Thieves in the Temple.

Penny Rants for Tuesday, January 21, 2020: of economic "prosperity" and Presidential immaturity.

Joseph Stiglitz reminds us that our current economy is not a "good" economy, regardless of any propaganda from our President or our media -- and also says we should be looking at indices other than Gross National Product or the Dow Jones Industrial Average to determine our economy's health. "Neither tells us what’s happening to ordinary citizens’ living standards or anything about sustainability," he says, and thus he offers life expectancy, disposable income, percentage of citizens with health insurance, and "deaths of despair" (i.e., deaths from suicide, alcoholism, and drug ODs) as better indicators of our economic health. We'd need more kinds of data to measure the effects of climate change on the economy, of course, though measuring property damage due to extreme weather events is a good start. (And if you're still wondering how to counter our Administration's constant bellowing about TEH LOWEST BLACK UNEMPLOYMENT RATEZ EVERZ!!!!!, consider that black wages still lag well behind white wages.)

Jonathan Chait reminds us that our President has long desired to weaken the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, even once saying, out loud, that "(i)t’s just so unfair that American companies aren’t allowed to pay bribes to get business overseas." His economic advisor, Larry Kudlow, says the Administration is still "looking at" changing the law, though it's hard to imagine the House going along with that, having just impeached our President after he essentially tried to bribe a foreign leader with the prospect of getting more business overseas in mind. When you hear statements like we need to bribe people more -- and when you contemplate, frankly, everything else he's ever done -- you'll find it easy to conclude, as Mr. Chait does, that our President "actually approves of corruption." But, sadly, our President's votaries also approve of corruption, and not just because our President is Their Bastard -- it's also because they think they're a lot smarter than everyone else when they're just a lot more cynical than everyone else.

In the wake of reports that our President apparently called our highest-ranking military officers "a bunch of dopes and babies" to their faces, I feel compelled to remind you, again, that nothing will split the insane 25% of the electorate away from our President -- they'll insist that our President loves the soldiers so much that of course he hates their leaders, and I suppose that's what passes for class solidarity among that lot. They'll also point out that our President loves winning wars, and it's true that we don't dominate the world despite spending more on defense than the next eight big-spending nations combined, although, well, there may be another lesson in there. And naturally they'll also scrub their memories of all those times they slammed Barack Obama for "not listening to the generals enough," since being a votary of our President means (just as being a Bush Mobb votary meant) never having to admit you've ever been wrong about anything, ever.

Around the table: from Kentucky to Syria, and guess where we find more hope?

Hazard (KY) job program helps give recovering drug addicts work, pay, and "a sense of purpose" as they help build affordable housing. "Research is starting to show what advocates have known anecdotally: having a job makes a significant difference in long-term addiction recovery," but try getting a job without skills, or with a criminal record. The program helps half a dozen folks annually gain construction skills and get jobs; maybe a few of our billionaires could break off some of their largesse and fund more programs like these, particularly in rural areas like Hazard? Or do we have to tax them harder to get it done? It's a question worth pondering.

Ho hum, our "liberal" media repeatedly insinuates that Messrs. Sanders, Warren, and Biden for being "too old to be President." Mr. Sanders's heart attack is obviously worth contemplating when deciding whom to vote for in a Democratic primary, but writing off all septuagenarians as physically and mentally unable to do the job is an awfully convenient argument given that the Democratic nominee will almost certainly be one of three septuagenarians. Maybe the one who takes selfies for four hours after a rally? And our "liberal" media never seem to mention the 73-year-old who currently occupies the Oval Office. Maybe that's because he constantly acts like a spoiled brat.

Also ho hum, Republican megadonor/notorious "America Firster" still manages to get H1-B visas for foreign workers even as our President cracks down on said H1-B visas. Of course, our President also uses undocumented immigrants wherever he can, and his votaries excuse that, because BUILDZ TEH WALLZ!!!!!. When Charles Baudelaire said that genius was the ability to hold two disparate ideas in the mind at one time, I don't think he was actually describing hypocrites or their enablers.

Uh oh: Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has apparently violated a court order preventing her office from going after some indebted Corinthian College students, and could face jail time. You'll remember Corinthian College as the for-profit college chain that went under in 2015, but not without putting a lot of its students in a big debt hole first; the Obama Administration set up a program to help some of them get loan forgiveness, but this Administration's Education Department has virtually (and unlawfully) shut down the program, resulting in students incorrectly getting billed for loans and even getting their wages or tax refunds garnished. Again: you can't just skimp on your duty under the law just because you don't want to do it, or because you don't believe it's your duty under the law.

Finally, I've been loathe to go after our President for pulling out of Syria, since I'm no fan of our presence in the Middle East, but I find it hard to believe that our only two choices were "stay in Syria indefinitely" or "let the Turks kill all the Kurds," especially with this supposedly uniquely talented "deal-maker" in charge. Naturally our President has opened himself to charges of corruption, given that he has, well, business in Turkey that he doesn't have with the Kurds. One sad part of all of this is that now even more of our descendants will say this is the way the world is and there's no sense in trying to change it. We can help avert that catastrophe by making this President into the poster child for How Not to Be.

Around the table: in which we examine a lot of whining and bad arguments from right-wingers.

The National Review publishes a 13-article issue called "Against Socialism," and the incomparable Nathan Robinson at Current Affairs rips it apart. Seriously, read the whole thing, and witness how right-wingers consistently set up straw men because that's all you can do when you can't win the argument on the merits. (Former Bob Novak protege/antiwar.com contributor Timothy Carney survives Mr. Robinson's scrutiny much better than the others, which isn't surprising, since Mr. Carney's a good egg.)

Thinking maybe this particular Administration, having promised to do better on terror-related issues than its predecessors, might actually be living up to that promise? Well, Dave Lindorff at The Nation finds our government's terrorism watch lists have expanded -- apparently to include him, as he has been searched several times at airports. And surprise, surprise, our government has padded these watchlists mainly with journalists and activists. Recall that Paul Craig Roberts has more than once asked why, if a no-fly list has a million people on it, we don't have a lot more terrorist attacks.

Dahr Jamali at TruthOut examines the ongoing fires in the Amazon rainforest and finds, guess what, a right-wing asshole in charge of a government that's bending over backwards to hand over more and more of the Amazon to logging, mining, and big ag corporations. And of course Mr. Bolsanaro, as disgusting a human being as has ever walked the Earth, plans to target the indigenous populations who have done the most to protect the Amazon from corporate pollution. Which is a big deal, actually, as the region, popularly known as "the lungs of the world," produces about one-fifth of Earth's oxygen.

The New York Times begins a "1619 Project" that puts slavery more at the center of American history, and right-wingers whine about it. Rebecca Onion is absolutely correct to note that we liberals shouldn't waste our "good faith on old, dead-end conversations" with right-wingers who can't take criticism, so I'll that I think it's more patriotic to face your sins and correct them than to whine about the people who actually do it. Also, hasn't the right been telling us for years that whining isn't conservative? You do have to wonder why they do it so often.

Finally, you know our President said a lot of stupid crap on Twitter this week, and I can't even say any of it is worse than any of the other crap he's said in that forum; perhaps I'm just weary of the pile. Thus I'm going to make a simple rule for this blog: if our President said it on Twitter, I'm not covering it. Also, I have blocked our President's Twitter account, and I think all y'all ought to do the same. It'd be nice if our media would follow suit, too. We might even call it "starving the beast." (And if anyone tells you you're "violating his free speech rights," remind them that our First Amendment does not require us to sit passively while someone screams in our face.)

Action: concerning lead poisoning and obnoxious racism.

Pennsylvania residents, take note: HB 930 would protect Pennsylvania's children against lead in their schools' drinking water, by requiring testing, mandating testing result disclosure to parents, and keeping lead levels in school drinking water below five parts per billion. We're now five years after the Flint drinking water crisis, and residents across Pennsylvania are finding lead in their school drinking water, but we still don't have vigorous standards against lead, though any amount of lead causes brain damage in children, and they don't exactly grow out of that. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell your Pennsylvania state Reps to protect our children by cosponsoring and passing HB 930. What's the argument against testing our schools' water for lead, I wonder? That "we don't have the money"? If a civilization accepts that as a reason for failing to protect our children, then that civilization deserves to die -- particularly if it keeps handing out endless welfare to corporate cronies.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Twitter to do a much better job policing hate speech on its site, then Color of Change still helps you do that. And to those who squeal TEH FREE SPEECHEZ!!!!, recall that our First Amendment protects us from our government, not from commercial media -- just as your local newspaper is under no obligation to print your neighbor's rants about black folks merely because he wants to be heard, Twitter can ban any speech it likes, and its executives need only worry about whatever PR backlash might result. And if (as Dean Baker said not long ago) Facebook is a publisher and thus should be held to the same standards to which we hold other publishers, then so is Twitter. Twitter's CEO, unfortunately, seems to think obnoxious racism is difficult to define. Here's a clue: when they start putting up swastikas, it means they're obnoxious racists. I mean, you'd have to be, to take up the banner of a nation we defeated in war over 70 years ago.

Around the table: no, every problem is not a Gordian knot! And other insights.

Politico wonders: "How Do You Solve a Problem Like 8chan?" Simple: you do what Dean Baker suggested we do last week -- you hold corporations like Facebook and Twitter accountable for the public postings of their users, in much the same manner you hold book publishers accountable for what they put out. (People who post privately to their friends will have to rely on their friends to tell them when they're full of it.) But you certainly don't throw up your hands and say the First Amendment "protects" hateful speech without specifying exactly how it does that (i.e., that it protects you from your government, and not your publisher).

And now for the WHEREZ TEH DATAZ!!!!!! crowd: researchers using FBI data on 248 active shooter incidents over 17 years, find that semiautomatic weapons "roughly double" victims' chances of getting killed or wounded. My initial reaction: they only double your chances of getting killed or wounded? But the Brigham and Women's Hospital study didn't count incidents with the largest death tolls or with multiple shooters. Headline from the no-gun-control-ever lobby: SEE TEH SEMIZ DON'TZ KILLZ TEH PEEPULZ MORE EFFICIENTLYZ HAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Of course, the more pertinent finding (and the one that aligns with common sense) is that semis do hit more people and thus result in more deaths.

Ben Freeman, Nia Harris, and Cassandra Simpson at TomDispatch explode the myth that military spending creates jobs. You've likely started to suspect that military spending enriches big defense contractor CEOs more than anything else, but it's nice to have some facts behind it. Lockheed's share of taxpayer money went up about 37% between 2012 and 2018, but their total workforce went down almost 13% -- and their CEO's salary went up 32%. Two other big defense contractors also cut jobs over that time, and two more only "gained" jobs because they bought other corporations. Stick that in your Tea Party uncle's hat next time he talks about defense creating jobs -- and then pivot to things that actually create jobs, like infrastructure, renewable energy, and health care spending, and you'll likely find a sympathetic audience. If only Democrats would act on this insight!

Another day, another finding that the 2017 tax "reform" hasn't goosed up capital investment like its supporters said it would, and this finding comes from our Administration's Commerce Department, which you would think would have an interest in saying the exact opposite. Then again, maybe not, as long as our President is willing to say whatever. But cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21% did not, in fact, "free" corporations to spend more money on capital projects. Historically, the only thing that does that is a higher tax rate, since corporations will spend more money on capital projects once they realize it's going to get taxed away if they don't. (That's also why corporations don't really need "incentives" to do research and development -- research and development are expenses, and corporate taxes only tax profits.)

Finally, our President voices his apparent belief that his "rhetoric" not only doesn't divide our nation but actually "brings people together." And it is possible that he may be right about that one day -- at that moment where we can all observe his rhetoric bringing people together against him. Sadly, that moment isn't now, because his votaries are still too eager to make excuses for him -- this, even though conservatives always told us conservatism wasn't about making excuses for people!

Action: concerning Social Security, renewable energy, and Presidential bad behavior.

2020 is coming, which means more fearmongering from the Koch brothers and their like-minded ilk about "runaway" "entitlements," and which likely also means that our President will go back on his promise not to touch Social Security because of TEH DEFICITZ!!!! he made worse with his tax cuts for the rich (probably not until after re-election, though). And it also means that the "liberal" media outlets that supposedly hate our President will be considerably more blunt then he about the "need" to cut "entitlements." So let's head them off, by telling our Congressfolk that we must expand Social Security, not cut it, as Social Security Works helps you do. The haters keep trying to sound "reasonable" and "serious" about cutting Social Security, and they keep failing -- but only because we stand up to them. We worked for it, we paid into it, we fought for it, and when we retire, we deserve to enjoy it. So don't let the haters and their scare numbers take it from us.

Penn Environment helps you tell your Congressfolk to extend funding for clean energy programs. Would it be crass to mention to them that they take big campaign donations from the fossil fuel corporations they still subsidize even though they don't really need it? No, it would not be crass. Would it be crass to mention that we just had the hottest June in recorded history and massive heat waves devastating the country in July, and that using more renewable energy and less fossil fuel energy would help us suffer less of that? Would it be crass to mention the increased health care costs from dirty air and dirty water caused by pollution from fossil fuels (and, ah, not from renewables)? The answers are, in order, "no" and "no." And though renewable energy has grown tremendously across America over the years, it still only provides about 10% of our electricity, and it still needs support from our government -- which really means support from us, the taxpayers. We should get the livable future we pay for, right?

Elyse Marin has begun a petition on Color of Change which helps you tell the Anschutz Entertainment Group (or AEG) to stop hosting our President's rallies. That's right, it's time for the Big Stick of Bad PR again -- if you're a corporate sponsor giving stadium space to our President so he can have his little Nuremberg rallies where his votaries all squeal "lock her up" and "send her back" and other noxious crap, then you deserve to be pointed out and shamed until you change your behavior. I know there are still folks who are so proud of their cynicism that they'll say well how do you say no to the President, huh? Gosh, 54% of the electorate said no to him on Election Day 2016 (though, as you know, he's not a man who takes "no" very easily!), and anyway, saying no to our President is part of our birthright as Americans, a lesson I bet meant a lot more to the cynics when Barack Obama was President. Is it too much to ask that no big arena in America enable our President's obnoxious behavior?

Light posting notice.

Posting will be light a bit longer, as I am thisclosereally to getting book number three to the printer.

I do have goals for the new year, though. I want 2019 to be the year we start kicking this President to the curb. The Special Counsel's report notwithstanding I don't particularly want him out of office, but I want good Americans to shun and shame him out of any serious discussion about America's traditions and America's future. I guess I really want him to become the proverbial Mayor of Deadwood, a man who aches to get in on the action only to get pushed out of the way. But I also want 2019 to be the year that America gets tired of drama. And by "drama" I don't just mean all of the right wing's manufactured outrages -- I mean a culture that can't stop showing folks acting obnoxious in public, a culture that follows celebrities around and calls it "news," a culture that winks with approval at corruption. Big dreams, I know, but America is the place for big dreams.

Around the table: starring unsolicited advice from an unwanted quarter.

Hoo boy: group of Nazi wannabes based in Alabama starts a Russian-language page extolling all the alleged similarities between Russia and the American South. You know, "same general gene pool," "similar values," and, of course, "our common faith," though I bet they'd be surprised at how they'd really worship in Russiabama. I can't dismiss the possibility that they started this page just to piss off liberals. I can, however, dismiss the possibility that I'll ever speak of this particular clown car again.

Our Administration's Energy Department places new restrictions on the oversight the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board performs. Worse, the order essentially mandates that Energy Department employees stonewall the Board -- how else to interpret an order to speak to the Board "with one voice," an order executives usually know better than to put in writing? The Energy Department says its order will "decrease costs," including, I would think, the "costs" of the problems advisory boards are always telling you to fix. But cleaning up a lab accident (or, heaven forbid, a meltdown) would cost a lot more.

From the "Dystopia is here!" file: a TruTV game show called Paid Off helps contestants pay off their student debt if they can answer questions correctly -- and helps losing contestants call their Congressfolk to tell them do something about student loan debt. I bet there'll be a hundred TV shows like this in the future; there should already be a game show for writing off your health care debt. I suppose Paid Off will do some good, but what a shame it's come to this. And note well that for many right-wingers this is exactly how the "free" market is supposed to work.

