Anybody Can Do It

So who needs the Russians?

After the debacle of the 2000 presidential election count, the US invested heavily in electronic voting systems – but not, it seems, the security to protect them.

This year at the DEF CON hacking conference in Las Vegas, 30 computer-powered ballot boxes used in American elections were set up in a simulated national White House race – and hackers got to work physically breaking the gear open to find out what was hidden inside.

In less than 90 minutes, the first cracks in the systems' defenses started appearing, revealing an embarrassing low level of security. Then one was hacked wirelessly.

Of course, it's the wireless hacks that are the most worrisome:

It's one thing to physically nobble a box in front of you, which isn't hard for election officials to spot and stop. It's another to do it over the air from a distance. Apparently, some of the boxes included poorly secured Wi-Fi connectivity. A WinVote system used in previous county elections was, it appears, hacked via Wi-Fi and the MS03-026 vulnerability in WinXP, allowing infosec academic Carsten Schurmann to access the machine from his laptop using RDP. Another system could be potentially cracked remotely via OpenSSL bug CVE-2011-4109, it is claimed.

Greetings from the Defcon voting village where it took 1:40 for Carsten Schurmann to get remote access to this WinVote machine. pic.twitter.com/1Xk3baWdxv

— Robert McMillan (@bobmcmillan) July 28, 2017

OK, so not all these machines are in current use, but I'd like to point out that we've known about their vulnerability to hacking just about forever, and it doesn't look like anyone in the voting machine manufacturing business is too concerned. And I'm sure The Hairpiece isn't concerned -- at least until someone hacks in and flips his votes.

Final quote: In the words of former FBI Director James Comey, ‘They're coming after America. They will be back.’

Via Towleroad.

What's New at Green Man Review

Yep -- it happens every week. This week is no different, but it is -- check out the reviews of books, music -- and a puppet theater.

More Pushback, Different Subject

I think we're all ready to admit that Trump can't do anything right. (Except con the gullible, but anyone can do that.) I'm sure you've read or heard about his speech to a group of police officers the other day:

“When you see these towns and when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice,” Trump remarked at Suffolk County Community College.

“Like when you guys put somebody in the car and you’re protecting their head, you know, the way you put their hand over, like, don’t hit their head and they’ve just killed somebody — don’t hit their head. I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”

At a time when police-community relations are arguably worse than ever before, when there is widespread criticism of racial bias in enforcement and prosecution, when almost everyone (except Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III) is aware that the "War on Drugs" is dismal failure, and almost everyday sees another story about police brutalizing random suspects, Trump comes up with something like this -- if he had set out deliberately to make the situation worse, he couldn't have done a better job.

Of course, Trump has demonstrated repeatedly that he has no understanding of basic American principles such as the rule of law and the presumption of innocence.

By all reports, those cops in attendance loved it.

Not so much the heads of police departments around the country:

The Suffolk County Police Department was one of the first to criticize.

“The SCPD has strict rules & procedures relating to the handling of prisoners,” the department wrote. “Violations of those rules are treated extremely seriously. As a department, we do not and will not tolerate roughing up of prisoners.”

New York, Los Angeles, and Boston have also weighed in.

The heads of police unions, on the other hand, were in support of Trump's remarks -- but then, they're the union equivalent of the NRA.

Of note: I haven't been able to find a reaction from the Chicago PD or the mayor to that speech. Of course, we do our best to ignore The Hairpiece here.

One of a Kind

Digby has a fairly short post this morning on how the comparisons between Trumps and the likes of Nixon, etc., don't really fill the bill, but her summation is something that I can't emphasize enough:

Many people fail to see what an anomaly Trump is and it's a real problem. They are driven to put him in the same category as previous presidents or fit him into a convenient slot in the partisan ecosystem.

He's something new.

That's not to say that the conservative movement and the GOP aren't responsible for him. They are. They created the political environment and the propaganda mill that made him possible. He is their creature. But he is unique and it's important to recognize that and remember it. This is not normal. And anything can happen.

My own take is that the Republican party has been working on a long-term solution to the problem of American democracy -- the problem, in their eyes, being that it is democracy. Now they've got Trump, and he's more than they bargained for. If we survive the Kim Jong-Uns (the one in North Korea and the one in the White House), there's still going to be a major mess in this country that we're going to have to clean up.

Somehow.

Pushback

Apparently I'm not the only one who was infuriated by Trump's "policy statement" via tweet about transgender servicemembers. There've been more negative reactions in addition to the ones I reported the other day.

First, Americans at large (via Joe.My.God.):

A majority of Americans believe that transgender individuals should be allowed to serve in the military, according to an exclusive Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Friday.

The July 26-28 poll suggested that the country largely disagrees with President Donald Trump’s announcement this week that he will ban transgender personnel from the armed forces.

When asked to weigh in on the debate, 58 percent of adults agreed with the statement, “Transgender people should be allowed to serve in the military.” Twenty-seven percent said they should not while the rest answered “don’t know.”

From a group of Senators. From WaPo via Joe.My.God.:

A bloc of 45 U.S. senators is asking the Pentagon not to discharge any transgender service members until the Defense Department completes an ongoing review of whether they should be able to continue serving in uniform. The letter holds no legal sway over the Pentagon and lawmakers cannot stop President Trump from carrying out his stated intention to ban transgender people from serving in uniform, but the letter puts almost half of the U.S. Senate on record as opposing the surprise announcement.

And a group of state attorneys general, who want Congress to cut Trump off at the knees (not that that will ever happen):

The top legal officers in 18 states and the District of Columbia have asked Congress to pass legislation prohibiting discrimination against transgender service members.

Hawaii Attorney General Douglas Chin sent the letter dated Thursday in response to President Donald Trump’s announcement, via Twitter a day earlier, that he would ban transgender people in the military.

The letter asks the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Armed Services committees to reaffirm in legislation that transgender people may not be banned from serving in the military. It urges lawmakers to include transgender protections in the National Defense Authorization Act. Eighteen other attorneys general, who like Chin are all Democrats, also signed the document.

(Sidebar: Yes, Lisa Madigan, Illinois' AG, signed. And both of Illinois' senators signed the letter from Kirsten Gillibrand noted above. Just so you know.)

And it looks like Trump may have made some positions in his administration harder to fill:

A former executive director of the Delaware Republican party has notified the Dept. of Homeland Security that he is withdrawing his name from consideration for a senior position in direct response to President Trump's announced ban on military service members who are transgender. John Fluharty had been interviewing to be DHS's assistant secretary of partnership and engagement.

“As I mentioned in our conversation, I am a strong advocate for diversity, both in the Republican Party and in government,” Fluharty wrote in an email to DHS, as Politico reports. “The President’s announcement this morning — that he will ban all of those who identify as transgender from military service — runs counter to my deeply held beliefs, and it would be impossible for me to commit to serving the Administration knowing that I would be working against those values.”

And just a note, in case I haven't mentioned it before: you don't get support from your generals if you don't keep them in the loop:

Top military leaders, including Joint Chiefs chair, didn't know ban on transgender service members was coming https://t.co/50bZm3lFBD pic.twitter.com/JgsgftKG0G

— CNN Breaking News (@cnnbrk) July 27, 2017

Late Thursday morning Reuters broke a story quoting the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who said in a memo that there will be no changes to U.S. policy on transgender service members until he receives explicit direction from the Commander-in-Chief.

