Chipping Away, "Free Exercise" Version

Catholic Charities is at it again, and now the Trump/Barr "Justice" Department, Evangelical Division, has stepped in:

In the latest example of the Trump administration seeking to enable legal discrimination against LGBTQ people, the Justice Department is calling on the U.S. Supreme Court to allow religious-affiliated adoption agencies to refuse child placement into LGBTQ homes.

In a 35-page brief, U.S. Solicitor General Noel Francisco and other Justice Department attorneys maintain the City of Philadelphia has “impermissibly discriminated against religious exercise” under the First Amendment by requiring Catholic Social Services to abide by a contract requiring LGBTQ non-discrimination practices in child placement.

“Governmental action tainted by hostility to religion fails strict scrutiny almost by definition,” the brief says. “This court has never recognized even a legitimate governmental interest — much less a compelling one — that justifies hostility toward religion.”

The U.S. government isn’t a party to the case, known as Fulton v. City of Philadelphia, so the brief is completely voluntary. In justifying the brief before the Supreme Court, the filing makes the case the Justice Department has a compelling interest to intervene.

The City of Philadelphia is insisting that "Christians" abide by a contract. The horror!

The case came about after the City of Philadelphia learned in March 2018 that Catholic Social Services, which the city had hired to provide foster care services to children in child welfare, was refusing to license same-sex couples despite a contract prohibiting these agencies from engaging in anti-LGBTQ discrimination.

And the DOJ's brief looks to be 35 pages of bullshit:

Although the case involves Catholic Social Services refusing to abide by the terms of its contract, the Justice Department framing of the litigation makes it seem like the City of Philadelphia is an aggressor and unfairly targeting Catholic Social Services, asserting the municipality is allowing for exemptions in some cases, but not religious-affiliated adoption agencies.

“The City impermissibly targeted religious organizations for enforcement of its newly articulated policies,” the brief says. “Commissioner Figueroa testified that, in determining whether foster-care agencies were complying with the anti-discrimination requirements of their contracts, the city focused only on religious agencies, making just a single inquiry to a secular foster-care agency…City officials made no effort to determine whether other secular agencies perform home studies for everyone who requests them, or show preference for or against individuals who fall within particular groups.”

When this happened in Illinois, the state suspended funding to Catholic Charities adoption services and threatened to pull their license. Catholic Charities got out of the adoption business -- and a number of other agencies, including those run by the Lutheran Church -- took over their case load.

Via Joe.My.God.

Antidote

And just to demonstrate that most people are decent and generous, this via Digby:

As riots in Minneapolis continue, a center for low-income housing put out a call asking for food donations.

This is how people responded.

There was so much food it became a distribution center for anyone — at all — who needed it.

Humanity.🌎❤️😇 pic.twitter.com/5tEIC4TBKT

— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) May 30, 2020

The Lower Depths

Actually, it's more like a Jacobean revenge tragedy, with Trump out to get back at Obama for being everything he's not, and to hell with consequences:

President Donald Trump on Wednesday said his administration will urge the Supreme Court to overturn Obamacare, maintaining its all-out legal assault on the health care law amid a pandemic that will drive millions of more Americans to depend on its coverage.

The administration appears to be doubling down on its legal strategy, even after Attorney General William Barr this week warned top Trump officials about the political ramifications of undermining the health care safety net during the coronavirus emergency.

Barr, being a good "Christian", is worried about the "political ramifications"; the people who are going to lose health coverage if this is successful are simply collateral damage.

One hopes the Democrats will use this as a bludgeon -- at this point, since the chance of a decision before the election is vanishingly small, the important message is that "Trump wants to take away your health insurance during a pandemic".

It would be different if the GOP had an alternative to offer. They don't, no matter what they say. The ACA is on the list of social safety net programs that they want to get rid of, along with Social Security and probably Medicare and Medicaid. The magic word here is "privatize", which translates to "Our owners should be able to make lots of money off these programs."

Read the whole thing -- good background in case you've missed this story in all the sound and fury coming from the White House.

