Author: Tom Sullivan

Having “a Republican argument”
by Tom Sullivan

It could be weeks before U.S. District Judge Thomas Schroeder rules on whether North Carolina’s House Bill 589 violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The NAACP and the U.S. Department of Justice filed suit alleging that the law discriminated against racial minorities, the elderly and young people. In addition to requiring photo IDs for voting, H.B. 589 eliminated same-day voter registration, out-of-precinct provisional voting, preregistration for 16- and 17-year-olds, and reduced early voting from 17 to 10 days. (In advance of the trial, state legislators loosened the ID requirements.)

At Plum Line, Greg Sargent spoke with Chris Brook, one of the ACLU attorneys on the case, about “the mother of all voter suppression bills”:

PLUM LINE: What is the case against the North Carolina law?

BROOK: It makes it more difficult for all North Carolinians to vote, but in particular for racial minorities in our state. Beyond that, the legislature knew full well, when they passed this raft of voting restrictions, that it would make it more difficult for African Americans to vote. Yet they plowed forward despite that fact. We’re challenging these measures pursuant to the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as well as Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

PLUM LINE: The judge in this case is trying to determine whether the impact of the law is discriminatory or merely inconveniencing. It seems like proving discrimination is a high bar.

BROOK: There’s grounds for optimism, because over the course of the trial, we were able to put on a strong case featuring dozens of North Carolinians who were disenfranchised in 2014. These restrictions are not mere inconveniences. They resulted in many North Carolinians not being able to vote.

More than 1,000 North Carolinians cast out-of-precinct provisional ballots in 2014 that previously would have been counted and were not counted. Approximately 11,000 North Carolinians registered to vote during the same-day registration window in 2014. They were not able to participate. This is something that has kept North Carolinians from voting.

In a narrow ruling this week, the United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit found Texas’ SB 14 voter ID requirement violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act in that it “produces a discriminatory result that is actionable because [it] . . . interact[s] with social and historical conditions in Texas to cause an inequality in the electoral opportunities enjoyed by African-Americans and Hispanic voters.” North Carolina’s H.B. 589 court could face a similar ruling.

The Fifth Circuit did not affirm that the law was passed with discriminatory purpose or that it constitutes a poll tax. Discriminatory purpose is tougher to prove, even if it’s obvious.

Election Law Blog’s Rick Hasen:

Particularly interesting in this analysis is the question whether Texas’s explanations for why it needed its law (antifraud, voter confidence) were tenuous. The trial court found that they were because the evidence did not support the need for voter id for either of these purposes, and this factor worked in favor of finding of a Section 2 violation.

In upholding the Section 2 claim, the court observed:

While increasing voter turnout and safeguarding voter confidence are legitimate state interests, see Crawford v. Marion Cnty. Election Bd., 553 U.S. 181, 191 (2008), the district court found that “the stated policies behind SB 14 are only tenuously related to its provisions,” Veasey, 71 F. Supp. 3d at 698. While in-person voting fraud is rare and mail-in fraud is comparatively much more common, SB 14’s voter ID restrictions would only combat the former. Id. at 639–41, 653.

[…]

The district court also found “no credible evidence” to support assertions that voter turnout was low due to a lack of confidence in elections, that SB 14 would increase public confidence in elections, or that increased confidence would boost voter turnout. Id. at 655. Two State Senators and the Director of the Elections Division at the Texas Secretary of State’s office all were unaware of anyone abstaining from voting out of concern for voter fraud, and the Director testified that implementing the provisional ballot process might undermine voter confidence. Id. The district court also credited testimony that SB 14 would decrease voter turnout. Id. at 655–56. According to a well established formula employed by political scientists to assess individuals’ likelihood of voting in an election, increasing the cost of voting decreases voter turnout—particularly among low-income individuals, as they are most cost sensitive. Id. at 656. Further, the district court dismissed the argument that increased turnout during the 2008 presidential election was demonstrative of increased voter confidence in two states that had recently passed voter ID laws. Id. at 655. Instead, it found that the increased turnout, nationwide, was due to President Obama’s candidacy. Id. Finally, the court also found that public opinion polls—which found high levels of support for photo ID requirements—were not demonstrative that SB 14 itself would promote voter confidence. Id. at 656. The district court discounted the polls because they did not evaluate whether voters supported SB 14 when weighed against its attendant effect on minority voters. Id.