Former FBI Director James Comey, who had lately advised all Americans to vote Democrat this fall, now says we should avoid voting for the "socialist left" (presumably in Democratic primaries) and vote instead for "sensible, balanced, ethical leadership." Pardon me if I regard his counsel as yet another attempt to drag the center ever further right. After all, right-wingers call anyone to their left a "socialist" anymore, and suggesting that, say, a House candidate who supports Medicare-for-All and taxpayer-funded higher ed is by definition insensible, imbalanced, and unethical is a bit rich, particularly in a world where right-wing policy prescriptions are actually insensible, imbalanced, and unethical. But even more to the point: Democrats have spent the last quarter-century getting behind the kind of center-right Democrats who might best meet Mr. Comey's criteria, and what's that gotten us? It's gotten us a sick, immoral, and decadent society, and an insane Republican party. So, thank you for your input, Mr. Comey, but I think you've done enough.

Finally, after the Iranian President says, rather colorfully, that our President shouldn't "play with the lion's tail" with regard to possibly blocking Iranian oil exports, our President responds by twittering a lengthy threat to Iran in all capital letters. And I realize: this is how trolls do it! Trolls write in shouty caps whenever someone gets under their skin! And they must have been absolutely ecstatic to see their President "stick it" to Iran exactly the way they would! I just hope they wiped their screens off afterwards.

Around the table: on "Establishment" Democrats, asylum seekers, internet freedom, and voting rights.

Here's a great article by Richard Eskow at the OurFuture blog, reminding us that "Establishment Wins are Bad for Democrats -- and the Country." I mean, if the Democratic establishment was so great, Hillary Clinton would be President right now and Democrats would control the Senate. Say what you want about Republicans (I do!), but they sure know how to get new blood every few years or so, while Democrats constantly wage war on all their new blood. (Mr. Eskow also reminds us that Tha Bush Mobb paved the way for our current President, and yes people sure do look at those years with rose-colored glasses anymore. I remember those years; they sucked. And the subsequent eight years of a Democrat establishment sucked only a little less -- and also paved the way for our current predicament.)

Our Supreme Court, in yet another 5-4 decision, upholds the state of Ohio's ongoing effort to purge voters from the registration rolls for missing one election. It's bad when the dissent accuses the majority of having simply misread the law. Justice Alito essentially argues that the right to vote -- specifically, the right not to be deregistered simply because you haven't voted, a right actually codified in federal law -- is less important than the "right" of states to "clean up" their voting rolls. Call me old-fashioned, but I think state administrations should serve people, not the other way around.

Attorney General Sessions orders immigration judges to curtail asylum grants to gang violence and domestic violence victims. If the countries from which they came could actually protect these good people from such violence, I'd agree with Mr. Sessions's decision, but since they can't, it just looks cruel. And Mr. Sessions has no business saying America can't let everyone in, when America finds it fairly easy to let in cheap labor for our President's resorts and our President's winery. Seriously, once we end corporate "free" trade deals, enact a $15/hour minimum wage, and repeal the exclusion of farm workers from the National Labor Relations Act's protections, our government will be in a far better position to be as compassionate as its people are.

The ACLU instructs us as to "How Net Neutrality Will End." Long story short: as I said yesterday, freedoms die better a bit at a time. Long story somewhat longer: "Once June 11 comes and goes, we should expect the ISPs will do little to nothing in response. Then, after some time has passed, they will point to their inaction as proof we were wrong to distrust them and their promises not to violate net neutrality in the absence of a federal mandate. And guess what will happen next? Drip. Drip. Drip. And before we know it, a flood will have washed away the free and open internet we all rely on." Pay special attention to the second sentence in that quoted passage, since that'll also be the Republicans' answer if Democrats actually run pro-net neutrality ads this year. Remember, also, that most big telecom corporations are monopolies in the media markets in which they operate, so when one of them starts censoring websites, you and I can't just "go buy from someone else."

Republican candidate for the New Jersey's 2nd U.S. House district says "(t)he whole idea of diversity is a bunch of crap and un-American." There's really no putting lipstick on that pig (the "whole" idea? Really?), especially in a country where most folks think the whole idea of who-you-know elitism is un-American. Now, maybe this fellow thinks facing a right-wing Democrat in the general election lets him be as obnoxious as he wants to be (I wonder where he got that idea!), but in New Jersey, which the President lost by 14 points and where a seven-term incumbent Republican got turned out of New Jersey's 5th for being too stridently anti-gay, he could mark himself as someone too obnoxious to hold public office.

Finally, a U.S. District judge in Indiana has issued an injunction against an Indiana state law that would automatically deregister voters who appear on the notorious "Interstate Crosscheck" database. That'll probably hold until after the midterms -- but eventually the Supreme Court will gets its hands on it, and given how they ruled in the Ohio case (second paragraph above), they'll probably reinstate it. Where is the plaintiff who will assert that deregistering a voter based on appearance in a ridiculous database constitutes punishing someone without proving they committed a crime? I mean, that's the law-and-order argument, and I'd like to see Neil Gorsuch squirm in his seat after being confronted with it.

Around the table: with important reminders about "far-left" policies, privatizing prisons, and political bad actors.

And here's the best headline I read all week: "The Surprising Popularity of 'Far-Left' Policies." The only way it could have been better is if they'd put ironic quotation marks around "surprising," because only Our Glorious Elites and their "liberal" media enablers would consider "protecting more public lands," "limit(ing) corporate tax loopholes," and "raising taxes on corporations and the wealthy" to be "far-left" positions, when in fact these policy proposals generally get majority support (and therefore bipartisan support) from Americans! But, as I've been saying for a long time, they love calling popular, good proposals "extreme," when their own solutions to everything -- make war on other countries so you can swing your balls around, cut spending that actually helps people, cut benefits for programs you've paid into all your life! -- are actually quite extreme.

The city of Tucson, AZ adopts resolution banning the privatization of its prison system. The even better news? Tucson isn't even the first locality to outlaw private corporations running their detention centers and jails, and a lot of the other localities that have done so are, like Tucson, in very red areas of the country. Of course, if you thought about it for a minute, you'd see that private prisons have no "market" incentive to improve prisoners' lives, because the more miserable they are, the less they'll be able to make it on the outside, and thus the more likely they'll become "repeat customers."

"Nearly Half of You Reading This Have Bullshit Jobs," announces the headline of this Daily Beast interview with the author of (you guessed it) the book Bullshit Jobs. The term "bullshit jobs" describes jobs that are a) quite well-paid and b) quite useless, the kind of job that exists to make other people look good, or at least not incompetent. They can range from the receptionist who takes one phone call daily but has to exist to make the boss look important to the "people who provide unnecessary supervision" to corporate-lawyer "goons." And they don't exist in spite of our "free" market ideology, but because of it, and its mania for quantifying everything. (Read the whole article; it contains, among so many other things, the best argument for a universal basic income I've yet heard.)

California Republican U.S. House candidate actually films herself harassing a transgender woman trying to use the bathroom at a Denny's. I won't name name this U.S. House candidate, since we shouldn't give jerks too much sunlight. But I will highlight her stupid argument, that a transgender woman was "invading my privacy" (italics in original) merely by a) being born male and b) wanting to use the women's room. Setting aside that following someone into a bathroom and then harassing them is an actual invasion of privacy, I could more easily argue that this House candidate is invading my privacy merely by being such an asshole that I noticed it. The good news? She'll be lucky to lose by only 50 points in this district, and thus she's the proverbial walnut in the batter of eternity.

Finally, upon hearing the so-far-unsubstantiated rumor that the Administration might fire Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, my first thought was: who on Earth do they think they're going to find to do that job better than she does it? By "that job," of course, I don't mean "informing the American people about what the Administration's doing," but the job of putting entire cartons of lipstick on the pigs this Administration keeps trotting out. Seriously, even Tha Bush Mobb's notorious last Press Secretary, Dana Perino, couldn't match the sheer will-to-lie of Sarah Sanders. Then again, I'd hate to report, in a few months, that I'd spoken too soon.

Around the table: a modest proposal for hedge fund managers who lose taxpayer money, and other items.

In re the slaughter of Palestinian activists by Israeli soldiers this past Monday, Jim Naureckas at FAIR reminds us that "Media Can Tell Readers Who's Killing Whom -- When They Want To. The good news, this time, is that some "liberal" media outlets seem to want to, including the Washington Post, but you've still got a lot of the same tortured headlines (the ones that seem to say protests kill people, not "people kill people") that you get for police shootings.

Radley Balko at the Washington Post tells us why the so-called Protect and Serve Act (H.R. 5698/S. 2794, in case you were wondering) "is a response to a problem that doesn't exist," i.e., the "war on cops." Calling crimes against police "hate crimes" ignores the simple fact that "they are about as far removed from a vulnerable group as one can imagine," since they, you know, "carry guns and other weapons," "have the power to detain, arrest, and kill," and "literally have the entire government at their backs." Seriously, if you think black folks "whine" about the fear of being executed by a police officer without even a charge, let alone a trial, you should reacquaint yourself with the definition of whining, because demanding to make police officers a "protected class" is pretty much it. (Hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but Mr. Balko also reminds us that crime against police officers actually isn't skyrocketing, even though we as citizens are a lot more skeptical about police officers than we were even five years ago.)

Ho hum, our EPA has (so far) squashed an HHS study of water contamination from toxic chemicals, with at least one White House aide saying, in an email, that they couldn't get the HHS agency to "realize the potential public relations nightmare this is going to be." That's almost like saying it out loud! Of course, when your President says all kinds of things out loud that civilized people wouldn't say out loud, I guess you can't expect the underlings to do better. And no, saying it's "important for the government to speak with a single voice on such a serious issue" to head off the release of a study that'll give you bad PR is intolerable bullshit.

Also ho hum, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos has basically dissolved the team in her department that investigated for-profit college abuses. And then hired some of the officials at for-profit colleges being investigated! How many times must I tell these pimps! For-profit colleges take taxpayer money! Punishing them when they're corrupt is a no-brainer! Thus more evidence that the only value of contemporary "conservatism" is executive profit, and also more evidence that when our President promised to "drain the swamp," he meant "get rid of all the liberals," which is, I'm pretty sure, exactly how his votaries understand it.

And even more ho hum, CIA Deputy Chief Gina Haspel, up for the big job there despite her well-documented past support and enabling of torture by CIA agents, now says torture was actually a bad idea -- thus giving Senators cover to vote for her, and (more importantly) allowing her to get away with the torture she's already supervised. You'll recall that Scott Pruitt also saved his nomination when he intoned that people cause climate change, a belief he sure hasn't acted on as EPA Administrator. When people talk about the moral breakdown of society, they should be locating it in occurences like these, not in gay marriage or birth control or "everyone making the cheerleading squad" or whatever diddles folks' rage glands these days.

Finally, Dean Baker suggests that, instead of harrumphing about whether Medicaid recipients "work enough," we should "focus() on whether the people at the top are working for their money." Meaning, of course, that if a rich hedge fund actually underperforms index funds while taking craploads of taxpayer money, maybe they should "work to pay off the fees the state paid them." They'd balk, of course, not just at making very little money and thus spending craploads of hours working them off, and they'd say things, out loud, like "we can't work under this kind of pressure." Hey, I have to do a good job everyday; why not a rich hedge fund manager?

Around the table: containing two of the President's best stratagems for winning the midterms.

With both parties of Congress anxious to give our President even more unconstitutional war-making powers, it's left to Pat Buchanan to remind us not only that Israel struck Iranian forces in Syria first last week, but that the neocons who supposedly hated our President so much now control his foreign policy. Mr. Buchanan rightly reminds us that the notion that "Iran is on 'a quest for nuclear weapons'" is a "Bush-like assertion," and that "the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for" is "being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives," but I bet these "America Firsters" were never that committed to ending foreign wars, especially now that their Personal Lord and Savior seems to favor one. Who wants to bet that this Administration will start banging the drums for war right around a month before the midterms?

Administration spokeshack says opposing torture-approving Gina Haspel for CIA chief would be somehow anti-feminist, and our "liberal" media seems to agree. I presume that a real feminist would know that women are, being human, as capable of evil as men are, and a real feminist certainly wouldn't let someone else's bean-counting get in the way of the truth. And, seriously, the CIA doesn't employ a single woman who can lead and who opposes torture? That seems unlikely, not just because the CIA is now almost half female, but because the world is a big place, much bigger than torture apologists tend to imagine.

Our President rolls back transgender protections for prisoners, meaning transgender prisoners will have to use the bathroom of their birth gender and get the crap kicked out of them by other prisoners as a result. Also, too, federal prisons will have to use "biological sex at birth" to determine housing assignments, which will also result in a lot of beaten-up transgender prisoners. I guess our President really doesn't care who gets hurt, as long as religious bigots get to diddle their rage glands.

There's so much to say about Vice President Pence's statement that "in the interests of the country, I think it's time to" end the Mueller investigation into his Administration, but I'll just say this: Mr. Pence should not act like the Administration "fully cooperat(ing)" with the Mueller investigation is some great gift to the American people -- "full cooperation" with a criminal investigation is, frankly, the minimum we, as Americans, have a right to expect from our government. (Is this what moved George Will to declare that Mr. Pence is even worse than our President? I don't know, but that statement certainly merits further evaluation.)

New NRA President Oliver North claims his organization is a poor, poor victim of "civil terrorism" by the multitudinous political activists who now oppose it. And, he adds, the NRA faces even worse opposition than even the civil rights movement did back in the day, though I suspect marchers who got the crap kicked out of them by police will beg to differ. All together now: waaaaaaaah! Remember: folks who present themselves as tough guys are more likely the real snowflakes.

Finally, we learn that our President would like the upcoming midterms to be "a referendum on his Presidency" and that he's far more likely to talk about himself at rallies than the candidates he's nominally supporting. Of course our President loves talking about himself, but this instinct may also be the Republicans' best path to victory in 2018 -- talking only about him erases the hopes and dreams of good Americans from the conversation, after all, and surely we remember how he rope-a-doped the Clinton campaign into talking only about him as Election Day approached in 2016, until TV became an onslaught of two-sided negative advertising that kept a lot of Americans home. If Democrats make this midterm all about our President's bad behavior, rather than what good Americans deserve from their government, then they deserve defeat.

Around the table: the persistence of redlining, and other horrible truths.

If you're looking for some really depressing reading, Earth Justice provides this list of bills under consideration by Congress that would curb your right to get redress for grievances in our courts. The courts have been our most effective weapon against the injustice this Administration constantly perpetrates, so of course Congress wants to take that weapon from us! Now, many of the bills that got passed by the House stand a good chance of dying before a Democrat filibuster, but that's no reason to get complacent. When I get action alerts, you'll get action alerts.

Reveal's analysis of over 30 million home mortgage records finds that -- surprise, surprise! -- folks of color still get turned down for conventional mortgages at a considerably higher rate than whites, even though discrimination is, you know, against the law. Banksters say it's not what it looks like -- that they deny mortgages based, to a large degree, on credit scores. But they also refuse to release the credit scores, saying, at various times, that it'd violate privacy rights (hey, no one's demanding names!), would be too expensive (waaaaah!), and wouldn't actually tell us anything (then what are you afraid of?). Someone should tell them that three bad arguments don't add up to one good one.

Ho hum, Dear Leader says his destroy-all-regulations-and-cut-all-taxes-for-rich-people policies have brought electricity prices down, when -- hard to believe, Harry! -- electricity prices have actually gone up over the last year. They've gone up 3 percent, which outstrips inflation by a little less than a percentage point, but again, this is the guy who not only thinks he can turn around a cruise liner on a dime, but tells everyone he's done it after utterly failing to do it. And, seriously, big corporate tax cuts lowering energy prices? That is to laugh. Big corporate tax cuts gild the plumbing in a CEO's 19th vacation home, and nothing else.

Now we know why EPA Administrator Scott "Cone of Silence" Pruitt has to fly in a special first-class safe space: because one passenger told him he was "fucking up the environment." All together now: waaaaaaah! You know, when someone says something nasty to me -- and people say much nastier things to me than that! -- I don't demand a "safe space" from them at taxpayer expense; I give these morons exactly the amount of what-for I think they require, and then I move on. That's what good people do. It's not what our current Administration's officials do, which not only makes them snowflakes, it makes them bad people. Don't get your shorts in a bunch about life's many shades of gray when I say that. These people are bad. No navel-gazing is possible about this matter.

