth folks earn their "great wealth" "more or less honestly." I've been saying the relationship between work and wealth has been rather strained for a while, but the relationship between law-and-order and wealth also appears to be strained, if we attend our President's example -- or the example described by the Panama Papers, which showed that "(t)he truly wealthy end up paying a much lower effective tax rate than the merely rich, not because of loopholes in tax law, but because they break the law." I guess we now understand fully why our President admires Mr. Putin so much.

Finally, I'll leave it to someone else to expose all the cherry-picking Sen. Collins did in her speech supporting now-Justice Kavanaugh, but FactCheck points out that her statement that D.C. Court of Appeals Chief Judge Merrick Garland voted the same way as Judge Kavanaugh 93 percent of the time is rather misleading. Appellate courts have much, much less power to refuse to hear an appeal, and they're more tightly bound by Supreme Court precedent and circuit court precedent, which means, in one observer's words, "a lot of cases are just slam dunks" and the "vast majority" of appellate court opinions are unanimous. More telling, we learn, is that Justice Kavanaugh not only wrote the most dissents while on the D.C. Court, but also wrote the most separate opinions, which, as we know, can express subtle disagreements with rulings even when they're not actually dissents.

Action: concerning prisoner rights in Pennsylvania and forced cotton field harvesting in Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: the state Department of Corrections (or PADOC) has banned books coming into prisons -- meaning prisoners can only get ebooks, and then only through a private ebook vendor -- and has also forced all mail from family to prisoners to be scanned by a Florida corporation and then re-sent electronically. All this, because over 50 correctional officers became ill after exposure to synthetic cannabinoids coming in via books and mail. At least, that's the official story; some toxicology experts have questioned whether that could have happened, and, hey, we're not schmucks: whenever an "incident" precedes a crackdown on someone's rights -- and a private corporation opening up prisoner mail is absolutely violating their rights -- you have every right to wonder whether that was the plan, particularly with million-dollar contracts with private corporations involved. Hence Roots Action helps you tell your PA state legislators and your Governor to lift the restrictions that harm prisoner's rights.

Meanwhile, it's October, meaning it's forced harvest season in the cotton fields of Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Yes, despite all the bad PR these nations have justly received, they still conscript good citizens into the cotton fields, no matter if you're already a doctor or a teacher or a civil servant -- or a child! Right-wingers, please attend: this is what an oppressive government acts like. We should point this sort of thing out whenever we can, lest some of our fellow-Americans continue to regard "being told Happy Holidays" or "worrying that I can't try to get a woman into bed without her saying I harassed her" as "oppression." We should also point this sort of thing out as the evil-alternate-universe version of "everyone coming together for the common good." We should come together for the common good willingly, and not for the "greater good" of cotton CEO bank accounts. So the Cotton Campaign helps you take a variety of actions against the forced cotton harvests, which include writing to the two governments in question.

Around the table: with hard lessons and strange bellwethers.

I'm not sure I agree, precisely, that "The Cruelty is the Point" of our President's rapport with his votaries. Yes, folks do bond over their shared hatred of others, but I bet these folks don't think of themselves as cruel people, or even people who enjoy cruelty done to their enemies; more likely our President has convinced them, as all right-wing bastards do, that their rage-against-others is necessary, and when you have a quarter of the electorate in a constant state of rage, it's easy to activate prejudices within them, even prejudices they've worked to eliminate in the past. Again: all of this would be a historical footnote if Democratic politicians were less like Hillary Clinton and more like Bernie Sanders.

In a related note, Matt Grossman at Five Thirty-Eight theorizes that "Voters Like a Political Party Until It Passes Laws." There's evidence to support that on the face, I suppose (voter antipathy toward the Affordable Care Act in 2010, voter antipathy toward Republican efforts to gut the Affordable Care Act in 2017), but gosh that theory makes us look like a bunch of jerks, doesn't it? It may be impossible to test in these times, but what if voters actually liked the laws that politicians passed? You know, instead of holding their noses and accepting the half-measures politicians pass because TEH ARTZ UV TEH POSSIBULZ!!!!!? Shame we can't test voters "liking" a party that expands voting rights protections, expands Medicare to include everyone, and builds out a renewable energy grid, because that party doesn't exist in America.

