A Very Discouraging Look At Alabama's Vicious New Anti-Abortion Law

Click here for an article at Slate by Lili Loofbourow entitled "The GOP Has Its Final Anti-Abortion Victory in Sight," subtitled "Stripping voter rights. Rigging the Supreme Court. Dull procedural tricks. It’s all paying off at once." The link to the article in WaPo says, "Every anti-abortion move the GOP has made for years is paying off at once." Discussing the law, Loofbourow says:

The point is this web-like convergence, across multiple states, that’s closing like a net around Americans capable of getting pregnant. Multiple states, with multiple paths to the Supreme Court. A law passed to invoke the high court can’t be dismissed as a “strategy” or a “tactic”—the law is exactly what it says. And it was passed to satisfy the beliefs of a minority. Take Georgia: 70 percent of Georgian voters and 68 percent of American voters don’t believe Roe v. Wade should be overturned.* It doesn’t matter. That isn’t stopping Georgia’s government. We’re long past democracy working, even if many have yet to realize it, because so much of its dismantling has been invisible to the public thanks to dark money, gerrymandering, voter suppression, and maneuvers like Ainsworth’s, all of which we’ve been encouraged to consider merely improper. A long campaign to hobble and constrain our representative government at every turn is now paying off dramatically. For decades, extremists have been seizing control through the kind of procedural malfeasance that gets continually mislabeled as assholery or poor etiquette. Over and over, Americans have made the mistake of responding to Republican misbehavior by treating each case as an isolated insult to be transcended. The mature thing, we’ve been told, is to “rise above.”

Republicans have been working diligently at this for the last 40 years; finally, under Trump, it's all coming together. A key element was the recent tainted election in Georgia, where controversies were ruled on by the Georgia Secretary of State, Brian Kemp, in favor of the Republican candidate -- Brian Kemp. That's right; Kemp supervised his own election, controversy be damned. As Loofbourow says:

Yes, a judge found that Kemp’s practices raised “grave concerns for the Court about the differential treatment inflicted on a group of individuals who are predominantly minorities.” It didn’t matter. He’s the governor now. In the name of what he called “voter maintenance,” the man canceled 1.4 million voter registrations in his tenure as secretary of state. He “won” his election by 55,000 votes. The thousand cuts he inflicted on Georgia worked: By the time that court decision came around, it was only a week before the election. Too much damage had been done. Kemp won—technically, but technical wins are all you need—and that yearslong series of cheats has empowered him now to sign a bill that would authorize punishing women for exercising their constitutional right to an abortion.

The damage inflicted by a Trump presidency is going to take decades to repair.

Use Windows 10's "Your Phone" App To Sync Your Phone And PC

Click here for an article at howtogeek.com by Josh Hendrickson entitled "Why Android Users Need Windows 10’s 'Your Phone' App." Apparently it does all sorts of good stuff, but I can't try it out because I'm in France, with a French SIM card and phone number. I'm saving this article here so that I can set it up on my phone at home.

The Your Phone app is a powerful and often overlooked part of Windows 10. If you’re an Android user, you can use it to text right from your PC, see all your phone’s notifications, and quickly transfer photos. If you have the right phone and PC, you can even use the Your Phone app to mirror your phone’s screen and see it on your PC.

You can text from your PC, transfer photos wirelessly, mirror your phone screen to your PC, and other good stuff.

They Teach Arabic Numerals In School!

More evidence of the Muslim takeover of American society

A group called Civil Science polled 3,200 Americans and found that:
- 29% said that Arabic numerals should be taught in school
- 16% had no opinion on the subject
-  56% said they should not be taught

Regardless of the clear findings of this poll, Arabic numerals continue to be taught in American classrooms.

Willmar, Minnesota, pop. 21,000: The Times, They Are A-Changin'.

I'm not a big fan of Thomas Friedman, but I like his article in The New York Times entitled "President Trump, Come to Willmar." It's about Willmar, Minnesota, a town of 21,000, has absorbed a large number of immigrants over the last 20 years -- and has thrived while doing so. The high school has students from 30 different countries.

It has almost zero unemployment. If you can fog up a mirror, you can get a job in Willmar — whether as an agriculture scientist or as a meatpacker for the Jennie-O turkey plant. The math is simple: There just aren’t enough white Lutheran Scandinavians to fill those jobs.

