Voting Won’t Work, BLM, Aunt Jemima, Confederate Teaching, Juneteenth

Sarah Cooper Explains How to Lincoln:

  • You want to change things? You need to vote, right?
    Jonathan Bernstein says voting is essential but it won’t work, at least not alone. You need to take it to the street: protests, activists, donations, reporters, and more.
     
  • Back when he was in office, Wisconsin Republican Governor Scott Walker pushed through a law that would cut health and retirement benefits for public employees and substantially reduce their right to collectively bargain. Fairly typical anti-union conservatism.
     
    Police unions were exempted. It was not an oversight. Busting police unions was not what conservatives had in mind.
     
    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson says it’s time to expand the law and apply it to police. Bust them unions. They stand in the way of reform. You know – – like conservatives have always said about all unions.
     
  • Since Aunt Jemima has gone the way of all syrup, the pressure is now on another brand. Ant Farmer’s Almanac finds that the parent company of Uncle Ben’s Rice will replace the current face on the box. The thought is that Ben Affleck is somebody’s uncle. Uncle Ben Affleck’s Rice.
     
    Okay, so they’re kidding. Satire. I knew it all along.
     
  • Frances Langum sadly notes that simple human decency is not enough to get Mississippi to take that racist confederate symbol out of its state flag, but maybe basketball can succeed where virtue fails.

  • At The Moderate Voice, David Robertson wonders if Southern children are still being taught the distorted history of the Civil War known as the Lost Cause. I recall some of that distorted history from my long ago childhood. Many of the historical falsehoods taught to children of my generation can be traced to a single academic source from the late 1800s, William Archibald Dunning of Columbia University.
     
  • Just for the record, Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post offers a brief history of Juneteen and its significance over the last 155 years. Apparently the annual celebration preceeded Donald Trump.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever reasonably speculates that my president is threatening prospective protestors at today’s Tulsa rally because he is trying hard to provoke a riot.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit notices a critical similarity between John Bolton and Donald Trump.
     
  • Nearly everyone thinks Trump’s unhinged legal action against Bolton and his book will fail. Green Eagle says nearly everyone is wrong. The lawsuit will succeed, if you know what “succeed” actually means.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil responds to local Republican optimism about the 2020 election with speculation about what household cleaning products they are imbibing.
     
  • Can anyone be more pro-Trump than Fox News? OAN, One America News, tries very hard to outfox Fox. With so many polls showing Donald Trump way-y-y-y-y behind Joe Biden, OAN decided to produce one with a more cheerful result.
     
    Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, reports that, sadly, their best efforts were not quite good enough. Still looks horrible for Trump. So they did the only thing true believers could do. They made their own poll disappear. They forget the link, though, for a time. Vixen took a picture of the error: Page Not Found (404).
     
  • So in President Trump’s own words: “If we stop testing right now, we’d have very few cases, if any.” Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger analyzes my president’s observation, and applies the logic in a well reasoned way.
     
  • In Scotties Toy Box, Scottie looks at the data and produces two graphs on the pandemic. One charts out what we think is happening, the other shows what is happening.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors finds easy to understand instructions for those speaking to public workers through protective glass. Yup, I can follow those directions.
     
  • Infidel753 is frustrated – aren’t we all? – by the dangerous attitude of many conservatives who seem to deny that objective steely reality exists quite apart from politics or religion. For example, the existance of a dangerous pandemic. Must simple health precautions be a political statement?
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is angry that New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy has extended the state’s health emergency by 30 days. I confess to being woefully misinformed. Up to now, I thought a virus-based health emergency would only get extended by the virus itself.
     
  • News Corpse looks into court documents as Fox News responds to a lawsuit. Seems Tucker Carlson allegedly defamed Karen McDougal when he told viewers that she extorted Donald Trump into paying for her silence about their sexual affair. He used the words “undisputed facts” to describe his characterization.
     
    Well … undisputed extortion does seem like a defamatory charge if untrue. Fox argues in court that viewers do not assume Tucker Carlson is telling the truth. Therefore there is no defamation.
     
    If I understand the argument correctly, Fox has filed legal papers saying that no reasonable person would expect Fox opinion personalities to tell the truth. So defamation is never a possibility.
     
    No harm, no foul. You can’t defame me if everyone knows you lie pretty much all the time. Not much of a motto, Fox – Don’t Sue Us – We Always Lie.
     
  • driftglass explores the dictionary and discovers a new word to describe ideological purists.
     
  • Cato’s Julian Sanchez talks with listeners about FISA reauthorization and several associated security, privacy, and legal concerns.
     

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