Some pollsters and Republican operatives point to a spike in Republican voter enthusiasm for the midterm elections, which I presume is, in fact, happening, though we're not seeing a drop in Democratic enthusiasm nor (and this could be more important!) in independent voter enthusiasm, and anyway this spike in Republican enthusiasm may be coming too early: Election Day is still over a month away, the Kavanaugh vote (which I expect will go his way) will wrap up the drama causing this particular spike in Republican enthusiasm by the end of the weekend, and there's still plenty of time for Democrats to remind everyone that, hello, health care! Of course, we'd be counting on Democrats to actually do that, when they're probably outsmarting themselves about this matter as we speak.

Ho hum, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), who does not presently have activists in his face at the Senate elevator, declares that the FBI's supplementary background report on Judge Kavanaugh did not "corroborate" Christine Blasey Ford's allegation. But that's actually a bait-and-switch -- Mr. Flake said on 60 Minutes earlier this week that Mr. Kavanaugh's nomination wouldn't go through if he lied to the Judiciary Committee (which seems fairly obvious, even if the lies all seem like "little white lies"), but now he says the Ford accusations are "uncorroborated," which, frankly, isn't the same as saying Mr. Kavanaugh told the truth. So between this and Sen. Collins's clucks of approval for the FBI's work and the rumors coming out of Sen. Manchin's camp, I guess we'll get to see how well this whole thing will work out for Republicans in the midterms. I'd like to think independent voters, at least, are sick and tired of Republican drama, but I've trusted independents too much before.

Finally, from the "Ain't Nothing So Bad Mitch McConnell Can't Make It Worse" file: Sen. McConnell (E-KY) says the Senate would set a "fundamentally un-American precedent" if it sinks the Kavanaugh nomination over the sexual assault allegations Ms. Ford has leveled against him. OK, deep breath: worse than the un-American precedent of simply refusing to consider a President's Supreme Court nominee because it'd tip the ideological balance of the Court away from you? Seriously, this being the "Age of McConnell" really does suck at times.

Action: three alerts concerning *real* national security.

Our Administration plans to admit only 30,000 refugees into America this year; recall that refugees are running from terror and are thus far less likely than everyone else to commit terror and you'll see their plan as the grandstanding cruelty it is -- unless, of course, you're a rage addict. But our ministry is not for rage addicts, but for those who may be thinking "we need to do something," when the whole point of living in this world is not to do "something" but to do the right thing. I will say we would find it a whole lot easier to do the right thing in re refugees if we a) stopped treating the world's citizens as impediments to resources we could take for ourselves and b) stopped letting corporations import workers willy-nilly so they can pay workers less and keep more money for themselves. In the meantime, we still have to do the right thing, hence Amnesty International helps us tell our Congressfolk to welcome more refugees to America.

Meanwhile, H.R. 6534, the Stop Outsourcing Security Act, would ensure, within six months of its passage, that employees of our government, and not private contractors, perform essential diplomatic and consular security functions in those areas of the world we're fighting. The bill would then give our President a little over a year to get rid of private contractors in other war-making functions. If you recall how Tha Bush Mobb tried to win the Iraq war with too few soldiers, and then recall how much they paid Blackwater private contractors to perform security functions in Iraq, then you no doubt see how fiscally responsible it would be to ensure we don't privatize so much of our war-making. And if we can't fight or win wars without privatizing some part of them, well, that may just be an indication we shouldn't be fighting the war at all. Hence Win Without War helps you tell your Congressfolk to stop privatizing our wars by passing H.R. 6534.

Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 6840, the Hold the LYNE Act, and thus stop our Administration's efforts to build so-called "low-yield" nuclear weapons. ("LYNE" stands for "low-yield nuclear explosive." I know, you also thought of this, too.) Anyway, we're already capable of destroying the world hundreds of times over with the nuclear weapons we already have, so you have to wonder why we'd consider building more. I'm sure LYNE advocates try to tell us that we need to have nukes that can cause less damage and give us more military flexibility. But setting aside the notion that we'd ever want to make nuclear war easier to fight: while there's a difference between a handgun and a semi-automatic rifle, there's really not very much difference between a low-yield nuke and what we're used to -- they both kill, they both make survivors very sick, and they both make worlds uninhabitable. It's enough to make you think LYNEs exist merely to make defense contractors rich.

Around the table: in which we try to make now a *very scary time* for bad people.

The New York Times finds that our President "Engaged in Suspect Tax Schemes as He Reaped Riches From His Father." Yes, it's good to have it all laid out here -- particularly his utter dependence on his father's largesse, that's some self-made man there! -- but if you recall Tha Man Himself taking 9.11-related small business tax breaks for buildings of his that weren't even damaged on 9.11, we're not exactly in Whoda Thunk It territory here. (By the way, it's not a good look for our President's lawyer to say these allegations are all false and my client had nothing to do with any of these transactions in damn near the same breath.)

Are you of the mind that the robots will not, in fact, "take our jobs" except at corporations no one should work at anyway? Astra Taylor at Logic instructs us about "The Automation Charade," which threatens workers with obsolescence if they demand better pay and conditions -- and devalues the housework mainly done by women. Technology doesn't actually get rid of jobs very effectively -- at McDonald's, the order-taking kiosks change worker duties more than they "replace workers" -- and all too often technology merely creates more work. Also, I've been wrong to demand that social media corporations stop relying so much on "algorithms" to screen content -- I should have been saying social media corporations should stop paying content screeners in dung pellets. I mean, their CEOs are billionaires, so they can afford to pay real money.

So here's what to say when your Tea Party uncle repeats Judge Kavanaugh's contention that he's had all these FBI background checks already and none of them caught any of these allegations: Trevor Aaronson at The Intercept reveals that FBI background checks tend to be fairly limited in scope to begin with. You probably already suspected this, if you were scratching your head trying to figure out what enterprising FBI agent would ever have thought to ask Mr. Kavanaugh if he'd tried to rape someone in high school, but it's also good to be reminded that such background checks focus on a potential employee's professional behavior. Also, too, without subpoena power, FBI agents can compel approximately no testimony from witnesses even if they know what questions to ask.

From the "Ain't Nothing So Bad Our President Can't Make It Worse" file: our President, at a Mississippi rally, says "it's a very scary time for young men in America when you can be guilty of something that you may not be guilty of." Well, I will say that it is a very scary time for young men who are, for the first time, confronting the fact that they are assholes and that there may one day be a price to pay for being an asshole. That sound you're hearing is the world's tiniest violin.

Finally, Kate Wagner of McMansion Hell fame writes an article excoriating both the New Jersey Turnpike and attempts to glorify it as the epitome of a civilization building itself up. If you've ever smelled the Elizabeth oil refineries as you approached Exit 13, you might find such glorification bizarre, and after you read about the infamous "House of Butterflies" and the "botanical trench-war" of "invasive plants out-invading each other" going on behind a veil of "tranquil greenery," you'll find it more bizarre. But I must confess that I, too, have sentimentalized the Turnpike's world-churning persona (I claim youthful indiscretion), and I regret it now. And "the rut left by civilization marching onward, over and over" is a great line of prose.

Around the table: concerning internet freedom, law and order, and the true nature of leadership.

Ho hum, our Administration's Justice Department sues the state of California over its recently-signed net neutrality law. That's right, our "conservative" federal government is suing a state for defying its will on net neutrality, after itself defying the people's will on the very same matter. I hope the federal judges who hear this suit look at all the other lawsuits being filed over the FCC's net neutrality repeal and decide there's just no way to figure out if the Justice Department's suit has a reasonable chance at success. That's better than hoping against hope that our "conservative" Supreme Court hears this case and actually respects free speech (or even "states' rights"!).