Some small towns in Minnesota, like Willmar, are doing well; others are in decline, plagued by unemployment and an opiate problem:

In Minnesota, the towns that are rising are places “that have said we need a trained work force with a good work ethic and we’ll embrace a redefined sense of community to get that,” explained Dana Mortenson, C.E.O. of World Savvy, a global education organization that also works in Minnesota towns. And the ones that are struggling — and losing both jobs and population — “are often the ones who can’t manage this new inclusion challenge.”

Social networks, globalization, climate change, economic opportunity, demographics and war are throwing more people together with more “other” people in more remote places than ever before. What’s happening in Willmar tells you just how deep this is going and why every town in America needs to get caught trying to make diversity work — or it will wither. It’s that simple.

A trickle of immigrants became a flood:

Diversity came to Willmar slowly, gradually — and then quickly. First, in the 1980s and 1990s, came a trickle of Latino seasonal farm workers who mostly went back south for the winter. Then the growing Jennie-O turkey processing plant needed a steady supply of meatpackers, and that led some to stay. And then, about 12 years ago, Somali and Karen refugees to the U.S. got word through their networks that there was work in Willmar and cheap housing. They, too, first came in a trickle, which became a large wave about five years ago — some arriving directly from African refugee camps.

According to the mayor:

“We had 1,200 to 1,600 Somalis when I started as mayor in 2014 and now we have 3,500 to 3,800,” said Calvin. “We also have 800 Karen people from Burma.” Add to that over 4,000 Latinos and you have a town of 21,000 that had been virtually all white and Christian its entire existence become nearly half new immigrants in the blink of two decades.

🎵 Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.🎵

The Green New Deal, John Oliver Style

Includes Bill Nye The Science Guy like you've never seen him before:

Paul Krugman On Trump's Trade Policy

As far as I can tell, [Trump] isn’t getting a single thing about trade policy right. He doesn’t know how tariffs work, or who pays them. He doesn’t understand what bilateral trade imbalances mean, or what causes them. He has a zero-sum view of trade that flies in the face of everything we’ve learned over the past two centuries. And to the (small) extent that he is making any coherent demands on China, they’re demands China can’t/won’t meet.

Which of the two has the Nobel for economics -- Krugman or Trump?

Donald and Rudy's Excellent Ukrainian Adventure

Click here for an article by Paul Waldman at The Plum Line, a WaPo blog, entitled "Trump is already colluding with a foreign government to get reelected."

It begins:

There are some news stories so jaw-dropping that you have to read them two or three times to make sure you’re not hallucinating. So it is with a story in the New York Times in which Rudolph W. Giuliani announces to the world that he is going to Ukraine to pressure that country’s government to use its official resources to assist in President Trump’s reelection effort — by mounting an investigation he hopes will produce dirt on Joe Biden.

Yes, Trump is trying to collude with a foreign government in an attempt to aid his campaign by creating negative stories about a potential opponent. Again.

“Oh come on,” you’re saying. “You’ve got to be exaggerating.” I’m not. The Trump team is apparently streamlining its previous pattern, which was to try to secretly work with a foreign government on its campaign, angrily deny it when it’s revealed and then, when caught by incontrovertible evidence, insist that there was never anything wrong with doing it in the first place.

They’re now skipping over the secrecy and denial parts, and just doing it openly.

Rudy's foray into the Ukraine has two objectives: to downplay the depredations of Paul Manafort, Trump's jailbird former campaign manager; and to attempt to smear Joe Biden because of his son's seat as a board member on a possibly shady Ukrainian energy company, Burisma Holdings.

Here's Guiliani's slant on it:

“We’re not meddling in an election, we’re meddling in an investigation, which we have a right to do,” Mr. Giuliani said in an interview on Thursday when asked about the parallel to the special counsel’s inquiry.

“There’s nothing illegal about it,” he said. “Somebody could say it’s improper. And this isn’t foreign policy — I’m asking them to do an investigation that they’re doing already and that other people are telling them to stop. And I’m going to give them reasons why they shouldn’t stop it because that information will be very, very helpful to my client, and may turn out to be helpful to my government.”

Waldman says:

So to be clear: The president of the United States is, through his lawyer, pressuring a foreign government to mount an investigation in order to tarnish his potential general-election opponent.