Via Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read: A Twofer

First, from Politico:

Views on how to respond to the coronavirus pandemic have become increasingly polarized, yet another political issue that for many culture war combatants is filtered through an ideological lens. The left has been almost uniformly — and loudly — in favor of sacrificing many personal liberties in exchange for containing the virus’ spread. The right has been divided, but the vocal activist wing of conservatism that has enormous influence on social media and Fox News, has been far more willing to attack the various infringements on where people can go and what they have to wear. . . .

For progressives, masks have become a sign that you take the pandemic seriously and are willing to make a personal sacrifice to save lives. Prominent people who don’t wear them are shamed and dragged on Twitter by lefty accounts. On the right, where the mask is often seen as the symbol of a purported overreaction to the coronavirus, mask promotion is a target of ridicule, a sign that in a deeply polarized America almost anything can be politicized and turned into a token of tribal affiliation.

Hide your irony meter:

Laura Ingraham warned that “social control over large populations is achieved through fear and intimidation and suppression of free thought” and “conditioning the public through propaganda is also key, new dogmas replace good old common sense.”

This from Fox's reigning Nazi Barbie, who has certainly done her share to effect just what she attributes to the left. It's called "projection".

Via Digby.

And from Digby herself:

Between McConnell making it clear he wants business to be given a pass on liability for failing to protect their workers if the blue states want to avoid bankruptcy and Trump demanding that the states succumb to his unhumane immigration policies if they want any federal aid, I think we are officially no longer one country.

This is now America, which is living under the US Constitution and Trumplandia, living under Dear Leader. Unfortunately Trumplandia, for the moment has the purse strings. It’s very important that America wins next November.

Ah, yes -- President Quid-Pro-Quo, who, as usual, is living in his own fantasy: It's not only blue states that are going to suffer:

Honestly, I think they’ll happily let people in their own states suffer if it means breaking public employee unions and their pensions. They aren’t even thinking about the rmifications. They just see an opportunity to advance their agenda and they’re going for it.

That's been the Republican party ever since Reagan -- "By any means necessary" might as well be their official motto. In that regard, I recommend this post by Tom Sullivan (OK, so it's a three-fer):

Watching workers go back to their jobs in life-threatening conditions to serve the economy punctuates the degree to which American myths are killing us. If the behavior of the acting president’s base seems cultish, it is because cultish behavior permeates the culture. A “deep sickness,” Digby called it the other day.

I frequently refer to the Midas cult, those of a certain economic class who view every human interaction as a potential for-profit transaction, who behave as though anything that might be turned into gold (profit) should be, especially not-for-profit public services such as education. For the Midas cult, anything less than private percentage off the top is a crime against capitalism.

The GOP has been working toward a return to the Gilded Age since forever -- after all, the billionaires own the party, and they are motivated by greed. I have to wonder what's missing in someone's makeup if they think they need five vacation homes or an elevator for their cars. There's something really wrong with these people.

Right-Wing "Values"

Today's lesson comes from Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick:

Claiming that he was “vindicated” by businesses being shut down by states’ stay-at-home orders, Patrick said on Monday night during a Fox News interview that the new plan to reopen Texas businesses was “long overdue.”

The Texas leader then doubled down on his grim argument for allowing people to be put at risk of death from COVID-19 to help the economy recover from the damage brought on by the outbreak – a proposal that was immediately met with a flood of criticism.

“What I said when I was with you that night is there are more important things than living,” Patrick told Fox News host Tucker Carlson, referring to when he first made the suggestion last month. “And that’s saving this country for my children and my grandchildren and saving this country for all of us.”

The next question, which these wise leaders never seem to ask, is "What kind of country are you saving for your children and granchildren?"

This sort of made me think:

“And I don’t want to die, nobody wants to die,” he added. “But man we’ve got to take some risks and get back in the game and get this country back up and running.”

