Prince of the Ascetics by Charles Johnson, found in Night Hawks: Stories and which begins:

Once upon a time, my companions and I lived in the forest near the village of Uruvela on the banks of the Nairanjana River.

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Anita Hill: Kavanaugh confirmation hearing ‘disservice to the American public’ by Amanda Holpuch.

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Could populism actually be good for democracy? by James Miller.

Everyone seems to agree that democracy is under attack. What is surprising is how many of its usual friends have come to fear democracy itself–or perhaps to fear that a country’s people, too inflamed by narrow passions, risk turning politics into a distasteful blood sport, pitting The People vs Democracy, in the startling words of one recent book title.

Observers have understandable qualms about political programmes that are alarmingly illiberal, yet obviously democratic, in that most citizens support them. In Poland and Hungary, democratically elected ruling parties attack Muslim migrants for undermining Christian identity. In the Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte rules with an iron fist, pledging to put drug pushers in funeral parlours, not prisons.

Modern democracies all rest on a claim of popular sovereignty–the proposition that all legitimate governments grow out of the power of a people, and in some way are subject to its will. Yet when a large majority of a country’s people vehemently supports policies a critic finds abhorrent, many liberals, even avowed democrats, recoil in horror.

Thus arises the possibility of a painful paradox: that “democracies end when they are too democratic”.

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Are Social Media Companies Really Silencing Conservatives? by Trevor Noah.

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Trump Translators, Border Golf & Raw Water by Desi Lydic.

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We find out who the sucker in the banking royal commission is by Andrew Marlton.

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The Weave by Charles Johnson, found in Night Hawks: Stories and which begins:

Ieesha is nervous and trying not to sneeze when she steps at four in the morning to the front door of the Sassy Hair Salon and Beauty Supplies in the Central District.

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Are dark kitchens the satanic mills of our era? by John Harris. (Suggested by Jojo.)
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Sleep: how much do we really need? by Hannah Devlin.

[E]ven a day or two of sleep deprivation can cause otherwise healthy people to suffer hallucinations and physical symptoms. After a poor night’s sleep, cognitive abilities take an immediate hit. Concentration and memory are noticeably affected and people are more likely to be impulsive and favour instant gratification [Emphasis mine, JH] over waiting for a better outcome. We are also worse people when we’re tired–one study found that sleep deprived people are more likely to cheat and lie.

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Barbara Kingsolver: ‘It feels as though we’re living through the end of the world’ by Lidija Haas.
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Camille and Lily, her daughter from her second marriage, knew never to disturb her when she was working. “There are two reasons you can knock on this door,” she remembers telling them. “Arterial bleeding; the house is on fire.” Joking aside, “they respected that. They knew that Mama was doing something important in there.”

To the extent that Kingsolver is an optimist, it’s because she sees that as the only practical and conscionable option. When she tells me of her visit to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef earlier this year, a treat after turning in the Unsheltered manuscript, she’s quick to correct me about the direness of the reef’s fate. “Reports of its death are greatly exaggerated,” she says, and gives me a very swift, clear account of why these particular corals with their particular microclimates can still survive, heal and adapt.

“You’re hearing about everything that dies, you’re not hearing about everything that’s still alive,” she says. “If you think it’s dead already then you’re not going to be bothered. I almost think people gravitate towards ‘It’s too late,’ because then they don’t have to put themselves out.” And then, as if casually reminding me just why her fiction, that patient, painstaking evocation of worlds, makes sense as a response to an emergency, she says: “Only if you love something will you inconvenience yourself to work on its behalf.”

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The Trump administration has entered Stage 5 climate denial by Dana Nuccitelli.

With apologies to Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:

Stage 1: Deny the Problem Exists
Stage 2: Deny We’re the Cause
Stage 3: Deny It’s a Problem
Stage 4: Deny We can Solve It
Stage 5: It’s too Late

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14 Questions with Ta-Nehisi Coates by Harrison Barnes.

Barnes: If you had one message for the youth of today, what would it be?

Coates: Study. But I don’t mean like study in school. I mean, that’s good, too. But when I think about things that helped me out, ultimately, it was just trying to be as aware as I possibly could — and studying as much as I possibly could — about what was going on. You know, I read a ton when I was younger. A ton. Beyond, like, even just newspapers. I read a ton of books, you know? Especially in these times right now, folks need to study and be aware.

Barnes: Would you maybe also add, “delete Twitter”? I know you deleted your account a while back. How has your life been different without social media?

Coates: So much better. You know, one of those things about Twitter is, like, even when you’re not on Twitter, you’re on Twitter. Your friends will send you links that they want you to see—so there’s no getting off of it. I feel better. I feel like I’m more pleasant. I think Twitter a lot of times is just really negative, you know?

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A Bird in Jail Is Worth Two on the Street by Sarah Koenig.
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Is the Tide Turning toward Justice for Police-Shooting Victims? by David French.

