The Full Scorsese

Wow! That’s a great ad. It tells the candidate’s story in a totally relatable way and explains why the Tea Klux Klan incumbent needs to go without being angry or incensed in the slightest.

A+

I’ll throw some $$$ her way.

BTW, Squealer Hucksterbee Slanders is the latest Tdumbpnazi to get booted from a restaurant and now she’s using her official Shitter account to bitch about it.

This from the soulless liar who advocates for businesses, governments, and hospitals to refuse to serve gays in addition to stealing children from their parents and shoving them into Kidz Koncentration Kamps.

This tragic incident will occupy a full chapter in her upcoming book:

I’m the Real Victim, My Triumph of the Will.

@¡Andrew!: I continue to be floored by their thoroughgoing cynicism. Mitch and Cheney I get — they revel in being evil — but folks like Sanders take it to levels not seen since Stalin.

@¡Andrew!: You being from around those parts, you probably have a better perspective than I do: Does it work for its audience? I’m just a heathen lefty Oregonian, so of course I’m gonna like it.

@nojo: Beats me. I moved 2,300 miles to the left side of the country to get away from those people.

That video made me cry – this is exactly what I’ve been saying all along: GET UP IN THEIR FUCKING FACES AND CALL THEM WHAT THEY ARE! http://www.stinque.com/2011/03/11/southern-man-dont-need-him-around-anyhow/

DAMN! That’s good. I think there’s a Gimme Shelter sample in there. Well done.

Hey. Has anyone noticed that instead of referring to himself as “Trump”, he’s transitioned to “We”? So fucking weird.

I might have watched that twice.

@nojo: Well, Ft. Hood is in the district, so who knows? If they get enough airtime… But SMs often vote absentee in their home states if they have time to register at all. I missed the 1992 general election because my absentee ballot never came from PA. Later I registered in CA.

IDK. Is Texas A&M still in his district? When I hear “North Austin,” I think she might have a chance, but the Aggie vote could be strong.

@JNOV: I’ve watched it a few times. It is, among other things, a nice piece of craft.

Cook rates TX-31 as Likely Republinazi, so I guess it all turns on whom they can get to show up and vote.

@¡Andrew!: I don’t follow Cook closely, but let’s say on average they’ve been shifting everything left five or ten points — much more likely or lean than usual. That’s what we’ve been seeing in all those special elections — even where the fascists win, the margins have been much narrower.

That’s the Blue Wave — not a seismic shift, but enough to make a difference. And that’s where turnout makes the difference. It’s also where shit’s gonna get even more ugly this fall, since Trump knows in his gut that fascist voters are demoralized, and he also knows in his gut how to whip them up.

WHAT THE FUCK, WESTWORLD? WHAT THE FUCK?

@JNOV: This happened, and this happened, and then this happened, or maybe it was before, or maybe it wasn’t, but that other thing definitely happened, unless it didn’t, and then Bobby Ewing showed up in the shower.

@nojo: Did you watch the scene after the credits?

WOW!!!

Couple’s fundraiser to reunite migrant families tops $20 million

MENLO PARK, California — A viral fundraiser established to help one migrant family separated at the border continues to shatter records, pouring millions of dollars in donations to a small south Texas nonprofit. Now, the organization has to decide how to allocate more money than it has ever taken in at one time.

The fundraiser, titled Reunite an Immigrant Parent With Their Child, was started by Silicon Valley couple Charlotte and Dave Willner with the goal of raising $1,500, representing the minimum needed to pay bond for a single migrant awaiting asylum released pending his or her hearing.

By late Sunday, the couple had beaten that goal by 10,000 times, reaching $20 million and breaking Facebook’s fundraising record. Organizers have established a new goal of $25 million.

The Willners said all of the money is being raised for the Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, or RAICES, the largest immigration legal services provider in Texas.

The organization is on the front lines of the immigration battle in Texas, providing legal services to migrants, their children and refugees along the border.

@¡Andrew!: :-) And that doesn’t include the direct donations via the RAICES website :-)

@JNOV: Ed Harris goes to Robot Heaven, yes.

@nojo: This show better not go all LOST on me.

Have you seen Succession? If you make it through the second episode, you reap the rewards of your patience.

@JNOV: Never got into Lost — the couple of times I sampled it, they seemed trapped into padding out 22-episode seasons. (X-Files actually had something to do when they weren’t advancing the mythos.)

Westworld has been batshit confusing, but I decided to just enjoy the ride and wait for Moments. I can’t keep up with the plot, and I don’t try.

Succession: If Kieran Culkin keeps smearing windows, I’ll keep watching.

This whole civility thing – being civil got us Trump. Fuck civility. I’m so tired of hearing about civility.

@JNOV: Summer’s just begun. I think we’ll have plenty of incivility to enjoy before September.

When they go low, WE KICK!

@¡Andrew!: Yup! Remember that silly debate about punching nazis? We were so cute!

