Thieves in the Temple.

Action: health care, Amtrak funding, and anti-pollution funding.

As you know, Senate Republicans have postponed voting on their even-worse-than-the-House-bill health care "reform" bill, and maybe it looks bad for a bill that typically gets around a 17% approval rating (higher than Congress's approvals generally, but rather lower than Obamacare's approvals at similar points in 2009 and 2010). Still, let's not get complacent; the Senate plans to be done with revisions on the bill today, which means it would go to the CBO next week and get a vote in mid-July, and these Republicans are evil. They don't care that you rely on the Obamacare Medicaid expansion right now or might one day, they don't care that the ban against pre-existing conditions protects you from getting screwed by your insurer, and they certainly don't care that you already see through their lies about "tax cuts for the middle class" (they're for the rich, just like always!) and "lower premiums" (your premiums might go up more slowly, but who cares if you're paying more out of pocket for lousier health care?). So call your Senators again, just to let them know we're watching them.

Meanwhile, among the multitudinous other nefarious things the Trump "hard power" budget would do is zero out funding for Amtrak long-distance service for passengers. Historically, Presidential budgets that have tried to cut Amtrak funding have met with fairly steadfast resistance even from Republican Senators -- remember Mr. Specter's blithe dismissal of a Bush Mobb budget cut proposal in 2005? -- but these are, as they say, interesting times. And ending federal funding for Amtrak's long-distance train rides would essentially destroy long-distance train travel in America, denying that service to nearly half of all Americans, particularly those in areas that don't have much in the way or airports or interstate highways. The truly stunning thing, of course, is that Mr. Trump's budget actually comes out and says it'd be better for Congress to concentrate on improving Amtrak's "corridor" services, meaning, essentially, densely-populated areas. And they say Democrats hate flyover country! MoveOn helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any effort to end funding for Amtrak's long-distance passenger service.

Finally, Pennsylvania residents, take note: your state legislators are all hot to cut funding even further for the state Department of Environmental Protection, as well as the Department of Conservation and Natural Resources. Why? Because these things don't make money for some politician's crony -- they only protect our clean air and clean water and public lands. But cutting funding for these two departments has real-world consequences, ranging from the closure of beaches and trails to the backlog of clean water complaints the DEP can't address because it doesn't have the staff. I shouldn't even say "staff" -- I should say jobs. Maybe then the legislature will fund the DEP and the DCNR -- because they create jobs for people who actually do the hard work of (for example) inspecting mines and monitoring fracking waste. Hence the Sierra Club helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislator to protect the commonwealth by properly funding the Departments of Environmental Protection and Conservation and Natural Resources.

Around the table: the bigliest pro-Trump network ever, and other lessons.

I've got some good-news-bad-news for you, courtesy Dave Lindorff at Counterpunch. The good news? Seymour Hersh has exposed the convenient lie that Syrian President Assad attacked his own people with sarin nerve gas in April -- the very thing that prompted President Trump to throw a couple dozen Tomahawks at a Syrian air base. The bad news? He couldn't get an American newspaper to publish it -- only the German daily Die Welt carried Mr. Hersh's exposé. Of course Mr. Trump is again claiming very loudly (with zero pushback from our "liberal" media) that Mr. Assad plans to use chemical weapons on his people again, and if any President was ever in need of a war, it's Mr. Trump.

Now Warren Freaking Buffett thinks we should shift to a single-payer health care system. And he's got an argument that might sway corporate leaders -- that health care costs, not corporate taxes, make corporations less competitive with their foreign counterparts. I've long argued that corporate CEOs would welcome paying less for their employees' health care, though of course the worst of them will want "something in exchange" for agreeing to it, as if reducing labor costs substantially isn't "something." If we're very, very lucky, we won't have some Robert Rubin-picked Democrat to conduct those negotiations.

Judd Legum at Think Progress describes "how TMZ quietly became America’s most potent pro-Trump media outlet." Its "apolitical" (and young) viewers "come for Kanye West, Lady Gaga, and Amber Rose" and then get pro-Trump coverage along with it. Of course, the mere fact that TMZ exists, and can broadcast on over-the-air channels, tells us how sick, immoral, and decadent our society has become, and just as it shouldn't be hard to believe that a President like Donald Trump could emerge from that swamp, it shouldn't be hard to believe that TMZ is his biggest cheerleader.

Former FCC Chair Tom Wheeler and former FCC general counsel Jon Sallet think this whole net neutrality imbroglio will end up in court. I'm inclined to agree, merely based on how many fake comments the FCC has already tolerated and could have prevented, but Mr. Sallet concentrates on what consumers can reasonably expect from their broadband connections -- for example, if your ISP says you can "go anywhere," should consumers reasonably expect legal internet sites to be censored or throttled? If the FCC does what we expect and kills net neutrality, maybe we should simply contact our ISP every time a page doesn't load fast enough.

Finally, security researchers find wind farms shockingly easy to hack. I'm tempted to say this news proves you ought to hire people to watch over things rather than leave every damn thing to computers -- or tumbler locks! But wind farms typically don't secure their computers very well, either -- even though most don't even connect to the internet, they can still be picked from afar. Of course, this is no reason to throw up your hands and accept the pollution of fossil fuels -- it's a reason to demand better security from wind farms.

Action: methane emissions, war in the Middle East, and the Johnson Amendment.

The Environmental Defense Fund helps you leave a public comment with the EPA opposing their decision to suspend the leak detection/repair part of their recently-issued methane emissions rule for two years. Two years without these requirements means two years more folks will get sick from breathing in carcinogens and two years that leaked methane assaults our climate. It's also two years that we waste methane, a perfectly usable energy source, by leaking it into the air! Those who don't care about climate change or other people's health should at least care about the wasted opportunity to make money. And of course you also know that an entire industry (the methane mitigation industry) has sprung up to help deal with methane leaks, which are as common at gas drilling wells as flies are at a pile of dung -- and the businesses doing this work charge as little as $250 for the service. So they can't really say TEH REGULASHUNZ KILLZ TEH JOBZ!!!!! or TEH REGULASHUNZ DRIVEZ US TO TEH POORHOUSEZ!!!!!

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia's war against Yemen -- a war we help fund, despite not having declared war with Yemen -- drags on, to the point where a cholera outbreak has broken out across that nation. And naturally the Trump Administration -- the one that promised to do foreign policy differently, to be "smarter" about getting involved in the Middle East -- does nothing. Well, those rich Saudis pay a lot of money to stay at Mr. Trump's hotels, so what do we expect? We expect our government to do our will, not fill the pockets of our President, so Just Foreign Policy joins with MoveOn to help you tell your Congressfolk to vote on our continued involvement in the Saudi Arabian war in Yemen via the War Powers Resolution. We shouldn't need a damn War Powers Resolution, for real -- the Constitution already says Congress declares the war and the President fights it, and the Founders divided those powers so that a President wouldn't ignore the will of the people and fight wars they didn't want. So let us assert our will.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from advocating for particular candidates or donating money to them, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. Does the Johnson Amendment restrict the free speech rights of churches? Ah, no, it doesn't -- churches can still talk all the politics they like, they just can't give direct aid and comfort to a particular politician's efforts to get elected or re-elected, or else they'll lose their tax-exempt status. Note well that last part, because it also refutes the BUT I GIVEZ TEH MONEYZ TO POLITICIANZ SO WHY CANTZ TEH CHURCHEZ!!!!! objection: as you're no doubt acutely aware, you are not a tax-exempt organization. Exemption from taxes isn't a right; if it were, we'd all be exempt from paying taxes. And the Trump Administration doesn't want "free speech" for churches, it wants freedom from responsibility for churches, a notion any good church would reject.

Around the table: mostly about health care, plus a bonus discussion of monopoly power.

California House Speaker decides to table Senate-passed single-payer bill for the foreseeable future. Why? Possibly because California Democrats (who run everything in Cali, and thus can't use Republican obstruction as an excuse) would rather give lip service to things people want than do things people want, though the latter would ensure their majorities as much as all the money they raise. Of course they say TEH SINGLE PAYERZ COSTZ TOO MUCHZ!!!!, which is bunk -- corporations pay too much to insure their workers now, and I can't imagine they wouldn't welcome paying less.

Speaking of which, Massachusetts state legislators introduce bills that would create a single-payer health insurance system there -- but also introduce bills that would assess the cost of single-payer, and mandate the legislature to act on findings about that cost. Of course it's cheaper pretty much everywhere on the planet you look, but making the state's nonpartisan Health Policy Commission do the counting gives us our best shot at making a convincing argument. I bet even that state's Republican Governor would think twice before vetoing a single-payer bill coming out of this process, since it would put him in the position of being fiscally irresponsible.

We talked yesterday about Mr. McConnell's flogging of lower-premiums-that-actually-aren't-lower-premiums, but the Center for American Progress reminds us of another reason you should be skeptical when you hear about lower premiums: lower premiums might well be a result of lousier plans covering fewer health conditions -- and if your lousy plan is cheaper, you won't feel like it's cheaper when you're paying more out of your own pocket. Just so happens the Senate bill would allow health insurers to cover less, which is pretty much the easiest way of making you pay more. "You pay more" really should be the backbone of a Democratic ad campaign, but I think I just hinted why that won't happen.

Mark this under "Profiles in Courage": Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH) comes out against the Senate's health care bill after the Senate Republican leadership postpones the vote on the bill. I really wish the Toledo Blade, which I'm sure is a fine paper doing the best it can in a sick, immoral, and decadent society, had mentioned that Mr. Portman was one of the 13 Republican Senators who worked on this bill behind closed doors to begin with, so that we could discover that he basically opposes his own bill.

Finally, Janine Jackson at FAIR interviews Institute for Local Self-Reliance co-director Stacy Mitchell on the real consequences of Amazon's proposed assimilation of Whole Foods. Chief among them: with one out of every two dollars spent online coursing through Amazon's veins, Amazon essentially has "monopoly power in online commerce," and it's well past time we re-embraced the notion that monopoly power is dangerous no matter how great the selection or how fast the package gets to you. (Also, too, the "liberal" media covers the proposed merger like it's a sporting match, not like it's your damn life.)

Action: government transparency, Muslim bans, and energy efficiency.

The Senate Armed Services Committee, apparently inspired by the Senate leadership's example on their health care "reform" bill, now plans to debate and vote this year's defense department authorization act in secret. What do they have to hide? It must be more than the usual corruption, fraud, and waste -- perhaps they plan to fund detention centers for Americans who disagree with Dear Leader? Or fund a war they plan to start next October? Actually, it could be any number of things -- witness Congress's attempts last year to include irrelevent religious "conscience" riders to defense bills. In any case, the Senate can claim the unique honor of being outclassed by the House, which plans its version of the defense authorization bill the usual way, by holding hearings and votes in public. Hence the Project on Government Oversight helps you call your Senators and demand that they debate the defense authorization bill out in the open. You know, like adults would do -- not like whiny, self-involved fools would do.

Meanwhile, you've no doubt heard that the U.S. Supreme Court has allowed parts of the notorious Trump Muslim ban to operate, and that three Supreme Court Justices (Messrs. Alito, Gorsuch, and Thomas, in case you couldn't guess) went on record saying they think the Trump Administration will win its case on the merits. You remember Mr. Gorsuch acting the part of someone who wouldn't prejudge? Yeah, that was all drama, too. But though you might find five Supreme Court Justices to say that Mr. Trump's obvious and well-documented animus toward Muslims (as described by Mr. Giuliani, who said Mr. Trump asked him how he could "do" a "Muslim ban" "legally") makes his "travel ban" a de facto Muslim ban, we don't have to wait for that -- we could also tell our Congressfolk to pass legislation preventing Mr. Trump's Muslim ban, as Amnesty International helps you do. Remember, folks: only cowards put walls between themselves and other people out of fear. Don't let Mr. Trump make you into a coward.

Finally, because President Trump apparently can't tolerate a single good government program existing in the same universe as him, he's trying to get rid of the Energy Star rating system for buildings, appliances, and other products. Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit when I say he merely hates good government, because his own buildings consistently receive low ratings from the Energy Star program, which means lower property values, which means less money for him. This was always the danger of electing a rich fool as President -- that he would only do what made him money, rather than the will of his bosses, the American people. And on an annual budget of less than $50 million, the Energy Star program has delivered, on average, over $15 billion annually in savings for good Americans, mainly in the form of lower utility bills. I'd say that works for us! So the Sierra Club helps you tell your members of Congress to reject the President's will and support the people's will by continuing to fund the Energy Star program.

