Thieves in the Temple.

Around the table: no, our President is not a traitor! And other lessons.

FCC Chair Ajit Pai suspends the proposed Sinclair/Tribune merger, saying he's afraid Sinclair will sell some of its stations (in order to get under an FCC ownership cap) in "sidecar arrangements" allowing them to keep a stake in programming and revenues -- thus retaining control over stations they don't own, which is against the law. Next will be a hearing before an administrative judge; Comcast and Time-Warner abandoned their efforts to merge rather than face an administrative judge in 2015. I still wouldn't be surprised to see this deal come back from the dead, though. And why do we allow any person or corporation to own more than one station again?

Look, I want to believe just as badly as anyone else that Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) could vote against the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination. After all, Mr. Kavanaugh believes a President should be exempt from criminal prosecution because he's-so-busy, and he has also stated that our government's metadata-vacuuming program is "entirely consistent" with our Constitution's 4th Amendment (and also spoke of the program's alleged "critical national security need," as if he hadn't convinced himself of the previous statement). But Mr. Paul could be the deciding vote here -- Republicans have 51 of 100 Senators, but John McCain is gravely ill and hasn't voted on anything in months -- and my guess is he waits for Sens. Manchin, Heidtkamp, and Donnelly to vote yea before he votes nay. Because the best time to vote on principle is when it makes no difference!

Just as we should take the term "fake news" with about a pound of salt, Jim Naureckas at FAIR reminds us that we might actually credit social media with the leftward shift in voters' beliefs over the last few years. And just as we figure our President calls things "fake news" because he doesn't like being criticized, we should also figure that the "liberal" media doesn't like social media first and foremost because it's upended their authority -- social media has allowed good Americans to filter the news they get more to their liking, and maybe traditional "liberal" media sources, corporatist and cowardly as they are, aren't really to anyone's liking. Also, too, social media certainly isn't worse than the "right-wing noise machine" that drove voters rightward during the '90s.

Uh oh: looks like Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker also met with Marila Butila, the Siberian woman recently charged with trying to collaborate with certain Americans to influence American elections. They met during Mr. Walker's Presidential campaign launch in 2015, which reminds me, mainly, that we really dodged a fucking bullet when Mr. Walker's campaign went kaplooey later that year, because Mr. Walker would be doing all the things Mr. Trump is doing and doing them in a way that would probably seem civilized to most Americans. But I'd be perfectly happy if this revelation helped finish his try for a third term later on this year.

Our President sure did put on a show two days ago in Helsinki (no, this won't be the straw that breaks the camel's back for Republicans, either), but no no no a thousand times no our President did not commit treason by throwing our intelligence agencies under the bus and sucking up to Vladimir Putin. He committed a thousand other sins, certainly, but not that one, because Article III, Section 3 of the U.S. Constitution still says what it's always said, and Congress has not declared war on Russia. And just as we remain wary of our "liberal" media regardless of how much our President constantly whines about them, we should remain wary of our intelligence agencies, as we have always done, out of our duty as citizens.

Finally, I was profoundly disgusted with our President fist-bumping that notorious Turkish dictator wannabe, Mr. Erdogan. "Do(ing) things the right way," according to our President, doesn't just explicitly mean steamrolling over our Constitution's mandate that spending bills originate in Congress -- it also explicitly means firing tens of thousands of civil servants, sending hundreds of judges to jail, torturing and raping detainees, and arresting 60 children for treason. Think of all that the next time you think of President Big Balls fist-bumping Mr. Erdogan.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: news about nukes, monopolies, and right-wing snowflakes.

I've been quite patient, but since our President is doing the dance-with-no-pants about it, I'll say it: this nuclear "deal" between our President and North Korea is a nothingburger on a dung bun. I'd ask how any sane person pulls out of an Iran deal that actually keeps Iran from making nukes and then signsa "deal" with North Korea that only gets "assurances" that North Korea will denuclearize, but I know that question answers itself. Could this be the moment when we finally -- finally! -- see significant numbers of mainstream Republicans breaking off from our President? I mean, they're all proud of what defense hawks they are, and while the President's votaries love him, he can't get re-elected without the support of those other Republicans. If they keep mum through this, I shudder to think what will shake them out of their stupor.

John C. O'Day at FAIR notices that the "liberal" media seems happy to report on our President's authoritarian tendencies, but then goes blind about them when they have to confront the fact that we wage war all over the planet and have enough nukes to destroy the world 200 times over. (Dig especially the narrative twist at the end of the third paragraph.) Now, maybe the "liberal" media think that's "balance." You know what I think -- that symmetry isn't balance, and balance isn't fairness. Fairness doesn't obsess over whether all the negative columns are the same size; fairness gives everyone their due, as they've earned it. Yes, I am a little impatient about these matters.

The incomparable David Dayen explains why "The AT&T-Time Warner Merger Ruling Is Bad for the Country." Long story short: modern thinking about antitrusts (first developed during the Reagan era, of course) posits that judges should only evaluate big corporate mergers on the literal dollar-and-cents cost to consumers, "when common sense clearly demonstrates the dangers of concentration." You know, the more power concentrated in the fewer hands, the worse off we all are? You knew it before I said it, but contemporary judges, who study for years to get where they are, pretend they don't know it. It's a damn shame. (Dear trolls: don't spout off about "precedent," since there's plenty of actual precedent -- not to mention the plain text of antitrust law! -- to do antitrust protections the right way, too.)

Virginia Republicans send 2017 almost-gubernatorial nominee/Confederate flag-hugger Corey Stewart up against Democratic incumbent Tim Kaine in this year's U.S. Senate race. Mr. Stewart has promised a "vicious" campaign against Mr. Kaine; maybe he'll outdo Ed Gillespie in that regard. But do you suppose Mr. Stewart will have the smarts to challenge Sen. Kaine on his support for giving the President even more war-making power? After all, wrapping yourself in the Confederate flag will only take you so far, even in Virginia. (Mr. Kaine, for his part, would do better to put "taking health care away from folks" first in any list tabulating Mr. Stewart's bad ideas.)

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) -- the man who gives empty suits a bad name -- not only calls criticism of Twitter's CEO for ordering from Chick-Fil-A during Pride Month "bullying" but is even fundraising off it. Ugh, one more time: criticism is not bullying. Gosh, does Mr. Rubio ever hear criticism from any of his friends? Or are they all tired of how he acts when he does? If he really thinks folks are being "bullied" every time someone disagrees with their regressive views on homosexuality, then he's a damn snowflake. Snowflakes deserve representation, of course, but (like the rest of us) they deserve much better than to be represented by other snowflakes in Congress.

Finally, Democrats score yet another special election victory in Wisconsin -- in the Senate 1st District election that Wisconsin's snowflake Governor, Scott Walker, tried his damnedest not to hold! Republicans have held this Senate seat for 40 years, by the way -- and it's up again in five months, and a lot can happen in five months, so who knows, they might take it back. But probably not if now-Sen. Frostman foregrounds health care, tax cuts for the rich, and clean water as his main issues, as he does on his campaign website.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: more thoughts about voting rights, media coverage, Presidential power, right-wing messaging, renewable energy, and free speech.

Aaron Sankin at Reveal reminds us of the other problem with the notorious Interstate Crosscheck voter info database: it's vulnerable to hackers, and thus exposes the personal data of millions of voters to identity theft. I wonder if that was a feature, not a bug! Seriously, I'll be happy if this is the reason the twenty-plus states still using Crosscheck to purge voters stop using it, though eight states have apparently stopped using Crosscheck for that purpose but are still sending voter data through an insecure system. (Also, consider that even though these states still sending voter data to Crosscheck may not be using Crosscheck to purge their own voter rolls, other states may be using that info to purge theirs.)

Murtaza Hussain at The Intercept reports that Muslim terror suspects get on average seven times the "liberal" media attention that white terror suspects get, and their sentences are on average four times longer. This is not a terribly surprising development, once you recall how urgently our "liberal" media has rushed to portray various white terror suspects (the Planned Parenthood bomber and the Austin bomber leap to mind) with adjectives like "troubled," a courtesy our "liberal" media most emphatically does not extend to terrorists of the more Muslim persuasion, though surely they're just as human as white people, right? In any case, it sure is nice to have some hard data behind it.

Stan Collender at Forbes suggests that our President might try to get around the most recent appropriations bill by simply refusing to appropriate the money as the law has directed. And then dance around with no pants on, no doubt, while his votaries all squeal HE DID IT FOR US!!!!! If a President refuses to appropriate money as Congress has mandated, Congress gets to pass another bill forcing him to do so -- which means that if this President decides to throw up his hands, we'd be relying on Republican-held Congresses to do more than stamp their feet about it. Like Republicans didn't already think of all of that! It's win-win for them -- they get their cherished spending cuts and they get to blame the President for them!

Dig the balls on Wisconsin Republican Gov. Scott Walker, in the wake of Republicans losing yet another election there, saying that the left is the side of "anger and hatred." What recent Republican policy prescription has not been driven by "anger and hatred" -- specifically, the anger and hatred of Our Glorious Elites toward the American people? It's good, at least, to be reminded why Scott Walker is so dangerous -- not just because he remembers to claim that his side is the side of "optimism," but because he'll say up is down like up really is down, and thus persuades people who don't have the time (or the compulsion!) to attend these matters as closely as we do, but who do respond intuitively to "people who seem to know what they're talking about."

Portugal produced just about all of its electrical requirements for the month of March via renewable energy. Now, more than half of March's renewable power yield came from hydroelectricity, and not every nation's borders are nearly half coastline like Portugal's, but Portugal also met over 40 percent of its energy needs with wind power, and I can think of a few well-developed nations that don't do that well. Please, right-wingers, don't squeal that Portugal still had to use some fossil fuels over the month of March due to renewable energy storage issues, because a) it wasn't much and b) that's no justification for handing out corporate welfare to fossil fuel corporations or drilling off every conceivable coast.

Finally, Laura Ingraham just took a week off her Fox News show after being on the blunt end of a massive boycott for ridiculing one of the Parkland school shooting survivors, and some "liberal" media journalists are complaining that boycotts are bad and you should always meet speech with more speech, but Atrios reminds us why that's utter bunk. It isn't just that you and I can't get our speech out there the way a Laura Ingraham can, or that the First Amendment doesn't actually guarantee you a right to a paid gig for your speech, let alone immunity from criticism or adverse action from advertisers and activists -- it's also that people like Laura Ingraham are not actual journalists. They're what the industry calls "talent," and what I call (when I'm feeling very generous) "newsreaders." Journalists do seem awfully upset about the power of boycotts these days; does that mean they'd be even more upset about a la carte cable packaging?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Around the table: the real lesson of the PA-18 special election, and other stories.

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times reminds us how little the Republican tax "reform" is doing for workers. Mr. Hiltzik reminds us that if corporations were serious about using their tax cut largess to make workers' lives better, they'd have given permanent raises, not bonuses that disappear almost as fast as they appear. And he also reminds us that Pfizer could reap immense rewards (not just of money, but of prestige) if they actually found a good treatment for Alzheimer's and Parkinsons, difficult as that's proven to be. And that's perhaps more emblematic of our times -- Our Best and Brightest corporations, which our laws supposedly need to "set free" from "regulatory burdens," constantly choose the easy way out when given the chance. And the easy way out now tends to be more lucrative, which is not how it should be in a civilized society.

Ho hum, the Treasury Department projects that our budget deficit will go up to nearly $1 trillion this year! And none of the President's votaries, who wouldn't stop whining about the Obama deficits, will complain about this one, because TEH TAX CUTZ!!!!! Which, as demonstrated in the above paragraph, are doing such great work for America.

Also ho hum, we learn that none other than OMB/CFPB director Mick Mulvaney was the one who approved the Labor Department's disastrous decision to bury the study that said their now-abandoned "tip-stealing" rule would actually result in bosses stealing their workers' tips! I presume one day Mr. Mulvaney will realize he's gone all-in on the wrong side, and suffer appropriately for it. I kid, of course -- Mr. Mulvaney will get wingnut welfare from Fox News forever after all the harm he's done our country. (If only we could buy our cable channels a la carte! Then there might not be any media wingnut welfare to give!)

Here's something genuinely surprising: the Senate Intelligence Committee, currently dominated by Republicans, says (among other things) that we should conduct elections with paper ballots. You and I have been saying this for close to 20 years, but I'm not going to be annoyed about that, or about the fact that their concern isn't machines disappearing votes but Russian meddling -- it's the right prescription, and I didn't think they had it in them to even say so. Now let's see if they actually help fund paper ballots at the state level.

Speaking of things you and I have known for 20 years, Paul Krugman at the New York Times instructs us that the entire Republican program is a "bait and switch" -- they promise all kinds of things to voters, but what they deliver is nothing more than "upward redistribution of income" from workers to bosses. But his analysis is valuable, because it confines itself to the PA-18 election, in which the Republicans tried "three different bait-and-switch strategies" -- roll call! Tax cuts are great! Tariffs will bring back the steel jobs! Democrats hate God and America! -- that failed to deliver victory for Mr. Saccone in a district the President won by nearly 20 points. But, you know, it isn't that the voters are "wising up" (the voters are actually plenty wise already!) so much as that Democrats like Conor Lamb -- who ran against the tax cuts and Obamacare repeal, and who ran for expanding Social Security -- are giving voters someone to vote for, and that's a thing that might even overcome whatever war the President plans to start the last week in October.

Finally, a Dane County Circuit Judge tells Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker that he must hold special elections to fill two vacant state legislature seats, even if he's really, really afraid Republicans will lose both, as they lost a Republican-held (and rather grotesquely-gerrymandered) seat less than two months ago. And who was the gay-humping, baby-killing, flag-burning, socialist-loving Governor who appointed this judge? I won't tell you his name, but his initials are "Scott Walker."

Around the table: the last refuge of pro-Trump scoundrels, and other lessons.

Mark Karlin at TruthOut interviews America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, about vote suppression in general, and the shutdown of the Trump Administration's Voter Integrity (sic) Commission in particular. Why does Mr. Palast think the Commission shut down, with its "mission" to be taken up by the Department of Homeland (sic) Security (sic)? You won't like the answer: "Kobach also bought lists of [Latino] voters. The purpose is clear: Match any José Garcia on voter rolls with José Garcia on deportation orders and purge an American for the crime of having a common [Latino] name." Deporting American citizens so you can win elections! It's what people do when they can't win arguments on the merits!

