And another day of the Season of Hate, MTG, QAnon’s new ‘plan,’ the anti-birth control movement, Rudy getting another suspension, an assassination, accessing science, and ‘Well, Hitler did a lot of good things’ comes to a close:
“I like presidents who don't admire Hitler.” — John Pavlovitz
Deaths
US: 621,873 (+312)
World: 4,017,622 (+8658)
Cases
US: 34,643,902 (+21,212)
World: 185,843,562 (+463,696)
“Summer of Soul” Is a Counter to the GOP Season of Hate. With the Biden administration beating back (for now) the COVID-19 pandemic, engineering (possibly) a bipartisan infrastructure deal, and presiding over an economy that has experienced a surge in hiring and wages, Republicans have little to rally around. Except, it seems, for hate and racism. In recent months, GOPers and conservatives have mounted an anti-anti-racism campaign that has included decrying the discontinuation of a handful of Dr. Seuss titles (that contained racist stereotypes), demonizing and misrepresenting Critical Race Theory and proposing absurd laws to ban its teaching, denouncing a book that examined the role of slavery in the Battle of the Alamo, and assailing NPR for noting the Declaration of Independence contains “flaws and deeply ingrained hypocrisies” (and the “foundation for this country’s collective aspirations”). Last week, 120 House Republicans voted against removing the statues of Confederate leaders from the US Capitol. These efforts to oppose actions redressing racism—couched as challenges to “cancel culture”—are just the latest iteration of the Republicans’ decades-old Southern Strategy, which was designed to encourage and exploit racism for electoral gain. And Republicans, even as they dismiss or downplay the January 6 attack in which pro-Trump domestic terrorists assaulted police officers and injured over 150 of them, are gearing up to make “law and order” a central them for the 2022 midterm elections. That’s a mantra that has long been regarded as a coded racist message.
On a visit to Europe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of the first world war, Donald Trump insisted to his then chief of staff, John Kelly: “Well, Hitler did a lot of good things.”…Bender reports that Trump made the remark during an impromptu history lesson in which Kelly “reminded the president which countries were on which side during the conflict” and “connected the dots from the first world war to the second world war and all of Hitler’s atrocities”…”Senior officials described his understanding of slavery, Jim Crow, or the Black experience in general post-civil war as vague to nonexistent,” he writes. “But Trump’s indifference to Black history was similar to his disregard for the history of any race, religion or creed.” — If you support Trump, you are a fascist and a racist. Own it. Don’t pretend that you’re not.
Marjorie Taylor Greene compares Biden vaccine push to Nazi-era 'brown shirts' weeks after apologizing for Holocaust comments.
QAnon's new 'plan'? Run for school board. In the wake of Donald Trump's 2020 election defeat, many QAnon followers have hatched a plan: run for school board or local office, spread the gospel of Q, but don’t call it QAnon.
The Anti–Birth Control Movement Is the New Anti-Abortion Movement. Republicans have started to blur the lines between birth control and abortion in the hopes of making it harder for American women to get both birth control and abortions. The war on choice rages on, but the alarming development is that it seems to be more and more focused on birth control. This is particularly disturbing because most of us feel that the legitimacy of birth control relies on solid settled precedent. But ever since Obamacare was passed, Republicans cottoned on to the fact that if they can tie birth control to abortion, then publicly funded insurance might not have to pay for birth control. Because of the Hyde Amendment, federally funded health care providers cannot, except in rare circumstances, offer coverage for abortion. So if birth control equals abortion…As outlandish as this equating seems, you can already see its consequences playing out…Look, Republicans are smart(ish), so they’re not going to take away your birth control pills, they’re just going to continue to blur the line between abortion and birth control. And do you know why that is? Because abortion was never about life for these Republicans. These were the people who argued that your grandmother should be willing to die for the Dow Jones Industrial Average when it came to COVID lockdowns. These are the people who believe in the death penalty. No, this isn’t about life, this is about power. Republicans want to blur the line between birth control and abortion because they want the power to control what happens to women’s bodies.
Rudy Giuliani suspended from practicing law in Washington, DC. Rudy Giuliani's law license has been suspended in Washington, DC, after he temporarily lost his license in New York for pushing election lies and that state court system looks further into his case.
Haiti in upheaval: President Moïse assassinated at home. A squad of gunmen assassinated Haitian President Jovenel Moïse and wounded his wife in an overnight raid on their home Wednesday, with police killing four suspects and arresting two others hours later amid growing chaos in a country already enduring gang violence and protests of his increasingly authoritarian rule.
Study: Northwest heat wave impossible without climate change. The deadly heat wave that roasted the Pacific Northwest and western Canada was virtually impossible without human-caused climate change that added a few extra degrees to the record-smashing temperatures, a new quick scientific analysis found.
The pandemic made science more accessible than ever. Let's keep it that way. Plus, COVID isn’t the only global crisis our planet is facing. What about climate change or cancer or malaria or biodiversity loss or bee colony collapse disorder or coral bleaching? Wouldn’t we benefit from those research articles being freely accessible?…Typically, it works like this: Scientists apply for and are awarded funding, conduct science, and write papers. Then, when they’re ready to publish a paper, they send it to journals one at a time, hoping the most prestigious one will pick it up. Once a journal accepts the paper, it can charge whatever it wants for people to access it. Researchers aren’t paid for their articles—and are expected to review their colleagues’ papers for free as just like, part of the gig of being a scientist. For institutions that rely on research, like universities, access to bundles of journals can cost millions of dollars, even for schools whose own scholars produced some of the work. (It’s sort of like if Mother Jones didn’t pay reporters for their stories, yet charged hundreds of dollars for a subscription.) The system makes even less sense when you remember that it is often the government—that is, the public—that is funding the research in the first place through federal grants.
Chinese social media giant WeChat shuts LGBT accounts. China’s most popular social media service has deleted accounts on LGBT topics run by university students and nongovernment groups, prompting concern the ruling Communist Party is tightening control over gay and lesbian content.
36 states and DC target Google's app store in antitrust lawsuit. The complaint contends Google has worked to ensure it distributes more than 90% of the apps on Android devices.
Life’s short. Live, love, create, and help others.
Until next time, my friends. Stay safe and stay sane. Good night.
