Thieves in the Temple.

Action: concerning voting rights, the Equality Act, social media, and the filibuster.

Happy Tuesday, good folks! Now it's time to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. (If you're pressed for time, People for the American Way helps you with the For the People Act, while the ACLU helps you with the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.) The 2020 elections taught us two things: 1) when people are super-organized, they can win elections even in places like Georgia, and 2) Republicans will use their power to prevent people from voting any way they can. As they're trying to do in states like Iowa, Pennsylvania, and Georgia as we speak! These bills would strengthen the Voting Rights Act, force campaigns to disclose their big donors, enact automatic and same-day voter registration across the land, mandate states to use redistricting commissions instead of self-interested legislators, and prevent states from using "address verification forms" to suppress voters of color -- among many other things! The only folks who'd oppose these things are folks afraid of losing a fair fight, and they certainly shouldn't get all the say about everything in America.

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to pass H.R. 5, the Equality Act. The Equality Act would prohibit discrimination on the basis of "sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity" in public places, as well as in the spheres of education, housing, and credit. You may reasonably ask why we need an Equality Act, given Supreme Court Justice Gorsuch's 2020 opinion ruling that Title VII of our Civil Rights Act covers gay and transgender folks. Well, Title VII only concerns employment discrimination -- Justice Gorsuch would be the first to tell you that, despite appearances, you can't just apply it in another area -- and the Equality Act, as I've suggested, covers just about everything else. If you peruse right-wing objections to the Equality Act, you'll find they don't argue against the idea that we should extend civil rights to gay or transgender folks -- they concoct the most absurd stories they can think of, as if the law can predict every conceivable future event, or as if judges don't rule on precisely those matters. Don't brook any of that silliness. Rights are more important than hysterical what-ifs.

Meanwhile, you know about all that land in the Amazon rain forest currently home to indigenous folks? And you know how the Brazilian government (whose President, Jair Bolsonaro, is now the biggest asshole in any government now that Donald Trump is no longer American President) has been seizing their land illegally to sell it off to developers? Now dig this: you can buy these plots of stolen land on Facebook's Marketplace. Because freedom! Naturally Facebook says it's up to the sellers to comply with the law, though one could certainly argue that Facebook is an accomplice to the crime. Interesting, isn't it, how Facebook is never responsible for the evil that happens on its platform? And please understand that by "interesting" I mean "galling." They have just as much right to keep actual criminal activity from happening on their platform as they do to keep Nazis from recruiting angry high school kids on their platform, but they won't, so it's time to wave the Big Stick of Bad PR in their faces again. Sum of Us helps you tell Facebook to get its act together and stop letting criminals sell land they don't own on their platform.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell Democratic Senators to end the filibuster, Demand Progress still helps you do that. The best argument for keeping the filibuster is the one I used to deploy: the filibuster also saves us from the worst Republicans can do. But that is becoming less and less true! Did the filibuster save us from Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Comey Barrett? No, it did not, because Republicans got rid of it for that purpose, as they will whenever they want to get something even more extreme done! We might as well get rid of it first, and get some good done in the meantime. Yeah, Republicans will one day take complete control of our government again, and we might wish to have the filibuster back, but you know what beat back health care "reform" in 2017? We did, and if we stay in that frame of mind, then we'll win the battles we're supposed to win. And remember: nobody's getting into the voting booth in 2022 saying thank God the Democrats preserved the sanctity of Senate procedure, no matter what the cost to front-line pandemic workers who should be making more than $7.25/hour!

Action: concerning voting rights, Ted Cruz, our Post Office, and the filibuster.

Happy Tuesday, good Americans! Today would be a good day to call your Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. The For the People Act, as you know, contains a lot of goodies -- campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. I would be hard-pressed to think of good reasons to oppose any of those things, though I know right-wingers will keep yammering on about them. The John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression over the last 25 years to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. This bill still doesn't have a bill number at this writing, but go ahead and say you want it anyway -- the more of us who say we want it, the more likely it'll get introduced, and passed, and become law.

Meanwhile, both Daily Kos and MoveOn (wow, sounds like a fresh breath of 2004!) help you tell Sen. Ted Cruz to resign from our Senate. We don't even need to go back to his enabling of the January 6 attempted coup; all we need do is recount his sins from the past week! As millions of his constituents were left without electricity, water, or heat from an uncharacteristically bad winter storm, he flew with his family to Cancún, only returning several days early once news of his flight became known; he even requested that beleaguered Houston police (big storm, remember?) escort him through the airport before flying to Cancún and upon returning. Would it be piling on to mention that he's taunted other politicians for pulling similar stunts? No, it would not. And don't brook any gaslighting from right-wingers about how little Sen. Cruz could have done. Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, who does not exactly hail from a neighboring state, has raised close to $5 million for Texas food banks, while Beto O'Rourke, who almost beat Mr. Cruz in 2018, organized nearly a million wellness calls and delivered food and water to good Texans. Seems they're better Senators for Texas than Mr. Cruz is.

In other news, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell President Biden to appoint four decent human beings to our U.S. Postal Service Board of Governors, then People for the American Way still helps you do that. And make no mistake about the end goal: the end goal is to fire Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, because that's what a decent human being would do. A decent human being would not sit there and let himself be gaslit by Mr. DeJoy's "big plans" for our Post Office. The only big plan he has for our Post Office is to make it run so badly we'll be "forced" to use private (and more expensive) mail carriers for everything. Our Post Office is a jewel, its workers some of the most diligent I've ever seen, and don't let anyone tell you differently. And if we want real reforms for our Post Office, we should stop making it pre-pay decades of benefit funds in advance (the source of most of its money problems) and we should allow it to offer basic banking services again. Like so many other things, this just ain't that damn deep.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to eliminate the filibuster, then Common Cause still helps you do that. I know, I know, I used to say my fellow liberals were dumb for wanting to do that, but you know what? I was wrong; they weren't dumb, and since our Senate hasn't listened to any of my principled calls for making the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, I say take their damn toy away. Republicans filibustered even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama, and they should have suffered for them! I mean, filibustering legislation that would stop tax breaks from going to corporations that outsource their jobs? Everyone who filibustered that should have lost their next election! But it ain't just Democrat weakness (I mean, did they ever run ads about that?) to blame; it's also a system that lets them obstruct in the dark, without their nefarious deeds ever being brought to the light. And if you believe in accountability, you know it's got to stop.

Around the table: Republicans Acting Badly, Part 583.

Ian Millhiser at Vox reminds us that there must be 50 ways to fix the filibuster. (No, I won't keep that going.) He also reminds us that the filibuster gets changed all the time -- a Brookings Institution scholar counts 161 "provisions of law" that protect a bill from a Senate filibuster, and we didn't pass all 161 of them yesterday -- and proposes a number of reforms that would do us a lot of good, although "making Senators actually talk through their filibuster instead of just signaling a filibuster and then going off to dinner or the theatre" comes a little late in the discussion for my taste.

