Today's PSA

Holiday cheer, and all like that there.

Today's Today

If you're going to tell people the truth, make it funny - otherwise they'll kill you.

I'm not quite the Libertarian Mr Stanhope is. And based on the bit about everybody paying their share - I'm not convinced he's all that Libertarian either.

I get the point about living your own life and leaving people alone, and wanting to be left alone in return. Honest, I get it. The problem with being Libertarian is that it's short-sighted.

Just sayin' - there are caveats for just about everything.

Happy 4th, everybody.

Today's Churchiness

My default position is that I can do without religion. Churches are too often scams - especially the big ones, which are really nothing more than musical theater.

But I'll give credit when it's due.

Try to ignore the pearl-clutching style of the anchor - as if she's reporting on the landing of shape-shifting lizard people from outer space (thanks, Alex Jones).

"Battle at the Border"? What the fuck, lady?

And sorry not sorry, but the field reporter's attitude felt a little condescending - like she can't believe the producer is forcing her to tell the story of some dirty hippie clergy people doing something inappropriately critical of Lord Commander Marmalade's glorious efforts to stem the tide of the brown hordes sweeping over us from the south... don't forget this is Mike Pence country.

Swamp Thang

Insidious:

in·sid·i·ous

inˈsidēəs/

adjective

1. proceeding in a gradual, subtle way, but with harmful effects.

   
   

   "sexually transmitted diseases can be insidious and sometimes without symptoms"

   
   

   synonyms:

   stealthy, subtle, surreptitious, cunning, crafty, treacherous, artful, sly, wily, shifty, underhanded, indirect; informalsneaky "the insidious bond between big money and political decisions"

• treacherous; crafty.

Let's say you've spent 40 years bitching about Waste Fraud & Abuse, giving the other side (ie: Libruls) the time and opportunity to look into it and point out that while there's a good bit of chicanery here and there, for the most part, government works pretty well, and in a fairly honest and cost-effective way.

Now let's say you want to take advantage of lots of weird situational confusion, and you're openly ripping off the taxpayers for millions.

All you have to do is point out that the liberals have been saying there's no corruption in government - and they've been saying it for years (even tho that's not what they've been saying, but who fuckin' cares anymore) - anyway, now suddenly, those libtards are saying it's everywhere - and blah blah blah.

Call it The Inoculating Lie.

Today's Tweet

This is resistance.

WHAT A HERO:

"Hi, (to Scott Pruitt)

I just wanted to urge you to resign...

This is my son, he loves animals....

He loves clean air...

He loves clean water...

**reads list of Pruitt's crimes/failures**

So, I would urge you to resign

before your scandals push you out." pic.twitter.com/CRETdb13sB

— Kaivan Shroff (@KaivanShroff) July 3, 2018

Today's Chart

From Pew Research:

Events unique to the history of individual countries cannot be ignored when considering why publics are more positive or negative about how the present compares with 50 years ago. However, our analysis also indicates that views of the current economy are a strong indicator of whether people say life for people like them is better today than it was 50 years ago, even when controlling for the demographic factors of income, education, gender and age. Indeed, across the countries analyzed, people with positive views of the current economy are 30 percentage points more likely than those with negative views to say life has improved for people like them.1

In general, countries that are more upbeat about their national economy are more likely to say life today is better compared with the past. For example, in Vietnam, where 91% say economic conditions are good, a corresponding 88% say life is better for people like them compared with 50 years ago. And in Venezuela, where only 20% say conditions are good, 10% say life is better for people like them. Overall, the correlation between economic assessments and views of the past is quite strong (+0.68).

I got ridiculously lucky, but almost 50 years ago, my high school diploma was enough to start me on a 40-year trip thru a career that put me in the top 3% of income-earners.

My kids will probably never know such things firsthand.

I don't know how to fix it. And there's never a guarantee that it can be fixed. But the one thing that will never fix it is allowing government to remain in the hands of people who are determined to keep us from even trying to fix it.

As The Poodle Turns

"Let there be justice tho' the heavens fall"

By way of a tweet from driftglass: "In clear violation of NYT editorial policies, Michelle Goldberg went to rural PA and talked to politically engaged working-class Americans who are not Trump voters. I hope they let her off with a warning."