When Philip Roth died, I thought, “Well…time to read something he wrote.” I started with the first thing that was available from the library’s digital collection. It was pretty good. It was about some dude who recently died and had seemed to lead a charmed glove-making life, but it was impossible to know if that assumption was true, so the narrator filled in the blanks with a not-so-charmed life. I liked it. His daughter blew shit up and became a Jain. I’m too lazy to Google the title. I always forget titles.

Well, that’s not true. I sure as shit will not forget the torture that is Portnoy’s Complaint! The bad thing about reading a book on my computer is that I can’t tell how close I am to the end. When you hold a book and you’re 3/4 way through it, you might feel bummed because the story is almost over. You might get excited because things are about to wrap up in an exciting way. You know where you stand in relation to the story. On a computer, the ending can sneak up on you like the bed intruder.

About a week into Portnoy’s Complaint, I figured I must be near the end because I think he’s covered just about everything that could possible have made him so unlike-ably neurotic.

NOPE! I’m not even halfway through. How is that even possible? This is a shit book, and my life will probably be enriched by returning this shit book to the library and reading something else.

@JNOV: Don’t know what it is about Acclaimed Mid-Century American Novelists, but I tried, and I took a pass.

Heller, sure. Kesey, definitely. Kerouac, well, he’s for some of my friends. But the Big Names, the New Yorker/NY Review crowd — they all blew past me. Coincidentally — or not — Freud was also a Big Name when I was growing up, and he’s long gone. As is Jung, except for Canadian Incel Hero.

I don’t have a clear take on this yet, but it’s something I’ve noticed now for 35 years. They were really all novelists of a moment, and it was a big moment, but the moment passed, and now they’re all fading with it.

@JNOV: I think the problem with the second season (still entertaining!) is that it’s unnecessarily confusing.

The Dueling Timelines in the first season had an elegant narrative point, especially since we didn’t know they were Dueling Timelines until late in the game. That dovetailed with the cyclical nature of Android Life, the past eternally repeating itself. Nice work!

So now all the fancy people are shot up, and there’s little to be gained by moving back and forth. Maybe there was supposed to be a Big Reveal hidden in all that, but it was lost in the fractured timeline. I could never tell what came before or after Bernard washing up on the beach, and I gave up trying.

@nojo: Yeah…I’m not sure about Bernard on the Beach. IIRC, Hale finds him, but I think it’s not Hale but Halores, which would put the beach scene near the end.

Maybe I’ll binge it while I wait to talk to my shrink.

Mitch McConnell and SCOTUS. He really fucked the country. He really fucked the country.

So just to recap, the Republinazis stole that Supreme Court seat and that Kangaroo KKKourt has now:

1 Upheld the travel ban and greenlit openly bigoted public policy driven by hate.
2 Upheld purging voters in order to disenfranchise racial and ethic minorities.
3 Upheld blatant gerrymandering to keep Republinazis in power and deny the majority of Americans a fair say in choosing their representatives.
4 Gutted antitrust laws.
5 Enforced arbitration clauses in order to deny people their right to a trial.

This deranged regime is an illegitimate fraud and will not stand.

The Supreme Court should simply republish Citizens United in order to finish flushing what’s left of their reputation down the shitter.

Does THIS sound familiar>>>

From June 13, 1934:

Professor Henry J. Cadbury, a broadminded and liberal Christian friend of the Jews, said at the Conference:

“By hating Hitler and trying to fight back, Jews are only increasing the severity of his policies against them.

“If Jews throughout the world try to instill into the minds of Hitler and his supporters recognition of the ideals for which the race stands, and if Jews appeal to the German sense of justice and the German national conscience. I am sure the problem will be solved more effectively and earlier than otherwise.”

https://www.jta.org/1934/06/13/archive/now-12

The Onion: Tips For Staying Civil While Debating Child Prisons

Avoid unkind generalizations like equating the jailing of ethnic minorities with some malevolent form of fascism.

Recall that violently rejecting a tyrannical government goes against everything our forefathers believed in.

Make sure any protests are peaceful, silent, and completely out of sight of anyone who could actually affect government policy.

Realize that every pressing social issue is solved through civil discourse if you ignore virtually all of human history.

Remind yourself that you’re just two people having a cocktail at the same D.C. party and that politics is a game to you.

The results are almost in on the Great American Experiment.

@JNOV: I’ve been contemplating that thought for the Weekly Drivel. Whatever system you imagine, power will always undermine it. The Founders thought they had cracked that nut, but they couldn’t imagine Congress being lapdogs to the Executive. They should have paid more attention to their critique of Faction.

@nojo: I’m questioning the wisdom of making the Executive the Commander in Chief. He doesn’t need to take over the military, and we’ve outfitted our local cops with military grade gear.

I’m reading the Antifa Handbook. Might come in handy.

@JNOV: Not a problem. Only Congress has the power to declare war! Plus, no (or little) standing army.

As it happens, “Imperial Presidency” is a recent development. The book labeling the trend was published in 1973.

/a desperately needed uplifting perspective/

I don’t like to imagine Trump having pushed us all over the edge of the cliff, and to see our reaction as screaming in fear.
If I can do anything, it can be to refuse to be fearful. If I can, I want to be courageous.

