Thieves in the Temple.

Horror and hope, 2018 edition.

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: with hard lessons and strange bellwethers.

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: our Administration writes another Democrat attack ad for them! And other tales.

Did you know that 49 states have the ability to bill prisoners for their stay when they get out? And 46 states can put you back in jail for failing to pay your five-digit "debt" to the state. I put "debt" in quotation marks for a reason: you pay your actual debt to society by serving your sentence. And if you get saddled with a $50,000 bill for the cost of incarcerating you, you'll almost certainly never make enough to pay it back (most criminals can't find work as banksters, after all). You can't work it off in prison, either, and certainly not at 50 cents an hour. But wait, there's more! The problem is even worse in states that have privatized their prisons. What a racket!

Ho hum, our President said that tax "reform" would bring $5 trillion back into America -- from corporations that stashed it overseas and pretended it was money made in foreign countries -- but a mere $147 billion has come back. Nobody could have predicted that, given the choice between paying a low percentage on their "foreign" profits and no percentage, corporations would choose the latter! Well, except anyone who thought about it. You like how our politicians act like there's just no way to make corporations pay the taxes they owe? Even though they routinely kill bills that would do that? (And, in a peripherally-related note, Administration economic advisor Larry Kudlow tells the Economic Club of New York that it'll be time to go after Medicare and Social Security after the midterms -- you know, since tax "reform" blew another hole in the budget, not that Mr. Kudlow will say that. His statement is, of course, a Democrat ad that writes itself, and thus a Democrat ad we're not terribly likely to see.)

Michigan's reactionary state legislature passes a paid sick leave law which also makes the minimum wage the same for tipped workers as for everyone else -- but labor activists aren't celebrating. Both of these initiatives were going to go before the voters in November, but now that the legislature has passed them, they're not -- and the legislature can now change the law with a simple majority, instead of the three-quarters supermajority they'd need to overturn laws passed via ballot initiatives. You know how politicians talk about "polishing this turd" when they support bills they know aren't perfect? Well, this is kinda the opposite of that. You might even call it "turding" a bill.

Lisa Song and Al Shaw at ProPublica inform us that Hurricane Florence is very likely to destroy homes that have already collected federally-funded flood insurance payments. And naturally climate change is going to make all that much, much worse. Remember that time John Stossel all but admitted he built a house on the beach so he could collect flood insurance payments? Good times! Seriously, you can't tell people where to live, but it seems to me you can tell developers where to build.

Verizon ends its membership in the notorious American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC) because of its association with the notorious David Horowitz. You may well be asking, as I did, "Stand Your Ground didn't do it, Voter ID didn't do it, climate change denialism didn't do it, but David Horowitz did?" Mr. Horowitz has, after all, been a sort of ambulance chaser of right-wing causes for decades. But, yeah, he says profoundly ugly crap that's unworthy of a civilized people. And anyway I'll take a hit to ALEC's pocketbook however I can get it.

Finally, Fareed Zakaria takes to the Washington Post an alleged "Threat to Democracy -- From the Left." How has this threat manifested itself? Well, two colleges disinvited right-wing speakers three years apart, the New Yorker changed its mind about having Steve Bannon on a panel last month, Roy Innis never got to debate William Shockley about racism in 1974 though he really really wanted to, and John Stuart Mill and Oliver Wendell Holmes said things about freedom of speech. Really, that's the whole argument. Here's a better, shorter one: the First Amendment only protects you from your government; it does not guarantee a public audience for your views, nor does it guarantee a reputation as a public intellectual. Even if one of our papers of record routinely prints your ramblings.

Around the table: we need ourselves more than we need a "blue wave," part 234.

We start with a warning about treating politics like we treat team sports: Aaron Rupar at ThinkProgress calls our President "clueless" for demanding that Apple avoid Chinese tariffs and price hikes on its products by "mak(ing) (their) products here," but he winds up defending Apple for sending parts to China for assembly because "workers there are paid much less than they would be in the United States." A lot of professional liberals won't reckon with the destruction wrought by "free" trade because our President happens to be on the right side of the issue much of the time despite being a Republican, but those of us who fight for good ideas and good policy, instead of Democratic ideas or Democratic policy, don't have this problem. And Mr. Rupar also assumes that higher costs inexorably lead to higher prices, like corporations don't routinely use the specter of "higher prices" to resist any worker wage hike or any worker safety regulation.

Another day, another study demonstrating how the Republican tax "reform" actually fattens the wallets of CEOs, not workers. This study, from our Federal Reserve, concerned the tax amnesty in the recent tax "reform," where corporations got to pay a lower tax rate on income they "repatriated" from "overseas," and it finds that, much like the 2004 tax amnesty, corporations didn't use their unearned tax break to create jobs, but to (a man does get tired of writing this) buy back stock, which delivers unearned money to shareholders and concentrates corporate decision-making power in fewer hands. Also, too, more money for stock buybacks means less money for investment in making-stuff-selling-stuff-saving-money, though doing these three things (call me old-fashioned!) actually makes economies work. (By "work," I also kinda mean "not jumping from one bubble to the next.")

The incomparable Umair Haque reminds us that it's not the "prole" who becomes a fascist but the "frustrated bourgeoisie," "(t)he one whom capitalism promised to make a capitalist -- but only did it to sell him on capitalism." My first thought, honestly, was that this point maps quite well onto the notion that it ain't the poor Middle Easterners who commit terrorism, but the middle-class Middle Easterners who watch the poor suffer. A lot of Nazi wannabes would be upset to hear how much they're like the guys who flew planes into buildings on 9.11, but not all of them. That doesn't mean the folks who aren't upset at the comparison are somehow "not racist"; it just means they admire evil.

And now from the "Blue Wave Won't Change Nothing" file: Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in line to become Speaker again if Democrats retake the House, announces she'll reimpose the "pay-go" rule for House budgets. That would be the rule the Republicans constantly ignore when it doens't suit them. Again: Democrats never get any of benefit from playing the role of "the reasonable ones," because Republicans just act crazier, the rage-added eat it up, and the "liberal" media covers the rage-addled like they're the only people in America. And if a "pay as you go" rule seems like gospel to you, then honestly account for all the times you went into debt to get ahead. You know, like those times you bought a house or took on a car loan or a college loan.

The notorious Nestlé corporation has told the Australian government that its efforts to root various forms of slavery and sexual servitude out of corporate supply chains could raise prices for consumers. Which is what, class? A manufactured hostage crisis -- don't make my suppliers stop using child labor, or the low price of your Crunch bar gets it! Then again, perhaps they were emboldened by the Australian government's apparent refusal to impose financial penalties for modern slavery practices. Give big corporations an inch, and they'll take your past, present, and future.

Finally, Robert E Gutsche Jr at The Conversation reminds us that the latest Bob Woodward book about our Administration doesn't really tell us anything new. He's right to denounce our "liberal" media for caring about little other than salacious "scoops," but I wish his call for "journalism that joins the dots of bad language, misfires, and intentional wrongdoing to larger systems of power and to individuals who can be held accountable" was a bit more specific, criticism of salacious journalism being itself a species of salacious journalism if it doesn't offer more of a roadmap out.

Around the table: the moral of every story learned, at last!

Another day, another reminder that making a "blue wave" the be-all-end-all of your life is very shortsighted, to say the least: Matt Stoller at the Washington Post says "Democrats Can't Win Until They Recognize How Bad Obama's Financial Policies Were." No, really, as in Mr. Obama's response to the foreclosure crisis was nothing more and nothing less than "a wholesale attack on the American home (the main store of middle-class wealth) in favor of concentrated financial power." It goes on from there; by the time you get to the point where the Obama FTC goes after "such villains as music teachers and ice-skating instructors" rather than, you know, any of the dozen job-crushing monopolies you or I could name, you'll hopefully be reminded that you are the Great Person you've been waiting for, not some Democrat politician who'll sell you out in the name of "bipartisanship."

I don't know that Brett Kavanaugh committed perjury per se during all of his various confirmation hearings over the last decade-plus -- some of the arguments made at the link are stronger than others, and the strongest argument anyone will really care about (what, you think the average voter could give one rat's hind-quarter how much input he really had into William Pryor's nomination?) concerns his testimony about torture. But politicians never seem to be as offended by torture as the people are, so I doubt Democrats will make much of an effort there -- though it'd be easy for Democrats to paint Mr. Kavanaugh as a "coward" for trying to distance himself from unpopular policies when convenient.

And now, from Sam Levin at The Guardian, here's "The Dark Side of California's Ending Cash Bail." What is the downside to ending the unconstitutional practice of detaining folks in jail indefinitely before convicting them of a crime? Well, the law's writers decided they had to come up with some system to keep suspects in jail, purportedly out of concern for public safety, but they came up with "risk assessment" algorithms to predict who's a threat, and guess whom they're most likely to "predict" are a threat? Poor, black, and brown folks, that's whom, since they're the folks law enforcement will most likely arrest in the first place! Maybe in time we can polish this turd, but right now we've just given rageheads another tool to impose their biases on the rest of us.

Uh oh: Louisiana state police were apparently circulating a list of antifa members they got from a Nazi wannabe website. Oh, and it's not even a list of real antifa -- probably just folks Nazi wannabes don't like, which means you or I could be on it! That'd be a little ominous, of course, but it would also make me a little proud. Naturally the Louisiana police tried to block the list's release, saying that doing so could "compromise" an investigation and out a "Confidential Informant" (caps in original), because, as we know, there's just no way civilized people could protect actual confidential informants and pursue justice at the same time.

I know our President didn't really mean all protests should be illegal, just the ones that take place during hearings on his Supreme Court nominees hearings at our Capitol, but he said what he said, and anyway he's dead wrong: our government belongs to us, so we've got as much right to be at our Capitol as our Representatives do, and if they get all angry-dad on us, we have every right to say "are you effing kidding me?" and act like the bosses we are. Seriously, if protestors dog your every move, don't you wonder what you might have done wrong?

Finally, Michaela Haas at Yes! magazine shares with us "Seven Strategies to Turn Trauma Into Strength." You're always better off trying to turn the bad shit that happens to you into some sort of positive, and I can tell you from experience that meditation, self-compassion, gratitude, and you-need-a-mess-of-help-to-stand-alone (to name four of the seven strategies) are big helps in doing that. And yet I also feel compelled to caution you against using positivity against folks who seem to have more trouble overcoming their suffering than you'd expect. You know, the way right-wingers do to poor, black, and brown folks? It seems like "don't be like right-wingers" is the moral of every damn story I tell.

Around the table: hard work and hard lessons about racism, betrayal, greed, activism, corruption, and weakness.

Here's some good advice from Briahna Gray at The Intercept: "Beware the Race Reductionist," i.e., the folks who say every policy proposal that doesn't directly attack racism first is either worthless or racist itself. Ms. Gray also devotes space to discussing "bad-faith" actors who can't reasonably attack programs like Medicare-for-All or "democratic socialism" (or fair trade, I'd add) unless they call them racist. The folks who actually think fighting racism is the be-all-end-all of activism (I was one once!) may hold us back, but they're still more our allies than the folks who claim that we shouldn't bother breaking up the big banks because that won't necessarily end racism.

Ho hum, even freaking Politico finds it easy to tabulate all the ways our President has injured worker safety regulations. Make no mistake, cutting mine safety inspections doesn't help the miners who have to go into less-safe mines keep their jobs -- it helps CEOs make more money. Counting on CEOs to hire more workers with whatever money they save from having to ensure their mines are safe, instead of keeping that money for themselves, is a fool's game. And counting on industry figures (let alone industry figures who have themselves been cited for safety violations!) to police their industries is also a fool's game. (Hate to pile on, but dig the National Pork Producers Council science and technology director who says that the effect of speeding up pork inspection lines on pork inspection workers is "really outside our area of expertise." And here you thought science and technology would have something to say about worker safety.)

I'm not sure it's good news that a Texas hospital slashed a patient's heart attack care bill from almost $109,000 down to a little over $330 after NPR ran stories about it. On one hand, I'm happy when our media shames corporations; on the other hand, I know our media doesn't cover everyone to whom this happens, and I'd certainly prefer our media do a little more shaming when health care bills go before legislatures, so we don't have this kind of BS in the first place. I mean, seriously, any politician trying to make it easier for hospitals to spring six-figure surprise bills for life-saving procedures deserves shame, right?

James Kilgore at TruthOut explains why this prison strike is getting more mainstream media coverage than the 2016 strike did. One reason: activists have kept working on issues like cash bail and immigration detention/deportation specifically and liberal economic and social issues generally. Another reason: activists have worked more closely with the prisoners themselves and not necessarily just on activism, and the movement has made some leadership, messaging, and tactical changes (not least the focus on boycotting commissaries, which allows prisoners to exercise some economic power). Of course, things no activist would plan (the Lee riot, prisoners valiantly fighting wildfires in California) also helped put the issues out front, but that always happens.

Gov. Rick Scott (R-FL)'s blind trust has somehow made investments into at least two corporations that have business before the state, and between these investments and the somehow-similar investments his wife made, the Scotts have cleared at least half a billion dollars. Even before you get to the part where both the trust fund and Mrs. Scott have invested in two dozen Cayman Islands-registered hedge funds, this all sounds like a tailor-made Bill Nelson ad. You know, if Bill Nelson's even awake!

Finally, about that massive document Brett Kavanaugh document dump Republicans orchestrated mere hours before hearings about his Supreme Court nomination were to begin: I hate to be a hardass, but Democratic Senators wouldn't be in this mess if they'd actually stop being such pusillanimous weaklings. They could start by winning elections with bold-but-popular proposals and then using their power to work for their bosses, the people, instead of counting on the inherent ugliness of Republicans to slide them into office and then letting their big donors do all their work for them. If they had worked for us all these years, Republicans would be in no position to kick sand in their faces now.

Around the table: in which our Administration starts yet another long game against the American people.

U.S. State Department starts denying passports to Americans born to certain midwives who practiced in Texas's Rio Grande Valley during the second half of the 20th century, declaring that they can't verify those Americans' citizenship after said midwives admitted forging a handful of birth certificates. Didn't know being born poor and Hispanic just inside our borders was a crime, did you? Didn't know a midwife forging one or two birth certificates made thousands more birth certificates suspect enough to provoke criminal investigation, detainment, and even deportation? It's exactly as simple as this: if you disagree with our Administration, they want you gone -- unable to criticize them, unable to shame them, and certainly unable to vote them out of office. And this is only the beginning: the mostly black, brown, poor, and old folks born outside of hospitals at any time over the last 80 years are next.

So what happens when our Federal Trade Commission installs a Bureau of Consumer Protection Chief who used to represent corporations being investigated by the FTC, and Public Citizen files a Freedom of Information Act request to discover his conflicts of interest? The FTC pumps out almost 500 pages of documents and redacts nearly all of it. Because the documents don't relate to specific lawsuits, and also because trade secrets. Should I praise them for resisting the urge to declare BECAUSEZ TEH NASHUNUL SECURITEEZ!!!! No, I should not. I doubt our laws allow this sort of chicanery, so I suppose the FTC is just following the example of our President and his Cabinet, by daring you to stop what they're doing.

Ho hum, our Administration creates a special "Marijuana Policy Coordination Committee" dedicated to persuading the public to abandon its will to legalize pot. And this Committee told other Administration departments to highlight "the most significant data demonstrating negative trends," while apparently avoiding finding anything out about how often folks consume pot or whether legalized pot reduces other drug use. Recalling that our Attorney General has a zeal for criminalizing pot should also remind you that criminalizing pot is mostly a way of putting more black people in jail. (No, John Ehrlichmann spelled that out for us years ago.)

I'm not sure that the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals actually said you have a First Amendment right to feed the homeless. Their ruling actually says that Food Not Bombs has a First Amendment right to feed the homeless during their community organizing events in Ft. Lauderdale, FL, since feeding the homeless, in this context, comprises "an act of political solidarity meant to convey the organization’s message." So it doesn't appropriately shame governments that would issue thousand-dollar permits to individuals who give food to the homeless -- although I suppose we could all go out in well-named and well-promoted groups to feed the homeless. It'd be a whole lot simpler if we'd just stop pretending that our only obligation in America is to ourselves.

