The parties really know how to pick ’em

Just after virulently anti-gay Bob Good won the Republican nomination for a Virginia congressional seat, another hateful nutjob is likely to win the party’s nomination for a seat in Georgia. (Thanks to commenter Tadas.)

The House’s highest-ranking Republicans are racing to distance themselves from a leading GOP congressional candidate in Georgia after POLITICO uncovered hours of Facebook videos in which she expresses racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views.

The candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene, suggested that Muslims do not belong in government; thinks black people “are held slaves to the Democratic Party”; called George Soros, a Jewish Democratic megadonor, a Nazi; and said she would feel “proud” to see a Confederate monument if she were black because it symbolizes progress made since the Civil War.
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John Oliver on the prison scandal

At the best of times, the state of US prisons are a scandal but what is happening during the pandemic is unconscionable, with inmates kept in conditions that guarantee that almost all of them will be exposed to the virus. John Oliver examines the problem and provides some common-sense steps that could be taken to ameliorate the situation but of course they are not being done because being seen as soft on criminals is seen by many politicians as a electoral death sentence, even though there is no way to confine the virus to just the prison population.

Is the word ‘welsh’ derogatory?

In an earlier post, I casually wrote that Donald Trump is a “notorious welsher on debts”, meaning that he feels free to not pay what he owes. It is not a word that I commonly use but am familiar enough with that it came naturally to me when I wanted to describe Trump’s practice of defaulting on his debt obligations.

That is the common meaning of the phrase ‘to welsh’. But later it got me thinking. ‘Welsh’ also refers to the people of Wales, a distinct nationality with their own language that makes up part of the United Kingdom. Was using the term ‘welsh’ the way I did a slur on them, implying that they as a people were prone to this type of dishonesty?
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We are witnessing a sea change in racial attitudes

Dahlia Lithwick amasses a wealth of evidence to argue that we have seen a significant positive shift in the attitudes of white Americans on the issue of race during the Trump presidency. While that is good for the country, it does not bode well for him or the Republican party.

To be clear, Republicans have got a majority of the white vote in elections for the past 56 years and will likely get it again this year. But the large margins that they obtained previously are dwindling, and it is their determined efforts at gerrymandering and driving down the minority vote that has enabled them to stay in power despite alienating every other group. As that margin of white majority becomes smaller, it may not be enough to compensate for their losses elsewhere. So we can expect even more desperate efforts at increasing the white vote with racist and xenophobic fearmongering, coupled with even more intensive efforts at minority voter suppression. But that too can backfire. As we have seen in recent state elections, the efforts at voter suppression have angered minority voters who have become even more determined to vote despite the obstacles placed in their way.
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California covid-19 cases rise as people flout safety guidelines

After initially managing to bring the covid-19 infection rate down in California, the state I live in, and the state started to open up a bit, there has been a disturbing resurgence in cases, similar to rises seen in other states. It has not been statewide but mainly in certain counties. This has resulted in the governor Gavin Newsom ordering restrictions on behavior.
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What else happened in Tulsa

Most of the media coverage of Trump’s Tulsa rally focused on the embarrassingly meager crowd and the bizarre elements of Trump’s speech in which he launched a ten-minute explanation as to why he looked so shaky when he walked down a ramp at West Point and then more time showing that he could drink a glass of water with just one hand. Really. What he did not speak about was George Floyd, Juneteenth, and the 1921Tulsa massacre that happened a few miles away, all of which would have been very timely. But in his mind, trying to heal deep racial wounds is utterly unimportant when compared to trying to show that he retains basic motor functions.
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Want to gauge Trump’s fortunes? Look at Lindsey Graham

The level of support for Trump is something that absorbs a lot of interest. His approval numbers, both nationally and in the so-called battleground states, are underwater (i.e., more disapprove than approve) and he also trails Joe Biden. But people are still shell-shocked by his 2016 victory that defied the polls and so are reluctant to place too much stock in them, thinking that he might well pull off another upset win.

But there is another indicator and that is South Carolina Republican senator Lindsey Graham. The warmongering neoconservative Graham is one of the most shamelessly hypocritical and opportunistic members of his party and that is saying a lot. He and his Republican colleagues in Congress have been the enablers of Trump’s many excesses. But he is also a self-serving weathervane. When Trump initially announced his candidacy in 2015 and was written off as a joke, Graham was one of his most vicious critics, savaging him mercilessly as utterly unfit for the office. But as Trump’s fortunes rose and he won the nomination and the presidency, Graham became one of his most unctuous supporters and enablers, slobbering all over him and doing whatever he wanted, and more.
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The Tulsa fiasco is the gift that keeps giving

I must admit, I am wallowing in schadenfreude over the Trump Tulsa debacle. There is something delightful about seeing a malignant narcissist not get the praise and adoration he so desperately craves and expected. The Tulsa fire department is now saying that there were only 6,200 people in attendance, one third of the capacity in the 19,000 seat stadium, and half of even what the Trump campaign conceded of 12,000, a truly pathetic turnout.

Trump is, unsurprisingly, furious about being so humiliated and is lashing out.
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