These people -- and by that I mean "Republicans" and maybe some Democrats -- seem to think that things in this country are just the way they've always been. There really is something of a 1930s flavor to a comment like that -- maybe we need a good world war to get things back on track. Except these days, no one knows what the track is. We don't even have a unified vision of what our country is or should be. Yes, we've had ideological differences in the past, but we used to be able to find a middle ground. That doesn't seem possible any more. It takes a major disaster -- like a pandemic -- to get our representatives to work together. And it has to be really major -- nothing piddly like a hurricane.

And of course, coming from a Republican, you just know that Patrick is not talking about himself or his family -- he's talking about you and your family.

Vie Joe.My.God.

Today's Must-Read: Quid Pro Quo

Yet another example of the axiom "There is no bottom". This is just the way Trump operates:

As we work to find out the scope and goals of the White House’s seizure of medical goods across the United States, a simpler pattern is coming into view: the White House seizes goods from public officials and hospitals across the country while doling them out as favors to political allies and favorites, often to great fanfare to boost the popularity of those allies. The Denver Post today editorialized about one of the most egregious examples. Last week, as we reported, a shipment of 500 ventilators to the state of Colorado was intercepted and rerouted by the federal government. Gov. Jared Polis (D) sent a letter pleading for the return of the equipment. Then yesterday President Trump went on Twitter to announce that he was awarding 100 ventilators to Colorado at the behest of Republican Senator Cory Gardner, one of the most endangered Republicans on the ballot this year. As the Post put it, “President Donald Trump is treating life-saving medical equipment as emoluments he can dole out as favors to loyalists. It’s the worst imaginable form of corruption — playing political games with lives.”

. . .

Were these a subset of the same ventilators? Like money, amidst the COVID-19 Crisis, all ventilators are fungible. It’s hard to know whether President Trump even knew in this case that his pandemic task force had swiped away five times as many ventilators just days before. Indeed, we still don’t whether this is all a central part of the White House’s crisis strategy – grabbing supplies from blue states to hand out to endangered Republicans or red state allies – or simply a layering of corruption over the general chaos.

Remember when wunderkind Jared Kushner said "These are our stockpiles"? No we know what he meant.

Read it. It's more than infuriating.

Via Digby, who adds:

I think this is the tip of the iceberg. There is going to have to be a full pandemic profiteering commissions after this is over. The question is whether or not the Democrats will be willing to “look in the rearview mirror.”

I'm not aT all confident of the Democrats' willingness to hold Trump's feet to the fire -- although they did impeach him. Of course, with Moscow Mitch in control of the Senate, another impeachment will go nowhere. But if we succeed in booting Trump and his criminal gang out of office in November. . . .

Is Anyone Surprised?

Trump seems to want the economy back on track in spite of the pandemic:

President Donald Trump made clear in an all-caps stroke of midnight tweet he’s done with sacrificing the economy to save millions of lives.

“WE CANNOT LET THE CURE BE WORSE THAN THE PROBLEM ITSELF,” Trump tweeted at 11:50 PM Sunday night.

Now reports from several news organizations are giving that disturbing tweet even more disturbing context.

“President Trump and some of his senior officials are losing patience with the doctors’ orders,” Axios reports. “Senior Trump officials, including the president himself, have only limited patience for keeping the economy shut down. They are watching stocks tumble and unemployment skyrocket.”

\

Maybe if the response had been other than a bunch of tweets downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic, the economy wouldn't be in trouble.

and of course, this just illustrates once again the priorities of Trump and the sociopaths he has surrounding him -- money first, people last.

Antidote

Watch this. It's been all over the blogosphere, but this is the first time I've seen a video of this encounter. Nine-year-old Zachary Ro asked a question of Pete Buttigieg at a town hall in Colorado:

If you can't imagine the outrage from the usual suspects, read this. Keep in mind, though, that factual accuracy is not a requirement for right-wing commentators.

Image of the Week

Or maybe of the year. This is dedicated to all those "Christians" who support the acting president's immigration policies. (They're the same assholes who get all bent out of shape because some store clerk says "Happy Holidays!")

From the accompanying article:

Ristine described the Holy Family as “the most well-known refugee family in the world” in the post on Saturday.