Surprise, surprise, the IRS catches a lot fewer tax cheats after Republicans spend seven-plus years cutting its budget, which has prompted the IRS to cut its tax law enforcement workers by about a third. I make the same argument here I make about Medicare: the mere presence of fraud doesn't prove public programs are weak, but catching and punishing those fraudsters does prove those programs are strong, and politicians should stop arguing that "we're broke" all the time, particularly when aggressive enforcement can recover (by IRS estimates) at least $125 billion annually, which even our President wouldn't dare call chump change.

Michelle Nickerson and Emily S. Johnson explain why "Women Are Deeply Divided on Brett Kavanaugh." Long story short: "many women in America are -- and have always been -- driven more by political beliefs than sisterly solidarity, a trend not limited to the political right." You should read the long story, though, and get yourself an education in 20th century anti-feminist movements on the right (a subject Ms. Nickerson has written about in more detail in her book Mothers of Conservatism). Reading the long story is, in fact, a good way to inoculate yourself against that right-wing habit of positing that the exception to the rule always obliterates the rule.

In a related vein, Judith Donath explains how Mr. Kavanaugh's alleged transgressions don't "signal to his supporters that he is untrustworthy" but rather that he is "one of them." "(N)one of Kavanaugh's accusers claim that he attacked them alone" -- some buddy or group of buddies was always there, ready to cover for him as he was for them, since "(m)utual misbehavior builds trusting bonds, partners in crime." And it ain't just that he'll cover for the Republican Party if he gets to our Supreme Court, knowing, as he does, that "(t)he rules that apply to others do not apply to them" -- it's that his predicament resonates with every male (I don't think I need to gender-equivocate here) who has ever enjoyed being part of a secret club, or wanted to be.

If you find yourself anxious about confronting the Ford/Kavanaugh testimony more directly, Nathan J. Robinson is here to remind us that you only need attend their testimony to know that Mr. Kavanaugh is more likely to be lying than Ms. Ford is. Long story short: "(i)f both parties speak with passion and clarity, but one of them says many inconsistent, evasive, irrational, and false things, while the other does not, then we actually have a very good indicator of which party is telling the truth." After you confront all the lies Mr. Kavanaugh tells in his testimony, you have to wonder why he doesn't simply admit he used to drink like a fish and say he's always struggling to do better, rather than refuse, even, to admit he drank before he was 18./p>

Finally, the notorious Amazon has pledged, after considerable agitation from activists, to pay their workers a minimum of $15/hour. Again, we learn that shame works, but we also learn that folks like Jeff Bezos get the whole relationship wrong: sure, saying "(w)e listened to our critics" isn't typical CEO-speak, but "(we) decided we wanted to lead" is utter horsedoodle. Amazon didn't lead; the people who agitated for them to change their ways led. I mean, this is America, where anyone can lead, and we must celebrate those who do lead, rather than reflexively assume that our "big," "bold" "entrepreneurs" must have somehow earned the title of leader.

Action: concerning "free" trade, tax policy, and our Supreme Court.

Our government has struck a new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, but guess what we already know from mainstream media coverage? That our government, in order to appease Canada yeah-sure, kept the "investor-state dispute settlement" system that outsources our jobs and nullifies our laws. I had long feared that our President, having run against "free" trade, would give us a trade deal that was just as bad as all the others -- and, sadly, I was right. No use objecting that we'll get more access to Canada's dairy markets or whatever when this deal also allows foreign corporations to nullify our clean air and clean water laws if it "costs them money" and then exact tribute from the American taxpayer to pay for that "loss." You can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Reps and Senators and demand that they oppose the USMCA trade deal.

While you're on the phone with your Senators, you might also tell them to oppose H.R. 6760, better known as "Tax Scam 2.0," which the House passed late last week while we were all watching the Kavanaugh hearing. Did they plan it that way? Does it matter? Evil people know that bad drama will give them cover for something, whatever that might be at whatever moment. H.R. 6760 makes permanent a number of otherwise "temporary" changes to the tax code, including the pass-through business tax cuts and the high-end income tax cuts that go almost entirely to rich folks; per the Tax Policy Center, that'll increase our federal deficits by $3.8 trillion over the 20 years from 2025-2045. And then some President who makes our current one look like the soul of decorum will tell you he just has to cut Medicare and Social Security to cover over this massive hole in our budget! Let's forestall this tragedy by rejecting this new round of tax-cuts-for-the-rich.

