The Commentariat -- June 16, 2021

Afternoon Update:

Jonathan Lemire, et al., of the AP: "President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin concluded their summit on Wednesday with an agreement to return their nations' ambassadors to their posts in Washington and Moscow and a plan to begin work toward replacing the last remaining treaty between the two countries limiting nuclear weapons. But the two leaders offered starkly different views on difficult simmering issues including cyber and ransomware attacks originating from Russia. Putin insisted anew that his country has nothing to do with such attacks, despite U..S. intelligence that indicates otherwise. Biden, meanwhile, said that he made clear to Putin that if Russia crossed certain red lines -- including going after major American infrastructure -- his administration would respond and 'the consequences of that would be devastating[.]'"

Rachel Siegel & Jeff Stein of the Washington Post: "The Federal Reserve expects inflation will climb to 3.4 percent this year, higher than the central bank's previous forecasts, while also projecting for the first time that there could be two interest rate hikes in 2023. As recently as March, the Fed predicted inflation would be 2.4 percent for this year. Earlier estimates didn't project an initial rate hike until 2024. Fed leaders also moved up estimates for when interest rates could rise from near zero. Projections released after the Fed's two-day policy meeting showed that the Fed now expects to make two rate increases by the end of 2023, sooner than previously expected." The AP's story is here.

~~~~~~~~~~

The New York Times is liveblogging the meeting today between President Biden & Vladimir Putin. The Washington Post's liveblog is here. MB: Unless the two get in an armed duel that spills out into the hall, I don't see what there is to blog about. According to what I read/heard yesterday, Biden & Putin were supposed to meet for four or five hours behind closed doors.

David McCabe & Cecilia Kang of the New York Times: "President Biden named Lina Khan, a prominent critic of Big Tech, as the chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission, the White House said on Tuesday, a signal that the agency is likely to crack down further on the industry's giants. Earlier in the day, the Senate voted across party lines, 69 to 28, to confirm Ms. Khan as a commissioner. The president may name any commissioner to lead the agency, which investigates antitrust violations, deceptive trade practices and data privacy lapses in Silicon Valley and throughout corporate America. Ms. Khan, 32, was sworn in on Tuesday, making her the youngest chair in the F.T.C.'s history." The AP's story is here.

Tyler Pager of the Washington Post: "President Biden announced his first slate of political ambassadors Tuesday, selecting longtime Washington hands for key foreign postings. Biden will nominate Thomas R. Nides, a former State Department official, to serve as the ambassador to Israel; Julie Smith, a former Biden national security adviser, as the ambassador to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization; and Ken Salazar, the former secretary of the interior and senator from Colorado, as the ambassador to Mexico.... Biden also will nominate C.B. 'Sully' Sullenberger III,who safely landed a plane on the Hudson River after a dual engine failure in 2009, as the ambassador to the Council of the International Civil Aviation Organization and Cynthia Ann Telles, a UCLA professor of psychiatry, to serve as ambassador to Costa Rica."

Adrian Blanco of the Washington Post: "President Biden and the Democrat-led Senate have moved quickly to boost minority and female representation on the federal courts following Donald Trump's four-year push to remake the judiciary, in which he nominated a large share of White, male justices. Biden's early judicial slate represents a departure from his recent predecessors; his initial picks are more diverse, and Biden rolled out more nominations earlier in his presidency than others.... In his first four months, Biden nominated as many minority women to the federal bench as Trump had confirmed in his entire four years. A Washington Post analysis of Federal Judicial Center data shows all women, regardless of race or ethnicity, are underrepresented on the judiciary."

Cleaning Up After Betsy. Collin Binkley of the AP: "The U.S. Education Department said Wednesday it's erasing student debt for thousands of borrowers who attended a for-profit college chain that made exaggerated claims about its graduates' success in finding jobs. The Biden administration said it is approving 18,000 loan forgiveness claims from former students of ITT Technical Institute, a chain that closed in 2016 after being dealt a series of sanctions by the Obama administration. The new loan discharges will clear more than $500 million in debt. The move marks a step forward in the Biden administration's effort to clear a backlog of claims in the borrower defense program, which provides loan forgiveness to students who were defrauded by their colleges. Claims piled up during the Trump administration, which stalled the program and only started processing claims after a federal court demanded it. There are now more than 100,000 pending claims."

Andrew Desiderio & Marianne Levine of Politico: "Hill Democrats are intensifying pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland to clean house at the Justice Department following revelations that Donald Trump's DOJ secretly seized communication records belonging to Democratic lawmakers, congressional staffers and journalists. Garland, who served as a federal judge for two decades, has worked to reassure Democrats that he's taking the issue seriously and pledged to support an independent inspector general's investigation into the matter. But Democrats are quickly growing impatient and already taking matters into their own hands -- opening a formal probe this week to determine who was responsible and hold them accountable." ~~~