“Shortly after the birth of Jesus, Joseph and Mary were forced to flee with their young son from Nazareth to Egypt to escape King Herod, a tyrant. They feared persecution and death,” she wrote, asking: “What if this family sought refuge in our country today?”

“Imagine Joseph and Mary separated at the border and Jesus no older than two taken from his mother and placed behind the fences of a Border Patrol detention center,” she continued, adding: “In the Claremont United Methodist Church nativity scene this Christmas, the Holy Family takes the place of the thousands of nameless families separated at our borders.”

It's nice to know there are some real Christians left.

Merry Christmas.

With thanks to commenter Bite Me Fan Boy at Joe.My.God.

Today in Christian Love

You may or may not have been following the Chick-fil-A story, but here's a short summary: Earlier this month, Chick-fil-A, which had gained more than a little notoriety for donating heavily to anti-gay groups, announced a change in its charitable giving priorities:

Starting in 2020, the Chick-fil-A Foundation is introducing a more focused giving approach to provide additional clarity and impact with the causes it supports. Staying true to its mission of nourishing the potential in every child, the Chick-fil-A Foundation will deepen its giving to a smaller number of organizations working exclusively in the areas of education, homelessness and hunger.

(Emphasis in original.)

The outrage in "Christian" circles is way up on the Richter scale, with such luminaries as Tony Perkins, the group that Joe Jervis calls the "red-caped Catholic loons" (for the life of me, I can't remember the organization's real name), Charlie Kirk (whoever he is), and Bryan Fischer calling for a boycott. It seems that not only was the company to cease giving to bigoted groups such as the Salvation Army (remember when during the Bush administration, the SA tried to get an exemption from non-discrimination laws?), but actually donated to the "god-hating" SPLC (one of the oldest and most respected civil rights organizations, which has the temerity to call out hate groups -- so designated as a result of their own words and actions). (Interestingly enough, all the stories I can find on that donation are at right-wing sources; I'm not going to link to any of them, because they have very little contact with reality -- the only thing they seem to have reported accurately is the fact of the donation and the amount -- a very modest $2500.)

And we all know how effective boycotts by the "Christian" right have been.

Anyway, according to Snopes, that's not exactly the case.

What's True

The Chick-fil-A Foundation's November 2019 announcement of a new charitable-donations strategy meant the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes, both high-profile groups that have been criticized in the past as anti-LGBT, would no longer receive funding in 2020.

What's False

However, the new donations strategy also meant several dozen other groups — with no anti-LGBT record — would not receive funding in 2020 either, and so the strategy does not appear to have been targeted specifically at the Salvation Army and the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Further, Chick-fil-A has repeatedly declined to specify that the cut to the controversial groups' funding was linked to their LGBT-rights records, and a company spokesperson would not rule out the possibility that the groups could receive funding again in the future.

So once again, there's a lot of manufactured outrage over something that didn't actually happen. I guess someone's not been getting enough attention lately.

And do notice how these "Christians" are reacting to a donation policy focusing on education, homelessness, and hunger. True followers of Jesus, right?

Criminalizing Humanity

At least, that what Trump's government (such as it is) would like to do. Didn't work:

Jurors found humanitarian aid volunteer Scott Warren not guilty Wednesday of intentionally harboring and concealing two undocumented migrants from the Border Patrol in the remote Arizona desert.

Warren, a longtime volunteer with humanitarian aid group No More Deaths, faced up to 20 years in prison. It was his second trial stemming from his January 2018 arrest in Ajo, about 100 miles southwest of Phoenix.

The 12-person jury in Tucson took just more than two hours to reach a not guilty verdict, striking a blow to federal prosecutors who opted to retry Warren after the first trial ended in a hung jury in June.

“The government failed in its attempt to criminalize basic human kindness,” Warren told supporters outside the federal courthouse.

I wonder if they would have arrested him if he was giving food and water to immigrants from, say, Slovenia.

And his base thinks this is OK. Even -- or maybe especially -- the "Christians" among them.

(Sorry -- couldn't access the full article for some reason.)

