Farm workers laboring through thick smoke in Salinas, CA, area: https://twitter.com/PocketNihilist
From Nan’s Notebook:
As hundreds of fires burn across California forming a heavy cloud of smoke, these farm workers trudge on keeping the essential agriculture industry alive.
Of course they have few other options since there is no paid time off for sick days … and most of them NEED that $5.50 an hour (and $1.60 per box filled) in order to survive in a state like California with an outrageously high cost of living.
So they continue to toil under record-high temperatures and suffocating smoke — many without any protection from the terrible air quality. Even though state regulations require companies to provide masks for workers when the air quality reaches a certain threshold of “very bad,” it doesn’t always happen.
Few appreciate these workers. In fact, there are those in our society who look down on them.
Nation Building: Not a game
From Anthony Stahelski at The Moderate Voice:
We failed to transform South Vietnam into a democracy. The Nixon-Kissinger assumption that introducing capitalism into China would lead to democracy failed- China is now more menacingly dictatorial than ever before. Our attempts to help Russia become democratic in the early 1990s failed miserably.
Attempts to introduce democracy into the republics carved out of the former Yugoslavia have been marginal at best, and, despite our great sacrifice in blood and resources, neither Afghanistan nor Iraq have become democratic. Finally, despite the initial democratic idealism of Arab Spring, the only Arab country that has progressed toward democracy is Tunisia.
So should the United States give up nation building? Not necessarily.
Kimberly GGahhhuilfoyle roars at empty studio
From Strangely Blogged:
You know, it might just be another of those days ending in “y”, but let’s tear into this RNC week with all the verve of Don Jr’s girlfriend trying out for Evita whilst not being able to feel her lips. At all. Like, is her face even attached? What is going on in this picture?
Anyways, it was a tough day in TrumpWorld, what with the investigation in NY going on with whether the Trump Organization was both committing tax fraud and bank fraud being announced, and also with the “pool boy” in the Falwell saga coming forward with the receipts on a seven-year affair with both Mrs. and Mr. in what I believe the kids these days call a “cucking” scenario. Before being revealed as a kinky grifter, the son of the far-right Rev. Jerry Sr.’s endorsement was very valuable to Trump in getting a toehold on the evangelical set.
(And I assume the evangelicals will forgive Falwell, and continue to support Trump, for reasons.)
RNC Audience Frightened By Tim Scott’s Ominous Story
From The Onion:
CHARLOTTE, NC—Admitting that the terrifying details would likely give them nightmares for weeks, Republican National Convention viewers told reporters Tuesday they were chilled by Senator Tim Scott’s ominous story of a black man who rose to a position of power.
No Republican Platform this year, but we will support Donald Trump.
I never entirely agreed with Republican principles as I understood them.
When I was a toddler, they were the party of civil rights. That was the main reason my grandparent and parents were enthusiastic Republicans, at least at that time. I would have been as well, had they allowed twelve year old kids to vote.
The libertarian wing of the party had taken hold by the time I was a teenager. It was called classic conservatism in those days. The emphasis was on militant balancing of the federal budget, limited government, and elimination of the social safety net. The exaggerated embrace of states’ rights was part of the same ideological package. So was your right to sell your house to whomever you wanted – or to refuse to sell to anyone you disliked for any reason.
The flirtation with what was euphemistically called “racial conservatism” seems inevitable in retrospect. White racial resentment of black progress spilled into anger at any hint that somewhere, somehow, some undeserving black person might be getting away with something.
What were classic conservatives to do? Turn away those who wanted many of the same things, but for the wrong reasons?
The surrender to temptation came in increments.
Ideological conservatives would not tolerate racist talk, but they often did deny that racism existed, except in very rare cases. This allowed many to condemn civil rights agitators for stirring up trouble over imaginary wrongs. Racism was an artifact from the past, a mere rhetorical cudgel: an unfair weapon in a contrived war of words.
Throughout it all, conservatives made valiant efforts to advance their clear principles. Until those principles eroded, melted away by the alliance many denied.
Every four years political parties have reaffirmed the values by which their existence is justified. Political platforms are usually disregarded by political campaigns and ignored by office holders between elections. But they are valuable within themselves. They are a mechanism by which political parties affirm to the faithful that they stand for something, and that the something for which they stand is worth fighting for, is worth voting for.
This year has been a special year in that regard. We watched as the slow erosion became a meltdown.
The party of fiscal responsibility became one in which taxes are slashed for the wealthiest while expenses are driven upward.
The party of limited government puts children in cages and clubs protesters for the sake of presidential photo ops.
The party of civil rights has completed the process of repudiation even of the pretense. Voter suppression and the violation of basic liberties is now very much in the open. Democracy itself is seen as a partisan issue.
Many of us have waited with curiosity, wondering what sort of alternate facts, what manner of pretzel logic, would be shone in this year’s quadrennial statement of principle. And now we have an implicit acknowledgment, unexpected but truthful after a fashion. The statement of principles, the Republican platform, has been reduced to this: We don’t know what Republicans stand for, and we don’t know who to ask.
