Events

I'll circle back to a couple of these later today. But at the moment, I've got the following queued up for my lunch hour: The Washington Post charitably describes yesterday's press conference in France as "a glimpse into Trump's unorthodox mind." As in, he lied through the whole thing. MSNBC says the G7 as a whole (which ended in the aforementioned presser) shows that other world leaders have learned to manipulate the president pretty well. Brazil, meanwhile has become the latest country to discover...

Writer Jennifer Rubin argues that the Democratic Party needs to present the president as what he really is: After all, Trump’s most defining feature these days is a frightful, manic personality more detached from reality than ever before. We don’t need a medical diagnosis or the 25th Amendment to conclude Trump is crazy in the colloquial sense — cuckoo, nuts, non compos mentis, off his rocker, unhinged. Even Republicans who like the tax cuts or the judges at some level understand this is not normal...

Walking 26,000 steps, catching Oklahoma!, and eating pastrami and a random slice on Lexington Avenue in the last 24 hours have distracted me from posting. Regular blogging continues tomorrow. And wow, Oklahoma! was totally worth it.

In The Daily Parker's occasional series on logical fallacies, we now come to my favorite: Non sequitur "It does not follow." That is, the argument does not have anything to do with the point under discussion. Sometimes non sequiturs make you wonder about the other person's sanity. Example, in poetry: Haikus are simpleBut sometimes they don't make senseRefrigerator If you look up "non sequitur" in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary, you will see this quote: "They've won five wars where the armies that...

In the articles I linked earlier today, one noted at 10th Circuit decision about so-called "faithless electors:" The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Tuesday that the Colorado secretary of state violated the Constitution in 2016 when he removed an elector and nullified his vote because the elector refused to cast his ballot for Democrat Hillary Clinton, who won the popular vote. The Electoral College system is established in the Constitution. When voters cast a ballot for president, they are...

So much to read, so much eye strain from the fluorescent lights: The federal budget deficit will hit $1 trillion in 2020, due mainly to the Republican tax cuts and spending increases. Note that Republicans have raised holy hell for smaller deficits during Democratic administrations. The 10th Circuit ruled this week that electors can vote for anyone they choose, which could have subtle effects in any presidential election. Drew Margary warns that President Trump "is not a cosmic 404 error." Brookings...

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Art Spiegelman (Maus) submitted an essay for a Marvel Comics compendium to be published this fall, but withdrew it when Marvel asked him to delete a reference to the "Orange Skull." The Guardian published it instead: Auschwitz and Hiroshima make more sense as dark comic book cataclysms than as events in our real world. In today’s all too real world, Captain America’s most nefarious villain, the Red Skull, is alive on screen and an Orange Skull haunts America. International...

Author Matt Grossmann argues that the Republican Party hasn't gotten their agenda through the states because most people just don't like their agenda: Where Republicans gained policy victories, the consequences on the ground were surprisingly limited. Abortion and gun laws changed in every state, but not enough for Republican control to produce changes in state abortion numbers or crime rates. Republicans opposed raising income taxes on the rich, but not enough to exacerbate inequality or accelerate...

Bruce Schneier has an eight-step plan—though he recognizes Step 1 might not be possible: Since the 2016 US presidential election, there have been an endless series of ideas about how countries can defend themselves. It's time to pull those together into a comprehensive approach to defending the public sphere and the institutions of democracy. Influence operations don't come out of nowhere. They exploit a series of predictable weaknesses -- and fixing those holes should be the first step in fighting...

Apparently the morning people haven't let up in their assault on us night people: [S]o far, legislation to go on year-round daylight saving time has passed in at least seven states, including Delaware, Maine and Tennessee this year, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Oregon was the most recent, approving year-round daylight saving on June 17. “After the 2018 time change, I don’t know what happened, but people got grouchy,” Oregon state Rep. Bill Post, a Republican who sponsored...