After Sen. Ron Johnson (A-WI) says that January 6 "didn't seem like an armed insurrection," the normally fair-to-middling fact-checking website Politifact takes the time to remind us that, yes, January 6 was, in point of fact, an armed insurrection. I guess I could be generous and say that Mr. Johnson hasn't been through too many armed insurrections and thus wouldn't know ha ha ha ha ha I kid of course -- Ron Johnson is gaslighting, and "only one shot fired" hides all the other weapons the seditionists brought, or, in the case of the one who attacked a police officer with an American flag, repurposed.

When you confront an article entitled "How to Live With Authoritarians," you may be tempted to respond "rule number one is don't coddle them." But authors Karen Stenner and Jessica Stern have a profound insight (or ten) to share. For example, "(a)uthoritarians’ fundamental aversion to diversity -- complexity and variety -- is distinct from traditional conservatives’ aversion to change -- which is more about novelty and uncertainty," and "those who are predisposed to favor freedom and diversity over authority and conformity must recognize that the authoritarian preference for oneness and sameness is largely innate and unlikely to change." Hence "(t)he new U.S. administration should promote equity and justice while avoiding a loud and provocative display of stances and messaging that unnecessarily aggravates authoritarians," which sure sounds like typical Democrat weakness, but really isn't, if you attend closely the word "unnecessarily" and if you're the kind of person who prefers getting things done to creating big dramas about them (which is to say, if you're the opposite of the kind of person Donald Trump is).

Folks are concentrating on the Washington County (PA) GOP Chair criticizing Sen. Toomey's vote to convict Donald Trump on impeachment charges because "we did not send him there to do the right thing," but of course it's far worse than that. Silly little Washington County GOP Chair, trying to convince us that Pat Toomey really only represents the Washington County GOP in the Senate -- or even Pennsylvania's Republicans -- and not all Pennsylvanians! I do get tired of right-wingers whining that they're not "represented" on those rare occasions Republican politicians don't march in jackboot lockstep with their urges. I've never agreed very much with our state's junior Senator, but I'm pretty sure this kind of thing is why Mr. Toomey decided to retire in 2022.

Finally, when I note that Rep. Jim Jordan (A-OH) thinks "cancel culture" is "the most dangerous thing happening in the country today," all I really hear is WAAAAAAAAH TEH LIBRULZ AREZ MEANZ TO MEZ!!!!! But you know, the whining isn't the worst thing about what he said. The slippery slope argument isn't the worst thing about what he said. Even calling "cancel culture" the "most dangerous thing" in America while a pandemic slashes its scythe through America isn't the worst thing about that. You know what's the worst thing about that? Jim Jordan literally enabled child molestation at a high school before getting elected to the House, but because he represents a deformed Tetris piece of a district, the voters can't cancel his sorry ass.

Action: concerning voting rights, Guantánamo Bay, and voting security.

Happy Tuesday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them to pass H.R. 1, the For the People Act, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act (no bill number at this writing). H.R. 1 would enact sweeping voting rights reforms, including campaign finance disclosure, same-day voter registration, automatic voter registration, 15 days of early voting, independent commissions to redraw districts, and an end to those nefarious "address verification forms" that only seem to lead to folks of color getting de-registered. Meanwhile, the Voting Rights Advancement Act would require any state or locality with a record of vote suppression to get pre-clearance from our Justice Department before changing their laws. Neither of these bills are budget-related, so Republicans will be able to filibuster them (unless Senate Democrats get rid of the filibuster, or force Republicans to talk through a filibuster), but I say let them say they're against helping more people vote. That won't go down too well with folks of color, and I dare say it won't go down too well with independents, either.

Meanwhile, Daily Kos helps you tell President Biden to close our detention center at the Guantánamo Bay once and for all. You'll remember that President Obama tried to close it, only to hear a bunch of not-in-my-backyard whining from Congressfolk of both parties (ain't bipartisanship grand?). ZOMG what if one of those terrorists had to be detained in my state? Those would be the "terrorists" our government literally couldn't charge with a crime after 10 years; if you can't charge someone with a crime after detaining them for 10 years, you're either incompetent or a fascist -- or, more likely, a fascist pretending to be incompetent. And don't brook any stupidity about folks we can't even call "terrorists" "returning" to terrorism, for Guantánamo Bay remains a stain on our collective soul as Americans, and we should scrub that stain right out. But remember: we don't locate America's greatness in our "infallibility," for only a coward or a fascist does that. We locate America's greatness in our struggle to right our wrongs. This is more our heritage than whatever OANN teaches is our heritage.

Meanwhile, our U.S. Election Assistance Commission (or EAC) plans to vote soon on the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines 2.0, which would ostensibly enhance election security -- if it didn't plan on allowing voting machines to have wireless devices in them! The standard actually says a voting machine can have a wireless device in it if the voting machine doesn't actually use it, but then why have it? So hackers can exploit the very presence of a wireless device and manipulate elections from afar? Somebody didn't think this through -- or, possibly, someone did. And funny thing, we actually convinced the EAC to include a strong wireless ban in its standards last year -- but now they want to water that standard down so that it's useless! I wonder who got to them. In any event, Public Citizen helps you tell our EAC to reject voting machines with wireless devices in them. Remember: if you don't trust wireless systems to handle your banking (and you shouldn't!), then you certainly can't trust wireless systems with your vote. And yes, elections were pretty secure in 2020, but that doesn't mean we sit back, it means we keep working.

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and keeping big tech out of our government.

Happy Monday, good peoples! Let's call our Reps and Senators and tell them, once again, to pass a vigorous COVID relief bill. Ignore the pablum from the chattering class about how the Biden plan isn't "bipartisan" enough! As far as I'm concerned, Republicans sacrificed their "right" to "bipartisan" consideration once they spent two months trying to overturn an election and then enabled a coup, and in any case they should listen more closely to their actual constituents, who support a $15/hour minimum wage and $2,000 monthly checks and funding for states and localities more than those who "represent" them want us to think. And if you're anxious about funding the bill, we could tax millionaire income at 91%, tax capital gains and corporate profits over $1 million at 55%, and tax million-dollar estates at 55%. We could also tax billionaire wealth, as Sen. Warren (D-MA) proposed even before billionaires made out like bandits in this pandemic! (Daily Kos helps you tell your Congressfolk to pass a wealth tax, regardless of whether it's part of a pandemic package or not.)

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of his impeachment charge, and prevent him from ever running for or holding office in America again. We all saw what happened on TV in real time, but nonetheless I'd like to note that two far-right former Congressfolk have made an excellent case for Mr. Trump's conviction. In a Roll Call op-ed provocatively titled "Republicans, If This Isn't Impeachable, What Is?", former Reps. Barbara Comstock of Virginia and Charles Boustany of Louisiana cite (among other things) the numerous actual threats Mr. Trump, his son, and his supporters made on January 6, plus they directly address the cowardly argument that it'd be "divisive" to convict him: "Some say we must move on. But it is clear that Trump and his mob still aren’t moving on. Trump, his family and supporters continue to threaten political revenge and have shown no remorse for their actions. Angry Trump supporters continue to make dangerous threats." See, it can't just be us who act civilized all the time -- it's a burden all civilized folks must bear.