The RNC has unanimously voted to forego the Convention Committee on Platform, in appreciation of the fact that it did not want a small contingent of delegates formulating a new platform without the breadth of perspectives within the ever-growing Republican movement;
Attorney General Orders Fox to Muzzle Trump Critic – Andrew Napolitano
From News Corpse:
Another excerpt from the book was just published by The Guardian. This one describes a meeting that took place last October between Barr and Fox News Overlord, Rupert Murdoch. News Corpse speculated at the time that the meeting resulted in the resignation of Fox host Shepard Smith, which was announced the next day. But Stelter’s book reports that there was another topic of discussion on their agenda:
“The attorney general, William Barr, told Rupert Murdoch to ‘muzzle’ Andrew Napolitano, a prominent Fox News personality who became a critic of Donald Trump, according to a new book about the rightwing TV network. […] Trump ‘was so incensed by the judge’s TV broadcasts that he had implored Barr to send Rupert a message in person … about ‘muzzling the judge’. [Trump] wanted the nation’s top law enforcement official to convey just how atrocious Napolitano’s legal analysis had been.’”
Just to be clear, intimidating and manipulating the media is not a part of the Attorney General’s job. In fact, it isn’t a part of any government official’s job. It is a totalitarian tactic to control speech and clampdown on the free press. And this sort of suppression of the constitutional rights of journalists is part and parcel of the Trump Doctrine that has designated the media in Stalinist terms as “the enemy of the people.”
Senator Susan Collins(R-MN) and former President Bush
From driftglass:
As the Republican Party dies an ugly, protracted, very public and long-overdue death, the Conservative elites and GOP nabobs who have scampered away from the flailing monster they helped to create now appear to be permanently stalled in “bargaining” mode.
This is a state of being in which Republican luminaries and message-makers who have hastily emigrated to a fairer shore will finally acknowledge that something has certainly gone badly wrong inside their former party, but would now like everyone to believe that they never had the slightest idea that the Republican Party was full of Republicans all along.
This Year’s Disappearing Platform
From Cato’s Julian Sanchez:
Whether power is ever simply a means to address an emergency is worthy of discussion. Seems to be its own end in this case.
Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.
Frances Langum gets the humor. Steve Bannon jokes publicly about ripping off We Build the Wall enthusiasts, then actually does rip them off, in exactly the way he laughed about doing it. Yachts, anyone?
At News Corpse, Trump dimly recalls meeting Steve Bannon sometime in the distant past but doesn’t remember any fraudulent fundraising effort called We Build the Wall. NewsCorpse senses something is missing here and checks it out.
A crazed conservative pastor comes up with proof that Democrats are all worshipers of Satan. If you look at the 5 pointed star in the convention logo sideways, it looks like a pentagonal sign popularly associated with Wicca. Wow! That certainly settles it! Then tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors messes it all up by thoughtfully providing a similar display that is precisely 50 times worse. Anyone who guesses what it is gets to stay and clean the erasers.
A few days ago, Max’s Dad watched my president semi-gloat to a loyal audience that New Zealand, the so-called success story in the fight against COVID-19 with zero cases in over three months, was suddenly experiencing a massive explosion of new cases. Seems New Zealand was desperately trying to track down the source of those 9 new cases.
That would be nine.
Mr. Trump recently shrugged at 170,000 US cases with “It is what it is.”
Okay, so Trump’s last discovery of a sure cure for COVID-19 was a dud. Who could have known? But Green Eagle has great news. My president has discovered a new for-sure cure! He is pushing for approval by the Food and Drug Administration right away! Experts are alarmed. They insist there is no scientific indication it works, and it does cause heart problems. But those experts are always raining on parades. And it IS endorsed by the my-pillow guy.
Besides, a lot of us who listen to our leader just want this pandemic hoax to end so we can stop injecting household cleaning products.
North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz presents Christians with Christian logic. If, as we believe, God exists, then science comes from God. Science presents us with knowledge that we can use to save lives. So we also must know that God wants each of us to wear a mask. So wear the damn thing!
So President Trump will be visiting a restaurant in Virginia? At The Onion, alarmed restaurant officials are creating emergency plans in case Trump refuses to leave.
Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger brings an analysis that gives us an 85% chance of a Biden Presidency. It occurs to me that it would be close to your chance of surviving a game of Russian Roulette. Anyone comfortable with those odds? How about, instead of pulling that trigger, we all vote?
Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara objects to a study of Trump appeals to white fear. Eddie Glaude of Princeton University says that it is an appeal to apprehension about change: “It’s all rooted in this panic about the place of white people in this new America.” Michael is indignant. The professor should realize that no group should have a special place in American society! In my home we call this missing the point.
Scotties Toy Box carries the angry reaction of a public performer to being fired, just for criticizing Dolly Parton. I mean, who can’t benefit from a little constructive criticism? Like “freak titted” or “slut” or “old Southern bimbo”? We can be glad he had the tiny bit of good sense to use a euphemism when he got around to calling her “a BLM Lover”. Her endorsement of Black Lives Matter is what set the guy off. Why should a performer lose his job just for that? For some reason, Scottie seems unsympathetic.
Dave Dubya is kind of proud at successfully getting banned by a self-described Proud Boy, who nonetheless insists he is not a racist. Dave provides highlights of the beating Proud Boy was getting in print before Proudy ran away.
Republican Senator Martha McSally is in election trouble in Arizona. She pleads with conservatives to sacrifice a few meals to give her some recovery funds. Cato’s Julian Sanchez reacts with a much more entertaining response than “Huh?”
