1. The Piece to Read About Gawker.
Gawker always said it was in the business of publishing true stories. Here is one last true story: You live in a country where a billionaire can put a publication out of business. A billionaire can pick off an individual writer and leave that person penniless and without legal protection.
If you want to write stories that might anger a billionaire, you need to work for another billionaire yourself, or for a billion-dollar corporation. The law will not protect you. There is no freedom in this world but power and money.
2. Trump supporters.
If there is no economic context, and Trump’s supporters are just mired in primordial racism, then they are forever lost in the morass of right-wing politics. This bolsters the vision of the Democratic Party as comprising an alliance of affluent whites and people of color with a political agenda of multicultural neoliberalism, where economic reforms can be limited to improved educational options and after-tax redistribution. If Trump voters are just “idiots” appealed to “not at a low intellectual level but at a sub-intellectual level” (as Jonathan Chait has put it) then progressives can forget about the angry white guys.
The Bernie Sanders campaign, however, held out another possible future: a multiracial working-class movement with socialist politics, seeking a fundamental reordering of power relations. That Sanders did so well in many white working-class regions where Trump also won big, like West Virginia, made such a strategy seem feasible for the first time in decades, if not longer. This conclusion is bad news for both parties’ establishments and the interests they represent. It’s difficult to believe that it was exclusively the racism or sexism of Democratic primary voters in poor white states that motivated them to support a self-described socialist who likes to cite Denmark as a model country.
We know that Trump finds a lot of support among blue-collar men who live in communities where white people are prematurely dying at shocking rates and young people have a bleak economic outlook. Despite the ways in which he grotesquely builds upon the politics of his more conventional predecessors, Trump is a bizarre and unsettling candidate. We still know too little about what is driving his support. But it’s willful ignorance to insist that economics doesn’t play a major role.
3. I don't have a link here...
I just wanted to offer the following thought - I find the Harambe meme (Harambe was the gorilla who was killed, referencing Harambe has now become a popular meme/joke, particularly on Twitter; this week the Cincinnati Zoo asked that people stop sending it tweets using the joke, as, you know it's painful; Harambe wasn't killed in 1977, it was just a few months ago) really unpleasant. It's premised on the idea that the death of a gorilla isn't that big a deal and so it's funny to joke about.
I've been snarky as long as I can recall, at least since Dave started Late Night - this might be the best evidence that I've aged out of that element of the culture.
4.
Twitter in a nutshell (via @FineFone) pic.twitter.com/d4ttkGEFkC— Alex Kantrowitz (@Kantrowitz) August 21, 2016
5. The end of privatization?
6. Dont Have a Student Loan in Texas
Seven armed U.S. marshals arrived at his door in Houston last Thursday, arrested him on the spot, and took him to jail. He owed all of $1,500, outstanding since 1987. Aker told Fox 26 that without any warning, his 29-year-old debt was forcibly being collected; the marshals took him to federal court and made him sign a payment plan. “It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker told Fox 26.
6. Dont Have a Student Loan in Texas
Seven armed U.S. marshals arrived at his door in Houston last Thursday, arrested him on the spot, and took him to jail. He owed all of $1,500, outstanding since 1987. Aker told Fox 26 that without any warning, his 29-year-old debt was forcibly being collected; the marshals took him to federal court and made him sign a payment plan. “It was totally mind-boggling,” Aker told Fox 26.
Matt Paré chatted with teammates and underwent a long treatment session as other Augusta GreenJackets players exited through a clubhouse door wedged open with a broken bat. He kept himself awake with a marathon shower.
By the time Paré dressed, he had the clubhouse to himself, along with what was left of the GreenJackets' postgame buffet. "What have we got, Sarge?" he called toward clubhouse manager Kristopher Nichols, a former Army drill sergeant who appreciates - and usually rewards - Paré's resourcefulness.
Paré is the oldest player for the San Francisco Giants' Class-A affiliate, and he begins most homestands by waiting out his teammates in order to stockpile free food.
the more Clinton’s allies have worked to defend big money donations to the Clinton Foundation, the more closely they resemble the right-wing principles they once denounced.
In one telling argument in defense of the Clinton Foundation, Media Matters, another group run by David Brock, argued this week that there was “no evidence of ethics breaches” because there was no explicit quid pro quo cited by the AP. The Media Matters piece mocked press figures for focusing on the “optics” of corruption surrounding the foundation.
Such a standard is quite a reversal for the group. In a piece published by Media Matters only two years ago, the organization criticized conservatives for focusing only on quid pro quo corruption — the legal standard used to decide the Citizens United and McCutcheon Supreme Court decisions — calling such a narrow focus a “new perspective of campaign finance” that dismisses “concerns about institutional corruption in politics.” The piece notes that ethics laws concerning the role of money in politics follow a standard, set forth since the Watergate scandal, in which even the appearance, or in other words, the “optics” of corruption, is cause for concern.
Americans between 18 to 24 are largely snubbing the old-fashioned bar of soap, leading to sales declines for the likes of Ivory’s iconic 125-year old bar and its bar soap rivals, according to new data from consumer research firm Mintel. Consumers who still buy bar soap, it turns out, have something in common: they tend to be over 60 years old and are men.
And one more...
That's all for this time. I'll be back next time. If there is a next time...
Your pal,
Jim