Hate to make this phone call to your Senators extra long, but go ahead and tell them to end the filibuster, too. I know, I'd also prefer to make the filibuster an actual talking filibuster, and if that's what Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema really have in mind I'll give them all the credit in the world, but I doubt they're that slick, and I've been advocating the talking filibuster for over a decade now, and I know I'm not the only one, and I know all the alleged parliamentary geniuses in Congress can see the problem just as well as I can, and yet they do nothing about it, so we might as well speak the language that they understand. Don't brook any silliness about the "sanctity of the institution." What, exactly, is sacred about the filibuster? Sorry, Russell Kirk acolytes, but just because we've been doing it a certain way forever doesn't make it "sacred." The best the filibuster does for us is make it easy for Democrats to oppose bad bills when they're in the minority. That's not playing to win, though -- that's playing not to lose. And you don't value "the sanctity of the institution" over, you know, justice.

Finally (cue cheers from convention crowd!), No Big Tech helps you tell President Biden to reject putting big tech corporation lobbyists into positions in our government. Folks all over America are done worshiping CEOs, and even the politicians are starting to catch on, yet big tech CEOs still seem to wow politicians with their alleged smarts. But what have these Big Brains at Big Tech have gotten us? Easier ways to consume more art, and what else? Do we have a cure for cancer? No. Do we have a renewable energy grid? No. Do we have research bases on the moon and Mars? No -- though we do have "space tourism" for the wealthy. Do we have a cure for poverty? No -- though we do have big tech CEOs claiming we can retrain coal miners to write code like people can be so easily contorted. Even Tesla's electric cars sure are taking their sweet time coming down to the price a working family can afford. So how we get people in government who know what they're doing?

Action: concerning COVID relief, impeachment, the filibuster, and another polluting pipeline.

The Biden Administration apparently wants to get the American Rescue Plan through Congress badly enough that they put Vice President Harris on TV in Arizona and West Virginia (from which recalcitrant "moderate" Senators Sinema and Manchin hail) to plug the plan. Hence you may want to call your Reps and Senators (you can use the tools in the upper right-hand corner of this page -- or the bottom of this page, if you're on a cellphone -- to find their phone numbers) and tell them how you feel about the plan. You may want to tell them that you want to keep the American Rescue Plan's $15/hour minimum wage, paid family leave, expanded funding for testing and vaccination, and expanded funding to states and localities, plus you'd add $2,000 checks every month and higher enhanced unemployment benefits, and you'd pay for it by repealing the CARES Act's massive hedge fund tax cut, plus a 55% tax on corporate profits and capital gains over $1 million and a 91% tax on income over $1 million. Hey, they're only supposed to negotiate with us!

While you've got your Senators on the phone, go ahead and tell them to convict Donald Trump of the incitement impeachment charge, and punish him by barring him from ever running for office again. Hey, actions have consequences! Or were conservatives lying every time they ever told us that? We're told we won't get very many Republican votes to convict, but duty is duty, and I don't just mean our duty to express our will, I mean the Senators' duty to do their job! You may be thinking that the failure of President Andrew Johnson's impeachment in the 1860s was "not that big a deal," but nothing could be further from the truth! When the Senate failed (by one vote!) to remove President Johnson, they signaled that America was done working to heal the damage caused by slavery; not long thereafter, Jim Crow flourished in the South, which meant another hundred years of direct damage to black folks in America. Surely our Senators don't want to be on the wrong side of history yet again.

Meanwhile, People for the American Way helps you tell your Senators to end the filibuster now. As you know, I've said for many years that we need to reform the filibuster, by making Senators actually hold the floor and talk for 30 hours like Jimmy Stewart does in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, rather than simply signal their intention not to cut off debate and promptly go out to dinner or the theater. I don't regret saying that -- I was telling the truth as best I understood it at the time. But Republicans have abused the filibuster over the last dozen years or so, such that even the mildest reforms proposed by Barack Obama as President couldn't pass simply because Republicans still had 47 or 45 or 41 Senators, and (this is important!) because Republicans acted as a body in doing so, and because our "liberal" media did such a bad job covering these matters, no Republican Senator ever suffered for their obstruction. Actions have consequences, after all -- but Republican Senators won't suffer them unless we abolish the filibuster.

Finally, President Biden reversed former President Trump's Executive Order allowing further construction of the Keystone XL pipeline, which effectively killed it, and no, I will not entertain yowling about TEH NINETIEZ THOUSANDZ OFZ TEH JOBZ LOSTZ!!!!!, because building pipelines that pollute our water table is not the only way to create jobs. Why, building out a national renewable energy grid would create a lot of jobs! But I digress, perhaps. The Enbridge Line 3 pipeline in northern Minnesota would, if completed, spur many similar concerns about clean water and pipeline safety -- why, it was a mere 10 years ago that an Enbridge pipeline ruptured and caused the largest inland oil spill ever in America, ensuring that 40 square miles of the Kalamazoo watershed would be, ah, flavored with oil. Hence both Daily Kos and 350 Local Group Network help you tell President Biden to put an end to the Enbridge Line 3 pipeline as well. Hate to pile on, but Native American groups also oppose Line 3; maybe they get a say, too?

Action: concerning the filibuster, impeachment, and Fox News.

In light of the news that Senate Democrats won't get rid of the filibuster right away, you may want to call your Senators and tell them how you feel about that. Leave it to Mob Boss Mitch himself to accidentally tell us why we should get rid of the filibuster, in saying that getting rid of it would "destroy() the Senate as we know it" and turn it into a "scorched-earth Senate." You mean a "scorched-earth Senate" like the ones we had from 2008 to 2020, where no policy initiative that smelled of liberal cooties could pass because Mitch McConnell and Republicans would either filibuster it or refuse to give it a hearing? That sounds like a "Senate as we know it" we must "destroy." Yes, we could keep the filibuster if we made Senators actually speak until they're blue in the face, like we did in the old days. But I've said that a hundred times if I've said it once, and like most Americans, I'm so, so done with politicians who don't listen.

While you've got your Senators on the phone, tell them to convict Donald Trump of our House's impeachment charge and ban him from ever running for office in America again. The trial doesn't start for another week and a half or so, but it's never too early, and for once we've seen all the evidence of our President's criminal behavior we need to see on TV! Many Trumpholes will tell you that the attempted coup of January 6 "wasn't such a big deal," but just because this particular group of seditionists bollocksed it up so badly (taking selfies, posting to social media, etc.), that doesn't mean the next group of seditionists won't do a whole lot better, and frankly we've got to strangle this particular baby in its crib before it grows into an obese, rage-filled manchild. Some of the folks voting on this matter probably remember that fairly acutely -- or would, if they weren't so terrified of a primary challenge. Well, no one said being a Senator was easy. I mean, leadership roles never are, nor should be.

Finally, the Daily Kos Liberation League helps you tell a bunch of corporations to stop advertising with Fox News already. Fox News's decades-long trail of slime surely requires no summary, but certainly their recent actions -- advertising stupid "election fraud" theories, claiming that the January 6 attempted coup was somehow the work of antifa and not the right-wingers everyone could see doing it -- should spur big corporations to fear the Big Stick of Bad PR, as wielded by their customers. No, big corporations shouldn't "reach out" to the Fox News audience. The name of the game now isn't "reaching out" to right-wingers; the name of the game now is isolating them, until they finally feel the shame they've so richly earned. Then we can be all Parable of the Prodigal Son with them. Until then? Not so much as a Subaru ad on Fox News.