The same “confidence” assertion the district court in Texas rejected is one prime rationale behind most of these laws nationwide, as well as in North Carolina. In July closing arguments in North Carolina, the Winston-Salem Journal reported:

Schroeder asked Farr [one of the state’s attorneys] what the justification was in making the election law changes. State Republican legislators said publicly they wanted to restore public confidence in the election system and stamp out potential voter fraud.

There is no evidence of widespread in-person voter fraud in North Carolina or nationally. An expert for the plaintiffs testified that North Carolina had only two verified cases of voter fraud out of 35 million votes cast in primary and presidential elections between 2000 and 2014.

My wife calls this having “a Republican argument.” That is to say, a disingenuous one. It’s where your opponent abandons rules of evidence and logic and instead argues by assertion or by exaggerated fear of what “might be” happening undetected.

It is to argue, for example, that eliminating public assistance to the rich through tax cuts, credits, and direct incentives (that fund their fifth home, new yacht, or airplane upgrade) will kill their incentive to work hard and “create jobs.” But public assistance to the poor — you know, for food — eliminates their incentive to work.

It is to argue after every mass shooting that we need no new gun laws criminals will simply ignore; we just need to enforce laws already on the books. Except when it comes to voting restrictions, we need new laws on top of those they complain the state is already not enforcing.

It is people arguing that we need to restore public confidence in the election system after they’ve spent decades trying to undermine it to build public support for restoring Jim Crow.

Next up: competency tests.

Trump on America: We suck
by Tom Sullivan

There will be hundreds of commentaries written today about last night’s Republican debates. The most interesting exchange last night, however, was over Donald Trump’s campaign donations:

BAIER: You’ve also supported a host of other liberal policies, you’ve also donated to several Democratic candidates, Hillary Clinton included, Nancy Pelosi. You explained away those donations saying you did that to get business related favors. And you said recently, quote, when you give, they do whatever the hell you want them to do.

TRUMP: You better believe it… I will tell you that our system is broken. I gave to many people. Before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them, two years later, three years later, I call them. They are there for me. And that’s a broken system.

BAIER: So what did you get from Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi?

TRUMP: I’ll tell you what. With Hillary Clinton, I said, be at my wedding and she came to my wedding. You know why? She had no choice! Because I gave.

Let’s hope the Supreme Court was watching.

When Trump “tells it like it is,” his supporters cheer. But they are too busy pumping their fists to notice that while Trump is blunt enough to call out the broken system, he is not principled enough to eschew taking advantage of it. Somehow his lack of principle in enriching himself from the system’s brokenness makes him the perfect guy to fix it. Go figure.

Ezra Klein calls Trump a honey badger. “He just doesn’t fucking care.” Klein writes:

You cannot embarrass Donald Trump. You cannot back him down with questions that make other candidates buckle. And the crowd loves him for it. They love him because he does not back down. The fact that Trump doesn’t back down is the core of Trump-ism. It is the answer to how he will negotiate with the Democrats, with China, with Mexico. He will get what he wants because he doesn’t back down.

Strength. Stubbornness. Savvy. Aggressiveness. Those are what eager Trump followers — and many other Americans — want in their alpha dogs. Not real character or principles. Just the appearance of having them. Plus a large dash of xenophobia. Others dither. Trump delivers.

A priest I know says Americans think one ought to have faith. Not in anything in particular, just faith. That’s Trump’s secret. His unshakeable faith is in himself.

So he gets away with saying things that would have lesser dogs crucified by conservative media:

This country is in big trouble. We don’t win anymore. We lose to China. We lose to Mexico both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.

Trump more or less tells supporters,”We suck.” They cheer.

The new American exceptionalism: We suck and everyone is better than us #GOPDebate— Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) August 7, 2015

Who Wants To Be A President?
by Tom Sullivan

Hiroshima at 70, the Voting Rights Act at 50, Jon Stewart, tonight’s Republican debate, the Texas voter ID ruling. It’s a bit much to take in before work. But I’m going to go with what E.J. Dionne calls Bernie Sanders’ “authentic authenticity” and what that, plus Donald Trump lapping the Republican presidential field in the polls, says about the mood of the country.

Dionne explains that Bernie Sanders “taps into a deep frustration with inequality and the power of big money in politics while also reflecting the public’s interest in bold proposals to correct both.” But at the New Yorker, James Surowiecki observes that fully one third of Republicans with no college education support the candidacy of Donald Trump. They support the billionaire, according to pollster Stanley Greenberg, because of their deep sense that the system is corrupt and that Trump can’t be bought.