Also late Thursday morning, USA TODAY reported Vice Admiral Robert Burke, the Chief of Naval Personnel, sent an email stating transgender service members can continue on as usual, at least for now.

USA TODAY obtained the email and reports the "Navy will not immediately discharge transgender sailors and will continue to provide them with medical treatment despite the tweets fired off by President Trump on Wednesday."

Way to go, Donnie.

Footnote: Interesting article in Air Force Times about some of the serving transgender personnel. Worth reading.

Today's Must-Read: The Evangelical Clown Show

I'm not talking about the evangelical "Christians" themselves, but what they seem to be willing to put up with from The Hairpiece. From Jennifer Rubin (yes, that Jennifer Rubin):

No group has been as blindly loyal to President Trump as Christian conservatives. They have not let religion or values get in the way of their support. Consider the “Access Hollywood” tape, the attack on a Gold Star family, a mass of inexplicable ties between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials (and the president’s open invitation to Russia to continue hacking), the firing of the FBI director, the humiliation of evangelical-favorite Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the politicization of the Boy Scouts, the threats to the special counsel and now an interview with Trump’s out-of-control, potty-mouthed communications director. What about Trump, exactly, reflects their values? (Taking Medicaid away from millions and separating families to deport law-abiding immigrants?) The Trump administration is a clown show — but it’s the evangelicals who supplied the tent, the red noses and the floppy shoes. Each day presents a new insult to the office of the presidency and a repudiation of civilized behavior.

She goes on from there. And the comments are scathing. Read it.

Today in Disgusting People

Pastor-Governor Mike Huckabee (who doesn't know the difference between the two) is not happy about the Senate doing its duty -- in this case, killing the latest incarnation of Trumpcare:

Time to repeal 17th Amendment. Founders had it right-Senators chosen by state legislatures. Will work for their states and respect 10th amid

— Gov. Mike Huckabee (@GovMikeHuckabee) July 28, 2017

The article goes on to theorize about the genesis of this idea:

Obviously he’s frustrated with last night’s failure of the Republicans to repeal Obamacare. But the reason that repeal of the 17th Amendment would favor his party is because the majority of state legislatures are Republican. The Republicans control both chambers in 33 states. Not because the majority of Americans are Republican, mind you. But because Republicans have gerrymandered their way into power.

I have another answer: He's a Republican, and Republicans, as has become more and more obvious, don't like democracy. Look what they put in the White House.

Via Joe.My.God.

Well, There Goes Fox News

This is funny, but also really scary:

Almost half of Republicans say they are in favor of courts shutting down media outlets that publish inaccurate or biased information, according to a new survey.

Forty-five percent of Republicans in the Economist–YouGov poll said courts should be able to shut down media outlets, while 20 percent of Republicans are opposed the idea.

Just 18 percent of Democrats said they would favor the notion, while 39 percent of them are opposed to it.

A majority of Republicans also said they support fines for media outlets that put out biased or inaccurate news reports.

Fifty-five percent of Republicans said they would favor fining news outlets, compared to just 12 percent who opposed the move.

I think this has some relevance here:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Emphasis added.

Actually, looking at it, it occurs to me that Republicans want to infringe on all of those guarantees.

Via Joe.My.God.

Idiot du Jour

Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX, of course), chair of the House Science Committee, on the benefits of climate change:

Also, as the Earth warms, we are seeing beneficial changes to the earth’s geography. For instance, Arctic sea ice is decreasing. This development will create new commercial shipping lanes that provide faster, more convenient, and less costly routes between ports in Asia, Europe, and eastern North America. This will increase international trade and strengthen the world economy.

I'm speechless.

Today's Must-Read: Antidote: Look North

Rolling Stone profiles Justin Trudeau:

It's strange to witness: He speaks in a modulated, indoor voice. His dark hair is a color found in nature. At home, there is a glamorous wife and three photogenic children, still not old enough to warm his seat at next week's G-20 summit or be involved in an espionage scandal.

He's such a contrast to that asshole in the White House -- but then, Trump makes Malcolm Turnbull look good.

One is tempted to think that Trudeau embodies the virtues of Canadians in general, and perhaps that's true, although he's not perfect, from an ideological purity standpoint: he's a realist.

His country has some problems. Canada's immense size makes it as much of a slave to fossil fuel as the U.S. in both usage and trade. No North Dakota oil field can compare with the Alberta oil sands, where the countryside is pockmarked like a B-52 bombing range. I ask him how he squares that with his evangelical support of the Paris environmental accord.

"It's a great question," Trudeau tells me while giving the distinct impression it's not a question he is psyched to answer. "One of the things that we have to realize is we cannot get off gas, we cannot get off oil, fossil fuels tomorrow – it's going to take a few decades." He shrugs a little bit. "Maybe we can shorten it, but there's going to have to be a transition time."

But on the whole, the contrast between Trudeau and Trump couldn't be sharper:

In 2015, Trudeau met Syrian refugees at the airport and handed out winter coats. One of the refugees thanked him a year later in person on Canadian radio. Trudeau wept. Another named his son after the PM. Meanwhile, Trump is pushing Muslim bans, and Mike Pence went to court to prevent any Syrian refugees from coming to his state.

"If we take in 40,000 Syrian refugees, it wasn't because the government sent a couple of planes and signed a decree," Trudeau tells me. "It was because communities opened up their homes, their churches, their community centers. Everyone said, 'Let's do our part to give some people in a terrible situation a better future.' We understand that bringing people here to build a better life for themselves makes the world a better place and makes our communities better as well. But I've only been able to do this because Canadians are open, generous and dream big for the country."

Shame on us. We used to be like that, more or less -- at least, we like to think we have been, and still are. For some of us -- most of us, I think -- it's still true. (This is from me, who lives in a "sanctuary city" in one of the most diverse neighborhoods anywhere in the country. You know what? We all get along just fine.)

And on top of everything else, he's gorgeous.

Read the whole thing, and try to figure out how the U.S. got where it is today.

Via Joe.My.God.

Oh, and if you're wondering about the motivation, Politico has a report:

House Republicans were planning to pass a spending bill stacked with his campaign promises, including money to build his border wall with Mexico.

But an internal House Republican fight over transgender troops was threatening to blow up the bill. And House GOP insiders feared they might not have the votes to pass the legislation because defense hawks wanted a ban on Pentagon-funded sex reassignment operations — something GOP leaders wouldn’t give them.

They turned to Trump, who didn’t hesitate. In the flash of a tweet, he announced that transgender troops would be banned altogether.

Trump’s sudden decision was, in part, a last-ditch attempt to save a House proposal full of his campaign promises that was on the verge of defeat, numerous congressional and White House sources said.

Gotta have that wall.

Via Towleroad.

Sickening: Update

Looks as though the Hairpiece's new anti-trans policy is not getting a lot of support. It's not only the usual suspects who are condemning it, but he's getting brickbats from the likes of John McCain:

Any American who meets current medical and readiness standards should be allowed to continue serving. There is no reason to force service members who are ready to fight, train, and deploy to leave the military – regardless of their gender identity.