Around the table: how to deal with domestic terrorism, part 298.

"Fears Grow," says this Guardian article, "That Efforts to Combat U.S. Domestic Terrorism Can Hurt Minorities." Yeah, it "can," in a nation that prioritizes going after folks of color even though white supremacists commit most of the domestic terrorism. Rep. Tlaib is right to say the January 6 coup attempt had nothing to do with "not having enough tools," and in any case "use the tools you got" shouldn't just be about laws and law enforcement -- when right-wingers look around and find everyone's stopped talking to them, then they'll start to think twice.

The International Energy Agency (or IEA) says that the best solar power set-ups now offer the "cheapest...electricity in history." So that's the good news. The bad news is we're going to have to work a lot harder to head off the worst effects of climate change than the good news would have us think, since we're still not abandoning coal and oil fast enough. I guess we'll just leave it to our best and brightest entrepreneurs, then? I kid, of course -- if they were really our best and brightest we'd have solar-powered utilities now.

Surprise, surprise, our "liberal" media are starting to cover the whining of deficit peacocks again, now that voters have moved heaven and earth to take control of both Houses of Congress and the Presidency back from Republicans. Now, when one puts it like that, it sure makes all these folks wringing their hands over the deficit and their media enablers sound more like the assholes they actually are. Do they not remember how George W. Bush's bankster bailout ran up the deficit right before Barack Obama took office? Gosh, it's almost like it's a plan with these people.

Well, that sure didn't take long: QAnon votaries who were starting to feel a little used-like-a-wet-dishrag after Inauguration Day have glommed on to a new hope: that Donald Trump will be inaugurated President on March 4 as the "19th President" of the original American republic. I'm afraid I can't illuminate the labyrinthine reasoning that links the District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 with this latest Oncoming Storm because no reasonable person can, but I do know that the "sovereign citizens" who've historically banged this saucepan have never had a healthy relationship with Jews or folks of color.

Finally, Sen. McConnell described why he likes the filibuster this week, and I'll discuss this a little more in today's action post, but I thought I'd illuminate this line of reasoning: "If your legislation can't pass the Senate, you don't scrap the rules or lower the standards. You improve your idea, take your case to the people, or both." Sounds reasonable, right? Trouble is, all this "just make your argument better" stuff doesn't apply when the side that does all the filibustering doesn't have to make an argument at all -- they just say "no" to whatever argument you're making and then go home. Now, if they had to say no and then keep talking, Mr. McConnell would have a leg to stand on here, but they don't, so he doesn't. He knows all that, of course -- he just hopes you don't.

Action: concerning D.C. statehood and the filibuster.

You haven't forgotten about that little attempted coup from almost three weeks ago, have you? Well, as many observers have pointed out, if Washington, D.C. were a state, it'd have its own National Guard and wouldn't have had so much trouble repelling Y'all Qaeda from our Capitol. Republicans despise the idea of D.C. becoming a state, even though it has more residents than Vermont or Wyoming and almost as many as North Dakota or Alaska. Of course, Sen. Cotton (A-AK) thinks D.C. is entirely composed of lobbyists, which will surprise the hundreds of thousands of good citizens who've been living and working there all their lives, and Sen. Daines (R-MT) seems to think they're not "real people." Hate to pile on, but D.C. doesn't just suffer under "taxation without representation," as their license plates say -- they suffer under higher taxation than nearly half our states. Hence Free DC and Demand Progress help you tell your Reps and Senators to make Washington, D.C. our 51st state.

Meanwhile, Public Citizen helps you tell Democratic Senate Majority Leader Schumer to reject Minority Leader McConnell's demand that Democrats preserve the filibuster during this session. I've long been against getting rid of the filibuster, and I could just restate my case again now off the top of my head, but fuck it -- 14 years is a long time to watch Republicans nullify the popular will again and again by stamping their feet and refusing to help pass even the mildest reforms. More than one observer has said that it's be a meaningless pledge anyway, since Democrats could still change the rules mid-session, but Democrats are also exactly the kind of politicians to "take the pledge seriously" so they'll have an excuse for not getting anything done, and then when they get buried by QAnon candidates in the 2022 midterms, they'll blame the liberals again. So lets do our best to deprive them of this stratagem.

UPDATE. Late last night, Sen. McConnell dropped his demand for a Democratic pledge to keep the filibuster -- because Sens. Manchin (D-WV) and Sinema (D-AZ) have publicly expressed their opposition to the idea. In a completely unrelated note, Sen. Manchin's D.C. phone number is 202.224.3954, and Sen. Sinema's is 202.224.4521. If you agreed with them once, as I did, you may want to describe why you changed your mind. You don't have to say "fuck it," like I did above.

Around the table: tabulating an unusually high number of setbacks to civilization, sorry.

Supreme Court stays various injunctions against our Administration's transgender military ban -- meaning the ban is in place until all the legal challenges thereto can be resolved. Seems to me the conservative thing to do would be to leave the injunctions in place and let the lower courts work it out, but apparently that's insufficiently conservative to this Court's "conservative" majority. Dig, also, our Administration Solicitor General whining about how many federal courts are now issuing used-to-be-rare injunctions against "major policy initiatives." That couldn't be because so many of your "major policy initiatives" break our laws, could it? What a snowflake.

Apparently because absurdity just isn't absurd enough, Vice President Pence compares our President to Martin Luther King, Jr., saying that both men have "inspired us to change." I guess he means to equate the Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, and the Open Housing Act with the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which remains our President's only significant legislative "achievement." The only way our President has "inspired us to change" is that he's inspired so many more good Americans to confront corrupt bigoted assholes like him a lot more forcefully, but I don't praise or thank corrupt bigoted assholes for that, nor do I argue for their continuance in office because some good happens to come of their assholery.

Lo and behold, Senate Majority Leader/Obviously Great and Wonderful Real American Co-President Mitch McConnell, mere days after saying he won't allow a Senate vote on any shutdown-ending bill that wasn't obviously the result of spirited negotiations between Democrats, Republicans, and our President, now plans to bring a shutdown bill that meets precisely none of those criteria to a vote this week. No use lamenting that he has no principles, because folks like Mob Boss Mitch think principles are for us "little people," not their "betters," like him.

Buried in this article buying the Republican fiction that they can't get our President's nominees through quickly enough despite the fact that Democrats literally can't filibuster them anymore is Sen. Todd Young (R-IN) whining about how "(i)t's very difficult for a president to advance his or her agenda if you don’t have the right people in place." I also despise the holds and withdrawals of unanimous consent that comprise Senate Democrats' last tools to stall our President's nominees, but Sen. Young appears completely unconcerned about the people's right to advance their agenda through their representatives in Congress, or about our President's constitutionally-mandated duty to do the people's will. I don't give one rat's hind quarter about a President's "agenda," and that's how our Founders wanted us to be.

Finally, why does our "liberal" media suppose our President has ever been any kind of "deal-maker," like this shutdown mess should be some kind of surprise? It's not just that every "great deal" he's ever made only allowed him to suck out a bankrupt corporation's wealth like the vampire he is -- a good deal benefits everyone, not just the guy who makes it, but our "liberal" media haven't attended that aspect of deal-making in some time, so obsessed are they with "who wins" and "who loses" like everything's a damn horserace.