~~~ Rip Van Garland. Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "After days of tumult following revelations that the Trump administration deployed warrants to investigate news reporters and members of Congress in leak investigations, Attorney General Merrick Garland issued a tepid response on Monday.... Garland entered office without a clear commitment to investigate all problematic conduct in the prior administration.... He has also never indicated as to whether, now that ... Donald Trump is out of office, the department would follow up on alleged illegal conduct examined by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III (e.g., obstruction of justice, perjury, witness tampering).... Garland seems to be operating as though we had not undergone four years of the Justice Department running afoul of ethical standards and department policy -- or worse, of the law."

Documents obtained by the Committee ... show that in December 2020 and early January 2021, President Trump, his Chief of Staff, and outside allies repeatedly put pressure on senior DOJ officials to challenge the results of the presidential election and advance unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud, with the apparent goal of keeping President Trump in power despite losing the 2020 election. -- House Oversight Committee ~~~

~~~ digby publishes the full Oversight Committee release. It's not that long, and it is worth reading. And digby lays out the simple truth of the current situation: "They're all getting away with plotting a coup. Nothing is happening to any of them." (Why is that? See also Jennifer Rubin's WashPo column on Garland, linked above) ~~~

~~~ "Pure Insanity." Whitney Wild, et al., of CNN: "... a batch of emails released by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on Tuesday ... show how Trump's White House assistant, chief of staff and other allies pressured the Justice Department to investigate claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election -- and how Trump directed allies to push [Acting AG Jeffrey] Rosen to join the legal effort to challenge the election result.... The emails also provide new detail into how Mark Meadows, then-White House chief of staff, directed Rosen to have then-Assistant Attorney General Jeffrey Clark -- who reportedly urged Trump to make him acting attorney general instead of Rosen -- investigate voter fraud issues in Georgia before the US attorney there resigned in January. Amid the pressure, Rosen said he refused to speak to Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani about his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen.... When Meadows sent Rosen a YouTube video link about Italian satellites, Rosen forwarded it to Donoghue, who responded, 'Pure insanity.'" ~~~

~~~ Washington Post Editors: "Many Republicans want the nation to ignore and forget ... Donald Trump's poisonous final months in office -- the most dangerous moment in modern presidential history, orchestrated by the man to whom the GOP still swears allegiance. Yet the country must not forget how close it came to a full-blown constitutional crisis, or worse. Tuesday brought another reminder that, but for the principled resistance of some key officials, the consequences could have been disastrous. The House Committee on Oversight and Reform on Tuesday released emails showing that the White House waged a behind-the-scenes effort to enlist the Justice Department in its crusade to advance Mr. Trump's baseless allegations of fraud in the 2020 election.... The country cannot forget that Mr. Trump betrayed his oath, that most Republican officeholders remain loyal to him nonetheless -- and that it could be worse next time." ~~~