Around the table: in which Republicans blink, for now.

Senate puts off health care "reform" bill vote until after the July 4 holiday. But don't get complacent: keep calling your Senators and communicating your will. And what's with President Trump's spokeshack saying that Mr. Trump hopes "Republicans would live up to their promise" of passing an Obamacare repeal? Like Mr. Trump never made that promise himself? Way to throw your party under the bus, Dear Leader!

So how was Mitch McConnell putting lipstick on that pig of a bill until yesterday? Why, by completely ignoring that part of the CBO report that says 22 million good Americans will lose their health insurance under the Senate bill, of course! He also pretended tax cuts going mainly to the rich were "middle-class" tax cuts, and he also "confused" rising premium prices and the rising growth rate of premium prices, so he could "accidentally" say the bill will do something about the former when it actually does something about the latter. Punchline? Obamacare has already reduced the growth rate in premiums -- and that's nothing to write home about.

Just to remind you that states aren't the only organs keeping massive amounts of data on good citizens, Cora Currier at The Intercept describes World-Check, a database owned by Thomson Reuters and used by world banks, which lists some two million folks whose alleged ties to crime or terrorism may be quite exaggerated. You might be able to get World-Check to change its data on you, eventually -- if you even know you're on it. And of course Thomson Reuters says it's a "risk assessment" tool, which is just doublespeak for blacklist.

Jeff Bryant at the OurFuture blog explains why "Charter Schools Do Bad Stuff." Long story short: "Because They Can." Long story somewhat longer: private agencies, not public ones, generally "monitor" charter school activities and "hold them accountable." It's bad enough we throw away the taxpayer money on private schools that we should be spending on public schools, but then our local governments don't even hold them accountable, instead outsourcing the job to a private entity. But really, what do charter schools have to fear from the people?

Finally, in a heroic effort, Tasneem Nashrulla at Buzzfeed tabulates recent softball questions Fox News has asked President Trump, Vice President Pence, and Ivanka Trump in the last 24 days. The list is either disheartening or hilarious depending on your level of spiritual advancement, but I'm only going to highlight one example: one talking head asks Mr. Trump if "Republican Senators are doing enough to have your back" on the health care bill, rather than the more pertinent question of whether they, or their President, have got the people's back. You see, for Fox News and for Donald Trump, democracy ain't about you, it's about them. May God have mercy on their immortal souls.

Action: health care, banksters, and GMO labeling.

Ho hum, the CBO projects that the Senate health care bill will cause 22 million people to lose their health insurance over the next decade, and 15 million to lose it by next year. That's a million fewer health insurance losses than under the House bill, but is that what you'd take to the pearly gates? "Yeah, I voted for a health care bill that only deprived 22 million of health insurance, not 23 million, so that we could give hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the undeserving rich." Sure doesn't sound like something you'd say to St. Peter, does it? And neither does "I voted for a health care bill that slashed Medicaid for working families and increased the possibility that folks would get tossed off their insurance for their pre-existing conditions." Tools for calling your Senator and telling them to deep-six this bill are in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone).

But wait, there's more! H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, would (among many other things!) weaken the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- the same bureau that has returned $29 billion to good Americans defrauded by financial predators -- and would eliminate the Obama Administration's "fiduciary rule," which requires pension advisors to put their customers' interests first rather than their own. And here's something I didn't know: H.R. 10 would also raise the threshold at which shareholders can file resolutions, so that only the very richest shareholders would be able to file them! Why would anyone support a bill that gives all these corporate welfare handouts to financial predators? Because they worship mammon, that's why -- and good luck taking that to the pearly gates! So PennPIRG helps you tell your Senators to reject the Financial CHOICE Act. Alternately, you could tell your Senators to oppose the bill while you have them on the phone about the Trumpcare bill.

Finally, the Department of Agriculture is mulling a new GMO labeling standard, as required by Congress last year; I always warned that some far-right Republican could get to write that standard -- but I also said that when the time comes, our duty is the same no matter who occupies the Oval office: to make our will unmistakably known to our government. Hence Just Label It helps you tell the USDA to enact the most vigorous GMO labeling system possible. What is our will in this matter? That all GMOs in food get labeled, that labels tell you which ingredients come from GMOs, and that labels be clear and easy to read. We'll have none of these "QR codes" that you'd need a smartphone app to read! Not everyone worships at the altar of the smartphone, after all -- in fact, a great many people still read, and a great many more than that don't want their food labels to mislead them. None of this is too damn much to ask. And remember, this is about disclosure of GMOs, not banning them.

Action: "free" trade, and endangered species.

President Trump may have withdrawn the U.S. from the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" and notified Congress of his intention to renegotiate NAFTA, but don't congratulate him too much for these things -- Mr. Trump, after all, decided not to try to get rid of the most odious part of NAFTA and other "free" trade deals, the "investor-state tribunal" that allows corporations to nullify our laws and extract tribute from the taxpayer. Also, Mr. Trump's own Commerce Secretary told a corporatist crowd that he'd start renegotiating NAFTA by adding in some of the only-slightly-less-odious parts of the TPP, like its extension of drug monopolies. You'd think any renegotiation of NAFTA would begin by putting workers' interests at its center, since that's pretty much what Mr. Trump said he'd do, so Sign for Good helps you tell the U.S. Trade Rep to make sure any NAFTA renegotiation puts workers in all three countries first. These interests include getting rid of "investor-state tribunals," requiring imports to meet strong American safety standards, protecting Buy American and Buy Local rules, and restricting monopolies on drug patents. Think they want to do any of that? Of course not. But let's make them known as opponents of the popular will, if it comes to that.

Meanwhile, the Sierra Club helps you tell the Department of the Interior to reverse its planned delisting of the Yellowstone grizzly bear as an endangered species. Interior plans to protect grizzlies inside the Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks and near Glacier National Park, but would rescind protections for hundreds of grizzlies in Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming. Some of these will now fall prey to trophy hunters, whom I'm pretty sure wouldn't face a grizzly bear without a big gun. Didn't know trophy hunters got so much say about everything, did you? Particularly after more than 600,000 public comments to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service prevented delisting last year? We do have many more grizzlies than we did 40-plus years ago, but not nearly as many as we used to, and grizzlies have lost nearly 10% of their numbers since 2014, so they still face challenges. And folks who complain about having to work to protect the grizzly for yet more years are clearly out of touch with the whole idea that anything worth doing is hard, takes time, and should be done right. You might think these are conservative values. And then you might wonder why so few of today's "conservatives" seem to hold them.

Around the table: why the FDA is a hostage to medical device corporations, and other lessons.

AP finds nearly 20 secret prisons in southern Yemen, where UAE forces torture alleged terrorists and American forces question them. The difference between the two isn't so vast, since international law looks upon the questioning of tortured detainees as complicity in that torture, and also since one Yemeni soldier has testified that at times American forces were mere "yards away" from that torture. Oh, if you're smelling that faint Trump odor, it sure looks like this has all been going on since the Obama years.

FDA strikes "deal" with medical device manufacturers which just so happens to require that the FDA exercise considerably less oversight over these same manufacturers. The FDA has to renegotiate this particular point every five years in order to continue getting funding from the medical device industry to finance a big chunk of its operations. Why not just fund it entirely with tax money, particularly since every time a medical device goes bad it hits the news big-time? At least then the FDA would be more accountable to us, instead of being industry's hostage.

Franklin Foer writes a long and generally incisive piece on how Democrats can get white working class voters back (without, you know, becoming racists again). Key points we learn from the famous Macomb County, MI focus groups: Trump votaries generally hate blacks a lot less than they used to but seem to have displaced that anger onto immigrants, and they don't care that Mr. Trump seems unhinged -- but they also don't know he's sold out to Wall Street banksters, and are very angry to learn that he has. Courageous Democrats might do something with the second item, but I think I just told you why that won't happen.

Ron Fein at TruthOut reminds us that President Trump has said bupkus about Turkish Presidential bodyguards attacking American protestors on the street last month. We can think of a few reasons, of course -- that Mr. Trump has encouraged his own supporters to act pretty much the same way, or that assholes tend to hang around with other assholes -- but you may not know that the Turkish President threatened to take Mr. Trump's name off a pair of Trump Towers in Istanbul last year. Oh, well, just another Trumpian conflict of interest that limits our freedoms.

Finally, the Carrier plant in Indiana where President Trump supposedly saved all those jobs in late 2016 will still outsource some 600 manufacturing jobs by the end of this year. Turns out most of the jobs Mr. Trump "saved" were not union-organized manufacturing jobs, but were technical and engineering positions that were never in danger of being lost in the first place! Also, the cash Carrier got as an incentive to keep the jobs? They're putting that into automation instead of actual job creation. Who "doesn't care about jobs" now, Trump votaries?

Around the table: the importance of blaming the right people, and other lessons.

Ken Levy at Counterpunch says that "Sorry, But It's Entirely the Right's Fault" we're such a polarized nation now -- and it's mainly because right-wingers argue and reason so badly. I'm pleased to see he offers "Exhibit A" as Newt Gingrich, as I found Real Change to be one of the most poorly-argued books I've ever read. Please pray very hard that I never decide to describe exactly how awful it is in excruciating detail, possibly in an e-book. (I would argue, by the way, that the "brainwashed right" comprise a smaller percentage of the American population than Mr. Levy says -- no more than 25%, not "35-40%.")

TruthOut talks to Noam Chomsky and Ha-Joon Chang about some of the "Myths of Globalization." It's tempting to blame globalization for the world's problems, particularly since "free" trade deals that foment globalization are so awful, but it isn't really the problem -- untrammeled corporate power is the problem. You'll also be reminded that you can't just turn displaced auto workers into software programmers, regardless of what the Democratic Party's said since the Clinton era. (Mr. Chang says the Scandinavians do job-displacement retraining well, so that's a subject for further research.)

Shawn Boberg at the Washington Post finds that President Trump's "hard power" budget slashes programs that combat homelessness -- except for a subsidy that goes right to private landlords. And, of course, Mr. Trump collects that subsidy, and while experts are right to caution that we can't yet prove Mr. Trump actually insisted on keeping that particular subsidy in his budget, I'm also not a schmuck. Let me guess the Trump votary response: give him a chance he knows what he's doing but her emails he shoots from the hip both sides do it fake news shutup traitor.

Amarnath Amarasingam and Jacob Davey at the New York Times reminds us that the vast majority of terrorism in America comes from the far right -- almost three-quarters of it since 9.11, per the Government Accountability Office, even if terrorism from groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda get more ink. (Though wouldn't we call them far-right, too?) Of course, part of the reason they get more ink is that right-wingers get their shorts in a bunch whenever they hear that most terrorism comes from the right, and then the "liberal" media stops talking about it after that. But, hey, facts are facts.

Finally, Wired provides a brutal timeline of Uber's rise and fall, with particular attention to the events of 2017. With all the ink spilled about the "gig economy" and "changing with the times," more folks should have realized that Uber has always acted like a corporation that doesn't perform a service for anyone, but instead just bullies other people into giving them money. The reason it's not obvious to so many observers, as Upton Sinclair might remind us, is that their salaries depend on them pretending it's not obvious.

Action: health care, paid family leave, and wage slavery.

So the Senate dropped its health care bill yesterday, and early reports indicate it's just as bad as we thought it would be: it makes some subsidies to poorer working families a little better than the House bill would, but it would cut Medicaid even more than the House bill would, and it would still substantially weaken the Obamacare ban on denying coverage for pre-existing conditions and still let insurers charge seniors a lot more than they can now -- and, of course, it would still repeal most of the taxes-on-the-rich that fund Obamacare programs. Remember that they're trying to cut taxes for the rich now so they can cut taxes for the rich even more later on and still comply with Senate rules. So today, also, 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 on a cellphone) and call your Senators to tell them to reject the Senate's health care "reform" bill. You might tell them to support H.R. 676 -- which would establish a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health care system in America -- while you have them on the phone.

Meanwhile, some folks try to tell you the one saving grace of the Trump budget (and after all, why would you ever need more than one?) is its boutique paid family leave plan, but don't believe that hype, either -- the Trump plan would only let new parents take the leave, and since it doesn't actually commit new funds to the plan, it would essentially force states to pay for it, likely by cutting unemployment benefits for other folks. Conservatives would call that an unfunded mandate; if you don't hear any of today's "conservatives" calling it that, well, you can assume they're not actually conservative. Around one in seven American workers gets paid family leave, and we are, as you know, the only industrialized nation on Earth that doesn't mandate it by law to new parents; that's not a good reason to start chanting WE'RE NUMBER ONE! So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the Trump budget and its "smokescreen" of a family leave plan -- and pass a real budget, that reflects America's real priorities, and a real paid family leave plan that doesn't leave working families behind.