Around the table: what "free markets" really mean, and other important lessons.

Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals rules that the Civil Rights Act of 1964 protects gays from discrimination at the workplace. The word "gay" doesn't appear in the Civil Rights Act, but the Court ruled, essentially, that discriminating against gay workers isn't appreciably different from discriminating against workers because of their sex, which latter item is in the Civil Rights Act. An 11th Circuit panel reached the opposite conclusion last month, but don't bet that even a Neil Gorsuch-infused Supreme Court would strike down such a ruling, at least as long as Anthony Kennedy is still around.

One great economist, Paul Craig Roberts, briefly describes the work of another great economist, Michael Hudson. You'll learn how classical economists use the term "rent" (i.e., "an income stream that has no counterpart in cost incurred by the receipient of the income stream," not necessarily what you pay your landlord). Also, "(c)lassical economists, such as Adam Smith, understood a free market to be one in which taxation freed the economy from untaxed economic rents. In neoliberal economics, Hudson explains, 'free market' means freedom for rent extraction free of government taxation and regulation. This is a huge difference." And if you were to suddenly see rents everywhere in this economy, you wouldn't be alone.

Third-party private tax collectors will begin operating soon, and given all the The Consumerist tells you what you need to know. Long story short: the IRS won't outsource just any old tax collection effort, you'll still get written notices from the IRS and the private collector before you get any phone calls, the private collector still can't call you just any old time, you can opt out of working with the private collector, and private collectors will by law direct you to pay the IRS, not them. I'd still prefer the IRS just did all the work they're mandated to do, though of course they can't mainly because Republicans have been starving their budget for years.

From the "Racism is Not Dead" department: a ProPublica analysis of four states finds car insurance corporations charging higher premiums to folks in minority neighborhoods, though these folks don't actually cost car insurers more! This "may amount to a subtler form of redlining," they say, which is quite an understated way of putting it. You'll also find that the article includes many criticisms of its methods -- and refutes just about all of them. (That doesn't stop the trolls in the comment section, because what reason ever stopped a troll?)

Harold Meyerson at The American Prospect thinks "Republicans have made a key miscalculation in their decades-long strategy of attacking social programs," since their white working-class supporters need these programs more and more now. I'm sure the poll figures cited are quite accurate, but I remember saying a long time ago that folks would be more sanguine toward food stamps as they knew more people using them (or had to use them themselves) and I'm just not seeing it. All that seems to happen is that the 25% of this country that's bat-guano crazy (a sector which, sadly, overlaps pretty well with "downwardly-mobile whites") just gets crazier.

Finally, Republicans get rid of filibuster for Supreme Court nominees, clearing the way for the confirmation of Judge Gorsuch to the high court. And Sen. McConnell (E-KY) had this to say: "There cannot be two sets of standards: one for the nominees of the Democratic president and another for the nominee of a Republican president." Of course, the Republican standard for "nominees of the Democratic President" is to completely fail to even hold hearings, which they did in 2016, and were planning to do if Mrs. Clinton won the Presidency, and surely would have done in 2009, too, if they'd had a Senate majority then. Good citizens of Kentucky, could you please turn out this clown in 2020? And Democrats: how about running candidates who might inspire people to vote for them?

Action: fighting government spying on Muslims and Donald Trump's Cabinet of Horrors.

Demand Progress helps you tell Congress to reject any attempt by our government to monitor Muslim-American citizens in violation of our Constitution. Apparently, Rep. King (R-NY) has pushed for just such a program, based on the New York city Police Department's "Demographics Unit," which was so wildly unsuccessful and unpopular (setting up cameras outside Muslim-owned stores and community centers, putting spies in Muslim communities) that they called it a "demographics unit." Monitoring Americans once you get a warrant from a judge is perfectly lawful and constitutional, but monitoring good Americans merely on the basis of their religious beliefs certainly violates the First Amendment, which protects folks from oppression by their government merely for their speech or religious beliefs. Of course, when Republicans bring up their so-called First Amendment Defense Act early next year, we'll have to remind them that the First Amendment only protects your right to speech and belief, not your right to deny other people their rights because of your beliefs. But we'll get there, too.

Meanwhile, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell your Senators to reject all of Donald Trump's reactionary Cabinet nominees, then the appropriately-named Block Trump's Cabinet still helps you do that. You remember Barack Obama's first slate of appointees? Some of them were pretty good (though Lisa Jackson at EPA is the only one that springs to mind presently) while some others (Timothy Geithner, Tom Vilsack, and Tom Daschle are, sadly, easier to remember!) were pretty awful. Not so with Donald Trump's first slate of appointees, who are all awful -- the objectively pro-racist Attorney General nominee, the objectively pro-pollution Secretary of State and EPA Administrator nominees, the objectively pro-bankster Commerce and Treasury nominees, and the objectively pro-government spying CIA nominee (you remember, the one who thinks people who use encryption are probably guilty of something?). Please remember that, thanks to short-sighted Democrats in the Senate majority back in 2013, that Presidential appointees (outside of the Supreme Court) can no longer be filibustered -- which means you have to contact your Republican Senators, too.

Around the table: a surprising (and amusing!) announcement from the Trump campaign, and other stories.

From Stephanie Woodard at In These Times, we learn that police kill Native Americans at a higher rate than any other ethnic group -- but the "liberal" media hardly covers these killings. I would caution against using this fact to tell black folks they have nothing to complain about, because they finish second in a race you really don't want to earn a medal in. Still, though tales of mistreatment of Native Americans are every bit as vivid as tales of mistreatment by black folks, we don't talk about it nearly as much, which could be because of Black Lives Matter's mobilization efforts, but could also be because we can only feel guilty about one thing at a time in America.

The Economic Policy Institute offers a lengthy primer about the gender pay gap. You probably already know that adjusting for simliar levels of training, experience, and expertise doesn't make the gender pay gap go away, but you may not know that the gap is actually worse the higher up you go on the pay scale -- because at the low end, minimum wage laws have a more profound leveling effect -- and you may also not know that the gap has narrowed over the last 35 years not necessarily because we're getting so much better at being fairer, but because men's wages have gone down over that period. There may be other things you may not know, but you'll never know unless you read the article.

Outgoing Senate minority leader Harry Reid says Democrats will likely get rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees if they retake the Senate this fall. And it's still a bad idea, just like it was when Democrats got rid of the filibuster for almost all Presidential nominees back in 2013. The better solution remains two-fold: get rid of Senate holds on bills and nominations, and make politicians work for their filibuster by actually speaking, instead of signaling their willingness to filibuster and then go off to dinner. I'd certainly be happy to look like a fool to stop, say, Estate Tax repeal, so why aren't Republicans willing to look like fools to stop, say, campaign finance reform? We'll just never understand.

Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway suggests that Mr. Trump would like to have another debate with Hillary Clinton between now and Election Day. No truth to the rumor that Hillary Clinton's has campaign responded, "why, yes, that's a great idea! How does November 7 look?"

Around the table: the liberal love for George W. Bush, and other absurdities.