Footnote: David Anderson had this comment:

This was not a mistrial. This was not a judge tossing charges. This was a jury saying that the federal prosecutors could not prove that human decency is illegal.

Compare and Contrast

The difference couldn't be more stark.

First, well-known "Christian" con man, hypocrite and Trump sycophant, Franklin Graham:

Here’s a topic that probably won’t be mentioned in the upcoming Democratic debate. An incredible 2.4 million cases of sexually transmitted diseases were diagnosed across the U.S. just last year alone. Hollywood is busy promoting promiscuity to the world—almost every movie, every television show is focused on sex. The saying goes, ‘sex sells.’ Well, the statistics in the CNN article verify that there’s a price to pay, and it is a very heavy price. God made us male and female and gave sex for us to enjoy inside a marriage relationship between a man and a woman—not two men, not two women. The Bible says that anyone who sins sexually, sins against their own body. How true. What’s the protection the world is looking for? It’s simple—follow God’s guidelines. Have only a monogamous relationship with your husband or wife.

Interestingly enough, if you look up the CDC's statistics on incidence of STDs, the Bible-belt states are pretty much up there toward the top in each category.

And then there's someone who actually walks the walk: Tyler Perry has opened a new studio complex, with a few additional facilities planned:

Tyler Perry opened Tyler Perry Studios over the weekend, a 330-acre complex with 12 sound stages in Atlanta on a former military base that was once a stronghold for the Confederacy.

Perry said he has big plans for the complex, which is larger than California lots owned by Warner Brothers, Paramount, and Walt Disney Studios combined.

Said Perry: “You know, the studio’s gonna be what it is. I’ll tell you what I’m most excited about next is pulling this next phase off, is building a compound for trafficked women, girls, homeless women, LGBTQ youth who are put out and displaced… somewhere on these 330 acres, where they’re trained in the business and they become self-sufficient.”

Which one would you rather hang out with?

Today's Must-Read: Am I Surprised?

Not really: The "Christian" right is turning Americans off to religion:

A few weeks ago, the Democratic National Committee formally acknowledged what has been evident for quite some time: Nonreligious voters are a critical part of the party’s base. In a one-page resolution passed at its annual summer meeting, the DNC called on Democratic politicians to recognize and celebrate the contributions of nonreligious Americans, who make up one-third of Democrats. In response, Robert Jeffress, a Dallas pastor with close ties to Trump, appeared on Fox News, saying the Democrats were finally admitting they are a “godless party.”

This was hardly a new argument. Conservative Christian leaders have been repeating some version of this claim for years, and have often called on religious conservatives and Republican politicians to defend the country against a growing wave of liberal secularism. And it’s true that liberals have been leaving organized religion in high numbers over the past few decades. But blaming the Democrats, as Jeffress and others are wont to do, doesn’t capture the profound role that conservative Christian activists have played in transforming the country’s religious landscape, and the role they appear to have played in liberals’ rejection of organized religion.

It's beyond hope that someone as arrogant and self-absorbed as Robert Jeffress would confess to being the problem, if he could even entertain the notion. However:

Social scientists were initially reluctant to entertain the idea that a political backlash was somehow responsible, because it challenged long-standing assumptions about how flexible our religious identities really are. Even now, the idea that partisanship could shape something as personal and profound as our relationship with God might seem radical, or maybe even a little offensive.

But when two sociologists, Michael Hout and Claude Fischer, began to look at possible explanations for why so many Americans were suddenly becoming secular, those conventional reasons couldn’t explain why religious affiliation started to fall in the mid-1990s. Demographic and generational shifts also couldn’t fully account for why liberals and moderates were leaving in larger numbers than conservatives. In a paper published in 2002, they offered a new theory: Distaste for the Christian right’s involvement with politics was prompting some left-leaning Americans to walk away from religion.