The story of the Florida shooter being vaguely associated with the Nazi wannabes at the Republic of Florida turns out to be a hoax -- perpetrated by right-wing trolls, of course. How the Republic of Florida leader who had identified Mr. Cruz as an associate got similarly "pranked" I can't tell -- either he's a bad leader or he was in on the joke to begin with, and neither of these possibilities flatter him. And anyway, the Republic of Florida got more publicity than it was going to get, and now it gets to play the victim card, by virtue of being unfairly associated with an evil school shooter (by the Anti-Defamation League, no less!). Sad that right-wing "pranksters" never seem to suffer for their sins, though.

Finally, the President tweets that the FBI missed "the many signals sent out by the Florida school shooter" because they were too obsessed with the Russia investigation -- and gets an earful from students who survived that shooting. Sadly, Reuters does not report on the students who took the President to task specifically for making their tragedy all about him, as he seems to love to do. Maybe he'll block these kids, like he blocks anyone else who gets the better of him in an argument! I must say I've just about had it up to here with this disgusting piece of filth who somehow got elected President.

Around the table: the cabal of lawlessness decries lawlessness, and other sad ironies.

Attorney General Sessions announces that Trump Administration will lift limits on military equipment going to local police departments. It is a bit rich that Mr. Sessions grandstands about "not allow(ing) criminal activity, violence and lawlessness to become the new normal," given that he works for a man who enables violence and clearly thinks law and order is only for little people. Suggesting police brutality is a "superficial concern" is a bit rich, too, when at least one out of every 10 Americans worry that their next police contact will be their last.

You won't be surprised to learn that ProPublica and the Texas Tribune told us almost a year and a half ago that Houston would be "a sitting duck for the next hurricane." Very often, local officials in Texas say it's our federal government's job to fix the problem -- a statement with which I wouldn't necessarily disagree, particularly given the Houston Ship Channel's importance to our economy, but also a statement which sounds odd coming from politicians who've long been ideologically predisposed to cripple the governments for which they work.

Dean Baker at TruthOut performs an enormous public service by instructing us that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a pro-growth agency. Right-wingers have drummed it into our heads that Big Gummint always strangles economic growth in its crib, but if the CFPB's new forced arbitration ban "costs" banksters $1 billion annually, that billion dollars comes from ordinary consumers like you and I, and that's not just a cost to us, but to the economy, which could use the extra $1 billion in stimulus. Also, the money banksters spend concocting ways to rip consumers off (rather than ways to provide better services than their competitors) comprises a drag on economic growth.

Illinois becomes the 10th American state (that was quick!) to pass an automatic voter registration law. Getting registered to vote whenever you renew a driver's license or a state ID should counter the nefarious effects of the Interstate Crosscheck database somewhat, but most folks aren't going to think to get new IDs done on Election Day, or have time to do it once they find out they've been mysteriously "de-registered" -- or, ah, have the ability to get to a DMV in a state that's closed as many of them as it can get away with!. Also, very few red or swing states have implemented automatic voter registration. I suspect the best solution to Interstate Crosscheck is a very good lawsuit striking it down as a violation of a citizen's due process rights.

Finally, the incomparable Matt Taibbi blames the media for creating "A World Dumb Enough for Trump." His article is a good tonic if you've been at all impressed with the "liberal" media's tough-on-the-surface coverage of Mr. Trump's Presidency -- after all, "(t)he Trump presidency is like a diabolical combination of every schlock eyeball-grabbing formula the networks have ever deployed," the creation of media that constantly push "(b)ig headlines, cartoonish morality, scary criminals at home and foreign menaces abroad" because "they all sell." Amen.

Around the table: in which fools grapple with white supremacy, to unsurprising results.

Treasury Secretary's wife brags about flight on government plane and all the big-name fashion brands she wore on that plane -- then unloads on one of her critics thusly: "Have you given more to the economy than me and my husband? Either as an individual earner in taxes OR in self sacrifice to your country? I’m pretty sure we paid more taxes toward our day ‘trip’ than you did. Pretty sure the amount we sacrifice per year is a lot more than you’d be willing to sacrifice if the choice was yours." Well, much is required from those to whom much is given! We'll always have people who think they're better than us; our task, as civilized people, is to contain their evil.

Notorious big pharma executive Martin Shkreli has been buying up internet domains with the same names as some of his critics (mayakosoff.com, carolinemoss.com, etc) so he can better mock them. I used to tell people that Michael Jackson's Neverland was a great argument for the 91% tax bracket, but of course I never dreamed of the Pharma Bro back then. How is buying up websites so you can mock journalists an example of the genius of the free market? Hell, how is jacking up the price of a life-saving HIV drug 5000%?

Long-time seller of white supremacist merchandise decides to shut down his store and find "spiritual peace" after making the front page of the Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer. So how quickly did he get from ZOMG FRONT PAGE ABOVE TEH FOLD OF TEH INQUIRER WE HAVE ARRIVEDZ!!!!! to all my neighbors have stopped talking to me? Quicker, I bet, than he gets from TEH BOTH SIDEZ ARE TO BLAMEZ!!!! to I was wrong and I have no excuses.

Vice President Pence says we shouldn't take down Confederate monuments, but just build more monuments that "celebrate the progress that we’ve made since that history." How did Mike Pence ever make it as a right-wing talker? Because let's-keep-the-racist-monuments-and-then-make-new-better-monuments is about as far from straight talk as you can get; it's a little like King Solomon suddenly splitting the baby in half. And I bet historians who spend most of their time making sense of medieval balance sheets also roll their eyes. (Also, too: how is anti-racism "some contemporary political cause"?)

Finally, the Department of Justice got a warrant demanding extensive information on everyone who visited an anti-Trump website hosted by Dreamhost, but now the DOJ has amended its warrant request so that it doesn't look like a fishing expedition. Frankly, trying to convict 200 protestors of "felony rioting" is still a damn fishing expedition, but still, a little sunlight can go a long way.

Around the table: in which we are reminded that the work of defending free speech is very hard.

The ACLU, under considerable pressure from misguided liberals, announces it will scrutinize which hate groups it represents a bit differently than it has in the past, its executive director giving the wish to protest with "loaded firearms" as an example. But I find it far too easy, frankly, to defend protesting with loaded firearms as a legitimate free speech act protected by the First Amendment, even if the folks doing such protesting are assholes. Of course shooting people with those firearms isn't "protected speech," but maybe our police officers could prepare for such things, you know, the way they seem to do when liberals march?

From the "Liberals Do Obnoxious Swordfighting Too" file: Katherine Cross, at The Establishment, asserts that "(e)very person who’s ever misused arguments for free speech to defend Nazis or white supremacists...has some measure of Heather Heyer’s blood on their hands." Gosh, I guess that includes me! Call me old-fashioned, but I think James Alex Fields and no one else has Ms. Heyer's blood on his hands, and more than a few liberals (Dennis Miller may be the most famous example) have switched sides after people like Ms. Cross kept shouting at them that they weren't liberal enough. Luckily for me, God made me a liberal, and I stopped bucking God a long time ago.

The Straight Dope's take on net neutrality -- the principle that says you, and not some corporation, should get to decide where you go on the internet -- isn't all that deep, but it contains one brilliant observation: that the worst thing that could happen as a result of its disappearance is "a time when an ISP might think carefully about what kind of content it allows to be seen on the Web, for fear of poking the orange dragon," i.e., our infamously thin-skinned President. That's weapons-grade PR, right there, so tell all your friends: Donald Trump wants to kill net neutrality so he doesn't get criticized on the internet.

I agree with this Las Vegas Sun editorial's description of Republican efforts to recall two state Senators (one Democratic, one independent) as "an abuse of the recall provision" and "an attempt to hijack the democratic process,", but that doesn't mean I want to stop the recalls. Let the endangered incumbents campaign against the inherent stupidity of the recall -- it's possible to do that without sounding self-pitying, you know! -- and show Republicans that future efforts to nullify democratic elections will fail. I'm not even particularly upset by the notion of "nonstop elections" -- elected officials should expect to be accountable to their bosses, the people, at any time.

Finally, you've no doubt heard that Steve Bannon's out as President Trump's "senior strategist" or whatever, and has made a soft landing at his old employer, Breitbart. And just like his old boss he continues to let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash, saying "I've got my hands back on my weapons" (I shudder to think what he's actually got his hands on) and that he's "definitely going to crush the opposition," which is what approximately zero people who crush the opposition say before they crush the opposition. I look forward to ignoring him, just like I did before he joined the Trump Administration.

Penny Rants for Friday, July 27, 2017: well, *someone* had a really good week.

Don't believe the hype that President Trump wants a middle-class tax cut and he wants rich folks to pay more. Not just because he's already proposed massive tax cuts for rich folks: don't believe it because we know that Mr. Trump will say anything to foment drama and chaos, and that fomenting drama and chaos is the only way he can get anything done. Of course, he's not really talking to us, at any rate -- he's talking to his votaries, who will dutifully cling to the belief that TRUMP CUTZ MY TAXEZ!!!! even as they're figuring out for the 20th straight month whether to keep the gas or the lights on. I really had my fill of government-by-drama-and-chaos during Tha Bush Mobb years; obviously God decided that, as a nation, we really didn't learn our lesson. Too often -- like, when I contemplate sensationalistic "liberal" media coverage in 2016, or how thoroughly Democrats have snatched defeat from the jaws of victory over the years -- I find it hard to argue with that conclusion.

Democratic New York Governor Andrew Cuomo explains why he doesn't "lay into" President Trump like many of his fellow Democrats do: "As a general rule, I haven’t found nasty ad hominem attacks on a person whose cooperation is needed to help your state especially helpful." Anti-kudos to Mr. Cuomo for using the word "help" twice in five words -- and that's not counting the synonym for "help" he used four words before that. "He decided early on he wasn’t going to stick a finger in Trump’s eye" would have considerably more gravity, of course, if Donald Trump didn't spend all his time sticking his finger in everyone else's eye. And Mr. Cuomo's statement also translates pretty well into "I'm happy being a hostage to circumstance, as is our unique heritage as Americans." If Mr. Cuomo is the Democratic nominee in 2020, Mr. Trump will beat him to a pulp -- why, Mr. Trump may even win the popular vote if Mr. Cuomo runs! He may even get a majority of the popular vote!

Hot on the heels of Mr. Trump's announcement of a ban on transgendered soldiers, ostensibly because their health care "costs so much," Josh Hafner at USA Today informs us that the added cost of transgendered soldiers' health care needs is equivalent to about four trips the President takes to his resort in Mar-a-Lago. It's also equivalent to 14 hundredths of one percent of our government's spending on our soldiers' health care, but the Mar-a-Lago figure is the most telling. I said yesterday that the up-to-$8.4 million added cost of transgendered soldier health care would be "chump change" in any other context to Donald Trump, but I forgot that his corruption always goes deeper than that: he also high-fives himself for sticking the cost of a month of weekend travel to Mar-a-Lago on the taxpayer, while crying crocodile tears about the "disruption" and "burden" of covering transgendered soldiers' health care for an entire year. What a fucking asshole.

Around the table: in which we confront financialization, again, and traumatic brain injury in NFL players, more fully.

Another economist reminds us that "financialization" of the world economy has turned it into a "house of cards." Read the whole thing, and then recall that Republicans, the "conservative" party, have become the apostles of handing over our economy to banksters (even more so than Democrats!), and ask yourself if chasing short-term profits and strangling corporations and households with debt exemplifies "conservative" values. I always figured being in it for the long term was more "conservative."

Greg LeRoy argues that politicians shouldn't hand out tax breaks to Amazon in an attempt to get them to bring their warehouses to their state or locality, but rather should impose new taxes and fees upon them. After all, Amazon has largely destroyed local retailing almost everywhere, more, even, than giant chain stores ever did, and while Amazon has been collecting sales taxes for some time now, they've been seeking out corporate welfare handouts to offset that "loss." So why won't politicians impose new fees and taxes? Answers could range from "abject cowardice" to "the hope that Amazon will kick back some campaign donation cash."

Boston University study finds evidence of chronic traumatic encephalopathy (or CTE) in a staggering 110 of 111 brains of deceased former NFL players. There's tremendous "selection bias" in the brains, warns a lead researcher -- BU examined only 111 of some 1,300 brains of players who died after 2008, and many of these brains came from a player's family, some in accordance with the player's wishes -- but even if none of the others showed evidence of CTE, the resulting percentage would still dramatically exceed what you find in the general population. Note well, also, that a lot of these players had long retired before the era of the 300-pound-plus offensive lineman, meaning we can no longer blame the size of the players. We have to blame the game.

Finally, in a development sure to unnerve close readers of the Book of Revelation, a Wisconsin corporation actually plans to offer implantable chips to employees -- so those employees can "open doors, buy snacks, log in to computers, and use office equipment like copy machines." Which we know is absolutely necessary, since it's not like there's any other way to do any of these things. The implants are optional, of course -- until a series of "equipment upgrades" makes them "necessary," no doubt! As Leonard Cohen might say: I have seen the future; it is murder.

Finally, President Trump speaks to the Boy Scouts Jamboree in West Virginia and does what he does best: act like he's the center of the universe and nobody else, even his audience, matters.. I'm not particularly bothered that he "brought politics" to the Jamboree, or even that he yammered on about "fake news" or joked about firing his HHS Secretary or called our Capitol a "cesspool," but it's profoundly uncivilized behavior to take an event that belongs to other people and talk about nothing but yourself and your obsessions, and taking adult topics to a meeting of youngsters, frankly, just heaps injury upon insult. And seriously, segueing from "a scout is trustworthy, loyal" to "We could use some more loyalty"? You could try earning some loyalty, Mr. President.

Around the table: in which we contemplate the "war on terror," free speech, the "liberal" media, smart birds, and an actual conservative health care plan.

Good news, everyone: U.S. House of Representatives passes two amendments to its defense authorization bill that would prevent American involvement in the Saudi-led war against Yemen. Yes, these amendments could well get conferenced out in reconciliation, particularly if President Trump demands it (and what an "independent" he'll be if he does!), but it's still a good first step -- particularly since it should be hard for Mr. Trump to use the 2001 AUMF (specifically aimed at those who attacked us, or harbored our attackers, on 9.11) to justify continuing to participate in a war on the same side as al-Qaeda and against Houthi rebels who fight ISIS well.

Ed Dolan at Vox explains "What a Good Conservative Health Care Plan Would Look Like." How do I know that these are actually conservative ideas? Because I'd actually be willing to implement some of them (definitely greater price transparency and drug reimportation from Canada) in an honest negotiation about health care reform -- though the other side would at least have to give up a public option, of course. I mean, negotiations have to be win-win. And I hasten to point out that a Medicare-for-All, single-payer system would wipe away any complaints about employer-sponsored insurance tax deductibility.

Glen Frieden at FAIR notes the relative absence of actual liberal populists from NPR's "varied mix" of on-air perspectives, while giving yuge airtime to right-wing commentator Jonah Goldberg, often without identifying his political bent. NPR professes to like Mr. Goldberg because he's not as "predictable" as the others, but the only thing "unpredictable" about him is exactly which tortured road he will use to arrive at the same place all the other right-wingers go. Also, he's really bad at punditry -- I can't tell you how many columns of his I've read where he accidentally destroys his own argument, and not even by trying to be hip.

Ho hum, Trump lawyer threatens unnamed individual in a string of profane late-night emails. The lawyer later apologized, and I suppose we could argue whether Mr. Kasowitz's threats rise to the level of criminality ("I already know where you live" and "You will see me. I promise. Bro." sure weren't his two best ideas that day), but certainly responding with four profane, rage-addled emails to someone best ignored describes a man who may not be the best person for whatever job he's got. I can already hear Mr. Trump saying I hire only the best people, the classiest people! The best!

Finally, researchers find ravens able to plan for the future. Ravens already save food for later, but scientists suspect that ability may be hard-wired, so they trained them to a) choose a rock from among a series of items, and then drop that rock into a tube to release a treat from a box, and b) exchange a token for a food reward. And ravens show more long-term planning than a lot of politicians do, by actually doing better on experiment a) when waiting 17 hours for a reward than they did after waiting 15 minutes, and by preferring to hold on to their tokens for the promise of a better reward later in experiment b). So think about all that next time you watch The Birds.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 472.