Kudos to Jake Johnson at Common Dreams for noting that our President has declared a pay freeze for 2 million of our federal employees while at the same time proposing a capital gains tax cut that would benefit the super-rich and virtually no one else. It is odd, isn't it, how they always say "we can't just keep spending money we don't have" when talking about paying workers, and never about, say, building nukes we don't need or giving the rich more tax cuts or handing out more "research and development" corporate welfare? OK, maybe it's not odd, per se, once we accept the fact that we are ruled by vampires.

Finally, maybe we shouldn't rush to celebrate Rep. Beto O'Rourke's challenge to incumbent Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as an "Obama-like" campaign. Mr. O'Rourke has a gift for speaking well, but so did Barack Obama, and we all know how his Presidency went: he coddled Our Glorious Elites instead of giving them the bitter medicine they earned, he extolled bipartisanship while half of the partisans tried to burn everything down, and he helped prepare the ground for a new President who seems to hate all the good and love all the evil in our world. So if Robert Rubin and Larry Summers have already gotten to Beto O'Rourke, we could be in for another turn of the vicious Republican/weak Democrat wheel, and as I've said, we've got to break that wheel.

Around the table: why the Democrats will fumble away the Oklahoma gubernatorial race too, and other lessons.

As actual liberals win the Democratic gubernatorial primaries in Florida and Arizona, Matthew Chapman at AlterNet speculates that Democrats may pick up the Oklahoma gubernatorial mansion as well, given that Democrats nominated a fellow who's won a lot of state-wide races and Republicans just nominated a "train wreck." Remind you of anything? Democrats will fumble this one away, too -- maybe Drew Edmondson's primary opponent, former Oklahoma state Senator Connie Johnson, didn't do enough to stand out, but I remember thinking she was a pretty damn good candidate and I would have liked to see her win. Mr. Edmondson, I bet, loses 51-48. Yes, even though Mary Fallin turned out to be very unpopular once good Oklahomans saw that all her tax cuts would have consequences. But people want to vote for people, not against people.

CFPB's student loan ombudsman resigns from the agency, specifically citing the agency's direction away from protecting students from predatory lenders under Acting Director/Man Who Wears Glasses So People Don't Punch Him in the Face Mick Mulvaney. So is this what right-wingers mean when they say good people aren't motivated to stay in government? I kid, of course.

Another day, another report finding that while worker pay is stagnating or going down, executive pay is going way, way up. Which you already knew, but it's still good to have yet another set of data points about it. Also, too, CEO pay went way up in large part due to exercised stock options -- which was, of course, an entirely foreseeable effect of cutting the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, as corporations used almost all of their tax break ($37 for every dollar they spent on worker pay!) on stock buybacks, which goosed up stock prices, which made cashing in those options far more attractive. Why, it's almost like that was the whole idea.

Upon hearing that our President thinks Google searches are completely biased against him, a number of quick responses leap to mind: waaaaaaaah!, whining is losing, maybe do something good for America for once and you'll get better news coverage! But if Democrats were clever (c'mon, let's pretend!), they'd be wondering out loud if maybe our President would like a sort of "fairness doctrine" applied to our media -- you know, like the Fairness Doctrine the FCC enforced on broadcast media until the late 1980s. And I bet our President would support that idea! At least, until someone in his braintrust reminds him that such a doctrine would also apply to Sinclair, Breitbart, Newsmax, the News Corporation, et al.

Finally, several Democrats ask Federal Trade Commission to investigate Verizon's admitted throttling of Santa Clara County firefighter data in the middle of a wildfire. Since Verizon has already admitted wrongdoing, an FTC investigation would have to be conducted by blind, deaf, and dumb infants to fail to find said wrongdoing -- but then this is today's FTC, and thus likely to declare the matter settled because of all of Verizon's apologies. Law and order is for us little people, after all, not big corporations.

Around the table: a dying mule, still kicking hard.

"What Happens When a Pipeline Runs Afoul of Government Rules?" asks ProPublica regarding an on-again-off-again West Virginia pipeline project. "Authorities Change the Rules." In letting pipeline construction continue before legally-mandated environmental reviews have been completed, state and federal regulators have repeatedly abrogated their duties over the last two years, until finally a three-judge panel from the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals halted construction. Law and order: it's only for us little people.

Speaking of which, Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh may have perjured himself by testifying to the Senate under oath 12 years ago that he was far less involved with Charles Pickering's 2002 judicial nomination than he really was. Yeah, I'd question the wisdom of going after him for this, too -- if I didn't hear so much BUT HE LIEDZ UNDER TEH OATHZ!!!!! about Mr. Clinton in the late 1990s. I guess perjury means more to right-wingers when there's a Democrat and a penis involved.

When I heard that Rep. Randy Hultgren (R-IL) defended his vote for the Republican tax "reform" by asking his constituents at a townhall whether they were better off now than they were "two or four years ago" and most of them said "no," my immediate response was "well, I guess he won't be holding townhalls anymore, either!" But then I clicked through, and, gosh, this Randy Hultgren sure sounds like he thought Chauncey Gardiner was a real person worth emulating! "We all benefit when the economy is growing" and "I see so many people who are working" and "families are seeing growth and opportunity" and "jobs are good for people" are not reasonable responses to "I'm not seeing a whole lot of tax cut in my paycheck." And he defends himself from the charge of cutting taxes for the rich just like the rest of them, by citing the "average" tax cut, when the average of a rich person's tax cut and your tax cut won't put more money in your bank account.

Randy "Iron Stache" Bryce wins Democratic nomination to contest Paul Ryan's House seat, and Republicans promptly run a radio ad accusing him of "spen(ding) his life breaking the law" because of his nine arrests from the '90s. Did you see "arrests" and immediately ask "what about convictions?" If so, good for you -- and if you noticed all those arrests occurred during his twenties, when most men do the majority of their carousing, good for you again. Seriously, though, "breaking the law"? That's grounds for a slander suit, right there. (There's some good news, though: all of those center-right Democrats who said Bernie Sanders cost Hillary Clinton the election are now castigating Mr. Bryce's primary opponent for "trying to lose the seat for the Democrats" by bringing up his arrests in the first place. I kid, of course.)

Finally, I'm going to link to this one time, and only so that you know to avoid it like the plague upon our civilization it is: Nate Silver says Democrats have almost a 75% chance of winning back the House. Seriously, has he not learned a fucking thing from the 2016 election, when he forecast a 70%-plus chance of Hillary Clinton winning the Presidency right up until Election Day? Sorry to deploy two cuss words in a single paragraph, but I need to impress upon you the importance of my point: don't look at any of this horserace shit, ever, because it induces you to treat our democracy like a spectator sport, rather than the living, breathing thing that belongs to you and to which you must tend -- and you must tend to it every day of the year, not just Election Day, because you know from experience that, absent our counsel, Democrats will interpret any mandate you give them as a mandate to suck up to Republicans. And I hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but your democracy belongs to you, not to the smartypantses who create "models" "predicting" "what will happen."

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: melting snowflakes since 2005.

And just like that, Congressional Republicans cave to our President and decide not to reimpose penalties on Chinese corporation ZTE, which, lest we forget, violated American sanctions on Iran and North Korea. The next time you see a Republican slamming our President, remember that this Republican does what this President wants him to do 99% of the time. But would it kill a Democrat to simply say "law and order!" sarcastically whenever these things happen?

University of Alabama study finds that terrorist attacks perpetrated by Muslims get 357% more media coverage than terrorist attacks perpetrated by anyone else. And before you retort that TEH MUZLIMZ COMMITZ TEH MORE TERRORIZMZ HA HA HA SNORT!!!!!, attend the finding that, actually, "white and right-wing" terrorists commit twice the terrorism of Muslim extremists. If, upon reading that, your next retort begins with "well, what about," stop. Just stop. And admit you're wrong. You'll feel a whole lot better.

"States Purged 16 Million Voters From the Rolls Before the 2016 Election" does indulge in scare numbers a bit -- some 12 million voters got purged from the rolls before the 2008 election -- but the problem it describes is real. And the Brennan Center for Justice found that voter purges went way up in areas that used to be subject to pre-clearance under Sec. 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act, the section our Supreme Court struck down in 2013. I sure hope whomever takes Interstate Crosscheck to the Supreme Court does a better job arguing our case than the folks who argued Husted and Janus did.

From NBC News we learn that "moderate Democrats" held a retreat last week to try and figure out how to neutralize the more progressive movement within the party. Like the French building an ever-longer Maginot Line, the Third Way types drone on and on about how they're "tired of losing" without ever realizing that they're the main reason Democrats lose. And three words for folks who think folks like us couldn't win in the Midwest: Sanders won Michigan. (As an aside, did NBC really call the convention a "safe space" for moderates? Yes, they did! What snowflakes they must be!)

How terribly surprising to learn that the EPA went to great lengths to protect former Administrator Scott Pruitt from a desk cleaned with formaldehyde, at virtually the same time the EPA also went to great lengths to bury an EPA report warning about the dangers of formaldehyde! It gets better: the new desk Mr. Pruitt ordered came from California, where formaldehyde is more strictly regulated, so the EPA aired the desk out in a warehouse for a week out of an abundance of caution! So, long story short: snowflake EPA workers protect their snowflake Administrator while having no intention of protecting, say, the American people. Did I mention snowflakes?

Finally, we learn how a Facebook group for sexual assault survivors got taken over by trolls who promptly started harassing the victims. With threats to call their abusers or call child protective services on them, among other evil works. Facebook sure seems anxious to apply just about every solution to this problem except hiring more workers to monitor groups, which they could do if only they'd break off some of that billionaire income in the front office. Hire humans to do jobs! It really does make a difference. In the meantime, if you think it's "funny" or "subversive" to pull stunts like harassing sexual assault victims online, could you do us all a favor and scratch "ASSHOLE" into your forehead with a knife so we all know to shun you when we see you on the street?

Around the table: chronicling an unusually high amount of low-level corruption.

Our President pardons the two Oregon ranchers, currently serving five years for arson on public lands, who "inspired" the Bundy brothers' 2016 seizure of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Public lands belong to whom, again? To the people. That's kinda why they call them "public." The Hammonds and Bundys of the world, of course, act like they're the "public" and no one else is, but ain't nothing they can do our President can't make worse. Law and order!

Actual rich liberal populist wins Mexico's Presidential election, and the "liberal" media here in America hope for "business-friendly" change. I guess that's an improvement from saying Mr. López Obrador is "just like" our President (just like him, except in, you know, nearly all of his policy proposals!), but "business-friendly" shouldn't be everyone's first concern, when corporations go around ruining everything in the world just so they can squeeze it for money. Remember, kids: money doesn't last, but civilization does.

Ryan Cooper at The Week asks an obvious question: "If democratic socialism is so bad, why is Norway so great?" Important lessons: don't confuse democratic socialism with things like Communism (particularly as practiced by the Soviets) and don't put yourself in the position of arguing that elite individuals should control the economy but the people shouldn't. And wasn't our President complaining about not getting enough immigrants from non-"shithole countries" like Norway? (As an aside, the relatively high U.S. per capita income is undoubtedly goosed up by our world-leading supply of super-rich, which, as I've often said, doesn't mean you see a bump in your bank account.)

Uh oh: Rep. Tom Reed (R-NY) has been putting GPS tracking devices in campaign signs so he can locate the people who steal them! Which has led him, no, not to an Antifa or Black Lives Matter protestor, but to a retired pastor. I wouldn't steal campaign signs myself, but maybe Mr. Reed should have considered that getting all Captain Queeq about a campaign sign makes him look like a small man. And really, if you were to serve the good people of New York's 23rd district, instead of serving mammon, you wouldn't have to worry about who's stealing your campaign signs.

Double uh oh: shortly after voting for that massive tax "reform" last fall, Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), who personally stood to gain $2.1 million from that tax "reform," bought himself a million-dollar yacht. Naturally his spokeshack whines about negative campaigning and "partisan smears," and the fact that Mr. Buchanan disclosed the purchase is irrelevant, like following the law is some gift he gives to us or something. This little yacht purchase is exactly the stuff of classic (and relevant) campaign ads. I wouldn't lay money on his Democratic opponent having the guts to run it, though.

Finally, Democrats seem to be meeting the Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination with "mixed messages," which is, admittedly, always a danger when a nominee is so completely awful on everything. But I can help with that problem! Here's the message: Judge Kavanaugh thinks Presidents should be even more powerful, which would make the American people less powerful. You're welcome, Democrats. (Full disclosure: Democrats never take my advice.)

Around the table: meet the new boss, same as the old boss, part 785.

From the "Nobody Could Have Predicted!" file: ISIS fighters have moved back into Raqqa, Syria, not even a year after coalition forces allowed 250 of their fighters to leave Raqqa with their families and all the weapons they could fit into a three-mile long convoy. It sure is a good thing our new national security braintrust isn't overly preoccupied with truly ridiculous projects like regime change in Iran! Oops, sorry; I forgot which evil alternate universe I was in for a moment.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt resigns/is fired, citing "unrelenting attacks on me personally" because waaaaaaaaaah! And our President's votaries now see Mr. Pruitt as One of Them, because he gets attacked by Those Librul Elites just like they do! Never mind that they'd never tolerate a Cone of Silence from a Democrat. (Also, a former coal lobbyist now runs the EPA, on an "interim" basis that I expect to last at least until the end of 2020.)

In the face of yet more "liberal" media hand-wringing over Just What Those Red State Voters Are Really Like, Amanda Marcotte at Salon reminds us that the glue that really binds them (and their messy lives) to our President (and his messy life which is now our messy life) is sexism. "The anti-abortion campaign is all about punishing women for sex, not men," right-wingers don't "put a 'higher value' on marriage" so much as they "stigmatize not being married," by which they mean women not being married -- all true, and as long as men are trying to get sex from women (and imagining themselves somehow disenfranchised if they don't), this'll all remain a problem.

Ho hum, privatizing IRS tax collection functions has caused our government to lose money, which Nobody Could Have Predicted! Worse, private tax collectors more typically go after low-income working families than big fish, which Nobody Could Have Predicted, Either! We talk about this kind of stuff all the time, but our elected representatives never seem to listen. That's why we need to keep talking about it. Can't some enterprising Democrat somewhere run campaign ads about this? Or would that be uncivil?

Max Boot becomes another major right-wing figure (a la George Will) to openly root for Democrats to win back the House and Senate this fall. Of course, Hillary Clinton was able to find plenty of Republicans willing to endorse her and even shoot ads for her; how did that work out? And how much pull do folks like Max Boot and George Will really have with regular Americans? Hell, how much pull do they have with other elite right-wingers, most of whom, I imagine, are saying we're getting rid of regulations and getting two Supreme Court Justices out of all of this as we speak?

Finally, leave it to Talking Points Memo's Josh Marshall to point out that simultaneously telling Democrats "we have to fight or we can't win" and "if we do fight, it will backfire and we also can't win" is utterly absurd. He also approves of the "Abolish ICE" slogan because at least it's got "clarity and power," like, you know, all right-wing slogans do no matter how stupid they are, plus "(i)f your political language tip toes around what you think or shows you’re not quite sure what you think or shows that you know what you think but may not be willing to act on what you think, that has bad consequences. It signals weakness and irresolution. It shows you may not have the resoluteness to act." Which explains how Scott Walker/Sam Brownback/Paul LePage/Rick Snyder/Rick Scott somehow won all those elections -- they're wrong about everything, but they're resolutely wrong.

Around the table: starring fake Republican courage and bad Democrat advice.

David Wang at Cracked explains "Why You're Being Kept in a Constant State of Impotent Rage." The major points -- that we can entertain ourselves so much more easily than back in FDR's day, that we let corporations make too much of our lives like pop culture fandom, that "the same media that connects us profits by making us all feel like we're under siege" -- are, of course, indisputably correct and artfully-put. But I maintain that even if you're part of the problem, you can also be part of the solution -- indeed, I suspect it's impossible not to be both. (And, as an aside, that jerkwad who put up the "no gays allowed" sign got what he deserved -- the knowledge that he could lose money and good will for being a jerkwad.)

Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) says flat out that a Supreme Court nominee who would overturn Roe v. Wade "would not be acceptable." Now here's why that's utterly meaningless: if Roe v. Wade comes up in the hearings, the nominee will either dance around the issue or make positive noises about Roe v. Wade and stare decisis, and then, having secured Ms. Collins's vote, he'll vote to overturn Roe v. Wade at the right opportunity. Look, if I've figured that out, I'm sure she has. And how many potential future Roe v. Wade annihilators has she already helped put on the federal bench during this Administration?