Ho hum, Matthew Gardner at ITEP reminds us that Disney's $125 million in employee bonuses is a little over one-tenth of its expected total haul from the Trump tax "reform." And those bonuses are a one-time thing -- I mean, only the boss's bonuses ever get repeated from year to year! -- while Disney's $1.2 billion haul from the (permanent, you remember) corporate rate tax cut will magically appear every year. I guess it'll lose its novelty after the first year, and they'll set about getting corporate welfare in other ways, but $1.2 billion every year is still $1.2 billion every year.

John Nichols at The Nation chronicles Gov. Scott Walker's continued crusade against democracy in Wisconsin -- including his refusal to call special elections for a vacant state Senate seat and a vacant state Assembly seat. All because "the legislature won't be that busy," when in fact the Governor has already called a special session for several thorny issues! This couldn't possibly be because a Democrat just won a special election in a previously Republican-held Senate seat by 11 points, could it?

EPA suspends its plan to allow mining in Alaska's Bristol Bay area, home to one of the world's largest and most profitable sockeye salmon industries. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt sure talks a good game about "the abundant natural resources" that deserve "the utmost protection" from the "unacceptable" risk of a Pebble Mine, but note that the EPA is still taking mining applications for the area, which could mean they're just fishing for the right crony investors. And if that takes a few years and we get complacent in the meantime, all the better!

Finally, with things going so well for the Trump Administration, quite a few right-wing punditoids are officially calling for people to be tried and convicted of treason. If patriotism isn't the last refuge of the scoundrel, as Dr. Johnson said it was, then calling your enemies traitors surely is. These idiots -- many of whom work for basic cable stations, which we all pay for whether we want to or not -- deserve nothing so much as a spanking. Unless, of course, they enjoy that sort of thing.

Around the table: how to deal with Nazi wannabes, and other lessons.

Laurie Marhoefer at The Conversation says "put(ting) (our) bodies on the line in counterdemonstrations" against Nazi wannabes plays into fascist hands, because they're trying to provoke us into fighting in the streets, and that usually winds up giving power to right-wingers in order to stem the tide of "leftist violence." She also says we'd be better off holding "joyful" "counterevent(s)" at some distance away from the Nazi wannabes, but I'd go one better: we should start holding "joyful protests" about single-payer health care, raising taxes on the rich, and hiking the minimum wage, so that these whites-don't-control-everything-anymore-so-sad losers get exactly the amount of attention they deserve. The times demand we play offense, not defense.

Speaking of playing offense, Branko Marcetic at In These Times reminds us that we shouldn't go easy on potential Democratic Presidential candidates like California Sen. Kamala Harris -- as too many "liberal" media types want us to do! -- but rather keep criticizing and pressuring them. Mr. Marcetic describes civil rights leaders who pressured politicians and won, as well as more contemporary activists who pressured Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and won. Of course, I'd go one better here, too, and say that establishment Democratic support of Ms. Harris means she'll lose to Donald Trump just the rest of them. People aren't tired of "partisanship" -- they're tired of politicians who don't stand for anything and don't stand up to anything.

Sam Pizzicati at Inequality.org writes about the massive corporate welfare handout the state of Wisconsin is prepared to give to Foxconn -- one that would easily amount to $500,000 in taxpayer money for every job Foxconn creates in Wisconsin, and would more likely be $1 million per job created. For jobs that might average a little over $50,000 annually in pay, and will probably be much lower! Plus Foxconn will get to ignore state wetlands regulations when they build their new plant! Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is the King of Corporate Welfare Handouts, but this might well be his masterpiece.

Ho hum, President Trump's new sanctions against the government of Venezuela specifically exempt Citgo, the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela's state-owned oil corporation -- and some of his former aides just so happen to work for Citgo! And Citgo just so happened to donate six figures to the Trump inaugural celebration. Isn't this the kind of corruption the Founders wanted us to avoid?

Fran Korten at Yes! offers "three modest, winnable first steps" toward getting single-payer, universal health insurance in America. They're all good ideas, of course -- drug price controls, a public health insurance option, lowering the Medicare eligibility age to 55 or 60 -- as long as they're not accompanied by SHUTUP YOU SINGLE PAYER PEEPULZ YOU'RE MAKING IT TEH HARDER WITH ALL YOUR DEMANDZ!!!!! I mean, people say that to you when they know you're right, but it's still damn irritating.

Finally, Ohio Republican Gov. John Kasich and Colorado Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper have apparently contemplated running on a "unity ticket" in 2020. A right-winger heading up a ticket with a centrist? Gosh, who does that leave out of "unity"? And dig the "veteran operative" saying it would be "(s)omething big and historic" that would "do() away with this hyper-partisanship on both sides." Republicans burn everything down and Democrats enable them; yeah, that's some "hyper-partisanship," there. No, this "unity ticket" would lose to Donald Trump just as easily as Mr. Hickenlooper would do on his own -- because it has nothing to do with reality as regular Americans like us experience it.

Around the table: Trump's not down, Kansas gets back up, and Southern auto parts workers get ground down.

Roy Edroso at Alicublog is "not so sure" that "Trump's down" due to the failure of his health care bill to even clear the House. Good points abound: "this failure is the GOP's, not his," a Senate version could be "stuffed with dominionist lunacy," and "Trump's already fucking up Obamacare" as we speak. Verdict: "as some wiseguy on Twitter said, this lull could just be the false relief that comes after the horror movie villain looks like he's dead the first time." Which is why we do sentry duty over the body.

Baltimore City Council passes $15/hour minimum wage. This is a big deal because other cities that have passed the $15/hour wage are much better off than Baltimore, and though conventional "wisdom" holds that a higher minimum wage would KILL TEH JOBZ!!! and RAIZE TEH PRICEZ!!!!, most rational folks know by now that it doesn't really do that. In fact, a higher minimum wage will more likely stimulate economies and create jobs, since folks have more money in their pockets and are ready to spend it. Really, economic policy shouldn't be all about which big box stores you can lure to your town.

Kansas state legislators are trying to bring the Affordable Care Act's Medicaid expansion to their state. It's not what Gov. Brownback wants, of course, because Obama, but Darth Brownback has been getting a little too much of what he wants over the years, to the extreme detriment of good Kansans. Republicans still dominate Kansas's legislature, but who cares as long as voters get good representation, which they might actually get for once?

Thom Hartmann at AlterNet describes "How Republicans Quietly Sabotaged Obamacare Long Before Trump Came into Office." Well, that's how you'd have to do it! If you're not actually going to run a government, you have to set fire to it and then point to it and say, see? Government doesn't work! The only solution is to give my cronies more of your tax money! Hey, it's worked for Scott Walker in Wisconsin.

Peter Waldman at Bloomberg BusinessWeek reminds us that Alabama's 20-years-and-counting "auto jobs boom" has come at a considerable price to auto parts supplier workers. No use complaining that they should be lucky to have jobs at all! when a) that'd be a rhetorical hostage situation and b) "(p)ay is low (for auto parts supplier workers), turnover is high, training is scant, and safety is an afterthought, usually after someone is badly hurt."

Finally, study finds more than half of men think they don't "personally benefit" from the Affordable Care Act's birth control mandate. Why anyone's asking what men think about this matter is beyond me, but I suppose it's good that men more likely to be having sex are more likely to appreciate the mandate, or that men generally seem to support it (and more so when facing the prospect of its repeal). And, yeah, if men could give birth, we wouldn't be trying to get rid of it. Also, I'd be anti-abortion.

Around the table: taxes, "entitlements," "discrimination," evil, greed, and cowardice.

Sam Pizzigati at Inequality.org argues that we ought to put a 30 percent minimum tax rate for the wealthy in place -- but also urges us "not" to "stop there," since our wealthiest Americans used to pay much higher rates. You know those teabaggers who are always going around saying I just wish this could be the country I grew up in? Remind them that they grew up in an America that taxed millionaire income at 91% and didn't hand out corporate welfare like it was candy -- and that's how we grew the greatest middle class in history.

Dean Baker at TruthOut reminds us that "debt and entitlements" was one of the topics at last night's third and thankfully final Presidential debate, and that this terminology herds people into agreeing to cut Social Security and Medicare when they otherwise wouldn't. Why not shore up Social Security and Medicare by taxing the rich a lot harder? The rich don't want you to ask that question, hence their talk of "entitlements," as if you haven't paid into Social Security and Medicare all your life, or as if you don't deserve it. And also, why not "debt and military spending," or "debt and pharmaceutical patents"?

Trump advisor compares the Department of Labor's new "fiduciary standard" -- which mandates that a pension fund's financial advisors must put their clients' interests ahead of their own -- is "about like the Dred Scott decision." Lest you think he was merely saying that the DOL's standard is dumb like the Dred Scott decision was dumb, he went out of his way to say the DOL's standard was discriminatory like the Dred Scott decision was discriminatory -- discriminatory against bad financial advisors, I guess. And they say liberals are frail and weak?

Wisconsin Gov./Satan Incarnate Scott Walker solicited $750,000 in campaign contributions from a now-deceased businessman who used to manufacture lead-based paint -- right before lawmakers put a four-word change into a budget bill nullifying lawsuits against the businessman's corporation and other lead-paint makers. And Mr. Walker's winged monkeys, naturally, wonder why this is a big deal, since lead paint has been illegal since 1978. As thinking people know, however, the fact that no one has made lead paint for nearly 40 years doesn't mean all the lead paint is gone, nor does it mean lead paint manufacturers never harmed anyone before it was outlawed (and it certainly doesn't mean they didn't know what they were doing, since they knew by the 1920s that lead was toxic). The only good news? Federal and state courts declared the legislative rider nullifying the lawsuits to be unconstitutional. I do not presume that these courts also ruled it to be evil, but I will.

VoteVets puts out ad scorching Pat Toomey for serving on the board of a now-unaccredited for-profit school, and "try(ing) to turn our military benefits into his financial gain." In a close race like the one Mr. Toomey's in, an ad like this could be the difference -- a lot of good Pennsylvanians know someone who served our country and then got caught in the downward spiral of the for-profit college debt trap. (As an aside, Mr. Toomey's ad claiming that he's "independent" and would stand up to the bad ideas of "any" President should get a fairly easy response listing all the bad ideas Mr. Toomey didn't stand up to when he was in the House and George W. Bush was President. But I fear Katie McGinty's focus-grouped her way out of that one.)

Finally, a North Dakota District Judge dismisses rioting charges against Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman -- but "No Thanks to Corporate Media," notes Jim Naureckas at FAIR. A few "liberal" media journalists did cover it, but they're names you'll recognize -- Will Bunch at the Philadelphia Daily News, Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times, and, of course, Matt Taibbi at Rolling Stone -- and we didn't hear very much about it from our papers of record in New York and Washington. As an aside, I'd love to have seen the look on Judge Grinsteiner's face when he dismissed the charge.

Around the table: Donald Trump hiding his tax returns, Wells Fargo exploiting our soldiers, and David Duke being a real peach as usual.

The New York Times reports that Donald Trump declared a loss of $916 millionany income taxes for the following 18 years. Apparently this figure was so unbelievable that even Mr. Trump's tax preparer's software choked on it. What you don't get enough of from Democrats, of course, is why it's wrong not to pay your taxes for 20 years -- they ought to describe the diseases that didn't get cured, the solar power infrastructure that didn't get built, the bridges and roads that didn't get fixed, and (most of all) the lost opportunity suffered by good Americans trying to make a better life for themselves and for their nation simply because people like Donald Trump don't pay their fair share.

David Fahrenthold at the Washington Post finds that Donald Trump's charitable foundation never got the certification the state of New York requires for charities. For Donald Trump that's no doubt a stupid piece of paperwork he'll get rid of once he's President, but that certification subjects charities to annual audits and you know how Teh Donald feels about transparency. Plus, only charities soliciting and raising over $25,000 annually from the public have to get this certification, so Mr. Trump won't be able to harrumph about burdens on small businesses in the next debate.

Surprise, surprise, a Nation investigation finds Wisconsin DMVs "systematically" failing to provide free IDs or voting certificates to residents who can't get the legally-mandated photo ID, and thus the state is failing to comply with several court orders. Of course, Scott Walker doesn't care, since his state's "failure" means Donald Trump has a much better chance of winning Wisconsin than he would under ordinary circumstances (hell, Sen. Johnson might even get re-elected!), and by then his "apology" for his government's "incompetence" (if he even offers one!) would be pretty painless. The next Democrat who runs for Governor of Wisconsin had better run on repealing the entire Walker Administration, or that state is screwed for the next generation.

Wells Fargo, already on the ropes thanks to its habit of opening accounts fraudulently for customers, also must pay over $20 million in fines and settlements for violating the Servicemembers Civil Relief Act. Oh, but brace yourself for how exactly they broke that law: they unlawfully repossessed cars from over 400 American soldiers. You know soldiers don't make a lot of money, right? And you also know they're frequently overseas (i.e., not always able to attend very closely to their bills), right? Then you know that Wells Fargo preyed on these soldiers because they smelled financial weakness, and though Donald Trump might call that "good business," civilized people would call it cruelty. Time to join a credit union, if you haven't already.

The New York Times reports that almost half a million homes don't have adequate showering facilities, a working flushable toilet, or hot and cold running water, even. This sounds like a job for a new public works administration! And if Republicans fight it, all we need do is ask them: why do you hate hot and cold running water?

Finally, David Duke reminds us, for some reason, that "shamefully bias (sic) debate moderator" Lester Holt has a Jewish wife. I do long for the day when people look at a statement like that and wonder why on Earth anyone would bring it up. In the meantime, let me indulge in a much-deserved personal attack: it's biased, not "bias." David Duke should work as hard on his grammar as he did on his face.

Around the table: prisoners on strike, journalists silent about mistreatment of journalists, corrupt politicians corrupting, drug-resistant infections still infecting, and Trump still Trumping.

The largest prison workers' strike in American history enters its second week. I'm no fan of free/cheap prison labor, either, and no, putting people in jail doesn't entitle us to do anything we want to them, because prisoners have specific sentences that detail their debt to society, and heaping more punishments upon them merely because they're incarcerated is cruel and uncivilized. Rageaholics waiting for the next "outrage" to be peddled to them by the "liberal" media will, of course, be unpersuaded by that argument, but they don't get all the say in America. I applaud the courage of the striking prisoners, who remain largely at the mercy of whatever retaliatory measures their captors can come up with, including but not limited to sudden charges of "terrorism."

North Dakota arrests Democracy Now! journalist Amy Goodman for "criminal trespassing," i.e., asking tough questions of Dakota pipeline security guards -- and the "liberal" media seems largely uninterested. You would think as journalists they would be aghast at this kind of treatment of one of their own -- but then, they probably don't consider Ms. Goodman "one of their own," because she doesn't hobnob with the powerful people they hobnob with. Here's a clue: if you're a journalist who cares about which rich and powerful person you're in with, you're doing journalism wrong.