There’s an understandable, human impulse behind this unwritten standard. Juries appreciate men in uniform who take risks to protect their communities. They are reluctant to second-guess decisions made in the heat of the moment. They’re swayed by expert testimony that often vividly describes how things “could have” gone very wrong, very quickly. Who are they to judge cops from the safety and security of a jury box?

But there’s a problem with this sympathetic analysis. It doesn’t reflect the law as written. Cops don’t have the freedom to fire when afraid. By law, they must exercise a degree of fortitude, and by law they can pull the trigger only when their fear is objectively reasonable. To borrow from the jury instructions in Slager’s case, he had to show that a person of “ordinary firmness and courage” would have believed he was in imminent danger when Scott was running slowly away from him, unarmed.

In other words, juries can’t be reluctant to second-guess an officer’s decision. That’s their job.

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Chicago Claps Back by Jeremy Scahill.
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Brazil’s Bolsonaro-Led Far Right Wins a Victory Far More Sweeping and Dangerous Than Anyone Predicted. Its Lessons Are Global by Glenn Greenwald.

[Jair Bolsonaro] policy prescriptions were even more deranged. Western media has often referred to him as “Brazil’s Trump” but that is wildly inaccurate, understating the case by many magnitudes. In temperament, ideology, and personal history, Bolsonaro – a former Army Captain during Brazil’s notorious 21-year military dictatorship – is far closer to Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte or Egyptian dictator General Abdel El-Sisi than Trump.

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Fossil Fuels Are a Threat to Civilization, New U.N. Report Concludes by Kate Aronoff.
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The Furious Saga of Bernie Moreno, Car Dealer Turned Tech Evangelist and Why Does Issue 1—the Statewide Ballot Measure to Reduce Drug Penalties—Have to be a Constitutional Amendment? by Sam Allard.

Putting Brett Michael Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court of the United States has fuck-all to do with a woman’s right to choose. The conservatives that put the “C” in Conservative have shown time and time again that they’re happy to pay for abortions for their mistresses.

No, the “C” Conservatives really care about—as demonstrated time and time again by the Supreme Court, is Corporations. Ralph Nader has railed against corporations and corporatists. He has a few ideas on how we should act with Kavanaugh on the bench.

Nader, in Let’s Start a Kavanaugh Watch to Check All Five Corporate Judges, writes:

Brett Kavanaugh, the new Injustice of the Supreme Court of the United States, must be pleased by the leading news stories on Monday and Tuesday regarding his swift swearing-in on Saturday. The multiple perjurer, corporate supremacist, presidential power-monger, and a past fugitive from justice (regarding credible claims of sexual assault), Kavanaugh saw critical media coverage become yesterday’s story. The mass media has moved on to other calamities, tragedies, superstorms, and celebrity outrages. Opponents of his nomination must persevere anew.

The future of the Supreme Court looks grim considering Kavanaugh’s judicial decisions and involvement in war crimes and torture as Staff Secretary to President George W. Bush. It is likely that Kavanaugh will be the cruelest and most insensitive justice on the high Court. His support of corporate power will have few limits. That’s saying something, given the rulings of Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito and Neil Gorsuch.

Kavanaugh’s decisions and political statements are so off the wall, I’ve called him a corporation masquerading as a human being. Corporations’ über alles is his pre-eminent core philosophy. Public Citizen’s analysis of his judicial record (apart Continue Reading »

I’m a bad netizen. I’m a bad netizen because I deploy ad blockers, a lot of ad blockers. I haven’t unwillingly seen an internet ad since I installed my first pop-up blocker—remember them?—sometime (I think) in the early ’90s. Advertisers hate people like me. I don’t watch broadcast television partly because of the advertising and I don’t listen to radio shows other than public radio stations (although their sneaky support from ads are starting to bug me). I’ve also avoided most podcasts because of the advertising.

I’m not a free rider, however. I understand that someone has to pay for the journalists. (I’m one myself.) I subscribe to a newspaper and magazines and I’m a public radio member. I even use a few customer courtesy cards.

Others are willing to sell their data and endure the barrage of sales messages to get a free service, but nothing is ever free. Ralph Nader has a few words to share on the topic. Nader, in The Root of the Internet’s Disrepute: Online Advertising! writes:

In all the mounting media coverage of problems with the Internet, such as invasion of privacy, vulnerability to hacking, political manipulation, and user addiction, there is one constant: online advertising. Online advertising is the lifeblood of Google, Facebook, and many other Internet enterprises that profit by providing personal data to various vendors. Moreover, the move of tens of billions of dollars from conventional print and broadcast media continues, with devastating impacts, especially on print newspapers and magazines.

But does online advertising work for consumers? The Internet was once considered a less commercial medium. But today consumers are inundated with targeted ads, reviews, comments, friends’ reactions, and other digital data. Unfortunately for advertisers, consumers are not intentionally clicking on online ads in big numbers.