Sen. Ted Cruz R-TX) says flat out that the good voters of Illinois's 3rd district vote for anyone, even a Democrat, instead of Republican House nominee/Nazi symp Arthur Jones, even going so far as to say "(t)his bigoted fool should receive ZERO votes." He's absolutely correct about that, of course, but it's not exactly the height of courage to say "don't vote for an avowed Nazi" out loud; we're just more inclined to think so because our President has encouraged so many Nazi wannabes to come out of the woodwork, a matter about which Mr. Cruz has had little comment. And would Mr. Cruz have said anything if Mr. Jones wasn't running against the famously center-right Dan Lipinski, but someone like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez?

Speaking of which, Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's thumping of a 10-term incumbent in New York's 14th district Democratic House primary sends, to Ryan Grim of The Intercept, a "sobering message to Democrats reliant on big money: it won't save you." And you would think Democratic pols would find this not a "sobering" message but an uplifting one! And not just because our elected officials really don't like spending half their time trying to scare up campaign donations, but because, in America, we all think we want more money, but what we really want is freedom from money.

Finally, here comes Sen. Tammy Duckworth of Illinois -- who lost her only competitive Congressional race, in a Democratic wave year, no less! -- to instruct us that Ms. Ocasio-Cortez's politics won't play well in the Midwest. Really? "They have money, but we have people" doesn't catch the average voter's elbow? And telling your primary opponent that you'll have to go to your supporters before committing to support him should he win the primary isn't how most people already think democracy should work? This critique, mind you, comes from the woman who had half her limbs blown off in Iraq but when asked in 2006 if she supported the war, said "there's good and bad in everything," which came off more as wishy-washiness than zen equanimity. So, one more time: as much as your positions matter, how you talk about them matters more. Or, to put it another way, if you have Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's politics but you talk about them like you're Tammy Duckworth, then yes, you'll lose, anywhere in America.

Around the table: it's Mitch McConnell's world, but we don't have to take it! And other hard-to-face facts.

What else did our Supreme Court get wrong when they upheld our President's Muslim travel ban? They forgot to consider that the Muslim ban actually violates two international treaties, and thus already violates U.S. law. Yes, that's what treaties become when our Senate ratifies them, and our Senate ratified both the the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Doesn't matter that our Senate entered reservations to both (or even that we might have agreed with some of those reservations), because our Constitution says international treaties become the "supreme law of the land." Of course bold thinkers still think international law shouldn't apply to them, because MURIKA!!!!

Alec MacGillis at ProPublica reveals "How Mitch McConnell Made Donald Trump." Mr. McConnell "has created the world in which we are now living" -- a world as accomplishment-free as his shrine at the University of Louisville library -- with his steadfast support for big campaign money and his obstruction of Democrats at every turn, which latter item, of course, also exposes the weakness of modern-day Democrats. But if this is, indeed, the Age of McConnell, then the age and the man certainly deserve each other.

Ho hum, CFPB acting director Mick Mulvaney has slashed a fine against a South Carolina payday lender. Dig the CFPB spokeshack calling the payday lender -- which charged triple-digit loans and actually roughed up borrowers -- part of the "productive sector" of society! This really is the Age of McConnell! Mr. Mulvaney did receive over $60,000 in campaign donations from the payday loan sector while running for and serving in Congress, though the article doesn't say if Security Finance (what cojones, that name!) was one of his donors.

Josmar Trujillo at FAIR notes that even though the "liberal" media have stopped uncritically flogging stop-and-frisk as the solution to violent crime (and have even, in some cases, walked past support for stop-and-frisk back), they're now uncritically flogging secret gang databases as the solution. You might be in a gang database used by the police yourself, even if you're as young as one year old -- no lie! -- and you can't find out if you're in a gang database, which means what, again? Folks get arrested on the basis of evidence they can't challenge, which is, you know, not democracy. Personal to those who say we need to "support cops" by using these databases: you do know that "support" doesn't equal "jackboot lockstep agreement," right?

Our Government Accountability Office (or GAO) can't say whether Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke broke the law by reportedly threatening both Alaska Senators -- because Interior wouldn't cooperate in the GAO's investigation! They act like they have no idea how such things look -- either because they're really that cynical or they want you to be that cynical, or (at least) accept that much cynicism. But all this really means is that good folks regard anything that comes out of Mr. Zinke's mouth as the word of a dishonored man.

Finally, unions may be down as badly as we've ever witnessed in our lifetimes in the wake of our Supreme Court's Janus decision, but George Lakey at Waging Nonviolence reminds us that unions have been down before, and have surged back -- specifically, after the Great Depression, when GM workers, backed by the United Auto Workers union, occupied their plants (without causing any damage to them, since GM would have used that to justify violence against them), and then used their success at GM to reach out to the more interracial workforce at Ford. That means coming back is going to take a good deal more than we've given thus far -- but don't complain about that to civil rights marchers!

Around the table: summarizing the latest in bad news.

I told you the Supreme Court wasn't done: the Court rules, in Janus v. AFSCME, that making government employees who are not union members (but work in union shops) pay certain union-related fees violates their First Amendment rights. Conflating money with speech is a persistent fault of the Roberts Court, but did the AFSCME make the best possible case? I mean, if a Supreme Court Justice won't figure out for himself how to distinguish between fees funding a union's political spending and fees funding spending on (for example) services that support workers in the workplace, it shouldn't be that hard to figure it out for him. (Then again, Justice Alito's opinion indulges in right-wing scaremongering about the "mounting costs of public-employee wages, benefits, and pensions.")

Both the Government Accountability Office (or GAO) and the Department of Health and Human Services Inspector General plan to investigate our President's handling of family separations at the border. I wonder how long it'll be before our President loudly declares the GAO and all these pesky Inspectors General to be part of the "swamp" he says he wants to drain (recall that he wanted to replace all of our Inspectors General right after taking office, before being told, you know, how that would look).

In a related note, Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo reminds us that immigrants commit fewer crimes than native-born Americans. In other news, voter fraud is not particularly common, the "liberal" media is not particularly liberal, "moral values" are not particularly about whatever hurts gays and women, and Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are not particularly real. Sometimes I do not understand why 25% of the electorate prefers to remain in a constant state of rage about utter bullshit.

The "liberal" media won't shut up about "civility" this week, but this New York Daily News article reminds us that a cookie shop owner refused to serve then-Vice President Biden in 2012 and nobody wrung their hands about "civility" then. Why, that's a better example of right-wing hypocrisy than the one I came up with off the top of my head the other day! It may be too much to hope that I'll only have to say this once, but protecting civilization is a lot more important than protecting civility.

Alexandra Ocasia-Cortez pulls off a stunning upset in the New York 14th House District Democratic primary, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says no bigs, it's just one district, takes all kinds of Democrats, yadda yadda yadda. Gosh, is Ms. Pelosi showing smarts here? Republicans win so often at least in part because they pretend to be so different from one another, though of course they're all cut from the same reactionary cloth, while Democrats have a well-deserved reputation of strangling new blood in its crib in their insane zeal for victory without work. Maybe, just maybe, Ms. Pelosi's finally getting it.

Finally, I know everyone's upset about Justice Kennedy's retirement, but as Mother Jones reminded us several hours before his announcement, Justice Kennedy hasn't been a swing vote, like, at all this past term. Yes, he was, over the years, better than we could have expected on gay rights and criminal justice reform, but n.b. that Chief Justice Warren was the swing vote in the cellphone warrants case. And Justice Kennedy was as corporatist as the rest of them -- recall that he wrote the majority opinion in Citizens United v. FEC.

Around our table: lesson #3088 in "why 'more Democrats' isn't the solution to our problems."

California state Assembly members blow massive holes in the state Senate's gold-standard net neutrality bill, to the point where the Senate bill's original author tries to withdraw it from consideration. And they announced their amendments late at night and then voted on them the next morning without debate, sorta like Daryl Metcalfe did to those anti-gerrymandering bills in Pennsylvania. And in case you were thinking all our problems would be over if we just elected more Democrats, note well that Democrats absolutely dominate both houses of the California state legislature, and they not only let this happen, they helped it to happen.

Here's something you may not know about our President's plan to let "small businesses" offer crappier health care plans that let insurers evade Obamacare coverage mandates: it has a loophole that allows big corporations to join "small business associations," as long as it doesn't upend a total size requirement, I presume. I mean, I'm not sure how else to read paragraph 17's report that "(u)ntil now, the Labor Department...often looked at the size of each company, rather than the group as a whole, to determine if it was a large or small employer." Thus will big corporations be able to foist crappy health insurance on their employees! (As an aside, it sure is odd that whenever we say "making insurers cover maternity care," our opponents say "burdensome regulations." I wonder why that is.)

Jessica Huseman's ProPublica report on the court case that struck down Kris Kobach's pet show-me-your-citizenship-papers-if-you-want-to-vote law catalogues a mighty dung-mountain of incompetence and malice, and is thus well worth the considerable amount of time it takes to read it, but I want to highlight, if I may, how Mr. Kobach came up with all those scare numbers about TEH THREE MILLYUNZ VOTEDZ ILLEGULLYZ!!!!! The academic who came up with that number found less than 40 folks out of 32,000 who said they were non-citizens registered to vote in 2008 -- and then said anywhere from 38,000 to 2.8 million folks had voted illegally, which is a range wide enough to be utterly meaningless. Naturally Mr. Kobach fell in love with the bigger number, just like our President. Look at them balls swing!

Ho hum, Factcheck.org reminds us that Presidents Bush the Lesser and Obama did not, in fact, separate families at the border with the sheer zeal of this Administration. And, you know, "they did it too" is bad argument even when it's correct -- it's a way of saying "I'm not going to defend my position on the merits, but I am going to subtly accuse you of hypocrisy for not crying out when the other guy did it." When they deflect to insulting you, they're announcing they're losers. I wish everyone understood that.

I was, frankly, hoping for more from this article, entitled "The Hope of a Blue Wave is Dangerous to Democracy." I take the author's point about everyone being overconfident about the 2016 elections, too (wasn't Chuck Schumer measuring drapes for the Majority Leader's office?), but I'd hoped for a larger message -- that "hoping to get more Democrats in office" has already disappointed the hell out of us, certainly, but more that democracy isn't about who we support but about what we do, every single day of our lives. It's a lesson those folks who went to townhalls to press their representatives about health care seem to have learned well, but we all need to learn it.

Finally, I do not believe that the Red Hen restaurant in Lexington, VA, has a "right" to kick Sarah Huckabee Sanders out, even for being the face of our Administration's evil propaganda machine. People can eat where they like -- I mean, a big chunk of the civil rights movement was about that! And a big chunk of the gay rights movement is about similar matters! -- and the First Amendment right to free association does not flow in only one direction at a time. And, as any cook or waiter will tell you, there are subtler and more effective ways to get someone not to eat at your restaurant anymore.

Around the table: concerning automation, corruption, wage theft, tax cuts for the rich, more tax cuts for the rich, and rogue ICE agents.

With all the anti-worker hysteria of ZOMG TEH AUTOMATIONZ WILL KILLZ ALL TEH JOBZ!!!!!, Neil Irwin at the New York Times highlights a number of very reasonable solutions we could implement to prevent such a job-ocalypse. These do not include a universal basic income, which right-wingers will use to destroy Medicare and Social Security -- they include work-sharing programs, codifying "maximum employment" policies in law, and shortening monopoly protections for trademarks and patents. But they should also include bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, which really is the thing that will prevent executives from throwing living-breathing workers under the bus for their not-very-well-working machines.

Ho hum, Florida Gov. Rick Scott's decision to issue "emergency contracts" for hurricane cleanup will cost Florida taxpayers at least $28 million more than if he'd relied on existing contracts for hurricane cleanup. I am, of course, reminded of Florida Republican U.S. House Rep. Carlos Curbelo instructing us last August that doing hurricane cleanup the right way saves more money than doing it the quick way, but Gov. Scott spent valuable time and money doing the whole rebidding process over again. Why, that's something you'd do if you were trying to help out your cronies, not protect taxpayers from "special interests"! The POGO general counsel's statement that Mr. Scott's decision did not reflect "good business sense" should be a Democrat campaign ad, but then again, these are Democrats we're talking about.

Sam Pizzigati wonders why big corporations, which can afford not to commit wage theft, still do so. Decline in unions yes, attacks on regulation certainly, but also the simple fact that "(t)he outrageously generous rewards that have become so commonplace in Corporate America give the executives who run our top corporations an ongoing — and almost irresistible — incentive to behave outrageously." Best way to fight the problem at its source? "(E)nd" "eye-popping CEO pay packages." At the risk of beating a dead horse, bringing back the 91% tax bracket on millionaire income would be the best way to do that -- certainly better than the so-convoluted-they-must-be-designed-to-fail ways center-right Democrats have come up with over the years.

Remember when tax "reform" supporters in the White House claimed that their tax-cuts-for-the-rich-and-for-corporations would put an extra $4,000 in every family's bank account? Well, it's fair to ask where that "$4,000 Raise" went, as Leo Gerard does. Wages actually went down 0.1% for non-supervisory workers from May of last year to May of this year once you factor in inflation -- and I think you would only "forget" to factor in inflation when you're trying to lie about economic policy! -- while less than five percent of American workers got raises or bonuses. Most of that tax-cut largesse, as you probably recall, goes toward executive stock buybacks and higher dividends for shareholders. I may have mentioned this before, but you could run a lot of good ads along the "Where's My Tax Cut?" meme -- you could even send out bloodhounds to find it, like Mitch McConnell did in those ads for his first Senate campaign back in the day. But again, Democrats would have to run these ads, and they wouldn't be civil.

Greg LeRoy at CityLab informs us that workers at Amazon's second headquarters, wherever they build it, will very likely be paying their state taxes directly to their employer, since whichever states "wins" the bid to host HQ2 will be giving massive corporate welfare handouts to Amazon. Where is the state that will stand its ground and say no, you clowns already get to deduct your expenses, so further "deductions" would be immoral, since it would cheat present and future generations of the services they pay for with their taxes? I don't know, since 18 of 50 states are in the running, and maybe the other 32 would like to be, but can't be, for various reasons, possibly including that Amazon would consider a lot of those states "flyover country."

Finally, ICE agents detain 62-year-old man who has permanent resident status and has been in America for literally almost half a century -- over an 18-year-old domestic violence complaint for which the man had already completed probation and anger management. Even if you want to spend valuable time and money combing through all these records for the "bad" immigrants -- hell, even if you want to assert that domestic violence should carry a worse sentence than that! -- you have to respect our nation's traditions and laws enough to leave people alone who have already paid their debt to society as mandated by the court that convicted them. Then again, for a lot of Americans, generally the ones who complain about "law and order" the most, there really is no law and order; there is only whatever satisfies their prejudice and their rage.

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.

Action: fighting for internet freedom, law and order, and clean water.

Net neutrality officially ended yesterday. You may not have noticed, possibly because the big telecoms are awaiting the results of a litany of lawsuits against the FCC's net neutrality repeal, or possibly because they're waiting to see if the House follows the Senate's lead and passes the "resolution of disapproval" that would reverse the FCC's repeal -- but most likely because Jesus Mary and Joseph even the big telecoms aren't that stupid! If Comcast or Verizon were to suddenly, say, put data caps on everyone's broadband today, or start censoring websites today, their customers would clog their phone lines for days! No, the big telecoms know, just like all corporations know: deprive people of their freedoms a little at a time, and they tend not to notice -- or revolt. Let's stop this catastrophe by telling our House Reps to sign on to the discharge petition that would force a vote on the aforementioned "resolution of disapproval," as Consumer Reports helps us do.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and the UAE plan to attack the Hodeidah port in Yemen, through which 80% of the nation's food exports pass through, which would make the already-near-famine conditions in Yemen considerably worse. I know someone is responding to that news with a shrug and a well, that's war, you hit your enemies where it hurts them the most. The problem with that philosophy -- besides, you know, the cruel way it makes a game of life and death -- is that Yemen is not our enemy, and our government continues to arm Saudi Arabia in its war against Yemen, in violation of both our Constitution's War Powers clause and the 1973 War Powers Act. Hence Just Foreign Policy helps you tell your Congressfolk to use our leverage as the most powerful nation on Earth to stop this planned attack on Yemen. Why, even the Washington Post opposes this attack -- and they usually cheer on our war-making! That should be a sign.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Congressfolk to pass H.R. 5609, the WATER Act, then CREDO still helps you do that. What would the WATER Act do? The WATER Act would allocate $35 billion annually to improving clean water and wastewater infrastructure. You remember our President running on infrastructure, right? And you remember how the state government of Michigan poisoned Flint's drinking water? And you've been hearing about how thousands of American neighborhoods have twice the lead poisoning levels as Flint did? It's hard to imagine your Congressfolk opposing making good Americans' drinking water cleaner, isn't it? I kid, of course -- it's not hard to imagine our Congressfolk being the cruel and heartless people they too often actually are. That's why we communicate our will to them -- and it's also why we shame them when they ignore our will. (We could turn them out of office a lot more easily, too, if Democrats would actually stand for things.)

