Thieves in the Temple.

Action: health care, the "war on terror," and the Grand Canyon.

Despite reports last week that Senate Republicans don't have the votes either for their planned repeal-and-replace-badly bill or their just-repeal-and-don't-bother-replacing bill, word on the street is that they're going to try and vote on one or the other of these monstrosities anyway. The Congressional Budget Office (or CBO) hasn't helped Republican efforts, of course, by calculating that the just-repeal bill will kick 32 million more Americans off their health insurance, with more than half of those losses (17 million) coming in just the first year. But of course, when some Republican Senators talked about both bills' inadequate funding of Medicaid and/or fighting opioid addiction, you should have known what would come next: an offer of tens of billions just for funding Medicaid and fighting opioid addiction in the states those Senators just so happen to represent, which is exactly the kind of naked who-cares-what-it-looks-like opportunism that has made Mitch McConnell so beloved the world over. Still, you can call your Senators and remind them that the whole point of being a Senator is not to strike deals with other Senators, but to represent their constituents. And you can ask them if handing out massive tax cuts to the wealthy while throwing tens of millions of people off their health insurance (which both bills will do) represents their constituents.

Meanwhile, CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to repeal the Authorization to Use Military Force (or AUMF) that has enabled so much unconstitutional war-making over the last 16 years. Yeah, we're coming up on some anniversaries -- not just the anniversary of 9.11, of course, but the anniversary of every bad idea Tha Bush Mobb forced down the throats of the American people afterward, including the USA PATRIOT Act and the AUMF, which latter item President Obama used to justify military operations (in Libya and Syria, to name two) he didn't get approval from Congress to undertake. But when the House Appropriations Committee approved an amendment from Rep. Lee (D-CA) that would repeal the AUMF, a spokeshack for House Speaker Ryan (E-WI) quickly declared that the amendment "endangers our national security," though of course Mr. Ryan supported the Iraq war, which we can pretty much say created ISIS, and thus "endangered our national security." And now the Lee amendment has somehow been quietly disappeared from the defense authorization bill; Ms. Lee blames Mr. Ryan, which, if true, gosh, whatever happened to not stepping on your Committee Chairs' toes? That has, after all, been Mr. Ryan's go-to excuse whenever someone actually calls upon him to, you know, lead. They have an excuse for every occasion, don't they? Would it be too much to ask for Mr. Ryan's not-that-red district to send him packing in 2018?

Finally, President Trump wants to drill everywhere, even (or maybe especially!) on public lands, and guess what that means for the Grand Canyon? It means that former Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's one great achievement -- banning uranium mining in the area around the Grand Canyon for 20 years -- is in danger of going down. Hence Penn Environment helps you tell current Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke to keep uranium mining corporations out of the Grand Canyon. He doesn't care what you think any more than his boss does, but let's tell him anyway, because it's our duty. The Colorado River, as you know, winds through the Grand Canyon, and it provides drinking water to over 40 million people in seven states plus the northwest region of Mexico -- and, well, it provides noticeably less drinking water to those good folks now, thanks to increased demand and climate change. Now imagine leeching uranium into that water. Does that sound like a good idea? Especially given that some uranium already leeches into the water naturally? Why, it's enough to make you think maybe tourism is the best economical use for the Grand Canyon, which is one of our national treasures, even if our government hasn't formally designated it as such. (Yes, Mr. Obama forgot to do that, too, during his last year in office.)

UPDATE. "Coming up on some anniversaries" is how that phrase in the second paragraph should have read! Error corrected.

Around the table: in which we are reminded to define terms like "treason" and "free markets" precisely.

Well, this timing sure is suspicious: not long before the ongoing five-nation terror campaign against Qatar began, the Trump family tried to get a Qatari billionaire to put half a billion dollars into their failing 666 Fifth Avenue property. So just remember that the next time President Trump says Qatar "has been a funder of terrorism at a very high level" -- if the vaguely-put "at a very high level" doesn't already strike you as coming from a man who's lying. And maybe the next time your Republican Senator rushes from his car to a meeting of rich people, you could ask him whether President Trump's real estate failures are going to dictate our entire foreign policy from now on.

Speaking of Trump and failures, Charles Pierce at Esquire looks at Trump the Younger's apparent attempts to get "dirt" on Hillary Clinton before the election and concludes that when the Trumps deal with Russian mob figures, they're "punching out of (their) weight class" and are little more than "compliant minnows in a shark tank." As a bonus, we may have learned why the Trump Administration really fired former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara. Study, though, the works left behind by Sergei Magnitsky, because he was obviously an extraordinarily courageous man, facing as he did certain death by exposing Russian corruption on an almost unimaginable scale.

But Jesus Mary and Joseph can Sen. Kaine (D-VA) stop with the "treason" talk already? It sure looks like Trump the Younger broke the law by soliciting "dirt" on Mrs. Clinton, but is that treason? Article III, Section 3 of our Constitution instructs us that "(t)reason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort." Has Congress declared war against Russia? No, it has not -- and I refuse to distend the definition of "enemy" further than that. Anyone who's ever been called a traitor for no damn good reason -- and their numbers include not just you and I, but this nation's Founders -- appreciates the importance of defining terms precisely.

Sam Pizzigati at the OurFuture blog reminds us that the ongoing downfall of Sears more or less reflects our ongoing downfall as a civilization. Wasn't that many decades ago that Sears executives didn't make silly money and its employees got good treatment -- though the 91% tax bracket kept executive salaries down and Sears treated its employees well to keep them from joining a union. Today, of course, the top tax bracket is over 50 points lower and unions have a third of the membership they used to have, so of course a vain bankster runs Sears into the ground and you might find more rats than employees in a store on a given day.

Charles Ornstein at ProPublica describes yet another way right-wingers injure Medicaid users: by demanding that the folks who get it verify their eligibility twice annually instead of once. And here you thought being conservative was about streamlining government services and reducing paperwork! Sadly, today's "conservatives," who we'd better describe as reactionaries, would only reduce the "burden" of "bureaucracy" for corporations, not people. Plus they think any program that works for everyday Americans is evil. Am I beating a dead horse? In these times, beating a dead horse is an act of courage.

Finally, Dean Baker reminds us that "Paul Ryan Hates the Idea of a Free Market in Health Care" and "He Wants to Give Money to Rich People." "There are no government-granted patent monopolies in a free market," Mr. Baker reminds us. "It is possible to argue for the merits of government granted monopolies...but it is not possible to deny that these monopolies are a government policy, not the free market." More to the point, this policy doesn't make people free, not if we pay $360 billion more every year for prescription drugs. Of course, the intellectually-bankrupt Mr. Ryan doesn't oppose any of that, nor does he oppose big pharmaceutical corporations taking taxpayer money to make drugs in the first place (which entitles us to rather more oversight than we've got!).

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Action: Social Security and Medicare, clean air and clean water, and internet freedom.

Social Security Works helps you tell House Speaker Paul Ryan that you will not permit him to destroy Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. You didn't think I forgot, did you? I bet Mr. Ryan sure hopes you forget, particularly with all the drama coming out of the Trump White House -- why, all that sound and fury is a perfect cover for Congressional Republicans to privatize Medicare, cut Social Security benefits, and turn Medicaid into those useless block grants that make it easier for states to fail to deliver Medicaid services to its qualified residents. And Mr. Ryan couldn't do any of these things if the spotlight were on him, because the American people wouldn't stand for it. Seriously, cutting seniors a check so they can maybe buy more expensive privatized health care? Why, that doesn't even save our government money! Of course, Paul Ryan is also the kind of person who either thinks you're stupid enough to think "subsidies" and "tax credits" are two different things -- or the kind of person who hopes you think he's stupid enough. We're smarter than that, though. And if we act, we'll win.

Meanwhile, the government of Cameroon has now turned off internet services in that nation's English-speaking areas for three weeks. Why? Because they're throwing a hissy fit about all the protesting going on there, that's why! English-speaking citizens of Cameroon have been protesting their government's institution of French as the official language in courts and schools, though two of Cameroon's 10 administrative regions (which enjoy a lot of autonomy, apparently) speak mostly English. Hence, the shutoff. Like I said, hissy fit. Sadly, internet shutdowns are considerably more common than you'd think -- governments imposed more than 30 of them last year -- and before you get too comfortable thinking it can't happen here, remember whom our President is, and how quick to anger he is, and how both he and his racist advisor Steve Bannon have both said they'd like nothing more than to smash the state into bits. Access Now helps you tell the government of Cameroon to turn the internet back on, and stop using shutdowns as a political weapon.

Finally, the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology held hearings yesterday that they dubbed, without intending irony, the "Making the EPA Great Again" hearing, and they considered a bill that Chairdunce Lamar Smith (R-TX) has been pushing for years: the Secret Science Reform Act, a title that, sadly, does not appear to be inspired by Joseph Conrad. The bill would require the EPA to formulate policy using only "replicable" and "publicly available" data, but as Sharon Lerner at The Intercept explains, data about catastrophes like the Spillageddon in the Gulf can't be replicated, because they're unique disasters, and a lot of good data isn't "publicly available" because it contains "confidential personal information that is illegal to share." Thus this bill only pretends to care about using the best science to make important decisions about our clean air and clean water. I think you may want to call your Reps and Senators, using the tools in the upper left-hand corner of this page, and tell them to reject the Secret Science Reform Act. They'll never see it coming.

Around the table: student loans, hiring freezes, Executive Orders, legislative agendas, Holocaust statements, and online privacy.

The Center for Media and Democracy finds that Betsy DeVos does have some education experience after all -- she's invested in a student loan debt-collection agency that, of course, has lately failed to secure a government contract, possibly because of numerous consumer complaints against it. So, yeah, we'd want someone invested in that in charge of regulating that! It's also good to be reminded, though, that "a largely bipartisan consensus around 'education reform'" has enabled Betsy DeVos's ascension to begin with, and that our "liberal" media still enable this "bipartisan consensus," one built on the three-decade-plus-old lie that public schools are failing us.

Richard Eskow asks "Who'll Get Shafted" by President Trump's federal worker hiring freeze, and finds, unsurprisingly, that mostly regular folks will get the shaft. Social Security recipients will get shafted by not having enough workers to help them through their issues, workers will get hurt by having fewer OSHA inspectors, and veterans will get hurt by hiring freezes at the Veterans Administration (strangely not part of Mr. Trump's big military exemption) -- but small businesses will also be hurt by the stagnating demand the hiring freeze will bring about, and when the EPA doesn't have the people to keep air and water clean, everyone will be hurt. (Yes, there's also a "public safety" exemption to the freeze, but I doubt a Trump EPA Administrator would ever pressure Mr. Big about it.)

Speaking of Mr. Big, a lot of Mr. Trump's notorious Executive Orders may "run aground," simply because he didn't consult any of the agencies that would be affected by them. That raises the possibility that these Orders would conflict with existing, settled law. But, hey, nobody but George W. Bush is better at profiting off failure than Donald Trump! If his immigration-related Executive Orders, for example, wind up dying a quick death at the hands of some federal appeals court, and then terrorists launch a 9.11-sized attack on American soil, Donald Trump can blame all those "liberal" federal judges (most of whom were appointed by Republicans, but never mind). C'mon, if I could figure that out, I'm sure Mr. Trump's braintrust has already mooted it.