President Trump suggests he could stop funding subsidies under the Affordable Care Act, saying Congress hasn't authorized them. If he does do that -- something neither Congress nor health insurance corporations appear to want at this point -- he might wind up with his very own Hawley-Smoot tariff, and for what? To "make Democrats negotiate" without giving them a damn thing worth negotiating for? That's like creating a hostage situation and then just killing the hostage! He'd be better off funding subsidies and running Obamacare into the ground in other ways, which is I'm sure where he'll be before long.

David Dayen reminds us that the economic "populists," such as they were, have far less sway in the Trump Administration than the Goldman Sachs crowd now. Which is not a pivot to the center, as anyone who thinks about it knows! No one voted for Mr. Trump because they wanted banksters running things -- in fact, his voters expected completely the opposite. And the center isn't Where Our Glorious Elites are -- it's where most Americans are, which is, again, not with the banksters.

Alex Pareene at Fusion reminds us that airlines like United can "treat you like garbage because they're an oligopoly." "When everyone gets mad at Pepsi, Pepsi has to apologize because it is very easy to not drink Pepsi," whereas airlines "do not need to do anything to convince people to fly with them, because they all merged and consolidated until there were just four firms controlling the vast majority of domestic flights." It's not a monopoly per se, but it might as well be. All praise the new economy!

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has requested 24-7 bodyguards, possibly because he's going to fire one out of every four EPA workers. Seriously, right-wingers walk around like they have the biggest balls, and yet they need the biggest security details, paid for with our tax money, no less. You'd think there'd be a lesson in there, somewhere -- you know, like if you don't hurt people, you don't need so many goons protecting you.

Some good news out of California: the state is making so much solar power that wholesale solar prices are actually in the negative for a few hours a day. This isn't about residential customers generating so much power that utilities have to pay them -- this is about corporations that generate solar power having to pay utilities on occasion, because it's apparently cheaper to do that than to simply stop generating power. So the utilities may not die a horrible death after all. These really aren't bad problems to have, you know.

Finally, in a truly impressive display, Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-OK) says at a town hall that it's "bullcrap" that taxpayers pay his salary. He "meant" to say he pays his own way in the world and does what he does in Congress as a service, but all anyone's ever going to hear is "you said you paid for me to do this? Bullcrap!" And if he thinks he's in a safe Republican seat, he might want to talk to Lee Terry about that -- or Ron Estes.

Penny Rants for Sunday, April 2, 2017: false flags, "free" trade, and internet privacy.

Emphatic non-truther Paul Street says "the time has never been riper for a false flag terror attack." Approvals in the 30s not even three months in, his first attempt at repealing Obamacare falling flat on its face, his first two anti-Muslim executive orders dying in court, his utter inability to put the Russian hacking story to rest -- yeah, the new President has sure made an entrance, and don't forget that 54% of the electorate voted for someone else. And don't forget, also, that George W. Bush didn't win the popular vote either, and sure looked headed for a one-term Presidency before 9.11 became his "opportunity" (Condi Rice's word, not mine). At least Mr. Bush actually put together a government; Mr. Trump hasn't even done that much, meaning there'll be fewer people in the conspiracy if there is one (and of course the bigger the supposed conspiracy, the more likely it doesn't exist). Remember that, incidentally, when the attack comes -- along with his refusal to attend intelligence briefings, his purge of the State Department, his golfing weekends in Florida, and his general strutting around like he's got the biggest cock in the universe. But, really, Mr. Trump may not need a conspiracy -- as one of my co-workers says, Mr. Trump's election is ISIS's endgame.

Mr. Trump says he won't scrap NAFTA, formerly "the worst trade deal," but will keep many planks in place when he goes to renegotiate it. And I bet you just can't guess one of them. That's right, the investor-state tribunal -- which the Times doesn't even mention until paragraph 20, though I'd say the mere existence of such tribunals, which threaten to destroy law and order in America and any other country in which they exist, was the main reason folks across the political spectrum hated the Trans-Pacific "Partnership." Were you wondering how Trump was going to fail us on "free" trade? This sure looks like how. But Paul Ryan's smoke-blowing aside, Mr. Trump hasn't exactly convinced everyone he's a "closer," and it looks like our neighbor to the north -- you remember that Canada was also a party to SHAFTYA, right? -- might have more urgent concerns about Mr. Trump's aims than Mexico does. Let's not allow the existence of Mexico's national sales tax lure us into accepting Mr. Trump's proposed American national sales tax "border tax," either. I'd be happy to accept our withdrawal from NAFTA. I'd even be happy to give Mr. Trump credit for it, as I do for our withdrawal from the TPP. (Not too much credit, though. We really deserve most of that.)

Wondering how to navigate the post-internet privacy world, as delivered by Congress this past week? Quincy Larson at Quartz advises us to set up a Virtual Private Network (or VPN) and certainly to enable HTTPS on our browsers, while Emily Dreyfuss at WIRED advises us to check out the Internet Noise website, which opens five tabs on your browser to websites chosen at random, and then visits five more websites every 10 seconds until you tell it to stop. I will admit to being quite attracted to the latter item -- as we learned in the Star Trek episode "Charlie X," one good way to deal with someone who's got too much power is to give them too much to handle -- but I also imagine that the better ISPs (and the better data-buyers) will ultimately figure out which traffic is trash. You should also worry (especially since Internet Noise's creator hasn't even evaluated all the search terms he uses) that an unscrupulous actor will concoct a terrorist plot from these searches -- Cardinal Richelieu once said "give me six lines written by the most honest man in the world, and I will find enough in them to hang him." There's more than one way to give evil too much to handle, though -- one of my random searches led me here, and that sure brought back some happy memories.

Around the table: Paul Ryan is a dumb guy, and other truths.

Robert Levering describes "How Anti-Vietnam War Activists Stopped Violent Protest from Hijacking Their Movement." "(T)he primary way to deal with those who advocate violent tactics is to isolate them," he writes, "(to) do everything possible to separate them from the peaceful demonstration," because violent protestors need the cover of nonviolent protestors the way fire needs oxygen. Also, nonviolent movements need to "train() marshals" to "essentially be our own force of nonviolent peacekeepers." You just know the "liberal" media would rather talk about violent protestors than the vast, vast majority of nonviolent ones.

Like Jason Linkins at the Huffington Post, I'm tired of the media pretending Paul Ryan is a smart guy, when (as someone once said) he's a dumb guy's idea of a smart guy. He says "(t)he people who are healthy paying for the people who are sick" like that's not how insurance usually works (except the people who are sick are also paying for the people who are sick). And you and I and everyone you know will belong to both groups at different times in life. I was surprised to learn that Mr. Ryan is so terrible he even makes Tucker Carlson look good for a minute, though I'm sure that's exactly how they both intended it.

You've perhaps heard Sean Spicer declare that "the deep state" has it in for President Trump, but Mike Lofgren, the man who coined the phrase "the deep state," reminds us that Mr. Trump's actions thus far suggest that he and the deep state actually have the very same aims. It's more tax cuts for the rich, more freedom for banksters, and more war against the Middle East all down the line, even if "free" trade is gone (for now!). It's enough to make you think (as Mr. Lofgren says) that Mr. Trump could save Our Glorious Elites' political agenda "by masking it in a façade of fake populism and reality-TV stage management." Unless we step up with real populism, that is.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA) alleges that President Obama is staying in D.C. to create a "shadow government," and then his office walks his comments back. Say obnoxious crap and then say you didn't really mean it -- well, that was the formula for getting attention in America, at least before Mr. Trump cut out the second step. But Mr. Kelly says so much obnoxious crap that some enterprising Democrat in his district could put together a greatest hits ad -- though let's learn from 2016 and not run only that ad, OK? Because if you want to hold public office, you have to do something.

Finally, we learn how the "Kalamazoo Promise" -- where a Michigan town pays 65 to 100% of your college tuition if you graduate from a Kalamazoo public school and meet certain other criteria -- has improved lives there. Lower dropout rates, higher college-completion rates, alleviated student loan debt, a rebounding population -- and yet some of the folks who've benefited the most still fret that other folks will find out they got help to go to school, when everyone gets help to do everything. Why, some of our richest Americans are completely dependent on Big Gummint, though they prefer you to think otherwise.

Around the table: the Continued Amazing Adventures of the Citizen Legislator! And other absurdities.

Attorney General Sessions may have committed perjury when answering questions about any contacts with Russia that he might have had, but the "liberal" media spins the story to his benefit. I sure hope all those right-wingers who demanded Mr. Clinton's impeachment because he lied under oath will be just as outraged when they find that Mr. Sessions has done the same thing. I kid, of course -- the rationalizations should be quite irritating. In the meantime, note well Mr. Naureckas's point that the internet hasn't destroyed traditional media organs (at least the big ones!) but has broadened their reach.

Priorities USA gives advice -- some good, some bad -- to Democrats looking to stop President Trump's economic plans. Their assessment that calling tax-cuts-for-the-rich a wealth redistribution scheme doesn't work is quite irritating, but pounding the "border tax" as a middle-class tax hike is a particularly good idea, not least because it's true, and "highlighting companies...that are proceeding with plans to send jobs to Mexico" is an even better one, not so much because it's true but that it'll send Mr. Trump into a tantrum.

From the "Not All Clickbait is Bad" file: Nithin Coca at Shareable gives us "Five (More) Reasons to Delete Uber" and offers "Some Ethical Alternatives." You won't be surprised by the five reasons (Uber "breaks laws," "strong-arms cities," "competes unfairly," "doesn't take safety seriously," and "exploits drivers"), but you may need to be reminded of the alternatives, which encompass not only cab-hailing apps and public transportation, but also certain taxi co-ops (not that they're everywhere yet).

If you're still convinced that privatization of public services is the way to go, Dave Johnson at the OurFuture blog provides a handy primer about privatization's multitudinous harms. This is the phrase that snuck up on me: "the people would make a public investment and share gains from that investment." "Share" is a powerful word in this context, and not just because the "sharing" economy is such horsedoodle, but because privatization cripples our ability to "share" in the "gains." Oh, and Mr. Trump wants to privatize the VA; we'll stay on that.

Uh oh: the office of Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI), the man who still gives the "Citizen Legislator" a bad name, sends a cease-and-desist letter to Milwaukee resident Earl Good after Mr. Good calls Sen. Johnson's Washington office hundreds of times to express his will. OK, I'd have called the local offices a lot more quickly than that, but what Mr. Good did hardly "cross(es) the bounds of decency," and the notion that "the well being of visitors to the office and staff" is their main concern in sending the letter, well, that is to laugh.

Finally, some good news: after a massive outcry from the citizenry, Arizona's House Speaker has decided not to move the nefarious SB 1142, the so-called "Plan a Protest, Lose Your House" bill, which would have used racketeering laws to attack protestors. I didn't emphasize this enough on Monday, so I'll do it now: calling us "paid protestors" is an attack not just on our ideas, but our patriotism. We do what we do because we love our country, and don't let anyone tell you any differently.

Around the table: everything old is new again, again.

So you've seen all those headlines about the "Confederate flag-waving couple" who got 33 years in prison? Adam Johnson at FAIR reminds us -- as "liberal" media headlines somehow don't! -- that they were also waving a shotgun at black folks. Which might explain the longer sentence a little better! Personal to the folks who say ONLY READINGZ TEH HEADLINEZ IZ TEH STUPIDZ!!!!: you're telling me you read every single story for which you see a headline?

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) pushes natural gas as a climate change solution at townhall meetings. Methane emissions, as you know, are a fairly persistent side effect of fracking, and pack a climate change punch much larger than even coal emissions, and I just can't imagine how Mr. Cassidy will vote on H.J.Res. 36, the "resolution of disapproval" that would nullify BLM rules limiting methane emissions from gas drilling on public lands.

Ho hum, the IRS is hemorrhaging experienced criminal investigators, though tax cheats still work around the clock. One could reasonably ask whether the IRS investigates too many cases that aren't directly related to tax fraud, but the main culprit here, of course, is Republican budget-cutting and Republican-engineered dramas about IRS investigation of right-wing groups. If you want to get all "law and order," you should maybe start with the tax cheats that steal from all of us.

President Trump's new National Security Advisor, H.R. McMaster, apparently rather dislikes using the term "radical Islamic terrorism," unlike his boss and millions of whining right-wingers. Because, he says, being a terrorist is "un-Islamic," rather like it's also un-Christian and un-any other religion you can name. And how many times must I tell these pimps! Demanding that everyone use the term "radical Islamic terrorism" is the very soul of political correctness!

Finally, about the President's address to Congress Tuesday night: let's not give the man so much credit for deciding that pretending you care is a better stratagem than constantly acting like a prick -- and let's also consider whether this "Presidential" persona will merely enable his votaries to label his prick-nature "fake news." And, really, Donald Trump telling someone else to cut it out with the "trivial fights"? That's Bush Mobb-level chutzpah, right there.

Around the table: banksters wilt under reporting requirements boo-hoo, and other tales.

Trump Administration rescinds Obama Administration's guidance on transgender folks using the bathroom of the gender they identify with. The Times reports that Education Secretary DeVos initially resisted, and while I'd love to believe that's true, I don't -- I believe, of course, that the report of her initial opposition exists to lull us into a false sense of security about how well the Trump Machine is running, when it's running exactly the way Our Glorious Elites want it to run.

The incomparable David Dayen informs us that banksters want to reduce federal reporting requirements on suspected money-laundering -- you know, the kind of thing that helps catch drug kingpins, tax evaders, and terrorists. Banksters' apparent inability to comply with federal law on this matter might suggest that the reporting requirements are onerous, but they're not, and with banksters, of course, you have to ask how their notorious incompetence in following the law might be intentional. Read the whole thing, though, because the banksters' bad arguments just get worse and worse. And if Mr. Trump wants to be a law and order President, he should be paying attention.

Sue Sturgis at Facing South explores another way to dilute minority voting power in a region: make all the representatives "at-large." She's talking specifically about the Board of Commissioners of Jones County in North Carolina, and I guess defenders of the "at-large" nature of the five Commissioners will happily explain how Commissioners aren't "representatives" per se. But I'm equally happy to call such an explanation pedantry, since federal courts have ruled against County Commissioners on Voting Rights Act grounds before.

Issie Lapowsky at Wired writes that "The Internet Gave Us Milo" Yiannopoulos, and "The Internet Can Take Him Away." But as Ms. Lapowsky acknowledges, he wouldn't have gotten anywhere without mainstream media coverage of his internet shenanigans, and he may find he made a major mistake taking his book to a major publisher, when, you know, he could have self-published the thing and made a lot of sales. Think maybe he didn't go full-indy because he wanted to be legit? And think maybe he's regretting that now?

Wellesley College's Davis Museum removes works created by immigrants -- in effort to highlight contributions made by immigrants to American culture. I can already hear right-wingers squealing that they can't imagine any immigrant Muslims making such contributions, oblivious to the fact that folks once said that about Germans, Irish, and Italians. And a lot of the right-wingers who squeal about such matters have German, Irish, and Italian blood, too.

Finally, the U.S. Supreme Court allows convicted murderer Duane Buck to ask for a new sentence, given that one of the reasons prosecutors gave in arguing for his death sentence in 1997 was that he'd be more likely to commit crimes in the future because he was black. This one was easy enough that Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion; one day I may regard his compulsive literalism as an idiosyncrasy rather than a flaw, but he's firmly anti-racist when the evidence is obvious enough or the forces of evil sloppy enough, and I guess that's not nothing.

Around the table: with glimpses into the innards of the Trump propaganda machine.

The economy created a hair over 225,000 jobs in January, and suddenly Donald Trump is all happy about the jobs reports he previously criticized as "phony." But of course he did all that on purpose, so that his votaries can squeal ZOMG HE CUT TEH UNEMPLOYMENT RATEZ FROM TEH 42 PERCENTZ TO TEH FIVE PERCENTZ DO TEH HEILZ!!!!!! And when they do, you probably won't be looking right at the Department of Labor's website -- though bookmarking it now might help!

Most spokeshacks who described a terrorist "massacre" that never occurred would find themselves out of a job posthaste, but not in Donald Trump's America, and certainly not in Donald Trump's Administration. Kellyanne Conway is doing exactly what Mr. Trump wants her to do -- help him create an alternate reality in voters' minds so he looks better in four years. There'll be no Bowling Green Massacres under President Trump, that's for sure! Until there are, at which point he'll blame everyone but himself for it.