I suspect that it has something to do with the fact that most Americans at least in theory believe in traditional American values: equality under the law, welcoming immigrants (and unless you're a pureblooded American Indian, your ancestors were immigrants -- although, taking a somewhat longer view, every human being in the Americas is descended from immigrants, given that there were no humans here until about 15,000 years ago), generosity, a government that actually does provide for the common welfare, those sorts of things, all of which are diametrically opposed to the Republican-evangelical program.

Do take the time to read the whole report -- it's pretty interesting, if a little soft-pedaled.

Via The New Civil Rights Movement.

Today in Disgusting People

But we knew he was a disgusting piece of work:

Acting U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Ken Cuccinelli on Sunday defended the Trump administration’s decision not to grant temporary protected status to Bahamians displaced by Hurricane Dorian, saying the government there is “capable of taking care of their own.”

“The Bahamas is a perfectly legitimate country capable of taking care of their own,” Cuccinelli said on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” adding that U.S. immigration agencies “rushed in resources” and noting that power has already been restored in the northernmost islands.

The Associated Press reported Sunday that the official death toll from the storm stands at 50, and some 1,300 people are missing.

Even though he's nominally Catholic, Cuccinelli sounds like an evangelical "Christian". I'm sure that the fact that the population of the Bahamas is 80% black and only 12% white has nothing to do with it.

And according to commenter BobSF_94117 at Joe.My.God., they don't expect to have power restored to Abaco for weeks.

This seems like an appropriate place to refer to this article:

I understand why it’s hard for normal people to believe that white evangelical Christians are sadists. Normal people have never been, as I was a long time ago, on the inside of that shadowy religious world. But the sooner they understand this, the sooner normal people will see that white evangelical Christian support for Donald Trump isn’t rooted in hypocrisy, contradiction or merely straying from the straight and narrow. The reason they support a fascist president is simple: They’re sadists.

The word “sadist” is off-putting. I get that. But if you’re thinking of sex, you’re thinking in the wrong way. If you’re thinking of “pleasure,” as in sexual pleasure, you’re thinking the wrong way. The pleasure white evangelical Christians derive from the suffering of human beings deemed less human than they are is not about sex. It’s about the pain, humiliation or even violence out-groups deserve by dint of being out-groups. Gay men, for instance, deserve their punishment because they are gay. Punishment for being gay is “divine justice.” From such “justice” comes pleasure—which is sadism.

The whole article is worth reading, but I'm not sure that the analysis is spot-on: it's more complex than that. There is, in fact, a large element of hypocrisy in the attitudes of too many "Christians" toward the suffering of others, and, notwithstanding the fact that right-wing luminaries such as Tony Perkins and Franklin Graham, and Cuccinelli himself, spend a lot of time and effort inflicting pain on other people, that's in direct contravention of the tenets of the faith they claim to follow. (I'm sure you've noticed that however much they drop Jesus' name at the slightest opportunity, they're solidly grounded in Leviticus.) And I think that one of the main reasons so many white evangelicals support Trump is that they're proto-fascists themselves: they want everything cut and dried, they need to follow an authority figure, and Trump's saying the things they believe but haven't dared to say themselves. While the author concentrates on the right's focus on gay rights, the idea does have broader application, as indicated by the article above.

With thanks to commenter greenmanTN at Joe.My.God. for the link.

And now that Brett "I Like Beer" Kavanaugh is in the news again, a runner-up (aside from Kavanaugh himself):

The tweet is deleted but they really did say it. Having an unwanted penis shoved in your face is harmless fun according to @nytopinion #whoknew? #brettkavanaughlikesbeerandslappingwomeninthefacewithhispenis pic.twitter.com/pXLphK9nld

— 🔱🧜🏽‍♀️🔱Neptune’s Daughter🔮🐚🐳🦀🐬🦞🐡🐙🐠🦐 (@TurtleTears) September 14, 2019

How clueless is the Times? "Harmless fun"? Seriously? What kind of person thinks that sort of thing is "harmless fun"? I mean, aside from Brett Kavanaugh and whoever wrote that tweet at the Times.

With thanks to commenter Halou at Joe.My.God.