But in case you thought Donald Trump wasn't the only Republicans planning to wreak havoc wherever he can, Paul Ryan's House also has an, er, ambitious agenda, to unfold over 200 days, apparently, because Donald Trump really likes it when you try to go one bigger on him. He'd approve of most-if-not-all of this agenda -- Obamacare repeal, tax cuts for the rich and corporations, strangling good regulations in their cribs, a corporate welfare infrastructure program -- even if most of the American people wouldn't, which is the more pertinent question, really. Why does Paul Ryan want more methane in our air, anyway?

If George W. Bush had simply forgotten to mention Jews during his Holocaust Remembrance Day statement, as Mr. Trump did on Friday, you might have chalked it up to stupidity, though Mr. Bush wasn't stupid, and anyway Mr. Bush was far too attentive to folks' feelings to have ever have made that mistake. Not too many folks think of Donald Trump as stupid, of course -- they're more likely to think of him as mean, which isn't a good look for a President, and they're also more likely to think of him as a racist, given his multitudinous you-call-it-politically-incorrect-I-call-it-being-an-asshole statements about various minorities. Also, too, Steve Bannon probably wrote that statement, and Steve Bannon's not exactly Nobel Peace Prize-winning material.

Finally, Julia Angwin at ProPublica discusses "How to Protect Your Digital Privacy in the Era of Public Shaming." I'm a bit put off by the title, merely because I don't think shaming people who injure our communities is a bad thing, but what is a bad thing is people throwing bricks through your window because you criticized the President. That isn't shaming; that's vandalism. Anyway, make your passwords longer, update your software, use encryption, opt out of data brokers, get rid of ancient data, and other things. (Also, Ms. Angwin provides a link to this site advising you on surviving online harassment, which might be in your future if you're planning to speak out against this evil Administration; there's plenty of good advice there, too.)

Around the table: the second-place finisher earns a "mandate" from the voters, and other absurdities.

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, tells us more about how the "Interstate Crosscheck" database affected the most recent election. If we look closely at the data Mr. Palast presents, we would not be convinced that Interstate Crosscheck delivered the election to Mr. Trump all by itself (though it sure looks likely that it flipped Michigan), though of course other voter suppression schemes (Voter ID laws, destruction of provisional ballots, throwing out ballots for frivolous reasons) may have also been a factor. But vote suppression schemes only work in America when they're not so obvious -- and if they're not so obvious, that means the right candidate, one who actually inspires people rather than merely rallying people to oppose the other guy, can overcome them.

In a peripherally-related note, Paul Waldman at the Washington Post reminds us that voter turnout was considerably down from 2008 and 2012. You could be excused for thinking that the plunge in turnout seemed to affect only the Democratic candidate -- Mr. Trump got almost as many votes as Mitt Romney, John McCain, and George W. Bush did, but Hillary Clinton definitely underperformed Mr. Obama (and only squeaked by John Kerry's 2004 showing). I've long said only an unusual Republican candidate can really win a Presidential election anymore, but it seems that's also true of Democrats -- which means the voters have decided their program (not our program, of course!) is just as corrupt and ineffectual.

In another peripherally-related note, Robert Reich advises us to "Dismantle the Democratic Party and Start Anew." "The Democratic Party as it is now constituted has become a giant fundraising machine, too often reflecting the goals and values of the moneyed interests," he writes. "What happened in America Tuesday should not be seen as a victory for hatefulness over decency. It is more accurately understood as a repudiation of the American power structure." He's 1,000 percent right about these and other things. And it will be hard for liberals to detach themselves from the Democrats, as long as Democrats can use the Fear of Trump stick against them, a task I'm sure Mr. Trump will be happy to enable.

Alex Vitale at TruthOut advises us on some things we can do in the coming dark years. They're all good ideas (forming or joining a union, working with organizations like the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, et cetera), and thankfully none of them involve making sure that Joe Manchin wins in the West Virginia Senate race in 2018. I wouldn't be averse to a Sandernista primarying him out of that race, though. It's not an outlandish thought -- Mr. Sanders did win West Virginia, after all, and surely someone who worked on his campaign in that state can get it together enough to challenge Mr. Manchin. (I don't mean to single out Mr. Manchin -- at least nine more Democratic Senators are going down in 2018, and I only count two I'd miss.)

Finally, Paul Ryan declares that the voters handed Donald Trump a mandate on Election Day. What a surprise: the "wonky," "intellectual" Republican insulting my intelligence. To review: Mr. Trump got fewer popular votes than the last three Republican Presidential candidates, 52% of the electorate wanted someone else on Election Day, and Mr. Trump didn't even finish first in the popular vote, whereas the last man to win a Presidential election got an actual majority of the popular vote, but not a "mandate," according to Mr. Ryan. They're saying it to scare you into inaction. Don't let them.

UPDATE. Since this post first appeared, Mr. Trump has surpassed both Messrs. Romney and McCain in vote totals, though not Mr. Bush in 2004 (as of this writing, November 16, 2016, at 5.35 am EST). Also, it now appears that 53%, not 52%, of the electorate voted for someone else in 2016. At any rate, still no mandate.

Action: Medicare, bankster pay, and voting rights.

Another year, another Paul Ryan attack on Medicare, although he has, perhaps, accepted (at least for now!) the notion that he will not be able to replace Medicare with a voucher program that would cost seniors more than Medicare does and save our government approximately zero dollars. But Speaker Ryan still has a jones to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67, which would also save our government approximately bupkus -- which you know just by remembering that folks aged 65 to 67 are actually the least likely seniors to have huge health care needs. (Perhaps I shouldn't say that out loud, so Mr. Ryan doesn't get it in his head to cut off Medicare once you hit 80!) Lowering the age is the minimum we should do, really, particularly when seniors' non-Social Security pensions are disappearing. In fact, I'd lower the eligibility age all the way to zero, so everyone can be on Medicare, including hundreds of millions of people too healthy to need the kind of care seniors need. Social Security Works helps you tell Speaker Ryan to abandon his plan to raise the Medicare eligibility age.

Meanwhile, the Dodd-Frank financial reform law mandates that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and other federal regulators write new rules reining in executive pay at banks financial service corporations -- and, naturally, their proposed rules don't go far enough. They don't force executives to pay back any bonuses they received if they committed wrongdoing, for example, and they don't do enough to rein in stock options that essentially insulate executives from the consequences of their bad decisions. The whole idea behind letting executives make all this money is, supposedly, that they take all this risk -- but they don't, because they still get paid when they take a dump all over the economy. Of course, the banksters want the relevant federal regulators to do nothing -- as if bankster greed and venality didn't put our economy in the crapper in the first place! If powerful people won't restrain their own behavior, then we must do it. Hence Americans for Financial Reform helps you tell our government to implement the most vigorous financial service pay reforms possible.

Finally, with the third anniversary of the Supreme Court's Shelby County v. Holder decision having just passed, People for the American Way helps you tell your Congressfolk to support H.R. 2867/S. 1659, the Voting Rights Advancement Act. As you may recall, the Court struck down Sec. 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act because, in their view, it unfairly singled out Southern states in its pre-clearance formula -- but the Court also all but invited Congress to pass a new pre-clearance formula, and the Voting Rights Advancement Act does that, by subjecting any state or locality to Justice Department pre-clearance of voting law changes if that state or locality has demonstrated a clear pattern of violating voting rights over the last 15 years. So what are our opponents' objections now? Well, Senate Majority Leader McConnell says "the South has changed so much," though the new law wouldn't specifically target the South, and House Speaker Ryan says he won't make his committee heads move legislation they don't want to move. In other words, our opponents have no case. So we must overwhelm them with our case.

Around the table: various Republican follies, plus that "Stairway to Heaven" lawsuit.

Donald Trump thinks people who see-something-but-don't-say-something should be "brought to justice" with "big consequences." I guess I should commend him for resisting saying "YUGE CONSEQUENCES!" How Presidential he's becoming! The Fifth Amendment is just an irritation to Donald Trump, and American legal precedent holds that we pursue obstruction of justice charges against people who lie rather than people who keep their mouths shut, which, again, places this nominal "conservative" against tradition, against precedent, and against the Constitution. Still, this Trump flatugasm will resonate with the chronically-frustrated, who are, after all, his only real constituency.

So, it's mid-June turning to late-June, and Hillary Clinton is conducting an advertising blitz while Donald Trump, well, isn't. For First Read, this raises the question "How long will she have the battleground-state airwaves to herself?" Which, in turns, raises the question "why do you assume she'll have the battleground-state airwaves to herself, when Donald Trump can fart into his Twitterphone and the entire "liberal" media will drop everything to cover it?"

The Bill of Rights Defense Committee blog sets the record straight about the real origins of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Long story short: it mostly went after liberals from the beginning (including the "Hollywood Anti-Nazi League"), particularly those groups (including Communists) who fought for black civil rights in the 1930s. As guilty as I feel about not knowing the whole history, I feel compelled to repeat that Mr. Gingrich's distortions would remain utterly unpersuasive even if they were true.

Greg Kaufman, writing at TalkPoverty, takes us on a tour of Racine, WI, which sits in House Speaker Paul Ryan's district and gives the lie to his recent "anti-poverty" statements. More than one-fifth of its residents sit in poverty (and that statistic cuts across racial lines), and it has the highest unemployment rate in the state. "How do you take away half of our manufacturing jobs and then say poverty is some moral failing?" one resident asks; how indeed! So we'll be seeing Democrat attack ads based around the poverty and hardship in Racine, right? Don't hold your breath.

Finally, the "Stairway to Heaven" lawsuit -- filed by a trustee of Randy California's estate -- now heads to court. As you may know, the first part of Led Zeppelin's "Stairway to Heaven" sounds rather similar to a Spirit song called "Taurus," from the latter's self-titled 1968 album. There are more than a few differences between the chord progressions, though, so I think Messrs. Plant and Page should beat this one -- though I also think George Harrison shouldn't have lost over "My Sweet Lord," and I probably march alone in that parade.

Around the table: financialization hits the mainstream media, and other developments.

I am shocked to see this article in Time magazine, entitled "American Capitalism's Great Crisis," and subtitled "How Wall Street is Choking Our Economy and How to Fix It." Rana Faroohar sounds like a kindler, gentler Michael Hudson as she describes how the finance sector (i.e., the banksters) has taken over the economy such that very little bank money actually makes it to the economy, and how "(m)ost of the money in the system is being used for lending against existing assets such as housing, stocks and bonds," rather than the creation of new assets. However, where Mr. Hudson offers debt forgiveness as a solution, Ms. Faroohar doesn't -- possibly because her article is a condensed version of a much larger book, which will go on my reading list right quick.

Ho hum, Paul Ryan says the Obama Administration's new overtime rule is an "absolute disaster" blah blah blah, will kill small businesses blah blah blah. As "disastrous" as it was back in the late '60s, when we routinely had sub-4% unemployment rates and the overtime floor was actually higher, once you adjust for inflation? Yeah, those were "disastrous" times all right -- for takers like Paul Ryan who would redistribute income upward to his corporate paymasters.

Former two-term Massachusetts Republican Governor William Weld will seek the Libertarian Party's Vice Presidential nomination, in the hopes that he will be on the ticket with former two-term New Mexico Republican Governor Gary Johnson, seeking that party's Presidential nomination. But while Mr. Johnson is believable as a Libertarian, Mr. Weld -- who first won in Massachusetts in 1990 by running to John Silber's left, which wasn't hard -- just looks like he's trying to find a home, even though he was the Libertarian Party's nominee (as well as the Republican Party's nominee) for Governor of New York against Eliot Spitzer in 2006. Still, the Party must be pleased to have four gubernatorial terms at the top of their ticket, and they may even attract a few liberals disaffected with Mrs. Clinton's center-right economics and center-further-right "war on terror" positions. Think the Koch brothers will put their money where their mouths are and throw a few hundred mil the Libertarians' way? I kid, of course.