Finally, you might also want to tell your Senators, if you've still got them on the phone, to reject the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to our Supreme Court. You may feel a little overwhelmed by all the drama surrounding his nomination, but you don't have to be -- taken together, his stated belief that Presidents should be shielded from criminal prosecution, his long history doing Republican dirty work, his multitudinous misstatements during his confirmation hearings, the quite credible sexual assault allegation against him, and his volcanic temper when confronted with that accusation all reveal a man who believes that if you are not part of America's elite class, you do not matter. And a man who thinks so little of us won't exactly rush to protect the rights we've won through struggle and hard work. So let's get someone maybe a bit less privileged up there.

Around the table: more lessons about drama and duty.

Surprise, surprise, while the Senate Judiciary Committee created all that drama on Friday, the House passed yet more tax-cuts-for-the-rich. Not that they planned it precisely that way, of course -- but creating drama all the time does give folks cover to do nefarious evil, and I'm sure the folks who create the drama are quite aware of that. (The House did not pass the bill in question, H.R. 6760, as part of a budget reconciliation process, meaning our Senators can filibuster it, and of course we'll get on our Senators to do that presently.)

Natalie Shure at In These Times instructs us, in examining the collapse of alleged innovative corporation Theranos, that we're not going to "innovate" our way out of our health care problems. "Ingenuity isn’t what our healthcare sector needs," she writes. "We have plenty of it already, and it hasn’t managed to stop poor people from dying over 10 years earlier, on average, than their wealthy peers." I was going to add that "looking to private corporations to fix health care is more than a little like looking to banksters to fix the foreclosure crisis," but then I realized it wasn't much of a joke, because the Obama Administration did all of that. Didn't we used to think scientists, not entrepreneurs, were the big innovators?

Rebecca Solnit at The New Republic does a public service by reviewing three books about female anger. Male anger -- the kind that ends up in school shootings, wife beatings, and whole movements of men who never stop whining about woman constantly rejecting them I wonder why -- gets most of the ink in America, but it's well past time we acknowledged that women have a right to be angry, and that we need to stop telling them they don't. (I mean, I don't put up with oooooh why are you so angry? from the haters, and it never occurs to me that I should -- but we make women feel like they should.)

Jake Laperruque and David Janovsky at the Project on Government Oversight inform us that aerial drones may have reached a point where they're good enough and cheap enough to tempt local police departments to radically increase spying on the citizenry. And the more automated they become, the fewer people will be involved in their use and maintenance -- which means, yes, that aerial drones kill jobs. How many times must I tell these pimps! Ensuring that government spying doesn't violate our rights is the work of a democracy, and only people can do the work of a democracy -- and if that last part puts the fear in you, then your task as a citizen is to help create people worthy of that work, not throw up your hands and let machines do it.

You can get too hypnotized by the inside politics in this excerpt from Michael Lewis's upcoming book (The Fifth Risk) about how our Administration is destroying our government from within, but you'll probably agree that, regardless of the specific context in which he said it, "fuck the law...I want my fucking money" is pretty much the motto of our President and of the corporate executives he regards as his real constituency. Remember that motto every time our Administration tries to slash clean air, clean water, and product safety regulations.

Finally, we learn the amazing story of how Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) went from declaring his support for the Kavanaugh nomination to demanding an FBI investigation into the allegations against Mr. Kavanaugh after activists confronted him in a Senate elevator with their stories of sexual assault. That video is hard to watch, but "(l)ook at me when I'm talking to you!" is exactly how we must confront the powerful in America, and when we do, we have the opportunity to learn a simple lesson: that shame works. Never let the cynics and the haters tell you any differently.

Around the table: chronicling more unneeded worry about ruining Mr. Kavanaugh's life.