The Guardian publishes some 1,500 pages detailing allegations of campaign finance law violations by Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The evidence the article presents is pretty damning -- if you thought Bill Clinton's "that depends on your definition of the word 'is'" was damning, just imagine the hifalutin legal contortions Scott Walker will have to employ to explain how statements like "I got $1m from John Menard today" doesn't subvert the law. "That depends on your definition of the word 'got'," he'll say! Of course, Mr. Walker may never go to trial, since these papers were all supposed to be destroyed.

Reuters finds that, 15 years after our government declared antibiotic-resistant infections a "grave threat," those infections have become a much greater threat. Worse than that, even, is that our state and federal governments don't even count deaths from those infections -- you're more likely to see Scott Walker talking about campaign money he's "got" than you are to see the word "MRSA" on a death certificate. But, yeah, let's keep using up that antibiotic hand soap. And let's keep prescribing antibiotics just to shut patients up. And, most importantly, let's make sure factory farms still use antibiotics indiscriminately on feed animals.

Finally, more than one analyst has suggested that maybe Donald Trump has really jumped the shark this time, by making his big "birther" press conference into an "infomercial" for his new hotel in Washington. The theory goes like this: if you piss off the press (this time, by making them wait for your big announcement by promoting your hotel), you're finished. How I know it might be true this time? I remember how Scott Walker couldn't get traction last year after treating the media with open disdain. Also, Jake Tapper gets off not one but two zingers about it. (As an aside, Mr. Trump can't even admit his big birther mistake without blaming someone else for it; is that leadership? Hell, is that grown-up behavior?)

Action: food stamps, and vehicle safety whistleblowers.

Now, at the behest of Governors eager to prove themselves as the biggest pricks in any room they enter -- led, of course, by the King of Pricks, Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker -- Congress may permit drug-testing on food stamp recipients. You'd think you already qualified for food stamps if you were having enough trouble finding work, but no, now you must also qualify by not abusing drugs, even though your chances of paying for meth or heroin with your EBT card are precisely zero. And guess what? They will not catch drug-abusers on food stamps in any large numbers using this method. We know this, because some Governors have tried it with welfare recipients and failed. We'd be much better off making aspirants for public office pass a drug test, amirite? Of course we have other reasons to smack down this proposal -- if you take federal money you follow federal rules being one, people with drug addictions need treatment and not endless stigmatization being another. So CREDO helps you tell your Congressfolk to reject any attempt to make receiving food stamps conditional on a drug test.

Meanwhile, a mere year after faulty ignition switches leading to over a dozen deaths forced General Motors to recall almost 50 million cars, and a mere six months after Congress passed the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act, the Department of Transportation -- charged with writing the regulations that will implement the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act -- has done approximately bupkus. I guess they're not quite as slow as the federal agencies writing (or not writing, as the case may be) the rules that would properly implement Dodd-Frank, but there's still no excuse to get rattled before the corporations no doubt hoping to run out the clock before President Trump takes office. What arguments could they possibly deploy in opposition? That corporations should always be free to do whatever they want or (pulls gun) your jobs get it? That they're "unnecessary," although, hello, 13 deaths? Anyway, the National Whistleblower Center helps you tell the Department of Transportation to implement the Motor Vehicle Safety Whistleblower Act already.

Around the table: what Presidents say means a lot to Americans! And other lessons.

Madison, WI city council adopts plan to cut carbon emissions by 80 percent over the next 35 years. Madison would also cut energy consumption overall by half in 15 years and get a quarter of its power from renewables in 10 years. Thus Madison exemplifies the putatively conservative values of responsibility, accountability, and local rule -- but the question on my mind is, how will the allegedly-conservative Gov. Walker try to undermine this project? Will he insist on dedicating even more state funding to investigating "wind turbine syndrome," perhaps?

In a related note, Los Angeles city council mulls a bill that would mandate that the municipal electric utility figure out how to get to 100 percent renewable power. A big job in a bigger city than Madison, but the L.A. Dept. of Water and Power has already begun work on that task, which is a good sign. I have heard, also, that southern California is very sunny, and is also near the largest ocean in the world. There might be a few renewable energy ideas in there somewhere -- and no Scott Walker around to try to gum up the works.

Michael Stein, writing at TruthOut, describes the trials and tribulations of the Louisiana shrimping industry. Having lately fought through Hurricane Katrina and the Spillageddon in the Gulf, Louisiana shrimpers now find themselves competing with cheaper foreign imports. Odd that Louisiana's politicians don't find this a reason to battle both "free" trade deals that enable all this dumping and embrace the vigorous food safety regulations that would turn cheap shrimp away at the port. And Jesus Mary and Joseph let's all stop pretending that Donald Trump really opposes "free" trade. If he wins, he'll do whatever Our Glorious Elites want him to do, and he'll forget all his supporters in the shrimping communities.

Noting that what Presidents say is fairly important to Americans, Mitt Romney says a Donald Trump Presidency would bring us "trickle down racism and trickle down bigotry and trickle down misogyny." Mr. Romney is approximately 100 percent right about all of that -- Barack Obama made gay marriage more palatable to Americans merely by discussing his change of heart about it, just as George W. Bush before him made climate change denialism mainstream -- but Mr. Romney's statements still fit in too snugly with Republican establishment policy that would, at best, be inadvertently racist, and at worst be aggressively racist without being so gauche as to be so obvious about it like Mr. Trump is.

Finally, Oxford, MS native Jake McGraw writes about how folks should really go about "changing Mississippi." He argues that what works in other states -- like boycotts by celebrities, state governments, athletic organizations, and corporations -- won't work in Mississippi because it's "among the most economically and socially isolated states in the country" and it's "still dominated by small communities and big families," which means the state "simply doesn’t have enough to lose." Thus, he tells us, the only activism that has ever changed Mississippi comes from folks willing to actually go there and work on the ground. I suspect all of that is true -- and I also believe a certain amount of shame and shunning is our duty as Americans.

Around the table: the minimum wage, voting rights, "Zombie Debt," Martian manufacture, and more Republican waffling on Donald Trump.

Washington, D.C. City Council passes bill raising minimum wage to $15/hour by 2020, and the city's Mayor has pledged to sign it. The good news? Washington, D.C. won't have a state government trying to kill its minimum wage. The bad news? The federal government sure will try to kill it, as Paul Ryan trots out his earnest nonsense about the higher minimum wage "killing jobs" (just like it's done in Seattle, not!)

America's Last Journalist, Greg Palast, provides more information on California primary-voting oddities. Apparently, if you were an independent voter who wanted to vote for Bernie Sanders on Tuesday, you had to say the exact phrase "I want a Democratic crossover ballot" or you got a ballot without the Presidential primary race on it -- and poll workers won't offer one to you if you happen to leave the word "crossover" out of your request. That sounds exactly like a rule both political parties would institute to ensure that only candidates endorsed by the proverbial smoke-filled room win. (In a related note, the timing of that AP report saying Mrs. Clinton had "clinched" the nomination one day before the primary was pure Bush Mobb.)

Kate Cox at The Consumerist asks "What is 'Zombie Debt,' and Why Won't It Just Stay Dead?" Long story short: creditors can sell unpaid debts for pennies on the dollar (say, 15 cents), and the new creditors who buy the debt can make a profit by hounding some of those debtors until they cough it up (say, 25 cents) -- and then they'll the rest of it again, and then the next new creditor does the same thing, and so on, and so on. Also, debts have statutes of limitation in some states, but when the nth creditor tries to collect on a debt and you send them a chunk of change to keep them happy, that resets whatever statute of limitation applies to you. Sound grim? That's because it is.

Courtesy Emma Grey Ellis at Wired, we learn that chemists might be able to build a Martian colony using Martian dirt, or regolith. NASA scientists were able to make bricks out of lunar dirt and polymers many years ago, but today's chemists don't have that amount of regolith to work with (I hear the shipping costs are murder), so they're experimenting with "a close cousin," Hawaiian volcanic ash. If they can make good building materials that utilize very few polymers (five percent is their goal), then scientists could eventually travel to Mars with very few materials they could actually make into a lot more. That's the kind of efficiency we need more of in America -- versus, you know, the kind of "efficiency" that just kills jobs.

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker now wonders if he can support Donald Trump, in light of Mr. Trump's repeated attacks on the Mexican-American judge presiding over a lawsuit against Trump University. So Mr. Walker's now taken two different positions on Donald Trump -- support-the-nominee and wait-and-see -- and he only needs take one more (I-just-can't-support-the-nominee) and he'll equal the record he set when he took three distinct positions on birthright citizenship within seven days. That was quite an achievement, but it takes a truly special politician to do it more than once. Is Scott Walker that special? We'll find out.

Around the table: from "thin-skinned authoritarians" to invisible women scientists.

Adam Gopnik, writing at The New Yorker, warns us that "thin-skinned authoritarians" like Donald Trump "do not arrive in office and discover, as constitutionalists do, that their capabilities are more limited than they imagined. They arrive, and then make their power as large as they can." Despite living through both George W. Bush and Scott Walker, I still wanted to believe that, once elected, Donald Trump would find it harder to impose his will than he anticipated, but I'll guard against that vain hope from now on. Also, Mr. Gopnik reminds us that "Hitler wasn't Hitler -- until he was," meaning that, like the "blizzard of lies" Mr. Trump foists upon us with "liberal" media help, each "shock" gets "tempered by acceptance." (Also, too, he has lots of Alexander Pope quotations, which always recommends a person.)

Shockingly, for-profit college corporation Apollo Education Group announces that two of its colleges, including the famous University of Phoenix, would stop putting forced arbitration clauses in student contracts. But there's a catch: Apollo is about to get assimilated into the Vistria Group, making it a privately-held corporation that will no longer be required to disclose litigation or investigations publicly -- so we may never know how well it's doing on its promise. Still, if the arbitration fairness movement can penetrate the for-profit college sphere, that's a good sign.

Greensboro, NC now allows "participatory budgeting," where the city's residents can decide how to spend at least some of the city budget. The city presently only allows residents to budget about one out of every thousand dollars, and some of you may regard this as a mere safety valve for citizen frustrations, but one out of a thousand dollars today can more easily turn into two or three or twenty tomorrow, and it doesn't always take much to improve folks' quality of life -- a bench at the bus stop or some shade at a public pool might do.

Abrahm Lustgarten, writing at ProPublica, wonders if the seemingly-endless climate change-induced drought in the American West has doomed the desert dam. Desert dams tend to hold water in giant artificial lakes with lots of surface area, meaning that the Glen Canyon Dam's Lake Powell, for example, loses over 160 billion gallons of water just to evaporation every year. When you can't keep reservoirs full, you start wondering if you should even keep them around at all, or whether you can combine two reservoirs into one, as at least one proposal would do with Lake Powell and Hoover Dam's Lake Mead (though surely you also see the hand of the Las Vegas casinos in that proposal).

18-year-old Texas stepdad accidentally shoots and kills his three-year-old stepson after pointing his gun at him and saying he would shoot him if he didn't stop jumping on the bed. It took some work to get this story out of witnesses, which says (to me, at least) that this actually was a tragic accident, and not the moronic hijinks of some Springer-cam wannabe. But that doesn't change the fact that people need to stop watching so much TV, not just because it makes violence seem as amusing as I presume it seemed to the shooter, but because it takes precious time away from being an actual hero to someone in your life.

Finally, Laurel Raymond, writing at ThinkProgress, tells "The Incredible Story of NASA's Forgotten 'Rocket Girls'" -- a group of female computers who (in the absence of adequate mechanical computing devices) crunched the numbers that helped send astronauts to the moon. It's not an entirely happy story -- in 2004 (under Tha Bush Mobb, I feel compelled to note), NASA took away the engineering position of a woman who had been an engineer there for almost half a century, only because she didn't have a bachelor's degree -- but it's a necessary and frequently uplifting story. Nathalia Holt's book Rise of the Rocket Girls will migrate to my reading list pronto.

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: another "war on terror" absurdity, and other stories.

Allan Hennessy, writing at The Guardian, laments that the dead in Brussels seems to matter more to the West than the dead in the multitudinous non-Western places where ISIS terrorists have also struck. Put simply, "Brown and black lives are not afforded the same respect" as white lives, and "(t)his imperialism feeds into the terrorist narrative. 'They don’t care about you,' ISIS can tell farmers suffering from drought in Raqqa." I suppose we should expect to feel fear more acutely when people "like ourselves" suffer at the hands of terrorists. But empathy still demands more of us than that, and as as civilized people, we do not make decisions based on fear, let alone reflex or reaction. That is when the terrorists win.

State of California wins $1 billion-plus judgment against Corinthian Colleges, after a San Francisco Superior Court Judge finds the now-bankrupt for-profit college chain misled prospective students about job placement rates, advertised degrees and programs it didn't actually offer, and used unlawful means to collect student debts -- among so, so many other things! Normally this would be cause for rejoicing, but it sure doesn't look like anyone's going to jail, and I wonder how California will actually collect from a corporation that doesn't actually do anything anymore.

In advance of the Wisconsin Presidential primaries, Sarah Smith, writing at ProPublica, informs us that Wisconsin's draconian Voter ID law mandates a "public service campaign" to inform the public what forms of ID will be accepted at the voting booth -- but the state legislature hasn't actually funded that mandate. That's more bold Scott Walker leadership for you! This is, of course, the kind of thing even an Antonin Scalia wouldn't sanctify on the Supreme Court -- but if a Republican wins the Presidency in 2016 in part because he wins a heavily-vote-suppressed Wisconsin, chances are pretty good that he'll be able to get someone (or several someones!) far more pliant on the Supreme Court by the time the case gets there.

You know all about Burger King and Pfizer -- now let's meet data corporation IHS, the latest corporation trying to pretend it's a "foreign" corporation in order to evade American taxes. Turns out, according to ITEP President Matt Gardner, that IHS hardly pays any American taxes right now, and thus doesn't lend itself well to the right-wing talking point that ZOMG TEH CORPORASHUNZ ARE LEAVINGZ TEH AMURIKAHS BECUZ TEH TAXUZ!!!!! That's after we confront the reality, yet again, that corporations typically buy themselves tax breaks so they don't have to pay that "onerous" 35% rate. Of course, if corporations don't pay it, then small businesses and working families do pay it, almost like that's the idea or something.