Speaking of the big man, yes, President Trump literally said he wants to reverse financial services reform because his "friends" "with nice businesses" "can't borrow money." I know about 25% of the electorate, being bat-guano insane, lives vicariously through Dear Leader and would also make big decisions based on what their own "friends" told them, but surely the rest of us can make a bigger noise than they can. And look! Lately, we have been -- I guess the other side only spray-paints swastikas on synagogues when they're flush with victory.

Wired wonders whether -- times being, as I've said, interesting -- you might want to get yourself a burner phone. Thus follows a list of a few burner phones, which sure have improved -- some are getting to be like smartphones anymore! -- plus the Burner App which can disguise your phone number. I bet more than a few scam artists are using that app already, though. Seriously, if I thought of it, it must be happening now.

Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA), in a completely unsurprising development, says he'll vote for Betsy DeVos as Education Secretary, thus virtually ensuring a 50-50 vote in the Senate that Ms. DeVos will win when Vice President Pence breaks the tie. Dig the ridiculous framing, though, both from Sen. Toomey -- who suggests that only his opinion of Ms. DeVos matters! -- and the article itself, which claims that he's upset "the left," and not, you know, the majority.

Finally, Christa Hillstrom at Yes! magazine describes the Northeast Investment Cooperative of Minneapolis, MN, "a first-of-its-kind co-op in the United States that pools members’ money to invest in commercial real estate." Some 200 local residents own property, share in the decision-making and the profits, and help keep local businesses thriving. They're hoping to export the model to other states, and I certainly would prefer a co-op to a bankster owning property they only bought so they can squeeze money out of it. I wish the NIC luck.

Around the table: the Trump infrastructure plan as "developer welfare," and other hard lessons.

Michael Hudson aptly describes "Trump's Infrastructure Plan" as "Developer Welfare." He describes how the Wall Street-financed construction of the 2nd Avenue line in New York City benefits the landlords along the line -- who are already raising rents on the people who were supposed to benefit from the line! And of course the MTA financed 2nd Avenue by borrowing from banksters, and now will be paying banksters interest in perpetuity. And that's the kind of "infrastructure" you'll see from Mr. Trump -- infrastructure that doesn't actually help ordinary Americans, but helps banksters and landlords, who seem to be his real constituency.

Spencer Woodman at The Intercept now finds eight U.S. states contemplating laws criminalizing peaceful protest in some way. What do they have to be afraid of? Well, North Dakota is mulling whether to make it OK to run over a protestor "accidentally," and supporters of that initiative actually have the cojones to tell you that the momentarily-successful Standing Rock protests make such legislation necessary! You know what else might make Standing Rock-style protests go away? Committing to renewable energy sources like solar and wind. Of course, big fossil fuel corporations think there's no money in that, but they're wrong.

Fox News poll shows the Affordable Care Act is actually more popular than Donald Trump right now. And finding that 50% approvals for the ACA is fairly unprecedented -- during that interminable debate over the matter in 2009 and 2010, you couldn't find even 40% approval for the thing (though, as the "liberal" media usually ignored, a lot of folks, and not all of them liberals, disapproved of it because it wasn't single-payer). Could it be that folks like something better as soon as they fear they're going to lose it? Or that Republicans have failed so badly at convincing people they can do better? It's probably both.

Lost in the brouhaha over "grizzly bears" at Betsy DeVos's last confirmation hearing was her apparent conviction that disabled students shouldn't get equal access to public education under the law, which conviction not only runs afoul of over 40-year-old federal law, but also of basic human decency. Privatize the whole system, as Mr. DeVos is eager to do, and you're likely to have a crapload of corrupt charter schools taking public money to break public laws. Anyone else think we ought to just commit to making our public services be the best they can be, instead of giving in to the promises of snake oil salesfolk?

Surprise, surprise, the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Alabama has found the state guilty of "unconstitutional racial gerrymandering" in 12 state legislature districts (three Senate, nine House). Alabama will have to redraw those 12 districts before 2018, if they don't appeal, which they may do, even though the plaintiffs alleged that 36 districts were unconstitutional racial gerrymanders. Still, it's something that the state drew a dozen districts so badly that even Judge William Pryor (lately mooted as Mr. Trump's next choice for the U.S. Supreme Court) wasn't willing to explain them away.

Finally, San Antonio Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich lights into President Trump in a radio rant. You may not have known the five-time NBA champion head coach was also a champion of civilization, but he is, declaring that "respect has to be earned," that "if our children would've said (what Mr. Trump said when he mocked a disabled reporter)" he'd have "grounded" them, that "the people around (Mr. Trump)...have the cynical approach and disingenuous attitude to really defend him and try to make it look like he didn't say what he said," and that Mr. Trump can't reach out to people he's hurt or offended because "bullies don't do that." And I haven't heard this anywhere else: "Instead of honoring the 117 people behind him (who died in the line of duty) where he was speaking (at the CIA offices), he talked about the size of the (inauguration) crowd." So what's Mr. Trump gonna do? Call Pop a loser?

Around the table: tales of rage and hubris -- and hope.

Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept reminds us that the evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 election is really quite scant at present -- amounting to nothing more than anonymous leaks to the "liberal" media. That's not to say that we won't find out more, or even that we won't find out we were totally played by Russia's government, but we've had many, many years to learn to be more skeptical (remember when George Tenet said the WMD case against Iraq was a "slam dunk"? Good times!), and calling anyone who disagrees with you a "Russian stooge" is really not how civilized people act.

In a related note, former U.N. Ambassador/complete asshole John Bolton insinuates that this whole Russians-hacking-the-election-thing might be a "false flag" operation coming from the Obama Administration. I was going to say, "imagine what a right-winger would say if you called 9.11 a 'false flag' operation," but I don't have to -- any deviation from Dear Leader Bush's vision was a treasonable offense to his votaries back in the day. And that's some cojones Mr. Bolton's got there, saying the Obama Administration has "politicized" the CIA, after Tha Bush Mobb purged all those CIA personnel at the beginning of his second term.

From the "Don't Look Now, But" file: Emma Grey Ellis at Wired tells us that "Thousands of Invisible Oil Spills Are Destroying The Gulf." The big spills (like Deepwater Horizon) get all the ink, but actually we suffer around 30,000 oil leaks annually (that we know of, that is -- our Coast Guard kind of relies on an honor system for oil leak reporting), and that means less clean air, less clean water, and more health problems. (By the way, after you read this article, you'll know what to say when some right-wing gaslighter comes along and says oil leaks are natural and have been occurring forever -- that those leaks are so slow that nearby life forms have evolved to adapt to it, and anyway, that's no damn excuse for the far more massive pollution perpetrated out of greed.)

James Fallows at The Atlantic reminds us that Donald Trump's victory in the Presidential race is not, as his spokeshack put it, a "historic" "landslide" or "blowout." Mr. Trump's electoral vote margin ranks a mere 46th out of our 58 Presidential elections, and his popular vote share -- 46%, in case you missed it the first 221 times I said it -- outpaces only two elected Presidents. I recall Rutherford Hayes being called "Old 8-7" by contemporaries, because of the narrow vote on the Commission that awarded him 20 contested electoral votes; why not constantly call Donald Trump "The 46% Man"? He'll get angry, but everything gets him angry. And this is one hornet's nest I think we should prod, over and over again, because we're stronger than he is.

Finally, Zenobia Jeffries at Yes! magazine profiles a Detroit woman who's trying to turn her block into a "solar-powered ecovillage." One that provides important resources for her community, too, like after-school meals and homework help for local kids. I'll admit that buying up distressed properties and turning the area into a renewable-energy hub has long been quite attractive to me, and I wish Ms. Harris the best in her endeavors. After all, who's going to do it if we don't? Big corporations ain't gonna do it, and big government ain't gonna do it, either, until we make it impossible for them not to.

Around the table: at long last, the Trump health care plan! And other disappointments.

A heavily-promoted Trump/Pence "conversation" about health care turns out to be a long, long wait for two-count-'em-two ideas: allow health insurance to be purchased across state lines (already tried, doesn't work), and, naturally, the "health savings account." OK, one more time: the whole point of insurance is that folks come together and pitch in toward a fund that helps one or another of those folk out at various times. A "health savings account" is thus, in that sense, not insurance, because you lose the bargaining power that comes from being part of a group. And you tell people working two jobs and still deciding which utility to pay this month while feeding their kids to "just save money."

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans to advance a corporate tax amnesty and use the money to pay for infrastructure repairs, and, perhaps not surprisingly, liberals don't like it. And why should we? We should be keeping corporations from pretending they made their profits overseas in the first place, not let them bring those profits back at a reduced tax rate, like that will ever encourage good behavior. Three other things: one, noting that Mr. Schumer "has shown a willingness to take on the liberal base in the past" is faint praise in a land where every Democrat indulges in hippie-punching; two, his plan will face Republican opposition, because that's all Republicans do anymore; and three, where does he get off suggesting that "progressive" and "constructive" are such mutually exclusive terms?

U.S. "Trade" "Representative" Michael Froman thinks Congress could pass the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" if Congressional leadership would just hold a vote. What makes him so confident? That "lawmakers are increasingly recognizing industry support" for the deal, though Mr. Froman doesn't speculate on whether he's noticed that lawmakers have noticed the American people's utter lack of support, which I think, in a representative form of government such as ours, is a far more pertinent issue.

Ho hum, North Carolina Sen. Richard Burr -- who might get cut down by a Democrat wave local only to North Carolina -- says he, too, will ensure the Supreme Court only has eight seats by the end of a Hillary Clinton first term. The best part? All the HOW CAN TEH SUPREME COURTZ ONLY HAVEZ TEH EIGHTZ JUSTICEZ!!!!!! handwringing he did in 2005 after Chief Justice Rehnquist died. (Oh, and BTW, BFD that he apologized for those nasty things he said about Hillary Clinton. Everyone says nasty crap so they can get attention, and then they apologize so they can get more; Mr. Trump's reluctance to apologize after saying/doing nasty crap is, in that light, almost refreshing. I said "almost.")

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, the man who gives the Citizen Legislator a bad name, announces that he won't serve more than two terms in the Senate. Of course, he faces Wisconsin voters in less than a week, and he's widely considered to be the most endangered Republican in the Senate, so he's going to need a lot of help from Wisconsin Voter ID laws to even get a second term in the first place.

Finally, David Brooks at the New York Times excoriates the Republican Party for abandoning conservative principles. I know you hear right-wingers say that a lot, usually about how their party doesn't punch gays and women enough, but Mr. Brooks makes a convincing argument, in part by describing precisely what the GOP has abandoned: "conservatism stands for intellectual humility, a belief in steady, incremental change, a preference for reform rather than revolution, a respect for hierarchy, precedence, balance and order, and a tone of voice that is prudent, measured and responsible." Any of that sound like Ted Cruz, the biggest "conservative" swordfighter of them all? Or Newt Gingrich? I'd feel better recommending this article to you if I didn't know that Mr. Brooks signed on to a lot of the "thousand small betrayals of conservatism" that helped get us here.

Around the table: attaching a dollar figure to the harm caused by banksters, and other revelations.

UMass-Amherst economist says that banksters wind up costing the average American household well over $100,000 over the course of a lifetime. Not just with credit card late fees, ATM fees, and overdraft fees -- and, for poorer families, with payday loans -- but with a lot of retirement funds, whose managers have limited or no fiduciary responsibility to work on your behalf, and who charge exorbitant fees for funds that perform little or no better than the stock market does as a whole. What are banksters good for? For redistributing your wealth upward -- to themselves.

National Labor Relations Board upholds appeal of earlier ruling permitting the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America to endorse a boycott of Israel. The Israeli legal center bringing the original suit (and the appeal) cited labor law preventing unions from encouraging workers at "neutral employers" (that is, employers not involved in a dispute between the union and its workers' employer) to stop work or go on strike in arguing that unions also could not encourage workers to "cease doing business with Israelis and Israeli companies." If it seems like a bit of a leap from one to the other, well, you're not alone. And now I'm rather interested in rolling back the law preventing unions from encouraging other workers to go on strike, as it seems a plain violation of their First Amendment rights.

New CFPB rules mandate that debt collectors now have to make some effort to prove that debtors actually owe them any money. New rules would make debt collectors limit their number of weekly contacts, notify debtors when statutes of limitation have passed on old debts, and get a whole lot more information about your supposed debt than just your phone number -- among many other absolutely needed reforms (though not all the reforms we'd like, of course). But please, Republicans, keep mouthing off about how the CFPB is just another "bureaucracy" preventing honest businessfolk from making money, when it's actually a tool to keep banksters from running roughshod over our lives.

University of Zurich study suggests that internet trolls are more obnoxious, not less, when they're using their real names. But only in limited contexts, it seems to me -- the study looked at comments on online petitions, where you have to give your real name but can request the petition manager to withhold your name from public exposure; the study doesn't look at, for example, Facebook or Twitter comments, though it seems to me you'd more likely find obnoxious behavior there than on online petitions. So clearly, this subject needs further research.

Finally, 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals strikes down North Carolina's Voter ID law, finding that the state legislature went very far out of its way to "target African-Americans with almost surgical precision." Gov. McCrory of course replies with the whole you-need-ID-to-buy-Sudafed-so-you-should-also-need-it-to-vote, as if he's never, ever heard anything anyone has ever said about the matter. And no Republican appeal of this law will ever survive Supreme Court scrutiny, not when your legislature not only goes very far out of its way to find out exactly how many non-whites their law will hurt and not only enacts that law anyway but writes all of their doings down.

Around the table: law-and-order issues, plus welfare and medicinal marijuana.

In light of recent events, TruthOut points us to a 2015 essay from Rachel Herzing explaining how we might get to a "police-free future," by advancing reforms "that lead toward the erosion of policing power rather than reinforcing it. I support a lot of the reforms described herein, but just as I dislike calls to "dismantle government" because politicians put their donors' interests ahead of ours, I also remain in the keep-police-but-oversee-them-more-effectively camp. Even if I were to accept, without qualification, the notion that the sole function of police is "armed protection of state interests," I still insist that we are the state, and if the state doesn't act in our interests, we change it into one that does.

Uh oh: ProPublica reports that police all over America are using a $2, 40-year-old drug test that routinely gives false positive readings. You think science has changed any over the last 40 years? Think maybe chemical processes have become more accurate? Among the problems: the kits don't have precise directions, and lots of other things turn these chemicals a different color. Moreover, the DOJ declared, shortly after these kits came out, that they shouldn't be admissible in court -- but, it turns out, unscrupulous/stressed people in law enforcement and the courts can work around that pretty easily, simply by pretending it's not true. I've worked enough jobs to know how overworked police officers and lab techs are, but that doesn't excuse the corporations that put out drug testing kits like they work.

Why are we having such trouble passing incremental criminal justice reform such as the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act? Alexander Bolton at The Hill suggests it's because Senate Majority Leader/Greatest and Brightest Shining True American King of Presidents Mitch McConnell doesn't have the cojones to face down two Republican Senators who might object. The bill's sponsor, Iowa Senator Charles Grassley, has carried plenty of water for Republicans over the years, but I doubt Mr. McConnell conceives of the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act as a payment for that water-carrying -- rather, he considers the water-carrying as payment for all the times he's let Mr. Grassley alone to do, you know, actual governing and oversight on behalf of his constituents.

John Cheese at Cracked talks about "The Four Types of People on Welfare Nobody Talks About." The article contains many necessary insights -- a substantial chunk of welfare recipients get it for seven months or less and then don't need it any more, which is kind of how it's supposed to work, while more than 90 percent of welfare benefits go to disabled folks, seniors, and folks who are also working (i.e., at McDonald's or WalMart), which means folks who constantly complain about lazy people getting free money are either stupid or deliberately lying to you. And don't miss Mr. Cheese's own reminiscences about being on welfare as a child. Spoiler alert: despite not asking to be born, he felt quite ashamed of himself.