NYT:

Erin Gabriel was already pretty busy before Donald Trump was elected president. All three of her children are autistic, and her youngest, an 8-year-old girl named Abby, is also deaf, blind and nonverbal, and suffers from seizures. “She has like 17 specialists,” Gabriel, 39, told me. “She does multiple therapies every week.” Gabriel’s husband is a pilot, and until a few years ago he had a job that took him away from home as many as 20 days a month.

Gabriel’s family, who live in rural southwestern Pennsylvania, have private health insurance but rely on Medicaid to pay for treatments for Abby that her insurance doesn’t cover. “A lot of our life is dependent on policy, Medicaid policy in particular,” she said. So she’s always paid close attention to politics, but her involvement was necessarily limited.

Then came Nov. 8, 2016. “It was terrifying,” Gabriel said of Trump’s victory. She worried about the repeal of the Affordable Care Act and the return of insurance discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Her older daughter, who is 11, had been excited to see a woman president, but was picked on by her classmates in their largely conservative area for supporting Hillary Clinton. “It was awful to have to tell her the morning after,” Gabriel said. She let her stay home from school Nov. 9.

It seems pretty easy to trace the hollowing out of American journalism.

There's always been a robust tabloid niche, where the enterprise is driven almost exclusively by profit, but it wasn't until the 80s that we allowed "the news" to be absorbed into the entertainment sector.

(Watch Network again for a good refresher; or Broadcast News)

Today's GIF

Constantly on the lookout for that perfect metaphor to illustrate the ridiculous state of our politics (social, economic, government, whatever).

Now all I have to do is figure out what entities to assign to the characters, and just what the fuck that anvil's supposed to be.

Some Dots For Connecting

Golf pro Lee Trevino said:

"If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron."

Even when he says shit like that, Franklin Graham is never seen holding a 1-iron.

In light of that simple truth, there can be no god.

Today's Tweet

It's not possible to overstate how stupid it sounds when the Undisputed Champions of Hypocrisy & Intolerance try to turn that shit around. 

pic.twitter.com/guNPhl0aCl

— John Fugelsang (@JohnFugelsang) July 1, 2018

The Othering Of LatinX

Trying to dispel some of the myths regarding MS-13.

(spoiler alert: 45* gets it wrong)

Jose Miguel Cruz, WaPo:

The Trump administration’s campaign against immigration conflates the flow of undocumented immigrants from Central America with the growth of MS-13 — the brutal transnational street gang. The president and the attorney general frequently say that stopping the former means stopping the latter. Information about the four-decade-old gang, formally named Mara Salvatrucha, is scarce, but we know enough to dispel some of the misconceptions that have grown up around it.

(here are the big 5 lies)

1. MS-13 was created by Salvadoran ex-guerrillas.
2. MS-13 is well-organized and controlled from El Salvador.
3. Illegal immigrants are coming to the U.S. to expand the gang's reach.
4. To combat MS-13, stop immigration from Central America.
5. MS-13 is a threat to communities all over America.

As always, there's nothing that says we should simply ignore the threat of gangs and the violence that gangs always bring with them.

Also always, we should never buy into the bullshit rhetoric of a Daddy State dick like Donald Trump.

Those Wacky Canadians

Amy Wang, reporting at WaPo:

Like a Charlie Chaplin film, modern-day surveillance videos can unspool a story without making a sound.

And in the case of an attempted criminal activity at a convenience store in Canada, footage from that incident tells . . . quite the tale.

I especially liked the part at the beginning when the guy tries to make his escape by shoving his girlfriend at the cop. Quite the gentleman.

Today's Pix

click to embiggen

Today's Tweet

You don't have to follow orders
No more torture at our borders

'We have no moral right to be comfortable when the price of our comfort is injustice.' — This man decided he'd rather quit his government job than pass information to ICE #FamiliesBelongTogetherMarch pic.twitter.com/0d6ptRNWij

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 30, 2018

Today's Quote(s)

"If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”

― Samuel Adams

- and -

“If ever a time should come, when vain and aspiring men shall possess the highest seats in Government, our country will stand in need of its experienced patriots to prevent its ruin.”

― Samuel Adams