Lisa Graves, writing at PR Watch, describes something called "Democrats for Education Reform," which turns out to be (surprise, surprise!) a PAC directing millions of rich investor dollars to state campaigns. Their ideas of "reform" naturally include more taxpayer money for charter schools, ballot initiatives attempting to strangle union power, and meddling in local elections with big out-of-state money -- and their backers naturally include banksters and Koch brothers. Warning: the sheer volume of front groups described in the article may make you a bit dizzy.

Finally, Chris Cilizza finds it "absolutely insane" that Ted Cruz has become the Republicans' establishment candidate, after endorsements from such unlikely actors as Lindsey Graham and Jeb Bush and support (however muted) from Mitt Romney. Mr. Cilizza's assessment is absolutely correct, but you can't ignore the possibility that this is really what the establishment wanted all along -- to anoint someone so far right he's gone right out of America as "establishment." Which would mean that whatever they say in public, in private they're toasting their dumb luck that Donald Trump came along to make Mr. Cruz look "reasonable."

Around the table: the whining of the Republican establishment, properly contextualized.

As Sasha Abramsky at The Nation helps us survey "The Hate Behind Donald Trump's Success," I remain stunned that the Republican establishment professes not to know how the hell we got to the point where one of the five still-standing Republican Presidential candidates says, out loud on the debate floor, that the debate resembles a wrestling match. If you remember how the establishment stood by and allowed right-wing rageheads to call Iraq war opponents "traitors" who "hated America" and "stood with the terrorists," or how the establishment decided, in the midst of the worst economic downturn of the last 80 years, to simply stonewall Barack Obama's entire agenda just-because, or how the establishment fiddled while corporate and "liberal" media enablers pretended the Tea Party were something other than bat-guano nuts, then you know how it came to this. And if you can count Republican caucus members in Congress, you also know who benefited -- and who'll benefit, ultimately, from a Trump Presidency.

From the "What's Scott Walker Doing Now?" file: the Wisconsin state legislature has just presented him with a bill that would essentially let debt collectors run wild on the populace, and he actually hasn't signed it. I do wish Wonkette's Matt Carpenter had remembered the bigger piece of weapons-grade PR against "debtor Scott Walker" -- not the debt he ran up in his campaign, but the personal debt National Journal found on his financial disclosures, which included at least two credit card debts over $10,000. Perhaps Mr. Walker will veto the bill, and then it'll magically come back to him with an exemption for government officials, who, after all, need to think solely about serving the people. Yes, he is that cold.

At that most recent Republican Presidential "debate," Marco Rubio reminded the world that Donald Trump has a thing called Trump University over which he's getting sued as we speak, but Casey Quinlan at Think Progress reminds us that Mr. Rubio was a big cheerleader for a far worse "educational" outlet, the now-defunct Corinthian Colleges, on whose behalf Mr. Rubio wrote the Department of Education requesting "leniency." And you may recall that when Mr. Rubio was asked about it later, he said he was "helping a constituent," though I'm quite sure many of his real constituents (i.e., the good citizens of Florida) suffered actual pain and hardship at the hands of Corinthian.

Congress finally manages to pass a bill outlawing internet service taxes forever. They even managed to attach it to a must-pass bill, like they suddenly remembered how to do things or something. Now, "internet service taxes" (generally assessed on your internet connection) should not be confused with internet sales taxes -- I'm no fan of sales taxes generally, but banning internet sales taxes may not be the hill I want to die on in the fight against sales taxes, either.

Finally, Nick Surgey, writing at PR Watch, reveals that Arch Coal, now in bankruptcy proceedings, gave money to the nefarious climate change denialists at the Energy and Environmental Legal Institute. We don't know how much money Arch Coal shoveled their way, but you do have to wonder if maybe they could have avoided bankruptcy by, oh, I don't know, changing with the times and investing in renewable energy sources, instead of stamping their feet and demanding that they shouldn't be made to do anything any differently.

Around the table: behold, the Dramaslayer!

FBI arrests "Pharma Bro" Martin Shkreli for securities fraud, after being "accused of repeatedly losing money for investors and lying to them about it" and "illegally taking assets from one of his companies to pay off debtors in another." Read the whole thing -- his trail of slime is even more impressive then I'd previously known. And surprise, surprise! The most hated rich man in America is not actually that good at holding onto money.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker signs a bill scrapping the state elections board that has caused him so much trouble, as well as another bill legalizing the sort of campaign finance rule violations that have also caused him so much trouble. His slogan might as well be Conservatism: It's All About Me! And unless Wisconsin Democrats are willing to abandon their why-can't-we-all-get-along silliness and vow to repeal all of Scott Walker's nefarious works, they'll never win a damn thing in that state again, and Bob LaFollette's life work will have been for nothing. And I sure wouldn't want that on my conscience if I were a Wisconsin Democrat.

"The Fed's Own Data Contradicts Its Case for Raising Interest Rates," announces Timothy B. Lee at Vox. In short, it's raising rates because it's worried about a spike in inflation, but has projected that inflation will actually decrease in the short-term. Of course, banksters have been flogging fears of inflation in their largely-successful effort to prevent our government from spending any money to get us out of this mess.

Jackie Kucinich, writing at The Daily Beast, thinks Bernie Sanders isn't going "negative" enough -- against Hillary Clinton. And here you thought he'd be running against a Republican in November! People who believe you have to run down your primary opponents with a bulldozer tend to be political consultants, and I suspect they only talk to each other. To be sure, Mr. Sanders hasn't been negative enough against Trumpcruzcarsonrubio, and such negativity would get him the free airtime with which the "liberal" media has thus far been very parsimonious.

Arlington (TX) authorities hold a 12-year-old Sikh boy with heart condition in juvy for three days for having a solar panel charger on his backpack, which some aspiring Congressman among his classmates told the principal was a bomb. Said 12-year-old boy -- whose heart condition has required three open heart surgeries and thus, I presume, also required tending for the three days he was detained -- now wears an ankle bracelet and may face charges as an adult, all because a bunch of actual adults aren't adult enough to admit they fucked up.

Finally, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller says he "might just slap" the next person who wishes him "happy holidays." I'd be happy to say "Merry Christmas" to him, if that's what he prefers, but why must he indulge in drama about the matter? I guess we can't expect anything but drama from a guy who wears a cowboy hat in his Twitter thumbnail.

Around the table: how fighting climate change *creates* jobs, and other concrete cold facts.

Robert Pollin reminds us that we can-so create jobs and beat climate change at the same time. "(B)uilding a green economy requires hiring workers at much greater rates than maintaining the world's currently-dominant fossil fuel-based energy infrastructure" does, and I don't even think very many fossil-fuel workers will lose their jobs as a result -- nobody's ever heard of "retraining"? -- and the "higher costs" of renewable energy will tumble as renewable energy efforts expand (and at least one international organization has already found parity between renewable and fossil fuel production costs). Big corporate CEOs will have to forego gilding the plumbing on their 19th vacation homes, of course, which is always why we can't have nice things.

Surprise, surprise, Scott Walker's new work requirement for the Wisconsin food stamp program has kicked 15,000 good Wisconsin citizens off the rolls just in time for the holidays. Nobody could have predicted that making your "job-creation" program entirely into a corporate welfare program would actually induce businesses and jobs to flee the state, leaving folks with much less opportunity to meet work requirements! Nobody, that is, except for the various hands inside Scott Walker's puppet head. I long for the day when we think of this guy when we hear the name "Scott Walker," and not America's Worst Governor.

Ho hum, Glenn Greenwald notes the preponderance of "experts" who are consistently wrong about foreign policy on CBS's flagship Sunday morning news program Face the Nation. Reminds me of the time some "liberal" media flak condemned the possibility of Sen. Feingold as Senate Foreign Affairs Chair. Someone who was always right about Iraq in charge of the Seante Foreign Affairs Committee? Perish the thought.

Ted Rall picks apart the "Phony Generosity" of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Read the whole thing, as the devil is in the details, but note two points: one, that "(n)o one can work hard enough to earn one billion dollars," and two, that Mr. Zuckerberg could be creating jobs right now by hiring some 24-7 customer service reps -- which I presume he doesn't do now because Facebook has a virtual monopoly on its kind of social media and thus you'll just eat whatever service problems you're having (I haven't had that many, admittedly, but Facebook hasn't dealt with them in a timely manner, either).

Finally, another day, another moronic politician blaming someone other than Robert Dear for the Planned Parenthood shootings, except that this Colorado state Rep blames Planned Parenthood and only Planned Parenthood for the shootings. How many times must I tell these pimps! Blame the shooter for the shooting. Right-wingers say things like this to liberals all the time, but I bet the only reason they wouldn't like it if you blamed the World Trade Center for 9.11 is that it obstructs you from blaming Muslims.

Around the table: Donald Trump, John Boehner, Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Scott Walker, and Vladimir Putin.

Jeffrey St. Clair, writing at Counterpunch, reminds us that Donald Trump's "noxious nativism" is "a grandiose hypocrisy": "(h)is father Fred boasted that his empire of suburban shacks was constructed by laborers 'right off the boat,' untainted by union membership. Donald followed the same reasoning at his own construction sites and in the low-wage jobs at his casinos and hotels." He also reminds us of the target audience for Mr. Trump's nativism: the same "Reagan Democrats" who have been pushed to the economic edge by thirty-plus years of Reaganism.

You may have heard that a certain Speaker of the House whose name rhymes with "John Boehner" has resigned. The headline here, "John Boehner May Have Been the Only Thing Standing Between America and Madness," is a little overheated. More likely, the next House Speaker will be a little to Mr. Boehner's right, and the "liberal" media will undeservedly label him a "leader" and a "moderate," as they did for Mr. Boehner, and thus move the "center" of American politics even further right. And we could fix the Constitutional "flaw" of having different parties control different branches of government by making independent commissions, not state legislators, redraw House districts. If Democrats would do something for America while they're in power, that would also help matters.

Jeb Bush tells a questioner at a South Carolina town hall that Republicans can win Black votes not with a "message" of "division and get in line and we'll take care of you with free stuff," but an "uplifting" message "that says you can achieve earned success." Question: if your taxes pay for "stuff," how is it "free"? I wonder how long it'll be before Mr. Bush starts making town hall attendees sign loyalty oaths.

Marco Rubio proposes giving corporations a tax credit for giving their employees paid sick and family leave. Because if there's anything corporations just don't have enough of, it's tax breaks. Plus it still caps employee benefits at $4,000 annually, whereas the boon to corporations (a 25% tax credit?) will obviously be much larger. Is there any policy initiative Mr. Rubio can't drag through the mud?

Daily Kos diarist Puddytat says Scott Walker pulled the plug on his campaign because he listened too much to national Republican advisers and because it was hemorrhaging money. The lunchbags with Walker campaign logos on them is truly priceless irony. I must admit that I had forgotten that Wisconsin doesn't term-limit Governors, so Mr. Walker could run for a third term in 2018. But the damage he's done to Wisconsin should be so obvious to everyone by then that he'll again be "called" to quit.

Finally, the Russian government fails in its plan to crack the Tor network (upon which users can surf the net anonymously), as the corporation contracted to accomplish the deed has now committed to spend twice the money the Russian government gave them just to get out of the deal. Well, like your parents always said, if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself -- and not contract it out to private corporations, particularly when FOUR MILLYUNZ RUBLEZ!!!!! doesn't go as far as it used to. Seriously, though, yay privacy!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christmas in September.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, who has lately polled consistently in the low single digits, has suspended his Presidential campaign -- and in dropping out said he's "called to lead by helping to clear the field in this race so that a positive, conservative message can rise to the top of the field," and urged other Republican candidates to drop out as well, so that the party could coalesce behind a nominee who is not a certain very loud billionaire who embarrasses them by saying the things out loud that they only say at country clubs. This is, of course, par for the course for a political animal who combines the inarticulate cunning of George W. Bush with the messaging skills of Karl Rove -- if he can call corporate welfare "job creation" and getting goodies for his cronies "winning for the people," why not call quitting "leadership"?

But in a world where repeatedly spewing forth racist and sexist garbage is apparently no longer a serious impediment to political success, it can be hard to see exactly what Scott Walker did (or failed to do) to lose the nomination. Of course he's not as scintillating as Mr. Trump, but neither are the other 154 remaining candidates, and Mr. Walker didn't win three statewide elections in four years because he's scintillating -- rather, he cuts the figure of a man who knows his stuff and doesn't get rattled when he's challenged, and voters respond to that as surely as they respond to a billionaire with a bad attitude. As far as I can tell, Mr. Walker only made two mistakes that Democrats would have mentioned in campaign ads: he out-Romneyed Mitt Romney by taking three-count-'em-three positions on birthright citizenship within a week, and he suggested that the British government didn't like President Obama's "leading from behind" in foreign policy, which earned that famously terse retort from the Cameron camp: "(t)he Prime Minster did not say that and does not think that."

You might find that assessment a surprise, if you've attended the steady drumbeat of stories about Walker missteps (like the Philly cheesesteak "gaffe," ugh) and sound bites from other Republicans (who knew Tom Coburn attended the party's pulse so well?) describing Mr. Walker as "not ready for prime time." You may be tempted to respond that folks who think Mr. Walker wasn't "ready for prime time" haven't watched Marco Rubio try to explain anything, but you'd be better off attributing Mr. Walker's demise not just to Mr. Trump, who sucks the oxygen from any room he's in, but also to that infamous right-wing chimera, the "liberal" media. Not that the "liberal" media had very much to say about Mr. Walker's destruction of public unions or his embrace of "right-to-work" laws, or his patent refusal to do either of these things while he was campaigning. But Mr. Walker too often showed contempt for reporters, especially when they asked tough questions. Aside from one frank assessment of a New York Times reporter on a mic he didn't know was hot, how much contempt for the "liberal" media did George W. Bush show in 2000? And who was the "liberal" media's favorite in 2008? The "liberal" media may not remember much, but they remember when they've been disrespected.

So now what? Mr. Walker, in "suspending" his campaign, could always come back, I suppose, but I doubt he will, since we don't live in that universe where Gary Hart won two terms as President. My heart swells at the prospect that Mr. Walker will have to go back to Wisconsin and face the mess he's made, and ultimately leave office in 2018 as disgraced as Mr. Bush did a decade earlier, but there is another, horrifying prospect: Mr. Walker could wind up as the Republican Vice Presidential nominee, not on a ticket with Mr. Trump, of course, but maybe with John Kasich or Chris Christie. Having Mr. Walker as your running mate would be like getting a good campaign manager for free, and once he's largely relieved of the responsibility to talk about himself or his own record, his considerable political skills could help propel the Republican nominee to victory.