States that have legalized medicinal marijuana saw a drop in Medicare drug spending between 2010 and 2013. If it were legal everywhere, you might see a half-billion dollar drop nationwide, which isn't a very big part of Medicare's budget -- but, ironically enough, it's very, very hard to research the medicinal benefits of pot, which means some folks using pot to treat their problems probably shouldn't do that. I suspect the big pharma corporations that make money off the antidepressants and painkillers that pot can replace will advance this point posthaste -- without recommending, of course, that we should make marijuana research much easier than it is.

Finally, former U.S. House Rep/talk-radio fixture Joe Walsh said this on Twitter after the shootings of at least a dozen Dallas police officers: "This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out black lives matter (sic) punks. Real America is coming after you." (Naturally, he deleted the tweet not too long afterward.) While this flatugasm may not qualify as "threatening the President" (and only because the threat is rather non-specific), it certainly qualify as "being an asshole in public." Well, they always say you should do what you're good at.

Around the table: nominees set, wreckage surveyed.

Harold Meyerson surveys the post-California landscape, and hopes Democrats are able to "build on" both Mrs. Clinton's victory in securing the Presidential nomination and Mr. Sanders's victory in "the battle of ideas." But I fear how Democrats will "build on both victories" is to co-opt the Sandernistas and offer them the same narrow choice between a weak legislative agenda and the spectre of far-right dominance, even though this strategy has achieved disaster both in 1994 and 2010 (and will likely do so again in 2018). Republicans will happily cooperate by squealing like pigs at every perceived insult.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) loses her House primary to another sitting Republican House Rep, George Holding. Ms. Ellmers started out as a far-right teabagger, but in just six years the right has portrayed her as a sellout for very, very miniscule sins (like being chummy with House leadership, or is that what she wanted House leadership to think?). Certainly redistricting helped doom her and that was probably the point, but mainly Ms. Ellmers has fallen victim to incessant swordfighting over Who's More Conservative, swordfighting that likely won't end even after an actual rabid raccoon wins a House seat.

Gary Legum, writing at Salon, tells us about that time Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) helped keep a hold on an Obama nominee for Ambassador to the Bahamas until the nominee died of leukemia. He kept the hold going, apparently, because it was "a way to inflict special pain on the President." Gosh, Sen. Cotton, all out of adult diapers? Seriously, if Arkansas Democrats ever figure out how to be populists, they could use this event to send Mr. Cotton back to the oblivion he so richly deserves.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid apparently has a serious jones to put Sen. Elizabeth Warren on the ticket with Hillary Clinton, but doesn't want to lose her Senate seat (Massachusetts's Republican Governor would get to pick her successor, at least in the short term). I still wonder who will be the first "liberal" media hack to question whether Hillary Clinton should have a male on her ticket for "balance," even though no one has ever asked a similar question with a male at the top of the ticket. My money's on Chuck Todd.

Finally, Donald Trump is so terrible that Matt Bai can skewer him. The crux of Mr. Bai's analysis -- that Mr. Trump is "a man tragically enslaved to his own neediness," and his "insecurity is not a manageable motivator" but "the black hole that consumes him" and, potentially, the Republican party -- is entirely apt, but I doubt it will actually consume the GOP, not just because the GOP can poop money whenever it likes, but because Trump supporters have been voting GOP for many years, and the "insurgent" candidacy of Mr. Trump is just another way to keep them involved without them suspecting they've been had.

Around the table: clean water, taxes, voting rights, Social Security, and the "liberal" media.

The water engineer who helped expose the Flint water crisis thinks that tragedy is only the beginning of our troubles with our water supply. After all, the lead in Flint's water didn't cause all the infections, rashes, and hair loss -- other systemic problems did. And when public water systems fail because our governments keep handing out corporate welfare like candy, those same corporations will swoop in and declare that only they can do it right! Which will, of course, leave us in far worse straits -- your government, at least, belongs to you.

Washington state Supreme Court rules that a particularly odious anti-tax initiative would be unconstitutional. The initiative requires state legislators to propose a constitutional amendment requiring a two-thirds supermajority vote for all tax increases -- or else face a one percentage-point cut in the sales tax. That's even more of a hostage crisis than right-wingers usually try. And though I'm fairly opposed to sales taxes myself, I'm pretty confident I could win an argument about sales taxes on the merits, without resorting to Rube Goldbergian legislative contraptions.

Greg Palast and Dennis J. Bernstein reveal that California poll workers have been told to give independent voters provisional ballots, which is against the law there. Independent voters can vote in partisan primaries in California, and we all know what happens to provisional ballots -- they get thrown in the trash. California's primary, naturally, starts in three days.

President Obama calls for an expansion of Social Security benefits in a speech in Indiana. I feel compelled to note, however, that Mr. Obama will be out of office in a little over seven months and has a Congress that won't try to expand Social Security, so his support is not exactly a profile in courage. Perhaps he would have been better off thumping this saucepan back when his party had a 70-seat House majority and a filibuster-proof Senate majority. We know that using those huge majorities to appease Republicans sure didn't work.

Finally, we learn that "liberal" media coverage of that notorious Donald Trump press conference from earlier this week -- the one where he repeatedly insulted reporters who had questioned him about his donations to veterans' groups -- has, ah, tended toward the deferential. One CNN headline proclaimed that "When Donald Trump Hits Back, He Hits Back Hard." Is that what we're going to call it now when someone's too cowardly to admit that he misrepresented his donations to veterans' groups -- and, indeed, only coughed up the money after the Washington Post shamed him? I may have been premature in suggesting that maybe Donald Trump has insulted the "liberal" media one too many times.

Around the table: "sacrificing human lives" as "the proper functioning of a market economy," and other absurdities.

I sort of expected an article entitled "Charles Koch's Disturbing High School Economics Project Teaches 'Sacrificing Lives for Profits'" to be a bit of clickbait, but it's real. You can read this right on the so-called Common Sense Economics website: "The charge that sways juries and offends public sensitivities...is that greedy corporations sacrifice human lives to increase their profits. Is this charge true? Of course it is. But this isn’t a criticism of corporations; rather it is a reflection of the proper functioning of a market economy." Remember that the next time some corporation says it favors more "choices" in education -- apparently teaching people to be assholes is just another "choice."

Belgian court rules that the "right to be forgotten," which allows Europeans to have unflattering references to themselves removed from the internet, also extends to newspaper archives. The "right to be forgotten" has centuries-old precedent in European law, but Americans would find all of this extremely hard to understand, and though these laws generally take into account any public interest in "remembering" the information, I can too easily imagine a citizen running for high office demanding that the media "forget" all the bad things he did, and finding a judge who'll agree with him.

Rebecca McCray, writing at TakePart, notes that the recent Supreme Court decision in Foster v. Chatman -- wherein the Court threw out a death sentence because of the prosecution's racially-motivated jury selection -- won't change very much about racism in jury selection. Of course, it's not really supposed to do that, and we all know the reason the Court acted here is that Mr. Foster's prosecutors left so much written evidence of their racism that even John Roberts couldn't ignore it (though, of course, Clarence Thomas still could). Still, you'll value the insight that judges might not want to accuse prosecutors they work with every day of racism.

Chinese plants appear to be having some success turning toilet waste into power. In China, "sludge" (as they call it) often finds its way into landfills, gets used as fertilizer (it's not clean enough for that!), or gets burned as an alternative to coal (it's not dry enough for that!). The process of harvesting methane from sludge is fascinating, but powering 400 automobiles with several hundred tons of sludge isn't as impressive as it sounds (that's, what, about a ton per car?), and methane, as you know, packs a considerably bigger climate change punch than coal. It's possible it's better than nothing, particularly in a nation with over a billion people who are kinda stepping in it all the time.

Finally, presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump spats with reporters during a press conference. Insulting Hispanics and women is just something the "liberal" media "covers," but insulting reporters? Particularly after one could say they've actually done their jobs? That's another thing entirely. Could this latest tantrum be the moment that does Donald Trump in? I wonder -- I would say, "ask Scott Walker how well he did after constantly insulting the media," but then Scott Walker also had Donald Trump sucking up all the oxygen the room, and Donald Trump doesn't suffer from that problem any more than he suffers from any of the other problems he foists on other people.

Around the table: why we need local media, and other lessons.

Senate Finance Committee holds hearing on corporate taxes that concentrates almost entirely on reducing the corporate tax rate, and not on closing corporate tax loopholes, as most Americans would prefer. Congressfolk don't listen to their constituents -- now there's a shock! Of course, given that Sen. Rubio defined his 2014 intervention arguing for Education Department leniency toward Corinthian Colleges as something he did "on behalf of his constituents," it's not at all clear that Congressfolk really understand what a "constituent" is. Probably they just think it's anyone who gives them lots of money.

Jeff Nesbit, writing at Salon describes a "right-wing lie factory" even "more insidious than Fox News." Backed financially by shadowy Koch brothers-related groups, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (originally housed in a Montana taffy shop, apparently just so it could have a "physical address") produces "news" stories pushing the same anti-government, anti-tax, and anti-regulation line you've come to expect from right-wing news sources -- but it takes advantage of the continuing dissipation of local media outlets by providing them with cheap copy. Which is yet another reason we ought to fight for real local news sources that hire real reporters and do real stories. I wish it were of more comfort that when right-wing dark money groups fund "citizen journalism" like this, they show they can't win arguments on the merits.

Two high-level intelligence officials state that our intelligence and defense workers have an "unbelievable" amount of child pornography on their work computers -- but the NSA professes ignorance of exactly how widespread that problem might be. That sure does seem unlikely, doesn't it? We know what that means -- and, sadly, it almost certainly does not mean that the NSA's spying powers aren't all they're cracked up to be. But if you can't protect children from sexual predators, you certainly have no business purporting to protect America from terrorists.

Hoo boy, Exxon suggests that the lawsuits against them for lying about climate change violate their First Amendment rights, and numerous right-wing media outlets parrot their argument. But the charge against them is that they knew climate change was happening, but told their investors and shareholders the precise opposite, which we would more aptly describe as fraud. And just as the First Amendment doesn't protect you from any criticism you deserve, it doesn't protect you from any fraud you've committed, either. (And I feel compelled to mention, in light of yesterday's discussion of habeus corpus, that while individuals on death row only get a year to appeal their convictions, corporations get for-freaking-ever to challenge decisions against them.)

Donald Trump advises West Virginians not to vote in tomorrow's primary, because he's got it all wrapped up now. All this work we do fighting the notion that democracies and elections are about the politicians and not about the people, and here comes this bigmouth to poop all over it. Never mind that West Virginians will be selecting gubernatorial nominees tomorrow -- apparently, they don't matter, because they're not Trump. What disgusting narcissism. (Yeah, he walked it back later, but is it too much to ask that nominees not be narcissists in the first place? We expect that from each other, after all.)

Finally, Alexa Strabuk, writing at Yes! magazine, takes us back to mid-1960s California, and the Filipino grape laborers who went on strike for better pay and working conditions and ultimately helped give birth to the United Farm Workers. The owners of the Delano grape field where they worked kept Filipino and Chicano workers separated, so that they could use one group to break any strikes conducted by the other -- but Filipino workers reached out to Cesar Chavez's National Farm Workers Association, and though the two groups experienced tension over the next five hard years, they won largely because (in one contemporary's words) of the "genuine solidarity" between the two groups. Sadly, Filipino involvement in these struggles has been largely forgotten over the years -- at least partly because Our Glorious Elites would rather not tell stories about different people uniting to fight them. But not entirely forgotten, of course.

Around the table: the "real Donald Trump," and other absurdities.

From the "Nobody Could Have Predicted It Except a Sentient Life Form" file: Donald Trump's handlers are now telling the Republican establishment that the billionaire has been "projecting an image" which they should not confuse with The Real Donald Trump, who is exactly like them. And then Mr. Trump tells a Connecticut that no way no how is he going to "tone it down," which I presume is also part of the scam. Seriously, though, at the point they try to persuade people that they should ignore bad behavior in public precisely because it's calculated to be drama, they argue for a politics in which we shouldn't make any decisions using evidence, but rather look for some "ironic" "calculation" lurking behind the evidence. And that's not happening, not in my America.

Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe issues executive order re-enfranchising some 200,000 convicted felons. His order only applies to those who have completed their sentences, and certainly the timing is a bit suspicious, but then again the drive to disenfranchise felons in the first place was also largely a matter of partisanship. And I can't abide the critics who say his order is too broad, because these felons should never have lost the right to vote at all. If society assigns you a debt to repay, society doesn't get to punish you again just because one party wants to win, or some folks want to ventilate their rage a little more.

Surprise, surprise, Philadelphia's Mayor wants to fund universal preschool with a soda tax -- and Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have the reactions you'd expect. Though my right-wing readers will likely find this surprising again, I don't like the soda tax either -- as Mr. Sanders says, it hits the poor harder than it hits the wealthy, which is exactly the opposite of how taxes ought to be. And not only are there better ways to fund universal preschool, there's a better way to fight childhood obesity -- like ending the massive welfare handouts for big ag corporations that allow cheap high-fructose corn syrup to exist, and allow soda to remain at literally the same price since 1981. I know Mrs. Clinton would never advocate for such a thing, and I'm afraid Mr. Sanders wouldn't, either, which is why we went with the corporate tax angle.

Adam Johnson, who's proving quite a find for FAIR, tells us to "Forget 'Bernie Bros' -- The Worst Trolls Work in Corporate Media." I don't know about "worst" trolls -- there are some pretty bad trolls out there! -- but the "liberal" media columnist justifying a ridiculous headline by saying "provocative headlines provoke" is, as Mr. Johnson says, the "the living, breathing definition of trolling," because it seeks to manipulate rather than inform. I tend to avert my eyes from headlines saying someone "called out" so-and-so, or headlines ending in "and it was glorious," for pretty much the same reason -- I'd rather have authentic emotional reactions to what I read.

Finally, Erin Sagen, writing at Yes!, discusses some of the challenges farmers face as they try to save seeds in a sustainable manner. This is a big deal not just because of big corporate "suicide seeds," or seeds designed not to yield more or better crops but simply to withstand proprietary pesticides, or big ag lawsuits against farmers whose seeds have been contaminated by GMO seeds and are thus "guilty" of "intellectual property theft" -- it's also a big deal because big corporate farming, in its quest to redistribute farmer wealth upward to its executives, frowns on things like crop rotation and crop diversity as "costs." I long for the day when "cost-benefit analyses" accurately represent the real cost of what corporations do to our economy, our civilization, and our lives.

Around the table: what being on the White House "kill list" is like, and other horrors.

Malik Jalal, writing in the Independent, tells you how being on the White House's "kill list" has affected his life. Put yourself in his shoes, and imagine keeping away from your family so they don't get "accidentally" bombed to death by drones, and you'll find it a sobering assessment. If you're wondering if Mr. Jalal has maybe "done something" to be on the list, ask yourself who decides who's on a "kill list," or whether the very existence of a "kill list" doesn't actually rid the world of terrorists but merely creates more of them.

FDIC and the Fed find that five big banksters have failed to come up with "credible" plans to wind their businesses down in case of financial instability, and as such can be subject to stricter regulation and/or breaking up in to smaller banks. That's ostensibly so these banksters can't crash the economy with their bad gambles and then receive massive taxpayer bailouts, like, you know, in 2008. But the two agencies couldn't agree on Goldman Sachs and gave Citigroup a shot at fixing the flaws in their plan. Perhaps not coincidentally, Goldman Sachs and Citigroup have been perhaps the most connected banksters in our government (and worst actors in our economy) for many years.

President Obama threatens veto of H.R. 2666, the bill supposedly concerning broadband rate regulation that actually seriously injures, if not kills, internet freedom. "(C)able and phone companies could claim that FCC rules against blocking and throttling -- concepts at the core of federal net neutrality protections -- amount to rate regulation," author Sam Gustin writes, putting it rather more succinctly than I did yesterday. The House plans to vote on H.R. 2666 today (you can call your House Reps using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page), so we'll see if it can get a veto-proof majority. Then, of course, it still has to go through the Senate.

The Guardian looks at some 70 million comments left on its articles over the last decade, and finds -- surprise, surprise! -- that of the 10 writers who receive the most abusive comments, eight are women and the other two are black men. The Guardian doesn't just block threats to life and safety, but also abusive speech toward the author, ad hominem attacks on both journalists and other commenters, "dismissive trolling" (which mocks the author or the reader for thinking the subject serious enough to merit coverage), and "whataboutery" (the kind of thing that earns the "are you conceding the point by changing the subject" response from me). That's pretty hardcore -- I tend to let people argue or behave badly and then ridicule them for it, but in any case, the First Amendment only protects you from your government, not from The Guardian's (or anyone else's) rules for commenting.