The Real Americans

A sobering post from Tom Sullivan at Hullabaloo, one how Trump has landed the working class vote:

Don't go looking to Matt Taibbi for hope this Labor Day. Taibbi's jaundiced eye is particularly yellow in his examination of the cult surrounding the acting president. "The average American likes meat, sports, money, porn, cars, cartoons, and shopping," he writes at Rolling Stone. Democrats need to worry their 2020 pitch is relentlessly negative about all that.

What makes MAGA cultists love their hero is not his absent appeals to their better selves. Rather, Trumpism means never having to say you're sorry for being like him:

Ronald Reagan once took working-class voters away from Democrats by offering permission to be proud of the flag. Trump offers permission to occupy the statistical American mean: out of shape, suffering from gas, poorly read, anti-intellectual, treasuring things above meaning, and hiding an awful credit history.

It's a pretty depressing picture, and veers awfully close to stereotype, but then, Trump himself is a stereotype. (Stray thought: Considering his notable lack of success as a "businessman", is it any wonder that his administration is occupied by losers?)

However, there's a bit of uplift at the end:

Meanwhile, 94-year-old Jimmy Carter is back to building homes for Habitat for Humanity after hip surgery in the spring. The former president and his wife Rosalynn Carter head to Nashville, Tennessee in October to help build 21 new homes.

In MAGA America, because people are not selling merchandise emblazoned with his face or rude taunts, that makes Carter a loser. But in Jackson Mississippi, Habitat and $1,000 a month, no strings attached from a local guaranteed-income pilot project — Springboard to Opportunities — are transforming Cheryl Gray's life:

Gray’s relationship with money changed dramatically. She used to want to put her children in the hottest clothes to prove that she was providing for them, but now saw the value of visiting the clearance racks. She paid off $4,000 in credit card debt. She found an $11-an-hour teaching job at a preschool and another part-time job, so she could save more money. As her new bank account grew from zero to $1,000 to $2,000, she began looking to leave the projects.

And she's sending $60 a week for her children's tutoring.

Sullivan notes that "You won't hear that celebrated at a Trump rally."

The irony is palpable: Cheryl Gray is the icon, so beloved of conservatives, of the American lifting herself by her bootstraps -- she's the real American the right has worshipped -- until Trump. But Sullivan's right: you won't hear them cheering her on any time soon, or Carter, for that matter.

Maybe that stray thought wasn't so stray after all: Trump's cultists are really just a bunch of losers.

Humanity

This speaks for itself:

An emotional moment: Beto O’Rourke meets Sean Nixon, 20, a Walmart employee who was there at the time of the shooting and helped a child.

O’Rourke asked if he was getting counseling, offered his personal cell number and said to call if he needs help. pic.twitter.com/GryDGQJWeD

— Eric Bradner (@ericbradner) August 7, 2019

Can you think of a Republican who would do this? I can't.

Thanks to commenter Dazzer at Joe.My.God.

Today in Disgusting People

So there's this person who goes from state to state helping Republican governors slash their budgets:

A few days after a powerful earthquake hit the state last November, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy (R) issued an order increasing the power of the state’s budget office, led at the time by a woman who had lived in Alaska a mere two weeks.

In her newly empowered role, Donna Arduin — an infamous budget-slashing expert — and Dunleavy went on cut to hundreds of millions from the state budget. They aim to trim even more in her second year in the remote state.

It’s hardly Arduin’s first rodeo. The budget consultant has served in several Republican-led governor’s offices, slashing state expenses while cutting or resisting efforts to increase tax revenue.

She's hardly worried about the effect on the people who actually live there:

The University of Alaska’s Board of Regents, at a meeting in which they declared financial exigency last week, sounded less enthusiastic. The institution has been “crippled,” its president said, by the governor cutting roughly 40% of the school’s state funding — over $130 million. Thousands of students across the state found their state-funded scholarships suddenly defunded with the school year looming. “We will not have a university after February if we don’t make a move,” one regent noted.

Another Alaskan who had scheduled a dentures appointment four weeks after having his teeth extracted was left with gums flapping in the wind, after the governor eliminated Medicaid dental coverage for adults. That saved the state $27 million.

