HorsesAss.Org

Didn’t have time for longer commentary this week, just a note about the scope of these roundups. When I initially started this, I didn’t intend to follow incidents involving government interventions over parenting. This tends to be a difficult area with respect to things like vaccines and extreme religious beliefs. In some of those cases, I fully support government intervention if there’s a clear public health justification. And in some cases, I can be convinced that a person’s religious beliefs cross the line into the abuse of a child.

But the recent incidents involving arrests over merely allowing young kids to play or walk alone go way beyond the line of what should be acceptable for the state. I plan to track incidents like these as well, as I think they warrant importance and belong in the same category as the other things I write about and link to here.

News from the past two weeks:
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– Congrats to all future married gay couples! (video loaded automatically for me)

– Even though I mostly agree with this fact-check about the rainbow flag crosswalks, how about just a little joy and whimsey is good enough?

– Even though it’s obviously based on bullshit, I suppose I support the GOP call for Roberts’ ouster, as long as Obama is still president.

– I’m looking forward to the First Hill Streetcar whenever it eventually gets going.

– Bristol Palin’s politics are awful, but her pregnancy really isn’t my business.

Anyone active blogging locally here in Washington is probably familiar with Angie in WA State. She was an early commenter on my first blog (blogspot seems to have taken down the comments from that era, but if memory serves, she was the first person who I didn’t know personally to comment there). She is most active as a diarist and commenter on Daily Kos, but she is all over. In recent years, her Twitter has been an inspiration to read.

Anyway, this is preamble to say that she’s running for Congress in the 3rd, against Herrera Beutler. She’d make a hell of a great Congresswoman, and I bet she’d make a hell of a great candidate too.

I hope you’ll consider a donation, or volunteering to walk a precinct. I don’t know if the Democrats are actively running anyone down there, but I can’t imagine there’s anyone I’d prefer to see in Congress from the area. She’s going to try to run a grass roots campaign more than a money-focused one, but all campaigns need money.

Good luck!

– The embarrassment is not limited to the flag, itself. The fact that it still flies, that one must debate its meaning in 2015, reflects an incredible ignorance. A century and a half after Lincoln was killed, after 750,000 of our ancestors died, Americans still aren’t quite sure why.

– Good for gender neutral city bathrooms in Seattle.

– So wait, there’s a cost to inaction on climate change?

– Five Thousand Ladybugs of Highly Effective People

Please join us tonight for a summer solstice edition of the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally. Stop by for an evening of informal conversation over an ice cold beer.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities chapter also meets. On Wednesday, the Bellingham and Burien chapters meet. And the Spokane, Woodinville and Kent chapters meet on Thursday.

There are 190 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting near you.

– It’s also crucial that white allies reject the lie that there is an epidemic of black men raping white women, which has motivated so much white violence toward black bodies historically. The systematic lynching of black men in the South was routinely built on the idea that there was an epidemic of black men raping white women in the South, and so many years later, reports of the shooter’s own words indicate that the protection of white women was a direct motive for killing so many innocent people, including six women.

– Nothing can ever be politicized.

– What does that fundamentalist word-salad actually mean? It means this cartoon. It means this hideous envisioning of precisely the diseased ideology that terrorist Dylann Roof described as he murdered nine faithful Christians at their Wednesday night Bible study.

– Anyone else find #CharlestonSyllabus helpful?

– You guys, crows are awesome, but also crows are the worst

– 18 Missing Link victims will go to the hospital by the time the trail study is complete

1 Corinthians 7:9
It is better to marry than to burn.

Discuss.

Thom: Texas rejects a woman’s right to choose.

“Holy Encyclical, Batman!”

• Mark Fiore: .
• Thom: The Popes climate change call
• Young Turks: Republicans attack Pope

David Pakman: Paul Ryan falls apart (again) on FAUX News…has no plan to replace ObamaCare.

Congressional Hits and Misses of the week.

WTF? Another Right-Wing Extremist Mass Shooting?!?