Finally, the Follow the Thread Campaign has begun a petition on Change.org which helps you tell five big retail corporations to disclose information about where they source their clothing. Most of the clothing you buy at big-box retailers, as you know, gets manufactured overseas, quite often in factories that treat their workers badly -- certainly you recall the Rana Plaza disaster in 2013, in which the collapse of a garment factory killed over a thousand Bangladeshi workers and injured 2,000 more, and you may also recall two factory fires in Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2012 that killed 350 garment workers. All of these disasters came about because of lax safety standards, and all of them prompted many of the corporations that source from these factories to pledge to improve those standards. Still, some fools will tell you that improved safety for foreign workers means higher prices for you. Can they find this alleged truism in Newton's laws? Of course not -- it's just another way to avoid talking about runaway executive pay, the real reason your prices would go up.

Action: fuel efficiency, work scheduling, and free speech.

Consumers Union helps you tell your Senators to reject efforts to weaken fuel economy standards. You may well be asking yourself: self, who sits at home and says you know what would be great? If gas cost more and our cars polluted more? Apparently, the answer would be the bipartisan group of five Senators who co-sponsored S. 1273, the so-called Fuel Economy Harmonization Act. So how does S. 1273 weaken fuel economy standards? Automakers get credits for exceeding fuel economy standards, and S. 1273 would allow them to increase the number of years they can use those credits to offset their performance in years they don't comply with the standards so well. S. 1273 would also dramatically increase the size of these credits over the years, doubling them in the short term and tripling them by 2022. The end result: cars that cost more to fill up and get fewer miles to the gallon. To think that people actually get rich coming up with crap like this! But we'll see how rich they are when they meet their Maker.

Meanwhile, H.R. 2942/S. 1386, the Schedules That Work Act, would require employers to give their employees their work schedule two weeks in advance, and pay employees more when they change their shift at the last minute or send them home because there's not enough work to do. The bill would also ensure that employees can request a schedule change without retaliation, and force employers to honor these requests if they can't come up with a business-related reason to deny it. Haters should note well that final phrase -- employers could still deny schedule change requests, just not merely because they feel like it. I know to some folks this'll all sound like we're handcuffing a business's ability to make money, but we're not -- if you're a manager, and you can't tell what your scheduling needs are in advance, then you're not a very good manager, and why should workers be made to compensate for a manager's incompetence? Hence the National Women's Law Center helps you tell your Congressfolk to support more stable work scheduling for working families by supporting the Schedules that Work Act.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to protect the Johnson Amendment, which prevents churches from endorsing or campaigning directly for particular candidates, then Food and Water Watch helps you do that. You may recall that one of the biggest pitfalls of repealing the Johnson Amendment -- that big corporations could simply use churches to launder campaign donations to particular candidates in complete secrecy. You would be appalled, I would think, not just at the physical corruption in such a scenario, but the spiritual corruption as well -- a church that would agree to do that would become rotten to its core, and perhaps worse, would become a slave to a particular politician's or donor's wishes. Churches should not be subservient, and the best way to avoid that pitfall is for them to do their necessary work from outside the electioneering process. This is also why I tell folks not to "support" politicians and hope they'll do the right thing, but to make politicians do the right thing, regardless of allegiance.

Around the table: in which our populist instincts find little reflection in the "liberal" media.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that Arab and Muslim immigrants who were unlawfully detained and/or tortured can't sue high-ranking public officials for damages. Because national security, naturally -- how can Our Best and Brightest make "difficult but necessary decisions" if they're worried about getting sued? Seems to me if you did nothing wrong, your best course of action would be to win the lawsuit, especially since, as a member of Our Best and Brightest, you would have the means to fight it. And the Court left open the possibility that plaintiffs can sue far lower-ranking officials for damages, which is rather like King Solomon literally splitting the baby in half.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, describes the kind of "Jim Crow Scam" that could have tipped the Georgia 6th special House race to Republicans. In Georgia, of course, it's considerably worse than elsewhere -- community organizations register voters, call the state government to find out why their registrations didn't go through, get the run-around, and then get raided and shut down by the state. And Interstate Crosscheck does its dirty work here, too. Stop me if you've heard this before, but a better candidate -- not the perfect moderate, but the perfect populist -- could have won that race regardless. 6th District Democrats will disagree with me, but they're wrong -- the major difference between rank-and-file liberals and conservatives these days is tone, not substance.

Speaking of which: the stunning thing about appeals for Democrats to move right on social issues so they can win more elections (as Jim Naureckas at FAIR tells us) is that the data tells Democrats to move left on economic issues. Strangely, "liberal" media pundits never suggest that Democrats should ever target folks who are conservative on social issues but liberal on economic issues! I've long said that the pro-lifer who wants to tax the rich at 91% is more my ally than the can't-we-all-get-along pro-business pro-choicer; we know these people exist, and we also know that corporatist Democrats offer them literally no reason to vote Democrat.

Barry Ritholtz at Bloomberg soberly evaluates the Kansas tax-cuts-for-the-rich "experiment" under Gov. Brownback, and finds it wanting. We need not tabulate all the ways in which Mr. Brownback has thoroughly bollocksed up his state (though Mr. Ritholtz's own tabulation is quite valuable, and "underpromising and overdelivering" is good advice for any undertaking!), but I did not know that Kansas finishes high on the list of states that lose a lot of its residents to other states. What state is at the other end of the spectrum, welcoming the most new residents? Oregon -- which passed a massive tax hike on the rich back in 2010. Could that be mere coincidence?

Finally, on the occasion of Jeffery Immelt leaving General Electric with a $200 million-plus golden parachute, Sam Pizzigati reminds us that CEOs don't really earn all that damn money. GE once gave us "breakthroughs like the first commercial electric power station (1882), the first high-altitude jet engine (1949), and the first laser lights (1962)," but not now, not when it's so much easier to artificially create a fortune by becoming a monopoly, securing corporate welfare, and slashing jobs and pensions. And the sad part is that too many Americans think "well, he made a lot of money" is an accomplishment. And that's because we don't do accomplishments anymore. Feel free to conclude that the lust for mammon keeps us from dreaming of real good works that we might pass down to future generations.

Action: internet freedom, a cease-fire in Yemen, and campaign finance reform.

You still have a few weeks to tell the FCC you want to keep net neutrality regulations exactly as they are, so that you, not some corporation, can decide where you want to go on the internet -- but why not pressure your Congressfolk, too? Both Free Press and Common Cause help you call your Congressfolk and tell them you oppose the FCC's plan to roll back net neutrality regulations, and that they should oppose it, too. Congressfolk have too often imagined that there's some mystical "light touch" regulation the FCC could apply, but that's bunk -- net neutrality, as expressed by the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2015, already is "light touch" regulation: it isn't "big government telling us what to do" so much as it's our government preventing corporations from telling us what to do. Which they will do, if we let them -- they will determine what internet websites you can visit, after extracting tribute from those websites, of course, and they will determine how fast your pages will load. So let's get our Congressfolk on board with us, for once. We deserve that much.

Meanwhile, a vote to stop munitions sales to Saudi Arabia came closer than ever to passing the Senate earlier this month, and now the U.N. Security Council has unanimously called for a cease-fire in Yemen, where Saudi warmaking (aided and abetted by American arms) has driven that country dangerously close to famine. Hence Just Foreign Policy joins with Move On to help you tell your Congressfolk to back the U.N. call for a ceasefire in Yemen. Why are we in Yemen again? The best face one could put on it is that we're trying to help keep order there -- Yemen is the poorest Middle Eastern country, with fairly weak governmental institutions -- but if that's the best face we can put on it, we probably should stay home. And that's not the best face you can put on Saudi Arabia's involvement in Yemen -- for years they've been financially supporting various tribal groups in their efforts to preserve their autonomy, which (again, at best) sure is a dangerous game to be playing. And with the Saudis' enemies, the Houthis, being some of the best ISIS-fighters on Earth, maybe there's no "best face" to put on this after all.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act, then Sign for Good still helps you do that. Yesterday saw the culmination of the special U.S. House race in Georgia's 6th district, an election in which donors spent over $50 million, making it the most expensive House race in history. And 2016 saw no less than nine U.S. Senate races in which donors spent over $70 million, including the Pennsylvania Senate race between a milquetoast Democrat and a far-right Republican, neither of whom got 50% of the vote, where donors spent an astounding $175 million. You can think of better things to do with $175 million, right? Like, oh, I don't know, create jobs? The Government by the People Act would set up a public campaign financing system, funding candidates six dollars for every one dollar they raise in small donations. And to think some folks actually say we need more campaign spending! But I watched those horrible Pennsylvania ads, and those donors might as well have flushed that $175 million down the toilet. How about we discourage that kind of waste?

Around the table: modern-day wage slavery in California, and other sad tales.

Anthony DiMaggio at Counterpunch argues that we've been overestimating economic populism as a factor in President Trump's support -- and thus underestimating factors such as racism, xenophobia, and "the elitist class war against the middle class and poor." Studies find Trump voters aren't poorer, more unemployed, or more from Rust Belt regions, while other studies show sexism and racism to be better predictors of Trump support, and still other studies find a disproportionate percentage of Trump supporters being well off. And when they say 70 percent of Trump voters don't have a college education, you can always remind them that the rate nationally is 71 percent.

U.S. Supreme Court will hear appeal of a District Court decision striking down Wisconsin's most recent redistricting map as unconstitutionally partisan. Justice Kennedy has long said he'd like to evaluate a standard that deals with partisan redistricting, but that doesn't mean he'll approve of the standard advanced by the original plaintiffs, nor does his joining the majority issuing a stay of the District Court's decision suggest which way he'll rule. One thing, though: if too many Wisconsin Republican legislators said out loud that they were trying to use the redistricting process to ensure permanent or durable Republican majorities, rather than respond to citizens' needs, that could piss off John Roberts.

Brett Murphy at USA Today looks at how California port trucking corporations force drivers into becoming "modern-day indentured servant(s)." Basically, these corporations turn their mostly immigrant truckers into independent contractors who "work toward" "owning" their truck, and then use their truckers' indebtedness to force them to work 16- and 20-hour days for little pay. And if they miss work for any reason, they seize their truck, and all the money they've paid toward it! Corporate hacks have their litany of excuses -- abuses are rare, drivers are lazy, unions make trouble, it's so hard to make money anymore. I suppose once major retail corporations start bowing to public pressure to stop taking advantage of this situation, we'll also hear you don't want your prices to go up, do you?

This New York Times article describing how Mr. Trump's business ties with Saudi Arabia and the UAE (and his lack of business ties with Qatar) are influencing his Middle East policy quotes Mr. Trump as saying Saudi citizens "buy apartments from me," spending "$40 million, $50 million" and then asking rhetorically "Am I supposed to dislike them? I like them very much." He and his votaries imagine he's just shooting-from-the-hip, but he's actually confessing that his own business ties (and not so much the people's will!) will set American policy, and confessing your wrongdoing as if it's nothing doesn't make it nothing. It sure doesn't make it "not wrongdoing."

Finally, Jon Schwarz at The Intercept alerts us to an actual historical mini-series on the History Channel called "America's War on Drugs" -- and notes that it's "the first time U.S. television has ever told the core truth about one of the most important issues of the past 50 years," i.e., that "the war on drugs has always been a pointless sham." It's not just a sham because President Nixon essentially created the "war on drugs" as a way of discrediting black and hippie protestors, but because of our own government's well-documented collusion with various drug cartels. Still, as Mr. Schwarz says, it's a big deal that it's on TV -- and not sequestered on a pay channel, even!

Action: fighting banksters and polluters.

H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, passed the House a few weeks ago, because what's more American than giving banksters more tools to screw good people over? H.R. 10 is so awful that its defenders have few things to say in its favor, except that ALL REGULASHUNZ IZ TEH BADZ!!!! and IT HELPZ TEH SMALL BIZNIZZIZ!!!!! Here in the reality-based community, of course, we know that regulations restricting financial predators are not, in fact, bad, and we also know that right-wing politicians love telling you that they do everything they do for small businesses when, in fact, they do everything they do for big corporate campaign donors. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the biggest problem small businesses have isn't government -- it's big corporations using their power to squash them before they have a chance to do great things. H.R. 10 still has to go before the Senate, so use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone) to tell your Senators to protect good Americans from financial predators and reject H.R. 10.