Finally, Three New York Times op-ed writers ask "Did Blacks Really Endorse the 1994 Crime Bill?" Short answer: not really. Somewhat longer answer: black leaders did, in fact, want less crime (duh), but also wanted more of the kind of investment in their communities that might have actually curtailed crime for the long term, and, well, they didn't get that. They got longer sentences instead. And "(w)hen blacks ask for better policing," the writers say, "legislators tend to hear more instead. It's true that a lot of black Congressfolk voted for it, just as a lot of Medicare-for-All advocates voted for the Affordable Care Act -- but that's hardly a signal of devotion.

Around the table: containing good news for law-and-order types.

Maryland Court of Special Appeals issues opinion stating not only that police must get a warrant before using a "stingray" -- a device that acts like a cell phone tower for the purpose of gathering cell phone user information -- but must "fully explain to the court what exactly the device does and how it is used." People who don't think that's an onerous duty for police probably opposed the Miranda ruling, too. Also, police can't apply for a pen registers (which only authorize collection of phone numbers) and then try to collect other info using the stingray, because that's dishonest -- almost as dishonest as cooking up nonexistent "informants" to "provide" the info a stingray gathered. And police can no longer hide behind nondisclosure agreements with stingray manufacturers to avoid doing the right thing. It's a shame that the "war on terror" and the "war on drugs" have complicated what really are very simple matters, but good for Maryland.

Economist Robert Pollin says "Bernie Sanders Will Make the Economy Great Again." How? Single-payer, Medicare-for-all health care would dramatically reduce our country's spending on health care; a $15/hour minimum wage would vastly increase worker spending power with minimal rise in business costs; a financial transaction (or "Robin Hood") tax would raise a lot of money and reduce financial speculation; and gross domestic product would go up in a way that would actually favor workers, rather than banksters, for once. You probably knew all that already, but it's good to have it all in one place.

Kate Gould, writing at TruthOut, proposes a "non-military" solution to the ISIS problem. More bombs and more ground troops might get right-wingers hard, but it also creates more ISIS militants, who look at the carnage all around them and decide ISIS must be right. Ending the wars in Syria and Iraq, stemming the flow of arms to these and nearby regions, stopping Iraq's oppression of Sunni-majority areas, and fighting poverty in the Middle East will (to use a simpler metaphor than the "artichoke" metaphor Ms. Gould employs) starve ISIS of the oxygen it needs to make fire.

The New York Times observes a considerable amount of infighting among nominal conservatives -- mainly about whether conservatism has become too intolerant and too prone to believing the wildest lies. Many of the folks who say conservatism is just fine, thank you, don't deserve to be called "conservative," and Jonah Goldberg weighs in by saying TEH LIBRULZ ARE WORSEZ!!!!!! And if you came across the phrase "epistemic closure" and decided it meant political correctness, well, I wouldn't blame you.

Finally, Trump supporters grope and pepper-spray a 15-year-old girl at a rally in Janesville, WI. Yeah, she was a protestor, but does that make it OK to grope underage girls and then spray pepper in their faces? Let's see Teh Donald talk his way out of this one. Is it too much to hope that praising his supporters' "energy" or saying the girl was "asking for it" just won't do this time?

Around the table: what "free" trade is really all about, and other horrible truths.

Dean Baker reminds us that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade pact "has little to do with trade" and more to do with "putting in place a pro-business regulatory structure." You see, tariffs aren't so much a "free trade barrier" anymore, but those pesky clean air and clean water and antitrust and fair use laws are, to the corporatists who drafted the pact -- not that they'll come out and say so, of course, since you'll want to punch them in the nose if they do. Rather, they'll use more scare numbers -- 18,000 OF TEH TARIFFZ DESTROYED!!!!, including the infamous Brunei ski boot tariff, a stain on civilization's honor since time immemorial.

Vulture capitalists -- those extraordinary folks who buy up a nation's defaulted debt for pennies on the dollar in order to extort vast sums governments can't pay without selling off public services -- have reached a "deal" with the new Argentine government. The shame of it is that Argentina actually did pretty well after its 2002 default, mainly by refusing to cave to outlandish creditor demands, but then 2009 hit, you remember that, and then another bad spell helped put a right-wing government in, one more willing to cave to folks like Paul Singer, until recently a Marco Rubio man and now standing to make nearly four times what he "invested." A certain American judge and a certain Obama Administration cabinet agency were also no help to good Argentinians.

In an unexpected development, the Department of Justice has apparently backed down in its fight to get Apple to create a key the FBI can use to unlock any encrypted cell phone. Sadly, not because they realized they were wrong, but because they think they can unlock the phone of the San Bernardino shooter another way -- hopefully a way that protects the privacy of the masses, though I'm not holding my breath. This "other way" might also fail, which means we'll be back to square one. We'll likely know in about two weeks' time.

Annalee Newitz, writing at ArsTechnica, describes Facebook's attempt to "establish an ethnic affinity," though not of course an actual ethnicity, to its users. Not to racially profile, but to make money, and praise the Lord it's only about making money! Also, like so many things in this Brave New World, this sort of marketing isn't opt-in: "(e)ven when a Facebook user says they like #BlackLivesMatter, they don't feel like asking to opt in to an ethnic identity," Ms. Newitz says, "it's just one of many interests that define that person." I wonder what "ethnic affinity" Facebook projects onto my newsfeed's endless stream of death notices and music videos.

Finally, Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall takes us in his wayback machine to the antics of southern California's Wally George, a right-wing TV host who presaged so many right-wing talk radio and cable news blowhards -- and Donald Trump. Helmet hair, limp liberals, wrestling-style bombast, security throwing guests out -- sound familiar? Of course I remember Morton Downey, Jr. gaining a similar following in the late 1980s with a similar act. Happily, "digging right-wing blowhards who yell and scream and throw things, ironically or maybe not" is one of the many childish things I've put away.

Around the table: the art of the apology, and other matters.

Comcast and AT&T lobbyists kill a Tennessee bill that would have allowed city-owned electricity utilities to offer broadband services outside the reach of those utilities' electric service. Because Big Gummint regulations are just fine when they allow big corporations to make more money without earning it! No, really, they're not earning it -- what, are they providing better service at lower prices than Chattanooga's famous municipal broadband service? No, but they are paying their executives a lot more.

Surprise, surprise, ProPublica finds that doctors who get more corporate cash really do tend to prescribe more name-brand drugs even when generic versions exist. Right-wingers like to tell you that it's OK that doctors take money from corporations, because they won't let that cloud their judgment. What, don't you trust people? they like to say. But when it comes to sex, these same people believe people (particularly women, I've noticed) are irredeemably corrupt.

Study of federal data finds that charters schools suspend black kids four times as often as white kids. (Disabled kids get a similarly raw deal, which is unnerving when you consider they hardly get into charter schools in the first place.) If you're inclined to think black kids are just that much more ill-behaved than white kids, please slap yourself, and then consider that black kids get suspended for things that white kids don't. Public schools aren't much better at the racial disparity, as it happens, but as a citizen you have more control over that.

Bingham County, Idaho sheriff objects to state legislative efforts to mandate rape-kit testing because, in his words, "the majority of our rapes that are called in, are actually consensual sex." And then he provides reams of data to support his claim! I kid, of course -- you can't prove what ain't. Sheriff Rowland then took to Facebook to apologize, sort of -- he says he "misspoke" but also says he was "misunderstood," and adds that "I did a 10-minute interview and this is what came out of it," when I don't suppose he'd excuse a middle-aged murderer because he lived a 50-year life and the murder is "just what came out of it." He also said he'd been "cyberbullied" and his family threatened, which is repugnant, but you don't solicit pity while you're saying you're sorry. I can't be the only person who sees that.

Finally, a Republican writes an open letter entitled "This is Not My Republican Party." You probably can guess the gist of it -- the party he knows isn't xenophobic, violent, undignified, etc. -- and it's a better apology than the one from the previous paragraph, but this act played a lot better 12 years ago, when the Bush Mobb was a much worse parasite on the GOP host than Donald Trump will ever be. Indeed, I'm tempted to say, now you're sorry? Where were you when Republicans called anti-war Americans traitors and terrorist sympathizers and haters of America?

Action: GMO labeling, email privacy, and the "liberal" media.

Word on the street is that the Senate will vote this morning on S. 2609, the Senate bill that would establish yet another voluntary-labeling regimen for food containing genetically-modified organisms and would prevent states from enforcing their own mandatory labeling regimens. Plus, this "voluntary" labeling system wouldn't use, you know, words, like you'd expect a label to do, but QR codes, which you may or may not have the technology to read when you're in the store. Democrat weaklings probably think QR codes are a clever way to trick more big ag corporations voluntarily label their GMOs. This bill made the Senate Legislative Calendar a little over two weeks ago without so much as a committee vote, and I couldn't even find this bill on Congress.gov until lately; why, it's almost as if they've got something to hide. Well, their secret is out, and Consumers Union helps you call your Senators and tell them to reject "voluntary" GMO-labeling regimens that will continue to keep consumers in the dark.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell House Judiciary Chair Bob Goodlatte to allow a vote on H.R. 699, the Email Privacy Act, then Save the Fourth still helps you do that. H.R. 699 now has an astounding 312 sponsors, including lead sponsor Kevin Yoder, Republican of Kansas's Third District and 194 other Republicans; that not only fulfills Dennis Hastert's stupid "majority of the majority" rule for bill consideration, but represents a veto-proof majority of the House, were President Obama to be so stupid to veto the bill. Moreover, the bill would actually do good things -- it would require our government to get a warrant to read any of our emails, even the ones left on ISP servers; currently our government can take possession of any email left on a server for over 180 days, under the notion that it's been "abandoned," a notion that made sense 30 years ago but makes none now. Naturally, a popular, bipartisan bill that does good works on behalf of government's owners, the American people, can't even get a vote. So let's remind them whom they serve.

Finally, Presente helps you tell CBS to fire its CEO, Les Moonves, after he said that Donald Trump's clown show "may not be good for America," but is very good for CBS's coffers. I do not understand why the "liberal" media seems only to care about money. Do they not care about protestors getting the crap kicked out of them by Trump blueshirts while Mr. Trump eggs them on? Do they not care about all the insults and bullying and whining coming from someone who aims to lead and represent the greatest country on Earth? Do they not understand that the Trump campaign would be long over by now if they, the so-called "liberal" media, didn't cover everything his immature antics like they were Very Serious Events to Be Discussed in a Very Serious Manner? I worry, of course, that the answers to these three questions, respectively, are "no," "no," and "yes, and they don't care," but I guess I really would prefer to believe that our "liberal" media elites are so drunk on post-modern irony that they really do not see their own decadence. So let's help them see.

UPDATE. S. 2609 failed on a cloture vote this morning; 49 Senators voted against cloture, including seven Republicans -- though one of them was Mitch McConnell, and his vote against cloture allows him (as Majority Leader) to bring the bill up again. So the anti-GMO labeling bill is dead -- for now. But those of you who mobilized on very short notice made a difference today.

Action: in which we fight at least two kinds of poisoning.

Moms Rising helps you tell our Presidential candidates to stop all the insults, shouting, and bullying already. Moms Rising's latest email missive reads: "my son would be sent to the principal's office if he shouted, insulted, bullied and interrupted his classmates the way we've seen in some of the Presidential debates. Yes, that's right, the behavior of some candidates for the highest office in our land is setting a bad example for an eight year old." And we lose sight of this -- that we're not just creating a culture for ourselves, but for our posterity as well, and civility is an essential tool to help us carry our past with us into our future. You may well say a sick, immoral, and decadent culture that celebrates gluttonous sensationalism created Trumpcruzrubioetal, but we have no hope of changing that if we don't speak out about it. And I'll certainly brook no fashionably post-modern pish-posh about how we're "naive" to expect our Presidential candidates to be role models. If you're an American, you're a role model -- whether you want to be or not.

Meanwhile, Color of Change helps you tell the Department of Housing and Urban Development to regulate lead in public housing. You might think this was settled already -- we've moved away from lead paint and leaded gasoline, and even the Flint affair seems a matter of a specific state government's incompetence and venality. But if you read the actual petition to HUD which you'd be supporting if you sign Color of Change's contact tool, well, you'll find it a bit eye-opening. The CDC now finds the only safe amount of lead poisoning is no lead poisoning, but HUD regulations don't reflect that. HUD also currently exempts "zero-bedroom dwelling units" from scrutiny, but these could include studios, efficiencies, dorms, and sublets, so that's a pretty big exemption. And HUD currently conducts only visual inspections of homes built before 1978, when a regimen of sample testing would do better. And remember to remind your Tea Party uncle that these are the kind of regulations that keep people safe and healthy.

Around the table: illustrating the right response to various kinds of dystopia.

You've heard folks say "Donald Trump says the things other people wish they could?" Well, Lindy West, writing at the New York Times, surveys the xenophobia and homophobia rampant not just in Mr. Trump's utterings but among attendees of Mr. Trump's rallies, and wonders "What Are Trump Fans Really 'Afraid' to Say?" Conclusion: "They’re not 'afraid'; they’re leading Mr. Trump as much as following him. They called him into being, not the other way around." And he in turn calls them into being, and they call him into being, and so on, and so on -- until, God forbid, some Trump blueshirt just ups and kills someone at a rally. Or maybe not even then.

ProPublica continues to offer its (recently updated) "Everything You've Ever Wanted to Know About Voter ID Laws." It's pretty good, but it's not everything -- it doesn't mention the seniors born outside hospitals who don't have birth certificates or the massive DMV closures in Wisconsin after the Voter ID bill passed there (though it does refer to the mass DMV closures in Alabama). I think this is all going to be a bigger deal than most folks think -- Wisconsin, for example, won't be a slam dunk for Democrats in 2016 if turnout turns out to be a problem.

Suraj Sazawal, at the BORDC blog, writes about "predictive policing," where software "predicts" where crimes will occur and possibly even who will commit them. It sure is a good thing that past crimes occur in a vacuum mercifully free of contexts like poverty, population density, and police treatment. It's also a good thing that "predictive policing" could never result in a self-fulfilling prophecy where police arrest the same kinds of folks for the same kinds of crimes over and over again -- or, perhaps, arrest people wrongly to prove the software "works." Please, good readers, let me know if I'm not being sarcastic enough.

In a peripherally-related note, Bloomberg BusinessWeek's Robert Koller wonders what will happen when prohibitively-expensive surveillance equipment becomes cheap enough for anyone to buy. From text-message phishing in China to opposition party surveillance in India, we're already seeing some of the effects. And in America, "(l)ocating a Kardashian...is something any self-respecting TMZ intern would love to be able to do," and "there are lots of people who want to spy on their neighbors or their spouses or their girlfriends." Yeah, dystopia sure is going to be a lot of fun -- and I'm not sure it'll be better if everyone has the ability to spy on everyone else.

Finally, John Perkins has updated his 2006 book, The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man, because "because things have changed so much during this past decade. The cancer has spread throughout the United States as well as the rest of the world. The rich have gotten richer and everyone else has gotten poorer in real terms." You'll likely nod in recognition at much of what he says -- that "we go deeply into debt" as "the World Bank and its sister institutions coerce other countries to go deeply into debt," that the "death economy" depends on "wars or the threat of war, debt, and the rape of the earth's resources," that this "death economy" is "driven by concepts that have become accepted as gospel." He has hope, though, as do we all, because how can we live otherwise?

Around the table: starring stupid government contractors, stupid "liberal" media elites, and stupid racists.

What is "The Biggest Iraq War Scandal Nobody's Talking About," according to Liam O'Donoghue at Salon? That our soldiers who worked near "burn pits" now tend to suffer life-threatening illnesses. What are burn pits? Holes in the ground where garbage got burned, garbage ranging from plastic to Styrofoam to batteries to human corpses. And who operated them on our government's behalf? Why, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown, and Root, of course! You'd have thought Agent Orange would've taught us something, but apparently all lessons fly out the window when there's money to be made -- particularly money to be made at the expense of both the taxpayer and our troops.