• Obama makes a statement about the shooting
• Liberal Viewer: FAUX News downplays racial motivation and tries to spin an anti-Christian motive
• Thom: The White shooter was a terrorist
• Sam Seder: Right wing terror—how the NRA uses racism to advance its cause
• Jon runs out of jokes
• Grace Para: Charleston from a Hispanic point of view
• Maddow: Making sense of it
• Should we call the mass murder terrorism?
• Sam Seder: The despicable Right Wing spin
• Young Turks: Right wing terrorists kill more Americans than Islamic extremists
• Thom: Charleston shooting PART 1
• Thom: Charleston shooting PART 2
• Sam Seder: Republican defends flying Confederate flag in the wake of the Charleston terror shootings

Mental Floss: 14 facts about parasites.

Rep. Derek Kilmer (D-WA) gets a jump on Father’s Day

Young Turks: What woman should appear on the $10?.

Pap and Sam Seder: GOP trash economics sends Kansas back to the dust bowl.

VSauce: Dinosaurs.

Mental Floss: Misconceptions about famous stories.

The 2016 Clown Parade—“Even More Clowns” Edition:

• Sam Seder: You bastards have no idea how hard this is for Ted Cruz
• David Pakman: Jeb! Is! In!
• Thom: Right Wing extremism, Jeb style
• Pap and Farron Cousins: Marco Rubio’s shopaholic confessions
• Sam Seder: The Rick Perry 2016 makeover
• Young Turks: Donald Trump hired actors to attend his announcement

• Donald Trump Can’t stop whining about America
• Factivist: The Jeb! Bush! record
• Farron Cousins: Donald Trump’s ego can’t fit in Republican clown car
• Jon: Listening to Trump quotes is “better than freebasing”
• Sam Seder: DNC’s hilarious statement about Trump
• PsychoSuperMom: Keepin’ Crazy in the Trump World:

• Maddow: Trump is in!
• James Rustad: Old Trump Donald Owned a Slum
• Pap and Sam Seder: Scott Walker makes Wisconsin even dumber

Mental Floss: Why do we blush when embarassed.

Farron Cousins: The death of another Republican talking point.

Kimmel: This week in unnecessary censorship.

Thom: How big money is undermining voter rights.

Racial Identity Politics:

• Young Turks: Rachel Dolezal, guilty or not guilty?
• Melissa Harris-Perry: Extended interview with Rachel Dolezal
• Flashback: Steven Colbert and Steve Carell in “Maya”
• Young Turks: Abdul-Jabbar defends Rachel Dolezal
• David Pakman: Are Rachel Dolezal’s parents abusive extremist young earth creationists?

White House: West Wing Week.

Last week’s Friday Night Multimedia Extravaganza can be found here.

They’ve taken the tweet down and changed the headline, but for most of yesterday, The Seattle Times had headlined their story copy of an AP soty and tweeted “Concentrated evil” or “sweet kid”: Details on the suspect in Charleston church shootings. Ansel at Slog gives some context to the harm done by various attempts by the media to humanize these killers. And that’s an important thing to say.

That context is important, but this case it’s ugly enough on its own. We’re talking about a racist crime. We’re talking about terrorizing a community. We’re talking about a man who committed the grossest of acts. And it doesn’t matter if you can find some friend’s parent who vouched for him at some point “sweet kid” is disgusting.

Look, I’m all for finding out all about how the people who knew him felt about him before. If it’s in the wire story, I guess run it. But The Seattle Times chose to highlight that. And it’s a fucking disgrace.

My ancient laptop is acting funny so no links. Will try to do something on the commute home, but no promises.

To the TV and radio hosts, the columnists, the leaders of White churches, to the parents of White people: You really have to take the lead in teaching our community not to murder Black people. There is a sickness in the White community where we excuse police, where we excuse people who saw an unarmed Black kid with Skittles, where we excuse anyone who says they’re scared of Black people killing them. While each time it’s horrendous, last night, we saw as the toxic racism of our culture that hardly bothers to condemn the murder of Black people came to a head in a Black church in South Carolina.

Yes, sure, there is more to deal with than looking for every excuse after a Black man or woman gets killed by the police or by someone with a gun. Yes, we need to deal more specifically with the toxic aftereffects of slavery, and of Jim Crow, and of redlining. And we need to end the pay gap between Black and White people. We can deal with the school to prison pipeline. We can take Black people seriously when they talk about their own lives. We can cut the micro-aggression bullshit. But we can at least start with condemning it when Black people are killed in this country. We can at least not look for excuses.

All of that has to start with White people. A white person bought Dylann Storm Roof a gun in the first damn place. White people are the ones whose paranoid fantasies give space for this sort of thing. We’re the ones who make excuse after excuse after goddamn excuse.

We’re the ones who after the fact say selling loosies should have been a death sentence. We’re the ones who say being put in the back of a police van should be a death sentence. White people, and especially those with a platform need to confront the deadly racism in our community. As long as we keep making excuses, there will be more.

– Dear SPD: Get your shit together.

– COOKIES ALL AROUND.

– Donald Trump isn’t going to be president, obviously. But him running probably solves his biggest concern: What if during the campaign, people aren’t paying attention to Donald Trump.

– Will there ever be a GOP candidate for governor who supports a minimum wage?

– Maybe it’s best to accept that some of this big-picture planning is just happening on autopilot.

You are invited to the Seattle Chapter of Drinking liberally tonight. Stop by for informal conversation over an ice cold beer.

We meet tonight and every Tuesday at the Roanoke Park Place Tavern, 2409 10th Ave E, Seattle. You’ll find us in the small room at the back of the tavern. Our starting time is 8:00 pm, but some folks stop by earlier for dinner.

Can’t make it to Seattle tonight? Check out one of the other DL meetings happening this week. Tonight the Tri-Cities, Vancouver, WA, and Shelton chapters also meet. The Lakewood chapter meets on Wednesday. And on Thursday, the Tacoma chapter meets.

There are 190 chapters of Living Liberally, including eighteen in Washington state, four in Oregon and two in Idaho. Chances are excellent there’s a chapter meeting somewhere near you.

Our state’s editorial boards love to complain about the budget impasse in Olympia, but for many years they have played a key role in the obstruction, consistently opposing any substantive new tax—especially on income—as fervently as the most dyed-in-the-wool anti-tax Republican. Until now:

A proposal in the Senate would apply a 7 percent capital-gains tax to 0.1 percent of the state’s residents, or about 7,500 residents. It would only apply to gains over $250,000 for individuals or $500,000 for couples.

Instead of punting to committees and next year’s Legislature, they should buckle down and make the choice to begin taxing capital gains.

That’s the Seattle Times editorial board making the case that a “capital-gains tax is best option to fund education.” Seriously. And while we’ve been seeing their position evolve over the past few months, it’s still pretty stunning to see them state their support for the tax so bluntly.

And then there’s this from today’s Olympian:

A key element of our state’s F grade for effort was the comparatively low percentage of the state’s economic output that Washington has invested through taxes into K-12 schools. Part of the problem is our over-reliance and regressive tax system that ignores a large share of economic activity including the sales of services and such income-producers as capital gains.

I sometimes joke that I’m the only non-lawmaker who still reads the editorial pages, but of course that’s not true. Editorial board endorsements may not be nearly as influential as they were even a decade ago, but they still play a role in shaping public opinion. Or at least, reinforcing it. And anti-tax legislators no longer have the “serious” people behind them in obstructing all efforts to tax income.

Washington’s tax structure is absurdly regressive. I’ve been saying that since my very first blog post, more than 11 years ago. There’s simply no arguing with that fact. And now the editorial boards have finally acknowledged that our revenue system is insufficient as well. Republican lawmakers should take note that they are on the wrong side of the editorial boards on this issue, and that if we fail to pass the additional revenue necessary to satisfy McCleary, the editorial boards won’t be shy about pointing out which lawmakers are to blame.

Given my fierce criticism over the years, you might think that I’d hate to give the editorial boards credit for finally advocating for responsible tax policy. Not at all. Responsible tax policy is all I ever really wanted. And it’s great to see the Seattle Times on board.

[Cross-posted at Civic Skunkworks]

– Pro-Choice and Pregnant? Yeah, It’s Really Real

– Increasingly it looks like this whole P.C. boo-hoo is just a weaponized version of Those Were The Days.

– Being a GOP presidential candidate gets you the opportunity to scam the elderly out of their homes, eventually.

– Wow, Councilmember O’Brien.

– The legislature should pass a resolution saying they don’t know if longer fire seasons caused by global warming are real.

– WHY WERE YOU MUTED?