Meanwhile, state government officials in Arizona and Utah have urged the Trump Administration to lift a 20-year uranium mining ban in the area around the Grand Canyon. These officials claim that the uranium ban kills jobs, as if uranium poisoning wouldn't kill tourism jobs, and that Big Gummint shouldn't designate monuments in states, as if that's not at all self-serving. But now they also claim, in a spurt of Bush-Mobb caliber bullshitting, that uranium mining doesn't pollute groundwater. And what's to stop President Trump from claiming that his Grand Canyon will be the bigliest yugest Grand Canyon ever, one that will magically make even more tourism dollars while making his mining cronies rich? If you mess up the Grand Canyon, you've messed it up forever -- and if you put uranium into the River that provides drinking water for 40 million people, then you've messed them up forever, too. So Roots Action helps you tell your President and your Congress that the Grand Canyon should be a national monument.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Pennsylvania Assemblyperson to stop two pro-pollution bills passed by the state Senate, then the Sierra Club still helps you do that. The two bills, as you may know, are SB 624, which would allow longwall coal-mining corporations to pollute public waters as long as they have a plan to clean it up later, and SB 561, which would require the state legislature to approve any and all Executive branch-issued regulations that could conceivably have a "significant economic impact." Of course, a lot of clean air and clean water regulations do have such an impact -- they drive health care costs downward. But I suspect that's not the "impact" Pennsylvania's state legislators care about -- I'm pretty sure they care about the impact such regulations might have on a corporate CEO's ability to gild the plumbing in his 19th vacation home. And as for SB 624, why would you trust a corporation's "plan" to clean up their mess? You make corporations clean up their mess, because that's the only way it can work.

Action: health care, drug policy, and Pebble Mine.

First up this week, of course, is the Senate's health care "reform" bill. The Senate's deliberation process, such as it is, has been so secret that even Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) has said she can't answer her constituents' questions about it because she literally hasn't seen any language from it -- and, of course, so secret that there'll be no committee hearings on it, and perhaps not even a copy of the bill for the public to read. Of course, from what we have heard about it, it'd merely hand out hundreds of billions of dollars in tax cuts to the rich and cut more hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid -- supposedly the only "disagreement" among "moderate" Republican Senators is in how fast they'd make those cuts. Oh, and their other ideas are pretty crappy, too -- just try and explain the difference between the Obamacare mandate and "auto-enrollment." Go ahead and call your Senators and tell them to reject their secret health care bill, and if you've got a Democratic Senator, then Indivisible helps you remind them that they've got tools to fight this thing.

Meanwhile, Attorney General Jeff Sessions may be hot to stamp out the spread of marijuana, everywhere (remember how he said back in the day that he thought the Klan were OK until he learned they were pot-smokers?), but H.R. 2920/S. 1374, the CARERS Act, would end federal prohibition of marijuana (which, frankly, has never belonged on Schedule I with really dangerous drugs like heroin) and thus protect the 30 states that have legalized medical marijuana. Yep, Mr. Sessions wants to go after that, even, having already asked Congress to fund efforts to prosecute medical marijuana providers and patients. The CARERS Act would also loosen some of the restrictions around marijuana research, which would, at least, cut down on the number of people who reflexively shout YOUZ CANTZ PROVEZ TEH POTZ HAZ ANYZ BENEFITZ!!!! You can't shut down all the haters, of course, but you can contain them. So Drug Policy Alliance helps you tell your Congressfolk to support sane drug policy by supporting the CARERS Act.

Finally, CREDO helps you tell the EPA to reject the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwestern Alaska. Wait -- you thought that was over and done with? Well, the change in Administrations has brought a change in the EPA's heart, if it can be said to have one anymore, as the EPA has "settled" a lawsuit with Pebble Mine's owners. If you've come to regard "settlement" as a dirty word thanks to Obama-era settlements with banksters, well, this one's even worse -- all the EPA got out of it was an end of lawsuits that might well have failed anyway, and now Pebble Mine's owners get to reapply for permits to mine for gold and copper in an area with a thriving salmon industry, one that provides about half the world's sockeye. Guess what happens to them if Pebble Mine ever becomes operational? They're all going to choke to death in polluted water, and the jobs they support will disappear along with them. Still, new permits require new public comments, which the Trump Administration doesn't care about, but is still legally required to solicit -- until such time as he declares martial law, I suppose.

Around the table: the drama-smashing machine.

U.S. State Department releases volume confirming American involvement in the overthrow of the democratically-elected leader of Iran in 1954, Dr. Mosadegh, which sparked that country's quarter-century slide into Islamic fundamentalism. This has, of course, been an open secret for decades, and you may recall Ron Paul bringing this up in every 2008 Presidential debate, but it's still good to have it from our government's own mouth.

I fancy myself an optimist, but I don't know that it's true that "A Progressive Electoral Wave is Sweeping the Country." It's a big country, with over half a million elected offices, so even citing 10 recent elections won by actual liberals doesn't necessarily describe a "wave" -- even if you add in the Democrats' surprisingly good showings in two recent Congressional special elections, good showings they owe to the actual liberals who ran in them. Paragraph 8 at least reminds us that most significant electoral change starts a long way away from Washington, which is likely why our "liberal" media don't see it until very late.

Kathryn Milano at the Roosevelt Institute informs us that, contrary to what right-wingers tell you, Dodd-Frank isn't "killing" community banks. Key takeaways: community banks are loaning and making more money than they did last year, and Dodd-Frank has always had tiered regulatory structures that demand more from big banks than the community banks. Really, big banks, not big government, are holding community banks back, and I can't see another way to keep big banks from distorting the economy than through vigorous regulation (including anti-trust regulation). File this one under "big corporations using small businesses as a human shield."

Homeowners sue Wells Fargo for modifying their mortgages without the homeowners' permission -- adding 10 years to the length of the mortgage in some cases. Doesn't matter if their monthly payments went down a bit, because people get to make that decision, not banksters, and people might not make that decision if it extends their mortgage well into old age -- a move which would, of course, also make the bankster a lot more money in interest. Boy, it sure is a good thing the House just passed a bill that would cripple the ability of federal agencies to root out this kind of corruption.

Finally, some House Reps, who imagine they really went out on a limb to pass Trumpcare, are supposedly very upset that President Trump has called the House bill "mean" and asked Senators to make it more "generous" -- and even say Mr. Trump could have trouble working with Congress on tax cuts and infrastructure as a result. Uh, no, he won't -- since they all want the same thing (i.e., tax cuts for the rich, and damn everyone else), no "negotiation" over these matters will be necessary. It's drama, people! So treat it as such.

Around the table: time for another exciting round of "who's the snowflake now?"

Rep. Lou Barletta (R-PA) says Congressfolk "absolutely" ought to cut down on public appearances (including town halls, which he absolutely talked about at length!) in light of the recent mass shooting that critically injured Rep. Scalise. That's rather insulting to the voters, when the vast majority of us are civilized people, and civilized people don't go around shooting people. Why do you suppose they'd want to conflate tough questions at townhalls with shootings? And Rep. Barletta is one of the fellows who actually charged people real cash money to go to his townhalls in 2011, so he's, like, a snowflake emeritus. Can't campaign ads address this sort of cowardice?

Researcher finds Georgia's voting system security to be almost absurdly vulnerable to hackers -- not long before the special House election in Georgia's 6th district that has the entire Beltway world aflutter. But if Jon Ossoff weren't just another let's-all-get-along-with-Republicans Democrat, he wouldn't have to worry about election hacking. America's not Iran -- you can't hack an election here unless it's already close, and here you can actually inspire large numbers of people to vote for you, versus repeatedly dragging out the spectre of The Republican Ogre Who Must Be Stopped This Time.

Kate Cox reminds us that "The Internet Can Help Treat Sick People in Rural America, But Most Lack Adequate Access." Not because net neutrality "stifles" such access, either (I know that argument's coming!), but because corporations simply don't build broadband out there because "there's no money in it." You know, the same reason we don't have an ebola virus after all these years. You know what would help rural broadband internet access? Good old public broadband funded by good old tax hikes on the rich -- and certainly not more haranguing from Democrats about how you've got to get on board with the future before the future's even arrived in your neck of the woods.

Here's something to think about: maybe mass killings of coyotes doesn't actually make livestock safer. Not that I really fault people for thinking that mass killing of predatory animals is Teh Only Way, but scientists have found that a) even the most experienced ranchers can't always tell exactly which animal killed their animals, b) killing predators tends to wreck the social structures of their packs such that their numbers actually get bigger, which makes them more dangerous, c) non-lethal means of discouraging predators (including guard animals and chemical repellants) actually protect livestock pretty well, and d) predators fulfill other important functions in ecosystems, functions you don't always see right away. Lesson: if a pen does the job, don't use a sledgehammer.

Finally, the government of China grants preliminary approval for nine previously rejected Trump trademarks. I'm sure this development is completely unrelated to the fact that Mr. Trump has stopped haranguing China for alleged currency manipulation. And no, right-wing snowflakes, that matter is precisely at the heart of the Constitution's emoluments clause. At least right-wingers can take comfort in the likelihood that Democrats will blow their chance to remove him from office by continuing to obsess about Russia.

Action: healthy school lunches, clean water, and campaign finance reform.

If you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Department of Agriculture to keep, and not roll back, the school lunch nutrition standards set by the previous Administration, then Moms Rising still helps you do that. The right has ginned up a "controversy" over what should be a very uncontroversial matter -- keeping junk food out of school lunches and putting more healthy food into school lunches -- and it's quite possibly even more ridiculous than the other fake outrages they peddle. For a time the "controversy" relied on anedcotes about kids not eating their apples, overblown accounts of states "having trouble" meeting the standards, and the tired right-wing trope of TEH BIG GUMMINT REGULASHUNZ IZ ALWAYSEZ TEH WRONGZ!!!! But now the controversy also relies on our Agriculture Secretary's rather flexible definition of "standard." You didn't know conservatism was all about not following the rules when you feel like it, didn't you? I kid, of course -- conservatism is not about that, even when the reactionaries who call themselves "conservative" act like it is.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state Senate passed SB 624 not that long ago; you may recall that SB 624 would amend state clean water laws so that corporations -- like, just to pull an example out of the air, corporations that practice longwall coal mining -- can pollute local streams with as long as they submit a plan to clean up their mess later on. Whether they actually follow through on their plan to clean up their own mess isn't even the point -- the water's polluted in the meantime, meaning you can't drink it, bathe in it, swim in it, or fish in it! If your kid didn't want to clean his room, but instead wanted to submit a cleaning plan to you so he could do it later, would you put up with that? Of course you wouldn't! And your kid isn't even planning to pollute your water! The state House Energy and Environmental Resources Committee has planned a vote on SB 624 for this coming Monday, so the Sierra Club still helps you tell your state Reps to oppose SB 624 (and also SB 561, a sort of REINS Act for Pennsylvania, which we need like we need a hole in the head).

Finally, Pennsylvania still barely has any campaign finance laws to speak of, not even gift-banning laws with any teeth, so Common Cause helps you tell your Pennsylvania state legislators to pass a strong gift ban. It's bad enough that so many of our allegedly greatest legal minds think money is speech, but they also get their shorts in a bunch when folks try to ban gifts to lobbyists, saying that of course politicians can vote objectively even though they get gifts, though virtually any sentient life form would regard such gift-giving as a temptation, if not an outright bribe. Odd, how some people find themselves defending politicians' good nature! Still, avoid the temptation to throw up your hands and say people are just corrupt -- or worse, to say that human nature is corrupt and any law that tries to change that is a bad law. People do change over time -- we settle far fewer of our disputes with murderous violence than we used to, after all. And a world without corruption would be a better world than the one we've got, and that alone makes it worth fighting for.

Action: government spying, and Congressional corruption.

S. 1297 would permanently reauthorize Section 702 of the nefarious FISA Amendments Act -- the bill Congress passed in 2008, with the support of then-Senator Obama, who cited, of course, "the grave threats we face" as a reason to unconstitutionally spy on Americans. You may recall from Edward Snowden's whistleblowing that Section 702 specifically authorizes our government to collect emails, texts, and phone calls in bulk, without getting a warrant, and therefore without establishing probable cause before a judge. So let's get this straight: lone wolf terrorists and terrorist organizations are not "grave" or "existential threats." You know what an "existential threat" is? Nazi Germany in 1939 -- not al-Qaeda, not ISIS, and not the Orlando shooter, whom ISIS disowned upon learning he might have been in the closet. Terrorists aim to paralyze us in fear so that we make our societies less free, thus the only moral response is to stay free. So Demand Progress helps you tell your Congressfolk to protect American freedoms by rejecting S. 1297.