Sen. Bernie Sanders delivers a withering Jeremiad denouncing banksters and the chaos and drama they cause in our economy. He's got good policy prescriptions, and he even backs up his statement that "the business model on Wall Street is fraud" pretty well (i.e., he notes that even banksters believe that's true). But I'd go further: why not a 7% cap on credit card rates, versus a 15% cap? And how about a 2% cap on mortgage rates? Believe me, banks will still make money under these conditions -- they just won't make enough to write the tax laws so they can make even more money doing nothing.

And what are Mr. Sanders' potential Republican opponents up to? Running campaign ads in Iowa and New Hampshire about terrorism and ISIS and who'll "chop" their "head" off and who's "serious" about fighting them, that's what. Well, they say talk about what you know, and these guys know fearmongering. Seriously, we could have made these two paragraphs a Goofus and Gallant strip.

Praise the Lord that Amanda Girard reminds us of "Five Taxpayer Handouts the Bundys Receive While Railing Against Government 'Tyranny.'" Not just in subsidies or "animal damage control" or Small Business Administration loans, either -- grazing on federal land costs ranchers less than seven cents on every dollar that private landowners charge, and ranchers also get a massive Big Gummint discount when they lease federal land directly. But you already got all that information from the "liberal" media when that whole Cliven Bundy thing blew up in 2014, right? I kid, of course.

Senate Republicans mull plan to end pre-debate filibusters on the Senate floor. Always the majority party wants to slash away at the filibuster and the minority party wants to keep it, and it doesn't matter which party is which -- Democratic majorities famously ended the filibuster for budget resolutions in the early '90s and also for Presidential judicial appointments a little over two years ago, that last item after minority Democrats decried Republican attempts to do the same in the mid-2000s. I've said it before and I'll say it again: the Senate needs to get rid of holds (which are the real obstruction) and force Senators to sustain filibusters by actually talking for hours on end, rather than signifying their intent to filibuster and then going out to dinner.

Consistently-ignored Republican Presidential candidate Mike Huckabee says that "a lot" of Christian leaders on the right are "scared to death" that a President Huckabee might actually end abortion, because then they "wouldn’t have the ability to do urgent fundraising because if we slay the dragon, what dragon do they continue to fight?" And you know what? He's likely right about that -- you may recall Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) saying something even harsher about certain Tea Party groups. And I can never shake the feeling that Democrats threw the last two midterm elections so they could fundraise off the crazy things all these newly-elected Republicans would say.

Finally, John C. O'Day, writing at FAIR, finds a lot of liberal commentators suddenly pining away for the good old days of George W. Bush, specifically because Mr. Bush didn't publicly demonize Muslims like a lot of today's Republican Presidential candidates do. This is a grim development, but not a surprising one -- I began many sentences during the Bush years with "at least Reagan didn't." But we have to work against thinking Bush-wasn't-so-bad when what's really happening is that our politicians keep getting worse, and will keep doing so until we a) stop the money-flow to their campaigns and b) force big telecom corporations to offer cable channels a la carte.

Around the table: more observations about the ongoing slow-motion wreck that is American politics.

William Greider, writing at The Nation sees in the ongoing GOP House caucus chaos "the final unraveling of Nixon's 'Southern strategy.'" That is, perhaps, an optimistic assessment. I'm more inclined to think that voters swayed by the Southern strategy don't really want to accomplish anything -- they want to feel rage and then get attention for their rage, which means the business wing of the party can eventually patronize them and then go back to using them to win elections. One can only hope the business wing of the party is as bad at strategy as they now are at business.

In a related note, Francis Wilkinson says that the "Archconservatives' Real Enemy is Democracy." That's true, of course -- a lot of far-right fools will reveal as much with startlingly little prodding -- and I'm glad to see that Mr. Wilkinson also sees no difference between the Freedom Caucus's aims and "mainstream" Republican aims. But could he kick the word "conservative" out of his description of the far right? They don't deserve it. They deserve the word "reactionary."

Mike Huckabee -- he's still running for President, isn't he? -- says "I trust Bernie Sanders with my tax dollars like I trust a North Korean chef with my labrador!" Now that he's had the "courage" to say something that racist, maybe he'll jump to double-digits in the polls! Seriously, though, the sight of grown men jumping up and down to get attention gets downright sickening after a while.

Various Republicans declare they're disgusted with the Senate filibuster and would like to get rid of it. They shouldn't -- they should make Senators earn it by actually talking. Both parties have been absolutely ridiculous about this matter in recent years, each one declaring it an evil when they're in the majority and a necessity when they're in the minority with no apparent recollection of having ever felt differently. But Republicans should consider that if they get rid of the filibuster, and Democrats win the Presidency and retake the House and the Senate in 2016 (not outside the realm of possibility, this!), and actually do some good things for the American people, Republicans might lose their low-turnout midterm advantage in 2018.

Finally, "sources" say that Sen. McConnell (E-KY) wants "significant changes" to Social Security and Medicare, along with a rollback of clean water regulations, in exchange for getting a budget passed and raising the debt limit. Never mind "negotiation" -- in a sane and healthy society, supporting these policy initiatives (let alone holding our government's funding and credit hostage to them!) would destroy political careers, for who besides an ideologue supports dirty water or a weakened Medicare or Social Security? But I guess that just means we have a lot more work to do.

Around the table: three more Supreme Court decisions and lots more right-wing gasbaggery.

U.S. Supreme Court rules that the EPA did not "lawfully" consider cost to polluting corporations when writing its air toxics rule, meaning they should've considered that cost much earlier in the rule-making process than they did. But Justice Scalia should not suggest that the health benefits of clean air amount to "a few dollars," since that's inaccurate and it's his job to know better.

However, Justice Scalia also authored a Supreme Court ruling striking down the federal "three strikes" law, writing that the law's definition of "violent felony" is too "shapeless a provision to condemn someone to prison for 15 years to life." That's stirring -- of course I was tempted to say he has a lot of compassion for white supremacists (like the plaintiff in the case that prompted this ruling), but he's been against the "violent felony" provision for years.

The Supreme Court also upheld Arizona's independent commission for redrawing Congressional districts, ruling that, while Article One of the U.S. Constitution specifically states that state legislatures determine "The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives," when the people vote on a ballot initiative (such as the one that created the commission), they essentially become a legislature. This is no small victory -- if the Court had interpreted "legislature" more literally, they could have wound up hampering ballot initiatives all over America.

Texas's Attorney General says county clerks can refuse marriage licenses to gay couples based on their "religious objections." Again, I'm not seeing how that's different from refusing to issue licenses to interracial couples based on "religious objections." It's enough to make a man wish President Obama would send in the National Guard to enforce the ruling. (Yes, I'm well aware of the difficulties in doing so; that's why I said "wish.")

Obama Administration lifts requirement that marijuana research protocols receive a "Public Health Service review" before proceeding. No other Schedule I drug (which pot shouldn't even be) needs this kind of review before research on it can proceed, and politicians on both sides of the political spectrum (including some who oppose legalization!) have advocated lifting that review process. So we have another instance of small government working.