Even as we are falling into this abyss, we are nearing the moment when we’ll land. We don’t know how far we’ll fall, but we know the landing is nearer. And when we get there, whenever we get there, we’ll look up and start climbing. Every protest, every conversation with a neighbor or call to a senator, every assuring word to a child of the next generation, will be like a muscle yanking us back up that ravine.

Tell yourself it’s going to be OK, because it’s true. Then tell your neighbor. They can’t scare us with this fall, no matter how long it lasts or how dark it gets, because we’re going to claw our way back up together.

Nothing could be worse than to feel like we’re suffering alone, that no one cares, especially when it’s not true. People care — no matter what Melania Trump’s clothing projects into the world.

Here’s one thing we can do while falling. Hold hands. Pull each other together. Promise each other that when we get to the bottom of this, we’re going to mend these wounds and then climb back up that chasm. We will do it together. Let’s make that promise in the urgency and with the truth that can only ever be expressed when faced with a horror like today.

https://www.advocate.com/commentary/2018/6/28/tell-your-neighbor-well-get-through-together

@¡Andrew!: I haven’t been pessimistic, despite the seeming tone, but I find it desperately important to see shit for what it is, to know what we are up against, to know in turn what will be required to defeat it.

A big part of this is the continuity of financial power, related to a continuity of significant white racism. The Civil Rights Act was signed when I was five, and although I was aware of the Southern Strategy early enough, and I was certainly aware of pockets of violent whites, I thought the racists among us were electorally insignificant — troublesome enough, but not overwhelmingly so.

That is not the case. America’s Original Sin remains with us. It mutates, it evolves, but at heart it has remained unchanged for more than two centuries. Whites vote their race, whatever the economic cost. And they happily allow injustices that sustain their status.

This is who we are, this is where we’re at. Nothing has changed — except the demographics. And there remains great ability to sustain white power in the face of demographic change, through the Senate, through the Electoral College, through outright suppression.

This is what we face. It is not a cause for pessimism, but a recognition that optimism must be tempered, must be very, very practical. This is new to us honkies. MLK’s generation knew it inside-out.

Multi-purpose sign for all future protests: It’s not a crime to be brown

People are asked to wear white this Saturday. My town’s protest is tonight. Olympia on Saturday.

No. Sign will read: Being brown is not a crime.

@nojo: All I can say is that Clinton won by 3 million votes, and Congressional Dems received something like 7 million more votes than the ‘pubs. The GOP maintains a jackboot on this country’s neck due to flat-out cheating through gerrymandering and the quirks of our truly despicable and destructive political system. It will not hold, which is why they’re so desperate to destroy democracy and stop people from voting.

By 2024, it may be demographically impossible for their racist gang to win federal elections, and revulsion over their policies may speed that up significantly.

Just had an appointment with my psychiatrist.

Dx: Going into a mania.
Rx: No politics, news or rallies until we right this ship – might take two weeks. I’m about to sedate myself. Can’t help anyone if I get fired or end up in the hospital. I’m not a bad person for putting on my oxygen mask first, etc. etc. I will not beat myself up for bowing out for the time being. The short term danger to me is that great, and the fight is for the long haul.

I’m going to get my mood disorder under control. I’ll be back.

@JNOV: Mass shooting at Annapolis newspaper. Break advised.

@JNOV: Take all the time you need to take care of yourself and recharge. The battle for this nation’s tattered soul will still be here when you get back. Hugs.

@nojo: So this time, First Amendment and Second Amendment Martyrs.

@JNOV: Hang in there sister.

Also, and I’m not trying to be alarmist here,
buuuuuuuuuuuuttttttt:

We’re now in a very late cycle of the soon-to-be second longest economic expansion ever.

The Chinese stock market has crashed, Shanghai down 20% from its high.

The US stock markets are flat YTD even after Big Brother and the Holding Companies blew their tax cut loads in billions of stock buybacks—US down 10% from its high.

Short and long-term bond yields are close to inverting. This has predicted every single one of our recessions.

These are exactly the kinds of stories that were buzzing around in the spring of 2008, and then… jus’ sayin’.

@SanFranLefty: Jesus. Now that we’re learning the shooter had a longstanding grudge against the paper, it’s all about whether Trump calling journalists “enemies of the state” applies here. Nobody’s talking about a dude blowing away five people with a shotgun, because they’re not students and the death toll isn’t double-digits, neither of which would change anything.

And summer’s just starting. God knows where we’re all gonna be come September.

To make matters worse…

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/jun/26/rising-seas-florida-climate-change-elizabeth-rush

@ManchuCandidate: “Florida is about to be wiped off the map”

At least there’s some good news this year.

Hope everyone just loved Infrastructure Week XXVIII.

@nojo: I just read that Carl Hiassen’s brother was among the victims. A very nice memorial in the Baltimore Sun.

@DElurker: I follow David Simon on Twitter — formerly of the Baltimore Sun, currently of HBO — and he knew two of the victims. Rob Hiassen was a former colleague and family friend.