~~~ Rick Hasen of Election Law Blog: "... let's not let the ludicrous nature of [a legal] complaint ... -- [which] cites debunked conspiracy theories and dubious legal theories and the Epoch Times as authority ... -- overshadow how dangerous this was: here is the President of the United States directing a lawyer to pressure the Department of Justice into filing a brief in the Supreme Court that would have enjoined the appointment of presidential electors by 5 states that Biden won (and that had already appointed electors pursuant to legal state process). This is nothing less than an attempt to use the courts to steal the election. It is brazen, and dangerous, and an affront to the rule of law. We are lucky that enough election administrators, elected officials, judges, governors and members of Congress blocked these attempts from going forward." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: And let us not rest on the pleasant notion that there were always be honorable officials to thwart Trump or the next Trumpian would-be dictator. Republicans around the country are working hard to put corrupt elections officials into office, curb the powers of honest officials & give state politicians the power to arbitrarily decide election results. MEANWHILE, more Trump-compliant DOJ officials were waiting in the wings, and the next Trump will likely try to make sure corrupt lawyers make the decisions at the DOJ. ~~~

~~~ Scott Lemieux in LG&$: "Let us be clear that Trump was dead serious about stealing the 2020 election, and he'll have a lot more allies if he tries it again in 2024[.]... This seems like an appropriate time to revisit the definitive stooge amongst Republican elite: '"What is the downside for humoring him for this little bit of time? No one seriously thinks the results will change," said one senior Republican official. "He went golfing this weekend. It's not like he's plotting how to prevent Joe Biden from taking power on Jan. 20. He's tweeting about filing some lawsuits, those lawsuits will fail, then he'll tweet some more about how the election was stolen, and then he'll leave."' Of course, a big reason we're in this place is that this was the attitude of most of the political press toward Trump throughout the 2016 election cycle."

Luke Broadwater of the New York Times: "The F.B.I. is pursuing potentially hundreds more suspects in the Capitol riot, the agency's director told Congress on Tuesday, calling the effort to find those responsible for the deadly assault 'one of the most far-reaching and extensive' investigations in the bureau's history. 'We've already arrested close to 500, and we have hundreds of investigations that are still ongoing beyond those 500,' Christopher A. Wray, the F.B.I. director, told the House Oversight Committee.... [Oversight Committee Chair Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.)] confronted Mr. Wray with messages from the social media site Parler, which she said referred threats of violence to the F.B.I. more than 50 times before the attack on Jan. 6. One message, which Ms. Maloney said Parler had sent to an F.B.I. liaison on Jan. 2, was from a poster who warned, 'Don't be surprised if we take the Capitol building," and "Trump needs us to cause chaos to enact the Insurrection Act.'... [Wray said,] 'I'm not aware of Parler ever trying to contact my office.'... At one hearing, Ms. Maloney presented her committee's research..., which showed that the Capitol Police and Washington officials made 12 'urgent requests' for their support and that Army leaders told the National Guard to 'stand by' five times as the violence escalated." ~~~

~~~ Dan Lamothe, et al., of the Washington Post: "Army generals involved in the maligned federal response to the attack on the Capitol cast the violence on Tuesday as a chaotic event requiring an 'unforeseen' change in their mission that came only after they received a panicked request for National Guard support. Lt. Gen. Walter Piatt told the House Committee on Oversight and Reform that Army officials 'all immediately understood the gravity of the situation' after receiving a request in a conference call for 'urgent and immediate support' at the Capitol, but that they still needed to develop a plan. Officials on the other end of the phone accused Piatt of denying their requests, he recalled, but he did not have the authority to approve them.... Piatt, the director of Army staff, testified along with Gen. Charles Flynn [Michael Flynn's brother,] who was then a three-star general and Army deputy chief of staff, and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray." Politico's report is here.

Annie Grayer & Kristin Wilson of CNN: "Five months after the January 6 insurrection, the House and Senate have come to an agreement that will award the Congressional Gold Medal to the officers who defended the Capitol. But 21 House Republicans refused to support the legislation, the latest reminder that members of Congress still cannot agree on the facts of the deadly Capitol Hill riot. The final vote in the House on Tuesday was 406-21. The number of House Republicans voting against the bill nearly doubled since the first time a version of the bill came to the House floor, as the vote when the bill first passed the House in March was 413-12."

Mike DeBonis & Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "The Senate on Tuesday unanimously passed a measure that would establish a federal holiday for Juneteenth, the day that marks the end of slavery in the United States. The bill now heads to the Democratic-led House, where it is likely to be approved, although the timing remains uncertain. Unanimous Senate passage was an anticlimactic culmination to a long effort to commemorate Juneteenth, the day that enslaved Black people in Galveston, Tex., received news on June 19, 1865, that they had been freed by the Emancipation Proclamation -- more than two years after President Abraham Lincoln had signed it." An NPR story is here. ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE, Down Alabamy way, Kyle Whitmire, a columnist with the Alabama Media Group, was wondering just what critical race theory was. "So I did what middle-aged white men are prone to do -- I asked another middle-aged white man.... I called an Alabama lawmaker, state Rep. Chris Pringle, R-Mobile, who wants to make it illegal to teach critical race theory in Alabama." According to Pringle, all his bill says is '... you can't teach critical race theory in K-12 or higher education in the state of Alabama.' About the most Whitmire "learned" from Pringle was this: "These people, when they were doing the training programs — and the government -- if you didn't buy into what they taught you a hundred percent, they sent you away to a reeducation camp." Apparently those who would be sent to re-education camps were "white male executives." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: I myself am a little confused as to how teaching history to K-12 kids would land "white male executives" in forced re-education camps. Maybe all the white male K-12 kids in Alabama are above average and they're already executives???

Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "A federal judge in Louisiana has blocked the Biden administration's suspension of new oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, in the first major legal roadblock for President Biden's quest to cut fossil fuel pollution and conserve public lands. Judge Terry A. Doughty of the United States District Court for the Western District of Louisiana granted a preliminary injunction Tuesday against the administration, saying that the power to pause offshore oil and gas leases 'lies solely with Congress' because it was the legislative branch that originally made federal lands and waters available for leasing.... A spokeswoman for the Interior Department, which manages federal oil and gas leases on federal lands and waters, said in a statement that the administration was reviewing the ruling and would comply with it.... Congressional Democrats said they would move forward with legislative efforts to limit oil drilling on public lands."

William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "The Manhattan district attorney's office appears to have entered the final stages of a criminal tax investigation into Donald J. Trump's long-serving chief financial officer, Allen H. Weisselberg, setting up the possibility he could face charges this summer, according to people with knowledge of the matter. In recent weeks, a grand jury has been hearing evidence about Mr. Weisselberg, who is facing intense scrutiny from prosecutors as they seek his cooperation with a broader investigation into Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, the people with knowledge of the matter said. The prosecutors have obtained Mr. Weisselberg's personal tax returns.... The investigation into Mr. Weisselberg focuses partly on whether he failed to pay taxes on valuable benefits that Mr. Trump provided him and his family over the years...."