Around the table: in which we examine gutting pre-existing condition bans, letting businesses turn away folks of color, and other stupid ideas.

Our Administration plans to argue that the Affordable Care Act is null and void now that its mandate no longer carries a financial penalty. Are there really that many people out there who still feel so angry that Barack Obama passed the Heritage Foundation's health care plan from the '90s? Because I bet more people would be angry if our Administration succeeds in getting rid of the pre-existing conditions ban, which is what striking down the Affordable Care Act would do. And not even five months before midterms!

Thanks to the vagaries of social media algorithms, yesterday I came across Neil Clark's 2014 requiem for Pete Seeger in The American Conservative called "Pete Seeger's Conservative Socialism," and Mr. Clark explains why healthy civilizations need conservatism better than I've done any of the 500 times I've tried to do it. I don't mean, of course, that healthy civilizations need what passes for contemporary "conservatism," with its corporatism, nativism, and politically-correct swordfighting -- I mean something more like "a vision of the ideal society" "rooted firmly in the past," a vision that fights selfishness instead of worshiping at its altar, and a vision that just so happens to reject "culture wars" and asks whether technological advances will wind up making our problems worse. We need real conservatism to root us so we can make real progress in delivering justice to those who deserve it; too bad the "conservatism" you see on TV is all people shouting at you.

South Dakota state legislator claims that businesses should be able to turn away folks of color if they like -- adding that "(p)eople shouldn’t be able to use their minority status to bully a business," which, like, wow, misunderstand the nature of power much? Always these clowns want businesses to have more rights than people! The legislator later apologized for his statement (after scrubbing it from his Facebook page, of course), but, ah, what apology is possible once you've said you're pro-discrimination? And didn't he get the memo from our President, that apologies for your obnoxious comments are no longer necessary?

Mitt Romney says our President will "solidly" win re-election in 2020. I'm inclined to agree that our President, despite his abominable term thus far, is in a very good position for re-election, but I utterly disagree with Mr. Romney's reasoning that Democrats likely nominating a "fringe" candidate (cough Bernie Sanders cough) is one of the reasons why. I would argue -- indeed, have argued -- that nominating yet another let's-all-get-along-but-inevitably-compromised moderate is the surest way to ensure our President's re-election. You don't beat a freak with a candidate like that.

Should we be that upset that the DNC has adopted a rule stating that all Democratic Presidential candidates must declare themselves to be Democrats? I mean, yes, it looks like it's aimed squarely at Bernie Sanders, and it gives the appearance of having learned exactly the wrong lesson from 2016, but Mr. Sanders actually has run in numerous Democratic primaries in Vermont and won them, only to decline the nominations and then run in general elections as an independent. So the rule change might more likely affect the attempt of some billionaire (cough Mark Cuban cough Tom Steyer cough) or some movie star (cough The Rock cough) to run in Democratic primaries.

Finally, gosh what a mess Scott Pruitt has gotten himself into because he can't keep his grubby hands off of anything. Surely Chris Christie (the first, and fired, head of the Administration transition team) would have found an EPA Administrator who'd gut clean air and clean water regulations without being so obviously corrupt. Alas, we have Scott Pruitt, who uses people, and uses them up. Our President must find him quite the kindred spirit.

Around the table: from ballot initiatives to social media dramas.

From Michael Corcoran at TruthOut we learn why Republicans fear ballot initiatives. The good news? You can scare up more righteous anger at, say, a state "right-to-work" law than you can scare up righteous anger in support of it. The bad news? The rage people feel at liberal policy initiatives sure does seem to get more attention. We need to amend our Constitution so we can have national ballot initiatives, by the way. I'd tell the states to do it, too, since less than half of them do it now.

The New York Times publishes a lengthy report on how economic austerity policies in Great Britain are decimating that nation's once-formidable safety net. I'd say it's interesting that the Times writes about austerity like it's a bad thing, but then again, they're probably more comfortable writing about the austerity that's happening far away than the austerity that's happening here.

Surprise, surprise, corporate CEOs are actually starting to come out and say they're not using any of their tax "reform" windfalls to raise worker pay. OK, I suppose it is a little surprising that they'll say it out loud, just as in a few months they'll be saying, out loud, that yeah we're going to cut all these jobs now because we have big balls. Think some of these CEOs can be the stars of Democrat attack ads? I kid, of course -- these are the Democrats we're talking about.

Of course we should investigate whether there's any relationship between the President's daughter getting five trademarks in China mere days before the President decided to bail out the Chinese corporation ZTE, but fact of the matter is our President seems to do something every minute of every day that points to some corrupt act or other. And the lesson? Don't elect people with so many conflicts of interest!

Perhaps the most bizarre moment during Roseanne Barr's sudden crash-and-burn earlier this week was the spectacle of right-wingers taking to social media to insist that Bill Maher should be fired for the same thing! (Which was "comparing someone to an ape," though if you compare a black person to an ape, as Ms. Barr did -- and as Mr. Maher did not -- you're taking part in a long tradition of American racism.) What a surprise it must have been that liberals largely responded by saying, essentially, whatevs, yo. And the lesson? Fight for ideas and policies, not people. By the evidence, liberals seem to be taking this lesson to heart more than right-wingers are.

Finally, Louisiana-based televangelist starts soliciting donations for a brand new $54 million private jet, saying that, if Jesus were here on Earth today, "he wouldn't be riding a donkey" but would be "in an airplane flying all over the world." But would Jesus insist on his fourth private jet in 40 years because there are too many "demons" to pray away in coach? That sure doesn't sound like the Jesus I've known since I was a little kid.

Around the table: starring hubris, shame, corruption, greed, and gerrymandering.

Dave Lindorff explains, at some length, exactly why our current Administration is headed for disaster with North Korea and Iran. You should read the whole thing, because it covers just about everything, but long story short: our Administration will fail because they think they can bully their way to get whatever they want from these two nations. Long story somewhat longer: they've also subscribed, rather uncritically, to an American tradition of "negotiation" that demands that the other side give them everything they want before "negotiations" even begin. Of course, if you've ever heard, from anyone, that actual negotiations have to be win-win, this way of "negotiating" will seem strange to you.

It took me a minute to sort out exactly why I can't stand the "liberal" media's absurd habit of blaming right-wing excesses, particularly those coming from our President and his votaries, on "liberal smugness," but here goes: blaming the President on his opponents's "smugness" is a way of trying to silence criticism of the President, calling the President's opponents "smug" is a way of trying to keep us from shaming the President and his votaries when they deserve it, and why do we blame liberals for what right-wingers do in the first place? And why do we never right-wingers called "smug" when they shame people? I suppose pointing to the "smugness" of liberal critics is also a way of saying you can't win the argument on the merits.

National Democratic politicians suddenly release a plan to deal with governmental corruption, the "Better Deal for Our Democracy" -- and it's not at all bad. I mean, it has plenty of good proposals, but they also divide neatly into three categories (voting rights, ethics, campaign finance) that have broad support across the ideological spectrum. Question is: will they run on it? I mean, these are Democrats we're talking about, obsessed with polishing their civility trophies and appearing "bipartisan." They could fumble away this opportunity like they've fumbled away so many others. So we gotta stay on them.

Ho hum, Harley-Davidson makes big bucks from the Republican tax "reform" bill, then closes a heavily-unionized plant in Kansas City, displacing 800 workers, and announces a close-to-$700 million stock buyback. It gets worse: their York, PA plant will add 450 workers, many of whom will be temps and other contract workers, for a net loss of 350 well-paid, highly-skilled, permanent workers. It gets even worse! Harley will also open up a plant in Bangkok, Thailand, later this year -- not to outsource jobs, they assure us, but to avoid paying taxes in the United States. No, they said it out loud! Maybe whomever runs against noted Harley-rider Scott Walker in Wisconsin can tie all of this nastiness to him?

Finally, a Pennsylvania state Senate committee unanimously passes the famous anti-gerrymandering bill, SB 22, with the full Senate about to take it up presently. But the Senate State Government Committee did amend the bill, and not for the better: if the Commission can't approve a new redistricting map, for example, the legislature, not the state Supreme Court, gets next crack at it (though the hurdle for approving that map is still high at both points -- 7 of 11 Commissioners, then two-thirds of the legislature). But it's still worth your support -- at least until Daryl Metcalfe gets a hold of it and makes a grotesque mockery of it, like he did with those other two redistricting bills earlier this year.

Around the table: concerning internet freedom, executive pay, health care, clean water, and the folly of trying to get the President's votaries to "respect" you.

Senate passes "resolution of disapproval" aiming to nullify the FCC's recent net neutrality repeal by a 52-47 margin. I expected 50-49, didn't expect Sen. Murkowski (R-AK) to vote "yea," and I guess I owe Sen. Kennedy (R-LA) an apology for hemming and hawing for two months over whether to be the 51st vote -- or maybe I don't, since 50-49 (sans Sen. McCain, still being treated for brain cancer in Arizona) was pretty much the foregone conclusion. Another foregone conclusion: the House reportedly won't take up the bill. We'll just have to get in their grills until that conclusion is no longer foregone. (And I know, 52 is still 15 short of the total we'll need to override our President's eventual reflexive veto, but one thing at a time.)

U.S. House Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) has released the first report of CEO-worker pay disparity data mandated by the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill, and it's not pretty. The vast majority of the corporations the study tabulated have a 100-to-1 disparity between those corporations' CEOs and their average workers (not "lowest-paid," since then the disparity would be closer to the 300-to-1 figure that's become commonplace by now), but a handful of corporations have truly absurd ratios, like Six Flags, with a ratio of 1,920-to-1. Remember that most Americans think the ratio of executive pay to unskilled factory worker pay should be seven-to-one, which means we'd almost certainly prefer the executive-to-average-worker ratio to be even narrower than that.

From Politico we learn that Democratic Congressional candidates are running on "GOP Health Care 'Sabotage,'". For once, this actually is good news for Democrats -- unless they shoot their wad on this topic now and decide everyone's tired of hearing about it in October, and you know no one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat. Particularly one with a lot of consultant "help." (It might also help if Democrats would remind everyone that double-digit premium hikes have been a constant feature of our privatized health care system for decades, lest Republicans blame the hikes that have happened on their watch on Obamacare, which has -- though this is nothing to put on your tombstone -- slowed the acceleration of premium growth.)

In a peripherally-related note, Paul Waldman at The Washington Post explains why Democrats can never hope to win the "respect" of our President's votaries. I'd have said "because they're bat-guano insane" and left it at that, though Mr. Waldman is more generous -- both to those votaries (who do have legitimate grievances, though not the ones they're constantly airing) and to Democratic politicians, who do natter on about "innovation" and "entrepreneurship" and "adapting to changing times" more than Mr. Waldman grants. His answer is not to "play the game" of pandering to right-wing voters, which is good advice, but the better advice is to do things that actually make their lives better. A rage-filled voter can go either way -- toward blaming the wrong people, or blaming the right people. Do things that make their lives better, and they'll blame Black Lives Matter and obscure liberal college professors a lot less.

Finally, Amanda Marcotte at Salon reminds us that water contamination is also rampant in rural America, where agriculture's dependence on phosphorus results -- almost every other day in America! -- in a toxic algal bloom leaving carcinogens in our drinking water. She also reminds us (and I needed this reminder this week!) that Big Gummint programs offering money to big farming corporations to clean up their runoff isn't as good a tactic as simply mandating that they clean up their runoff. No need to object that mom-and-pop farmers get hurt, because there ain't that many of those left anymore, thanks to nearly 40 years of farm policy that puts corporations above people. And corporate profits above clean water.

Around the table: the stupid, it burns! Part 818.

If you've noticed that you hear an awful lot of criticism of alleged "radical leftists" in the mainstream media but you don't actually hear these "radicals" themselves, well, you're not alone: Nathan J. Robinson at Current Affairs wonders why we can name virtually every talking head who slams "political correctness" and "social justice warriors" but hardly anyone who's politically correct or a social justice warrior themselves. You can answer this question in at least two ways: 1) because these talking heads who style themselves as "dissidents" are actually card-carrying members of Our Glorious Elites, and how do you get people to go along with ridiculous ideas if you can't deflect to some "common enemy"? And 2) waaaaaaaaah! (I remain convinced, by the way, that the real reason so many right-wingers use the "SJW" shorthand is that it shares two letters with "Jew.")

We learn from George Joseph and Liam Quigley at The Intercept that plainclothes police officers in New York City commit a rather disproportionate number of police shootings there: they comprise around 6% of the force, yet commit over 30% of the shootings. Why? Some observers suggest that plainclothes cops can get mistaken for robbers, but many others suggest that the lack of a "blue suit" gives them the "freedom" to "act like gangsters" -- and it is more difficult to get a badge number if it's not displayed, or a unit number from an unmarked car. Just so happens they don't wear body cameras, either.

Michigan state legislators push a Medicaid work-requirement plan that just so happens to target majority-black cities while leaving majority-white rural areas alone. I'm happy to oppose Medicaid work requirements for blacks and whites myself, and not just because most folks on Medicaid are already working like we should be proud of that as a civilization -- no, really, we should be proud of a civilization where everyone can get good-paying work and only need programs like Medicaid when times get tough, as times do for virtually everyone except the crowd who constantly hector us to work harder. (Also, dig the Chamber of Commerce lobbyist's "(w)e were just trying to be helpful" act. She must think we're all suckers.)

Ho hum, the New York Times reports on how "national Democrats have been embracing recruits near the political center" in red states. What's the definition of insanity again? And what authority do the same folks who lost 2016 all over the map now have to say "but here's how you win in Kansas"? After all, a liberal Sanders acolyte came within six points of defeating Rep. Ron Estes in Kansas's 4th early in 2017, in a district Mike Pompeo used to win by 30 points. The Times might even get this, at some level, because they simultaneously describe Rep. Conor Lamb (D-PA) as one of those "moderates" and as someone with a "populist economic message." (I will concede that Clarke Tucker, the star of this article, has a good shot in Arkansas's 2nd since if he makes health care his issue, as it looks like he'll do.)

Finally, our President wants to help out a Chinese corporation punished by his own Commerce Department. A corporation punished for violating sanctions against Iran and North Korea, no less! What will the President's votaries say when they learn he's suddenly so obsessed about Chinese jobs? Wait, let me guess: leave him alone give him a chance he knows what he's doing he got a great deal but her emails but Benghazi he shoots from the hip both sides do it fake news shutup traitor.

Around the table: rageheads gonna rage, part 374.

Jim Naureckas at FAIR catches a New York Times columnist alleging that certain opinions about free speech and identity politics are somehow "taboo," when in fact the Times ventilates these opinions all the time. This stratagem is as old as time itself: pretend your critics are way, way more powerful than you are, even though you have all the megaphones. And if the only defense you can muster for your arguments is that you have "free speech," then you're admitting you can't win the arguments on the merits! Our Glorious Elites: if they don't have everything, they act like they have nothing. I'd say they should try actually having nothing for a minute, but that'd probably send them into an even deeper spiral of self-pity.

David Cooper at the Economic Policy Institute studies the trajectories of the Wisconsin and Minnesota economies since 2010, and finds the Minnesota economy performing better for working families in just about every way. More jobs, more growth, higher wages, less poverty -- think Gov. Walker's 2018 Democratic opponent, whomever that may be, could maybe use all that information in a campaign ad? The inclusion of the word "Democratic" in the previous sentence should suggest the likelihood of that event.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will shut down its student loan office. Which is the natural outcome of returning some $750 million to bilked students and helping put the notorious Corinthian College out of business -- if you're objectively pro-financial predator, that is. CFPB head Mick Mulvaney says he wants to scale the bureau back so that it does "only what is required by law," but how much do you want to bet his efforts to do so have already violated existing law? I mean, it does seem like that's the Administration way: do whatever you want, even if it's illegal, and dare America to stop you.