Los Angeles City Council unanimously passes ordinance requiring farmers' markets to accept food stamps. Perhaps that will stop right-wingers from complaining about poor people buying candy bars with their EBT cards! Again, I kid -- nothing stops right-wingers from complaining about the poor. Still, good Los Angelenos should be able to eat better (and eat better cheaper) this way, and we can chip away at the stereotype of farmers' markets as places ruled by yoga mats. (As an aside, I did not know that farmers could not sell their wares directly to customers in California until 1979. That doesn't sound like the sort of thing a truly free market would tolerate.)

Finally, Matt Taibbi writes about how Donald Trump is "Killing the Republican Party." He's not too sure the Republican Party will actually die, of course -- I figure they'll compete as long as they have money and rage-filled adherents, both of which they'll have for a long time -- but it's hard for me, even as someone who tries hard to avoid blasphemy, to disagree with statements like "(n)o hell is hot enough for them." At least there's optimism: "Money is important in politics," he says, discussing how well the Trump and Sanders campaigns have done, "but in democracy, people ultimately still count more."

Around the table: good folks giving politicians what-for, and other tales.

Trevor Timm, writing at The Guardian, explains "Why the Panama Papers Should Be a U.S. Election Issue." Long story short: even if no Americans are named therein, the Panama Papers highlight how "American" it's become to use offshore tax havens. Of course, corporate tax avoidance isn't exactly popular -- even the Treasury's rather meek corporate inversion rules have induced Pfizer to abandon its plan to merge with Allergan and become "foreign" -- but it is by and large legal, thanks to politicians who never listen to the people.

Hot on the heels of Rep. Grothman's rather frank admission that Voter ID helps Republicans out in Wisconsin, a former Republican staffer testifies that Republicans in Wisconsin's state legislature were "literally talking and plotting to deny someone, a fellow citizen, their constitutional right" to vote, particularly in "certain neighborhoods in Milwaukee and on our college campuses." The words "voter suppression" may never have passed their lips, because Scott Walker's New Republican Reich may be many things but they're not stupid. Still, we always knew it, and it's nice to have insider testimony.

Peter Maass, writing at The Intercept, reminds us that, whatever Donald Trump's ridiculous pronouncements about expanding libel laws, President Obama is the one who's used the Espionage Act of 1917 to "prosecute more leakers and whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined." Which should also remind you that the guy who blew the whistle on CIA torture (John Kiriakou) is in jail while the torturers themselves aren't (because we're "looking forward"!) and that the Obama Administration's hatred of whistleblowers is so total that even FDA workers suffered blowback after trying to call attention to malfunctioning medical devices.

Dean Baker finds complaints about the "lack of specifics" in Bernie Sanders's answers to the New York Daily News to be "silly." I mention this mainly because he reminds us that the same "liberal" media so anxious to castigate Sen. Sanders acts like Paul Ryan is TEH WONKIEST WONK EVAH!!!!, even though (or perhaps because!) he has "has repeatedly proposed eliminating most of the federal government." Then again, if Bernie Sanders knew the precise statute that would permit him to prosecute banksters for mortgage fraud, the "liberal" media would probably just call him a nerd.

Finally, Florida Republican Gov. Rick Scott must regret stopping off at a Starbucks in Gainesville on Tuesday, after a local woman gave him what-for over (among other things) his refusal to expand Medicaid, saying "(y)ou should be ashamed to show your face around here." You'll recall that he said he supported expanding Medicaid while running for re-election in 2014, then flip-flopped once he was elected, because he won and you didn't. As for his "I created a million jobs" spiel: ah, no, the people of Florida created a million jobs, through their demand for goods and services -- and might have created more, except for Mr. Scott's perpetual hard-on for tax-cuts-for-the-rich getting in the way.

Around the table: voter ID, government spying, medical malpractice, and more Supreme Court follies.

Tens of thousands of good North Carolinians march in Raleigh to protest voter suppression, which is alive and well there in the form of Voter ID. Anyone who thinks Voter ID isn't such a big deal is invited to read the first four paragraphs, describing the travails of two seniors who had to jump through absurd hoops just to keep their right to vote. (Ah, and anyone who thinks Voter ID isn't such a big deal is also invited to keep their made-up statistics about voter "fraud" to themselves. Also their Project Veritas videos "proving" voter "fraud" is "widespread" by pointing a camera at one guy. Also their notions that black folks are "stupid" because they so rarely vote Republican. Really, some folks should learn a little self-censorship.)

Susan Gaissert, writing at the BORDC/DDF blog, tells us when the FBI started watching the Occupy movement -- and it was before Occupy even set up in Zucotti Park. Also, a lot of law enforcement reported Occupy-related activities to federal terrorism offices, and the FBI did successfully (and violently) end the Zucotti Park occupation by the end of 2011. But at the risk of beating a dead horse: if anyone feels "terrorized" by Occupy, they should just see a therapist.

Marshall Allen, writing at ProPublica, interviews brain surgeon-turned malpractice lawyer Lawrence Schlachter, who says that "medicine is incapable of regulating itself." His observation that too much patient care gets done by non-doctors "for economic benefit" is, unfortunately, a fairly universal phenomenon -- and the regret Mr. Schlachter feels in not "step(ping) up and say(ing) it" when he saw something wrong as a doctor is also a fairly universal phenomenon. I'm glad to see him doing something about it.

The ever-alert Paul Waldman catches a young Mitch McConnell writing a law review article stating that "the Senate should discount the philosophy" of a Supreme Court nominee at least at the start of the hearings, because "(t)he President is presumably elected by the people to carry out a program and altering the ideological directions of the Supreme Court would seem to be a perfectly legitimate part of a Presidential platform." Of course Young Mitch wrote this after President Nixon's first two nominees got rejected by the Senate, but Mitch McConnell always acts like the world has no memory.

Finally, House Speaker Paul Ryan says that Congress "has every right NOT to confirm someone" to the Supreme Court. (Shouty caps in original. I may be an abuser of the Italics Hammer, but I don't do shouty caps.) The rest of his opinion, as reported above, is uselessly histrionic, but of course he's right that the Senate doesn't have to confirm a Supreme Court nominee. But I never said otherwise -- I only said the Senate were cowards who would not be doing their duty if they didn't consider a nominee if Mr. Obama offers one. And Sen. McConnell suggested that Mr. Obama shouldn't even bother nominating someone and just let the next hopefully-Republican President do it, so Mr. Ryan's exclamation is a bit beside the point. Finally, why are we, again, talking about the "rights of Congress" and not the rights of people? Just because Mr. McConnell pretends the people only "have a voice" on Election Day doesn't mean it's true.

Around the table: stories about financial and governmental parasites.

America's Last Conservative, Paul Craig Roberts, explains "Why Michael Hudson is the World's Best Economist." (That would make Mr. Roberts second-best, though he says early that Mr. Hudson might be "the only economist in the world.") Anyway, I can second Mr. Roberts's claim, having spent many hours with Mr. Hudson's 2012 book The Bubble and Beyond; I'll move on to last year's Killing the Host (i.e., the financial sector as one giant parasite on the economy) soon. Mr. Roberts's column serves as an admirable introduction to Mr. Hudson's thought. And always remember there's another term for "countries...servic(ing) huge debts simply by lowering domestic wages in order to pay creditors" -- income redistribution.

And now we learn that Michigan state environmental officials ignored scientists' warnings about Flint's water quality, with the state's highest environmental official admitting that his office was "combative and dismissive" toward scientists' warnings. The EPA certainly deserves blame, too, for failing to air their concerns to Michigan in a timely manner, but let's not forget how this all really started: with a financial crisis leading to a government installing unelected "emergency managers" and giving them broad powers to override democratic processes in order to "save money." That's the kind of bold thinking George W. Bush was always known for, you know.

Retail analysts inform us that Amazon's shipping service isn't as good as it used to be for its non-Prime customers. You'd think Amazon would ensure its service is just as good even to those who aren't in their special club, because the best service would entice more folks to join that special club for other reasons (like streaming!) -- but Amazon doesn't have to do that, because Amazon is a damn monopoly. This is, by the way, the kind of thing that would happen on the internet all the time without strong net neutrality regulations.

On the eve of Super Bowl 50, Lindsay Gibbs discusses the strange (i.e,, racist) attitude the "liberal" media has toward Panthers QB Cam Newton, while also treating us to a lengthy history of the first black starting QB in pro football history, former Broncos QB Marlin "the Magician" Briscoe. The "liberal" media hates on Cam Newton for all the reasons the article gives, plus one more: he doesn't apologize for the fact that he can run the crap out of the ball if the situation calls for it. I always felt a little heartsick when I heard Donovan McNabb disrespect his own running ability, and I feel a little heartsick when I read about former Bills QB James Harris hiding his foot speed from his coaches out of fear they'd move him to another position.

Finally, you'll be heartened to learn that Paul Ryan has warned other Republicans that "we can’t fall into the progressives’ trap of acting like angry reactionaries." No truth to the rumor he then said, "we have to be pleasant reactionaries," though that is basically the Republican plan. Always suspect a guy who talks about "ideas" all the time -- particularly if all his ideas are bad.

Around the table: more from the Republican clown car, plus college accreditation shortcomings.

Putative libertarian Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah introduces bill that purports to limit law enforcement's use of stingrays (which can capture the data on your cell phone) without a warrant -- but, naturally, the bill contains broad exceptions for "national security" and FISA. And I do mean broad -- "conspiratorial activities threatening the national security interest" could mean a lot of things. File under "The Uselessness of Libertarian Republicans."

Steve Benen notes that Paul Ryan, since ascending to the Speakership, has hired eight-count-'em-eight new communications staffers and zero policy staffers. What do we expect, though, from a political party that thinks they can convince America that dung is meatloaf if they just message it right? (Mr. Benen is right, though, to note that getting rid of staffers who actually know policy and hiring more PR flaks is a long-standing problem. I suspect the enterprising messager could make campaign ads attacking Republicans on this very basis.)

Annie Waldman notes that the Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (or ACICS) seems to oversee a lot of for-profit schools where students don't finish school very much and are swamped in debt. ACICS's President told Sen. Warren that his agency couldn't take "any kind of action" without "evidence," by which he meant the "outcome" of federal investigations, not merely the fact thereof. But if your students suffer under more debt and complete school less frequently, what evidence, exactly, are you waiting on?

Ben Carson alleges that a rival Presidential campaign leaked his ties to medical supplement corporation Mannatech, ties he denied having at that CNBC debate last week. The reporter who broke the story nine months ago, National Review's Jim Geraghty, denies the charge, but why isn't Ben Carson blaming himself for thinking he could just deny something that had already been widely-reported? I can't just blame the softball question that prompted the charge.

Finally, the Washington Post talks to some voters who support Donald Trump. There'll be no surprises -- they're mostly older folks who think of the Reagan era or the '70s or the Eisenhower/Kennedy era as the last American golden age, and they all admire a man who "talks like a regular guy." But you also know all these folks are going to vote for whomever the Republican nominee is, Trump or no, and none of them want to bring back things that actually made America great, like the 91% tax bracket and aggressive corporate taxation. And I hear too much complaining about "everything (being) about race" -- "everything wasn't about race" in the '50s because too many folks didn't even question segregation. And, ah, hate to pile on, but the Eisenhower era would never have produced a Donald Trump -- he's only this well-off because of the casino economy Ronald Reagan began to bring about.