Finally, Jeb Bush said he'd consider getting rid of the Senate filibuster in the context of repealing the Affordable Care Act. Senate Republicans have abused the filibuster mightily and cried like brats when Democrats (inadvisedly!) ended the filibuster for Presidential nominations in 2013 -- which Republicans had just tried to do in 2005! -- but whatever; this is just more right-wing swordfighting. We should just bring back the actual filibuster, and get rid of this absurd and cowardly version where Senators signal a filibuster and then go out for martinis.

Around the table: more good news from Election Day...and more "liberal" media "advice" after Election Day.

Scott Baker at Op-Ed News lists a few more victories from our recent Election Day debacle. Key finding: politicians constantly whine about spending money on public projects, but voters don't often feel the same way, approving massive infrastructure spending projects in no less than 11 states. People actually do want their politicians to spend money on worthwhile projects, and complaining about "corruption" in that context is pointless noise if one can produce no actual evidence of corruption.

Ho hum, another bad day for Democrats, another slew of "liberal" media outlets arguing that the lesson is for Democrats to move to the right. Exit polls find economic populism to be, well, popular, but who cares, when there's bipartisanship to be had? After you read the "liberal" media's counsel and you hear Mitch McConnell suddenly talk about the value of "bipartisanship" after all these years, you may be reminded that "bipartisanship," for the "liberal" media, seems to mean Democrats and Republicans coming together to do whatever Republicans want.

Mike Konczal advocates "shrinking" the financial sector to promote more equitable economic growth. You already know the financial sector's too big because banksters go to some length to obscure its workings, and also because you've suspected that "finance has increased inequality by convincing corporate executives and asset managers that corporations must be judged not by the quality of their products and workforce but by one thing only: immediate income paid to shareholders." Conservatives are supposed to be about the long haul, but modern-day "conservatives" are only about getting money now, rather than providing services to people, as even 1990s conservatives believed.

The New Republic thinks that Senate Democrats should use the filibuster as "ruthlessly" as Republicans did. I disagree: of course you should filibuster awful legislation whenever it rears its ugly head, but bad behavior is bad behavior no matter who does it, and I still favor filibuster reform that makes Senators actually stand up and talk for 24 or 48 hours, rather than merely block legislation painlessly and go home. Even the "liberal" media can't put lipstick on a pig that actually stands up for 48 hours stopping a minimum wage hike or campaign finance disclosure.

Julia Angwin at ProPublica discusses the best encryption tools for internet communications. I invite those folks who still think big corporations create innovative products to list the major corporations creating the more highly-regarded products Ms. Angwin discusses. Spoiler alert: there's one, and it's Apple, and it's still well down the list. Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook are rather further down. Most of your innovation, here as elsewhere, comes from small businesses.

Finally, another study finds that shift work actually impairs thinking and remembering. Every 10 years on shift work ages you about 6.5 years, as far as your cognitive abilities, and n.b. that "shift work" includes second-shift work, because you probably don't get to bed before midnight. The good news? Once out of shift work for five years, your abilities recover. Still, the lead doctor suggests "design(ing) work schedules...that minimize the disruption of the body clock," a schedule which could include "not working very many nights in a row." I'm all for that, and somewhere, someone running a hospital is probably all for that, too.

Around the table: blows against sanity!

After multitudinous Republican filibusters against President Obama's Executive branch appointees, Senate Democrats vote to bar filibusters against all such appointees except Supreme Court Justice nominees. I still think that's a big mistake -- don't Democrats remember that Republicans wanted to do exactly this in 2005? I opposed it then, and I oppose it now. Still, hearing Mitch McConnell say Republicans have been very fair to Mr. Obama's nominees doesn't exactly garner my sympathy. You may recall that Mr. McConnell is the man who filibustered his own bill late last year.

Oklahoma's state-owned National Guard facilities will no longer offer benefits to any married couples, rather than give spousal benefits to same-sex couples. Pro-family policies at work! Those same-sex couples can get spousal benefits at one of five federal National Guard facilities, but that might be a long drive, since Oklahoma ain't a small place; I'd be interested to see if the Supreme Court calls that an "undue burden" upon same-sex couples. But isn't this a long way to go, Oklahoma, just to appease bigots?

David Dayen instructs us that we shouldn't be jumping for joy over the $13 billion settlement JP Morgan Chase made with our government. Apparently the reported $13 billion includes other costs from another settlement, but the bigger deal is that the principal reductions might actually hurt homeowners, as their reductions get counted as income and thus subject to unexpected tax hits.

In a peripherally-related note, Jesse Eisenstein at ProPublica notes that Mr. Obama's nominee for Commodity Futures Trading Commission, one Thomas Massad, is a bit of a blank slate. He could be the fellow who supposedly pushed back against Bank of America while running the bailout, or he could be the fellow who frequently clashed with bailout special inspector general Neil Barofsky, a man who should be a hero to Americans. I'm leaning toward the latter, but I'd be happy to be wrong.

Finally, Monica Potts at The American Prospect describes a fairly successful program that helps poor New Yorkers save money by diverting some of their tax refunds into a savings account, and then matching the money they save (at about 50 cents on the dollar) over the course of a year . Such programs just so happen to have a lot of conservative support -- building as they do on the Earned Income Tax Credit, a Reagan-era achievement -- but guess how eager today's "conservatives" are to take such programs national.

President Obama plans to urge Congress to gradually shut down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, "seeking to buffer taxpayers from future housing market downturns." But Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, one more time, didn't cause the housing bubble to burst -- banksters and their hifalutin financial "instruments" did that. I guess Mr. Obama figures that because he got Dodd-Frank passed, he can do something for the right wing. Wrong again. He can do the people's will, because that's his job.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos buys the Washington Post. I suppose I should applaud any business icon who espouses "long-term thinking," since the major problem with today's economy is that big corporations want all the goodies right now, but he's against folks like himself paying more in taxes, though a 91% tax bracket would force all those CEOs to think about the future. And note well how paragraph 6 blames "the epochal change from print to digital technology," and not the Post's shilling for an ever-more unpopular class of American elites, for the Post's problems. Also note well that Mr. Bezos is one of those elites.

Another day, another liberal who sees nothing wrong with getting rid of the filibuster, because of demographic trends and because Republicans suck so bad they won't elect many Presidents in the foreseeable future. It's like some people have no recollection of the filibuster saving the Estate Tax in 2006, or of how 9.11 rescued a walking-dead Presidency. It's also like they can't type out the words "talking filibuster" without their hands seizing up. And Scott Walker can win in 2016, especially if the economy's still bad. And Brian Sandoval can win even if it's not.

Want to read one of the worst arguments ever? I don't care if she raised Temple Grandin, Eustacia Cutler argues like a right-winger, one who'd make Jonah Goldberg seem lucid, no less -- she seems to think autism equals masculinity equals lack of empathy equals obsessive logicality equals computer fixation equals pornography equals child porn, plus maybe fathers should go to more autism conferences. Nary a fact nor piece of research sullies this free-associative trip (and the "80 to 90% divorce rate" in autistic families is crap-with-crap-sauce, by the way). And what's with all the sentence fragments?