It begins: a group of "deplorables" set up a billboard warning "liberals" to "get your guns if you try to impeach" our President. Absent undeniable evidence of high crimes and misdemeanors I'm inclined to let the man twist until 2020, but threats of violence are, as you know, not First Amendment-protected speech. And we've still got almost six months until Election Day; you think the threats will ratchet up a bit? Of course they will -- what else can a ragehead do but diddle his rage gland and let his mouth write checks his ass can't cash?

Finally, our intrepid Attorney General says the "ACLU effect" -- i.e., what happens when the ACLU speaks out about law-and-order matters -- caused a spike in Chicago homicides in 2015 and 2016. The trouble with that theory, of course, isn't just that Chicago ended its "stop-and-frisk" practices in 2015 without an actual ACLU lawsuit, but that the murder rate went down in 2017 without Chicago going back to stop-and-frisk! Seriously, though, what a scaredy-cat Jeff Sessions is. If you're that afraid of dissent, perhaps you need to go live in an actual police state.

Around the table: power, corruption, and lies, part 864.

Against the advice of EPA career staffers, most of whom he's going to throw under the bus before too long anyway, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt approves waiver exempting large swath of southeastern Wisconsin from smog rules -- and Gov. Scott Walker's favorite corporate crony, Foxconn, just so happens to sit there. But, ah, is Mr. Walker absolutely sure he wants to run on all that corporate welfare he handed out to Foxconn?

David Mislin at The Conversation explains how "Anti-war Protests 50 Years Ago Helped Mold the Modern Christian Right." Mainly, a lot of Protestants left the anti-war churches -- most of which had never protested a previous American war -- and joined the more fundamentalist ones. You do have to wonder, of course, what role racism also played, given all the tension over (among other things!) open housing laws in the mid-'60s.

Ho hum, ThinkProgress finds that Rep. Martha McSally (R-AZ), now running for Jeff Flake's Senate seat, has totally broken her pledge to vote against her party 20% of the time. I never would have made such a pledge in the first place ("that was four pro-party votes; I sure hope the next one's something uncontroversial!"), but she did attack her opponent's bipartisan bona fides back in 2014, so she made her bed. For the record, she's voted the President's way 97% of the time since January 2017. That's a campaign ad waiting to happen -- but Kyrsten Sinema would likely be the one running it, so forget about seeing it.

With the West Virginia Republican U.S. Senate primary less than a week away, an Evan Jenkins campaign ad doctors a photograph of Patrick Morrisey so that it looks (vaguely!) like he's shaking hands with Hillary Clinton, when in the actual photo he was shaking hands with the President. I expect this to backfire on Mr. Jenkins bigly, though not necessarily to Mr. Morrisey's benefit (Don Blankenship is also running, and oh boy would he get buried by the right campaign ad). In any case, the Jenkins flack who said the campaign was just "tak(ing) creative license while arranging images in order to help make a substantive point" is an evil bastard whose career in politics should be over, though of course it won't be.

Get a load of House Speaker Paul Ryan claiming that the end result of Democrats winning back Congress would be "subpoenas and gridlock." In reverse order: this clown couldn't repeal Obamacare even though Senate Democrats couldn't filibuster it, and even the Republicans' list of evil achievements is actually pretty small, basically comprising tax-cuts-for-the-rich and a few overturned Obama Administration rules. And as for subpoenas, that is to laugh: a Democrat politician's default setting is don't rock the boat. There won't be subpoenas until and unless the President's guilt is obvious to a deaf, dumb, and blind infant. Who was it who called Paul Ryan the stupid person's idea of a smart person?

Finally, while it's grotesquely easy to tabulate the multitudinous ways in which "400 years of slavery" isn't a "choice," as Kanye West suggested to TMZ a few nights ago, let's not let pass the putative genius saying he admires the President because he did "the impossible." So, by implication, Mr. West thinks it's less impossible for black folks to overcome redlining, police brutality, and environmental racism than it is for a white billionaire to become President. Success really does make people forget where they came from.

Around the table: how Democrats will lose in 2018, and other lessons.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu claims to have evidence that Iran "lied" about the nuclear deal -- but only proves that Iran wanted to build a nuclear weapon before the deal, a fact no one has actually disputed. Iran's intentions aren't particularly relevant, after all -- Iran's actions are, and 55,000 documents from an apparently unlocked warehouse later, we can't say they're building nukes now. Which makes Mr. Netanyahu's address what, class? Drama, that's what. No wonder our President loved it.

Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (E-PA) guts yet another anti-gerrymandering bill in his committee, one that also had the support of more than half the members of the lower house. I was going to say he's left quite the trail of slime over the years, but then I realized how insulting that'd be to slime. Is it too much to ask that the man who talks like he's never going to lose an election again lose his next election? I don't care if Zombie Charles Manson beats him.

Branko Marcetic at Jacobin looks at the Democrats' "Red to Blue" list of approved Congressional candidates, finds it wanting. The woman who lost bigly to John McCain in 2016, the dude Steny Hoyer likes so much he told one of his primary rivals to get out of the race, the guy who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory against Sam Brownback in 2014, the woman who worked in Tha Bush Mobb's foreign policy apparatus, and so on -- it's bad when the guy running in Utah's 4th is one of the more courageous candidates. If Democrats can't win back the House despite all the wind at their back, this is why.

Former HHS Secretary Tom Price said that repealing the individual mandate penalty in the Republican tax "reform" will result in higher prices for those who use the Affordable Care Act exchanges. Because healthy people will drop out, you see -- gosh, where have we heard this before? Oh, right: from almost every single American who thought about the matter for 20 seconds. What a stalwart defender of the forgotten man he was, back when he had the power to do something!

Now Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) says "there's no evidence whatsoever" that the recent Republican tax "reform" bill -- for which he voted, because of course he did -- has helped American workers. He's not quite in Sen. Corker territory, I suppose, but The Economist really needs to attend Mr. Rubio's "ideas" more closely, so they could tell us that he would like to "increase()" the "child tax credit" so that very rich people could get it too, and that his "provision for paid family leave" would steal from Social Security to pay for it. Marco Rubio: he gives empty suits a bad name.

Around the table: the real reason Republicans keep falling, and other lessons.

J.F. Sargent reveals "The Real Reason Social Media Makes Hollywood So Nervous." Surprise! It's the same reason social media makes traditional print/TV media so nervous: it "has destabilized centuries-old power structures and amplified voices that have historically been ignored, silenced, trampled and punished." Yes, social media is "also vulnerable to the worst impulses of mob-mentality, petty grudges, rumor-mongering and cruelty," but if that latter picture is the only one Hollywood wants to focus upon -- and not, say, the very social-media-savvy #MarchForOurLives movement -- you have to wonder why.

No, the polio vaccine did not "cause cancer," any more than vaccines "cause" autism or "cause" disease because they generally have a tiny piece of the disease they're inoculating against -- you know, to teach the body what it's fighting? -- inside them. OK, the story FactCheck tells gets into considerably more detail than that, and is totally edifying, but sheesh, too many people don't know jack and yet are so proud of their University of Google degrees.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt will return from his Capitol Hill testimony to an agency "demoralized" by Mr. Pruitt's repeatedly throwing EPA employees under the bus during his testimony. Nobody could have predicted! And Administration votaries will continue to look at Mr. Pruitt, and his employer, as a "fighter," even though both men "fight" mainly by blaming all their problems on other people. Then again, most Administration votaries blame all their problems on other people -- and usually the wrong people.

Rep. Pat Meehan (R-PA), who had announced his retirement due to a sexual harassment scandal, has now resigned his seat. Which means another special election, likely in July or August, and what appetite will Republicans have to hold onto that seat, particularly since the districts will all change for the 2018 election? Seriously, this is a no-lose proposition for Democrats. Then again, they've demonstrated quite the aptitude for losing those.

Finally, Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) says "you have to wonder" if the fear of assassination is driving all these Republican retirements in Congress! OK, so I've dutifully wondered, and the short answer is no. The somewhat longer answer is no, you whiny snowflake. The somewhat-even-longer answer is no, they're not retiring because one out of the last bajillion mass shooters can be positively identified as a liberal -- they're retiring because they fear accountability from voters in November, just like they feared accountability from voters at all those townhalls they didn't have. Why does Rep. Brooks want to disappear voters from his analysis, I wonder?

Around the table: untangling webs of corruption and weakness.

The Intercept gets an audio recording of current House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) telling a candidate for Colorado's 6th U.S. House district to get out of the way of the party's more corporate choice for that seat. If you're still tempted to say "get people who can win" (and, ah, haven't considered how that worked out in 2016), remember that the party gives a leg up in endorsements and fundraising to their preferred hacks, and then uses this "success" in endorsements and fundraising to justify more help! But if these hand-picked candidates are so great, why not let the primary voters choose them? Because no one snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat, that's why.

What's worse? That Mick Mulvaney came out and said if you gave to his House campaigns, he'd talk to you, and if you didn't, he wouldn't? Or that he came out and told banksters that if they want to hamstring the agency he now (nominally) leads, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, they should give more money to Congressfolk? I kid, of course -- there is actually no point in trying to decide which is the pile of dung the flies have found and which is the pile they haven't found yet. Here's a lesson for Democrats, though: Republicans didn't prevent people like Mick Mulvaney from running for Congressional seats in 2010, and they won back the House that year, and look how he's made so little go such a long way!

Ho hum, the six biggest banksters saved nearly $3.6 billion in taxes just last quarter, thanks to the massive Republican tax "reform." Also, "(b)ank executives have said the majority of the savings from the lower tax rates will be returned to shareholders in the form of higher dividends and stock buybacks," i.e., not job creation. Some enterprising Democrat should run ads like that famous Mitch McConnell ad from 1984 where hound dogs looked for his opponent, except these hound dogs would look for that supposed $4,000 boon everyone was supposed to get from corporate tax cuts. Then again, you know, Democrats.

Been hearing about the "massive fundraising advantage" Democrats allegedly have in the upcoming midterm elections? Well, don't believe the hype: NBC informs us that "(m)ajor national Republican and Democratic party groups" have spent over $48 million just on the seven Congressional special elections since January 2017, and Republican groups are outspending Democratic ones by a 3 to 1 margin. Getting a lot of bang for their buck, too, I see! Seriously, remember that when you hear that a candidate has raised x amount money, you have no idea what PAC or SuperPAC is going to inject y+z money into that race. Also, too, getting excited over who's raised what is horserace politics, and thus beneath your dignity as a citizen.

Finally, speaking of special elections, Republican Debbie Lesko won Tuesday night's special election in Arizona's 8th, but by a mere six points, in a district Republican Trent Franks had typically won by over 28 points in his races. I won't say, as one local Democrat consultant does, that a swing of 15 points here (the President won this district by 21) means a swing of 15 points everywhere, but I will say that Hiral Tipirneni's excellent showing means that Democrats can make a winning argument everywhere. Unless they bully all the liberals out of their Congressional primaries, that is.

Around the table: why Russiagate still comforts liberals, and other lessons.

Glenn Greenwald discusses with Daniel Denvir the "comforting answers" Russiagate "offers to despondent liberals." Long story short: "the Trump victory was a traumatizing and disorienting event for most people," leading folks to "crave an explanation that makes sense and that lets you feel like the world is safe and understandable again." Key reminder: the Russian troll effort was "primitive and pales in comparison to the amount of money spent on messaging by political campaigns, let alone US corporations and lobbyists." And regardless of who goes to jail over Russiagate, I still think the Democrat play-not-to-lose mentality and Republican vote suppression had more to do with the result than Russia could ever hope to have done.

Say, did you hear about that time the National Restaurant Association hired Frank Luntz's group to poll Americans about raising the minimum wage, which of course the "other NRA" opposes -- and found over 70% of Americans perfectly happy to pay restaurant workers more even if it meant higher prices? No? That's likely because the big restaurant lobby, as you might expect, isn't happy with the findings, even though it hired The Father of The Death Tax to get those findings. I am a little appalled that 29% of Americans opposed a minimum wage hike "even if the average food service employee can't make ends meet," until I remember that 25% of the electorate is batshit insane.

Jim Naureckas at FAIRNew York Times hack advising Democrats to be more like "liberals" and less like "progressives." Apparently "liberals" know better than to "eradicate" economic problems like the income gap -- apparently they'd be content with handing out welfare checks, rather than, you know, minimum wage hikes and job-creating taxes on the rich -- and "progressivism" is somehow "intrinsically opposed to conservation," which is as ridiculous as saying conservatism is intrinsically opposed to progress. Anyway, I've never called myself a "progressive," because it's long been the Democrat way of running away from the word "liberal," but articles like the Times's give liberals like me a bad name.

Another week, another Congressional special election in a deep-red district that's somehow a tossup in at least one poll, and we learn that the Republican nominee for Arizona's 8th, current state Senator Debbie Lesko, has "routinely" introduced bills that are little more than ALEC model bills with a few words changed. It'd be nice if her dependence on/work for ALEC scuttled her election bid, but certainly the news has arrived too late (the election's tomorrow), and besides, not everyone knows what the American Legislative Exchange Council is, or how nefarious their works have been over the decades.

From the "Nobody Could Have Predicted" file: Mitt Romney doesn't even get a majority of votes at the Utah Republican Convention to pick a U.S. Senate nominee (among others) for 2018, and will face a primary against a state Rep who got more votes. Mr. Romney thinks Utahns didn't care for him running at the convention and trying to get enough signatures to appear on the primary ballot anyway, and maybe he's right -- or maybe good Utahns, like everyone else, hate those whom they perceive as "Establishment" politicians.

Finally, in the wake of our newest Supreme Court Justice casting the deciding vote against a part of immigration law allowing detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants who have committed "violent" crimes, our President now wonders aloud if Justice Gorsuch is conservative enough. All together now: one counterexample does not destroy a trend. Also, too, why should a President expect Justices to toe his line? And why should we enable that sort of thinking? That's not what our Founders wanted, was it?

Around the table: from an apparent "free" trade reversal to the "retirement" of the House Speaker.

Remember when we could say "at least he got us out of that awful Trans-Pacific 'Partnership'"? Well, now our President is contemplating re-entering talks on the hated "free" trade deal. And by the looks of this article our "liberal" media is all set to enable him -- we don't even hear a substantive word about "free" trade opponents (a group which includes, like, everybody) until paragraph 18. The good news? A President Hillary Clinton would have already rejoined TPP by now, and thus sent her party on the road to massive losses in the House and Senate in November.

Chauncey DeVega at Salon reminds us how Republicans manage to keep their votaries and hurt them at the same time: by redirecting their rage at "individuals and groups they view as the Other." That's why the fever ain't breaking, Mr. Obama! The sad part about all of this is that we could just have easily said "Republicans leave the vast majority of their voters' bellies empty" but "fill their voters' hearts and minds with rage, hate and resentment" when Mr. Bush was President.

In a truly revolting development, Pennsylvania state Rep. Daryl Metcalfe (R) guts HB 722 -- which would have created an independent commission to handle redistricting -- with an amendment that puts power back in the hands of politicians. This he did, apparently, without showing his amendment to anyone first -- which is what folks always do when they've got the superior argument! -- and naturally his rewrite also cuts the state Supreme Court out of the process entirely, because waaaaaaaah! Could the good citizens of Butler County please turn this monster out this year? A shrub could do a better job.

Ho hum, Republicans who helped write the recent tax "reform" bill just so happen to be getting, on average, over $300,000 from "pass-through" business tax cuts. If I were Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH), I'd use that information to absolutely savage probable Republican opponent Rep. Jim Renacci, who's one of the 15. If I were Rep. Jacky Rosen, the probable Democratic nominee in this year's U.S. Senate race in Nevada, I'd use that information to savage incumbent Sen. Dean Heller. And they both might be game for that! I just hope the consultants don't get in their ear first.

Our President apparently plans to pardon former Bush Mobb crony Lewis "Scooter" Libby, the only person convicted of anything over the Valerie Plame scandal back in the day. But how much good is this really going to do for Republicans in the short term? Scooter Libby isn't some martyr whose framed visage hangs on every rage-filled voter's wall, and even if the President's votaries care about nothing except "pissing off the liberals" (which is quite possible!), I still don't see them doing victory laps around the voting booths on Election Day because of it.