Around the table: "banning the box," the "new Willie Horton," online charter schools, forced arbitration, and Paul Ryan's charming views about paid family leave.

President Obama issues executive order "banning the box" for federal employers (though not federal contractors). This means that, instead of presenting a job application with a check-box asking if applicants have ever been in prison, federal employers will have to wait until later in the process to check backgrounds, and thus ex-prisoners will get to put their best foot forward and make more of their lives than they might otherwise had an opportunity to do. I wish he'd included federal contractors (which would have made a much bigger difference), but this still represents progress.

In a peripherally-related development, Politico headlines a story about Mr. Obama's plan to release 6,000 non-violent drug offenders thusly: "Has Obama Set Loose a New Willie Horton?" I presume they won't use the I'm-just-asking defense -- I bet they'll claim they mean "Willie Horton" not in the near-literal, is-one-of-these-folks-actually-going-to-murder-someone sense, but in the "Willie Horton as political football" sense. It doesn't matter, because it sure looks like racist fearmongering. (In other news, Ted Cruz is completely useless -- he "favors reform," except when his opponents actually try reform.)

Study on online charter schools, partly funded by private charter school foundation, "effectively says that the average student who attends might as well not enroll," particularly where math is concerned. But you probably knew this, if you figure the charter school "movement" is basically a way to undermine public schools and steal taxpayer money at the same time, or if you've ever gone online and found yourself four clicks away from where you intended to be.

Forced arbitration makes the New York Times! OK, they've probably covered it before -- after all, a main foe of forced arbitration, Sen. Blumenthal, lives just over the border in Connecticut -- but this is about as good a primer about (in one law professor's words) "the whole-scale privatization of the justice system" that you'll get. Warning: some of the items contained therein will make you very angry. Which, I assure you, is because you're a good person.

Finally, even Fox News Sunday all but tells Paul Ryan he's a hypocrite for wanting more time with his family while opposing bills that would help all workers have more time with their families. Remember, "some new federal entitlement" and "a new unfunded entitlement" don't actually have any bad words in them, regardless of Mr. Ryan's tone. And the FAMILY Act, which would essentially make the Family Medical Leave Act paid, is actually funded by a laughably small payroll tax. So when Paul Ryan brandishes "unfunded" as a scare word, he's not even right.

Around the table: starring hypocrites, pimps, greedy CEOs, and reactionaries.

Daniel Drezner, writing at the Washington Post, still thinks Donald Trump will have a lot of trouble winning the Republican Presidential nomination. His two main points: Mr. Trump hasn't done the work that would actually turn voters out (like buy voter databases and hire field staff), and Howard Dean, also, looked fairly inevitable in 2004 "right up to the moment people voted." Mr. Drezner isn't the only one who's ever cited Howard Dean in suggesting that actually pulling the lever for Donald Trump might give a lot of folks pause once they're in the voting booth. But Democratic primary voters are a different animal than Republican primary voters -- I wonder what, if anything, gives the latter pause.

The "liberal" media has heavily reported Paul Ryan's desire to spend more time with family as an obstacle to him taking the Speakership, but Bryce Covert at Think Progress reminds us that Mr. Ryan has consistently opposed policies that would help poor working families achieve a similar work-life balance, like paid sick leave. It's one thing to walk the walk about work-life balance yourself, and another thing entirely to cut off poor people at the knees so they can't do the same, because you say it's a "culture problem" when people can't get jobs corporations aren't creating.

The incomparable Dave Zirin reminds us not to resort to false innocence or cynicism when confronting the Louisville basketball recruiting scandal, wherein the University of Louisville allegedly paid a "Louisville madam" to ply players and recruits with sex. The path of cynicism is always the wrong path -- I'd put "always" in shouty-caps, if I weren't philosophically opposed to shouty-caps -- but the path of false innocence, a path to which I'm just as susceptible as anyone else, also blinds us to the sexism of this apparent "recruiting tool." I mean, just because "everyone does it" doesn't mean it's not outrageous.

This Center for American Progress report tells us, in about as restrained a voice as is humanly possible, what's wrong with the economy: corporations don't invest in the future, despite high profits and low borrowing costs. The right counters that corporations just need more tax cuts, but we've had nearly four decades now of evidence that tax cuts haven't done much for the economy but have starved our government of necessary revenues. And though CAP won't come out and say it, I will: corporations won't invest because the CEOs want all the money for themselves. I'll say this, too: when we condemn corporations who only care about short-term profits, we're the conservatives in the room, not the corporate lackeys in the Republican party.

Finally, there's Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, again, saying that Adolf Hitler really didn't want to kill the Jews but the then-Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, who was (of course!) a Palestinian, forced his hand. But you know what's getting lost in all the brouhaha about this, ah, questionable thesis? That Hitler killed the Jews. You'd think a "conservative hero" like Mr. Netanyahu would know to blame the people who actually do evil, rather than the people who "forced" them to do evil. But maybe Mr. Netanyahu doesn't get that because he's a reactionary, not a conservative, and reactionaries don't get anything but what makes them angry or hard.

Around the table: the end of the Jim Webb Experience, and other somewhat bigger stories.

Big pharmaceutical corporations have big problems with the Trans-Pacific "Partnership," big enough that it could get scuttled. But given that both left and right are now attacking the same part of the deal for different reasons, Mr. Obama could pick up a lot of support for the plan by saying, see, both sides hate it! It must be good! Which is rather like Solomon actually splitting the baby in half.

Paul Ryan now says he'll run for Speaker, if he can be a "unity candidate," i.e., one who's not completely controlled by the "Freedom Caucus." But I think this is all theatre. Paul Ryan may not be a member of the "Freedom Caucus," but he's surely one of them; the only difference between them is that he's willing to wait a little longer to turn America into dystopia. But I'm not sure how many members of the "liberal" media still fall for the notion that Paul Ryan possesses deep intellect and devotion to policy-making.

ProPublica wonders if the 21st Century Cures Act would "cure patients or the drug industry." The FDA, of course, has already "streamlined" its processes, if we measure by acceptance rates, but the real problem is the narrative that pits government regulation against innovation -- as if regulation never, ever spurs innovation, as if it's not the FDA's job to keep unsafe medical products off the market, as if a product that's unsafe could possibly be "innovative." Only if we're "innovating" on the definition of "safety" so that it includes things that aren't safe, amirite?

Ho hum, Good Jobs First releases a study finding that states actually give large corporations the lion's share of taxpayer assistance, regardless of how much they go on about their love of small businesses. Big corporations get 90% of the money states give out, and that's not counting programs that small businesses can't even reasonably take advantage of. The more testosterone-addled among us might say well, that's how it should be, because they're bigger! But, actually, "large corporations should get more assistance than small businesses" is not Newton's Fourth Law -- legislatures could write laws that only assist small businesses, though large corporations really, really wouldn't like that.

Finally, in a development that wasn't likely to be widely noted even before Vice President Biden's announcement yesterday that he wouldn't run for President in 2016, former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb is ending his campaign for the Democratic Presidential nomination, though he may make an independent run at the same office. It can't just be the "liberal" media's fault that Mr. Webb's unorthodox message, designed to sell left-wing economic populism to disenchanted white men, never resonated -- Mr. Webb doesn't seem to enjoy campaigning or fundraising (not that I blame him!), and Bernie Sanders has basically stolen whatever populist thunder Mr. Webb might have had. I doubt an independent Webb run would hand the Presidency to Donald Trump, though plenty of liberals would stupidly blame Mr. Webb if it did.

Around the table: with run-of-the-mill right-wing hypocrisy, plus the new strongest material on Earth.

Jared Bernstein notices that Rep. Paul Ryan wants to reduce "improperly-claimed tax credits" to working families -- and who doesn't? -- but has not advocated taking similar steps to force businesses to report all their income. So, again, for Republicans, rules are for the little people, not for big corporations. Yes, I'm going to keep pointing this hypocrisy out until everyone is able to recite it in their sleep.

David Cay Johnston finds that as older businesses have come to dominate the economy, the income gap between rich and poor has grown, and wages and growth have become stagnant. And get your surprised face ready: it started to get that way in the early 1980s, and now it's to the point where businesses 11 years or older now account for about half of all businesses in America (up from a third in 1987). Lesson: laws and regulations that protect older firms stifle our economy. And you know the powers-that-be will still blame our slow economy on laws and regulations that actually protect people.

In Other Completely Surprising News, Fingerhut makes renting-to-own look more affordable by jacking up retail prices. You'll see, among other things, a 58" LED TV offered for $59.99 monthly over two years, one that supposedly costs $899 ("down from $999," naturally!) go for a little over $600 on Amazon. And at $59.99 a month for two years, you'd wind up spending over $1,400 for that $999 $899 $609 TV! I should add that if the infernally cautious Sen. Casey (D-PA) is calling on the FTC and CFPB to investigate this matter, it must be bad.

Scott Klinger at the Center for Effective Government covers the 102 years of the federal income tax. You'll learn how tariffs on imported goods were the main source of federal government revenue for many years (and, naturally, that meant our government raised most of its revenue from the middle and lower classes, since they spent more of their income on imported goods than rich folk). You'll also learn how the Supreme Court struck down a modest tax on the rich -- and how a constitutional amendment permitted the income tax.

Arkansas legislators pass bill prohibiting municipalities from enacting any anti-discrimination law that might benefit gays. Because TEH GAYZ!!!!! And, I guess, RELIJUZ FREEDUMZ!!!!! Yes, in some parts of America, only bigots have religious freedoms. And yes, I'm going to make sure you can recite that in your sleep, too.

Finally, scientists have found a natural material even stronger than spider silk -- millimeter-long teeth of aquatic snails. Imagine a strand of spaghetti holding up a one-pound bag of sugar and you'll get a sense of how strong this stuff is. Granted, it's tough to simply extrapolate what's strong at one millimeter and make it similarly strong at, say, three feet, but it's still worth it to study it, and to try it.

Around the table: slaying zombie lies about tax cuts, food stamps, and charter schools.

Jamelle Bouie explains how Paul Ryan will "cook the books" to "prove" that tax cuts grow economies, create jobs, and increase federal revenue. Never mind that none of those same promises made by Tha Bush Mobb after its tax cuts ever materialized, and never mind how spectacularly Sam Brownback's tax cut "experiment" is blowing up in Kansas as we speak -- Paul Ryan and his disciples will forever concoct new ways of "scientifically" showing that it must happen.

Paul Buchheit at Nation of Change points out that the richest 14 Americans made the same amount of money as our entire federal food stamp program. So we're not exactly "broke," are we, when a mere fourteen people's income can pay for an entire massive federal program? The numbers get worse from there, impossible as that sounds; keep some of them at the front of your mind for your next argument with your Tea Party uncle.

Surprise, surprise: the Center for Popular Democracy finds over $30 million in charter school fraud in Pennsylvania over the last 17 years. Nobody could have predicted that diverting taxpayer money to schools that can goose up their stats by kicking students out at will would lead to fraud. Nobody could have predicted that the state would completely drop the ball on its oversight duties. Nobody, that is, except any sentient life form who gave the matter a nanosecond of thought. Let me know when the sarcasm starts wearing thin.