Orrin Hatch:

I don’t think anybody should be discriminating against anyone. Transgender people are people, and deserve the best we can do for them.

Joni Ernst:

She believes what is most important is making sure servicemembers can meet the physical training standards, and the willingness to defend our freedoms and way of life,” the spokeswoman said. “Americans who are qualified and can meet the standards to serve in the military should be afforded that opportunity.

Log Cabin:

This smacks of politics, pure and simple. The United States military already includes transgender individuals who protect our freedom day in and day out. Excommunicating transgender soldiers only weakens our readiness; it doesn’t strengthen it.

Even Caitlyn Jenner has made a statement condemning the policy.

There are 15,000 patriotic transgender Americans in the US military fighting for all of us. What happened to your promise to fight for them? https://t.co/WzjypVC8Sr

— Caitlyn Jenner (@Caitlyn_Jenner) July 26, 2017

But, Trump is getting support from Matt Barber.

Addendum:

Add a little irony to the mix -- an anniversary: 69 years ago.

Digby's comment: "Trump and his voters would like to reverse that too, I'm sure."

Sickening

I wonder who's pulling Trump's strings on this atrocity (via Joe.My.God.):

President Trump announced on Wednesday that the United States will not “accept or allow” transgender people in the United States military, saying American forces “must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory” and could not afford to accommodate them.

Mr. Trump made the surprise declaration in a series of posts on Twitter, saying he had come to the decision after talking to generals and military experts, whom he did not name.

“After consultation with my generals and military experts, please be advised that the United States government will not accept or allow transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military,” Mr. Trump wrote. “Our military must be focused on decisive and overwhelming victory and cannot be burdened with the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail.”

Sounds awfully familiar, doesn't it? Like when the debate was going on about DADT repeal.

As for his "military experts," one candidate came to mind immediately:

Just in from hate group leader Tony Perkins:

“I applaud President Trump for keeping his promise to return to military priorities – and not continue the social experimentation of the Obama era that has crippled our nation’s military. The military can now focus its efforts on preparing to fight and win wars rather than being used to advance the Obama social agenda.

“President Trump recognizes what the nation’s military leadership and the American people realize, this Obama policy makes no sense.

“The last thing we should be doing is diverting billions of dollars from mission-critical training to something as controversial as gender reassignment surgery. However, the cost to readiness, recruitment, retention, morale and cohesion would have been even greater under the Obama policy. As our nation faces serious national security threats, our troops shouldn’t be forced to endure hours of transgender ‘sensitivity’ classes and politically-correct distractions like this one.

After all, Perkins was a Marine -- an MP, which somehow seems to suit his personality -- so that makes him an expert. He's also an even more reflexive liar than Trump, if that's possible.

Antidote: The Kids Are Alright

As a counter to reports of 47,000 Boy Scouts booing Hillary Clinton at the behest of The Hairpiece, I offer this:

Photo:  Jenny Burnett

If there was any doubt that Kamden Houshan and Paul Burnett would be friends forever, there certainly is not anymore. . . .

Kamden became a paraplegic when he was born with a massive tumor embedded in his spine. Though doctors were able to remove the tumor in surgery, the 8-year-old boy was left paralyzed.

Kamden's last wheelchair was so heavy and bulky, it prevented the youth from being able to freely maneuver household doorways. Since it could not fit into the bathroom, Kamden's mother always had to carry him, which put excessive stress on her body.

Then in August, Kamden was able to test drive a lighter wheelchair model – and he was astounded by how much of a positive difference it made in his life. Unfortunately, insurance could not cover the cost of another wheelchair for another few years.

Maybe the Republicans should consider Paul's solution as part of their "destroy health insurance" drive:

Meanwhile, Paul had learned about GoFundMe from watching YouTube videos. Upon hearing about his friend's troubles, he asked his parents if he could start a campaign for his Kamden.

In a matter of weeks, Kamden's page had raised $5,500 – roughly $2,000 more than their original goal.

It's not all teabaggers and trumpanzees.

Giggle du Jour

Remember that story about Ark Encounter selling its land to its non-profit arm to avoid paying a "safety tax" to the city? And then losing its state tax incentives, because the sale violated its agreement with the state?

Well, it just sold itself back to itself:

Three days after state tourism officials suspended an $18 million tax incentive, officials at a Noah’s Ark theme park have sold their main parcel back to their for-profit entity for $10.

The issue started in late June after Ark Encounter LLC sold the parcel to its non-profit affiliate, Crosswater Canyon for $10. The deed continues to describe the property as worth $18 million even though the Grant County PVA has assessed the land for $48 million.

Ark Encounter officials have declined to say why they sold the property in the first place, but the move in June coincided with their refusal to pay a safety assessment tax levied by the city of Williamstown. City officials worried that the sale might be the first step in the ark park claiming non-profit status, which would exempt it from property taxes.

Dear Ken Ham: Karma's a bitch, ain't it?

(Via Joe.My.God., and thanks for the image.)

Today's Must-Read: The Shape of Things to Come?

Digby cites this incident at the end of a longish article on ICE and its badly misdirected enforcement agenda:

We don’t know if Philippine National Police Director General Ronald dela Rosa realizes it. But no other event since the Duterte administration came to power has dealt a greater blow to the credibility of the police in the war on drugs than the treacherous killing last Sunday of anticrime crusader Zenaida Luz in Oriental Mindoro.

Ms. Luz’s killers drove by her house on a motorcycle wearing a bonnet and a mask. It was close to midnight. She was shot in cold blood while standing in front of her house, waiting for someone who had contacted her asking for help. It was clearly a ruse.

Responding to a distress call from village officials, a police patrol team caught up with the fleeing masked killers, who traded shots with them. Cornered and wounded, the gunmen desperately shouted “Tropa, tropa!” to signal that they were friendly troops. To their horror and shock, the police recognized the gunmen as indeed from their ranks. The assailants turned out to be Senior Insp. Magdaleno Pimentel Jr. and Insp. Markson Almeranez—out of their uniforms, moonlighting as vigilante killers.

Do remember that Trump really admired Duterte.

It's not as much an offside to an article about ICE as it might seem at first:

What he's seeing is a bunch of guys with guns and uniforms drunk with power believing hey have a free hand to go after a particular vulnerable population. I think

“I like predictability,” the agent said. “I like being able to go into work and have faith in my senior managers and the Administration, and to know that, regardless of their political views, at the end of the day they’re going to do something that’s appropriate. I don’t feel that way anymore.”

And the Trump administration wants to hire thousands more, many of whom will not be vetted or properly trained.

Papers, please.

Image du Jour: Snakes on a Plane

With thanks to commenters Michael R and djcoastermark at Joe.My.God.:

Today's Must-Read: Voter Suppression, Coming Soon To a Precinct Near You

This piece, by Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, is, to say the least, sobering:

Working inside the process, it is stunning how at odds with the fantastical, Republican rhetoric reality is. Safeguarding people's right to vote is a big deal for these volunteers. Ensuring people can vote and that the process is fair is a passion. Most (though not all) of our GOP counterparts here in this work respect the process. We who work elections know what a fraud "voter fraud" is, which makes us, I guess, both smarter than the president and/or smart enough to be president.