Meanwhile, S. 1189, the Close the Revolving Door Act, would ban Congressfolk from ever lobbying Congress on someone else's behalf after they leave office. That'd be a big deal, as too many Reps and Senators from both parties become lobbyists after retiring or getting defeated for re-election. The bill would also extend the ban on Congressional staff becoming lobbyists from one year after leaving their Congressional jobs to six. Does this restrict their free speech rights after they leave office? No, it does not -- the Constitution can't prevent you from redressing grievances with your Congressfolk, but the Constitution doesn't guarantee a "right" to make money doing that, either. Former Congressfolk who become lobbyists aren't "redressing grievances" so much as they're exploiting connections, and while the First Amendment also guarantees a right of free association, it doesn't guarantee a right to make money off your "free associations," either. If Congressfolk don't like any of that, I suppose they can always work for a living. So Rootstrikers helps you tell your Congressfolk to fight corruption by supporting S. 1189.

Around the table: tales of arms deal votes, Russian hacking, mass incarceration, a narrow primary vote, and more right-wing whining.

S.J.Res. 42, which would have blocked munitions sales to Saudi Arabia, fails by a 47-53 margin. The bad news? Five Democrats -- four of them up for re-election in states Mr. Trump won in 2016, three of whom are absolute toast at this writing anyway so why did they bother? -- voted against the resolution, basically finishing it off. But even the most cynical person -- the one who'd say the four Republicans who supported the resolution only did so because they knew it would go down -- would have to recognize, I think, that this close, dramatic vote is 20 votes better than what we got from a similar resolution last year. And we should watch this Todd Young, Republican Senator from Indiana; he did a lot of legwork to get this effort as far as it did, so he might actually mean it.

Don't get too riled up over the news that Russian hackers hit more voter databases than we previously thought -- because apparently those hackers didn't actually do any vote manipulation, possibly because state and local databases are all different, which is as good an argument as any for keeping some matters out of our federal government's hands. Seriously, one federal database, likely based on one national ID system, would be far more vulnerable to manipulation. States need to do more to secure their voting data, of course, but the same objections I've always had to obsessing over Russia -- that obsession distracts you from worse things, Republican vote suppression swayed the results far more, Democrats wouldn't have this problem if they'd stop nominating colorless centrists already -- still apply.

We tend to think of the era of mass incarceration in terms of what it's done to urban populations, but Issie Lapowsky informs us that more rural folks are going to jail, too. Pretrial incarceration, which really is unconstitutional and really should be against the law, has afflicted the rural population even more over the last 40 years than it's afflicted the urban -- pretrail jail rates have gone up over 400% among rural folks, versus around 300% in the cities -- and that's stunning. The reasons (high among them the lack of resources to get people to trial quickly enough) are, sadly, not stunning.

Bush Mobber Ed Gillespie beats Trump supporter in Virginia Republican gubernatorial primary by a single point. Now I'm old enough to remember when Mr. Gillespie told Republicans to characterize all criticism of George W. Bush as "political hate speech," so I don't Mr. Gillespie's narrowly-won advancement to the general election as some great victory for civilized society. And I rather expect Mr. Gillespie will court those Trump voters with considerable vigor. After all, it's not exactly like he has an uphill battle against Ralph Northam, in a state with a notoriously oppressive Voter ID law and a Clintonoid centrist in charge of executing it.

Finally, Newt Gingrich blames Kathy Griffin and that NYC production of Julius Caesar for "setting the tone" of a "biased" special investigation of President Trump's Russian ties. You didn't know Robert Mueller could be so easily swayed by a) a photo that virtually the whole of liberaldom condemned and b) a play about how badly an assassination of a state leader wound up going? Well, Newt Gingrich didn't know, either -- he'd praised Mr. Mueller's selection as special prosecutor as recently as last month. Why do we talk to Newt Gingrich about anything again?

Action: food stamps, and campaign finance reform.

The Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any cuts to the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program, i.e., food stamps. A lot of folks really don't understand how the food stamps program works -- not just because right-wingers want to destroy all good federal programs, but because centrists pretend that pandering to people's shallowness is the path to victory. A lot of folks seem to think that the food stamp program works by taking their taxpayer money and giving it to folks who don't deserve it, but that's not how it works: it takes taxpayer money from all of us and gives it to anyone who needs it, which could be all of us, at some time or other. I mean, even the hardest-working folks suffer bad luck and reversals in life. If you really think too many of "those people" get your hard-earned money, then you have an obligation to change the system so that it's fairer. If that's even the problem -- if the problem is you're just a racist, then you need to change yourself.

Meanwhile, H.R. 20, the Government by the People Act, would create a public campaign financing program allotting six dollars for every dollar in small donations (donations $50 and under) made to campaigns. And thus the bill would amplify the power of small campaign donors; right now the really really big campaign donations seem to jump their donors to the front of any line to get their grievances heard, and our Constitution doesn't give you more rights just because you have more money. H.R. 20 wouldn't mandate participation by candidates in the public financing program, so reflexive Citizens United defenders can sheath that imaginary objection, and though it would likely have the effect of shaming candidates who forego participating in the system, there's no Constitutional "right" not to be shamed by your countryfolk, and anyone who pretends otherwise is a snowflake. Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to support real campaign finance reform by supporting the Government by the People Act.

Around the table: the Donald Trump chicken-egg question, resolved! And other lessons.

The incomparable Naomi Klein reminds us that Donald Trump "is not the crisis," but "the symptom of the crisis." Much happened before his election, after all -- we abandoned our commitment to helping each other and began worshiping the undeserving rich long ago, after all, and Mr. Trump is merely a culmination (not necessarily the culmination) of this decadent age. Among the many necessary reminders: Our Glorious Elites routinely associated the anti-"free" trade movement with terrorism after 9.11.

The incomparable David Dayen reminds us that Mr. "Trump Assigned Himself an Awful Lot of Homework That Isn't Getting Done." Most of Mr. Trump's very dramatic Executive Orders direct federal agencies to accomplish something; so far, his Orders have set 27 deadlines that have already passed, and his Administration's met less than half of them. These include a deadline for a progress report on vetting violent extremists worldwide. So add that to your list of reasons Donald Trump will have failed America when we have another 9.11-sized attack. (Oh, and if you're inclined to complain that all these missed deadlines are just bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo, you have to explain why the President is even setting them in the first place.)

Dean Baker at TruthOut tells us why the Trump infrastructure plan is a "scam." I've been using the word "boutique" to describe his infrastructure plan (because it'll more likely spur development of "boutique" projects in wealthy areas of the country that don't need all that help), but "scam" is as good a word for it. One could imagine a hundred campaign ads painting Mr. Trump as the kind of scam artist you used to see all the time on late-night infomercials. Then one would remember that weakling Democrats would have to run them, and like the steam from your coffee cup, one's reverie would dissipate.

Adam Rogers at Wired explains why "If You Care About Cities, Apple's New Campus Sucks." Long story short: Apple "produced a building roughly the shape of a navel, and then gazed into it," a building that takes up 175 acres but looks inward rather than outward, failing to connect in any meaningful way to the community in which it sits, particularly in areas like housing and public transportation. Read the whole thing, though, because it's a hell of a deconstruction.

Finally, Montana U.S. House Rep. Greg Gianforte pleads guilty to assaulting a reporter, gets 40 hours community service. I should've known the moment he pled out that he wasn't going to jail, being a big politician with lots of money, but what can I say? I remain a creature of hope, and there is hope, I suppose, in the fact that he pled out so quickly. So if Mr. Gianforte challenges Jon Tester for Montana's Senate seat next year, will we get to anoint Jon Tester the Luckiest Man in American Politics?

Action: defending freedom fighters across the world.

Access Now helps you helps you tell the government of the United Arab Emirates to release human rights blogger Ahmed Mansoor. What did Mr. Mansoor supposedly do? Well, let's look at the charges: he did time in 2011 for insulting the President, Vice President, and Crown Prince of the UAE, and now he's charged with "publish(ing) false information that damages the country's reputation" and "spread(ing) hatred and sectarianism" on social media. So, in order, that's one charge only a snowflake government would file and two charges snowflake governments make up to punish folks who resist them. On the latter two charges the UAE has held Mr. Mansoor in solitary for three months, without access to a lawyer or his family, apparently because the state's too good for law and order. So let's wield the Big Stick of Bad PR against the UAE. (And, ah, if you're tempted to say this Can't Happen Here, recall that some Americans want to outlaw "fake news" and our own snowflake President wants "tougher libel laws.")

Meanwhile, H.R. 1299, the Berta Caceres Human Rights in Honduras Act, still awaits Congressional consideration, so the Sierra Club helps you tell your Congressfolk to support human rights in Honduras by supporting H.R. 1299. H.R. 1299 would use that vaunted leverage we have that we never seem to use at the right time: it would cut off military and financial aid to soldiers or police in Honduras until such time as they stop killing activists. Berta Caceres is, of course, the famous Honduran activist who got killed in her own home last year, and since the 2009 coup, when right-wing militarists ousted the left-leaning and democratically-elected President of Honduras, over 100 such activists have died under, shall we say, mysterious circumstances. Our government may have sat back and watched the Honduran coup under President Obama, but that doesn't mean we stop doing the right thing, and it doesn't mean we wait for our government's permission to act, either.

Around the table: notes on the "war on terror" and political divides.

Patrick Cockburn at Counterpunch explains why the British seem to get counterterrorism wrong. Long story short: Western adventures in the Middle East cause more terrorism than the internet does. Long story somewhat longer: folks actually about to commit terrorism can't seem to shut up about it, but the British government puts way too much effort into investigating and harassing foreigners obviously not about to commit terrorism. There may be no better writer about terrorism on Earth than Patrick Cockburn.

Speaking of warrantless wiretapping, our own NSA now says it's not going to tell us how many good Americans get swept up in their surveillance dragnet. Because it's too hard, of course -- which seems to be what all big talkers say when their mouths write checks their asses can't cash. Even Sen. Graham, no great fan of getting warrants before spying on people, suggests he might not reauthorize the NSA's spying authority because of this development, though I'm sure he'll back down. But if you get swamped in information about potential "terrorists," you make it that much harder to find real ones.

And now the New York Times wrings its hands over the growing "divide" in the Democratic party between the rank-and-file and the establishment, possibly "disrupt(ing) the party's path to a majority" in the 2018 midterms. Right -- just like the Tea Party's spirited inflexibility scuttled Republican attempts to retake the House in 2010. I kid, of course -- the "liberal" media only ever allows Republicans to make demands in America, while labeling the rest of us "extremists" if we want someone better than a center-right corporatist to represent us.

Billionaire hedge-fund manager takes to LinkedIn to criticize President Trump for choosing "conflict" over "harmony" and the good of the "part" over the "whole." I often hesitate to criticize folks for coming to the party late (you know, Parable of the Prodigal Son and all), but, frankly, what this guy's saying has been obvious to everyone who doesn't treat politics like a sporting event, and for a while now. Plus, he's a little New Age-y for my taste -- was there no other phrase to describe how Mr. Trump would stimulate the economy besides "ignite animal spirits"?

Finally, regarding the upcoming special election in Georgia's 6th U.S. House district, and Stuart Rothenberg calls the race "almost a must-win" for Democrats, because "it would have a significant impact on the political narrative of the summer and early fall" if they lost. Beware people who make a living "shaping the narrative" telling you that wins or losses will "shape the narrative." Also beware people who pretend that "narratives" shape elections, and democracy, more than people do. That New Age-y hedge fund manager already looks better.

Action: the Saudi arms deal, health care "reform," and pro-bankster legislation.

The Senate reportedly plans to vote today on S.J.Res. 42, which would prevent the President from sending munitions (though not all military aid) to Saudi Arabia, so either use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) to call your Senators and tell them to vote in favor of the resolution, or use the toll-free number provided by Just Foreign Policy, which is 1.855.686.6927. Saudi Arabia would use those guns in order to keep the people of Yemen starving, just as they've been doing with the guns we've been giving them for years, and keeping the people of Yemen starving also just so happens to oppress some of the world's most effective fighters against ISIS. Why, it's almost like that's the idea. But getting the Senate to actually debate policies that lead to other people dying is a good thing. When you're done with your phone call, Just Foreign Policy asks that you report your call here.