Why then would they not demand Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, both of whom have established bona fides in that area? Besides political tribalism, perhaps it’s the money, and because Trump is the perfect game-show candidate. Because as jaded as they may be, voters still haven’t let go of the American dream. Plus, decades of quiz shows (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire) and reality TV have programmed them to think they’re just one right answer or good idea away from being Donald Trump, the showman. Surowiecki writes:

Trump is hardly the first Western plutocrat to venture into politics. Think of William Randolph Hearst or, more recently, Silvio Berlusconi. But both Hearst and Berlusconi benefitted from controlling media empires. Trump has earned publicity all on his own, by playing the role of that quintessential American figure the huckster. As others have observed, the businessman he most resembles is P. T. Barnum, whose success rested on what he called “humbug,” defined as “putting on glittering appearances . . . by which to suddenly arrest public attention, and attract the public eye and ear.” Barnum’s key insight into how to arrest public attention was that, to some degree, Americans enjoy brazen exaggeration. No American businessman since Barnum has been a better master of humbug than Trump has.

There’s one born every minute, and Trump has suckered his share of drought-stricken dirt farmers into thinking he’s an economic rainmaker. But there’s a difference, explains Dionne:

As for alienation from the system, Trump and Sanders do speak to a disaffection that currently roils most of the world’s democracies. But their way of doing it is so radically different — Sanders resolutely programmatic, Trump all about feelings, affect and showmanship — that they cannot easily be subsumed as part of the same phenomenon. Sanders’s candidacy will leave behind policy markers and arguments about the future. Trump’s legacy will be almost entirely about himself, which is probably fine with him.

True. But whether Sanders’ candidacy, if unsuccessful, has any policy legacy on the left remains to be seen.

Finally, I’ll welcome back Charlie Pierce from his vacation. Pierce looks at the Jade Helm 15 nonsense and the arrest of three North Carolina men for preparing to meet the Kenyan usurper’s martial law with improvised explosives. It is symptomatic of some Americans’ darker response to disaffection:

For all the talk about how Donald Trump has tapped into some general dissatisfaction with government and some ill-defined populist moment, the energy behind his campaign comes mainly from these sad and angry places, deep in the tangled underbrush of fear, hate, and profitable ignorance, where it’s all funny until somebody builds a bomb.

But tonight, at least, it’s Bread and Circuses in Cleveland.

The courage of our exceptionalism
by Tom Sullivan

In the home of William Blackstone, they are at least investigating whether the Iraq war was illegal. Just very, very slowly:

An impatient David Cameron will demand that Sir John Chilcot name the date by which his report into the British invasion of Iraq will be ready for publication.

The prime minister is expected to tell Chilcot he wants to see the report as soon as possible. “Right now I want a timetable,” he told journalists.

Its release is not expected before September, and could be delayed until the middle of next year. Chilcot has been at this for some time and has spent £10.3m:

Chilcot has so far declined to give a timetable for the publication of the findings of the Iraq war inquiry, which opened in 2009 and concluded in 2011. He previously told Cameron and separately the chairman of the foreign affairs select committee, Sir Crispin Blunt, that he was still waiting for witnesses to respond to planned criticisms in the report. He is also examining fresh evidence.

Much of the Chilcot report is expected to examine communications between Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bush:

In January Chilcot announced that 29 of Blair’s notes to Bush had been cleared for publication, as well as extracts of 130 records of conversations between the two leaders and records from up to 200 cabinet-level discussions. Chilcot also plans to release documents that reveal which ministers and officials were excluded from discussions on military action.

That snip above is from late April. British families are still waiting to know why their loved ones were maimed or killed.

Jeremy Corbyn, current frontrunner for Labour leader in next month’s elections, is still waiting:

He said: “The Chilcot report is going to come out sometime. I hope it comes out soon. I think there are some decisions Tony Blair has got to confess or tell us what actually happened. What happened in Crawford, Texas, in 2002 in his private meetings with George [W] Bush. Why has the Chilcot report still not come out because – apparently there is still debate about the release of information on one side or the other of the Atlantic. At that point Tony Blair and the others that have made the decisions are then going to have to deal with the consequences of it.”

Corbyn is leading the polls as union supporters hope a Corbyn win can loosen “the grip of the Blairites” and neoliberals on the party. Corbyn is raising hackles in his own party by suggesting former Labour PM Tony Blair might eventually stand trail for war crimes.