I'm not going to lie to you, though. Scott Walker dropping out of this race is Christmas in September. He'd have been that horrible a President. And now we're very likely spared that catastrophe for at least eight more years.

Around the table: scare numbers, Bernie Sanders's speech at Liberty, "childlike" policy proposals, the Brill Building v2.0, and the further troubles of Scott Walker.

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post debunks a Wall Street Journal claim that Sen. Sanders's programs will cost $18 trillion. You know the first thing I'm going to say: it's a scare number! And how is it a scare number? Well, the WSJ, like everyone else, doesn't say right off that it's $18 trillion over ten years, and gets that figure by including the supposed $15 trillion cost of a single-payer health care program, without noting (as Mr. Sargent does) that we currently spend $42 trillion a decade on health care now, and would spend rather closer to $15 trillion if we implemented the Sanders plan.

Speaking of Bernie Sanders, D.D. Guttenplan at The Nation describes how Mr. Sanders's address at Liberty University went. Long story short: not bad, considering. Mr. Sanders deserves our praise for going to Liberty and not trying to pander to them; I thought the Liberty crowd would be more responsive on economic issues, but I didn't expect them to respond on racism. As pleased as I am to see less vestigial racism in far-right evangelicals here, I still find it frustrating that they still think banksters are just people who work hard, when banksters just redistribute the income of people who work hard upward to themselves.

Dean Baker finds a New Yorker writer calling new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's populist-left economic proposals "childlike." We could just as easily call Republicans' devotion to tax-cuts-for-the-rich "childlike"! The difference? We could also point to the failure of Tha Bush Mobb tax cuts and the Brownback "experiment" in Kansas, as well as the rise in federal revenues following the return of the 39.6% tax bracket in 2013. But all right-wingers have is the name-calling.

Nathaniel Rich, writing in The Atlantic, pulls the curtain on the virtual unknowns who write almost every song in this week's Billboard Top 40 countdown. If you want to persuade people that today's popular music is all crap (you know, the way every older generation, mine included, likes to do), you could do worse than point to the big hit songwriting now being so concentrated in so few hands. Of course, there's so much music out there now, and so many different ways to consume it, that you can also expend far less effort ignoring the Top 40 than you used to.

Finally, Scott Walker can't name a single time he's stood up to a "conservative special interest" on CNN. He instead talks about how many small donors he has, but if you're running for President, you should answer the question put to you, and then extrapolate. You know what else? "Unintimidated" is the worst word to describe him, because it's easy to act like your opponents don't "intimidate" you when you've got all that Koch brothers support at your back. In fact, given that Mr. Walker's devotion to corporate welfare programs hasn't exactly made him rich, you have to wonder if he has been intimidated -- by corporations.

Around the table: President Reagan vs. his votaries, and other tales.

On the eve of the latest Republican Presidential debate at the Reagan Library, Think Progress reminds us that the putative heirs of Ronald Reagan would profess to find much of his program revolting. You know, raising taxes every year but one, a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, occasional compromise with Democrats. This reminds me of the time someone called into the Rush Limbaugh show to tell him that President Reagan did-so raise taxes, and Mr. Limbaugh demanded to know the source of that info, and then said he thought the caller's source might be Media Matters, because, you know, MEDIA MATTURZ BAD!!!! That's all right-wingers have left anymore: personal attacks.

Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals insists that corporations can't compel video services to take down videos that allegedly violate copyright without first making a good faith effort to determine whether the video constitutes "fair use." You'd think this would be common sense, but to big corporations trying to extract unearned money wherever they can, it's apparently not. And Universal Music really stepped in it, first saying they did-too determine fair use, then saying that having to determine fair use could slow down their anti-piracy efforts boo-freaking-hoo. I don't think it's that hard to tell the difference between piracy and fair use -- unless, again, you're trying to leverage your copyrights to redistribute income from other folks to yourself.

Michelle Chen, writing at The Nation, describes how bad the "sharing economy" can be for workers -- and lists some actions workers can take, including using the Big Stick of Bad PR whenever Uber or Lyft has you working 15 "flexible" hours in a row. Oddly enough, I just received an offer from one of my credit card providers promising a "rewards upgrade" -- and one of those upgrades just so happens to be a 20% statement credit on Uber rides through April. Needless to say, I won't be taking them up on that offer, because that's is how the big corporations get you to act against your interests, and the interests of other working families.

Study suggests that "Racial Diversity in Alternative Press May Be Declining." They're doing better with women and LGBTQ populations than folks of color, which, sadly, doesn't surprise me. You'll also be sadly un-surprised to learn that a lot of folks who do the hiring at alternative presses say they "reach out to everyone" or "look to the best candidates regardless of race," which is much too similar to what people say when they don't care to make the effort.

Finally, Talking Points Memo editor Josh Marshall calls Scott Walker a "Dead Man Walkering," given his Trump-aided plunge in recent polling. The truth is there's nothing wrong with Scott Walker's campaign that $900 million in Koch Brothers money can't fix. Still, a man can hope that a happy side effect of the Trump ego trip is that Mr. Walker can't find the spotlight again, so he has to go back to Wisconsin and face the consequences of the corporate welfare state he's created there.

Around the table: the trouble with Not Being Trump, and other stories.

Scott Walker proposes a giant dung sandwich for working families -- making the entire country "right-to-work," eliminating the National Labor Relations Board, repealing the Davis-Bacon Act, and replacing overtime with comp time, all of which he calls "reform" and "modernization." I thought he'd at least pretend he wasn't such a bastard, but apparently the pressure that comes with Not Being Donald Trump is too much to bear. If he gets the nomination, and tries to pull an Etch-a-Sketch on the electorate, he'll need a lot more "liberal" media help than Mitt Romney got.

Buried in this fluff piece about Great and Awesome American Real Super-President Mitch McConnell is his rather absurd claim that "(b)usiness leaders" have told him they have "a hard time finding people to do the work because they’re doing too good with food stamps, Social Security and all the rest." You're tempted to respond that science is more than just collecting anecdotes, but you might also contemplate the possibility that these "business leaders" can't find people to fill positions because they're trying to pay them in dung pellets. (Hate to pile on -- OK, I don't -- but why does he think "the most successful people" are the people who make the most money?)

Casey Quinlan at Think Progress asks "Why Graduates Of For-Profit Colleges Are Struggling To Pay Back Student Loans." Long story short: for-profit schools promise rather more in the way of career prospects than they deliver and commit a good bit of fraud, and of course the financial services meltdown made everything a lot worse. But it sure is a good thing Marco "Corinthian is my constituent" Rubio would get rid of the "elitist" college accreditation system so that even more Americans can enjoy endless debt.

It's not just the for-profit college students who have trouble: ProPublica reports on the large amount of debt low-income NYU and UCal students pick up. Their job prospects are better than if they went to some Corinthian college, but still. We also learn that low-income Vassar College students leave with very little debt, thanks in part to its "need-blind" admissions policy and its reliance on grants instead of loans. (NYU's response has its slimy arguments, like the one ProPublica takes apart in paragraph 18. But at least NYU didn't step in it the way the Harvard official does at the end.)

Finally, Citizens for Tax Justice studies Jeb Bush's tax "reform" plan, and surprise, surprise, the top 1% get over half the relief from Mr. Bush's tax cuts. Oh, and it would eliminate the Estate Tax and the now-patched Alternative Minimum Tax. You just keep partying like it's 1999, Jeb!

Around the table: forget it, Jake, it's Marco Rubio! And other observations.

U.N. report says Gaza could be "uninhabitable" by 2020, given blockades, Israeli military operations, and the incompetence of Gaza's own government. Has no one learned by now that running a people into the ground just creates martyrs and terrorists? Or is that the plan?

Robert Borosage reminds us, in the wake of Friday's job figures, that while unemployment may be going down, so are inflation-adjusted wages. Noting that Congress will likely try to zero out Planned Parenthood funding rather than funding infrastructure jobs or doing something about student loan debt, and that the Fed is mulling whether to raise short-term interest rates by one-quarter of one percent, he concludes: "(n)o wonder Americans are increasingly disgusted with politics as usual." No wonder, indeed.

Ho hum, Catherine Rampell tells us that Congress's plans to slash the deficit will more likely add to the deficit. How? By cutting programs (IRS tax collection, family planning funding, fighting disability fraud) that either save our government money or make our government money -- or, to put it more precisely, programs that either save or make the taxpayer (i.e., you) money. Again, it's almost like that's the plan.

College prep-test corporation Princeton Review charges families more according to their zip code -- which just so happens to result in Asian families paying more than others. Regardless of whether Princeton Review intends it this way, the result is racist. And I'm not so sure of their good intentions, either -- surely they've heard of redlining?

Ain't no controversy so bad that Marco Rubio can't make it worse, and so it goes with his opinion on the Kentucky county clerk who won't issue marriage licenses to gays: "(w)hile the clerk’s office has a governmental duty to carry out the law, there should be a way to protect the religious freedom and conscience rights of individuals working in the office." I guess "there should be a way" to get every American family a unicorn, too, but it ain't gonna happen. (Also, as Kerry Eleveld notes, "there already is 'a balance.' It allows Davis to practice her religion according to her beliefs on her own time as a private citizen.")

Finally, Caitlin Huey-Burns at Real Clear Politics suggests that Scott Walker has fallen the farthest among Republican Presidential candidates. Remember when I said the way to beat him was to repeatedly call him cold and soulless? Well, Republican operatives won't describe him like that, but "he's coming off as an opportunistic candidate who doesn't know who he is" and "(e)vangelical voters here are looking for conviction" and "one thing (the caucus process) does is it smokes out inauthenticity" do the job just as well, not that we should get complacent. (Kudos to Ms. Huey-Burns, as well, for noting that Mr. Walker "has also been in politics in Wisconsin for almost all of his adult life." Any fool can get elected, but a real adult can get and keep a job.)

Around the table: from reduced rape kit backlogs to the ever-changing moods of America's worst Governor.

First, some good news: the city of Detroit has tested more than 9 out of 10 rape kits, some of which had been waiting for over 30 years to be tested. At least three years of investigations will follow, according to the Wayne County prosecutor, but justice is at last a hope for some of these victims. It would have been hard to do, of course, without a few million dollars in state and federal help -- but that is, of course, the kind of funding right-wingers try to kill because GOVMINT DUZN'T WORK!!!!! If only they'd be so zealous about corporate welfare.

Jim Hightower confesses to wanting to "tear out my hair" after reading some former PR firm chair suggest that his fellow CEOs would pay their employees more if they just got subsidies from our government to do that. I sympathize with his frustration (though I sure wouldn't tear out my own hair because someone else acted like a moron), and of course he's right to remind us that higher pay for working families is in no way "charity," but I'm a bit surprised that he didn't remind us that these corporations already get massive welfare handouts from our state and federal governments. They sure got some cojones asking for more.

The incomparable Dave Zirin tells us why, as union-lovers, we should celebrate Judge Berman's decision rescinding Tom Brady's four-game suspension from the NFL. Long story short: even though the NFLPA's contract with the NFL allows Commissioner Goodell to essentially arbitrate grievances over player punishments he has issued, the law still demands a certain amount of fairness, which Mr. Goodell -- by failing to allow Mr. Brady the opportunity to examine evidence, among many other things -- didn't demonstrate. Yes, if it weren't Tom Brady, we'd probably see the worker rights issues a lot more clearly. That's just one reason we shouldn't think of politics the way we think of sporting events.

It had to happen sooner or later: right-wingers promote the Kentucky county clerk who still won't issue gay marriage licenses an "anti-gay Rosa Parks." It isn't just that people want to be black without doing the hard work that comes with being black, or that Ms. Parks broke a law anyone not heavily-invested in the status quo could have seen was unconstitutional in 1955, or that her freedom to sit somewhere other than the back of the bus oppresses no one else -- it's also that Rosa Parks couldn't walk away from being black, but Kim Davis can walk away from being a County Clerk. And resigning her job because she won't do her job isn't some unconscionable hardship, either -- Ms. Davis would certainly get to suck at the teat of wingnut welfare forever.

Radley Balko administers a spanking to Scott Walker after Mr. Walker suggests that heightened scrutiny of police officers has made the job more dangerous than it was when he was a kid. The facts, as you might expect, turn out to be precisely the opposite: whereas more than 30 officers per 100,000 were murdered in 1975, that rate had fallen to five officers per 100,000 in 2013. "Moreover," Mr. Balko adds, "you’d think that someone who professes to believe in limited government would welcome more oversight of a government institution." And if Mr. Walker doesn't welcome that, we might conclude that oversight gets in the way of funneling taxpayer money to cronies.

Finally, speaking of America's worst Governor again, Mr. Walker now claims he has "never talked about a wall to the north," though his statement that a border wall with Canada "is a legitimate issue for us to look at" is well-documented. Watch the whole clip; Mr. Walker's stories have more wiggle in them than a plate of jello in an earthquake. Seriously, there are two rules about word games: 1) people absolutely hate them, and 2) unless they come from a particular politician to whom they are absolutely devoted. I think Mr. Walker has overestimated the devotion the electorate has for him, or could have for him. Of course, if he had a soul, he'd know all of this already.

Around the table: from a Presidential candidate determined to do it wrong to a police department determined to do it right.

Surprise, surprise, Jeb Bush opposes encrypting data. "If you create encryption, it makes it harder for the American government to do its job -- while protecting civil liberties -- to make sure that evildoers aren’t in our midst." He almost forgot to say "while protecting civil liberties," didn't he? Every advance in communications technology brings these challenges with it; how does Jeb Bush think we got this far without terrorists tearing us apart?

"Joe Biden Said to Be Considering One-Term Presidency," Politico tells us. Who said this? Famed journalist Carl Bernstein, who added that Mr. Biden would use his one term to "unite Washington" because he's "dealt with the Republicans in Congress all (his) public life," though you'd think Mr. Biden's six-plus years as Vice President would have helped "unite Washington" by now. Mr. Bernstein's reporting on the Watergate break-in helped take down an American President when he was just 30, as you know, so he doesn't care what I think. But his analysis sounds like typical Beltway wankage.

Now that an Avian flu outbreak has caused Iowa farmers to euthanize over 30 million birds, organic farmers say we should avoid looking at vaccines as the solution to the problem and look instead toward "organic, regenerative" farming. Farmers don't have to be organic, really, but they do have to be small-scale operators that care more about the land and the animals than about profits (since without the land and the animals, you don't even have profits). Certainly we should stop worshiping at the altar of "efficient" factory farms, which produce a lot of sick, miserable animals and only do one thing "efficiently" (that is, deliver wealth upward to CEOs).