Ted Nugent instructs us that Trayvon Martin "got" justice, because, you know, he was a troublemaker, and Ted doesn't need to actually prove that, because he can spot trouble a mile away. I bet I know how he can spot it, too. You know what? Ted Nugent just wants attention now. He's done getting it from this space.

With Senate Democrats and Republicans reaching an agreement to avoid changing filibuster rules -- Senate Republicans will graciously allow a vote on several Obama Administration nominees in exchange -- Daily Kos helps you tell the Senate to make the filibuster into a talking filibuster. Senators should actually have to talk to maintain a filibuster, as Rand Paul did for 13 hours not long ago; now they just "signal their intent" to filibuster and then go home, and that makes too many cowards far too powerful. I've received a few dozen action alerts over the past week calling for an end to the Senate filibuster entirely, but I didn't pass any of them along; I'm fully aware that calling for the filibuster's end was, for some, a negotiating tactic, but I'm a citizen, not a politico, and we citizens must advocate for what we believe to be right. They call it "honest counsel" for a reason, after all.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has begun investigating collusion on the part of BP, Shell, and Statoil, going back to 2002. The EC suggests that the three corporations might have violated European Union antitrust rules against reporting distorted prices and shutting other actors out of the price-reporting process. Sounds pretty arcane, doesn't it? But I'll bet the resulting inflated prices at the pump don't seem arcane. And you have to wonder why the United States doesn't investigate -- after all, BP and Shell are household names here, too. You have to wonder even more when you recall that Mr. Obama told Mr. Holder to monitor oil and gas prices back in 2011, and Mr. Holder launched the Oil and Gas Price Fraud Working Group in order to do just that. I guess they ain't been doing very much working, so Public Citizen helps you tell the Justice Department to stop fraud in the oil sector.

In other news, Facebook still mulls letting children under 12 join up. What's the big deal? Children can't deal with sophisticated advertising, that's the big deal -- I was a relatively intelligent child and I was positively helpless in the face of TV ads. Praise the Lord that my parents and grandparents kept me on the straight and narrow! And TV advertising in the '70s was nowhere near as sophisticated as social media advertising is today -- even parents have little understanding of how facebook turns every photo and comment and click into a dossier that corporations can use to target you. And hello? Adults don't always grasp the ins and outs of relating to people and sharing information with them online; how much more difficult must that be for children? Thus the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood still helps you tell Facebook to avoid flinging ads at kids. I don't claim that parents should get a break from being parents. But I don't think corporations need to make parenting so much harder, either.

Finally, if you've missed previous opportunities to tell the Bureau of Land Management (or BLM) to require corporations to disclose all the chemicals they use when fracking on federal lands, then the Center for Effective Government still helps you do that. The BLM's current proposal lets corporations keep a few of their chemicals secret, and allows "disclosure" to a website funded by the gas drilling industry, and there is just no possibility for a conflict of interest there, no sir! Gas drillers often cite the need for "trade secrets." I've said it before and I'll say it again: no "right" to keep information secret from competitors trumps the people's right to know what the hell corporations are pumping into their water table. And if gas drillers want to use public lands, they have to play by public rules -- the people's rules, that is. It's a shame the BLM doesn't quite seem to grasp that. We'll have to tell them until they do.

House passes Farm Bill completely devoid of food stamp funding; they say they'll pass a separate food stamps bill later, perhaps at about the moment monkeys fly out of my butt. And they made big corporate agricultural subsidies permanent! It's like they're trying to do everything wrong. You know it's bad when Rod Frickin' Dreher quotes Ross Frickin' Douthat to tell you how monstrous the House Farm Bill is. (That The American Conservative printed it isn't a big surprise, though.)

TPM's Sahil Kapur says that Mr. McConnell may have lost the filibuster battle, but he's winning the war to enshrine a permanent minority obstructive force in the Senate. But that force could be broken by making Senators actually talk their way through filibusters -- when Senators have to make fools of themselves in public, and when good citizens will scratch their heads at our Senators yammering for hours on end about (for example) the "evils" of campaign finance disclosure, we'll see less obstruction, and the world will be a better place.

North Carolina state legislature passes an abomination of a tax "reform" "plan." Long story short: the rich get richer, the poor get shafted, because God and also because jobs. Anyone else want to forcibly eject North Carolina from our Union? We'll airlift the Moral Monday protestors out first. (Citizens for Tax Justice has more.)

Another day, another "liberal" media hack telling us that reinstating Glass-Steagall really isn't a good idea. Mr. Matthews actually tells us that the Warren-McCain bill's definition of "securities entity" is "pretty airtight," which is pretty much what you need to know, but n.b. that he (like others) says diversification is good for banks, as if we should give one rat's hind quarter what's good for banks at the expense of what's good for the American people. And he, like others, tells us that Alan Greenspan's Fed basically eviscerated Glass-Steagall, as if that's Glass-Steagall's fault and not Alan Greenspan's fault.

Now Daily Kos calls on Harry Reid to do away with the filibuster for Presidential appointees and judicial nominees. I reject this call -- rather, I call upon the Senate to make their members sustain a filibuster by actually talking for hours on end about a subject. But this short-sightedness is appalling -- does Daily Kos not remember that a mere eight years ago Republicans wanted to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominees? Do they remember what they thought about it then? I do. I hope Mr. Reid merely means to make Mr. McConnell cave on a few nominees, like Messrs. Perez and Cordray.

David Koch thinks getting rid of the minimum wage will help the poor. Because getting fewer dung pellets always helps them! As a side issue: does a putative "avalanche of regulations" create "a culture of dependency"? I think regulation prevents a culture of dependency -- a culture of dependency upon corporations. And it's hard to say you're "dependent on government" when it's your government. One more thing: when Mr. Koch talks about "the mobility of labor" I'm pretty sure he wants to exercise that mobility, not you.

As you know, federally-subsidized student loan rates doubled on July 1, and the Senate, again, couldn't agree on a way to cut it back. Which is to say, only 51 of 100 Senators wanted to keep the old 3.4% rate. I maintain that getting rid of the filibuster is not a solution -- if we made Senators work for their filibusters, they'd make fools of themselves and they'd filibuster less. Speaking of fools, I'm starting to wonder whether we'd all have been better off with another term for a do-nothing moderate in Maine than with Angus King.

From the "This Used to Be the Future" file: CNN wonders why we don't all work 15-hour weeks, like our intelligentsia thought we would by now. And takes 11 paragraphs to get to the obvious answer: because we wouldn't make enough money! And still mainly blames consumerism, which I'll grant doesn't help. Should I give them credit for noting, right off the bat in paragraph 11, that "income gains (in recent decades) have been disproportionately distributed"? Not as much as I'd give them if they'd said "technology has made workers more productive -- and delivered the wealth that production created to their bosses."

Indiana "reforms" its criminal code, with the "unintended" consequence that any same-sex couple filing for a marriage license in Indiana could get 18 months in jail! Also, any state official or clergy member performing a gay marriage could get six months in jail. The Supreme Court would strike down that restriction on Indiana clergy with a quickness. No, I'm not kidding.

Finally, Elizabeth Hasselback, until two days ago the token right-winger on ABC's The View, will join Fox and Friends in the middle of September. And THAT! IS THE MOST! SURPRISING! THING! I! HAVE EVER! HEARD!