If America really had the courage of its exceptionalism, we might already have dealt with Bush, Cheney, et. al., whose actions with Blair, Corbyn says, “are still played out with migrant deaths in the Mediterranean and refugees all over the region.”

But as with the Chilkot report, don’t hold your breath. Here at home we still refuse to hold Wall Street magnates criminally accountable for the global fraud behind the 2008 financial meltdown that had banks wielding phony paperwork throwing families into the streets. We are still arguing whether to release 28 pages (unredacted, please) of the Joint Inquiry into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, we’re still failing to comes to grips with structural racism while trying to bring back Jim Crow. And 239 years after declaring we would no longer bow and scrape to British royalty, American voters are fawning like peasants over their uber-rich betters from Jamie Dimon to Donald Trump, while refugees drown in the Mediterranean and Dick Cheney keynotes Republican party events in Florida.

Which way to the revolt?
by Tom Sullivan

Robert Reich sees Donald Trump’s and Bernie Sanders’ rising popularity as evidence of a growing revolt against America’s ruling class. Go figure. When venture capitalist Tom Perkins last year compared Occupiers and progressives to Kristallnacht, then held up his watch on TV and bragged, “I could buy a 6-pack of Rolexes for this,” he was less than six degrees of Marie Antoinette. And just as clueless.

Reich writes:

We’ve witnessed self-dealing on a monumental scale – starting with the junk-bond takeovers of the 1980s, followed by the Savings and Loan crisis, the corporate scandals of the early 2000s (Enron, Adelphia, Global Crossing, Tyco, Worldcom), and culminating in the near meltdown of Wall Street in 2008 and the taxpayer-financed bailout.

Along the way, millions of Americans lost their jobs their savings, and their homes.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court has opened the floodgates to big money in politics wider than ever. Taxes have been cut on top incomes, tax loopholes widened, government debt has grown, public services have been cut. And not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail.

Reich continues:

In 1964, Americans agreed by 64% to 29% that government was run for the benefit of all the people. By 2012, the response had reversed, with voters saying by 79% to 19% that government was “run by a few big interests looking after themselves.”

The left wants to rebuild the system while the angry right (exemplified by the T-party) wants to burn it down, Reich writes. As American families saw their net worth plummet and lost jobs and homes in the Great Recession, the ruling class Hoovered up more of America’s wealth, even as it bitched about bonuses and taxes, and as hedge fund managers rallied to defend the carried interest loophole. Lynn Parramore explains that one at Naked Capitalism:

The carried interest loophole, as economist Dean Baker put it, is likely the worst of all the “sneaky and squirrelly ways that the rich use to escape their tax liability.” It goes down like this: Hedge fund managers brazenly claim they deserve to pay a special low tax rate on the money they earn overseeing the funds they manage because, um, it’s not guaranteed. So they pay 20 percent instead of the 39.6 percent they would pay if the money were taxed as ordinary income. They get very rich from this windfall, just ask Mitt Romney. But you know what? Lots of workers have no guarantee about the money they’ll earn, from people selling cars to the guy who just served you a burger. Do they get a special tax rate? No, they don’t. They pay full freight. In fact, almost nobody’s income is guaranteed. You could get a pay cut tomorrow. Or a pink slip. Do you still pay regular income tax? Yep, you do.

This unfair tax break basically allows hedge fund managers to screw their fellow Americans out of money that could do things the illustrious patrons of the Robin Hood Foundation claim are so dear to their hearts, like building schools and feeding the poor. According to a Congressional Research Service cited in the Hedge Clippers report, closing the carried interest loophole would generate $17 billion a year. How many hungry children in New York City could that feed? All of them.

In exposing the Robin Hood Foundation’s brand of billionaire philanthropy, the Hedge Clippers report shows that “for every dollar the Robin Hood Foundation hedge fund managers studied give to the organization’s antipoverty efforts, they soak up $44 from the public in the form of tax avoidance and anti-tax advocacy. The authors of the report believe that to be a conservative estimate,” writes Parramore.

That’s pretty revolting right there. And now, cake?

Poseur for president
by Tom Sullivan

During one sequence in Buster Keaton’s comedy The General, the hapless train engineer Johnnie Gray (Keaton) finds himself caught in a battle between Union forces and Confederate Army friendlies. Finding a sword, Johnnie discovers that when he brandishes it (the way officers do) Confederate soldiers mistake him for someone actually in charge.