Scott Walker, speaking at a New Hampshire VFW, suggests that only a "handful" of Muslims are "reasonable" or "moderate." Gosh, what if a Presidential candidate said only a "handful" of Christians are "reasonable" or "moderate"? Our Glorious Elites would throw a collective tantrum, that's what. His spokeshack does the best she can with it, I suppose, basically by pretending Scott Walker doesn't really believe what he says. So how will he appear more "moderate" for the general election? I don't know, but he sure won't be troubled by the task, because such a task would only trouble a man with a soul.

Finally, Gloucester, MA police chief decides that "the war on drugs is over, and we lost," and starts helping drug addicts get clean. Gloucester is a small town, but one out of every six folks the Gloucester police help come from out of state. I eagerly await the studies suggesting that (just as providing homes for the homeless is actually cheaper than providing them expensive services on an emergency basis all the time) concentrating on helping addicts rather than just punishing them actually saves the taxpayer money. In the meantime, I wish Chief Campanello and his department the best of luck.

Around the table: Bernie Sanders says the most interesting thing a politician will say this year -- while the Republican Presidential candidates clown on in their clown car.

It may go unnoted as such, but when Bernie Sanders said "do you have serious questions?" when asked about Hillary Clinton's hair vis a vis his own, we witnessed the collision between serious cultural criticism (the reporter was trying to get Sen. Sanders to say it's sexist that the "liberal" media pay so much attention to Mrs. Clinton's hair) and serious political discussion ("we're the only major country on Earth that doesn't guarantee health care to all people," and yet we're talking about hair). I guess it wouldn't have killed Mr. Sanders to say the media is sexist in addition to being frivolous, but actually hearing a candidate say the hair obsession is frivolous is itself a major step forward.

Another day, another member of the "liberal" media, in this case Steve Rattner, claiming that manufacturing job losses haven't fallen to trade deficits but to the alleged inevitability of "productivity growth." Ah, no -- American corporations are, in fact, paying foreign workers in dung pellets to make products consumed by Americans, and no allusion to "productivity growth" can change that. When people like Steve Rattner (the fellow who oversaw the destruction of autoworker jobs and pensions during the 2009 automaker corporation bailout, you may recall) tell you something is "inevitable," they're trying to take the fight out of you. Don't let people do that to you.

Mike Huckabee says Dr. King would be "appalled" with the Black Lives Matter movement if he were alive today. Because, of course, "all lives matter." But context is important here -- the "black lives matter" slogan occurs in the context of a society that too often acts like black lives don't matter, and folks who retort "all lives matter" typically have never had to worry that their next police contact might be the one that kills them.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (E-WI) proposes an Affordable Care Act "replacement" plan, one that would give sliding-scale tax credits to folks without insurance based on age. By coupling tax-credits-which-are-not-insurance and the "sliding scale" concept, Mr. Walker's plan is dumb and eggheaded at the same time, a feat usually only Democrats accomplish. But the "liberal" media will no doubt call the eggheadedness intelligence, since, you know, Scott Walker is bold and rides a Harley.

Finally, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), still running for President as of this writing, says birthright citizenship is a "bad practice" that he'd work to end. Why is it a "bad practice"? Because of anecdotal evidence of "birth tourism"? Also, it's not changing a "law," as he puts it, but changing the Constitution -- specifically, the 14th Amendment. I'd wondered if Republicans would get into a big swordfight over who wants to repeal the 14th Amendment fastest, but not all of them have taken the bait -- I guess the really big swordfight is for 2020! If Scott Walker thinks he's getting away with that non-answer, though, then maybe he's not such a skillful politician after all.

Around the table: yeoman work from five actual journalists, plus Jeb Bush blames Obama and Clinton for Iraq.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, gives us a thorough exposé of Scott Walker's ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council (or ALEC, the lobbying organization responsible for so many horrible bills at the state level). You'll see the same theme, over and over again: Scott Walker breaking promises of more legislative transparency, instead springing right-wing legislative surprises on the people of Wisconsin, though they're not surprises to him or his ALEC buddies. Remember that when he tries to seem "moderate" after he gets the nomination.

And Steve Horn and Michael Aria, writing at Nation of Change, introduce us to the multitudinous lobbyists who benefited from Gov. Walker's $250 corporate welfare handout to the Milwaukee Bucks for a new stadium. Warning: a lot of these nefarious folks are Democrats, including Tom Barrett, who lost to Scott Walker in gubernatorial elections twice in a two-year period. In case you were wondering how Scott Walker keeps winning: a big part of it is that his Democrat opponents are corrupt weaklings.

Amanda Frank, writing for the Center for Effective Government's The Fine Print blog, debunks the "Texas Miracle" myth of low government regulation leading to a boom energy economy. Actual facts: not only does fracking pollute good Texans' drinking water, and not only do more than half of Texas schoolkids go to school near hazardous chemical facilities, but Texas still has a lot of poverty, a lot of uninsured, and a lot of good folks working full-time who still need taxpayer assistance to make ends meet. Come to think of it, pushing Rick Perry's "Texas Miracle" might do for Republicans in 2016 what Michael Dukakis's "Massachusetts Miracle" did for Democrats in 1988. Think they remember?

Jeff Gelles, writing at the Philadelphia Inquirer, tells the story of one Matthew J. Hartigan, who has spent nearly two decades trying to convince a multitude of creditors that he's not the Matthew J. Hartigan who's skipped out on property taxes in Northeast Philadelphia -- which he couldn't be, since he would have been 12 when the other Mr. Hartigan bought those properties. Good news? He's beaten back all comers so far. Bad news? Not everyone has the good fortune of being legally unable to purchase a property at the alleged time.

Finally, there's Jeb Bush, actually blaming Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the rise of ISIS. Haters will of course agree with Mr. Bush, but actually ISIS, too, is all George W. Bush's fault -- we can blame Mr. Obama for launching another unconstitutional war, one that will fail to eradicate ISIS no less, but no doubt Mr. Bush just thinks the President isn't killing enough people, even if he's hesitant to say so right now.

Around the table: "the only job Scott Walker cares about creating is his own," and other truths.

Better sit down for this one: the Coca-Cola corporation gets caught funding scientists who say that ingesting a lot of calories (like, you know, from soft drinks) doesn't have a whole lot to do with obesity. These scientists say things like, "'Eat less' has never been a message that's been effective," when the message more pertinent to Coke would be "eat less sugar." Or, maybe, "eat less shit."

After an ACLU report finding that Chicago's "stop and frisk" program just so happens to overtarget black folks, Chicago Police Department and ACLU agree to get an independent evaluation of said "stop and frisk" program. That's a good start; now we just have to get the police to do something with the information we already know they're going to get, rather than just shove it down the memory hole.

Jeb Bush's official campaign website accidentally (or perhaps "accidentally") puts up and then takes down attacks on Scott Walker and Marco Rubio. The attacks on Mr. Rubio compares him with Mr. Obama ho-hum (though citing Mr. Rubio's apparent missed votes might stick -- it sure stuck to John Kerry!). The attack on Scott Walker, however, is dead on, and worth repeating: "the only job Scott Walker cares about creating is his own." That's so good Mr. Walker's eventual Democratic opponent might steal it.

Speaking of the worst human being in politics, Scott Walker says he didn't know until this week that he was the target of the now-closed John Doe probe that ended in 2013 with six convictions of Walker aides. The man who combines the political cunning of George W. Bush with the micromanaging skills of Karl Rove didn't know that? The hell he didn't.

Finally, Moody's Analytics, which has predicted the last nine Presidential elections correctly, says a Democrat will win the 2016 Presidential election -- by the not-very-mandatey margin of 270-268. Moody's did not predict that the "liberal" media would promptly use this result to tell the winner to "stick to the center," but I'll go out on a limb and predict it. (Moody's model, incidentally, has the Republicans taking Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and Nevada -- and still losing, as Democrats narrowly take Virginia, New Hampshire, and Iowa.)

Around the table: "free" trade hurdles, Scott Walker's money problems -- and a victory against "ag-gag" laws.

The New York Times actually seems rather concerned that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" "free" trade deal (which concluded a recent round of negotiations in Maui last week, without scheduling another one) won't get done. To which I say: we can only hope! Trouble is, if the TPP gets dashed on the rocks because, say, Republicans insist on giving American pharmaceutical corporations more handouts, the "liberal" media will still report it as "the deal died because the hippies all screamed."

David Cay Johnston writes a comprehensive account of how corporations have hidden more and more of their profits offshore to avoid taxation in America. And, apparently, repealing one section of the giant 1986 tax reform law would do the job -- it would bring back at least $6 trillion in cash that's just sitting overseas doing nothing right now, and that could finance a lot of good projects. But Congress won't do it, because socialism.

U.S. District Court for Idaho rules that the state's "ag-gag" law is unconstitutional. Key quotation: "an agricultural facility’s operations that affect food and worker safety are not exclusively a private matter. Food and worker safety are matters of public concern. Moreover, laws against trespass, fraud, theft, and defamation already exist." Fairly succinct, and portends future good works.

Scott Walker's financial disclosures reveal that he has two credit cards running $10,000 of debt each, and is paying over 27% interest on one of them. Everyone struggles with credit card debt at some time or other, but not everyone's selling their ability to shepherd the people's money well as their President. And Mr. Walker is also one of the poorest Republican Presidential candidates -- rather like Max Baucus, long a lackey of the big banks and never an even remotely wealthy Senator -- and I think I actually like it less that Mr. Walker seems to believe so sincerely in shoveling the people's money to corporate welfare queens that he refuses to benefit from it.

Finally, on the occasion of the Obama Administration issuing its final climate change rules, Media Matters profiles over 20 "grassroots" organizations dedicated to killing the new carbon emissions rules dead. You'll recognize the gnarled hands of the Koch brothers in most of them. Some of them sound all reasonable and citizenly ("Partnership for Affordable Clean Energy," for example), but, as a famous philosopher once said, "you can't be a successful crook with a dishonest face."

Around the table: Republicans fail to defund Planned Parenthood, Scott Walker gets punked and good, and other stories.

Democrats filibuster Republican bill that would have stripped Planned Parenthood of federal funding. I guess it's nice to know Democrats will still fight for something. But it'd be nicer to know that maybe, just maybe, putting out deceptively-edited videos isn't the recipe for success it was just six years ago -- though it should never have been a recipe for success anywhere, anytime, and has only succeeded due to "liberal" media laziness.

FAIR notes that the "liberal" media hardly ever covers when a politician slurs Iranians as "evil," "liars," or "animals." But here's an analysis of the problem I don't often hear: "(s)ome argue this is the inevitable product of the US right-wing constantly making ridiculous statements. At this point, they claim, we should simply expect conservatives to make absurd remarks." I've never heard someone actually say that, but I know everyone thinks it, though we all know racism is racism and bad behavior is bad behavior, and each of these demands a response.

Unlike those Scott-Walker-lives-in-my-butt protestors in south Philly last week, protestors in New Hampshire pulled off a good stunt on Scott Walker on Monday -- by posing with the candidate and a friendly sign, only to flip the sign to reveal a fake check for $900 million made out to Mr. Walker and signed by the Koch brothers. Yes, the photo is pretty glorious, and no, these folks are definitely not Walker campaign plants.

No doubt disappointing dozens of Americans, former Maryland Governor Robert Ehrlich has decided not to run for the Republican Presidential nomination after all. But the real story here isn't that he was a Republican who actually decided not to join the other 219 candidates; the real story is that he really thought anyone was waiting for his candidacy in the first place.

There's just no end to Teh Stupid: Charles Koch now flogs his alleged commitment to criminal justice reform as a way of trying to bamboozle good folks into thinking he's really not so bad. As with his brother's alleged support of gay marriage, it means nothing if he's going to continue to support politicians who just so happen to be tough-on-crime jerks. You know, as the "price" for supporting "fiscally conservative" politicians.

Finally, the incomparable Dave Zirin reports on the horrible water quality in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, where the 2016 summer Olympics will take place -- yes, with swimmers and sailors and the like. You know it's bad when sailors get sick after a few hours, and at least one scientist says athletes who actually go into the water have a 99 percent risk of infection. Say it with me: clean water is our most precious natural resource. And it won't stay clean unless we keep it clean.

Penny rants for Sunday, August 2, 2015: "I see weak people!"

David Barton whines that putting a woman on the $10 bill proves that liberals "literally want to erase our history." After all, it's not like the other bills all have men on them or anything! But that wasn't the stupidest thing he said on July 27, and neither, amazingly, was his invoking of our Founders, as if he's not the guy who attributes all kinds of right-wingy quotations to the Founders without sourcing them. Here's the winner: "(t)hey want to remake this country; in fact, as Obama said, to transform America, and you don't transform America from what it was without trying to erase what it was." You know who thinks "transformation" can never, ever build on tradition or honor the past? Two kinds of people: 1) a simpleton, and 2) someone pretending to be a simpleton in order to turn emotionally-vulnerable people into right-wing rageheads. I don't believe you'll find very many simpletons in America, I really don't. But you'll find a lot of pretend simpletons -- or, as better folks than I have called them, "useful idiots" -- and they're very well-paid in our sick, immoral, and decadent society.

Sen. Cruz (S-TX) suggests he'd shut down the government over continued funding of Planned Parenthood. You know, over that stupid video that the "liberal" media is somehow covering as if it's not a badly-edited hit job, even though, you know, they're supposedly full of "journalists" and stuff, a lot of whom actually took classes in college about how editing creates reality, even! You'll recognize the threat as more right-wing swordfighting -- Ted Cruz can't just have a vote over defunding Planned Parenthood like Rand Paul, but has to shut down the government over it. (And then, of course, Mike Huckabee suggested he'd send in federal troops to stop abortions, which proves that someone always thinks they have a bigger sword.) But, ah, Politico? That headline is profoundly offensive -- Planned Parenthood wouldn't "shut down the government"; obnoxious politicians would shut down the government. I guess if Republicans threw a similar tantrum over, say, the Voting Rights Advancement Act, Politico's headline would read "How Black Voters Could Shut Down the Government."

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), currently vying for the Democratic Presidential nomination, says he will not run as an independent candidate if he does not get the Democratic nomination, for one simple reason: "I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States." Memo to Sen. Sanders: you would not be responsible for electing a right-wing Republican as President if you were to run as an independent. Who would be responsible? The right-wing Republican Presidential candidate, obviously, for successfully lying to the American people about what he plans to do (cough Scott Walker cough), and also to the people who voted for him though it wasn't in their interest to do so -- and also to the spineless Democrat politicians who accomplish nothing when they have power and thus give no one any positive reason to vote for them. We liberals get enough guff for "always blaming the wrong people" that we should actually, you know, blame the right people when bad things happen.