Facebook's shuttle bus drivers, who transport Facebook employees to and from work, want to organize and bargain collectively. Naturally, Facebook's "hands are tied," because they contract the bus driving function out to another corporation, whose President says the benefits and pay are good (though the given pay figures aren't that good, especially for the area) and adds that he has no solution for the bus drivers' main complaint -- that their eight- or nine-hour shift is spread out over 15 hours, such that they never get to see their families. No solution, eh? And you thought our entrepreneurial class were bold thinkers!

Do you keep hearing that if we tax the rich less, they'll donate more to charity, thus making up for lost government functions? Well, that isn't true, either: folks making over $200,000 have given more total money to charity since 2006, but their incomes have gone up rather faster than their charitable contributions have. Meanwhile, Americans overall still donate about 3% of their income to charity annually, meaning that lower- and middle-income Americans have picked up the slack. You know what would induce more charitable giving by the rich? The return of the 91% tax bracket for millionaire income, that's what.

Finally, from the "I Wish This Was from The Onion" file: author sues yogurt maker Chobani, claiming that Chobani's slogan "How Matters" infringes on his trademark on the word "how." Mr. Seidman not only insists that he uses the word "how" uniquely enough to trademark the word, but that Chobani uses the word in exactly the same way and can leverage its power to cripple his very ability to make money looking at "how" businesses do things. Seriously, Chobani's not going to win because it's a big corporation with deep pockets, but because this is an utterly frivolous lawsuit. (I feel compelled to note, though, that if "How" really "Matters" to Chobani, they shouldn't be using GMO milk to make their yogurt.)

Around the table: ladies and gentlemen, the smartest man in the Republican Party! And other follies.

In the middle of explaining how he'd replace the Affordable Care Act with a "free-market system" with vouchers and risk pools, Rep. Paul Ryan unfurls this gem: "Whether they choose to do that or not (that is, whether good citizens actually buy health insurance with the voucher he'd give them or not) is not really something you can necessarily actually capture in scoring." In other words, he can't prove his plan works -- which is understandable, because you can't score bullshit. He also doesn't explain why the Affordable Care Act is "so fundamentally flawed in its architecture," though I guess he figures if he uses the word "architecture" you'll just take his word for it. He really is, as someone once said, the dumb person's vision of a smart person.

Joe Conason says Americans appear to have amnesia about national security issues, as they seem to prefer Republicans to handle foreign affairs right now. Of course we'd be fools to discount the possibility that Mr. Bush knew his little Iraq adventure would blow up in someone else's face and that Republicans might benefit from that, but it'd also help to explain why this appears to be "amnesia" -- it'd help to explain, for example, that our "liberal" media has virtually no attention span, and carried water for the Bush war in Iraq while helping to demonize those of us who opposed the war from the beginning.

Remember that bankster CEO who complained that most folks who hate banks just don't have enough "skin in the game"? Robert Reich reminds us that ordinary folks already have too much "skin in the game," in that we suffer from Wall Street disasters while banksters don't. Fun fact: even gamblers can get their gambling debts forgiven more easily than regular folks can get their student loans forgiven. And if a Senator were to introduce a bill correcting that obviously absurd state of affairs, the banksters would strangle it in its crib.

Another year, another putatively pro-business association claiming that federal regulations are much more expensive to businesses than they really are. Long story short: like previous reports, they brandish scare numbers (ZOMG $1.7 TRILLYUNZ!!!!!) without telling you that their big, bad numbers accumulate over decades, that they count penalties for breaking the rules that most businesses don't break as "costs," and that they don't count the health benefits resulting from following the rules against the "cost." After all, hours (and therefore work) not lost due to illnesses from dirty and air and water don't help the CEO buy his 19th vacation home.

It's not just local police departments that get killing gadgets from our military -- school districts get them, too. School districts! That's not a comment on Kids Today, since every generation has complained about Kids Today. That's a comment on how little faith our educational system has in its ability to manage our children, who surely cannot be that threatening to adults. The good news? Most school districts are sending them back. And that's a comment on the awesome power of bad PR.

Finally, after much public pressure, Google executive Eric Schmidt has said Google will end its association with ALEC, the state legislative affairs group responsible for so much right-wing legislation at the state level over the years. I'm such a stubborn bastard that I still wish ALEC's regressive views on economics, rather than their regressive views on climate change, prompted Google's executives to quit -- but I'm not so stubborn that I won't take it. Next up on Fox News: Google joins the lynch mob against ALEC!

Around the table: the empty promise of Republican anti-poverty programs, and other stories.

Mike Konczal and Bryce Covert at The Nation instruct us how Paul Ryan's New Big Idea -- replacing federal poverty programs with "block grants" to states -- is the same old Republican hogwash. If you think about it for a minute -- that giving states a pile of money to use as they please isn't a good way of replacing a federal program addressing very specific needs that may rise or fall over time -- you see through it. Why our "liberal" media doesn't see through it is, of course, a matter open to speculation.

William Finnegan at the New Yorker writes a magnificent profile of activist workers at a McDonalds in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City. It's a lengthy read, but worth your time. My perhaps idiosyncratic list of highlights: McDonald's absurd scheduling system made manifest in a strip of paper in paragraph 5; McDonald's well-publicized "advice" to its employees ("Fresh fruit and vegetables are good for you"!) in paragraph 17; the sudden appearance of the Washington Heights franchise owner when TV cameras come to investigate a worker's collapse in paragraph 26. Also, don't miss the William S. Burroughs reference.

Tara Culp-Ressler at Think Progress says "You Shouldn't Ask Why Janae Rice Stayed." Many folks wonder why Ms. Rice -- now married to former Ravens running back Ray Rice, who beat her unconscious in a casino elevator in Atlantic City in July -- "didn't just leave him." Anyone who's ever been in love knows half the answer to that, and here's the other half: a) you could die, b) you could lose your family, c) you may be financially dependent on your partner, and d) if your partner is black, it's more likely the cops will beat him/her up. And asking "why don't you leave?" is also, of course, a way of avoiding the more pertinent question of "why doesn't your partner stop being an asshole?" We do believe in blaming the right people, don't we?

Last week, I nominated Thom Tillis's "the process worked" blunder -- uttered during his North Carolina U.S. Senate debate with incumbent Sen. Kay Hagan -- as the campaign-killing blunder of this election cycle, but many other observers seem more concerned with Mr. Tillis's apparent condescension toward Ms. Hagan -- told her she was bad at math, repeatedly called her "Kay" instead of "Sen. Hagan," like that. I don't think all that's so big a deal, possibly because I rarely pay the proper respect to a U.S. Senator myself, but I also don't live in North Carolina, and I also thought Mr. McCain's obvious disrespect for Mr. Obama in the first 2008 debate wouldn't amount to a hill of beans, either, until it was all the talk at the water cooler at work the next day. So I could well be wrong about this, too.

Finally, European researchers suggest that babies who sleep on animal fur may be less likely to experience asthma and allergies as they grow older. Babies would have to receive a great deal of exposure to animal fur -- through a sheepskin blanket or rug, say -- in order to receive the beneficial effects. But then, this may be why our housecats keep shedding on our clothes -- so that we may benefit from it later. Cats are wise, you know.

Around the table: "extraordinary access to the Member," and other horrors.

California state legislature passes plastic bag ban. I've opposed plastic bag taxes in the past, on the grounds that it would hurt lower-income folks harder, but a ban is easier to support: though I don't know anyone who doesn't reuse their plastic bags, I see where the trash problem could become (or perhaps already is) intractable. The bill now goes to Governor Brown's desk; I have no idea whether he'll sign it or not, because when you look up the word "enigma" in the dictionary, it has a picture of Jerry Brown.

The Center for Public Integrity looks at "How Big Telecom Smothers City-Run Broadband." Long story short: it's the money -- from those same big telecoms that won't build out into cities that want the city-run broadband! Don't get discouraged when you read all of the flatugasms coming from the mouth of AT&T's CEO (including his extremely unlikely claim that he "just" didn't know his corporation spent millions lobbying for bills that would strangle community broadband) -- at the end, we learn that there may be judicial precedent for pre-emption of state anti-broadband laws (from a Reagan-appointed judge, no less!) and that plenty of Republican-led legislatures have tried to pass similar bills in recent years and failed.

Wired! profiles Biomeme, a startup that aims to mass-produce a diagnostic tool that would be easy to use and snap on to your smartphone. Biomeme faces a number of challenges -- some related to regulatory hurdles, some related to the enormity of the task, as other companies have found success in this field rather more elusive than expected -- but if you could have a relatively-inexpensive device that could tell you if you've got the flu or not, why wouldn't you want it? I hope they succeed -- and I also hope the FDA applies the proper amount of skepticism.

Rep. Steve Stockman (R-TX), whose term in Congress is over in just a few months, apparently is looking for unpaid interns who are not "vapid granolas who fear guns, hate babies, are ashamed of America, and think Islamic terrorists and illegal aliens are just misunderstood." I'm as liberal as they come, and I've never actually met anyone like that; certainly I can't understand why such a person would try to get a job with Steve Stockman. Click through (twice) to see the job listing itself, and learn with a shudder that if you get hired, "you will have extraordinary access to the Member."

Uh oh: Wisconsin's tax collection revenues fell $281 million short of the Walker Administration's projections last year. This could actually be a big deal in Scott Walker's impending re-election fight -- right-wingers like Gov. Walker insist that letting corporations do their thing actually increases tax revenue, when clearly the opposite is happening -- and his Democratic opponent, Mary Burke, seems willing to pound him for it. But when will Ms. Burke hammer Mr. Walker's infamous "budget repair" law essentially outlawing public unions in Wisconsin -- which, as you may recall, Mr. Walker "had" to do because the state was "broke"?

Finally, another day, another Barack Obama quotation alleging that Republicans are held "captive" by their far right wing, and I wish he'd just stop saying that stuff. Perhaps he aims to intimate that the Republican leadership isn't worthy of the people's support if they can't tell the Tea Party to go scratch, but most people will think Mr. Obama is saying the Republican leadership is reasonable and moderate, when they're not -- Newt Gingrich was reasonable and moderate compared to Messrs. Boehner, Ryan, and McConnell, and back in the day Gerald Ford and Bob Dole were reasonable and moderate compared to Newt Gingrich. Seeing a trend? Of course you are -- you're seeing the "center" move ever further right, and Barack Obama is making it worse.

Around the table: the hits just keep on coming for Sam Brownback! And other stories.

Richard Kogan gives us one more reason to reject Paul Ryan's plan to combine 11 federal poverty programs into one "opportunity grant," to be doled out to the states to spend as they like: "history shows that block grants that consolidate a number of programs or may be used for a wide array of purposes typically shrink — often very substantially — over time." Which stands to reason, since it's easier to cut one program than 11 programs, especially if the one program does 11 different things and any one of them are unpopular.

The Government Accountability Office reports that the EPA is doing a bad job overseeing gas drilling wells, particularly the 170,000-plus wells that carry hazardous and/or radioactive materials. Some "job terrorists," eh, Eric Bolling? Now we already knew the EPA was doing a bad job at this, though we didn't know that the EPA generally agrees that they're doing a bad job at this. But increasing their budget to help keep toxic chemicals out of our drinking water shouldn't be a hard sell for Democrats.

Jim Hightower reminds us that, though American corporations whine about the "crushing" 35% tax they supposedly have to pay, American corporations actually pay 12% on average. And partly because they get to deduct the fines they pay, as a price for their wrongdoing, from their taxes! Nice work if you can get it!