Meanwhile, as you might expect, Republicans in the Senate used all the hoo-hah over James Comey's testimony to get their precious health care bill sent off to the CBO, which means they're much closer to throwing more than 20 million people off their health insurance than they've been letting on. So you might well suspect that when you hear that far-right Senators want to scuttle the whole Trumpcare effort, they're just feeding you drama to catch you off your guard. So both Roots Action and Social Security Works help you tell your Senators to reject the Trumpcare legislation in any form. But you may just want to tell your Senators that while you've got them on the phone about S.J.Res. 42. And you may want to add that you know the Senate's reported plan to wind down the Medicaid expansion more slowly than the House bill would do is not even the "compromise" it's been reported to be. You might even say you'd rather expand Medicaid to include everyone.

But wait, there's more! The House passed the nefarious Financial CHOICE Act last week -- you know, the bill that would give banksters more choices in how they screw us over -- and now the bill goes to the Senate, so both Consumers Union and the Sierra Club help you tell your Senator to reject the Financial CHOICE Act. Or, again, you could append it to your phone call about Saudi Arabia and the Trumpcare bill. Seriously, if they're going to try to set everything on fire at once, then they can take a 90-second phone call instead of a 30-second one, and anyway it's their job. Republicans in Congress have made no secret of their hatred for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or, indeed, for any regulations that actually keep financial predators from taking advantage of us, but they do seem to think that merely ventilating their hatred is somehow persuasive. Of course, as long as Democrats don't take on the banksters, as is the people's will, Republicans won't lose their jobs, which is about all that'll ever mitigate the harm they do.

UPDATE. Word on the street now is that the Senate will vote on S.J.Res. 42 tomorrow after 2 pm. Call your Senators anyway.

Around the table: campaign finance reform threatened by Democrats, and other sad tales.

From Richard Eskow at the OurFuture blog we get perhaps the best one-paragraph explanation of why you shouldn't support President Trump's boutique infrastructure plan: "If you needed a new stove or refrigerator, you wouldn’t give the keys to your kitchen to Olive Garden, then pay them to let you eat. You’d be opening your wallet for the rest of your life. Unfortunately, that’s the kind of logic Donald Trump and his party are using to give away our shared wealth." The rest of the article's great, too, describing how private corporations would own our roads, our bridges, and our water systems, and charge us obscenely to use them. But please, right-wingers, complain about how TEH LIBRULZ HATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!! as if there are literally no other alternatives to whatever Mr. Trump wants to do. (Like, you know, paying for infrastructure by taxing the rich a lot harder.)

Sen. Risch (R-IA) relies on a very literal interpretation of what Mr. Trump said to Mr. Comey to justify his belief that Mr. Trump did not obstruct justice. I'm far from unsympathetic to the notion that our justice system should err on the side of not putting people in jail, but the law instructs us that one might obstruct justice merely by trying to corruptly influence an investigation, rather than issue "orders." Of course, like many Republicans, Mr. Risch seems more interested in saying "nothing to see here" and moving on to gutting Obamacare and our tax code.

Former Bernie Sanders advisor says we ought to connect with voters more traditionally, i.e., by actually going door-to-door and talking to them. Ms. Bond says, quite rightly, that Democrats seemed to think voters were very happy with the Obama era, when in fact they weren't, and if they'd actually talked to as many voters as possible -- their obsession with "big data," she says, leads them to ask "what is the smallest number of people you can talk to and win?" -- they might have seen that. Of course, then they might have had to do something about it, which might have offended their big donors. And that's why we trust people, not politicians.

Ho hum, Connecticut Democratic politicians are trying to destroy their state's Clean Elections Program, which keeps big money out of campaigns. They'll tell you it's because of budget shortfalls, but Connecticut's budget shortfalls are way bigger than the CEP's entire budget, so you know that's a lie (plus, as one observer points out, public campaign financing saves the public money, in corporate welfare tax breaks that don't get passed). More likely they're trying to kill it because incumbents want to stay incumbent, even when many of them got to be incumbents because of the level playing field the CEP instituted. It's hard out there for a pimp.

Finally, President Trump has apparently told the British government that he won't be visiting there until he can be sure his visit won't be met by protests. All together now: waaaaaaah!

Around the table: time for another exciting round of "who's the snowflake now?"

Legislators across America also seem to routinely block folks from their social media accounts. Of course, if you've created a Facebook page or a Twitter account for the express purpose of interacting with constituents, you don't get to block people -- you only get to block people from your own, private account, which, sadly, President Trump's account still seems to me to be, although Mr. Spicer sure ain't helping matters by telling reporters that they should treat his boss's twitterings as "official statements." Those Trumpsters think they're so deprived if they don't have everything both ways.

Things are so messed up now that even former right-wing talk show host Charlie Sykes says we need to put "truth" above "tribe." But this is an astoundingly good read (I wouldn't be surprised if it's actually the intro to his forthcoming book), arguing, among other things, that contemporary propaganda aims primarily to exhaust us, and also that a lot of folks "use information not to discover what is true, but rather to reinforce their relationship to their political tribe." We knew that already, but Mr. Sykes puts it really well -- and doesn't urge us all to come together behind right-wing ideas, as unscrupulous "bipartisanship" obsessives in both parties would have us do.

Seven state Attorneys General challenge EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's decision not to ban the controversial pesticide chlorpyrifos in late March. They claim the EPA has violated federal law by failing to ban it, since they also haven't determined a safe level of public exposure, and frankly that wouldn't be surprising, coming from an Administration so anti-law-and-order. The EPA also appears to be ignoring its own scientists' finding that chlorpyrifos threatens folks' health -- but they haven't even taken that information down from their website at this writing, which is really surprising.

Republican House candidate Karen Handel, running a close race in Georgia's 6th district, says, in a debate "I do not support a livable wage." Of course she means she doesn't support a law mandating such a wage, or even a minimum wage, but that's a quotation that should be featured in a thousand attack ads. I think she still beats Jon Ossoff, partly because Republicans will suppress the vote and partly because the election is still almost two weeks away and folks generally don't remember mistakes like Ms. Handel's for more than a week, but mainly because Mr. Ossoff is a wet bag of leaves.

Finally, in a truly impressive display, House Speaker Paul Ryan says President Trump may have asked former FBI head James Comey to drop that agency's investigation into then-National Security Advisor Michael Flynn because he's "new at this." Then, when a reporter asks him why he seems to think that's an "acceptable excuse," Mr. Ryan says it's not an acceptable excuse, and then says now he knows why Donald Trump is so frustrated with media coverage! All together: who's the snowflake now?

Action: corporate welfare, clean water, and freedom of speech.

Did you know this was "infrastructure week," according to President Trump? Sure, other things crowded it out of the news, but Mr. Trump did propose privatizing our nation's air traffic control apparatus -- by letting a "non-profit" run it, though non-profits can pay their executives outrageous salaries and then jack up prices and fees to balance the books as easily as any for-profit. The rest of his infrastructure program is pretty much what you already expected -- some $200 billion in corporate welfare handouts that will purportedly attract $800 billion in investment, so private corporations can own our roads, our bridges, our schools, and our water systems, putting their profits above our services -- not by streamlining operations in order to deliver better service at the same price, but by simply dictating prices and services to good Americans held hostage by private ownership. Hence Food and Water Watch helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Mr. Trump's boutique infrastructure plan.

Meanwhile, the authors of H.R. 953/S. 340 have called the bill the Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act and the Sensible Environmental Protection Act, respectively, and you know what that means: that "regulatory burdens" mean only those "suffered" by big campaign donors, and "sensible" means "whatever pleases big polluters." Read the bills at congress.gov and you may not be that appalled by them, as they would allow a corporation to discharge "a pesticide authorized for sale, distribution, or use under the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act" into our public waters without getting a permit. But you might also see problems with that: saying something is safe to kill bugs is not precisely the same as saying it's safe to discharge in large quantities into our rivers, lakes, and streams, and getting rid of permitting requirements for polluters would reduce our ability to know what pollutants are in the water we drink, clean with, and bathe with. Is filthy water a good price to pay for a little less bureaucracy? H.R. 953 has already passed the House, hence CREDO helps you tell your Senators to protect our clean water by opposing H.R. 953/S. 340.

Finally, President Trump still has a jones to dismantle the Johnson Amendment, that slice of our tax code that prevents all 501(c)(3) non-profits, including churches, from endorsing (or opposing) candidates for office. Mr. Trump and his kind say that the Johnson Amendment violates a church's First Amendment rights, but it doesn't -- it merely strips politicking preachers of their non-profit status, which is hardly the same as being put in jail for your speech. And since churches don't have the same reporting requirements as other non-profits, you would not have difficulty imagining big campaign donors using churches as massive money-laundering operations allowing them to evade campaign finance disclosure laws. And frankly, churches need as much protection from the Johnson Amendment as we do! The church-state wall works both ways -- it keeps the church from imposing its will on good Americans, but it also protects churches from corruption by politicians, and thus keeps them free to serve communities. People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to repeal the Johnson Amendment.

Action: "free" trade, oppression of activists, and climate change.

President Trump, as you know, has informed Congress of his intention to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, a.k.a. NAFTA. I'm quite pleased he withdrew the United States from the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," which more than one observer described as "NAFTA on steroids," but you can excuse me for thinking Mr. Trump doesn't really have the American people's best interests at heart, as evidenced by his stated intention to keep the most odious thing about NAFTA -- the "investor-state tribunals" that let corporations exact tribute from American taxpayers for having the temerity to pass laws that "cost" those corporations money (you know, like labor and clean air/clean water laws). And here you thought Donald Trump was the law and order President! I'd hope a good lawyer would argue at one of these tribunals that good environmental regulations actually save corporations money in health care costs, but I'd rather defend our right to make laws. Hence Sign for Good helps you tell the Trump Administration to negotiate a trade pact that actually does right by American workers.

Meanwhile, Jewish Voice for Peace helps you tell your Congressperson to help pressure Israel to drop charges against Palestinian activist Issa Amro. Mr. Amro founded Youth Against Settlements in 2003, after successfully campaigning to reopen Palestine Polytechnic University (where he was an engineering student), which the Israeli army had closed; for the past decade and a half he has preached nonviolence and civil disobedience against the Israeli occupation, and for his trouble he's been arrested dozens of times. Now Israel has indicted him on 18 charges, and some of these -- like "insulting a soldier" and "spitting in the direction of a settler" -- sure bear the mark of a state that can't win an argument on the merits. And you couldn't reasonably claim that Mr. Amro's commitment to nonviolence is a sham (if that were true, I think we'd know by now!), nor could you claim that Mr. Amro's aims are so unpalatable it doesn't matter what his methods are, particularly when we've founded a nation on precisely the notion that folks should be free to express themselves in a civilized manner, regardless of their ideas.

Finally, the Union of Concerned Scientists helps you tell ExxonMobil and Chevron to help fight climate change. This action alert comes hot on the heels of the news that an astounding 62% of ExxonMobil shareholders approved a resolution at last week's annual shareholder meeting calling for ExxonMobil to plan for the changes in its business model that fighting climate change would require; that resolution is non-binding, of course, but if you're a CEO, you ignore a six-in-ten majority of your shareholders at your own peril. Resolutions involving climate change and corporate lobbying also gained ground at the annual Chevron shareholder meeting. I've long said that shareholders don't care exclusively about money, and though the behavior of shareholders (particularly during the Obama years) has sometimes challenged that belief, I'm pleased to see my faith in them rewarded here. Yet I'm also quite irritated that shareholders ever had to tell fossil-fuel executives (our best and brightest, supposedly) to do the obvious. The sun and the wind always come back eventually, but fossil fuels will be gone sooner than we think.

Around the table: a potential public option in Nevada, responsible government in Kansas, and other items.

Don't look now, but Nevada's state legislature just passed a bill that could make Medicaid a public option there. The bill allows folks who qualify for Obamacare subsidies to use them to buy into Medicaid instead, an option that might be attractive to both Nevada and Nevadans simply because Medicaid generally pays doctors less than Medicare does. But if Gov. Sandoval doesn't veto the bill (and he may not), I suppose those "conservative," "states'rights" people in the Trump Administration could always come in to try to squash it. You can't judge by "positive" interactions with Tom Price's CMMS, after all.