This morning, the New York Times again inveighs against this massive snipe hunt and national effort at voter intimidation:

It was born out of a marriage of convenience between conservative anti-voter-fraud crusaders, who refuse to accept actual data, and a president who refuses to accept that he lost the popular vote fair and square.

It is run by some of the nation’s most determined vote suppressors, the kind who try to throw out voter registrations for being printed on insufficiently thick paper or who release reports on noncitizen voting that are titled “Alien Invasion” and illustrated with images of U.F.O.s.

Its purpose is not to restore integrity to elections but to undermine the public’s confidence enough to push through policies and practices that make registration and voting harder, if not impossible, for certain groups of people who tend to vote Democratic.

That's just the tip of the iceberg. Sullivan quotes Damon Linker on some of the deeply anti-American efforts coming from this administration and the Republicans -- aided, alas by a not negligible number of Democrats:

There is, to begin with, the bill that would make it a federal crime (a felony punishable by up to a $1 million fine and 20 years in prison) to support the international boycott against Israel for its occupation of the West Bank. That 14 Democratic senators have joined with 29 Republicans in backing this flagrant assault on the First Amendment is certainly shameful, but it does nothing to diminish the outrageousness of those who like to portray themselves as courageous defenders of free speech endorsing a bill that would drastically curtail it. (And no, I don't support the movement to boycott Israel, just the right of others to do so, which is exactly the way liberal democracy is supposed to work.)

It just gets worse and worse. What's more frightening is the number of people who support these efforts.

Welcome to Trump's America.

Party Like It's 1955

Here we go:

The Trump administration is readying for a crackdown on marijuana users under Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

President Trump’s Task Force on Crime Reduction and Public Safety, led by Sessions, is expected to release a report next week that criminal justice reform advocates fear will link marijuana to violent crime and recommend tougher sentences for those caught growing, selling and smoking the plant. . . .

“The task force revolves around reducing violent crime and Sessions and other DOJ officials have been out there over the last month and explicitly the last couple of weeks talking about how immigration and marijuana increases violent crime,” said Inimai Chettiar, director of the Brennan Center's Justice Program.

They're not going to produce any evidence to support that assertion, because they're isn't any. They'll just keep repeating it, and enough people will believe it that they just might get away with it.

Sessions sent a letter in May asking congressional leaders to do away with an amendment to the DOJ budget prohibiting the agency from using federal funds to prevent states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."

“I believe it would be unwise for Congress to restrict the discretion of the Department to fund prosecutions, particularly in the midst of an historic drug epidemic and potentially long-term uptick in violent crime,” said the letter from Sessions, first obtained by Massroots.com and verified by The Washington Post.

States' rights! Yeah!!

Here comes the police state.

I just recently discovered that Illinois has legalized marijuana for medical use -- one of 21 states, along with another eight that have also legalized recreational use. Going to be interesting to see how this all plays out in Chicago. And it looks like Sessions may not have it all his way:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who publicly criticized Sessions for reversing Obama-era guidelines on criminal charges and sentencing in May, said he’s not in favor of the DOJ interfering with state policies regarding marijuana.

“I will oppose anybody from the administration or otherwise that wants to interfere with state policy,” he told The Hill this week.

Paul is part of a bipartisan group of Senators pushing legislation to allow patients to continue accessing medical marijuana in states where it is legal without fear of federal prosecution.

Legislation introduced last month by Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Cory Booker (D-N.J.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Al Franken (D-Minn.), Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Paul introduced — known as the The Compassionate Access, Research Expansion and Respect States (CARERS) Act — would amend federal law to allow states to set their own medical marijuana policies.

In case you had any doubts about what a piece of work Sessions is, read the whole article -- there's a lot more.

Fasten your seatbelts, etc. . . .

Via the New Civil Rights Movement.

Continuing a Tradition

Granted, it's only six months old, but in this world, that's a long-standing tradition:

White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci on Sunday said that President Trump does not have to pardon anyone in connection with the Russia investigation.

During an interview on CNN's "State of the Union," Scaramucci was asked about Trump's tweet in which he said: "While all agree the U. S. President has the complete power to pardon, why think of that when only crime so far is LEAKS against us."

. . .

"He's basically saying he doesn't have to pardon anybody," Scaramucci said when asked who the president is thinking about pardoning.

"The president is thinking about pardoning nobody...The president is not going to have to pardon anybody because the Russia thing is a nonsensical thing."

Fake News!!1!

(Via Joe.My.God.)

A lot has been made of Scaramucci's previous criticisms of Trump. His accepting this position, I think, speaks to his -- well, call it "flexibility." If the money's right. . . .

As for Sean Spicer, I have no real opinion on him -- I've seen reports that he's a real scumbag, and it's worth noting that he was communications director for, I believe, the RNC for a number of years, which to me just indicates that he's made a career of being a liar for hire.

Footnote: It's all in the name:

Scaramuccia (literally "little skirmisher"), also known as Scaramouche or Scaramouch, is a stock clown character of the Italian commedia dell'arte. The role combined characteristics of the zanni (servant) and the Capitano (masked henchman). Usually attired in black Spanish dress and burlesquing a don, he was often beaten by Harlequin for his boasting and cowardice.

What's New at Green Man Review

Chock full o' goodies today -- Tolkien, baseball, early music, and more -- so scoot on over.

Image du Jour: Republican Economics

Doesn't really need a comment:

Via Crooks and Liars.

Hit 'Em Where It Hurts

A couple of stories this morning that are sure to warm your cockles -- both, as it happens, from one of those bastions of "Christian" privilege, Kentucky.

First, remember Kim Davis? She's the county clerk who decided that the issuance of marriage licenses should be dependent on her definition of marriage, according to her Bible. Of course, she got sued, and, although she didn't actually lose -- the state changed the law to get her off the hook -- there are still bills to pay:

In a victory for same-sex couples denied marriage licenses by Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, a federal judge Friday awarded $222,695 in fees to their attorneys. . . .

U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered the state to pay the fees, rather than Davis or Rowan County.

He said Davis was protected because she was acting in her official capacity when she stopped issuing marriage licenses in 2015 on religious grounds after the Supreme Court held gay marriage is a fundamental right. He said the state rather than the county was liable because the state is primarily responsible for regulating marriage.

In a 50-page ruling, Bunning said he was awarding the fees under a federal law that allows them to be granted to the prevailing party in civil rights cases. He overruled a magistrate judge who had denied the money because he said the plaintiffs hadn’t really prevailed.

They prevailed enough to get their marriage licenses.

And, not all that far away, those good "Christians" at Ark Encounter got caught out in a dodge to avoid paying taxes. The story so far:

The Creationists behind Ark Encounter initially said they were building a for-profit attraction in order to get a lot of perks, including a tourism-related tax rebate from the state of Kentucky worth more than $18 million over ten years. But after the city of Williamstown said they would add a 50-cent surcharge to all tickets to pay for a safety fee, Ken Ham‘s team sold Ark Encounter to their own non-profit, Crosswater Canyon, because religious ministries are exempt from that kind of tax.

It's called "shooting yourself in the foot."

