President Trump supports bill that would cut legal immigration in half. So how will those white folks who always work themselves into a red-faced rage about TEH ILLEGULZ!!!!! prove they're not racist now? After all, they deflect charges of racism by saying but of course I support legal immigration, but this bill curtails legal immigration, so if you support this bill, you support less legal immigration. Of course, less legal immigration means more undocumented immigrants for people to get into a red-faced rage about, and thus more souls for the Trump goblins to harvest.
Joshua Holland at The Nation argues that single-payer isn't the solution to the problem of achieving universal health insurance coverage in America. So what is the solution, then? Well, the two solutions offerred by Mr. Hacker at Yale would both improve the system, and might even ultimately lead to single-payer coverage, but mainly we learn that converting to a single-payer system in America would be really hard, that not every "single-payer" system is a single-payer system per se, and that the folks fighting hardest for it should be nicer to their opponents. In other words, it sounds like folks slightly to our right want us to feel ashamed of ourselves for fighting so hard. Good luck with that.
Strangely enough, the title of this Patrick Eddington article at The American Conservative --"Why is Mattis Declaring War on Whistleblowers?" -- kinda buries the real story: that a group of NSA employees created a good system for constitutionally sifting internet traffic for terrorist activity, a system that some observers say could have prevented 9.11, but because the NSA Chief hated it and wanted to develop an entirely different and inferior system, the NSA buried it, and the folks who created it suffered greatly, at least in part because they filed whistleblower claims about it. In any case, it sure does look like the Trump Administration will be no better at protecting whistleblowers than previous ones.
Adam Johnson at FAIR describes the "liberal" media's addiction to "perseverance porn" -- i.e., the news stories about folks walking 10 miles each way to work, going right back to work after a serious accident, etc. The "liberal" media extolls these stories as proof that anyone-can-make-it-if-they-try, instead of asking fairly obvious questions, like "why isn't the walking man's area served by public transportation?" or "why doesn't his job pay him enough so he can buy a second-hand car"? As with the notion that the man who walks the streets of a "dangerous" neighborhood without incident for decades isn't news but the one who gets mugged is, one should wonder why the folks who can't get to work after getting run over don't make the news.
New study suggests that "Obama-Trump" voters may be more likely to simply be Republican voters who voted for Mr. Obama, rather than disaffected Democrats who voted for Mr. Trump. Thus, of course, getting those voters back is a fool's errand. Actual economic populism of the Bernie Sanders kind is, of course, the Gourdian knot that slices this problem -- an actual economic populist might expand the number of Democrats who actually come out to vote, and attract some Republicans whose emotional attachment to their party might only be built on rage. I guess that's why Democratic elites won't ever do it.
Finally, hedge fund manager/HIV drug price gouger Martin Shkreli now faces up to 20 years in prison after his conviction on securities fraud (two counts) and conspiracy (one). And just as Al Capone ultimately went to jail for tax evasion, the original Man with a Face Even a Mother Could Punch didn't get nailed for jacking up the price of Daraprim from $13.50 per tablet to $750 per tablet, which is what he'd go to jail for in a sane and healthy society. (No, he wouldn't go to jail for being a sexist pig -- though, in a sane and healthy society, he would be more thoroughly shamed and ostracized for being one.)
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