Pope Francis I calls for the worldwide abolition of the death penalty, saying that "(t)he commandment 'you shall not kill" has absolute value and applies to both the innocent and the guilty." Haters who stand at the ready to condemn the Pope because it's a day ending in "y" should note that the Catholic Church has actually been evolving in this direction for over a decade. And I think I've come to the same place -- I've long said we should work on rehabilitating souls rather than merely locking them away from the rest of us, but even at the point where the best rehabilitative efforts fail, I can no longer justify killing someone.

You've heard that liberal economists have hated on Bernie Sanders's economic plan, and that their number includes even the incomparable Paul Krugman? Dave Johnson, writing at Futureblog, explains how this happened. Long story short: even the best of Our Glorious Elites seem very afraid of profound change, which the Sanders plan (which would tax the rich a lot harder, cut health care costs, and spend more on infrastructure-building) certainly would be. And using the lousy economic figures of the Bush/Obama years to attack the Sanders plan -- when neither Messrs. Bush nor Obama ever even tried anything on that scale -- is, to quote a famous philosopher, "most illogical."

Daily Kos diarist Barbara Morrill finds that the "Trump rhetoric" that upsets NBC's Chuck Todd isn't his racist rhetoric, his sexist rhetoric, his nativist rhetoric, or his militarist rhetoric -- but his anti-press rhetoric. Why, that's the only thing I sorta-almost like about Donald Trump! I'm guessing Mr. Todd finds anti-media tantrums worse than the others because he's supposed to be objective and not "complain" about the others. To the rest of us, though, it looks like Mr. Todd only finds rhetoric "dangerous" when he's about to be on the blunt end of it. Typical "liberal" media self-absorption.

Finally, in a not-tremendously-shocking development, a right-wing radio host/Republican Congressional candidate in Minnesota has said a number of racist and sexist things over the years. I remember Robert Welch of the John Birch Society saying more or less the same sort of thing 50 years ago about black folks actually having it pretty good in America as far as material possessions go! It is true that your money goes a lot farther in Ghana (and India, and Iran, and Thailand, and most other places on Earth) than it does here, but how does that prove blacks should just shut up and be content with the knowledge that their next contact with police might be their last? I mean, I thought we aspired to better things in America.

Around the table: "terrorizing the public for the terrorists," and other absurdities.

Umair Haque argues that Donald Trump has already peaked, because (and this summary won't do his argument justice) he's a troll and the only strategy available to a troll, after a time, is to say ever more outrageous things, which means he will inevitably alienate even his most loyal supporters. I hope Mr. Haque is right, but the real problem is bigger -- the folks who give attention to trolls like Mr. Trump simply move from one object of rage to the next, from terrorism to the deficit to Obamacare to regulations to immigration to Black Lives Matter to refugees, and Our Glorious Elites seem to have no problem finding new people for haters to hate and "populist" vehicles for their hate.

Adam Johnson, writing at Fair.org, finds the "liberal" media far too willing to "terrorize the public for the terrorists." I wouldn't call terrorism a "post-modern" crime, because the phrase "post-modern" sure sounds a lot like "post-now," but it is true that "blowing up a market 1,000 years ago, for example, before mass communication, would have been entirely pointless. To properly terrorize a population, the population must be aware of the threat, and to be aware of the threat relatively quickly, mass communication is required for economy of scale to be achieved." You'd hope the "liberal" media would be more aware of that, lest they go The Way of the Troll.

"People are Demanding Non-PC Comments on Terrorism," writes Danielle Egnew, "So Here's the Mother of Them All." Maybe not quite "the mother of" -- the demiurge of, I'll say -- and of course I wish her rant were shorter, but yes it's annoying to hear people constantly whining about "political correctness" merely because they just want to be able to use slurs and still have people like them, and yes they need to "grow up emotionally." And I think saying "the terrorists have won" every time some right-winger fearmongers about refugees or "impending terrorist attacks" is a good idea.

Fox News morons try to land a punch on John Oliver after his lengthy rant debunking refugee-related hysteria from the right. And what do they pick on? His Englishness, of course -- which shows their desperation, as resorting to the personal attack first and foremost always shows desperation. Welcome to "then they fight you," Mr. Oliver!

I'm a little late to this party, obviously, but the Economic Policy Institute provides a handy primer for arguing politics with your Tea Party uncle. OK, sure, Thanksgiving was yesterday, but there are more holidays coming, so you can get plenty of practice dealing with inanities like what did unions ever do for us? or why can't the (sic) government tighten its belt like the rest of us? Of course, you won't need to cite all of these facts all at once -- quick answers to what did unions ever do for us? include "weekends" and "eight-hour days." It could turn into a Life of Brian routine right quick.

Finally, both Costco and Red Lobster say they won't sell genetically-modified salmon. Congratulate yourself if you were one of the many who helped pressure Costco to repudiate GMO salmon (a variety of which the FDA approved last week, as you probably know). A Friends of the Earth spokesperson cleverly says "the market is rejecting GMO salmon," which of course we already know from big food corporations' efforts to fight mandatory GMO labeling and their utter refusal to voluntarily label GMO foods.

Around the table: some necessary truths about refugees, welfare, and Donald Trump.

There are "No Excuses, No Exceptions" to "The Moral Imperative to Offer Refuge," writes Joseph G. Ramsey in Counterpunch. I can think of at least two readers who might be amused to see Kant's categorical imperative put to some good use, but Mr. Ramsey's characterization of what rageheads who would ban refugees really say -- "Let these people fend for themselves. Let them suffer. Let them sink into the mud of ramshackle refugee camps. Let them be crushed and flayed against iron fences and razor wire. Let them be swallowed by the seas. Let them starve where they squat" -- hits the point head-on. Of course, the "liberal" media would never air such a notion -- it's too hardcore for them.

After Trump supporters beat up a protestor shouting "black lives matter" at a Birmingham, AL rally, the man himself says "(m)aybe he should have been roughed up," because what the protestor was doing was "disgusting" and he was "a troublemaker, looking to make trouble" (that last part, apparently, is for folks who don't know what a troublemaker is). If Jeb Bush wants to position himself as the "serious" Republican candidate, he could try bashing Mr. Trump for approving of the beating of a protestor. He might also add that "being obnoxious" and a "troublemaker" aren't grounds for getting beaten up anywhere at any time. And he might even add that the media enables Donald Trump's antics, to the point where if Mr. Trump actually snapped someone's neck with his bare hands, the media would call the event "provocative."

Kasia Tarcyznska, writing at the Good Jobs First blog, explains how Kraft Heinz stands to gobble up $20 million in welfare handouts from Iowa taxpayers even though they're planning to eliminate 900 Iowan jobs. The good news? This is actually controversial in Iowa! And the Mayor of Davenport, IA (where Kraft Heinz will rebuild its existing plant) reminds us that without jobs, there's fewer taxpayer money to give away in the first place, almost like that's the idea.

Alec MacGillis, writing in ProPublica, tries to explain why so many areas of America with so many poor folks who depend on government assistance keep electing politicians determined to slash it. Long story short: poor folks who actually get assistance aren't voting, but the folks a step above them economically, who look down on them as "moochers," are -- and "these voters are consciously opting against a Democratic economic agenda that they see as bad for them and good for other people — specifically, those undeserving benefit-recipients in their midst." It'd be nice, also, if Democrats would use their power when they get it to force corporations to create good jobs and pay workers more so they don't need government assistance as much.

Finally, speaking of the relationship between welfare and work, an MIT/Harvard study evaluates seven welfare programs for working folks (more precisely, "cash transfer" programs) and finds that precisely zero of them "discourage(d) work." Six of the seven programs were "conditional" cash transfer programs (i.e., money from the state if you get your kids vaccinated and/or send them to school), but the unconditional cash transfer program from Mexico also saw no change in employment levels or hours worked due to the program. Of course, we're talking very small amounts of money in these programs -- the kind of welfare banksters and other corporations get are huge enough that they really do discourage work.

Around the table: the endless folly of right-wingers.

Hillary Clinton releases plan to slow rising drug costs. Like her student loan debt plan, it's as unwieldy as Obamacare and, also like Obamacare, will probably do some good. Here's a campaign slogan: Jeb give you wankery, but Hillary gives you wonkery! But, ah, you know what else would stop runaway drug prices? Single-payer health care, that's what.

Ho hum, Marco Rubio thinks Pope Francis's "moral authority" only extends to things like abortion and "the importance of marriage" and certainly not economics. Mr. Rubio wants you to believe that more tax cuts for the rich alleviates poverty, but wanting you to believe that "morality" has only to do with the narrow buttons Republicans always push is even worse than that. At least he's having a public spat with Donald Trump, which lessens the possibility that Mr. Trump will pick him as his running mate, and having Marco Rubio as the VP nominee (I don't think he's quitting the Senate for any other reason!) is almost as bad as having Scott Walker as the VP nominee.

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones evaluates Jeb Bush's claim that it's just too hard to start a business in America, and finds it wanting. Those of us who started a business in one day already find Mr. Bush's claim surprising, of course, but read the piece anyway, so you can be reminded that (for example) it's bad to generalize about an entire country by using data from two cities, and it's also bad to cite "authorities" if their science is bad.

Martin Shkreli is so hated in America that even Donald Trump piles on, calling Mr. Shkreli "spoiled," "smug," "disgusting," and a "disgrace," concluding, also, that "(h)e is zero. He is nothing." And that, folks, is why Donald Trump has led in polls for so long -- because he talks about Martin Shkreli the way a lot of folks would talk about him. I'm not terribly motivated to be polite about Martin Shkreli, either.

Finally, Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe got very, very upset when folks described a man he invited to testify at a committee hearing as a "white supremacist." Mr. Metcalfe insisted the man was actually a "white nationalist," and added that "(t)o say somebody is a nationalist and for the independence of their country and a patriot to (sic) defending their country, is a lot different from saying somebody is a racist," leaving us to wonder exactly which white nation Mr. Metcalfe's guest hails from. Or should I say heils from?

Around the table: paid sick leave, media posturing, an embarrassing video, a law-bomb, and another "religious freedom" suit that should fail.

President Obama signs executive order mandating corporations that contract with our government give its workers at least seven paid sick leave days. Cue the Republicans shouting AMURIKAN CAESURZZZ!!!!!, though they led the cheering for warrantless wiretapping and NSA spying. And if they want to claim that he's "circumvented the legislative process," they'll have to show, exactly, where Congress hasn't already delegated authority to the Executive branch to set such standards for federal contracts. Bet they don't.

Ho hum, Fox News punditoids denounce Mr. Obama for ignoring the shooting of a police officer who was just filling up his damn gas tank -- for several days after Mr. Obama condemned the shooting. He even called the officer's widow, but apparently living in the modern world means that if you're a media punditoid, you never have to admit you're wrong.

Conservative party candidate/appliance technician in Canada bows out of Toronto-area parliamentary race after video of him urinating in a customer's coffee cup surfaces. In America, you could get away with this, because plenty of punditoids would happily go on TV afterward and say, well, maybe the customer deserved it, and we've all wanted to do that to a customer, amirite? -- as if peeing into someone's mug is ever acceptable behavior, from anyone.

And now, for more from the government-is-incompetent-and-we're-gonna-prove-it-by-being-incompetent crowd in Kansas: the state's entire court system will be defunded, per a 2014 law restricting some state Supreme Court powers. How? The law states that if any court struck it down, the whole state court system will be defunded as a result -- and a district judge just did that. What do we call that, kids? A hostage situation. We also call it petty. And if any liberal ever attached the legislative equivalent of an IED to a law, the "liberal" media would suddenly see it exactly as I do.

Muslim flight attendant files suit after being suspended by her employer for refusing to serve alcohol to her customers, because of her "religious beliefs." I find folks who fervently oppose alcohol fairly sympathetic, and the co-worker who filed the complaint against her may be a better target for a lawsuit than her employer, but the same logic holds for this situation as it does for pharmacists who won't fill birth control scripts and county clerks who won't issue gay marriage licenses: consuming alcohol is legal (if you're over 21), consuming alcohol generally doesn't violate the religious beliefs of your customers, and if your "conscience" leads you to oppose doing that part of your job, you need to find another job.

Around the table: partisans more entrenched, the right moving further right, corporations squashing people -- but at least Pat Buchanan hates "free" trade, too.

Patrick Buchanan notices that the right made a lot of noises about fighting President Obama's alleged "usurpations" of power, yet carries his water on "free" trade fast-tracking. I know, right? Wasn't the Tea Party supposed to be anti-corporate and suspicious of foreign entanglements? I wonder why they're failing that philosophy on "free" trade -- oh, and also on net neutrality, the "war on terror," the PATRIOT Act, and NSA spying.

United Food and Commercial Workers ask NLRB to investigate a raft of recent temporary WalMart closings. WalMart says they closed the stores to fix their "plumbing," but the UFCW says they closed the stores because of pro-union activism therein, and I'd feel pretty stupid if I gave WalMart the benefit of the doubt about this matter, especially after it closed a store in Quebec where workers had organized all those years ago.

Jesse Eisinger profiles Tony Menendez, a Halliburton accountant who spent almost a decade of his life trying to prove accounting irregularities there, winning a measure of vindication at the end. But don't be tempted to say forget it, Jake, it's Halliburton when you get to the part where Halliburton changed an employee's official testimony, because I bet a lot of corporations do that when they get in trouble. And before being tempted to say government can't do anything right, recall that Mr. Menendez met with a lot of Bush Mobb bureaucrats. A forced arbitration agreement also figures in the story.

Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) gets not one but two primary challengers in her upcoming House primary, one of whom got over 40% of the vote last time despite being a gadfly. I'm old enough to remember when Renee Ellmers was a Tea Party darling; now she has challengers from further right calling her a "progressive," just because she got it in her head once or twice that being in government requires actual governing. This is right-wing swordfighting at its worst. It's also why you don't "reach out" to haters.

Finally, study finds that "most partisans...act like fans in sports rivalries instead of making political choices based on issues." Which you already knew, but hey, we're here to change that. Slightly fewer than four in 10 of these partisans also say it's OK to use just about any tactic to win -- but one observer suggests that "(i)f our politicians are polarized and uncivil, maybe it's because many voters are polarized and uncivil." I'm pretty sure it's the other way around -- after all, politicians get attention and money with their bad behavior in public, whereas boons don't accrue so quickly to voters who act similarly.

Around the table: five examples of How Not to Be, plus a possible Alzheimer's breakthrough.

Ho hum, a ProPublica/Washington Post investigation finds New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's record on "fiscal responsibility" to be, well, not quite what he says it is. When the three big credit agencies downgrade your state nine times in six years, you know some shenanigans are going on, but read the whole thing, and learn how many times Mr. Christie, contrary to his persona, has settled for gimmicks and one-time fixes in his budgets.

New York state AG Eric Schneiderman sends warning letters to a baker's dozen of big box retailers for putting its employees in an "on-call" scheduling system, where workers don't know if they're working or not until the last minute. Corporations supposedly like such systems because it gives them more "flexibility" -- though workers don't get the same amount of flexibility in paying their bills. That eluded their calculation for some reason.

Idaho legislators kill a child support bill over absurd concerns that passing the bill would leave it open to ZOMG SHARIA LAWZ!!!!! The end result? Idaho may lose millions of dollars in federal funding to help find and process child support cases. This is how rageheads get attention for themselves now: they call everything Sharia law, and consequences for people other than themselves be damned.

Granville, MI car repair owner says he won't provide service to "openly" gay people, which leaves open the possibility, I suppose, that closeted gay folks or not-very-gay-looking gay folk can still get their car fixed at his shop. Same old same old with this guy -- you're-the-racist-for-noticing-my-racism, "(o)ur rights as conservative (sic) Americans are being squashed more and more everyday." A lot of people want to be persecuted in America without doing any of the hard work that comes with being persecuted.

Right-wing video blogger says he's "probably" going to vote for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because he now has health insurance via the Affordable Care Act and Republicans want to take that away. To which I respond: asshole! Either your values mean something or they don't -- and if your values don't inconvenience you, they're not worth having.

Finally, Duke University scientists find a potential cause of Alzheimer's disease, one that may be treatable with a drug, no less. Apparently, in mice, the brain's immune cells go a little haywire and start devouring a nutrient called arginine that helps prevent the formation of the "plaques" in the brain associated with Alzheimer's. Further progress will take time, but it's an encouraging start.