I've been struggling to put this satisfactorily in re the Kavanaugh nomination, but luckily Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch does it: we do not have to shackle ourselves to a "presumption of innocence" when evaluating an appointment to our nation's highest court, any more than employers shackle themselves to a "presumption of innocence" when considering job applications. I mean, gosh, if we were filling 827 Supreme Court slots, I suppose we might evaluate candidates a little more loosely, but we're hiring for one slot, and even our President could easily find someone else who's qualified, preferably someone who hasn't treated the world as his plaything, as Mr. Kavanaugh has.

Study finds that millennials are actually driving down the divorce rate in America. How? They marry later in life than their boomer parents and grandparents, they wait until they're financially ready -- and, well, a good number of them don't get married to begin with. The first two items are good news -- even though I suspect "not marrying until you're financially ready" wasn't as much a preoccupation with boomers, since they were more likely to be "financially ready" once they entered the workforce -- but the third item suggests we're about to make marriage a privilege of the well-educated and well-paid. A solution presents itself: give everyone opportunities to be well-educated and well-paid.

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker generally runs good campaign ads, so I'm totally gobsmacked that his campaign decided to make, and run, this one. You need to see it to believe it, and even then you won't believe it. You can make strange campaign ads -- in Wisconsin alone, Russ Feingold and Ron Johnson are famous for it -- but the strangeness kinda has to make sense after a while, and also (and this is important!) the strangeness can't be unpleasant and off-putting. You can't cut just any ad and say "there is no such thing as bad publicity," not merely because there is such a thing as bad publicity, but also because you don't have infinite money and infinite time to run ads.

Ho hum, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) throws a tantrum near the end of Thursday's hearing on the sexual assault allegations against Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, calling the hearing "the most unethical sham since I've been in politics." Hearing him complain that Democrats want to "hold this seat open and hope (they) win in 2020" is especially rich, considering he had absolutely nothing bad to say about Republicans a) refusing to consider Merrick Garland in 2016 and b) threatening to hold that seat open until 2020 themselves!

Finally, good citizens in small-town Iowa are using a novel strategy to keep from getting swamped in ever-higher levels of factory farm hog manure: they're agreeing to a legal covenant whereby they all agree not to allow factory farms or factory farm waste on their land, a covenant 40 families have joined, and more may join in time. Actual conservatives would no doubt applaud such a move -- one that doesn't institute new regulations and depends on citizens more than the state to police each other -- but too many of today's "conservatives" argue that whatever delivers the most money to CEOs is what's best for America. And anyway Iowa does need better regulations of factory farms, since factory farms tend to pollute folks' drinking water.

Action: concerning cruel budgeting and our Supreme Court.

It may seem strange, but Republicans are talking an awful lot about cutting Medicare, Medicaid, and the protections of the Affordable Care Act -- Administration economic advisor Larry Kudlow told the Economic Club of New York that our Administration would be going after Medicare and Social Security after the midterms, and Republicans in Congress keep proposing budgets that would turn Medicare into a voucher program and cut trillions of dollars from Medicare and Medicaid. You'd think with all the trouble Republicans had getting rid of the Affordable Care Act, they'd know better -- but then again, they're probably looking around the political landscape and seeing nothing but weakling Democrats who barely raise a peep in defense of popular and necessary programs. Thus it's up to us, as always, so Greyroots Action helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to our Supreme Court, then you can still use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a smartphone) to call your Senators and give them what-for. The news is all about the sworn affidavit from a third woman accusing Mr. Kavanaugh of horrific sexual behavior toward girls while he was still a youth -- and, as other observers have pointed out, a sworn affidavit means perjury charges for the person who swears it if they're lying. But Justice Kavanaugh has already convinced us he'd do his damnedest to expand Presidential power, and I think we're all seeing how bad a proposition that would be right now. And these quite reasonable accusations over the last week also show us that Mr. Kavanaugh is too entitled to sit in judgement on anyone or anything.