Nicholas Kulash & David Gelles of the New York Times: "Thanks to the soaring value of [Amazon] stock, [MacKenzie Scott, Jeff Bezos' former wife,] is accumulating wealth faster than she can give it away. Though she has donated more than $8 billion over the past 11 months, primarily through direct gifts to nonprofits, today she is richer than ever, worth some $60 billion, according to Forbes. In 2020, a year of incredible need, Ms. Scott gave away nearly $6 billion to 500 organizations. Now, for the third time in under a year, Ms. Scott has announced a new round of grants, worth a combined $2.74 billion, demonstrating that her dedication to rapidly disbursing her fortune has not abated." ~~~

~~~ MEANWHILE. Jodi Kantor, et al., of the New York Times: "When the coronavirus shut down New York last spring, many residents came to rely on a colossal building they had never heard of: JFK8, Amazon's only fulfillment center in America's largest city. What happened inside shows how Jeff Bezos created the workplace of the future and pulled off the impossible during the pandemic -- but also reveals what's standing in the way of his promise to do better by his employees.... Amid the pandemic, Amazon's system burned through workers, resulted in inadvertent firings and stalled benefits, and impeded communication.... Amazon continued to track every minute of most warehouse workers' shifts, from how fast they packed merchandise to how long they paused.... If productivity flagged, Amazon's computers assumed the worker was to blame.... Amazon acknowledged some issues with inadvertent firings, loss of benefits, job abandonment notices and leaves, but declined to disclose how many people were affected." ~~~

     ~~~ Marie: Gosh, MacKenzie, maybe you can give away some of those billions to, you know, mistreated Amazon workers.

Just Right-Wing, Not "Far"-Right-Wing. Sarah Bailey of the Washington Post: "The Southern Baptist Convention elected Ed Litton as its president on Tuesday, signaling a defeat for the hard right within the nation's largest Protestant denomination. Litton narrowly defeated Mike Stone, the favored candidate of the far right. For the past few years, the convention has been mired in debates over racism, politics and sexual misconduct that mirror many of the same debates in the Republican Party. The election took place at the convention's annual meeting in Nashville."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Israel/Palestine. Not a Good Start. Patrick Kingsley, et al., of the New York Times: "The Israeli military said early Wednesday that it had conducted airstrikes in the Gaza Strip, after officials said that the militant group Hamas had sent incendiary balloons into southern Israel from Gaza, in the first eruption of hostilities since an 11-day air war between Israel and Hamas ended last month. The Israeli military said that it 'struck military compounds belonging to the Hamas terror organization, which were used as facilities and meeting sites for terror operatives in Hamas' Khan Yunis and Gaza Brigades.' Palestinian news reports said that one of the strikes caused property damage, but there were no immediate reports of casualties in Gaza, a densely populated urban strip. The day of rising tensions was the first test of a new Israeli coalition government just three days into its term. It started when the government permitted a far-right Jewish march to pass through Palestinian areas of Jerusalem on Tuesday night, over the objections of Arab and leftist parties in the coalition, and despite threats from Hamas that it would retaliate." An AP story is here.

Comments

[Ken Winkes]

Sure the idea is floating around elsewhere, like in the halls of Congress, but it occurred to me that attaching a small rider to the Juneteenth bill, which seems to have bipartisan support, might be in order.

Schedule it on the second Tuesday of November...

BTW, new computer (good). Same old fingers (not so good).

[PD Pepe]

Something I read by a former CIA analyst, Martin Gurri, who wrote "The Revolt of the Public and the Crisis of Authority in the New Millennium, " has stuck with me:

"In the end, Trump was chosen precisely because of, not despite, his apparent shortcomings. He is the visible effect, not the cause, of the public's surly and mutinous mood." (he wrote this in 2018)

What then follows, of course, is the conclusion after four years that our institutions have failed us––too weak, obviously to stand in his way–-to prevent the millions that were in his sway to run roughshod on our once, so we always thought, old and precious democracy.

Putin is loving every minute––will probably treat Biden during their meeting with that look of oneupmanship, licking his chops and afterwards wiping off that pink foam that forms around his mouth. I'm trying to envision a different scenario where Joe's forceful rhetoric takes hold and there's a sense of fear on the face of the man who basks on the banks of the Black Sea and dreams of power plays and other ways to rule the world.

We wait in anticipation.

[PD Pepe]

Re: the email scam commented on yesterday: I thought we made it crystal clear who were the victims in this scenario. Our friend tells us she has hired a group that does a deep dive into your commuter and fishes out those scam artists and if not does something-something to make your emails more secure. Since Ken has purchased a new computer maybe it has some nifty software to prevent whatever bad stuff comes Ken's way like an electric jolt as a warning or a bubble like apparition whose mouthing NO! Don't touch! Anyway, Ken–-old fingers aside–-good luck, my friend, with your new purchase.

[citizen625]

Putin: look at what he does to rule the world's largest country. Look at what we must do to rule our less huge country. The biggest difference is the utter concentration of wealth and power in Moscow; the US is more diffuse in the concentration of wealth. We have the NYC East coast, Cal, Chicago, and finally some gasps of independent wealth in the South fueled by Texas oil money. Putin is a study in what power does when unconstrained by laws. This is sort of like China, but Vladdy the hammer is a master and Xi is just getting started, but he has a much bigger population base. Joe Biden enters into dealings with both with his eyes wide open; because he is a he, he will likely get more done against Russian and Chinese misogynists than Hillary ever could. Putin and Xi both know that Joe has no problem making nice with our military industrial complex. If Biden really wanted to rattle the Russians and Chinese he would appoint Hillary as a special ambassador for human rights while simultaneously documenting how the FSB and MSS are feeding Republicans traitorous false info about Hillary. As the most maligned woman in my lifetime, Hillary has a unique skill set. Use her, because Putin and Xi know only one thing women can do. That is their weakness.

[Jeanne]