Is Kansas finally ready to bounce back? The state legislature finally rolls back a big chunk of Gov. Brownback's "signature" tax-cuts-for-the-rich by overriding his veto of a sizable legislature-passed tax hike. To the Republican Rep who voted against the override by saying it was "(t)oo much, too fast," I might remind him of William Lloyd Garrison's axiom that you don't pull a baby out of a fire gradually. I might also be interested in his opinion of those actually too-much-too-fast tax cuts in the first place.

Michael Shermer at Scientific American reminds us of the key reason "Why Climate Skeptics Are Wrong": they don't point to a better theory that explains the data better. Also, they often "point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence." Of course, when you worship at the altar of mammon, you don't have to do science very well.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is following up on earlier ProPublica reports that Wells Fargo has been charging mortgage fees to customers inappropriately, often blaming bank-caused paperwork delays on the customer. And given that these were, you know, mortgages, the fees could be $1,000 or more. Nice work if you can get it! The CFPB is, of course, the agency Congress and President Trump are so hot to cripple, because worshiping at the altar of mammon also means you don't have to do morality very well.

The Town Hall project provides a list of the 193 members of Congress (out of 535 Reps and Senators) who have not held townhalls since the inauguration. Some "liberal" media flak no doubt stands ready to call the problem "bipartisan," but only 34 of the 193 are Democrats, meaning this is a problem is over 82 percent Republican. You'll see New Jersey House Rep. Frelinghuysen on that list -- the one who told activists to pipe down and let him do his work, the one who outed another activist to her employer, the one who should lose re-election to a shrub in 2018.

Finally, the Columbia Law School's Knight First Amendment Institute thinks President Trump is violating the First Amendment by blocking critics from his Twitter feed. But I think that depends entirely on whether Mr. Trump's Twitter account really is a "designated public forum," and not just the absurd rantings of a guy who happens to be President; under the latter, I think he would have First Amendment free association rights like anyone else, whatever we may think of him blocking his critics. But making the President use an official account that is a "designated public forum" would be well within Congress's rights.

Action: campaign finance, health care, and the "liberal" media.

H.J.Res. 31/S.J.Res. 8 would amend our Constitution to empower state and local governments to restrict campaign spending, like we used to do before the Supreme Court's Citizens United v. FEC ruling. Two-thirds of Republican voters think the Court ruled wrongly in Citizens United, and virtually no one thinks unlimited corporate campaign spending is an unqualified good, so you know what that means: it means arguments against overturning Citizens United are desperately absurd. Mostly they rely on conflating money and speech, when money and speech are not the same thing -- the First Amendment protects the latter, but the former is property, and courts have long held that governments have a right to regulate property. But they also use scare tactics, like the threat of government shutting down newspapers or incumbents passing laws silencing opponents, i.e., things that never happened during the heyday of McCain-Feingold. So People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to support real campaign finance reform in America by overturning the Citizens United decision.

Meanwhile, you may have heard that the California state Senate passed a single-payer health insurance bill. The state Assembly still has to pass it, and then the mercurial Gov. Brown would have to sign it, but it's still a good step, and one we ought to try and repeat at the federal level, too. I know, I know, the Republicans who run Congress only seem to care about inflicting injury and hardship on working families, hence their zeal to take away protections for pre-existing conditions, give away taxpayer money more directly to health insurance corporations, and (hilariously!) "automatically enroll" people who don't have health insurance into health insurance, which is so different from the Obamacare mandate they profess to hate. So, yes, it's well past time to change the subject and demand that our Congressfolk enact a Medicare-for-All, single-payer health insurance system that we pay for with our taxes. Hey, we pay for all kinds of corporate welfare with our taxes, so why can't we pay for the general welfare, too? The Peace Team helps you demand a Medicare-for-All health insurance system from our politicians.

Finally, you may know that the Washington Post wrote essentially a hit piece against Social Security Disability Insurance by profiling, at length, a single family that's been getting disability payments for generations. Oh, BFD: one example of abuse (even one that's been going on for decades) doesn't constitute a trend, let alone an argument, and one of the challenges of civilization -- of maturity, even! -- is to resist the temptation to throw away good works because a very small number of people abuse them. Better to stop people from abusing them, so honest people can benefit from them! And you should remember that regardless of the sizable amount of good reporting the Post has done on President Trump, once e's gone they'll go back to foregrounding the "need" to "reform" "entitlements" (i.e., by giving away Social Security and Medicaid to private corporations) far more than they're doing now. We can help put a stop to such efforts, by telling the Washington Post to stop running distorted stories that support the President's anti-Social Security agenda, as Social Security Works helps you do.

Around the table: the ongoing chronicle of malicious Republicans, weak Democrats, and enabling media.

The estimable McClatchy D.C. bureau informs us that "GOP Media Plot Anti-Media Strategy for 2018 Midterms." And it could work! The "liberal" media deserves criticism, after all, for embracing sensationalism at the expense of truth, for turning our civic life into a glorified sporting match, and for letting their corporate paymasters dictate what gets covered and what gets buried. But I doubt Republicans level these criticisms at the media, and all Democrats have to do in response is tell everyone that only losers whine about the media. I kid, of course -- these are Democrats we're talking about.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt says coal corporations have created over 50,000 jobs since President Trump took office, but he overestimates that number by almost 49,500 jobs. Well, after all, simply taking jobs hostage whenever folks want you to stop polluting their air and water -- don't make my plant pollute less, or these jobs get it! -- only goes so far, and it doesn't go as far as it used to, frankly. So the forces of evil are reduced to telling balder and balder lies, and it sure doesn't look like the Sunday morning news shows were all that prepared for that.

Democrats actually contemplate attaching some conditions of their own to the next debt limit fight, which should occur in July. But of course they won't demand, say, a minimum wage hike before they vote to raise the debt limit (hey, it worked on The West Wing!), but they're merely going to demand that Republicans make their tax reform plans "revenue-neutral." And that's bad leadership: you only lead well when you remind voters of what they're fighting for, not merely what they're fighting against. Of course, if you do the former, you risk alienating your big donors, so, yeah, they'll totally bollocks this up, too.

Ho hum, Saudi Arabia pays the Trump International Hotel over a quarter of a million bucks over the past few months. No, this gets worse: they were putting up American war vets in $500/night rooms so they could go to D.C. and lobby against the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, which would allow 9.11 families to sue Saudi Arabia for its involvement in 9.11. After lying to them that such lawsuits could be turned on them by foreign governments, no less! And that's how far you have to go to get good people to do bad things.

Donald Trump whines that Democrats are keeping him from staffing our government, and is, of course, wrong. How is he wrong? He hasn't even nominated a lot of folks to staff our government, and those positions that require Senate confirmation can no longer be filibustered by a Senate minority. Always he blames someone else, even when it's obviously his fault. Remember that when the next big terrorist attack hits.

Finally, first-term U.S. House Rep from Louisiana writes a clumsy rant on Facebook saying, among other things, that America should hunt down and kill "radicalized Muslim suspects." Hey, asshole: you don't kill a suspect in America, "radicalized" or not. And if you think you should get to kill a suspect, maybe you need to go live in a police state.

Action: fighting cruel budgets, polluters, and banksters.

What's not to like about the Trump budget? Why, that it throws people off Medicaid so more poor workers will die, that it cuts food stamps so more kids and seniors will starve, that it cuts Social Security disability funding so workers who get hurt can become poor, that it cuts student loan programs so more students will be crushed by debt, and that it slashes renewable energy funding and clean air and clean water enforcement so Trump cronies can make even more unearned money and the rest of us can get sicker. OK, I don't know if Mr. Trump intended all those things with his budget, but intent matters a lot less than result, and those will be the results. And if anyone tells you that TRUMP HAZ TEH PAID FAMILY LEAVEZ HA HA YOU ARE TEH STUPIDZ!!!!!, remind them that Mr. Trump's six-week paid family leave program is, like his infrastructure plan, a boutique plan. Use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page (or the bottom, if you're on a cellphone) and keep those anti-Trump budget phone calls to your Reps and Senators coming.

Meanwhile, I'm no great fan of the Paris climate accord, but I'm not above using Mr. Trump's withdrawal therefrom as a news hook to persuade you to tell your Governor to work harder to protect good Americans from the ill effects of pollution and climate change, as Penn Environment helps you do. When you can't get our federal government to do something, you can still get your state and local governments to do it -- indeed, it really ought to be easier, since you have fewer people to influence, and it's also how a lot of great change happens in America, and if today's state governments also seem only to respond to their biggest donors, that only means we must redouble our efforts. Renewable energy standards -- you know, the ones Rick Perry is so anxious to get rid of, how's that for "small government"? -- have come about entirely at the state level, and with Mr. Trump caring more about his fossil fuel cronies than the real job creators in the up-and-coming solar and wind industries, our state governments are our best bet for renewable energy investment, too. So let's get to stepping.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to reject H.R. 10, the so-called Financial CHOICE Act, then People's Action still helps you do that. You might think that conservatism animates Republican politicians these days, but you'd be wrong -- nothing animates Republican politicians so much as delivering more unearned money to their biggest donors, whether through more tax-cuts-for-the-rich or more "relief" from the "burden" of regulation. But ask yourself: why is keeping banksters from cheating you a "burden"? Why is keeping financial predators from taking your home and your savings a "burden"? Frankly, the unchecked power of banksters, who do nothing but play casino games with our economy and want nothing so much as to make us all their debt slaves, is the real burden. And they crashed our economy not even a decade ago with their casino games, and given the "freedom" Congress wants to give them, they'll do it again and again and again -- and extract tribute in the form of bailouts again and again and again. Well, folks, we've got to break that wheel.

Action: selling arms to Saudi Arabia nay, crippling the Endangered Species Act nay, and drilling in ANWR nay.

If you've missed previous action alerts helping you tell Congress to stop President Trump's weapons "deal" with Saudi Arabia, then the Action Network still helps you do that. Also, the Friends Committee on National Legislation helps you write a letter-to-the-editor to your local media outlets condemning the President's Saudi arms deal. Letters-to-the-editor may sound quaint, but Congressfolk do pay attention to them, and one should communicate one's will to one's representatives in as many ways as possible. Our opposition to the $100 billion-plus arms deal goes well beyond Saudi Arabia's ongoing war on Yemen, a war which has left millions of Yemenis on the brink of starvation, though that war has injured the very same Yemeni rebels (the Houthis) who have been among the most effective fighters against ISIS in the region. Saudi Arabia tortures its political protestors and outlaws protest and beats up protestors. And if we're so strapped for allies in the region that we have to turn to this government, why do we still call ourselves America?

Meanwhile, H.R. 2134/S. 935, the so-called Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act, would (among other things!) end protections for endangered species a mere five years after their listing. The bald eagle, you may know, needed 40 years of ESA protection to get off the list; one could merely ask one's Congressperson do you really want to mess with the bald eagle? I suppose the bill's supporters will claim they're merely forcing our government to "do the job more efficiently," but saving an endangered species is not necessarily something you put on a stopwatch -- you either do it right, however long it takes, or you fail, and then that species is gone forever. You would be quite right, of course, to suspect that this bill's authors merely intend to open up as much land to oil and gas drillers as possible, so as to keep that sweet campaign cash coming. Hence Environmental Action helps you write a letter-to-the-editor of your local publication demanding that Congress reject the Endangered Species Management Self-Determination Act.

Finally, we have so, so many reasons to oppose the Trump "Hard Power" budget, and we're going to get into more of those reasons tomorrow, but the Alaska Wilderness League helps you tell your Congressfolk to keep Arctic National Wildlife Refuge drilling out of the budget. The love of money, as the Bible teaches us, is the root of all evil, and Donald Trump has let the love of money write his entire budget -- any spending that might actually help someone make ends meet is out, while any spending that might make some crony or other richer is in. And make no mistake, drilling in the ANWR refuge will do nothing except make some oil drilling CEO richer -- no, it will not "reduce our dependence on foreign oil," since most scientists think there's not very much oil there to begin with. And it doesn't represent a blow against Big Gummint -- after all, keeping that region relatively free from pollution is a good thing. Government can do good things, when it listens to its owners, the people. And when it doesn't, you don't just destroy it -- you just speak out more.

Around the table: climate change, the "war on terror," health care, immigration, and the "liberal" media.

Before President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate change accord, Naomi Klein at The Intercept warned us that the Paris climate change accord was never all-that to begin with, having been consistently negotiated downward in order to appease American corporate interests. Which, of course, means Mr. Trump's withdrawal is little more than drama. While voluntary agreements (i.e, those without penalties for noncompliance) aren't worthless, I much prefer our citizens making our government curb pollution of our air and water -- and, of course, other nations' citizens doing the same.