Earlier today, the Freedom From Religion Foundation announced that they had sent a letter to the Kentucky Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet notifying them that, because of the sale and new non-profit status, Ark Encounter is violating the terms of the tax rebate deal.

Guess what? They didn’t need to do that. Because three days ago, a lawyer for the Kentucky Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet sent a letter to the lawyer for Ark Encounter saying the exact same thing.

It has come to our attention that your client, Ark Encounter, LLC, is in breach of its Tourism Development Agreement… with the Commonwealth. On July 10, 2017, the Tourism, Arts, and Heritage Cabinet… became aware of a quit claim deed transferring the Ark Project land, with all the privileges and appurtenances to the same, from Ark Encounter, LLC, a for profit company, to Crosswater Canyon, Inc. a non-profit company.

And the icing on the cake is that the lawyer for the state quoted Ark Encounter's own website to point out that they knew what they were doing.

Both via Joe.My.God.

Culture Break: In Memoriam, Chester Bennington

Chester Bennington, lead singer of Linkin Park, reportedly has committed suicide:

Law enforcement sources tell us the singer hanged himself at a private residence in Palos Verdes Estates in L.A. County. His body was discovered Thursday just before 9 AM.

Chester was married with 6 children from 2 wives.

The singer struggled with drugs and alcohol for years. He had said in the past he had considered committing suicide because he had been abused as a child by an older male.

"Powerless," which I think is one of the band's most affecting songs:

Can We Talk About Tax Returns?

The man has no self-awareness at all:

The president also questioned why certain states were refusing to cooperate fully with the commission’s requests for voter information, hinting that those states might be hiding something. “If any state does not want to share the information, one has to wonder what they’re worried about,” Trump said. “What are they worried about? There’s something, there always is.”

Do I really need to comment?

Well, This Is Depressing

I think the headline itself speaks volumes about the decline of America:

On second thought: 1 in 8 people who voted for Trump want to change their vote

Only 1 in 8?

You can read the whole thing if you want -- it doesn't get any better.

Law 'n' Order -- We Don't Need No Stinkin' Constitution

Running true to form, Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III comes down on the side of the police state:

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has expanded the authority of law enforcement to seize criminal suspects' money and property, bucking a movement in Congress and many states to rein in a practice that critics said led to flagrant abuses and was unconstitutional.

The Justice Department announced Wednesday it was restoring so-called adoptive forfeitures, where local or state authorities can seize valuable assets from suspects under federal law, circumventing more restrictive state laws.

Asset forfeitures are controversial because law enforcement agencies often take possession of cars, homes, jewelry and cash from suspects implicated in drug deals or other crimes without first obtaining convictions or, in some cases, indictments.

I wonder how many gun-totin' white supremacists are going to have their possessions seized? Oh, wait: It's all about the War on Drugs, and we know who's involved in that.

In the previous eight years, adoptive forfeitures — mostly by the Drug Enforcement Administration — had garnered about $880 million, according to a March report by the Justice Department's Inspector General.

The report found that many of the forfeiture cases were not linked to provable crimes. It cited a case in South Florida that led to seizures of $49 million but not one criminal indictment.

You know where that money goes? Into the budgets of the police departments.

And strangely enough, it's the police departments who are in favor:

"We heard loudly and clearly from local police agencies that they think this is a valuable tool," Rosenstein said.

It's painfully obvious that the arguments in favor of this policy are so much bullshit, and it's also obvious that it violates Constitutional requirements for due process.

They can't even get Republicans on board:

Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif., who sponsored legislation this year to more tightly regulate asset forfeiture, called the new policy "a troubling decision for the due process protections afforded to us" under the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution.

"Criminals shouldn't be able to keep the proceeds of their crime but innocent Americans shouldn't lose their right to due process, or their private property rights, in order to make that happen," Issa said in a statement.

Six members of the Senate urged Sessions in a May 31 letter to revise the asset forfeiture policies in light of increasing indications that the Supreme Court views the practice as unconstitutional.

"Instead of revising forfeiture practices in a manner to better protect Americans' due process rights, the (Justice Department) seems determined to lose in court before it changes its policies for the better," Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, one of the six, said in a statement Wednesday.

Welcome to Trump's America.

Republican Are Just the Nicest People

This, from Digby, pretty much nails it:

Republicans have been trying to destroy the American safety net for decades. They’ve been hostile to Medicare and Medicaid since the day they were passed. They’ve been running against Social Security for 82 years. (They just tried to privatize it in 2005!) They will never stop attacking the ACA either.

This isn’t just about profits or ” free markets.” Consider that this Senate bill was opposed by all the so-called stakeholders: the insurance companies, the hospitals, doctors and even big business. It still has 48 out of 52 votes in the Senate. Conservatives simply do not believe that people have a right to health care. They see it as a commodity like any other, something which you should not have if you cannot pay for it.

By way of crude illustration, recall when libertarian godhead Rep. Ron Paul ran for president in 2008. CNN’s Wolf Blitzer asked him during a debate what an uninsured man who became catastrophically ill and needed intensive care for six months should do. Paul replied, “What he should do is whatever he wants to do and assume responsibility for himself. That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risk. This whole idea that you have to take care of everybody …” The audience then erupted into cheers, cutting off Paul’s sentence. Blitzer followed up by asking “Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?” Members of the audience clapped and shouted “Yeah!”

This sort of throws into sharp relief something that's been at the back of my arguments on the "Christian" idea of morality, and the lack of humanity in the Republicans' ideology, which has only gotten more extreme in the Age of Trump (although, if you look at it, he's a symptom more than anything else -- this extremism long predates him). As an illustration of what we're dealing with, this is instructive:

I'm a physician. If someone has a right, that means you take my skills and the fruits of my labor.

And this man's a doctor.

I've said it enough, but I'm going to repeat it: the right has no real concept of morality, other than following arbitrary rules cherry-picked from the 4,000 year old tribal taboos of a bunch of Middle Eastern nomads, because otherwise Daddy will spank you: morality based on fear. I suppose this is the more-or-less inevitable result of a group of religions based on servility and obedience.

In the real world, the more I study animal and human behavior, the more I'm convinced that our morality is pretty much hard-wired, and as social animals, there's one basic precept: we take care of each other, because there's a kind of synergy between the benefit of the individual and the benefit of the group: they seem to mutually reinforce each other.

Which leads me back to the contemporary Republican party, tainted as it is by libertarianism (and yes, I consider that a taint: I've long held that libertarianism is a morally bankrupt ideology). They've become the party of the aberrant. All the racism, anti-immigrant rhetoric, the "me first" attitude (disguised as patriotism, which is bullshit) -- all that simply represents a trend that draws the boundaries of "us" in ever narrower terms, which has been exploited by the demagogues on the right, who themselves have only one guiding principle: power, for power's sake.

America was predicated, if only subliminally, on the expansion of the idea of "us": the point was, we were no longer to consider ourselves as English, or Irish, or French, or German, but as Americans. The right has fractured that idea back into its component parts, playing to that minority that, sadly, has always been with us and that is incapable of taking that conceptual step.

(And, to pile irony on top of atrocity, note that so many of them profess a religion that was to be inclusive, that welcomed all: they've perverted that idea into just another little fragment of what should be an overriding "us".)