That also works for Donald Trump: posture as if you are a leader and people will think you are. He’s just better at it than his fellow poseurs.

Washington Monthly‘s Nancy LeTourneau believes Trump is what you get when you follow Republican rhetoric “to its logical (?) conclusion“:

What is it that Trump is suggesting he would do on the issues the Republicans are so concerned about. When it comes to Obamacare, he’d “repeal it and replace it with something terrific.” Sounds good, huh?

And when it comes to the 11 million undocumented workers in this country, just round ‘em up and get rid of them. If you think that Mexican immigrants are nothing more than rapists and murderers, that sounds good too, doesn’t it? But don’t bother fretting your pretty little head about how to go about doing that. Donald will “manage” it.

As I said, this is the “logical” conclusion of the path Republicans have taken. Climate change…deny it. Iran nuclear deal…oppose it. Terrorism…talk tough, but don’t get into specifics. Their own party leaders are admitting that their agenda is being set by a conservative media that “doesn’t give a damn about governing.”

Governing requires compromise, and compromise is for wusses like Alexander Hamilton, the subject of a new musical:

Ron Chernow, whose biography of Hamilton inspired the musical, said that compromise was the timeliest theme in the musical. “What Lin is showing is that it’s very easy when you’re in the political opposition to take extreme ideological positions, but when you’re dealing with real power, you have to engage in messy realities and compromises to move forward,” Mr. Chernow said.

Trump supporters such as last week’s New Hampshire focus group don’t want leaders who school them in messy realities. They want to feel “strength and power.” They want a wise-cracking, Daddy Warbucks action figure, someone to step in, talk tough, and solve problems with a punch or a roundhouse kick. They don’t just want to vote for Trump; they want to be him.

LeTourneau writes, “They have an idealized view of America where white men are in charge, authority is unquestioned, and the world bows to our dominance. The fact that things are more complicated than that pisses them off.” Trump is the big, swinging d*ck who can fix anything with a wave of his, uh, hand.

Daddy Donald is just the ticket, a more manly version of these kiddie-show problem solvers:

Clinton’s tax release: No whining
by Tom Sullivan

Tax records released this week show that since leaving the White House the Clintons have done pretty well for themselves. Jonathan Allen explains at Vox, comparing Hillary’s finances to Jeb!’s:

Friday’s disclosures make clear that Clinton has made a lot more money than Bush. She’s paid $57.5 million in taxes since 2007, well more than the $38 million Bush made between 1981 and 2013. In 2013, the most lucrative year for which he has provided information, Bush made $7.36 million. That year, the Clintons pulled in $27.47 million.

They also earned $28.3 million in 2014, paying an effective tax rate that year of 45.8 percent in federal, state and local taxes — partly due to the tax joys of living in New York. Their biggest source of income in recent years has been paid speeches, a fact reinforced by Friday’s first-time disclosure of $22.3 million in earnings from lecture-circuit stops in 2013.

For his part, Jeb! has been paying “roughly 36 percent” in a state with no income tax, and to my recollection has not been gauche enough to whine about it, or else he just learned from his father’s “read my lips” #fail. Jeb! has in fact refused to sign Grover Norquist’s no-tax pledge.

Republicans will no doubt mine Hillary Clinton’s tax records for anything they can make seem suspicious, or fuss over what they claim is missing in her email releases. But what’s really missing is the whining over what she pays. Clinton wants people in her tier to pay more. She wants to close the carried interest loophole and push for implementing “the Buffett Rule, which makes sure millionaires don’t pay lower rates than their secretaries.” Those making over $1 million per year would pay at least 30 percent of their incomes in tax. Plus, in her attack on “quarterly capitalism,” Clinton wants to change how capital gains are taxed. Vox continues:

“We hear very different principles from the Republican candidates running for president. They want to give me another tax cut I don’t need instead of putting middle class families first,” Clinton said in a statement accompanying her release. “Families like mine that reap rewards from our economy have a responsibility to pay our fair share.”

None of what Clinton wants to do with the tax code is particularly radical. But Republicans, most of whom have signed a pledge to never raise new taxes, have given her a lot of room to contrast with them.