Around the table: terrorism, cowardice, dishonesty, handouts, abortion, and renewable energy.

Glenn Greenwald reminds us that we don't commonly consider the racist murderer Dylann Roof a "terrorist," but our laws do commonly consider animal rights activists "terrorists." Only a sick, immoral, and decadent society prioritizes like this -- and it'll get worse under a President Scott Walker, who'll be such a stooge to big agricultural corporations he'll make that big corn subsidy champion and breaker of GMO-labeling promises, Barack Obama, seem like a granola-eater. Why, it's almost like that's the idea.

Alan Pyke at Think Progress instructs us that Walter Palmer's trophy killing of Cecil the Lion in Zimbabwe makes hunters look much worse than they are. Luring a lion out of a national park to kill it isn't what hunters do, it's what cowards do; so is killing a lion who has a pride (whose cubs will be killed by the next male that takes over the pride), and so is failing to mercy-kill the lion for a day and a half. The good news? Walter Palmer is about the most unpopular man in America right now.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) not only invested in a fund that would have yielded massive returns if the U.S. had gone into default in 2011 during the debt ceiling crisis, but failed to disclose this holding in financial disclosure forms. In other words, he stood to benefit from a default, and didn't want you to know about it, lest you think he was in bed with the banksters -- or that his efforts to hold the debt ceiling hostage to harmful and unpopular budgetary demands might have been, you know, selfish. It's enough to make a man wish we forbade Congressfolk from investing in anything at all.

The incomparable David Sirota, after noting that opposing corporate subsidies happens to be an actual bipartisan cause, reminds us that corporate subsidies is "a central part" of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's economic agenda. So yes, perhaps we should skip over "cronyism" when talking about the WEDC and instead just go right for the jugular: corporate welfare, as in "Scott Walker's economic plan begins and ends with corporate welfare." Maybe an ad with guys in monocles holding their hands out and crying would do the trick, though no Democrat has the cojones to do it.

Mike Huckabee suggests that he might send in federal troops to stop abortions. He cites President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation as support, and an actual legal scholar reminds us that President Eisenhower, though not a great fan of desegregation, did send in federal troops to integrate schoolkids in Arkansas -- so it sure seems like a lot of right-wingers want to be black without doing any of the hard work that comes with being black.

Finally, Germany produced an astounding 78 percent of its energy needs on July 25 from renewable energy sources. That was a spike, obviously, as Germany produced a little over 25 percent of its energy from renewables in 2014 overall, but again, the big American polluting corporations will be more than happy to tell you that renewable energy doesn't work, when all that's really missing is commitment.

Around the table: includes tales of Republicans, "governing"!

You know that highway infrastructure reauthorization bill that Mitch McConnell is supposedly working so hard to get done, so he can prove Republicans can run Congress without everything falling apart? Well, among its problems is that it shields certain kinds of public safety information from disclosure via Freedom of Information Act requests. "Risk to public safety is exactly the type of information that FOIA is intended to prevent being shielded from the public," writes Sue Udry, but you know, it's only accountability to the people, so you can see why Mr. McConnell doesn't care.

Speaking of that highway bill, Scott Klinger says we should fund the Highway Trust Fund in ways other than what the Senate has proposed in its legislation, like closing the corporate offshore profits loophole. As an aside, the Senate is actually proposing outsourcing tax collection to private tax collectors as a money-saving idea again. It didn't work last time, as anyone who thought about it for a nanosecond could have predicted. But hey, look at the Republicans, governing!

Jim Tankersley at the Washington Post reminds us that Jeb Bush owed his "success" at "rejuvenating" the Florida economy to a massive housing bubble. Which, when it burst (after Mr. Bush left office, of course), left Florida way worse off than most other states. Next time he says "I know how to do this," remember that anyone can "rejuvenate" an economy with unsustainable speculation.

Leon Neyfakh suggests we can live without air conditioning -- which at least one scientist estimates adds the equivalent of 10,000 car-driving miles per household of carbon emissions to the atmosphere. Ignore the notion that "civilization was humming along just fine" before air conditioning arrived -- I'd want to see stats concerning heat-related hospitalizations and deaths before and after A/C before buying that -- but attend the notion that it's silly to cool down offices so folks can wear uncomfortable business suits, or the notion that modern architecture has forgotten a lot of very useful information.

Elizabeth Hasselbeck uses her valuable time on Earth playing devil's advocate about cops beating up Sandra Bland (who later died in police custody) during a traffic stop. "But, what if, I mean, there are times, I'm sure, someone has, in the history of this land, used a cigarette against a police officer, maybe chucked it at him, pushed it at him." Number one, speak English! Number two, the officer had at least two far more powerful weapons than a lit cigarette. Let's do ourselves a favor and never speak of Elizabeth Hasselbeck again.

Finally, Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker stopped in at both legendary Philadelphia cheesesteak stops on Tuesday. Chiding Mr. Walker for ordering American cheese and no onions is so stupid I shouldn't even have to waste space calling it stupid, but chiding him for cutting in line and leaving trash behind is entirely appropriate. And those protestors held up such asinine signs I can't dismiss the possibility that the Walker campaign planted them.

Around the table: tales of right-wing swordfighting and Democrat cowardice.

State Department bumps Malaysia and Cuba up a level in its annual "Trafficking in Persons" report -- which just so happens to ensure that Malaysia will be able to sign the TPP. As stunning as it is that the Obama Administration has affirmed that the Trans-Pacific "Partnership" is more important than human life and human freedom, it's also stunning that Cuba can get a bump up a level despite, in our government's own words, not recognizing its forced-labor problem. We know why that's happening, too, but really.

FAIR's Janine Jackson interviews the Center for Media and Democracy's Brendan Fischer about the campaign finance issues surrounding Gov. Scott Walker. Long story short, from Ms. Jackson: "it sounds as though the charge was that Walker actively sought to skirt finance laws and that the (Wisconsin Supreme Court's recent) ruling is: Yes, he did, but it’s OK." Also n.b. the part where the Washington Post calls breaking the law a "workaround." That's our "liberal" media at work.

Lou Dubose at the Washington Spectator finds plenty of right-wing swordfighting going on at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference last month. This Republican Presidential candidate has a moment of silence, the next one does a three-minute prayer; this one says he knows how to deal with ISIS, the next one says he'll be a "wartime President"; this one says he'll protect the unborn, the next one says he signed a law outlawing abortion at 20 weeks, this one says he's against gay marriage, the next one flat-out makes up entire Supreme Court arguments to demonstrate he's more against it -- it's all quite ridiculous, and no, this never happens on the left, mainly because most liberal politicians are too timid to actually do anything.

Don't give the Boy Scouts of America too much credit for repealing the ban on gay Scout leaders at the national level, because BSA will still allow local Boy Scout chapters to ban gays. For religious reasons, of course. These folks better hope nobody ever starts a religion that demands that we all oppress Republicans. Oppress for real, I mean, since they seem to think that not getting everything they want all the time equals "oppression."

Finally, Franklin "the Lesser" Graham says we should end all immigration of Muslims to the U.S. until we can "settle" the "threat with Islam." Rev. Graham has apparently decided that getting more attention for himself and parading his manhood around are both more important than his charity's relationships with the countries it serves. And if his charity does suffer, he won't say it's God's will -- he'll just blame the liberals.

Around the table: how Scott Walker will *fit right in* in Washington, and other stories.

Stephen M. Walt argues that if ISIS actually succeeds in establishing a state, our best course of action is containment. Right-wingers who find that the idea of containment doesn't adequately arouse them should remember that their hero, Ronald Reagan, never asked Congress for a declaration of war against the Soviets, who were a more powerful enemy than whatever Iraq-sized nation ISIS establishes will be -- especially if, as any reasonable person would expect, ISIS finds statecraft to be a lot harder than blowing crap up.

Brian Murphy, writing at Talking Points Memo, provides a comprehensive report of how badly Scott Walker's baby, the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation, has run. You'll experience the shock of recognition when you read about the folks who donated six figures to Walker campaigns and got millions of dollars in tax credits, because that sort of thing happens in Congress all the time -- big corporations make millions in donations and get billions in tax breaks. See? Scott Walker will fit right in over in Washington, D.C.

FAIR catches Politico announcing that "Tennessee is the Capital of American Jihad," based on, literally, two incidents of domestic terrorism in the Volunteer State six years (and hundreds of miles!) apart. Two incidents -- why, it's an unstoppable juggernaut of an argument! Best part? FAIR makes up a fake Politico cover featuring two white Southern terrorists, with similarly histrionic headlines.

Kentucky gun-store owner bans Muslims from her place of business. Then whines about how, as a white person, she has no "freedom" anymore, and asserts that putting the sign up is only "freedom of speech," which certainly isn't true when you enforce the sign. You'd think gun-lovers would want to associate with other gun-lovers, but not this one. She also says her store will go out of business at the end of the month; I wonder why.

Finally, NASA's Kepler spacecraft finds another planet that could support life -- its year being only a little longer than ours, which puts it in the zone where it could support life, though there's still a lot we don't know, because the planet is 1,400 light years away. Presumably the natives, if there are any, also don't call it "Kepler-452b" like we do.

Around the table: includes more Scott Walker flatugasma.

Whoa: Scott Walker suggests that the next President (i.e., him) might have to take "aggressive actions, including military action" on his first day in office -- in the context of dealing with Iran, of course. Not enough, anymore, to merely oppose the deal; not enough, even, to say you'll "tear it up on your first day in office" as Mr. Walker has already said -- now you have to be ready to bomb Iran on Inauguration Day without consulting with Congress first as the Constitution mandates. All this right-wing swordfighting will get us all killed one day, and Jeb Bush is mistaken to think rage-filled primary voters will prefer a more "mature" way of killing the Iran deal.

Mr. Walker has also made the news by fielding a provocative question from a 13-year-old daughter of an apparently undocumented immigrant: "why are you trying to break my family apart?" But despite that easy, unflappable tone that lulls many a "liberal" media pundit to happy dreams, Mr. Walker talked like a politician-not-a-person, arguing without persuading and sniping at the press when they pressed him the way they're supposed to. Most telling: when her younger brother asks whether Gov. Walker really wanted the boy to come home and see his dad deported, he responds, "that's not what I'm talking about." The correct answer is "no, I would not want that," regardless of whether or not you feel you have to do that, and Scott Walker would know that, if he had a soul.

From the "Jesus Mary and Joseph This Crap Again?" file: just as he's announcing that Waller County (TX) will treat Sandra Bland's "mysterious" death in custody "like a murder investigation," Waller County's D.A. hastens to add that Ms. Bland "was not a model person." The next time I hear such speculations about the character of a white person who gets killed by police will be the first. More to the point, you shouldn't have to be a "model person" in order to avoid getting killed by police -- they're not rights, after all, if you have to be a "model person" to enjoy them.

Martin Levine at Nonprofit Quarterly tells us what we should learn from the closing of Alameda County (CA)'s FAME charter school. When these schools can get their charter from an entity other than the local school board, it turns out, oversight becomes a lot more difficult. Still, for someone who seems comfortable with charter schools' continued existence, Mr. Levine documents a lot of incompetence and greed at the FAME school.

Finally, because we need some good news, a New York state government panel recommends that New York City pay a minimum wage of $15/hour to its fast-food workers by the end of 2018 -- a recommendation the state's acting labor commissioner will enforce, unless a right-wing parasite takes over his mind and body very shortly. It ain't all huzzahs, unfortunately: the owner of Tropical Smoothies (three cafés on Long Island) says she sees the wage hike forcing her to "cut() labor, hir(e) less people, hav(e) less people per shift." But is that how a real entrepreneur thinks? Or does a real entrepreneur think of all that extra money in working families' pockets and thus all those extra mango magic smoothies she could sell?

Penny rants for Monday, July 20, 2015: featuring the bad behavior of Scott Walker and Comcast.

Lost in the controversy over Scott Walker suggesting that raising the minimum wage is a "lame" idea (so many Americans want it, it must be lame!) is his statement that "we need to talk about how we get people the skills and the education and the qualifications that they need to take on the careers that pay far more than the minimum wage." And how has he done that as Governor of Wisconsin? With a government website that matches Wisconsin residents up with jobs that are too frequently out-of-state? With a privatized economic development corporation so plagued with waste and cronyism that he is no longer its chairman? With his zeal to turn the state's vaunted university system into little more than a vocational school feeding worker bees to big corporations? Hell, if he's so great at "skills and education and qualifications," why is Wisconsin's economy lagging behind the rest of the country? But don't count on Democrats raising such objections during the campaign, since they learned during Tha Bush Mobb years that it's impolite, treasonous even, to tell everyone the Emperor's not just stark naked but doing the helicopter dance in front of you.

Comcast allegedly offers St. Paul (MN) seniors and economically-disadvantaged folks a 10% discount, but their commitment to that plan may be a bit suspect, as Comcast reps tell callers inquiring about the plan to stop asking for "handouts," allege the discount plan is only good in California or Puerto Rico, or just plain seem unaware of the plan's existence. The discount plan does sound like something big corporations put together to claim they're community-friendly when they never intend to do the hard work that would make it effective -- and I also suspect municipal governments tolerate that state of affairs, so they can give off a similarly-unearned "business-friendly" veneer to other corporations. The moral thing to do, of course, would be to hold corporations to their promises, especially when their franchise agreements seem to depend, at least in part, on such promises. Comcast, for its part, has apologized and said it'll re-train its workers about the discount plan, but that also sounds like an old song-and-dance. Well, it sure is a good thing the "free" market always provides alternatives to monopolists! I kid, of course -- Comcast is the only game in St. Paul.

Around the table: with bait for white racists and tales of two Governors named Walker.

Nate Silver informs us that black folks are not just eight times more likely to be murdered than white folk, they're about as likely to be murdered as people in actual war zones are. I expect there'll be underreporting of such crimes in war zones, but still, take that, "white lives matter too" crowd. "Eight times more likely to be murdered" pretty much obliterates whatever advantage white folks, in their bitterness and self-pity, imagine black folks have.

Lest we forget the original occupants of the bottom rung of the Great Chain of Being: CDC/National Center for Health Statistics data tells us that Native Americans are almost as likely to get killed by police as black folks are. At a considerably higher rate than white folks, again, if the average of all races is 1.2 per million folks and Native Americans just from the ages of 25-34 is 6.6 per million. It's hard to imagine how "the minorities" get "all the advantages" in life, when it'd be more accurate to say they get all the advantages in death.