Add in the worship of unrestrained capitalism, and you have an oligarchical nightmare in the making.

And they call it "Taking back America" -- from other Americans.

I've started wondering again whether New Zealand is far enough away.

This Is Seriously F***ed Up

Via Digby,this:

More detail, from another post:

The number of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents who think that the Russians sought to influence the election, and that the Trump team intentionally helped them, has fallen from 18 percent in April to 9 percent now, indicating even stiffer GOP resistance to the idea. Among leaned Democrats it’s gone from 60 to 64 percent, not a significant shift.

The more Republicans hear about it, the less they believe it happened. And we aren’t just talking about Trump true believers. This is all Republicans, even ones who held their noses to voted for him. Considering the information we have, it would be fair to say “we don’t know what really happen,ed” but for Republicans to think there’s less evidence today than there was three months ago is bizarre.

Quote du Jour

The summation of this post at Mahablog:

But it’s also the case that for the more fanatical Christians in the U.S., the Bible ceased to be a scripture a long time ago. It’s become more of a totem, a sacred symbol assumed to have spiritual power that represents the tribe of self-proclaimed conservative Christians. What it actually says about anything is irrelevant.

(Emphasis added.)

I'm sure you can all come up with examples of "Christians" who give no evidence of ever having read the Scriptures.

The article itself is about the Green family, of Hobby Lobby fame, and their looted biblical antiquities. It's a good example of what happens to your sense of morality when your sacred text becomes a mere totem, losing all real meaning.

Today's Must-Read: The Votes That Counted

They weren't real votes, actually -- just billions of dollars worth of free publicity. From Mahablog:

A righteously frustrated Colbert King writes,

The vaudeville show that’s running at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue didn’t book itself into the White House. Nearly 63 million Americans sent that burlesque comedy with headliner Donald Trump to Washington. That 66 million other voters thought otherwise is beside the point. Trump didn’t anoint himself president. Millions put him in office.

What does that tell us about the country?

I would ask, what does that tell us about U.S. elections and how people make voting decisions? Many mistakes were made last election by both parties; little went according to plan. But I think a lot of the blame has to go to news media and how elections are covered.

Just one example:
 

I was never to frustrated with television news as I was on March 15, 2016, when three cable networks ignored a speech being given by Bernie Sanders in favor of covering Trump’s empty podium. Ryan Grim wrote at the time,

Fox News, CNN and MSNBC all declined to carry Sanders’ speech, instead offering punditry about the evening, with the chyrons promising, “AWAITING TRUMP” and “STANDING BY FOR TRUMP.”

This is what happens when the news departments become profit centers -- they're no longer a public service, they are entertainment.

Read the whole thing.

Today's Must-Read: The Right's Moral Vacuum

Tom Sullivan has a good piece at Hullabaloo on the Republican's complete lack of moral foundation:

After decades of accusations from conservatives that the American left advances reprehensible moral relativism, this week we saw that the real sin was having morals of any kind. What the Trump family modeled for the world this week is what it looks like to have none. Watergate veteran John Dean warned during the Bush II administration of the rise of "Conservatives Without Conscience." The Trumps consider that lack a plus.

"What stood out most in the interview was the moral emptiness of the president’s son," Slate's William Saletan wrote after Donald Trump Jr. appeared with Sean Hannity to explain away his meeting last June with a Russian emissary offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. What looks to be a willingness to conspire with a hostile foreign power to undermine an American election, Trump Jr. dismissed as no big deal. “That’s what we do in business. If there’s information out there, you want it." He might have done things differently, but he'd done nothing wrong.

It's not just the Trumps, although more and more I think that they're an accurate reflection of their class -- the movers and shakers, the "job creators," the plutocrats who trade in congressmen and senators -- it's the right as a whole: they've demonstrated time and time again that they have no idea of what morality is about. (This is only one example.)

Sullivan digs deeper, noting this by WaPo columnist Jennifer Rubin:

We have always had in our political culture narcissists, ideologues and flimflammers, but it took the 21st-century GOP to put one in the White House. It took elected leaders such as House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and the Republican National Committee (not to mention its donors and activists) to wave off Trump’s racists attacks on a federal judge, blatant lies about everything from 9/11 to his own involvement in birtherism, replete evidence of disloyalty to America (i.e. Trump’s “Russia first” policies), misogyny, Islamophobia, ongoing potential violations of the Constitution’s emoluments clause (along with a mass of conflicts of interests), firing of an FBI director, and now, evidence that the campaign was willing to enlist a foreign power to defeat Clinton in the presidential election.

Out of its collective sense of victimhood came the GOP’s disdain for not just intellectuals but also intellectualism, science, Economics 101, history and constitutional fidelity. If the Trump children became slaves to money and to their father’s unbridled ego, then the GOP became slaves to its own demons and false narratives. A party that has to deny climate change and insist illegal immigrants are creating a crime wave — because that is what “conservatives” must believe, since liberals do not — is a party that will deny Trump’s complicity in gross misconduct. It’s a party as unfit to govern as Trump is unfit to occupy the White House. It’s not by accident that Trump chose to inhabit the party that has defined itself in opposition to reality and to any “external moral truth or ethical code.”

I'd take Rubin's final comment one step further: the Republican party and its adherents are completely lacking in any moral truth or ethical code whatsoever.

Read it and weep.

Pandering Squared

OK. This one stopped me cold:

An imprint for HarperCollins will publish The Faith of Donald J. Trump: A Spiritual Biography in 2018.

The book will “[draw] on unparalleled access to the White House to explore the rarely discussed, but deeply important, religious beliefs and worldview of Trump and his advisors,” the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN) announced. The CBN’s Chief Political Correspondent David Brody will co-author the book with conservative columnist Scott Lamb.

The announcement follows two solid weeks of Donald Trump’s pandering to the evangelical community amidst increasing scrutiny of his administration’s ties to Russia, beginning with his decision to cost taxpayers at least $400,000 to headline the Celebrate Freedom Concert in Washington D.C. with anti-gay pastor Robert Jeffress.

If that's not enough for you, this is what CBN had to say:

“President Trump won over evangelicals not by pandering to them,” CBN wrote in their book announcement, ignoring that he’d pandered to their community since the campaign trail, “but by supporting them and all their most important issues without pretending to be something he’s not.”

The network continued by claiming that “President Trump has surrounded himself with believers who think he is the one guiding figure who can return us to traditional values—hard work, discipline, duty, respect, and faith—that have long been the foundation of American life and truly make America great again in all ways.”

The cynicism on both sides of this is off the scale.

What's New at Green Man Review

We start off this week with a quote from Chicago's "Saturday in the Park," which always reminds me of Sunday in the Park With George, maybe because Seurat's Sunday on the Grande Jatte is here at the Art Institute.

Be that as it may, check out the offerings this week at Green Man Review -- lots of books, music, even margaritas.

Today's Playlist

Just on a whim, I started off with Boiled in Lead's Silver, which was OK but not quite on point. Next came three albums from Brian Eno, and I'm finishing off with Corelli.

Looking at it, that's sort of a weird mix. But it worked.

Health Care Note

If you want some solid, detailed analysis of the impact of the Republicans' various attempts to strip health care coverage from the majority of Americans, check out David Anderson's posts at Balloon Juice.