If she does, Clinton will have to do it in a more accessible way than she has so far if she expects Average Joe to stop genuflecting before the grousing rich. Unlike Clinton, the 1% always have some mighty fine whine about what they pay in taxes. No tax rate short of Somalia’s will stop them from whining about it. They won’t be satisfied until We the People are paying them for making a profit.

Fight or flight?
by Tom Sullivan

Eric Garner: selling loose cigarettes
John Crawford: shopping at Walmart
Tamir Rice: playing in a park
Walter Scott: burned out brake light
Freddie Gray: running from police
Sandra Bland: failure to signal lane change
Sam Dubose: not displaying a front license tag

The first three were on foot. Police stopped Freddie Gray for running when he saw them. Police stopped the other three for minor traffic violations. All African American and all dead after the encounters.

In 45 years of driving while white, I recall being pulled over for something as trivial as failure to signal a lane change exactly once. How many times had Sandra Bland at age 28 been stopped for minor offenses before being dragged from her car on July 10, 2015?

In the case of Sam Dubose, a grand jury this week indicted Cincinnati Police Officer Ray Tensing for murder over the July 19 shooting. The (ironically named) Hamilton County prosecutor Joseph Deters called the shooting “the most asinine act I’ve ever seen a police officer make, totally unwarranted.”

Watching the body-cam video, it seems that Dubose wanted to get away when the white officer asked him to step out of the car. Imagine that.

Imagine you are an African American stopped for a traffic violation as trivial as a missing front license plate and, based on recent events, consider the possibility that in moments you might die. What does raw instinct demand? Fight or flight?

Except choosing either (as if instinct is a choice) is proof for the warrior cop of something much more threatening than an expired tag. Fleeing imminent death becomes proof of malice, the way drowning once proved an accused witch innocent.

According to Deters, Sam Dubose died over “chicken crap stuff” and Tensing “never should have been a police officer.” One wonders how many others fall into that category.

Facebook’s aerospace team
by Tom Sullivan

Now there’s a phrase to give one pause. This just came in over the transom:

MENLO PARK, Calif. (AP) — Facebook says it will begin test flights later this year for a solar-powered drone with a wingspan as big as a Boeing 737, in the next stage of its campaign to deliver Internet connectivity to remote parts of the world.

Engineers at the giant social network say they’ve built a drone with a 140-foot wingspan that weighs less than 1,000 pounds. Designed to fly at high altitudes for up to three months, it will use lasers to send Internet signals to stations on the ground.

Facebook’s engineers at engineers at Connectivity Lab are designing a laser-based communications system to deliver the Internet to remote regions of the world the NSA cannot currently monitor from ‎Fort Meade or Bluffdale.

The plan calls for using helium balloons to lift each drone into the air, Parikh said. The drones are designed to climb to 90,000 feet, safely above commercial airliners and thunderstorms, where they will fly in circles through the day. At night, he said, they will settle to about 60,000 feet to conserve battery power.

Each drone will fly in a circle with a radius of about 3 kilometers, which the engineers hope will enable it to provide Internet service to an area with a radius of about 50 kilometers.

Facebook drones at 90,000 feet. Amazon delivery drones below 400 feet. Large military drones in between — commingled with your Aunt Millie’s flight to Omaha. Amateur idiots anywhere, anytime. And one FAA NextGen air traffic control system to rule them all. (They’re only having a little trouble meeting the September 2015 deadline for writing those rules.) And c’mon, Zuckerberg, right? No worries. Not until one takes down an airliner or crashes into a school.

Yeah, yeah, but your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could that they didn’t stop to think if they should. — Dr. Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park (1993)

And instant communications. Anywhere. Anytime. It’s been a dream of techies since at least George Orwell.

But, you know, all that hardware to maintain. So much needless expense. TPC had a better idea for handling that little problem back in 1967:

(h/t Barry)

Next come the phony quotes
by Tom Sullivan

Donald Trump continues to wow the GOP’s nativist base. Jeff Tiedrich explained why yesterday in a Tweet:

.@realDonaldTrump is a dumb white male's idea of what a rich person sounds like.— Jeff Tiedrich (@jefftiedrich) July 29, 2015

Michael Savage interviewed Donald Trump on his radio show yesterday, declaring, “I’m for Trump. Point-blank. Best choice we have.” The two discussed voter identification laws, immigration and the Iran nuclear agreement.

Savage called Trump the “Winston Churchill of our time.”

Next come the phony Trump quotes, I guess: “You can always count on Americans to pick the right president – after they’ve tried everybody else.”