Finally, on the occasion of U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan's announcement that he'll retire from the House at the end of this term, Sam Fullwood III at ThinkProgress examines Mr. Ryan's legacy of "Cruelty Toward the Poor." But I doubt we're seeing the "curtain come() down" on his career of evil, because now he can earn millions of dollars spewing the same filth by becoming a lobbyist, a think tank fellow, or (God forbid!) a cable news commentator. In other words, Mr. Ryan's reward for quitting will be a promotion and a significant pay hike. Nice work if you can get it!

Around the table: the President is not America for the 443rd time, and other musings.

Louisiana and Minnesota legislators introduce anti-protest bills in the wake of protests over pipeline expansions in those states. And the Louisiana bill actually goes further than model ALEC "critical infrastructure" legislation in that you don't actually have to set foot on a pipeline site to go to jail. Again: if you have to pass laws to stifle protests, you've lost the argument. Adults admit when they lose arguments. I guess that means these legislators aren't adults. You know, just like our President.

Jessica Rich at Wired reminds us that -- in the wake of the news that 87 million Americans, not 50 million, may have had their personal info on Facebook compromised by Cambridge Analytica -- that we need basic internet privacy laws in America. Recall that Congress repealed FCC broadband privacy regulations in 2017 and a campaign ad may present itself: the Facebook scandal proves we need stronger privacy laws -- but your Republican Congressperson voted to gut federal privacy laws! Think Democrats will run that? Nah; running ads like that might make people think you'll actually work for them.

Alvin Chang at Vox draws a straight line from tax-cuts-for-the-rich in Oklahoma to the Oklahoma teachers' strike, now almost two weeks old. Over the last 14 years, the state legislature has cut the top bracket from 6.65% to 5%, which wound up depriving Oklahoma of some $350 million in annual education spending, such that Oklahoma kids now only go to school four days a week. You recall, no doubt, that tax-cuts-for-the-rich has put Kansas's public schools in peril, too, though at least Kansas didn't respond to hard economic times by sponsoring an "Oilfield Prayer Day," as Oklahoma did.

Ed Henry at Fox News may have won numerous plaudits for his unexpectedly scorching interview with EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, but the network's other programs either a) ignored the interview or b) gave it as much pro-Administration spin as possible. And this is exactly how one would do evil propaganda -- put up the occasional negative report to say "see, we're not so bad," and then bury that negative report as deeply as possible on programming that gets the most eyeballs. It's rather similar to how they've been using Shepard Smith for years. Hell, it's how they've been using their internet reporting for years.

Finally, hot on the heels of two FBI raids of the office of our President's personal lawyer, our President calls the FBI raid "an attack on our country in the truest sense." If he has a serious point to make about, say, the way the FBI got its warrants for the raid, you'll never hear it underneath all his TEH UNFAIRNEZZ!!!! and TEH WITCH HUNTZ!!!! And one more time: the President is not America. I locate the greatness of America in our people and our traditions, not our President. Perhaps Dr. Johnson should have said that conflating yourself with your country is the last refuge of a scoundrel.

Action: discrimination, overtime pay, and methane emissions.

Another day, another "bathroom bill," this time in Tennessee, where it's passed out of one House committee (though not the full state House) and will get consideration in a Senate committee starting today. HB 2620 would force the state of Tennessee -- and thus the good taxpayers of Tennessee -- to pay all legal fees whenever a school district in the state decides to adopt a policy that would force transgender students to go to the restroom of their gender-at-birth. Surely its authors know that transgender students who sue against these kinds of policies under Title IX will win, and will likely win sizable settlements, so I must conclude that the legislature intends to cut off the nose of the taxpayer to spite the legislature's face. Hence the Tennessee Equality Project helps you tell Tennessee state reps to reject that state's latest "bathroom bill."

Meanwhile, H.R. 4505/S. 2177, the Restoring Overtime Pay Act, would undo the damage caused by court rulings (or a lack of thoroughness on the part of the Obama Administration, if you prefer) nullifying the Labor Department's 2016 overtime pay hike, by mandating that the Department of Labor raise its overtime pay threshold to the approximate point the Obama Administration originally raised the threshold, or about $48,000 annually. Thus folks making less than that would get paid time-and-a-half starting with their ninth hour in a working day or their 41st hour in a working week. The bill would also automatically update the threshold every three years, based on new income data. So a number of good government groups help you tell your Congressfolk to support better overtime pay for American workers by supporting the Restoring Overtime Pay Act.

Finally, Penn Environment helps you tell Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to cap methane emissions from existing gas fracking wells. Gov. Wolf has gone the full Obama route on regulating the methane emissions that not only pollute our air and pack a bigger climate-change punch than coal, but help deprive good Pennsylvanians of the royalties they could earn from that energy source -- by capping emissions from new fracking wells, but not the thousands and thousands of old ones. Don't the old ones pollute worse? But that is, of course, a typical Democrat attempt at a cutting-the-baby-in-half "compromise," with an industry that doesn't care about anything but delivering money to its executives. And we have a few decades of data now to suggest that when you pander to big corporations, they just demand more. So let's stop compromising on clean air, since it clearly doesn't even buy us any time.

Around the table: stories concerning monopolies, corruption, and racism.

Our President is reportedly "obsessed" with Amazon," and has allegedly "wondered aloud if there may be any way to go after Amazon with antitrust or competition law." You and I could come up with a few "ways" to do that, though I bet his Attorney General, being a doctrinaire "free" market Republican, would tell him it's just impossible. But ultimately I don't care that our President hates all the critical coverage he gets from the Washington Post (owned, as you recall, by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos) or even that he might think he's Superman and Mr. Bezos is Lex Luthor, just as long as it does our country some good. And breaking up Amazon would, quite frankly, do our country some good.

Mick Mulvaney isn't the only Administration official actively avoiding doing his job: Department of Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson has been scaling back enforcement of fair housing law and freezing enforcement actions. The good news? Laws limit how much you can pick and choose what parts of your job to do. The bad news? Good Americans will have to go to court to get Mr. Carson to do very much of anything. Note well, however, that the Houston low-income housing imbroglio involves a lot of Democrats, too.

Ho hum, FAIR reminds us that "Evidence of Violent Extremism is of Little Interest When the Killer is White." So, so many good lines, and here's just one: "Fortunately for Conditt, his race and politics seem to have insulated him from being labelled a 'snowflake' who refused to accept personal responsibility for his failures, and insulated his community from accusations of producing a super-predator who “doesn’t value life the way we do." Also n.b. that the Washington Post's Philip Bump writes about how "(w)e can identify much more easily" with Dylann Roof, apparently completely unaware that the easy answer to that statement would be what you mean "we," white man?

I would advise against using the lack of charges against two police officers for allegedly killing Alton Stirling as "proof" that body cameras don't work. I've found body camera testimony to be frequently chilling, and we can't tabulate the number of folks who haven't died at police hands because police know they're leaving video evidence of their actions, nor can we tabulate the number of folks who won't die at police hands in the future, as more police become acclimated to this sort of accountability. Of course you're tempted to throw up your hands when someone dies, but you shouldn't -- at least not without more evidence than this article provides (though I will concede that body cameras shouldn't only point at victims).

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker finally decides to hold two special state legislature elections after no less than three judges order him to start following the law and stop delaying them. I'd love to one day be sitting around a campfire saying hey, remember that time Scott Walker tried to get a judge to stop telling him to hold special elections so he could get a law passed that would let him not hold special elections? But by then Mr. Walker will be on his second term as U.S. President, because Democrats will still be a bunch of weaklings who still think polishing their civility trophies is more important than doing good works, or even winning.

Around the table: with horrible truths about the Pennsylvania 18th district special election.

The President's nominee for CIA director, current CIA deputy director Gina Haspel, allegedly ran a CIA "black site" in Thailand where prisoners got waterboarded, and may even have ordered the destruction of video evidence of that torture. Right-wingers, of course, are squealing that ProPublica got the identity of one tortured suspect wrong, which of course automatically means she never ever tortured anyone ever ha ha ha suck it liberals! Seriously, though, this is what we get for looking forward, not backward. Right, Mr. Obama?

Study finds that of the 150 counties that get the most food stamps, 136 are rural. A majority of counties isn't the same as a majority of recipients, but surely this finding means our "liberal" media and our politicians underplay the prevalence of food stamp usage in rural counties. That's because of racism, of course -- keep telling rural food stamp recipients that any cuts in the program are really for TEH BLACKZ!!!! and they'll keep voting Republican. Unless, of course, Democrats start running campaign ads about Republican cutting your food stamps. I kid, of course -- these are Democrats we're talking about.

Turns out at least two stories about Executive branch corruption are worse than we thought: EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's little "cone of silence" wound up costing $43,000, not $25,000, and the Carsons did-too pick out their $31,000 dining set on the taxpayer dime. I wouldn't blame you for thinking this doesn't look a whole lot like "draining the swamp," but you must remember that when they say "drain the swamp," they really mean "stick it to liberals."

Senate votes by a nearly 2-1 margin to pass the nefarious S. 2155, which would loosen financial regulations on big banksters. Any good news? The House thinks the Senate bill isn't evil enough, and wants even more easing of regulatory "burdens," so when House and Senate go to conference out differing versions of the same bill, Democrats can filibuster the resulting conference bill. Yes, even the ones who voted for it the first time who feel "betrayed" by the changed conference bill. I mean, Jon Tester's not a fool -- if the President's going to remain this unpopular, why throw him a lifeline?

Now that Democrat Conor Lamb has upset Republican Rick Saccone in the Pennsylvania 18th special election -- in a district the President won by almost 20 points in 2016 -- some Republicans, including the President himself, are scrambling to claim Mr. Lamb as a conservative. Because he's personally pro-life but believes abortion should be legal, an opinion that has impressed exactly zero pro-lifers since Geraldine Ferraro? Because he "doesn't like" Nancy Pelosi, another opinion that will have zero consequences in the real world? They're even resorting to lies like saying he "love(s) the tax cuts," which is the precise opposite of the truth, without breathing a word about Mr. Lamb's many attacks on repealing Obamacare and slashing Medicare and Social Security. Well, when you've got nothing but you still feel the need to flap your yap, what can you do but lie?

Finally, and perhaps even worse, Republicans were calling Mr. Lamb's opponent, Rick Saccone, an "F candidate" even before the election. Mr. Saccone is an ignorant, blustering fool, certainly, but you don't even have to look at our President to see that he's not exactly an anomaly -- that in fact he represents the natural progression of the mainstream Republican candidate. When Republicans spend decades defending indefensible Presidents and policies and provoking their most rage-addled adherents with bad arguments and lies, then Rick Saccone is precisely the kind of person winds up carrying their banner. Seriously, they're all "F candidates" now.

Around the table: a noted centrist suggests that Democrat centrists stop meddling in Congressional primaries, and other tales.

Elizabeth Hinton thinks we should "Turn Prisons Into Colleges." If we could keep prisoners away from the for-profit sector, though, that'd be nice. I suppose the ragehead crowd will squeal PRIZUNZ ARE FOR TEH PUNISHMENTZ!!!!, though actually prisons are for rehabilitation. But those who only care about punishment and retribution can take heart that a lot of prisoners would find studying to be an absolute chore, at least at first. What rageheads will say when more of those prisoners become functioning members of society again? Oh, who am I kidding -- they'll point to the ones who don't and declare the whole thing a failure. And their heroes will say PRIVATEZ PRIZONZ ARE TEH ANSWURZ!!!!!

Our Department of Defense tells Congress it can't tell them not to refuel Saudi planes that go on to drop bombs on Yemen, which suggest a certain ignorance, on Defense's part, on how the Constitution is actually supposed to work. They're not even trying to argue that the 2001 AUMF, which needs to be repealed yesterday if not sooner, gives them all the authority they need! Instead, they're trying to say helping Saudi Arabia bomb Yemen doesn't "constitute 'hostilities'." Anyone want to ask any Yemenis about that?

Ho hum, the Obama Administration started a commission that finally got some health care help for Cold War-era nuclear workers exposed to toxins, but the current Administration has let that commission's expired seats (i.e., all of them) go unfilled. Because GUBMINT BAD REGULASHUNZ BAD ADMINISTRATIVEZ STATEZ BAD!!!! I predict that once someone explains to President Manchild that a lot of these workers probably voted for him, he promptly takes to Twitter to slam Democrats for holding up his nominees, even though they literally can't now.

Well, this is a watershed moment: brilliant but occasionally infuriating centrist Matthew Yglesias not only says the DCCC should stop trying to pick nominees for voters, but that the Democrats' whole elect-someone-who-can-win theory has "very little evidence" to back it. Which we've known for a while -- long before 2016, even! -- but again, nice to have some science behind it, and nice to hear it from an unlikely source, too. Studies do not, in fact, show that candidates who "moderate" their positions do better, and where have Democrats been cleaning up in special elections so far this cycle? In red areas where they did better before 2016, and notin places like Georgia's 6th district, where Barack Obama got shelled but where Hillary Clinton barely lost.

Finally, the Administration has told Idaho it can't break the Affordable Care Act as nakedly as it had planned to do, by selling health insurance plans that don't comply with Affordable Care Act requirements in re pre-existing conditions, for example. Still, we shouldn't congratulate the Executive branch for doing its job, nor should we ignore all the wink-winks in Ms. Verma's letter to Idaho Gov. Otter, which could just as easily have read "we told you how to break Obamacare, but NOOOOO! You had to do it your way!" And, ah, what "freedoms" is Gov. Otter talking about Obamacare destroying? The "freedom" to buy crappy health insurance that won't be there for you when you need it?

Around the table: there are a lot of opportunities, if you know where to take them, you know.

The President enacts tariffs on steel and aluminum, and the World's Last Economist, Michael Hudson, tells us why that's such a terrible idea. While it's true that great nations got great through protectionism, not "free" trade -- and have since lied to themselves about it to get other nations to buy into "free" trade! -- generally you don't put tariffs on raw materials, but the finished products that come from them, so if imported steel gets more expensive, steel corporations not only won't invest in new plants or jobs, they'll make less money in profits. (We won't even get into the plan to lift the tariffs on Mexico if they pay for the border wall. I mean, that's just rock stupid. And the President's votaries will love it.)

Good Kansans are challenging their state's show-your-citizenship-papers voting registration law, and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who's both the defendant and the defendant's counsel here, tells the plaintiffs they just aren't trying hard enough to get registered. I couldn't blame you for asking if voting is your right, why do we have to try so hard to get registered? But you also have to remember that folks like Mr. Kobach can pretty much take the day off whenever they like without any consequences, so they don't understand what working families have to go through.

Interior Department reportedly spends almost $140,000 for a "Secretary's door." At that price, that door better open up into a better universe than this one, and, ah, when you call the contractor who did the work and they hang up on you without saying goodbye, that's a bad, bad look! And of course Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke thinks his department's budget should be cut! The pricey door shouldn't surprise you, though: Ryan Zinke, you may recall, is the man who literally rode into his first day on the job. Drama: it's all Republicans have to offer.

The Straight Dope wonders if bacteriophages, or viruses that can infect and change bacteria, will save us from the coming antibiotics crisis -- you know, the crisis that comes from using four out of five antibiotics in healthy feed animals as a way of producing more meat? Initial analysis: they could help, but they're not necessarily a magic bullet, particularly when it's hard to turn them into cash cows for big pharma (and, to be fair, when Western regulatory agencies have no history of handling them). Maybe we spend tax dollars researching phages, and then keeping the results for the public? Maybe we ban antibiotic abuse? Just saying!

Finally, we should absolutely celebrate that the West Virginia teachers' nine-day wildcat strike won them (and other state employees) a 5% pay hike, but we should also recall that the state decided to fund these increases by cutting state health care spending. A truly skilled Democratic consultant would call that an opportunityto run campaign ads against Republican state legislators who chose to cut health care instead of, say, raise taxes on rich folks. But I kid, of course -- Democrat consultants are always too busy polishing their civility trophies to try something like, you know, winning.

Around the table: from the problem with killing union dues to yet another Presidential fantasy.

As the Supreme Court mulls Janus v. AFSCME, David Cole and Amanda Shanor at The Nation find the anti-union argument therein to be "based on a faulty premise." An actual Supreme Court case from the '70s, Abood v. Detroit Board of Education, found that union dues don't actually constitute an abridgment of free speech rights if unions use those dues solely to perform the duties the law requires them to perform -- but not if the union uses dues for political campaigning, for example. Besides, "(t)he First Amendment protects the right to speech, but not the right to get something for nothing," which is what Mark Janus will get (all the benefits of union protection at his job with none of those pesky dues!) if he prevails at the court. I still fear the "conservatives" on the Court will ignore this precedent.