The Club for Growth turns on a former House Rep for whom it used to have mad love. The Club called former Rep. Todd Tiahrt's record on cutting spending "atrocious," even though he voted with the Club's wishes exactly 100% of the time in 2010. Why the change? Simple: they like his successor, current House Rep. Mike Pompeo, a.k.a. "R-Koch Industries," much better. Still, it's amusing to hear that Mr. Tiahrt's 77% lifetime rating "pales in comparison" to Mr. Pompeo's 90%. And when did agreeing with someone more than three times out of four become "atrocious"?

Finally, sticking with Kansas, we learn that Gov. Brownback has, for all intents and purposes, been outraised by his putative Democratic opponent this year -- and that Mr. Brownback has only officially "outraised" him because his own Lieutenant Governor has loaned the campaign $500,000. That loan represents over 40% of Mr. Brownback's total campaign haul for 2014, and what a waste -- Lieutenant Governor Jeff Colyer could be creating jobs with that money.

Around the table: the President criticizes people for not knowing what's happening in secret negotiations, and other stories.

Get a load of the cojones on this guy: President Obama suggests criticism of the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade agreement "reflects lack of knowledge of what is going on in the negotiations." The secret negotiations, you mean? Mr. Obama's own trade representative told us that if Americans knew what was in the TPP, they'd hate it, which lends credence to everything we've learned from leaks about "investor-state tribunals" and websites getting shut down on suspicion of copyright violation. Perhaps even worse? He wants us to "wait and see what's in the agreement," when he's pushing hard for the ability to pass it without amendment and with minimal debate.

McClatchy DC headline blares: "How’s this for counterintuitive? Pentagon hails jump in reported sexual assault cases." The Pentagon reported a 50% increase in sexual assault accusations over the past year, but Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said that was mainly because our troops are more comfortable with coming forward. That all seems likely, if (like me) you didn't think rising hate crimes rates in the '90s reflected an actual rise in hate crimes, but more assiduous reporting of hate crimes by police departments that hadn't been doing it.

Paul Buchheit opines on "Why the Super-Rich Should Pay Super Taxes." If you think you already know why, you may find some things here you didn't know -- or, at least, had forgotten, since no one keeps a list of reasons the rich should pay more in taxes at the forefront of all their thinking. You'll also be reminded that Paul Ryan got plenty of hands up from Big Gummint on his way to becoming the would-be architect of despair for American working families.

Tennessee state legislator says that "Democrats bragging about the number of mandatory sign-ups for Obamacare is like Germans bragging about the number of manditory (sic) sign-ups for 'train ride' for Jews in the '40s." First it's being forced to participate in the private health insurance market, and before you know it it's camps, gassing, and being turned into soap. And then he tries to talk his way out of it! I think I've heard of Stacey Campfield before, but we're never going to speak of him again.

Finally, Bush Mobb NSA Advisor/Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice decides to pull the plug on her planned commencement speech at Rutgers University later this month, after pressure from both students and faculty. Is it too much to ask that none of the Bush Mobb luminaries ever be asked to speak anywhere, ever again? Can we not live in a society where people who do such wrongs as they did are too ashamed to show their faces in public? I know such a society is unlikely, especially in the Jersey Shore age, but it would be a society worth fighting for.

Around the table: BP bribes, tax cut claims, Wall Street defenders, GMO labeling bills, and 3D-printed houses.

BP is back in our government's good graces after the 2010 Spillageddon, and Greg Palast explains why. One key finding: the State Department covered up BP's previous cement-cap blowout, a mere 17 months earlier, in the Caspian Sea. Another key finding: BP has been "driving" Azerbaijan's economy for over 20 years, largely with bribery. And with more judicial activism from the Roberts Court, America could be headed down this same desultory path.

Rand Paul claimed the other day that big Reagan tax cuts drove the creation of 20 million jobs, but Factcheck finds that claim wanting. Chiefly, Factcheck notes that the Clinton administration raised taxes on the rich and created almost 23 million jobs (versus nearly 19 million created during the entirety of the Reagan/Bush era, which included six years of a 50 percent marginal tax rate and the 1991 tax hikes on the wealthy), while also noting that revenues, ah, didn't go up as a result of the 1981 tax cuts. But Factcheck fails to note that the revenue increases of 1984 and 1985 happened after President Reagan signed tax increases into law.

Rep. Walter Jones (R-NC) has a primary challenger, a former Bush Mobber named Taylor Griffin. And, just as Richard Lugar's defeat in the 2012 Indiana Senate primary at the hands of Richard Mourdock had more to do with Mr. Lugar's support of bank fee caps than anything else, Mr. Jones's real sin isn't voting against the Ryan budget or criticizing the Iraq war or even co-sponsoring the DISCLOSE Act, but demanding more regulation of the financial sector banksters who have their tentacles so firmly in Mr. Griffin's person. If Mr. Jones loses his primary, can Democrats capitalize? Just kidding; these are Democrats we're talking about -- though if Mr. Jones goes the independent route and wins, maybe Democrats will take him back. (Mr. Jones was a Democrat until early in 1994.)

Vermont Senate passes GMO-labeling bill, the first bill that includes no triggers depending on other states passing similar bills. Now the bill goes to the Vermont House, which passed a similar bill last year. Could this bill die because the two houses "just can't agree on the version they can both live with"? Sure, it could. I'm not saying it will, but we have to prepare ourselves for the worst. Still, this represents progress, and the inevitable big ag lawsuits that will lose if they get to a judge with any brains will also represent progress.

Finally, a Chinese corporation builds houses out of concrete using a very, very large 3D printer. The houses are a bit samey, not to mention small, and they're not made whole but in parts that people then assemble (sort of like prefab housing). But the houses are also rather cheap (about $5,000 per unit), and I imagine that some public policy maker, somewhere, might be able to ameliorate homelessness with them -- no, even in America, where the most progressive thinking about ameliorating homelessness currently comes from Utah.

Around the table: special "right-wingers still suck!" edition.

House approves Paul Ryan's latest budget by a vote of 219-205. 12 Republicans defected, and though they included West Virginia's David McKinley, North Carolina's Walter Jones, and New Jersey's Frank LoBiondo, most of the Republican defectors thought the Ryan budget wasn't severe enough. In a few years, they'll be calling Paul Ryan a moderate! All 219 "yea" votes should lose their jobs in November, but I doubt Democrats would run ads about the Ryan budget even in competitive districts. Like Paul Ryan's.

Hank Aaron, arguably the most popular home run king in baseball history, compares Republicans to the KKK over their treatment of President Obama. I've long said Republicans treat Mr. Obama so badly because he's a Democrat, not because he's black -- but I've also long argued that I can understand why people would think they're doing it to him because he's black, because of the sheer disrespect they show the man. I fear that, at some point, this may all become a wave/particle thing.

An "environmental research organization" faults the "fear-based appeals" of folks trying to avert climate change, blaming said appeals for "denial, fatalism, and polarization." See that? Once again, when folks try to keep us on the road to disaster, it's not their fault -- it's our fault, for trying to change things for the better! Spoiler alert: they also misread someone else's research to support this point.

Heritage Foundation President/former U.S. Senator Jim DeMint tells a right-wing radio host that "no liberal is going to win a debate that big government freed the slaves." Because nothing says "small government" like a pair of Constitutional amendments. He also says "the conscience of the American people" freed the slaves, as if our government couldn't possibly be a vehicle for that conscience -- indeed, those aforementioned Constitutional amendments kinda support that notion. And as for the radio host's straw-man "liberal" "saying" "that Founding Fathers thing worked out really well, look at that Civil War we had eighty years later" -- right-wingers might do well to listen to a few liberals, if only so they'll know what we really sound like. It might even result in fewer on-air circle jerks.

Finally, Mike Huckabee is "beginning to think there's more freedom in North Korea sometimes than there is in the United States." He cites TSA pat-downs as a reason -- in North Korea, I can almost hear Yakov Smirnoff saying, they pat you down in the cab to the airport! -- and then he compounds his error by suggesting that maybe you should get TSA-style pat-downs before you vote! I liked Mike Huckabee when he ran for President -- what other Republican or Democrat said their party didn't deserve to win a Presidential election if it wouldn't get serious about corporate crime? -- but he's absolutely gone off the rails since President Obama won. What a damn shame.

Around the table: the struggle to detect signs of intelligent life in corporations and government.

Ho hum, Citizens for Tax Justice finds that the latest Ryan Budget gives millionaires an average tax cut of over $200,000. Which they'll then turn around and use to create jobs, right? Sure -- just like they do whenever they get a massive tax cut. Which means "never," since the rich are very much like you and me in that they hoard a windfall when they get it.

Richard Kirsch describes some of the challenges unions face in organizing retail and fast-food workers today. Key finding: large corporations are extremely powerful, even "more powerful than governments," but they distribute their workers over hundreds of sites and unions can really only organize one at a time, giving said unions very little power to change what a corporation does. That's if it succeeds, of course -- workers in retail and fast food turn over a lot, which makes getting half the workers to sign cards that much harder.

Tennessee pols see the gnarled, ringed hands of the Koch brothers behind a bill restricting municipalities from creating mass transit programs using dedicated lanes -- you know, like the one Nashville just so happens to be trying to build right now to shorten commuting times. The good news? Sunshine on this bill might kill it, as it killed Tea Party efforts to kill solar power efforts in Georgia (though at least one other Tea Party group fought on the side of the angels during that battle).

Speaking of the Koch brothers, their front group Americans for Prosperity is dropping over a half-mil on an ad nominally aimed at incumbent Arkansas Senator Mark Pryor (D), featuring a speaker who seems to have no idea if he has health insurance or not. See, what you do here is you all get together and laugh at this clown, who seems to think his ignorance is someone else's fault, and whose wife, perhaps not coincidentally, narrated another AFP anti-Affordable Care Act spot broadcast in Arkansas that reporters found to be, well, not necessarily in line with the facts.

Hobby Lobby -- the corporation trying to assert before the Supreme Court that it has the "religious freedom" to deny its workers contraception coverage -- has pumped over $70 million of its employee retirement plan into mutual funds investing in corporations making abortion drugs and contraception pills and devices. Hobby Lobby's Glorious Leaders no doubt stand ready to tell us that they have no control over what the mutual fund does with its money, which I knew was bunkum even before I heard of the Ave Maria Fund. I guess actual people have an easier time living their values than fictional ones.

Finally, scientists have found an ocean under the icy surface of one of Saturn's moons, making that moon a candidate to support life. That life may not be very lively, since Enceladus is, like many of Saturn's moons, quite small and quite cold, and the ocean underneath its icy surface is about the size of Lake Superior. Still, it's a start.

Around the table: the horrible truth about Our Glorious Leaders, part 333.

Good news, everyone: the FCC votes to ban TV stations from owning other TV stations in the same market by "recruit(ing) or creat(ing) a separate corporate entity to own the station" in order to evade media consolidation rules. TV owners (some of whom, like Sinclair and Gannett, are actually very big) complain they need loopholes like these to "compete with pay TV giants," which -- since they do not actually address any of our complaints about the slashed newsroom staffs and cookie-cutter news reports -- translates roughly as "we deserve more money for not doing any useful work."