The article concludes:

This is like a crew of bank robbers stopping on their way into the bank to hold a news conference to announce that they’re going to hold the customers at gunpoint, tie up the tellers, blow the door to the safe, grab the money, then escape through the back entrance where their getaway car is waiting. Any questions?

I’ve argued that Trump is going to mobilize the resources of the federal government to destroy his eventual opponent. Trump has already told Sean Hannity that Attorney General William P. Barr is looking into what he called “incredible” charges involving Ukraine and Hillary Clinton, no doubt at his suggestion. This is only the beginning of what Trump is going to pull, and there’s every reason to think that he feels utterly unrestrained by law or ethics.

That Trump would do this at all is shocking and despicable. That he would do it so openly is proof that he really does think he can get away with anything.

C'est la vie. Just another day in Trumpland. Move along; nothing to see here.

Saving Screenshots, Using Snipping Tool

Click here for an article at How-To Geek by Raihul Saigal entitled "How to Take Screenshots in Windows 10." You can also save a screenshot to a file, and save all or part of a screen. For more flexible options, it tells how you can use a Windows 10 snipping tool.

WaPo Fact Checker On The Uranium One "Scandal"

Click here for an article by Glenn Kessler, Fact Checker at The Washington Post, providing information on the Clinton "Uranium One scandal."

Hamilton, Jefferson, and Betsy DeVos

Click here for an article at ThinkProgress by Ian Millhiser entitled "Betsy DeVos appears to have no idea who Alexander Hamilton was."

It's a good short explanation of the ideological struggle between Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton:

The early history of the United States was, to a large extent, a battle between a Jeffersonian model built on agriculture, small government, and slavery; and a Hamiltonian model built on capitalism, economic expansion, and a robust centralized government.

Betsy DeVos, of course, has no idea of the philosophies of either man, and while head of a government department dedicated to fostering public education, says she intends to fight for "freedom from government." Sigh.

Keyboard Shortcuts for VLC

Click here for an article at How-To Geek by Chris Hoffman entitled "Master VLC With These 23+ Keyboard Shortcuts."

Examples: "Control" with the up or down arrow increases or decreases volume (VLC's slider volume, not the main system volume); "T" displays time remaining and time elapsed (only for a few seconds); "Shift" with the left or right arrow jumps 3 seconds forward or back; "Alt" with left or right arrow jumps 10 seconds; "Control" with left or right arrow jumps 1 minute; "Control-Alt" with left or right arrow jumps 5 minutes; "Control-T" jumps to a specific time in the video (enter time with number keys).

Teach Dave To Cook

Click here for a short (five-part) series of videos from The Washington Post entitled "Teach Dave to Cook."

Cook a steak, make salad with vinaigrette and croutons, make chicken Scarpariello (shoemakers' chicken) with sausage.

Keyboard Shortcuts for the Windows Command Prompt; Write an AutoHotKey Script

Here are a couple of interesting articles from How-To Geek: Click here for an article at How-To Geek by Walter Glenn entitled "34 Useful Keyboard Shortcuts for the Windows Command Prompt."

Here are a few pointers about opening the command prompt:

Windows (or Windows+R) and then type “cmd”: Run the Command Prompt in normal mode. Win+X and then press C: Run the Command Prompt in normal mode. (New in Windows 10) Win+X and then press A: Run the Command Prompt with administrative privileges. (New in Windows 10)

I like the last one, with administrative privileges.

**********

Click here for an article by Anthony Heddings entitled "How to Write an AutoHotKey Script."

Presidential Popularity (Average Poll Ratings)

This is a tweet from CNN producer Ryan Struyk:

Average presidential approval ratings through this point in term via ABC/Post and Gallup polling:

Kennedy 73%
W. Bush 71%
H.W. Bush 70%
Johnson 69%
Eisenhower 67%
Nixon 58%
Truman 56%
Obama 55%
Reagan 55%
Carter 52%
Clinton 51%
Ford 47%
Trump 38%

An unrelated, but pleasant, side note: Democrats have won the popular vote in six of the last seven presidential elections.

Joe Biden, Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas

Click here for an article in The Washington Post by Elise Viebeck entitled "Joe Biden was in charge of the Anita Hill hearing. Even he says it wasn’t fair."

Krugman Does It Again

Hits it out of the park, that is. Click here for his article in The New York Times entitled "The Great Republican Abdication," subtitled "A party that no longer believes in American values."

In the face of Trump's disregard for the law, "the modern G.O.P. is perfectly willing to sell out America if that’s what it takes to get tax cuts for the wealthy."

Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt co-authored a book entitled "How Democracies Die." They maintain:

that when mainstream politicians abdicate responsibility in the face of a leader who threatens democracy, it’s usually for one of two reasons. Either they have the misguided belief that he can be controlled, or they’re willing to go along because his agenda overlaps with theirs — that is, they believe that he’ll give them what they want.

Krugman points out the deep unpopularity of Republican positions:

By large margins, the American public believes that corporations and the wealthy don’t pay their fair share in taxes. By even larger margins, the public opposes cuts to safety-net programs like Medicaid. Yet as far as I can tell, every G.O.P. budget proposal over the past decade has combined big tax cuts for the rich with savage cuts in Medicaid.

Why, then, do Republicans keep getting elected?

Partly by lying about its policies. But mainly the G.O.P.’s political achievements depend on identity politics — white identity politics. Exploiting racial resentment to capture white working-class voters, while pursuing policies that benefit only the wealthy, has been the core of the party’s political strategy for decades. That’s why, in an increasingly diverse country, Republican support has stayed overwhelmingly white.

Has Trump delivered? Yes:

In 2017 he passed a huge tax cut, largely for corporations, that disproportionately benefited the wealthy, and almost succeeded in repealing Obamacare, in the process gutting Medicaid.

Krugman draws two conclusions about this Republican behavior:

First, anyone expecting bipartisanship in dealing with the aftermath of the Mueller report — in particular, anyone suggesting that Democrats should wait for G.O.P. support before proceeding with investigations that might lead to impeachment — is being deluded. Trump is giving the Republican establishment what it wants, and it will stick with him no matter what.

Second, it’s later than you think for American democracy. Before 2016 you could have wondered whether Republicans would, in extremis, be willing to take a stand in defense of freedom and rule of law. At this point, however, they’ve already taken that test, and failed with flying colors.

The simple fact is that one of our two major parties — the one that likes to wrap itself in the flag — no longer believes in American values. And it’s very much up in the air whether America as we know it will survive.

Excellent Exposure Of Fox News Hypocrisy

This is a series of short cuts from Fox News criticizing Obama -- for playing golf, vacationing in Florida, tweeting, being obsessed with cable TV (?!), legislating by executive action, criticizing former presidents and media outlets, increasing the deficit, not being transparent, concealing records, "pandering to the worst regimes, and thugs, and dictators," ignoring the rule of law, constantly campaigning, blaming others, never making any concessions, treating his opponents as enemies, will never admit he's wrong, for insecurity and vanity, failing to set the correct tone for the country, dividing the country and pandering to his base, doesn't like being mocked (thin-skinned?), trash talking, name-calling, failing to be positive and uplifting, acting like a schoolyard bully, not being able to scare Putin.

Of course, Trump is worse on all these counts by several orders of magnitude.

Must Read - Rupert Murdoch

Click here for a long, long article at The New York Times by Jonathan Mahler and Jim Rutenberg, entitled "How Rupert Murdoch's Empire of Influence Remade the World."

The article includes:

Part 1: Imperial Reach. Murdoch and his children have toppled governments on two continents and destabilized the most important democracy on Earth. What do they want?

Part 2: Internal Divisions. President Trump’s election made the Murdoch family more powerful than ever. But the bitter struggle between James and Lachlan threatened to tear the company apart.

Part 3: The New Fox Weapon. The Disney deal left the Murdochs with a media empire stripped to its essence: a hard-core right-wing news machine — with Lachlan in charge.

Brian Stelter comments:

Murdochland was quiet when the NYT published its three-part investigation of "Planet Fox" two weeks ago. But one of Rupert's top execs, News Corp CEO Robert Thomson, has something to say. In a Tuesday evening speech, he "dismissed the NYT's investigation as a 'rancid hatchet job' that was 'distant from the truth,'" according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

Thomson called it "multi-generational muck-spreading in which the facts were incidental, if not accidental, and the journalistic jaundice and corporate self-interest were fundamental." Hmmm, which facts? I don't see any corrections on the story!

Tip For Copy-And-Paste

If the material you're copying contains images or other weird stuff, copy as usual, but paste into your document using the command Control-Shift-V. That usually copies only the plain text.

Magic Jack

Click here for a Bob Rankin article entitled "Will MagicJack Replace Your Landline?"