Longtime HUD official claims she was demoted because she wouldn't rubber-stamp an illegal and pricey renovation of HUD Chair Ben Carson's office. Doesn't matter that "everybody does it" or "that woman's a Democrat" or "but the FOIA requests" -- all anyone's going to remember about this is the Administration official, the one who kept hounding her to "find money" to get around the $5,000 limit on office renovations, saying that "$5,000 will not even buy a decent chair." Gosh, how do little people like us ever get along? Drain the swamp!

Michael Sainato at TruthOut profiles former Oklahoma state Senator Connie Johnson, who's running for the Democratic nomination for Governor this year. She sounds like she has a good program (tuition-free public college, legal pot), and she has a good story (her Christianity led her to forgive her brother's murderer!), and if folks think she's "too liberal" to win in Oklahoma, they ought to attend how well aping Republicans has worked out for state Democrats. Remember Brad Carson, Brad Henry, Dan Boren? Of course you don't. Nobody does. With any luck, she'll win the primary, and the national Democrats will decide she doesn't have a chance, and let her do her thing, which can't possibly be worse than nominating yet another "someone who can win."

National resistance figures have put together a "Pledge to Fight for America's Future," composed of 11 good-to-great legislative proposals, including spending actual money on infrastructure, reforming our tax code so plutocrats pay more instead of less, and committing to renewable energy. I'd shorten the title and go at some of these issues a bit harder, but Democrats would do much better running behind this plan than behind whatever bowl of soggy oatmeal the national party puts together. Do they think they won back Congress in 2006 for some other reason than supporting a minimum wage hike?

Finally, our President theorizes that he, of course, would have "run" into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School while the shooting was happening "even if I didn't have a weapon," unlike those deputies who "weren't exactly Medal of Honor winners." Well, welcome to Everything's About Me, Part 232! As my coworker said, "Mr. Bone Spurs was going to run into the school?"

Around the table: more thoughts about guns, health care, corporate crime, and "environmental terrorism."

Thom Hartmann at AlterNet offers "Two Simple Laws" that "Could Solve America's Epidemic of Violence." These would a) treat semi-automatic weapons exactly the same under the law as automatic weapons and b) regulate gun ownership the way we regulate car ownership. Remember, cars may be killing machines, but they also get us places; guns are just killing machines. Even if you don't want to ban guns outright, it's hard to argue against getting proper training and licensing before buying killing machines -- unless you're a snowflake, that is. Seriously, no whining about ALL TEH RED TAPEZ!!!! It makes you look stupid and lazy.

Jonathan Chait at New York magazine says our current Administration has fomented "a Golden Age for Corporate Crime." The SEC, whose job is to protect shareholders from malevolent executives, is of course bringing far fewer cases and hauling in far less money in penalties than Mr. Obama's 2016 SEC did over a comparable period of time -- please recall that Mr. Obama spent eight years bending over backward to please banksters after they destroyed our economy -- and the EPA, whose job is to protect our air and water from polluters, has of course collected less than half the money in fines that Tha Bush Mobb did in its first year in office (though, to be fair, Tha Bush Mobb was still trying to look like reasonable moderates back then). And that's before we get to the CFPB dropping a major case against a loanshark outfit, then lying that CFPB employees -- the same ones who'd spend years building the case -- made the call! It's enough to make a man wish these CFPB employees could sue their boss for libel.

Idaho Republicans announce plan to defy the Affordable Care Act, by letting insurers sell plans that don't meet the ACA's standards in re lifetime caps, covered conditions, and pre-existing conditions. The Otter Administration is placing one good bet in assuming that the current Administration won't bother enforcing the Affordable Care Act, but they're placing one very bad bet in assuming that the good citizens of Idaho will simply take it lying down, pre-existing conditions bans being, as you know, very popular. I'd like to remind Idaho populists hemming and hawing about running for office that this is the state that sent Frank Church to the Senate four times.

Ho hum, Blue Cross is pressuring its employees to donate to the Michigan Democratic gubernatorial candidate who doesn't support single-payer health insurance. And Gretchen Whitmer (whose dad use to run Blue Cross, no less!) is just like other weakling Democrats, refusing to answer direct questions about corporate contributions to her campaign while touting her willingness to "work with everyone," as if everyone's worth working with. What do you suppose the chances are that Blue Cross demands its employees donate to the Republican candidate once Ms. Whitmer wins her primary? It's a question worth asking!

When confronted with this lengthy report on how our government wants you to think environmental activists are "terrorists," you might well be compelled to ask: why aren't laws protecting vandalism on private property enough? After all, any activist who (for example) shuts off an oil pipeline valve knows they're breaking the law. I can only conclude that law and order simply isn't good enough for corporations who have lost the argument and won't change with the times. Bonus: ALEC can only come up with anecdotal evidence about "environmental terrorism" to make its argument -- and most of its anecdotes are rubbish!

Finally, Sen. Ted Cruz, talking with another right-wing hack, discusses that Simpsons episode where Homer goes all 2nd-Amendment and Lisa opposes him and utters this priceless flatugasm: "The Democrats are the party of Lisa Simpson and Republicans are happily the party of Homer, Bart, Maggie and Marge." If you want to say Democrats are so-smart-they're-dumb, you don't liken them to the Simpsons character who actually knows science, thinks hard about things, and plays a mean saxophone. Is it too much to ask that, after this, nerds never vote Republican in significant numbers again?

Around the table: more stories about taxes, deficits, health care, hypocrisy, and our stupid President.

Jesus Mary and Joseph why on Earth would anyone vote for a Democrat who says we're stuck with the Trump tax "reform" for the next three decades? I thought Jon Tester might survive in 2018, but if hopelessness in the face of corruption and evil is all he's got, he's toast, even if the House Rep lately convicted of assaulting a reporter runs against him. His fellow Democrat Senators are little better, falling all over themselves not to say what needs to be said: that we have to tax the rich and corporations a lot harder than we've been doing. (I also think the Bard College economist's idea of getting rid of the corporate tax altogether and just "imputing the profits to shareholders" won't work, because it's still not really the shareholders' income. Sheesh, just tax the rich already, and stop playing 13-dimensional chess.)

Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo is of course entirely correct that Republicans have never really cared about government deficits, and I understand why he hates current media reporting suggesting that Republicans have somehow "changed" on deficits, but I also know people hate admitting they're wrong, particularly when they've been so wrong for so long, and I also think there's some benefit to the "liberal" media finally framing Republicans as something other than the "fiscal hawks" they pretend to be when Democrats are in power. That's true even if it took a scolding from Rand Paul to make it obvious.

Ho hum, President Trump says Britons were out in the streets marching against their single-payer health care system, when they were actually out in the streets marching for it, and also demanding that their Tory government fund it properly. You know, I wondered if he was watching Fox and Friends, for many years the stupidest show on TV, right before he twittered out that fecal blast, and I'm sad to report that I was right. Even the Tory Health Secretary responded to Mr. Trump by saying no one wants "to live in a system where 28m people have no cover," by which he means our system, extolled by morons as TEH WURLDZ GREATESTEZ!!!!!!

Also ho hum, President Trump still isn't reading his Presidential Daily Briefs, supposedly because getting an oral summary is supposedly "his preferred style of learning." After all, they call it a "brief" because it's a thousand pages long and has all kinds of information the President doesn't need! No use saying at least Messrs. Mattis, McMaster, and Tillerson get one, because he's going to throw any or all of them under the bus if Fox and Friends tells him to.

Finally, Stephen Mattson at Sojourners instructs us that "Conservative Christianity is Now Everything That It Once Hated: Post-Modern, Morally Relative, and Post-Truth." This has, of course, been happening for a long time -- didn't Cal Thomas, of all people, discourse at length about how the Moral Majority had failed Christian values back in 2005? Why, yes, he did -- but of course it's worse now that right-wing evangelicals rush from one manufactured outrage to the next just like their more secular right-wing comrades, and have such a disgusting human being as Donald Trump as their standard-bearer. Remember: Tony Perkins gives Mr. Trump a mulligan, as long as he creates "religious conscience" exemptions allowing corporations to discriminate.

Around the table: concerning campaign finance, corporate welfare, tax "reform," and approaching rural Americans.

A Tampa Bay Times/WTSP-TV/TEGNA investigation finds dozens of "zombie campaigns" still spending money years after their candidates stop running for office. The culprits range from infamous Florida Republican Mark Foley still charging his campaign for $450 lunches 11 years after leaving Congress in disgrace and Democrat Robin Tallon, Jr. somehow spending large amounts of campaign money 25 years after leaving Congress all the way to folks I've long respected, like the late Rep. Steven LaTourette (R-OH), whose campaign spent over $4,500 in Ohio State football tix three years after he retired, and Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX), whose dormant Presidential campaign paid his daughter over $16,000 between 2015 and 2017. And at least eight campaigns spent money after their candidates died -- which means that Mr. Trump's 2020 re-election campaign will almost certainly survive us all.

In a related note, the Center for Media and Democracy informs us that ALEC's new national chair, a North Carolina state rep named Jason Saine, has spent nearly $20,000 in campaign funds on new suits. Mr. Saine says he needs his suits specially-tailored because he's "short and fat" (his words), and, sadly, his donors probably accept that reasoning, since they're getting what they're paying for -- a "representative" whose "conservatism" consists entirely of serving big corporations (pre-empting local anti-fracking laws, now there's small-government conservatism for you!) or stoking rage in the already rage-addled (limiting free speech on campus, because what's more "small government" than telling people what they can't say?)

EPI researchers inform us that the data proving that giving Amazon tax incentives corporate welfare to build another headquarters in a particular county "just isn't there." Or, more precisely, the data proving that Amazon job creation won't be offset by local job losses caused by Amazon (which, you know, closes down Mom-and-Pop stores with a vengeance!) just isn't there. You'd think states and localities would realize they have Amazon by the short-hairs, since Amazon has to build warehouses just to keep up its super-fast order fulfillment and shipping, but then again, they serve mammon, not you and I. (In a related note, Amazon's insistence that unemployment has gone down 4.8% "on average" in counties it's built in over the last five years isn't that impressive, considering that the national unemployment rate has gone down almost 4% during that time, while the U6 unemployment rate -- which adds in folks who've given up on the job search and part-timers who want to work full-time -- has gone down over six points during that time.)

Now this is truly remarkable: Paul Ryan proudly twittered that a public school employee was getting an extra $1.50 per paycheck thanks to the Trump tax "reform," and that would take care of her Costco membership for an entire year! Most folks aren't going to notice an extra buck-fifty a week, of course, and you may recall that Sen. McConnell (R-KY) slammed President Obama's Making Work Pay tax cut for only giving folks a piddling $7 extra a week. Meanwhile, the average one-percenter, per the Tax Policy Center, will get an extra $980 weekly from the tax "reform." I guess if Mr. Ryan ever had to count the cost of anything, ever, he'd have known to keep his mouth shut. And if a buck-fifty is the boon coming to most Americans from tax "reform," Republicans might actually be in trouble this November.

Finally, Ivy Brashear at Yes! magazine explains "Why Rural America Isn't a Lost Cause for Progressive Ideas." Short answer to title question: people hate what the politicians they've got have done to them, so why not pitch real hopes and dreams to them? How to do it: meet with rural folks on their turf, talk straight to them, and talk about their problems first and then describe how liberal ideas can solve them. You know what I'd add? Don't tell them the economy's changing and they all have to learn how to write computer code to keep up -- not just because they've got plenty of mainstream Democrats in their ear telling them to do that, but because it doesn't remind them that they have the power, and the right, to bend the world in their direction a bit.

Around the table: what stands in the way of a Democratic wave, and other lessons.

If you're already gushing at the possibility of a Democrat victory in the coming midterms, Ari Berman at Rolling Stone cautions that Republican-held states have devised a lot of nefarious ways of suppressing the vote. Mainly Mr. Berman concentrates on Wisconsin, once the home of great American public servants like Bob LaFollette and William Proxmire, but now a right-wing swamp of extreme gerrymandering, vote suppression, and dark money political contributions. But here's a ray of hope: maybe the Supreme Court heard about 2011 Republican lawmakers saying "ignore the public comments" while mulling the Wisconsin gerrymandering case?

Here's another corrective to your enthusiasm: Ryan Grim and Lee Fang at The Intercept describe how actual populists in U.S. House races have to run against the Democratic establishment before they can run against (beatable) Republican incumbents. You'd think Pennsylvania state Democrat poobahs, in particular, would have far less credibility after their lousy showing in 2016 (seriously, who could possibly care about getting Katie McGinty's endorsement?), but they're still around, saying Democrats have to appeal to Republican moderates who will never vote for them rather than the left-leaning and left-behind economic populists who otherwise wouldn't vote for anyone. What's the definition of insanity again?

Bill McKibben at The Nation presents "Three Strategies to Get to a Fossil-Free America," wryly adding that "none of them rely on Washington to do anything useful." Here they are: getting states and localities to move to renewable power; blocking new fossil-fuel projects like gas and oil pipelines and fracking wells; and stop the flow of bank money to fossil-fuel projects. I laughed out loud at the part where folks actually installed fields of solar panels on Keystone XL's path.

In a peripherally-related note, The Straight Dope describes the phenomenon of the "fatberg," or the massive, dense blob of cooking oil and other waste that tends to block off sewer lines. The biggest culprit in the creation of the "fatberg" isn't that turkey grease you dumped down the sink (though it doesn't help!), but the massive amount of used cooking oil restaurants dump into sewers. Sadly, the only idea advanced to stop the fatberg -- converting cooking oil into energy -- is over a decade old already, and some enterprising small-town or big-city mayor should already have made it the great work for which they'll always be remembered.

Finally, Araz Hachadourian at Yes! magazine describes the "time bank," where good Americans who might be short on cash trade hours of services instead. Folks might swap mowing the lawn for a good food dish, for example -- and no money changes hands. Some 500 of these banks exist across America, and I suppose today's "conservatives" would decry them as TEH SOSHULIZM!!!!, even though they consist of people signing and fulfilling contracts with each other without the assistance of some governmental body, which would ordinarly sound like something after a conservative's own heart.

Around the table: conservatism's ongoing decay, and other sad developments.

The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy provides us with yet more helpful data demonstrating that outsourcing the IRS's debt collection function is a terrible idea. The IRS spends about $3 on private debt collectors for every $1 they bring in, which won't surprise you if you have, well, virtually any life experience at all. Strange that today's "conservatives" push for privatization, then do nothing when the private corporations deliver bad results. Aren't conservatives all about making government more efficient and saving the taxpayer money? Or is that just what they told us?

Gov. Walker's little corporate welfare deal with Foxconn will now cost Wisconsin taxpayers $4.5 billion, instead of the $3 billion he previously said it would cost. I wouldn't put it past Mr. Walker, who's as politically astute as he is evil, to try to get some insulation from the backlash by letting President Trump announce the Foxconn deal last year, but this imbroglio remains a major opportunity for Democrats to finally find bipartisan hatred of corporate welfare sexy enough to run ads about. Of course, these are Democrats we're talking about.

Not quite two weeks after passing the massive tax "reform" bill, House Speaker Paul Ryan gets $500,000 in campaign contributions from Charles Koch (of Koch brothers infamy) and his wife. I won't say you could prove a quid pro quo in a court of law, but I'd be a schmuck to say the two events are completely unrelated. I've become convinced that the future of campaign finance is the small contribution, and that big campaign contributions like this will become massive PR headaches for donors. But I wouldn't mind the future being now, of course.

Ho hum, West Virginia's plan to drug test welfare applicants has caught exactly four people in its web over the first three months. One shouldn't compare number of welfare applicants who fail drug tests to the number of folks who use drugs in the population as a whole, but to the number of folks who fail drug tests in the population as a whole. But proponents of this sort of thing have failed to make the case that welfare drug testing is fiscally responsible, which is, again, the sort of thing we thought conservatives cared about. Of course, I'd also argue that punishing addicts is far less fiscally responsible than treating them.

Finally, former Maryland Lieutenant Governor/RNC Chair Michael Steele says the Republicans are entirely to blame for the current government shutdown. I never enjoyed watching Mr. Steele, an obvious moderate, run as far right as he could to appease the rest of the party -- you remember him popularizing the phrase "drill, baby, drill" at the 2008 Republican convention? And you remember his apology for his very mild criticisms of Rush Limbaugh the next year? -- but if he's really as fed up as he sounds these days, he might do some good for this great nation after all.