The Center for Effective Government (formerly OMB Watch) puts out a report enticingly entitled "The Disappearing Corporate Tax Base," which shows us how we could get corporations (which just enjoyed another year of record profits in the middle of Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon) to pay more of their share. Hopefully you'll recognize the good ideas -- a financial transaction or "Robin Hood" tax, taxing investment income the same as almost every other kind of income, ending deferral of offshore profits. Also, hopefully, you'll be able to answer the inevitable BUT HOW WILLZ THA CORPORASHUNZ CREATEZ TEH JOBZ!!!! line with "well, look at what a terrible job they've been doing at that for the last dozen years when we haven't been treating them like the wayward brats they are."

Ho hum, another year, another Paul Ryan budget proposal that makes massive cuts to programs people need, gives millionaires yet more tax cuts they won't use to spur the economy, thinks repealing the Affordable Care Act will save money, and assumes that all the deficit-cutting will spur economic growth, when we all know by now that you have to spend money to make money. I'll admit the Washington Post, in its article, doesn't fawn over him like it used to, but where is the investigative reporting from our "liberal" media that will expose this new budget for the fecal blast it is?

The incomparable Alex Pareene writes about "The great Tea Party swindle: How to make lots of money off the naive." Long story short: "They just raise money and spend it on themselves and their friends." Long story somewhat longer: "they are all spending quite a bit on overhead and 'office expenses' and travel and not that much on actual candidates." Ever hear right-wingers complain that liberal policy initiatives are little more than handouts for liberal cronies? Nice to see the Tea Party is so much different than all of that.

Finally, Duncan Black, who's written a lot about the Iraq war, reminds us why we opposed it, and why we still oppose it. To wit: "Those of us who were against it were against it, in part, because it didn't make any fucking sense at all...The stated reasons were bullshit, the implicit reasons were gibberish." The historians will do little better.

Around the table: one government agency doing well surrounded by Republicans doing badly.

You may have heard that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), desperately trying to convince everyone he cares about poverty, fingered "lazy men" from the inner city as a main cause of poverty. But Jamelle Bouie at The Daily Beast reminds us that redlining and blockbusting did more to force black folks into inner-city poverty than any imagined "culture that doesn't value work." By the end, you might even think the "culture that doesn't value work" belongs to our elites.

Wisconsin Senate passes bill ending early voting on weekends. Republicans claim the bill would "level the playing field" for rural areas that can't afford early voting on weekends, though pretty much any sentient life form would immediately ask why they didn't just "level the playing field" by helping rural areas get more early voting. No doubt they'll answer WE'RE BROKE!!!!!, especially since they just passed another budget-busting tax cut. Gov. Walker hasn't said whether he'll sign the bill, which calculated indecision I'm sure will be overly praised by the "liberal" media. (The Senate passed a few other crappy bills, too. What a shame Wisconsin Democrats have stopped recalling them.)

Erica Eichelberger at Mother Jones lists ten things the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has done for America since its inception in 2011. You'll recognize the first few as "things that led to Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon that the banksters can't do anymore," and it's nice to know someone might crack down on payday lenders, which Congress won't do now that the banksters want to get in on it.

RNC Chair Reince Priebus says that fewer Presidential debates in 2016 will "strengthen" the Republican Party. If I were a Republican, I'd probably agree, and probably even for good reasons. But he also says "this time around, we're going to pick the moderators." He thinks that was the problem? No, the problem was that Republican Presidential candidates were either out of their damn minds or trying to pander to voters who were out of their damn minds. We needed no moderator with real or imagined "liberal bias" to see that.

Speaking of which, possible Republican 2016 Presidential candidate Ben Carson thinks America is a lot like Nazi Germany these days. No, you haven't missed our government gassing Jews and Gypsies and turning them into soap -- for Mr. Carson, it's all about the "PC Police," who are not an actual police force with actual guns, or even an actual organization. "We now live in a society where people are afraid to say what they actually believe," he opines. Where was he when "liberal" media punditoids routinely called anti-war Americans traitors and terrorist sympathizers, I wonder? Is he only moved to speak out when bigots feel too ashamed of themselves to air their bigotry? Let's never speak of this man again, even if he runs for President.

Around the table: from the ultimate absentee slumlord to the fear of a "progressive Kristallnacht."

Alan Pyke at ThinkProgress describes a horrifying phenomenon borne of Our Ongoing Economic Armageddon -- that banksters have foreclosed on enough homes to become some of America's biggest landlords. The story begins "Anyone who has ever struggled to get her landlord to fix a broken appliance can imagine how much worse it could have been if she were paying rent to a faceless hedge fund based thousands of miles away." And the story gets worse from there, as these "Wall Street-based absentee slumlords" amass enough power in municipalities to force cuts to public services and start another round of toxic property-backed "securities." Moral: concentrated power anywhere is evil, not just in government.

Speaking of concentrated power in government, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board has concluded in a report us that the NSA data-vacuuming program is illegal and must end. Which doesn't surprise anyone who recalls how many "secret court rulings" the Bush and Obama Administrations has used to justify the program. The Board has also concluded, not incidentally, that the NSA data-vacuuming has been of "minimal" value. What was the problem with getting warrants again? Oh, I remember: Tha Bush Mobb couldn't do that competently either.

Actual economist Dean Baker asks why the Wall Street Journal can't figure out why factories are "humming" but not hiring, and discovers that the answer is that factories are not, in fact, "humming." You'll note, from the first chart, that factories "hum" a lot less during recessions. It's almost as if the two factors are related, except in Republican minds, where the answers to every economic question are either "cut government" or "cut government more."

Ho hum, it looks like Congress plans to take another whack at the Affordable Care Act as part of some debt-limit hostage situation. Paul Ryan twists the "risk corridors" provision into a "bailout," but having voted for the actual 2008 financial services bailout, he doesn't get to call anything anyone else does a "bailout." (Having vehemently opposed the 2008 financial services bailout myself, I get to make these rules.) Also, it's not good strategy to have your Krauthammers and Pommurus write columns bragging that you could saddle people with higher premiums if you get your way.

Finally, some "venture capitalist" wonders whether the fight against income inequality will turn into a "progressive Kristallnacht." Replete with liberals killing banksters and hauling them off to concentration camps and breaking their shop windows and burning down their churches and hospitals -- and also with people calling Danielle Steel a "snob," since Kristallnacht apparently ain't what it used to be. Anyone ever heard of Tom Perkins before? Me neither. Now let's never speak of him again.

Around the table: including various health care fibs and the return of Monty Python.

Commonwealth Fund finds that wait times for medical appointments are, in fact, not longer in single-payer countries than they are here. Then again, those of us who've actually had to see the doctor know full well we have to wait for appointments in Our Glorious Free Market System. Oh, and by the way, our healthcare system is still way more expensive than it has to be, because it's a Glorious Free Market System.

Speaking of Universal Healthcare Lies, factcheck.org catches Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) telling folks that Consumer Reports told people not to sign up on healthcare.gov because of fraud. Actually, Consumer Reports told people that they might want to wait a bit to sign up on healthcare.gov because the site might be working better by then, not because of fraud. Don't expect Mr. McCarthy to clear the air, since being a Republican means never having to say you're sorry.

Hawaii state Rep, fed up with the homeless situation, starts taking a sledgehammer to the shopping carts the homeless use to store their belongings -- though he brings the carts he finds in good condition back to local markets. I hope the writer intends dry sarcasm with phrases like "novel approach" and "pitching in," because anyone who'd take a sledgehammer to a person's last few possessions is six ball bearings short of Captain Queeg.

Mother Jones informs us that WalMart could pay their employees almost $15/hour if they'd just stop spending $7.6 billion annually to buy back their own stock, which drives up their stock prices. I'd challenge anyone who retorts that it's their money to tell me how goosing up your portfolio in this manner is somehow work.

Ho hum, the Washington Post hypes Paul Ryan's as-yet-unreleased plan to combat poverty, quoting no less than six right-wing sources for "analysis" (like their fingers are too broken to dial Citizens for Tax Justice or Public Citizen!) and conveniently forgetting how miserable Mr. Ryan's former Roadmap to Nowhere would have been for poor people. I guess they think it's only important to point out these clothes have no emperor when the empty suit's running for national office.

Finally, the five surviving members of Monty Python's Flying Circus plan to get together for their first live show since 1998. It would be hard to underestimate Monty Python's influence on my generation. I just hope they've written dynamite new material, like Kids in the Hall did for their 2002 shows.

Around the table: right-wingers encouraging the borrowing of money! Somebody make this madness stop!

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's Paul Ryan's "bipartisan" "compromise" to "end" the government shutdown, in which he would graciously accept all of the Social Security and Medicare cuts the Obama budget offered, but none of the tax hikes the Obama budget demanded in return (though he'd give back the sequestration cuts, what a guy!). Seriously, though, I always said that the Obama budget offering Social Security and Medicare cuts would come back to bite him.

Rep. Lee "Danged Straight!" Terry (R-NE) will draw a formidable opponent for Nebraska's 2nd in 2014, an Omaha City Councillor named Pete Festersen. While I know the old saw that Nebraska actually has two Republican parties but one of them just happens to refer to themselves as Democrats, a Pete Festersen victory won't be anything to celebrate -- he's another one who calls himself "pro-business" as if those of us who won't give corporations everything they want are somehow "anti-business."

Rep. Steve Pearce (R-NM) told furloughed federal workers on Facebook that if they're facing tough times, they should just take out a loan. I thought everybody had to balance their budgets, sir! How dare you encourage fiscal irresponsibility in this manner! Seriously, his district's fairly right-of-center, but a Democrat just served a term there from 2008-10, and New Mexico Democrats don't just fall down for anybody, so this could be a faux pas you see in TV ads incessantly a year from now.

Maryland state police reports depict state Attorney General Douglas Gansler (also running in the Democratic primary for governor) as the kind of guy who'd order them to hit the lights and sirens and speed and run red lights just so he could get to mundane appointments on time. Mr. Gansler, in response, concedes a certain amount of "backseat driving" and nothing else -- but if the accusations are true, they're extremely damning; a man capable of disrespecting the law that greatly is capable of doing pretty much anything to anybody, and shouldn't even be Attorney General, let alone Governor.

In case you thought racism was so over already, behold: a 7 GB map of America, with each American represented by one dot, and each dot colored to represent a person's race. You'll notice some areas are quite, well, like-colored. Some folks will say well, that just means people like to stay with their own kind, and I suppose those folks have never talked to a real estate agent even once in their lives.

Finally, seminal Tea Party group FreedomWorks has had such bad money troubles lately they've had to take out a $1 million line of credit. Fiscal responsibility! That's what they get for paying Dick Armey $8 million late last year to go away. When I think of FreedomWorks, I'm actually tempted to think more fondly of the John Birch Society ("at least they weren't total clowns!"), but I'm almost certain a little more research would cure that with a quickness.

From the EVERTHING IZ TERRORIZM!!!! file: Tennessee Department of Environment official claims that baseless complaints about water quality comprise "an act of terrorism" "under Homeland Security." I guess if Mr. Smith feels "terrorized" by what most bureaucrats would find irritating, he can always go see a therapist -- unless, of course, he's just trying to intimidate folks into keeping their mouth shut about water so bad they have to boil it.

Paul Ryan blames Democrats for the farm bill's defeat in the House -- ignoring the poison pill amendment Republicans rammed through mere minutes before the vote -- but also reminds us that he didn't vote for the farm bill, either. Then he treats us to a paragraph of bloviating about Congressfolk "keeping their word" with each other, instead of the more pertinent problem of whether Congressfolk keep their word with the people they represent.