Paul Mason says "the end of capitalism has begun," and that the "sharing" economy (which, to be fair, he defines more broadly than the "sharing economy" that deserves our enmity) is our escape hatch. Don't be intimidated by the article's length and breadth -- it may be full of historical insights, and yes it's always hard to imagine the precise equilibrium that emerges from chaos, but I still think that unless we enact some good old-fashioned tax-the-rich and clean-the-water, the biggest actors will still bend the new equilibrium to their will.

Scott Walker puts out a fundraising email aimed at religious-right voters claiming that his Presidential run is "God's plan." Thankfully, the email doesn't say whether him winning is God's plan. Seriously, though -- "(m)y decisions are guided by my relationship with God -- not by what might win me a few votes"? From the man who only makes decisions based on what'll win him a few votes? And talking about "my decisions" is a way of saying the people don't have very much to do with his decisions, which is certainly paternalistic, if not autocratic. So I guess he knows his audience, then!

Hillary Clinton keeps pushing corporate "profit-sharing," and supports giving corporations who share profits with their workers a tax credit. But once a corporation disburses such money to its workers, seems to me it's not "profit" anymore but "expense," so they'd hardly need a tax break on top of that. And the corporate tax loopholes they'd close to pay for the tax credit? Unidentified, naturally. You know what would deliver worker earnings back to workers? The 91% tax bracket on millionaire income, that's what.

Finally, Alaska Gov. Bill Walker (I) says he'll expand Medicaid for good Alaskans even though the state legislature doesn't want to. Which, all by its lonesome, makes him the best Governor named Walker in America. Maybe he could be the Gallant to Scott's Goofus.

Around the table: Scott Walker's consistency problems, and other conundrums.

Surprise, surprise, Pennsylvanians who live near fracking sites report health problems, including skin and breathing problems. Those fools tempted to say HAHAHAHA ONLY 87 REPORTS IN FOUR YEARS HAHAHAHA!!!!! would be advised to remember two things: 1) not everybody knows to report a fracking-related issue to the PA Department of Health and 2) PA Department of Health workers were under orders not to talk to citizens about fracking-related complaints, which could, you know, lead to underreporting.

Prominent Iowa Republican writes that Scott Walker makes Mitt Romney look like "a model of consistency." And that's how you hit him -- plus you add that he's inconsistent because he has no soul and no record to defend. The only thing wrong with Sen. Jauch's assessment of Mr. Walker ("He has an altar boy's appearance. But Darth Vader writes his policies") is that saying "Darth Vader writes his policies" might lead people to believe that Mr. Walker somehow isn't his own man, when we know he is. His own soulless man, that is.

President Obama will commute the sentences of 46 federal prisoners, 14 of which had received life sentences for non-violent drug offenses. The President's critics on the left (ahem!) won't be that pleased, since he's been pretty stingy with his clemency generally -- but of course the right will squeal ZOMG TEH PRETENDER WILL FREEZ ALL TEH BLACKZ FROM TEH JAILZ BY 2016!!!!!!, because what's more important than blind partisan hatred, after all?

Dent County, MO will lowers its flags to half-mast for the next calendar year in order to "mourn" the Supreme Court's gay marriage ruling. In a related development, Dent County's stores have observed a sharp rise in the sale of adult diapers since the ruling. And speaking of "blatant judicial overreach," what county in America lowered its flags to half-mast for a year after Citizens United v. FEC? (Hint: its initials are "no county.")

Finally, a University of Texas/NIH study finds that one dose of an inhaled ebola vaccine can neutralize the virus in monkeys. Of course we don't know if it'll work in people, but good job, researchers.

Around the table: stories about cybersecurity, Scott Walker, health care, and religious "persecution."

Elizabeth Goitien explains "Why Surveillance Won't Prevent Cyber Attacks." Long story short: a cyberattack that would "bring America to its knees" is so hard to pull off as to be unlikely, and successful cyberattacks work mostly because corporations haven't embraced encryption, stronger passwords, and multifactor authentication. In that context, claiming you need more power to spy on Americans because of cyberattacks sure sounds like a bait-and-switch.

To celebrate Scott Walker's official entry into the Presidential race, Alice Ollstein presents this admirably compact survey of the wreckage Mr. Walker has wrought as Governor of Wisconsin. Key takeaway: under Mr. Walker, Wisconsin lurches from one budget crisis to the next, and his solution is always to take from the people, never from corporations. "Fight and win for Americans" my ass -- he could only beat a weak Democrat, though that's, you know, a distinct probability.

And John Nichols at The Nation reminds us that Mr. Walker has also basically killed the weekend, by repealing the law (because that's what budgets are for, after all!) guaranteeing that retail and factory workers get "24 consecutive hours of rest for every seven-day stretch." Should be a bumper sticker: Unions gave us the weekend; Scott Walker took it away. Think Democrats will run ad after ad pummeling Mr. Walker for killing the weekend? Just kidding: these are Democrats we're talking about, after all.

ProPublica finds the widely-used blood thinner Coumadin causing deaths and injuries in nursing homes. The problem? Coumadin really has to be monitored very, very carefully -- ever have a relative on Coumadin suddenly show up with a black eye after not having been in a fight? Then you know. The article cites the coordination problems between doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and labs as a source of the problem, but I also suspect Coumadin doesn't get monitored very well at understaffed nursing homes by underpaid workers.

Ho hum, the uninsured rate in America has fallen nearly seven percentage points from its pre-healthcare.gov high of 18% to 11.4% now. That's only down three percentage points from the first quarter of 2008, but it's still impressive. How will Republicans run against that? By cherry-picking the high figures from, say, mid-2013, I would think. Ted Cruz did something similar about Hispanic unemployment just last week, as you may recall.

Finally, Benjamin Dixon unfurls 11 glorious paragraphs about the "Christian Persecution Complex." Key quotation: "they have convinced themselves that not being able to force through law their faith onto others who do not wish to willingly abide by it is in itself a form of persecution. So the fact that they cannot persecute non-believers to them is persecution. The oppressor can no longer oppress and therefore he believes he is oppressed." And then we get to actual oppression of Christians elsewhere on Earth (i.e., beheadings), and it rises to an awesome fury. Read the whole thing -- but skip the comments; they'll just anger up the blood.

Around the table: the Greek government aims for surrender, and other stories.

And now the Greek government prepares to squander the advantage the people handed to them in last week's referendum, by signing a bailout deal that's no better than the one the people rejected. I'd advise Alexis Tspiras to ask Democrats how well capitulation has worked for them at the polls, but most Democratic politicians aren't self-aware enough to give him a useful answer.

Hillary Clinton lays out her economic plan. Long story short: it's not as good as Bernie Sanders's economic plan (which is still a bit too nonspecific for my taste, I'll tell you what), but it'll do some good -- if she actually plans to act on any of it, that is. Which she can, no matter how many seats Republicans have in the House and Senate after 2016.

Doctor gets 45 years in jail for giving chemo treatments to folks who didn't actually need them. His monstrosity ran the gamut -- he gave chemo treatments to folks who didn't have cancer, overtreated other cancer patients, and gave the wrong treatments to still others -- all of which killed a not-insignificant number of his patients as it fattened his bank account. And yet too many right-wingers will go to their graves obsessing about black kids in hoodies, rather than real monsters like Dr. Fata.

Facebook has finally given its users the ability to prioritize what shows up in their news feed. I've been using custom lists almost exclusively on Facebook for years, and though I expect the news feed still won't show events in chronological order (as my custom lists do), this is a welcome, if very overdue, development.

Finally, Scott Walker formally joins the Presidential race. "Government that is closest to the people is best," "Americans deserve a President who will fight and win for them" -- that's some cojones from the man who fights and wins for the wealthy, whose government stands further from the people's will than any other. Yeah, he's won three elections in four years, but a real populist Democrat could have beaten him easily.

Around the table: four trifles, plus one uplifting tale.

Ho hum, Kansas Governor Brownback issues an executive order protecting religious weaklings from Teh Gay Cooties. After noting that the order will have, ah, incompatibility issues with state and federal law, the Executive Director of Equality Kansas assesses it thusly: "it's a tantrum."

"Should Hotels Be Required to Include Mandatory Resort Fees in Published Room Rates?" asks the Consumerist. Philosophically speaking, yes, they should, and so should any other fee a hotelier can make up. Paying a "resort fee" at a hotel is like paying a "meat fee" at a steakhouse.

Big pharmacy chain CVS, which has been a visible opponent of smoking lately, quits the U.S. Chamber of Commerce because the Chamber opposes anti-smoking laws. I was going to say, "I wish they'd quit over everything the Chamber is and does," but opposing anti-smoking laws is unusually rank. And the Chamber knows it, because they're so defensive about it.

Scott Walker spokeshack admits to "provid(ing) input regarding" proposed changes to Wisconsin's Open Records law. But she suggests the legislature started the whole process, though she avoided adding, "suckers!" Seriously, we may one day mention Laurel Patrick in the same breath as past prevaricators like Ari Fleischer.

Finally, Muslim groups have raised over $30,000 to help rebuild black churches that have been burned down in the South. Throw that in your Tea Party uncle's face the next time he complains that Muslims never do anything about terrorism! It's like a two-fer.

Penny rants for July 8, 2015: on Greece, Confederate flag-loving black folk, and how to beat Scott Walker.

Paul Krugman compares the "self-styled technocrats" pushing Greece to vote "yes" on the EU bailout deal to "medieval doctors who insisted on bleeding their patients — and when their treatment made the patients sicker, demanded even more bleeding." Everybody but our elites knows you have to, in Eric Cantor's words, take a risk to get sluggish economies moving again -- but that means you have to spend money, which means you can't hoard it if you happen to have most of it when the economy goes south. Mr. Krugman also reminds us that "Greece’s debt problem reflected irresponsible lending as well as irresponsible borrowing," which makes a total of one member of the "liberal" media who has mentioned the irresponsible behavior of German and French lenders. Mr. Krugman also says he doesn't know for sure that abandoning the Euro would work out well for Greece, though debt relief surely would, especially when one of Greece's creditors has come out and said that Greece can't pay back what it owes, which scenario would, I suppose, be the dream scenario for banksters.

Thanks to the Washington Post, we meet some black defenders of the Confederate flag, most of whom live in the South. ZOMG THE TABLES HAVE TURNED!!!!! TEH WHITEZ WHO OPPOSEZ TEH FLAGZ ARE TEH REAL RACISTZ!!!!!!! Well, not exactly -- America is a big place, with some 330 million people, big enough that you'll encounter pro-Confederate flag black folks sooner or later. I don't presume all of them want extra credit for opposing slavery and only being friends with folks who feel the same, nor do I presume all of them can't explain coherently why they think slavery is a "choice" or how preventing state houses from flying the flag actually oppresses a person's own right to fly the flag or think about the flag however they like. I also presume that not all Confederate-flag loving black folks think you are "not entitled to commentary on which flag waves in our humid Southern breeze," though such "commentary" would also be First Amendment-protected speech. But, for better or worse, that's who we meet here -- another bunch of folks who can't distinguish between being oppressed and being shamed in public.

Finally, I've talked a lot about Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's political survival skills, but I think I've finally figured out how to beat him. As always with formidable politicians, it involves turning his strength into weakness. What is his strength? His absolute unflappability through whatever chaos and disorder he's fomented; the kids would call him "cool," I suppose, or "chill." And what would we better call him, in order to defeat him? Cold. The man is unflappable, we would say, because he has no feelings about anything at all. And how do we know his hollowness? Because he has shown us he will say anything, at any time, to gain an advantage -- he tells the Tea Party he's against Big Gummint welfare while telling Iowans he's for ethanol subsidies, and he said he wouldn't try to kill public unions or pass right-to-work laws when he was trying to win elections, but he did both those things after he got elected. You can't trust anything the man says, because for him, you are not people; you are mere instruments of his victory, and men like that can never be trusted with power. I'll likely have to refine or expand upon this thesis in time, but that'll do for an opening.

Around the table: thoughts about Greece, Scott Walker, and gay marriage.

Dave Lindorff exults that "The Greek People Have Voted No to Austerity and Economic Blackmail." "Blackmail" does adequately describe what the EU is trying to do, after all, and so does "hostage-taking" -- kill those pensions and sell off those public utilities, or the country gets it! Paragraph 8 allows us to dream of an America that had national referenda, and the final paragraph suggests that Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras could well meet with an "accident."

French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us that Germany has "no standing" to lecture Greece about repaying its debt, noting that plenty of other nations, including Germany, have had considerably worse debt at various times over the last few centuries, plus Germany never paid debts incurred from two World Wars. By the time he calls their putative "moral uprightness" "infantile," I'm reminded that we do hear very little from the "liberal" media about irresponsible lenders.

Wisconsin's legislature sought to gut its vaunted Open Records law last week, before a public backlash forced them to backtrack, and now some folks wonder if Gov. Walker was really behind the effort to gut the law in the first place, since he's personally under investigations relating to Open Records requests. Really? This is a question? Sure, if we tried Mr. Walker in court, we'd need more evidence, but elections only require that we reject candidates who do horrible things that just-so-happen to benefit them personally.

In other Scott Walker news, right-wing economist Stephen Moore claims Mr. Walker assured him over the phone that he hasn't gone "nativist" on immigration -- and then Mr. Moore "clarified" that he hadn't actually talked to Mr. Walker over the phone, but someone in his organization had. So I suppose the Walker and Moore camps hashed out a story making Mr. Walker look like he might be less extremist on immigration while not utterly discrediting Mr. Moore. That's the sort of thing people do when they possess a lot of cleverness and no soul.

Mike Huckabee, clearly backed into a corner by recent events, says the problem with marriage today is that we see it as a "selfish means of pleasing self, rather than a committed relationship in which the focus is upon meeting the needs of the partner," and adds that the "redefinition of love as something that is purely sentimental and emotional has been destructive." I find the sentiment behind the first quoted part agreeable to a point, but, ah, the "redefinition of love"? Is he acquainted with any works of classic Western literature?

Finally, clerks in five Kentucky counties have stopped issuing any marriage licenses so that they don't have to issue them to gay couples. One says, "I respect their position — the gay community's — that that is how they want to live...but I would ask for for the same respect for my decision." Ah, no: "how they want to live" is the law now, and your "decisions" don't deserve the "same respect" because you're a public servant, not an only-the-public-I-approve-of servant. And not issuing marriage licenses but sending a heterosexual couple to another county to get one? That's cheating, and God sees when you cheat.