Around the table: now, with more good news! (For today, at least.)

Here's the House roll call vote on the tax "reform" bill; you don't need the Senate roll call, because all Republicans (except Sen. McCain, who's incapacitated at present) voted yea, and all Democrats voted nay. Your House Republicans voting nay are all from New Jersey or New York except for two Californians (Messrs. Issa and Rohrabacher) and, of course, the incorrigible Walter Jones of North Carolina. All those who voted yea should be unelectable now, just as everyone who voted to repeal Obamacare earlier this year should be unelectable now, but there's still plenty of time between now and Election Day, and seriously, you think Democrats will run ads about these evil works? Why, that would be uncivil!

Steel-manufacturing corporation agrees to pay $1.5 million for polluting the air of good Pennsylvania residents -- and will face more penalties if it doesn't reduce emissions. Those who constantly complain about TEH REGULASHUNZ!!!!! should ask themselves whether they actually approve of folks not being able to go outside because the air's so bad. Because if you constantly whine about regulations, you're objectively pro-pollution, not to mention objectively pro-bigger health care bills. I really don't think it's more nuanced than that.

Trump judicial nominee Matthew Petersen withdraws from consideration after a video of him wilting under rudimentary legal questions from Sen. John Kennedy (R-LA) goes viral. Mr. Petersen can't go away without playing the pity card, of course -- "I had hoped that my nearly two decades of public service might carry more weight than my two worst minutes on television," he says, omitting the fact that his "two worst minutes" thoroughly demonstrated why he shouldn't be a federal judge. President Trump no doubt eagerly awaits the day when net neutrality is no more, so future unqualified judicial nominees won't be so easily embarrassed.

Surprise, surprise, an FCC Inspector General finds that, contra right-wing propaganda, President Obama did not, in fact, interfere with the net neutrality rule-making process in 2014 and 2015. You recall that Mr. Obama did make a video saying what he thought the FCC should do in late 2014, but that hardly constitutes "express orders," particularly when Mr. Obama made a point of saying he couldn't tell the FCC Chair what to do. Maybe right-wingers will still think Mr. Obama interfered, but I doubt a judge will, since that's where this is all going. I'm starting to think Mr. Pai isn't the accomplished servant of corporate interests he aspires to be.

President Trump commutes sentence of Iowa kosher meatpacking executive Sholom Rubashkin, who was serving 27 years for money laundering and bank fraud. So now we know whom Mr. Trump thinks deserves mercy in America: other bosses, like him -- and this boss originally got busted for using hundreds of undocumented immigrants! And while Mr. Rubashkin is no Wall Street bankster, I wouldn't be so quick to say he deserves clemency merely because he was "a devoted husband and father" and "a deeply religious man," as if these are amulets to shield you from the consequences of your actions.

Finally, jury finds first six defendants not guilty of rioting and property destruction charges for their participation in J20 Inauguration Day protests. Well, only 166 defendants to go! Seriously, I'd like to celebrate this as a victory for free speech and protest, but it is a little demoralizing seeing how low prosecutors will sink to try to win -- and frightening to think how low they'll go once President Even-Worse-Than-Trump takes office.

Around the table: the "liberal" media keeps obsessing about Russia, and other stories.

Mark Joseph Stern at Slate suggests that Alabama may have violated the National Voter Registration Act with its various shenanigans concerning "inactive" voters. "Voters who cast ballots in every election should not be told that they have abruptly become inactive; the right to vote should not depend upon one’s ability to recall her county of birth; citizens should not fear arrest on their way to cast lawful ballots," he writes. Thankfully, black voters came out in such numbers that they could not be ignored -- which I guess means the Republican state apparatus will redouble their efforts to suppress them.

Eoin Higgins at FAIR finds MSNBC more eager to cover Russia than other, more important issues, like the Republican tax "reform," the California wildfires, or reports that the President wants to create his own spy network. And that's why I don't watch cable news, even the nominally liberal kind! It's all drama, all the time. Also, too, MSNBC only went "liberal" (with the arrival of Keith Olbermann, who's also been too preoccupied with Russia lately) after failing to ape Fox News well enough, and not for lack of trying.

Ho hum, yet another pair of writers take to the New York Times to complain that the process for choosing Presidential candidates shouldn't be too democratic or anything. Also, apparently, Donald Trump is all Bernie Sanders's fault, and not at all Donald Trump's fault -- where have we heard that before cough bushnadergore cough? With Democrats taking "advice" like this, it's no wonder they constantly lose elections. You did notice that Doug Jones's people kept the national Democrats out of Alabama, right?

At least five multinational corporations have hired intelligence firms to spy on activist groups who oppose them, with at least one observer saying private intelligence corporations have embedded more agents within these activists groups than police have. Remember: the police work for us, and if they go awry, we can do something about it. Over private intelligence firms we have far less oversight, almost like that's the idea.

Senate Finance Committee passes Dodd-Frank "reform" bill by a wide margin, but the House gives it a "chilly reception," largely because it doesn't do enough damage to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Please, House Republicans, stand up for your beliefs! No compromise, no sell out! (Seriously, though, they say with a straight face that Dodd-Frank "hinder(ed) economic growth"? Jesus Mary and Joseph banksters hogged just about all of the growth during this recent "recovery"! How much is enough?)

Finally, federal judge throws out felony "inciting a riot" charges against the first six J20 defendants, but they'll still get tried for charges including "property damage, conspiracy to riot, and engaging in a riot." This, even though the prosecution has already admitted that none of the six defendants actually destroyed any property! Don't you, you know, kind of have to do things to be convicted of those things? Showing up at an anti-Trump rally wearing black isn't enough.

Around the table: concerning government spying, bad government officials, and facing up to necessary truths.

Michael Price at Just Security wonders if our Supreme Court will declare unconstitutional our government's procurement of GPS location data without a warrant. The problem seems to be that the Justices don't exactly agree on why it's unconstitutional, though the "third-party doctrine," as described here, seems a bit broadly drawn. Still, it's nice when even Justice Gorsuch threatens to rule on the right side of history.

Longtime Republican strategist calls Trump Administration spokeshack Sarah Huckabee Sanders a "serial congenital liar," adding that she buries Americans "in an avalanche of horseshit." I'd respond, "gosh, I wonder what the Democrats say about her!" And yet I know that some Democrats make apologies for her behavior as we speak, because they're so-smart-they're-dumb and so-nice-they're-weak. The worst part? If, for some reason, Mr. Trump gets rid of Ms. Sanders, he'll find someone worse, because that's how they roll. Her predecessor was no monument to humanity, after all.

Ho hum, a lot of Mr. Trump's "acting" directors are slowly taking the "acting" out of their job titles. You'd think the Senate, which didn't confirm any of these wastes of flesh, would be more upset about not being adequately consulted, but aside from Mr. Grassley (of course!), they're not -- and I wouldn't blame you for thinking it's because these appointees are exactly the kind of people Republicans wish they could appoint, but can't, because everyone would know how awful they are. Besides, now Republicans get to blame a hated President for overstepping his bounds while reaping the benefits thereof, and what better place is there for a Republican to be?

Again I feel compelled to note that we really should be ignoring reports of the President's "dementia," certainly if they're not coming from medical professionals who are actively treating him. From my admittedly layman's perspective, President Trump is not "demented" any more than he's "mentally ill"; he's simply a bad person who does nothing but enable other bad people, and armchair analysis such as "he's demented" or "he's crazy" merely enables us to avoid facing this horrible truth.

Study suggests that America will lose a third of its workforce to automation by 2030, but I doubt it, not just because ZOMG TEH AUTOMATIONZ WILL DESTROYZ TEH JOBZ!!!! is mostly anti-worker and anti-regulatory hysteria, but because if you've ever dealt with autocorrect or Twitterbots or automated shopping kiosks, you already know the technology just isn't that good, and you might even suspect (as I do!) that the technology will never be a match for the complexity and adaptability of the human mind. I just hope we're able to punish all the bosses who do switch to automation without hiring enough humans to do the necessary quality control.

Finally, an electrician comes up with a novel way of foiling (so to speak) GPS tracking: by putting his GPS-enabled tablet inside an empty, foil-lined bag of cheese twists. Of course I do not approve of using this set-up to avoid being discovered skipping out to the golf course while still on the clock, as he did, but I do approve of appropriating his ingenuity for nobler purposes, like making it harder for our government or our cellphone provider to spy on us.

Around the table: on the mental gymnastics performed by Trump supporters, and other matters.

President Trump calls a dozen Democratic Senators and tells them he'll "get killed" financially if his tax "reform" effort passes. Because, after all, if you can't trust Donald Trump, who can you trust? He also told them that they've got to pass an Estate tax repeal because they had to "give the rich something," but what can you give people who already have everything? (Oh, and a Trump spokeshack again spreads the lie that Democrats are holding up his nominees when they're not even able to filibuster Presidential nominees anymore.)

Politico reporter revisits Trump supporters in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, and finds that although they generally said they'd abandon him if he didn't deliver, now they're saying they won't abandon him even though he hasn't delivered. You'll encounter all the naked self-contradiction of their analyses and you'll say well, what the hell else are they going to do? Most of us have a very hard time admitting we're wrong, and it's not like Democrats offer very much in opposition. (By "offer very much," I mean offer very much economic populism, not whatever else it is Democrats think people want.)

Maine voters overwhelmingly approved a Medicaid expansion at the polls earlier this week, but didn't actually provide a funding mechanism in their ballot resolution, so Gov. Paul LePage may yet get to stop it, by declaring a lack of funds (Maine's share of the expansion would be around $54 million) and sending the resolution back to the legislature. Of course Mr. LePage -- who was very poor and very abused by an alcoholic father as a child and I got past it, so suck it, poor people! -- has already vetoed five-count-'em-five Medicaid expansions as Governor, and the current state Senate Majority leader would like to succeed him, so it doesn't look as good as it did on Election Day, which is a shame. (The good news: Utah might succeed in 2018 where Maine has thus far failed.)

Surprise, surprise, hedge fund manager/Trump campaign financier Robert Mercer appears to have used money sheltered from U.S. taxes in Bermuda to finance some anti-Clinton efforts. So quite a few Democrats will now be able to attack quite a few Republican opponents by referring to all the tax shelter money being spent on that Republican's behalf -- but nah, they won't do that, not when they can coast on this week's results in Virginia.

Finally, in a story that may be breaking a few weeks early, a woman has come forward to accuse Republican U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore of molesting her when she was 14 and he was 32. Mr. Moore has denied the allegations, but the bulk of the Post's report describes a man who seemed to spend an awful lot of time with girls when he was spending time with anyone, and that's not a good sign. Also, he tried to date at least three other teenage girls in his early 30s, though none of those attempts resulted in any sexual relations (and in one of them he actually seems kinda human). I bet he still wins the race anyway, because rage.

Action: government spying, media consolidation, and war in Yemen.

Congress is considering H.R. 3989, the USA Liberty Act, which purports to reform Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act so that our government's snooping on foreign targets wouldn't result in our government snooping on innocent Americans, though of course this is exactly what happened, and H.R. 3989 would actually renew that unconstitutional surveillance! Until the threat has passed, no doubt! At which point Chancellor Palpatine will happily abdicate! S. 1997, the USA RIGHTS Act, would go considerably further toward restraining our government from Hoovering up information on law-abiding Americans without a warrant, so a coalition of good-government groups helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject the USA Liberty Act and protect good Americans from being spied upon by our government by supporting the USA RIGHTS Act. Remember: merely talking to a foreign citizen doesn't mean you give up your Fourth Amendment rights. At least, the Constitution says so. That still counts for something, right?

Meanwhile, the FCC will only take comments for a few more days (which sure makes you think they really want to hear from you, doesn't it?) on its naked attempt to loosen media consolidation rules mainly so that the pro-Trump Sinclair Broadcasting Group can assimilate even more local TV stations like the low-rent Borg that it is. Hence both Free Press and Demand Progress help you tell the FCC not to loosen media consolidation rules. Hatred of a media landscape where a handful of large corporations own every media outlet is one of the few things liberals and conservatives share -- the only people who want more media consolidation are a) Republicans who have ideological objections to any attempt to control corporate behavior and b) weakling Democrats who are so smart, they're dumb. But most Americans know that big corporate control of local media makes that media less responsive to the needs of local communities, plus it's a job-killing juggernaut. If only our leaders were as good as the people!

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Congress to pass H.Con.Res. 81, which would require Congressional authorization to go to war in Yemen and would thus stop (at least temporarily!) our involvement in Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, then CREDO still helps you do that. Roll call! Over 10,000 Yemeni dead, seven million more Yemeni near the point of starvation, the world's biggest cholera outbreak, and the systematic extermination of the Houthi rebels, who have proven to be among the world's best ISIS-fighters (and here you thought the Trump Administration was "laser-focused" on fighting terror!). I bring these things up yet again to remind us that we're not only being cruel by helping Saudi Arabia find targets and refuel planes, we're also being stupid. Odd how frequently that happens! And if we'd only followed the Constitution in the first place, and demanded that Congress authorize the President to engage in war-making activities in Yemen, we very likely wouldn't be in this mess.

Around the table: yet more stories about taxes and not listening to Trump votaries.

Anthony DiMaggio at Counterpunch finds all kinds of data suggesting that Americans just aren't fooled by the tax-cuts-for-the-rich-help-everyone rubbish Republicans are still peddling. 2001 and 2003 weren't that long ago, of course, and most folks remember that those tax cuts preceded years of lackluster job creation, followed by a financial meltdown that almost destroyed our economy. But Mr. DiMaggio also reminds us that President Trump's unpopularity ain't helping him sell this rubbish, either.

You've heard that silliness about the proposed corporate tax cut leading to an average $4,000 boost in annual household income? Well, Factcheck.org finds that claim "dubious," not just because expecting a $127 billion drop in corporate tax revenues can hardly spur a $503 billion increase in household income, but also because even the pro-corporate tax cut crowd is scratching their heads over how the Trump Administration got the number. Also, too, citing the "average" take from a tax cut is a time-honored way of signifying to everyone that you're full of soup.

Of course, as the Economic Policy Institute reminds us, corporate tax cuts have, historically, not been a boon to our economy, and our periods of great prosperity have far more often occurred under a system that taxes corporations hard. Of course, you and I know that if you give a corporation more money, it'll shovel it to its shareholders, not create jobs with it. Jobs are for people, after all, and people have families and illnesses and such, so why would corporations spend their unearned largesse on that, when they can keep it for themselves (and then pay even less in taxes, since dividends get taxed at a lower rate)?

Hate to pile on, but the Institute for Tax Policy informs us that if Republicans do pass a tax plan that keeps the 39.6% bracket for millionaire income, the Trump tax cut plan would still mainly benefit the rich. Rich folks will still, after all, be getting all the tax cuts the plan would shower on income between $450,000 and $1 million -- and they'll still benefit disproportionately from the massive corporate tax cut that Republicans would hand out. They think we're really stupid, though of course we're not, and (as the link in the first paragraph tells us) the polling is starting to reflect that.

OK, maybe I don't hate to pile on: Justin Miller at The American Prospect tells us that the Republican tax plan would not only cut the corporate tax rate, but shift to a "territorial" tax system that would actually encourage corporations to shift even more profits "offshore." How? Currently, we tax all corporate profits, domestic and overseas, but the overseas profits get deferred, leading to corporations pretending they earned some of the money they've earned here "overseas," and even corporations pretending to be "foreign." The Republican plan would simply give up on taxing overseas profits, and what do you think corporations will do even more when that happens? Up really is down for these clowns.

Finally, William Rivers Pitt at TruthOut gives sage and welcome advice: "Stop Trying to Convince Trump Voters. Start Trying to Win." This maps well onto the advice I've been giving people for over a decade: 25% of the electorate is bat-guano insane and can't be reasoned with, and we should simply out-vote them at every turn. I'd still say the most important reason we don't is that the weakling Democrats who present themselves as TEH ONLY ALTERNATIVEZ!!!! don't fight for their constituents -- we've told them and told them and told them, and they still listen first and foremost to money. We'll continue to do our duty, until it's impossible for them not to do theirs. If we got some new Democrats, of course, I wouldn't complain.