Action: concerning corruption, corporate taxes, and the Muslim ban.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support S. 3357, the Anti-Corruption and Public Accountability Act, then Public Citizen still helps you do that. S. 3357 would (among other things!) help keep lobbyists out of our government and keep our politicians out of lobbying after they leave office, prevent politicians from owning individual stocks while they're in office, and subject federal contractors to more public scrutiny. In addition, S. 3357 would reclassify federal administrative law judges as civil service jobs -- to reverse our President's efforts to pack those positions with his cronies -- and it would make the IRS release eight years of tax returns for all Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates (as well as two years' returns for Congressional candidates). All of that would help get rid of, as our President might say, a lingering stench in our government. So let's do it.

Meanwhile, Sum of Us helps you tell big pharma corporations to stop stashing their profits in overseas tax shelters. We should, of course, continue to demand that our Congressfolk pass laws that make corporations pay their fair share of taxes -- so that good Americans and small businesses don't have to bear all the burden of paying for roads, bridges, firefighters, libraries, schools, and the like -- but we might as well go right to the corporations, too, particularly the ones who charge us an arm and a leg for drugs they tend to need a lot of taxpayer money to even make. The Big Stick of Bad PR makes a big crack and a big hurt -- even when corporations respond by saying we already pay all the taxes we're supposed to pay under the law! They hope you don't know that they spend millions of dollars every year getting our Congressfolk to write the laws that lower their taxes. The good news? I think that ship has sailed.

Finally, a group of good government organizations (including People for the American Way and Project South) helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal our Administration's notorious Muslim travel ban. No use arguing with me that TEH BAN IZ ALSO FOR TEH VENEZWAILYUNZ!!!!!, because we all know our Administration put them (and a few other nations) in there just so our Supreme Court would have an excuse to say "see, it's not a religious ban per se!" But if it looks like dung and smells like dung, you don't have to taste it just because some right-winger says "you can't prove it's not meatloaf." The Muslim ban is a stain on our national character, not just because it unfairly targets folks based on their religious beliefs, but because it is a policy that diddles the rage glands of America's most rage-addled folks. And, frankly, they shouldn't get all the say about everything in America.

Around the table: the further adventures of our intrepid President.

Remember when our Secretary of State "certified" that the Saudi/UAE coalition was doing its best to protect civilian human rights in its war on Yemen? Well, he may have done that after the State Department's legislative affairs team told him that ending the war in Yemen would cost corporations too much money in arms sales -- and a former lobbyist for a defense contractor just so happens to head up that team. Nice to know that the matter of right and wrong enters into our government's deliberations so frequently! Remember this when your Tea Party uncle says our President is conducting a "different" kind of foreign policy, or that you should put businesspeople in government because they're the best people and they know everything.

Our Administration lifts a penalty for a coal corporation that has repeatedly violated mine safety laws -- and may have broken the law in doing so. And the fellow who made this decision -- our Administration's Mine Safety and Health Administration chief -- is a former coal executive whose corporation repeatedly violated the safety of its workers because of course he is. Again, let your Tea Party uncle explain how businesspeople "know everything," or, better yet, how making coal mines less safe "helps out coal miners." (And yes, I noticed the Russian connection to Pocahontas Coal -- but which would be worse: the fact of a Russian connection, or more coal miners getting sick and dying because our Administration doesn't think it has to play by the rule of law?)

A U.S. District Judge blocks a North Carolina law aiming to slash farmworkers' rights. Confront the details of the bill the court struck down and you'll likely think of it as legislators throwing fecal matter against a wall to see what sticks. But you know, it sure would be better for all of us if farmworkers weren't exempt from the protections of the National Labor Relations Act, and recent pro-worker legislation at the federal level, while pretty commendable, hasn't gone as far as that.

North Carolina passes law mandating voting places stay open from 7am to 7pm on weekdays -- but this has the unintended consequence (or do I mean "unintended consequence"?) of forcing almost half of that state's counties to close early voting locations. If you're thinking more hours open means more access to the polls, consider how far some rural folks have to go to vote and how little it matters that polls might be open a little earlier or a little later, and then accept the wisdom of having more voting locations.