Republican Congressional aide still calls himself the "undisputed SNAP challenge champion," even though he actually failed to feed himself on food stamp money for a week. He had "an unexpected trip," after all, and so he couldn't do it the way he was supposed to. These Republicans, always needing to bend the rules to get anything done! Anyone heard of Donny Ferguson before this week? No? Now let's never speak of him again.

ProPublica tells us just about everything we need to know about Abigail Fisher's affirmative action case, which the Supreme Court just bumped back down to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. Long story short: Ms. Fisher's whiteness almost certainly didn't keep her off the University of Texas's Austin campus, or her lawyers would have spent more time arguing that -- and she didn't even finish in the top 10 percent of her class or get a gang-busters SAT score, which somewhat undercuts her own "work hard and be rewarded" argument.

Finally, Maine Gov. Paul LePage has announced he'll no longer comment on stories published by three newspapers who have lately published stories critical of his Administration. Does Mr. LePage ever remember that he won with 38% of the vote?

Mother Jones offers a primer on the massive Brazilian protests. Long story short: it ain't just about bus fare prices (though those can take up a quarter of a minimum-wage income in Brazil).

Entrepreneur Nick Hanauer explains why a massive minimum wage hike would be good for businesses. Of course he wants people to have money to buy stuff, but he also says this: "My investment portfolio includes Pacific Coast Feather Co., one of the largest U.S. manufacturers of bed pillows. Like many other manufacturers, pillow-makers are struggling because of weak demand. The problem comes down to this: My annual earnings equal about 1,000 times the U.S. median wage, but I don’t consume 1,000 times more pillows than the average American. Even the richest among us only need one or two to rest their heads at night." I've struggled to make this point so well. (Sadly, the comments mostly comprise a primer in how not to argue.)

Paul Ryan co-sponsors a Farm Bill amendment that would apply the dreaded "asset test" to food stamps -- meaning that if you have $2,000 in savings and/or a car worth $5,000, you can't get any. Silly Paul Ryan -- thinking that $2,000 can get you through even one catastrophe, or that a $5,000 car (the last one I bought for less than that cost me approximately one dollar in repairs for every six miles I drove) could be converted so easily to cash. If Mr. Ryan had ever worked somewhere besides politics or the family business, he might have a clue about these things.

Supreme Court rules that big corporations can force small businesses into binding arbitration agreements even if that prevents small businesses from redressing grievances in any meaningful way. Mr. Roberts thinks this is true even if said small businesses would otherwise sue big corporations for violating antitrust law. Antitrust law, good peoples! Next time your Republican uncle tells you Republicans (who gave us all five Supreme Court votes in the majority here) are "the party of small business," remind him of this case.

Speaking of antitrust law, the New Yorker explains "Why Monopolies Make Spying Easier." You probably already know the answer to that, but it's still worth reading about the internet of the '90s (what a time that was, eh?), Western Union's role in the 1876 Presidential election, and the halcyon days when America had thousands of phone companies. That's not a misprint.

HHS Inspector General finds some Medicare doctors as "very extreme in their prescribing" -- doctors who wrote an unusually large number of prescriptions, relied an awful lot on brand name drugs, or prescribed a high number of pain killers. We're not looking at more than three percent of Medicare doctors potentially doing wrong, but of course we ought to stamp out fraud wherever we find it. (And n.b. how many comments are intelligently critical of the article.)

Exodus International president shutters his pray-away-the-gay organization, apologizing for all the hurt he's caused. Normally I say great timing, guys! to such folk, but Mr. Chambers makes a fairly exhaustive list of sins, which isn't how you'd use an "apology" to keep lying to people.

Finally, the House's Farm Bill fails by almost 40 votes; partisan finger-pointing followed, which should only interest people who think this is all a big game. Mr. Obama deserves some credit, not only for saying he'd veto a bill like the House's that cut food stamps so deeply, but also for saying Congress might try to find savings in farm subsidies; these comprise two more acts of courage than I expected from him. But he did not say he'd veto the Senate Farm Bill, which cuts food stamps less than the House bill would have done and takes baby steps toward reining in subsidies, so let's not give him too much credit.

We've been bashing the Zombie Ryan budget a lot lately. And for damn good reason, I might add! But I should also mention that Mr. Obama, the Wizard of Super Happy Bipartisan Fun-Time Land, has repeatedly offered up Medicare benefit cuts and Social Security benefit cuts as part of a "grand bargain" with Republicans. Is this how "bipartisanship" works? One side wants to burn down the house, the other side doesn't, so we let half the house burn? And when is the other side going to demand some damn improvements to this house? The Center for Media and Democracy helps you tell your Reps and Senators not to cut Social Security and/or Medicare benefits. Their action tool also contains a list of better ideas, so they can't say well, you come up with a better idea! Just about anyone can come up with a better idea for our house than burning it down.

Meanwhile, CISPA hasn't advanced out of the Permanent Select House Committee on Intelligence since its reintroduction over a month ago, but Congress likes to move unpopular bills pretty quickly, and when they think no one's watching, so Daily Kos and Demand Progress help you tell President Obama to threaten to veto the bill. Wait a minute -- why get Mr. Obama involved? Because he did threaten a veto last time around, and unlike his veto "threat" of the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011, which he threatened to veto because it didn't give him enough power to detain citizens, he actually threatened a veto for the right reasons, including the false choice the bill presents between security and privacy. If we stay on him, he'll do better, and if he stays on Congress, they'll do better. But it doesn't begin with him -- it begins with us.

Republicans are very serious about convincing Americans they're not the same old Republicans who hate everything. Case in point: they're voting on the Ryan budget in the House this week -- the budget that blows up Medicare, the one that gives more big tax cuts to the rich, the one that cuts good social programs to the bone. Yup, sure looks like they've turned over a new leaf to me. NETWORK, the national Catholic social justice lobby, helps you tell your House Rep to vote "no" on the Ryan budget and "yes" on the Congressional Progressive Caucus budget, a.k.a. the "Back to Work" budget, which would do a lot of terrific things, like taxing Wall Street speculation, hiking taxes on millionaire and billionaire income to over 45%, treating investment income the same as dividend income, cutting corporate deductions for moving jobs overseas, and letting Medicare negotiate its own drug prices. Also, the "Back to Work" budget would simultaneously invest $2 trillion in three years and cut the deficit. If you invest in people, and not some CEO's gilded plumbing, you can do both.

Meanwhile, Moms Rising helps you tell the Obama Administration's Department of Labor to extend minimum wage and overtime protections to home health care workers. Yes, these laws currently exclude these workers, though they do some of the hardest work anyone could do, which you know if you've ever taken care of a very sick relative. Now home health care CEOs claim that if we gave minimum wage and overtime to home health care workers, it would kill their business. Let me put this succinctly: if giving your workers minimum protections will kill your business, then your business deserves to die. And letting home health care workers make minimum wage and overtime will not only result in better care for sick folk, it'll result in fewer workers having to resort to public assistance programs like food stamps. Don't the folks who complain about people on public assistance all the time want fewer people on public assistance? Or do they prefer to dream that they, too, could make a lot of money exploiting other people? I prefer to believe the best of Americans, but some people make that so hard.

You don't have to take my word for it that the Zombie Ryan budget would turn Medicare into a voucher program, cut useful social spending to the bone, and cut taxes for the super-wealthy so they can not pump it into the economy -- you can also take the word of the Progressive States Network, which compares the Ryan budget to the far superior "Back to Work" budget promoted by the House Progressive Caucus. Or you can view this chart from the National Priorities Project, comparing the Ryan Budget, the "Back to Work" budget, and the Senate Democrats' budget. Or you can read Citizens for Tax Justice's report also comparing the aforementioned three budgets. I think you might have enough information to call your Reps and Senators and tell them a) to oppose the Ryan budget and b) to pass something more like the "Back to Work" budget. Because, hey, we're all about solutions around here!

Meanwhile, after over 100,000 good Americans told the White House that we want to be able to free our cell phones from our networks if we're unhappy with the service we're getting, and the White House agreed, Senators have introduced a few bills toward that end -- S. 467, Ron Wyden's Wireless Device Independence Act, and S. 517, the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, which has seven sponsors. But neither bill is ideal. Mr. Wyden's bill is better, but it only deals with cell phones in the context of copyright law, and S. 517 merely restores the pre-January status quo for another year, during which the Librarian of Congress will decide whether to restore the prohibition or not. So Free Press helps you tell Congress what you want regarding your cell phones and your freedom. Strangely, the Free Press action tool doesn't include the words "network neutrality" -- but you can easily rectify that problem in your comments. (The FCC's weak net neutrality rules from 2010 don't cover wireless networks at all.)

Remember when Pennsylvania chocolatier Hershey tricked foreign students on a federal cultural exchange program into becoming wage slaves? Looks like a couple of McDonald's franchises (also in Pennsylvania, imagine that) just got caught doing something similar. McDonald's packed students from Latin America and Asia eight to a room and then forced them to work as long as 25 hours at a stretch without overtime, threatening them with deportation if they quit. And the students paid $3,000 apiece for the honor! Needless to say, the students got fed up with that state of affairs and, with the help of the National Guestworkers Alliance, staged a surprise strike on March 6. That got the parent company's attention -- they fired the franchisee who organized the exchange program, Andy Cheung, and he sure seems like a real piece of work -- but we might as well strike while the iron is hot. Sum of Us helps you tell McDonald's to pay the guest workers back and ensure their guest worker programs don't go this awry again.

Another year, another Paul Ryan budget that attempts to turn Medicare into a voucher program, that aims to give millionaires another huge tax cut while giving you bupkus -- wait, did he win election to Vice President? He's sure acting like it. Luckily, we can act like citizens and administer our will to our representatives in Congress. The Campaign for America's Future helps you tell Congress to oppose the Ryan budget and support the Congressional Progressive Caucus's budget instead, and Public Citizen helps you tell Paul Ryan to leave Medicare alone. Amazing that so many Congressfolk claim to care about Medicare, but none will allow Medicare to negotiate its own drug prices. It's like our Congressfolk are so stupid they can only equate spending cuts with causing Americans pain. No, it may not be evil: they may really be that stupid.

Meanwhile, the Pennsylvania state Senate tried to pull a fast one earlier this week, with SB 411, a bill that would actually immunize gas drilling corporations from prosecution for using abandoned coalmine water for their fracking activities -- because, as we know, making corporations pay for their crimes is bad for the economy, just as putting burglars in prison is also bad for the economy. The legislature apparently intends immunity as an incentive for drillers to use the contaminated coalmine water, because removing the possibility of punishment always results in good behavior! (Should I be wearing the Sacred Antlers of Sarcasm?) The Pennsylvania legislature website says the bill has been tabled, but let's let them know we're still watching, OK? Penn Environment helps you pimp-slap some sense into the Pennsylvania state legislature.

In other news, banksters like Wells Fargo now push payday loans, ahem, direct deposit advances on people. Just what we need: banks acting more like loansharks, giving out loans designed to necessitate other loans to pay off the first loans, loans that could result in a 300% interest rate after a year. (As a basis for comparison, your credit card probably charges you around 20% interest.) I can already hear the right wing's objection: people should know better than to take out a payday loan. Well, here's another one: banks should know better than to give out payday loans. They know it's wrong, yet they still do it -- unless we shame them, or compel our government to act on our behalf. CREDO helps you tell federal regulators to stop big banks from offering payday loans. They've made a mint off our ongoing financial Armageddon -- when will it be enough?