Citizen: great thought. I still get chills when she appears anywhere, like this morning. The thought piles on the same thoughts ad nauseum-- if all those elements of the steal (maybe?) of the 2016 election had not come together so well, we would be in a so different place now.

I am so angry as these things come forward to our attention, that the criminals tried very hard, tried everything they could, to steal another election, and no one is swinging from a yardarm. Daughter says the moron in PA who voted for his dead wife and was caught --an R, of course-- got probation and that young woman in TX or wherever who didn't know she couldn't vote got five years... Guess whether race had anything to do with it. I am beginning to fear that Merrick Garland was a poor choice. I want thunderous yelling and screaming, not graceful soft voices. I also don't give a good goddamn about the CEO of the Trump Criminal Org: it seems to me that we are somehow equating ordinary criminal behavior with criminals in political life. What Dump and his henchpeople and family have done should be enough to send MANY to prison, and soon. This is all so frustrating.

[Akhilleus]

So let me get this straight. No one can teach “critical race theory” in Alabama if this idiot racist Trumpbot’s bill goes through, but he’s not exactly sure what it is. Oooh-kaay.

You can’t do A, but we’re not going to tell you what A is, except we’ll know it when we see it. Then you’ll lose your job, because otherwise white male executives will be shipped off to concentration camps.

What?

This, folks, is what passes for intellectual rigor on the right. Sounds more like rigor mortis.

I recently heard an On the Media podcast in which one of the guests suggested that everyone using the term critical race theory be made to define it. I doubt a single one of these racist husks screeching about this latest winger bogeyman could do so.

But the fuzziness allows for outrageously expansive hyperbole that can easily make the jump from teaching about racism to forced internment. Thus, fuzziness and purposeful indeterminacy become essential aids in the hyperbolic scare tactics used to frighten all those poor, put upon white Trump voters. Teaching honest American history is tantamount to rounding up white people, putting them in shackles and making them do things they don’t like. And gee whiz, THAT’S never happened to any other groups in America, right? Ummm…okay, another reason to threaten anyone who wants to teach this stuff.

So the idea is, we will stop teaching about terrible things that actually were done to black people by claiming that something similar will happen to white people (which it never would).

Again…huh?

But this is just another in the long line of right-wing bogeymen and tribal shibboleths. Political correctness, woke, cancel culture, Occupy, antifa, Black Lives Matter, NOW, any terms that can be removed from all context, warped and weaponized, used as a political cudgels to curtail rights and freedom for the majority of Americans in the interest of preserving rights and freedom for one group alone: white, far-right Christian Republicans.

You see, just teaching about American history is too unremarkable. It has to be painted as a huge threat by making extraordinary leaps into the Abyss of Crazy. Teaching kids how to read road signs when learning to drive becomes a master’s program in Marxist semiotics designed to turn kids into Socialist robots who will murder their parents at the next “keep left” sign. Teaching about racism is racist against white people who will be arrested and put away.

It doesn’t even matter if no one actually believes this crap. It only matters that such mental flatulence and astonishing intellectual dishonesty and political flim-flam whip up the racists and the gun nuts.

And scare everyone else. Cuz that’s all they got.

[Forrest Morris]

Texas History. I attended 1st, 3rd and 4th grades in Texas schools.
There was never a true telling of why the Battle of the Alamo
occurred or what it was actually about. Just the fact that all of
those Texas heroes fought and lost their lives at the Alamo.
No facts, like who knew they were fighting to keep slaves in Texas.
Mexico was against slavery.
Who knew they were fighting to hold onto land stolen from Mexico.
Who knew they were fighting for white supremacy.
And now, Texas manufactures most of our textbooks.
I wonder if they correct historical points to their way of thinking
before printing.

[Jeanne]

Bolton on MorningJoe and NPR today. These hellcats are immortal. Thanks, “journalists.” Must upchuck now.

[Akhilleus]

Forrest,

To answer your query about the writing and editing of history textbooks, it’s important to recognize three things. First, white, racist confederates, especially in Texas, have been attacking textbook publishers for decades, demanding that history be taught the way they see it. This means whites first. Minorities hardly at all. Second, the Texas textbook market is enormous. Third is the problem of economics. It’s just not economically feasible for publishers to print one set of textbooks for Texas informed by their racist, misogynistic, Christian beliefs, and another set of more accurate, fact based textbooks for everyone else.

Ergo, all American kids are fed the nonsense dictated by a tiny minority of far right-wing confederate activists in Texas. In the same way that Republicans in the Senate who represent 30% of the country control everyone else as well, wingers get their way in just about everything. They can try a violent overthrow of the government but only a handful of knuckleheads are held accountable.

The rest go forth unmolested to try again. And feed our kids wingnut poison in schools.

But THEY’RE the victims.

[Ken Winkes]

And south of the border:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/06/16/trump-playbook-peru-democracy/

Interesting reversal of the rural/urban voter pattern familiar here.

A few worthwhile comments, too.

[Patrick]

Whatever happened to Sharia Law as the great threat to western civilization? Now it's Critical Race Theory as uber bugaboo.

Some people just can't focus. Once they realize that Mohammed was pretty dark-skinned (probably), we'll get Critical Race Sharia Theory and REALLY be able to focus! Even if he was not "black" Black, he was a semite. So pump it up to Criticial Race Sharia Anti-Semite Theory.

Now we're getting somewhere.

I certainly don't want my granddaughters to be burka clad islamic Black Panther nuns, so we've got to nip- this- in- the- BUD, as Barney used to say.

[NiskyGuy]

Today’s Fresh Air is an interview with one of the authors of a new book on the history of the Alamo. Very on-topic for today.

[Ken Winkes]

Not that anyone here needs one, but would offer "How to Hide an Empire" by Daniel Immerwahr as a corrective to Texas-centric American history.

Just started it, but so far it meets my approval. Has maps, lotsa facts and shows a clear understanding that white supremacy was the main driver of our greedy march across the continent and far, far beyond.

Call it a product of Critical History Theory.

And Patrick: One of your best. Thanks.