Ho hum, Facebook now relies on two government-created propaganda outlets to stem the spread of "fake news." Or do I mean "stem"? Too many folks are using the spectre of "fake news" to censor good liberal news outlets, and (as I've said to more than one troll!) crying "fake news" at everything is a way of saying you can't win arguments on the merits. I'll admit I've barely noticed Facebook's doings on my news feed, but that's because I don't use them as a news feed -- I use email, still the greatest social network ever created, as a news feed.

Finally, we now know of four women who are accusing Brett Kavanaugh of various kinds of sexual assault, and rather than attend Mr. Kavanaugh's unlikely denials or our President's expected hysteria, let us instead attend Sen. Lindsey Graham's declaration that he doesn't want to "ruin this guy's life based on an accusation." If Mr. Kavanaugh didn't get on our Supreme Court, would that really "ruin" his life? He'll still serve on the D.C. Circuit Court, he'll still be the beneficiary of (I suspect wholly unexamined) white privilege, he'll be able to get wingnut welfare forever if he chooses -- yeah, our lives should be so "ruined." And, as I've suggested, a lot of people not so afflicted by a sense of entitlement must have the skill and ability to fill this position. Maybe even our President could find one.

Action: concerning taxes and conservation.

As you likely know, House Republicans are trying to ram through yet another tax-cut-for-the-rich; the bill number is H.R. 6760, and the title is the innocuous-sounding "Protecting Family and Small Business Tax Cuts Act of 2018." The cojones on these clowns, pretending that families and small businesses have anything to do with it! The idea that "pass-through businesses" are "small businesses" -- and not, you know, the kind of corporations rich people set up to avoid taxation -- is a laugh. The idea that making the 2.6% drop in the top income tax rate permanent is a way of "protecting families" is also a laugh. But when Republican Congresses come after our Social Security and our Medicare and our Medicaid because TEH DEFICITZ!!!!! -- when their own tax plan blew open a trillion-dollar-plus hole in the deficit! -- ain't none of us going to be laughing. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the so-called "Tax Scam 2.0."

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reauthorize the Land and Water Conservation Fund before it expires on September 30, then the Wilderness Society still helps you do that. The Wilderness Society's email action tool also allows you to tell your Congressfolk to permanently reauthorize the LWCF, which sure would be better than leaving it vulnerable to the hostage crises our legislators like to create -- I mean, if Congress really desperately wants to repeal it (or improve it!), it could simply pass a bill to do that later. Ha ha, I said "simply" like it would be easy for them to do! The LWCF is actually pretty popular, after all -- most of us have visited one of the 40,000-plus scenic places it's created at no cost to the taxpayer. Yes, it's much "easier" for Congress simply to sit on its hands and let popular programs expire, which is a damn good reason to make them reauthorize such programs forever.

Action: concerning our Supreme Court and a vicious e. coli strain.

If you haven't done so, already, today would be a good day to use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're viewing it on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to reject the nomination of D.C. Circuit Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh to our Supreme Court. I've said that the entirely plausible accusation of sexual assault, regardless of how long ago it was, is reason enough to sink his nomination -- I mean, we're only trying to fill one spot; think we can't find a qualified judge who doesn't have the sense of entitlement you'd have to have to try to rape someone? But we must remember that Mr. Kavanaugh poses a far greater threat to law and order: he has demonstrated, through his multitudinous writings, that he would expand Presidential power and Presidential prerogatives far beyond what our Founders intended or what a free society would tolerate. And that should upset you no matter what our President's name is.

Meanwhile, researchers at George Washington University have found a particular strain of E. coli (ST131-H22, to be precise) found in chickens seems to be migrating to humans and causing (among other infections) up to 40,000 urinary tract infections annually -- a mere one half of one percent of all UTIs Americans get in a year, but that won't comfort you if that number becomes 100 percent of you. And, of course, it could get much worse -- ST131-H22 has apparently developed some resistance to tetracycline, which it encounters frequently enough because factory farms tend to pump it into their chickens. Anyway, Penn PIRG helps you tell our USDA to start testing poultry for this strain of E. coli. The USDA can do this without additional authorization from Congress, and yes the big poultry producers will very likely stamp their feet and try to drag this out in court, but really, this is an appropriate time to say if you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear.