Wednesday

Media - BS

Not a word on the Fox News front page about Bolton except this.

I wonder if Bolton will now play a liberal when he returns to Fox Propaganda? 

Media - The Liberal Media Isn't #1723

NPR framing health care questions in the conservative voice.



Trump, Bolton, and Israel

Trump suddenly seems less supportive of Netanyahu and Israel. Something has changed? Did Netanyahu piss Trump off? Maybe Trump can't stand Netanyahu's power and wants to cut him down a little? Epstein? Something? I'd expect some event to pull us closer to Israel before the Israelis go to the polls.



MAGA My Ass

Israeli PM Netanyahu’s Himalayan Miscalculation on Iran: Bringing China into the Mideast

China Defies Trump on Iran Big time with $400 bn Belt-and-Road Investment, 5000 Red Army Troops



Politics

The Secret Files of the Master of Modern Republican Gerrymandering - I don't think democracy can work in an age of big data, social media, and peak marketing unless we make major changes.


From the always good Stumbling and Mumbling, ON TORY PARADOXES

This leaves the Tories with a problem. If wealth and power are concentrated, how can you create widespread support for the party that defends the existing economic order?

The answer is to change the subject

Yep. Here in the US you should read "Tories" as "The Two Parties". They have no answers, well, no answers that can satisfy both the small set of corporate donors and the mass of voters so they set policy for the donors and change the subject for the voters to things like abortion, guns, immigration, race, etc. 

The Mythical Market

People Are Homeless Because of the Failure of Our Capitalist Economy

Free-Market types preach that allowing markets to run free of any human/government interference is the answer to almost every problem. I agree that markets work to solve a lot of economic issues but one thing they don't work very well at is smoothing wealth and income inequality. Wealth tends to accumulate at the top and there is no market in the world going to fix that. It takes government taxing away some from those at the top and helping those at the bottom.


Capitalism

Capitalism Requires Loss Of Money And Power



Trump's Sharpie

16 of our readers' funniest responses to Trump’s Sharpie-marked hurricane-warning map



Mike Pence and Jerry Falwell, Jr.

'What are we going to do Mike?': Trump's victory posed problems for Pence and his wife, new book says

So Pence is a bad businessman 

"The Pences may not have needed the financial help if the couple, years before, hadn’t lost nearly $1 million Pence had inherited from his father."

Indecisive and easily manipulated

"LoBianco describes Pence as indecisive, but great at executing others' decisions. A "pleaser," Pence is kept on track by his “bulldog” wife and is easily manipulated by staff, according to the book."

Can be bought

"Most notably, he credits Paul Singer, the hedge-fund billionaire who Pence had been courting for a potential presidential bid, with convincing him to agree to change the law. 

and is OK with Trump being a dick.

Pence’s comfort level was severely tested by the release, during the campaign, of the Access Hollywood recording in which Trump had bragged about grabbing women’s genitals

He's the best reason not to impeach Trump.

also,.... speaking of hypocritical, religious twerps.

Whistleblowers out Falwell's Liberty University as a grifty, multibillion-dollar personality cult

I get the feeling Falwell's world is falling apart and he's scrambling as fast as he can to keep it together.