Real policy wonk stuff, with real world relevance.

Antidote 2

Just remember: we're better than the gang in Washington wants us to believe:

The New York Daily News reports that 32-year-old Aaron Tucker was on a bus headed toward a job interview in Stanford, Connecticut, when he saw a car that had flipped over and had smoke pouring out of it just ahead of the bus.

Tucker, who had recently completed a 22-month sentence related to a weapons charge, asked the bus driver if he would wait for him if he got out of the bus to help people in the wreck — but the bus driver declined.

Tucker got out of the bus anyway and found the car’s driver strapped into his seat and hanging upside down in the car. After removing the driver from the car, Tucker noticed that the man was bleeding from his head — and so he took off his shirt and used it to slow down the bleeding.

Tucker kept the man alive and conscious before an ambulance could arrive to take him to a nearby hospital, and the Daily News says many in the man’s community are crediting Tucker with saving his life.

But it's not just him:

Even though Tucker lost his opportunity to interview for a job as a bus boy, he has since received job offers for jobs in construction and in a rubber factory.

What’s more, the community of Westboro, Connecticut has created a GoFundMe page on Tucker’s behalf that is looking to raise $25,000 for him to thank him for saving the driver’s life.

Like I said, we're better than Washington (and that includes the press) wants us to believe.

Antidote

When life hands you a bag of lemons, make lemonade -- for those who don't have any:

An Indiana bride-to-be, who cancelled her wedding reception at a pricey hotel, is not going to let all of the food and cake go to waste. Instead, she is inviting local homeless families for dinner after failing to get her deposit back.

According to the Indy Star, Purdue student Sarah Cummins, 25, and her fiance. Logan Araujo, had a wedding planned at the Ritz Charles in Carmel, Indiana with a budget of $30,000 to cover the whole thing. After canceling the wedding — for unspecified reasons — Cummins was unable to get her deposit back.

“It was really devastating to me. I called everyone, canceled, apologized, cried, called vendors, cried some more, and then I started feeling really sick about just throwing away all the food I ordered for the reception,” Cummins explained, saying she has worked an event planner at Ritz to rework the evening.

According to Cummins, she has arranged for buses to picks up homeless families at local shelter for the dinner this weekend, where the attendees will dine on bourbon-glazed meatballs, goat cheese and roasted garlic bruschetta, chicken breast with artichokes and Chardonnay cream. And, wedding cake, of course.

Wink, Wink, Nudge, Nudge

You may have run across stories about the speech Attorney General Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III gave behind closed doors to recognized hate group Alliance Defending Freedom. Well, after the threat of a FOIA request from Right Wing Watch, a transcript magically appeared at The Federalist. An excerpt:

Under this administration, religious Americans will be treated neither as an afterthought nor as a problem to be managed. The federal government will actively find ways to accommodate people of all faiths.

The protections enshrined in the Constitution and our laws protect all Americans, including when we work together, speak in the public square, and when we interact with our government. We don’t waive our constitutional rights when we participate fully in public life and civic society.

This administration, and the upcoming guidance, will be animated by that same American view that has led us for 241 years: that every American has a right to believe, worship, and exercise their faith in the public square. It has served this country well, and it has made us not only one of the tolerant countries in the world, it has also helped make us the freeist and most generous. Thank you.

Given Sessions' record, I think the title of this post is amply justified.

By the way -- ADF really doesn't like being called a hate group.

Welcome to the Bully State

The Trump White House has a way to deal with dissent:

Public comments on the voter fraud commission released by the White House late Thursday were overwhelmingly, and in many cases profanely, critical of the project.

The Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity posted on its page on the White House website, without comment or explanation, 112 pages of emails received through July 11, commenting on the organization’s request for states to send them voter information. The posted material did not redact the email addresses, phone numbers and home addresses of the authors.

“Please note that the Commission may post such written comments publicly on our website, including names and contact information that are submitted,” read a blog post published Thursday on the White House’s site.

Of course, the White House will claim no responsibility for any threats or retaliation on the commenters by the nutjobs who still support the president. Trump only claims responsibility for other people's accomplishments.

The Give-Away Continues

Now you can get Russian propaganda right here at home -- if you live in D.C.:

Russian state-funded Sputnik Radio has started its first broadcasts in the Washington, D.C., area, in an effort to reach more Americans with what it calls "alternative news."

Sputnik, which says it gives voice to minority views outside mainstream media and supports an anti-establishment agenda, broadcasts on the 105.5 W288BS frequency.

Critics say Sputnik functions as part of a Kremlin propaganda machine aimed at undermining Western institutions.

Sputnik Radio staffers say its broadcasts into the Washington area will allow Americans in the nation's capital to listen to them and not just to what is being said about them.

A sample of Sputnik's "alternative news" (read "alternative reality"):

For instance, Sputnik's webpage this week showed a front-page column headlined "Trump, Putin Up Against US Deep State," which argued that "the US Deep State comprising the military-intelligence nexus and their political media machine in Washington does not want to normalize relations with Russia."

The same writer, Finian Cunningham, in June wrote, "US global power depends on its presumed economic prowess and military force. With its economy in long-term decline, precipitated by the teetering dollar, the US rulers are relying increasingly on militarism to project power. That tendency is pushing the world to war."

It went on to say, "Fortunately, Russia and China may have sufficient military power to deter the desperate, waning American empire from trying to incite catastrophic war."

And just when did "catastrophic war" become a possibility? Why, on January 21, 2017, when Putin's preferred candidate was formally sworn in.

One question occurs to me: how did a Russian state propaganda station get a license to operate in this country? I mean, you don't just set up an office and start broadcasting.

Grabbing It All

The push of evangelical "Christians" to take over the country knows no bounds. Here's one of the most radical, Jim Garlow, with his solution to the problem of health care:

Last month, right-wing pastor Jim Garlow was interviewed by Megan West of the organization My Faith Votes, where he claimed that “healthcare is God’s issue” and suggested that the government should impose a tax on citizens that could be given to churches so that they could provide healthcare to the poor.

According to Garlow, any government healthcare program is “doomed to fail” because the Constitution lists the “enumerated powers of what the government is allowed to do and can do, and one of them is not healthcare.” Instead, Garlow argued, the government ought to defer to the church on this issue because God “has already designed a format” for properly providing healthcare to a nation.

We're already subsidizing churches -- they don't pay taxes, so we have to make up the difference. And just a clue as to what Garlow thinks is providing healthcare to the poor:

Garlow insisted that “the best medical care and welfare benefits can be done by the church” and should be funded through a “once every three years, ten-percent taxation on people” that would allocate money to “the faith communities.” According to Garlow, allowing the church to provide healthcare would “get rid of the freeloaders that abuse welfare.”

How Republican of him. One can't help but wonder who is going to decide who those "freeloaders" are, given the alignment of so many "Christian" churches with right-wing extremists and out-and-out racists. And who's going to supervise these churches to make sure that they're meeting minimum requirements for adequate care?

There are already real problems with Catholic hospitals playing pick and choose with what services they will offer and who they will treat. Can you imagine the nightmare if all healthcare in this country were subject to religious doctrine?