And she's crippled social services in other states:

In the process of cutting $8.1 billion over five years in Florida, the Los Angeles Times later reported, “Florida eliminated money for eyeglasses, hearing aids and dentures for poor seniors and forced 55,000 low-income children onto health insurance waiting lists.”

At a time when there is broad support for universal health coverage, assholes like Arduin are cutting funding. Her rationale?

“I joined government to shrink it,” she said.

Spoken like a true libertarian, which is possibly the most morally bankrupt philosophy that I've ever run across.

Of course, she doesn't have to bear the consequences.

Via Bark Bark Woof Woof.

Today's Must-Read: The Lower Depths, Part ? (Update)

Trump's mean, vindictive policy of separating families and putting the children in concentration camps continues, and the more reports I read, the worse it sounds. This one, from CNN via Digby, is more than horrifying:

A 14-year old told us she was taking care of a 4-year old who had been placed in her cell with no relatives. "I take her to the bathroom, give her my extra food if she is hungry, and tell people to leave her alone if they are bothering her," she said.

She was just one of the children we talked with last week as part of a team of lawyers and doctorsmonitoring conditions for children in US border facilities. We have been speaking out urgently, since then, about the devastating and abusive circumstances we've found. The Trump administration claims it needs even more detention facilities to address the issue, but policy makers and the public should not be fooled into believing this is the answer.

The situation we found is unacceptable. US Border Patrol is holding many children, including some who are much too young to take care of themselves, in jail-like border facilities for weeks at a time without contact with family members, regular access to showers, clean clothes, toothbrushes, or proper beds. Many are sick. Many, including children as young as 2 or 3, have been separated from adult caretakers without any provisions for their care besides the unrelated older children also being held in detention.

We spoke with an 11-year-old caring for his toddler brother. Both were fending for themselves in a cell with dozens of other children. The little one was quiet with matted hair, a hacking cough, muddy pants and eyes that fluttered closed with fatigue. As we interviewed the two brothers, he fell asleep on two office chairs drawn together, probably the most comfortable bed he had used in weeks. They had been separated from an 18-year-old uncle and sent to the Clint Border Patrol Station. When we met them, they had been there three weeks and counting.

Read it, if you can stand it.

Update: And if people try to help, Border Patrol ignores them.

Antidote, Pride Edition

This story has, as they say, gone viral.

This Oklahoma man is showing that ‘not all country boys are bigots’ with the Pride flag on his pickup truck pic.twitter.com/E56tscNkfU

— NowThis (@nowthisnews) June 24, 2019

I don't think I need to add anything.

The Day After D-Day: Remembering the Forgotten

This is something I didn't know, part of this post from Adam L. Silverman at Balloon Juice:

There used to be a prevailing myth that no black men participated in D-Day — by far one of the most important days of World War II.

But a closer look reveals that some African-American soldiers played a key role on Omaha Beach, and their stories still remain largely untold.

"There were no (Congressional) Medals (of Honor) given to any black soldiers for what they did at D-Day," said 90-year-old Joann Snowden Woodson. "People really need to know the truth.”

Woodson has been on a consistent mission to share the truth of D-Day with the world, as well as the service of her late husband, Waverly Bernard Woodson — one of the few black soldiers known to have served on Omaha Beach that fateful day.

Originally from West Philadelphia, Waverly Woodson was a member of the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion, an all-black Army unit that specialized in placing barrage balloons in battle areas during World War II. Their goal was to distract and destroy enemy aircraft and provide cover for Allied soldiers on the ground.

Waverly Woodson and his Battalion left England on June 5, 1944. They arrived on the beach in Normandy via transport boat the next day.

"He said he could see the soldiers being picked off just like flies," Joann Woodson reiterated. "Some of them were dead; some of them he had to administer the last rites. And some of them — I think he said he had to do amputations and everything."

Read the whole thing. And read Silverman's complete post as well. It's sobering when we think we've made progress in exercising our humanity.

(My dad served in the Pacific. He never talked about the war.)