The truly stunning thing about Mr. Trump's incessant twittering after the London attacks on Saturday? That he let approximately zero time lapse before bringing up his precious Muslim ban and how we need to "stop being politically correct," by which I guess he means we should scrap that whole innocent-until-proven-guilty thing. In comparison, Tha Bush Mobb was positively measured in its immediate response to 9.11; heaven knows (and does not need to tell us!) how far off the deep end Mr. Trump will go if we have another one of those here. (As an aside, ah, terrorist attacks five days before the British snap election? Hey, I'd be a fool not to have noticed the closeness of the two events.)

Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) thinks it's "unlikely" Congress will reach a deal to "reform" America's health care system this year, and even says the House bill is "dead on arrival" and is "not a good plan." But don't get complacent! Mr. Burr most definitely does not say that Republicans won't pass something health-care related -- what will stop Republicans from, for example, simply repealing all those taxes-on-the-rich that fund Obamacare? All these Republicans want are tax cuts for their big donors, after all, and if those tax cuts can cripple Obamacare, that's just gravy.

I would bet that even the most hardened nativist would pause before applauding ICE's arrest and deportation of a man who was on his way to picking up his newborn son from the hospital after life-saving surgery. Or am I giving them too much credit? I can also imagine them arguing about law and order, a phrase I never hear them utter when polluters put cancer in our air and water, and I can also imagine them arguing you have to have the courage to make hard decisions, which courage is always much easier to muster when someone else will bear the consequences.

Finally, Michelle Goldberg at Slate reminds us that the "liberal" media wrings its hands over "the rage of Trump voters" while never wondering if Hillary voters might also have feelings worth considering, let alone fearing. I'm all for redressing the legitimate (i.e., not racist) grievances of Trump votaries, but I also find odd the media's "lopsided concern for the tender feelings of people who march around in 'Fuck Your Feelings' T-shirts." And what an utter surprise to see the Washington Post's Robert Samuelson, that banal apologist for Our Glorious Elites, arguing that we shouldn't impeach Mr. Trump because it might offend his votaries. Can you say hostage crisis, class?

Around the table: yet more tales of corruption and venality.

Brian Klaas at USA Today puts it about as well as it can be put: "Donald Trump's Business Ties Explain a Lot of His Dictator Worship." For example, we can assume Mr. Trump praises Mr. Duterte because he's got a Trump Tower in Manila, or that he stops slamming China because one of his businesses got a lucrative trademark deal there, or that he congratulates Turkey's President for "winning" a referendum that destroys democracy there because he's got two buildings in Istanbul. And that's before we get to his conflicts of interest in Saudi Arabia, of course.

Speaking of conflicts of interest, the Trump Administration now routinely grants waivers to employees so they can meet with the organizations they used to work for! And here you thought your government was supposed to serve the American people! David Dayen, bless him, serves up the conflicts you already know about first, and then dives deep into the one you haven't heard about (Andrew Olmem, once a lobbyist, now an assistant to Gary Cohn), one uniquely positioned to help a former bankster client avoid regulatory scrutiny. Because he "knows the issues," of course!

Joshua Cho at FAIR serves up a study whose results will disappoint you but not surprise you: the "liberal" media, in covering Trump cabinet appointees between Election Day and Inauguration Day, talked to Republicans more than Democrats by about a 5-2 ratio. Because they control all the branches of government, you see, and therefore their viewpoints "deserve" more airtime! Except that back when Democrats controlled our government in 2009, you may recall, Republicans still got disproportionate airtime during stimulus bill coverage, presumably because their "minority" viewpoints need to be heard! It's almost like they think you have no memory of anything that's ever happened.

House overwhelmingly passes bill making "sexting" between teenagers could get said teenagers 15 years in jail. No one approves of sexting, but imposing a mandatory minimum sentence that could equal the offender's entire lifetime up to that point is rather like taking a sledgehammer to a mosquito -- n.b. the story of how our government let a sexual abuser off the hook by trying to nail him on child porn charges. The bill's motto appears to be: when in doubt, punish someone who can't fight back, and punish them real, real hard. Pick on someone your own size, Congress.

Finally, there's so much to say about Vice President Pence's statement that "the left" is obsessed with climate change "for some reason," but let's just leave it at this: most people think our government should do more about climate change than it's currently doing, yet our government wants you to think it's only "the left" that wants it. This is what Our Glorious Elites always do: they take what's broadly popular and suggest it's actually an "extreme" position. Given that their favorite solution to every problem (i.e., cutting government spending that actually helps government's owners, the people) is itself an extreme position, Our Glorious Elites have a nasty pot-kettle-black problem.

Action: ADA "reform," birth control, and renewable energy.

Just when you thought some things were safe from this Congress, along comes H.R. 620, the so-called American Disabilities Act Education and Reform Act of 2017, reminding us that when Congress says they're going to "reform" something, you should be scared. H.R. 620 would require disabled folks to give a written notice directly to any business owner who they think has violated the act (by, for example, not providing a wheelchair ramp), and then gives that business owner nearly half a year to make progress toward fixing a problem. They could no longer file a complaint with the Department of Justice or files a lawsuit on their own, since, hey, that actually works better. H.R. 620 is all about hurting people so that business owners don't have to follow the law, which is precisely the problem with America today. You may 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 about this matter. Don't brook any whining about the ADA "causing frivolous lawsuits," not when corporations file four out of every five lawsuits in America.

Meanwhile, thanks to a leaked rule proposal, we now know that the Trump Administration plans to allow employers to block their employees' access to birth control coverage if it conflicts with said employer's "religious beliefs." Because, after all, your employer's "religious beliefs" are so much more important than yours! Seriously, I'm sick of the notion that bosses have earned more rights than the rest of us -- though, of course, the apotheosis of the beliefs that bosses-are-great-and-people-suck is now our President. Hence the National Women's Law Center helps you tell the Trump Administration to stop trying to take women's rights away in the name of "religious freedom." Oh, and to anyone itching to lecture me about how hard CEOs have worked for the "right" to tell people what sort of health care they can have: you don't "work" for rights. You have rights because you're an American. And you don't have "more rights" because you have more money. You have more power, but not more rights, and it's time to learn the difference. (That's before we get to whether Our Glorious Elites have earned anything.)

Finally, Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry has lately suggested that the Administration might actually fight state-level renewable energy standards! How would he do that? Well, apparently he'd start by commissioning a study on "grid reliability" that will say guess what, since it's headed by a Kochhead? That coal and oil and gas and nuclear are "more reliable" than sun and wind, even though sun and wind will actually be around forever and, you know, storage of energy before it's used is an actual thing. And what could we call this little idea of Mr. Perry's? We could certainly call it corporate welfare, since it clearly aims to prop up the dirty fuel industries, and thus also the outlandish salaries of their CEOs. But we could most certainly not call it conservative for our federal government to attack standards that good Americans want and have fought hard to pass at the state level -- standards that have helped solar and wind become more competitive, price-wise. So Penn Environment helps you tell the Energy Department to stop trying to kill state-level renewable energy standards.

Action: food stamps, drug prices, and Presidential tax returns.

Trumpians say "it's time for good people to stop paying for bad people" in our federal budget. But they're not talking about taxpayers paying for welfare handouts for banksters and big pharma and nuclear power plants; they're talking about things like food stamps, as if only "bad people" (and not, say, children or seniors) use them. Trouble, of course, is that we now live in a society where (as Neal Gabler instructed us a year ago) nearly half of us would have big trouble scaring up $400 if we had an emergency, so the next time you cross the street against the light, you could be utterly broken financially as well as physically, and then you might need food stamps to make ends meet. Would that automatically make you a "bad person"? Of course it wouldn't -- and if we funded food stamps like civilized human beings, we could be there for each other, and not incidentally, for ourselves, since trouble doesn't discriminate. So Moms Rising helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject Mr. Trump's proposed food stamp cut.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 1776/S. 771, the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act, then Sum of Us still helps you do that. Want yet another measure of the sickness, immorality, and decadence of our society? Then consider how easily the notorious "Pharma Bro" could hike the price of the life-saving medicine Daraprim by over 5000 percent and then act all surprised anyone thought that was uncouth. Consider also how Mylan could hike the price of an EpiPen -- something you might need to deploy within 10 seconds to save someone's life! -- by over 400 percent. Consider how often cable news punditoids talk about us having to live with high drug prices as the price of research and development, without noting that research and development are expenses and thus don't get taxed as corporate profits! So if you're as sick and tired as I am of all the rhetorical hostage-taking, then the Improving Access to Affordable Prescription Drugs Act is for you.

Finally, supporters of H.R. 305/S. 26, the Presidential Tax Transparency Act, are now circulating a "discharge petition," which would require the bill to get a full vote before the House if more than half its members (218 of 435) sign it. Then House Speaker Paul Ryan wouldn't be able to deploy his usual excuse for refusing to consider a bill (that doing so would step on the tootsies of his precious little Committee Chairpersons!). The bill would, as its title suggests, force Presidential candidates to release their tax returns, as Mr. Trump famously refused to do during the campaign (and now he says he won so it doesn't matter nyah-nyah-nyah). It used to be tradition for Presidential candidates to do this, but Mr. Trump killed the tradition, so now it's gotta be law. And though the bill couldn't force a sitting President to release his tax returns, guess who's already declared his candidacy for re-election in 2020? Sign for Good helps you tell your Congressfolk to support the Presidential Tax Transparency Act.

Around the table: right-wingers ramp up the hysteria!

Adam Johnson catches Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen comparing folks who protested a eugenicist to "fascists" and the Manchester bomber. Charles Murray deserves protest everywhere he goes (though he doesn't deserve violence), but Mr. Cohen has been a long-time backer of Mr. Murray's work suggesting that black folks are "naturally" less intelligent than white folks, which may explain why Mr. Cohen plays the fascist card so quickly. (No, you need a little more than an act of violence to be a fascist. After all, many fascists are well-placed enough that they never have to commit acts of violence themselves.)

From the "Don't Call It Stupid" file: the Trump Administration's little immigration database appears to expose some undocumented immigrants to (further) domestic violence and sexual abuse by putting their personal info out there. Remember: when they respond WE WERE JUSTZ TRYINGZ TO HELPZ TEH VICTIMZ!!!!!, don't believe they didn't know what they were doing -- our government still has a few lawyers in it, despite Mr. Trump's best efforts. And if you're tempted to defend Mr. Trump here, ask yourself if immigrants deserve to be raped or beaten up merely because they don't have papers.

Ain't no terrorist attack so bad a Republican's self-pity can't make it worse, and so it goes with the Multnomah County, Oregon GOP Chair, who says Republicans maybe ought to go out with private security forces like the notorious Oath Keepers because things are so "dangerous" for them. A racist attacks two women of color on the train and then kills two folks (and injure a third) who defended those women, but Republicans continue to think everything is all about them. Of course he goes on to talk about "a closing of the mind" to viewpoints we fought World War II over. I guess he's sad we won that war. Waaaaaaaah!

Ho hum, Rep. Adrian Smith (R-NE) refuses to tell an NPR reporter -- three times! -- whether Americans have a "right" to eat or not. That and his incomprehensible grammar ("I would hope that we can look to"?) would be career-ending in a sane and healthy society -- but in the one where the Nebraska legislature has so gerrymandered Mr. Smith's district that he typically wins re-election with 75% of the vote, he will never suffer the consequences. And if someone who says Americans have no rights were to knock him off in the primary, that wouldn't be anything to celebrate.

About half of the 8th-graders from the South Orange (NJ) Middle School refuse to have their picture taken with House Speaker Paul Ryan. Adults seem to have no idea what civilized behavior is anymore, but children still do, and that's something. I haven't checked, but I bet that as we speak more than a few right-wingers are attacking these kids, either as pretentious fools or (worse!) "pawns of their parents." After all, attacking children is one of the last refuges of the scoundrel.

Finally, comedienne Kathy Griffin is 500% wrong for putting a photo of her with a severed and bloody Donald Trump's head on her Twitter feed. No one who really believes in the promise of America would murder the President, or joke about it. Also, to hell with her apology, because too often in America we see someone getting attention for doing or saying something awful and then getting more attention for the apology. That's not "the way the world is," or even "the way the business is" -- it's merely another indicator of our sickness, immorality, and decadence.