I'm pretty much poleaxed by the sheer effrontery of Garlow's proposed money grab.

Via Joe.My.God.

Another Must-Read: But Who Gets To Be King?

Tom Sullivan, at Hullabaloo, with a summation of the urge toward -- not totalitarianism, exactly: he's casting it in terms of aristocracy:

There has always been a muted desire among some of our neighbors, as there was during the American Revolution, for rule by hereditary royalty and landed gentry. Holding onto our republic against that impulse has always been problematic, as Benjamin Franklin hinted it would be. A yearning for a return to the old ways never seems far from the surface. It has seemed a little bit closer lately.

I've written repeatedly of my theory that members of the fringe right, alt-right or whatever are simply acting out a traditional murder ballad with their country. Facing demographic and economic changes that threaten to upend the traditional political and cultural dominance of white Christians in America, extremists among them are pursuing the slow murder of their lover because if they can't have her, nobody can. Donald Trump is their hands around her throat. Those hands (insert your own joke here) got tighter last week at the G20 meeting.

But that frame applies more to the middle and working classes. For moneyed interests, what's happening could be the denouement of a decades-old effort to roll back the New Deal and Civil Rights era projects that strengthened and broadened the middle class, flattened American society, and brought the country closer to (although still far from) the ideal of a society in which all its citizens are not just created equal, but treated that way. For the Caledon Hockleys who see themselves as society's better or at least more productive half — 53 percent is surely not exclusive enough — that was never their ideal.

No matter what form it takes -- oligarchy, dictatorship, de facto monarchy -- this is the end goal of the ruling elite.

Again, a pretty thorough piece, and pretty sobering.

Survey du Jour

Via Digby, this little gem:

Digby's comment: "It's especially neat that the "populist" GOP trusts banks and Wall Street more than labor unions."

I don't find that surprising: along with churches, Wall Street is one of the most top-down sectors of our society, and Republicans love their authority figures.

Today's Must-Read: Behind Closed Doors

Have you noticed how the Republicans running our country want to do everything in secret? While we're all focused on Junior's e-mails (E-mails? Where have I heard that before?), this is going on:

President Trump entered office pledging to cut red tape, and within weeks, he ordered his administration to assemble teams to aggressively scale back government regulations.

But the effort — a signature theme in Trump’s populist campaign for the White House — is being conducted in large part out of public view and often by political appointees with deep industry ties and potential conflicts.

Most government agencies have declined to disclose information about their deregulation teams. But ProPublica and The New York Times identified 71 appointees, including 28 with potential conflicts, through interviews, public records and documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Some appointees are reviewing rules their previous employers sought to weaken or kill, and at least two may be positioned to profit if certain regulations are undone.

That's just the tip of the iceberg.

I might point out that, contra the right-wing myth of "liberals" in government crushing our brave entrepreneurs with regulations, these rules were not formulated just to be nasty to the "job creators": they happened in response to abuses and problems that required government intervention. (For example, there's quite a bit in the article on pesticide manufacturers wanting to get rid of rules that require them to get approval from the EPA and the Interior Department before offering their products for sale, because of the requirements of the Endangered Species Act. Who needs that kind of headache? After all, what could go wrong?)

It's kind of lengthy, and in places perhaps offers more than you wanted to know, but it's worth reading, just to give you an idea of what's going on while no one's looking -- and how the government is stonewalling those who are trying to find out what's going on.

It's About Time

HRC joins the fray:

The nation's most influential LGBT rights advocacy group announced Tuesday that it will spend $26 million and hire at least 20 additional political staffers to deploy across all 50 states ahead of the 2018 midterm elections. The goal: replicate what happened in North Carolina in Senate, House and governor's races across the nation next year and make the LGBT vote one of the most forceful voting blocs in the progressive movement.

The impetus: Like so many fired-up left-leaning groups these days, it's President Trump.

“I think folks believed that after the Supreme Court ruled on marriage, that we were headed quickly toward a place of full equality in this country,” said Chad Griffin, president of the Human Rights Campaign. “And the president's attacks on our community — and so many minority communities — has served to be, in many ways, a great awakening of our democracy.”

Like many in the LGBT community, I've been more than a little ambivalent about HRC: they've been largely ineffective, and a few moves -- wanting to horn in on the Prop 8 case after spending years arguing against pursuing marriage equality, the focus on ENDA to the exclusion of everything else -- have given me a distinctly negative impression.

However:

The Human Rights Campaign isn't a newcomer to politics. The group has been around since 1980 and has field and volunteer staff across the nation. But Griffin said until now, the group had the resources to drop into a political battle only for a couple of months, then leave when it was over.

Since Trump got elected, donations to the group are flooding in (most donations are under $10), LGBT people are stepping out alongside other progressive groups to protest and, for the first time, there will be a dedicated effort to keep this community politically activated.

The Human Rights Campaign will be investing in all 50 states but will put its North Carolina model to the test specifically in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. They're all swing states, most of which Trump won, and all have big 2018 Senate races as well as some potentially competitive governor's races.

At this point, although I'm not from Missouri, show me.

Via Towleroad.

Antidote: A WTF? Moment

I really have nothing to say about this:

Ugly bunny fracas is swiftly broken up by the chicken police. pic.twitter.com/kTxMODYsGa

— Dick King-Smith HQ (@DickKingSmith) July 10, 2017

Idiot du Jour

I'm sure you've heard about Ivanka Trump keeping Daddy's seat warm (ahem) at the G-20 conference while he was off destroying out relationship with someone. The reactions have been less than positive -- except for Fox News' Harris Faulkner:

“It must be so frustrating for Democrats not to have any low hanging fruit. They’re grasping now. They’re really grasping,” she said. “She is there in a capacity of someone who has run a very successful corporation and her items are selling by the way, hot online.”

Words fail me.

Of course, this being Fox News, the discussion then turned to dissing Chelsea Clinton -- who, by the way,, has a PhD in International Relations.

Via Joe.My.God.

This Morning's Playlist

Coolish (relatively) rainy morning, feeling very low-key. Started off with the soundtrack to Hell or High Water by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis (yes, that Warren Ellis), with a couple of additions from Chris Stapleton and Colter Wall, then on to Philip Glass' soundtrack to Dracula, Pole's second album, and just finished Terry Riley's Lisbon Concert. Next, I think, is a group of ragas performed by K. Sridhar.

And then, we'll see.

Trumponomics at Work

Great way to create jobs:

In the coming days, the Trump administration will take steps to delay and ultimately rescind an Obama administration rule allowing foreign entrepreneurs to come to the U.S. to start companies, sources familiar with the situation tell Axios.

In real terms, this doesn't make any difference in anyone's present visa status -- the rule hasn't taken effect yet.

But what it says about Trump is -- well, it would be troubling if there weren't so many other negatives clustered around the man. OK, so he hates foreigners. We knew that. He doesn't consider consequences -- we knew that, too. He has no common sense -- yeah, that, too. And he has no clue about how things work.

Via Mock Paper Scissors, which offers this insight:

Entrepreneurs are going to start their businesses somewhere. What if the next Facebook-level success is Russian instead of American? Or what if Elon Musk had gone to the UK instead of here?

But he's going to bring back those coal jobs, for sure.