Google’s search ads tackle people when they search for a product or service. A controlled study by eBay research labs in 2014 concluded that Google was greatly exaggerating the effectiveness of such ads—at least those bought by eBay. eBay’s Continue Reading »

What happened last week? Did we witness a senate hearing? A criminal trial? A civil trial? A job interview? An anointment? The difference is important because they all have very different burdens of proof and we can’t judge the results unless we know just how high the bar was set.

Briahna Gray, writing in Sen. Lisa Murkowski Admits That The Reasonable Doubt Standard Doesn’t Apply to Brett Kavanaugh’s Confirmation for The Intercept, helps us to find out:

Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska admitted on Friday what no other Republican senator would: The standard for joining the elite ranks of the Supreme Court is higher than “he probably didn’t attempt to rape that 15 year old.”

For the past week, conservatives have argued that if Democrats can’t prove “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Judge Brett Kavanaugh sexually assaulted Christine Blasey Ford, he should be appointed to the Supreme Court.

But of course, this is not a trial, and it is not appropriate to apply the level of proof meant to protect criminal defendants from having their life or liberty stripped to a judicial confirmation process.

In fact, the appropriate standard isn’t even the lesser preponderance of the evidence or the “more likely than not” standard that Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said she relied on in deciding to confirm Kavanaugh. That civil standard is lower because less is at stake in civil matters — one’s property can be taken away, but not one’s liberty. But even that standard is too high. As Rachel Mitchell, the prosecutor hired by Senate Republicans to question Ford, said at last week’s Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing: “A Senate confirmation hearing is not a trial, especially not a prosecution,” and “there is no clear standard of proof for allegations made during the Senate’s confirmation process.”

But regardless of whether you agree that the stakes here are ultimately comparable to a (very important) job interview, as many, including myself, have argued, it is undeniable that neither Kavanaugh’s personal liberty nor property is at risk. Although his own behavior during last week’s hearing might put his reputation in jeopardy—the American Bar Association is revisiting its positive evaluation of Kavanaugh based on “new information of a material nature regarding temperament”—if Kavanaugh’s confirmation were to have failed, he would lose nothing tangible that he already had. Like Merrick Garland, whose nomination was stalled for months until former President Barack Obama was no longer in office, he would simply go back to being a judge on the second most powerful court in the country.

That being the case, it was refreshing to hear a conservative acknowledge that the Supreme Court is an institution whose members should engender a high level of respect rather than merely meet a low bar

I would add that having partisan organizations—such as The Federalist Society—submit list of candidates, and then discover that their picks were the only candidates considered, is beyond deeply troubling. If there is such a threat as a deep state to our constitution, I think we have no further to look than such groups.

Yes, Breathing While Black is now a thing…

The Caucasian Kanye: Tucker Carlson Has Gone Full White Nationalist

Dallas Police, DA Refuse to Release 911 Call, Records From the Night Amber Guyger Shot Botham Jean

White Man Tells Black Family Campaigning for Senate Candidate Beto O’Rourke to Get Out of His Neighborhood

Georgia Cop Who Lied About Being Shot by a Black Man Gets 15 Years in Prison

Members of California White Supremacist Group Charged in Connection With 2017 Charlottesville Riot

A Black NYPD Sergeant Supported Colin Kaepernick. He Believes It Cost Him a Promotion

#JusticeForDre: NCCU Students Walk Out of Classes, Demand Answers Over Classmate’s Death at Hands of Security Guard

In Monsters and Men, the Impact of a Police Shooting Is Examined From 3 Different Viewpoints

GOP Congressional Candidate Blames LGBTQ Rights Law on Illiterate Black Heathens

Shopper Says Florida H&M Falsely Accused Her of Stealing a Pair of Earrings: ‘It Was a Black Thing’

White Mother Accidentally Sends Racist Text to Her Black Nanny Then Fires Her For Possibly Being Offended

White Social Studies Teacher Fired For Teaching a Racist Slavery Lesson Wants to Sue for Reverse Racism

Previously…

[Updated at 2324]

In what passes for our national reality, Truth is not Truth.

I scan the headlines and read a few of the stories posted on National Review each day. As is to be expected, the headlines for the past week or so have been dominated by stories on Judge Brett Micheal Kavanaugh and his potential elevation to the Supreme Court Of The United States.

Here is just a recent sampling: The Kavanaugh Battle, Viewed from Rome; The Case against Kavanaugh Is Collapsing; The Left’s ‘Judicial Temperament’ Claim against Kavanaugh; Who Was behind the Flake Set-Up?; Yale Classmates Try and Fail to Show That Kavanaugh Lied about Drinking; Another Shoddy ‘Perjury’ Claim; Which Americans Support Judge Kavanaugh? and In the Kavanaugh Hearings, Democrats Break Norms to Gain Power. You get the idea.

People who read National Review are not the fans of Alex Jones, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck. They may not even be aficionados of Fox News. They are old-money conservatives in the circle of the late NR founder William F. Buckley, Jr. and they are most unlikely to read the latest piece from Jayne Mayer and Ronan Farrow in The New Yorker.

Mayer and Farrow, reporting in The Confusion Surrounding the F.B.I.’s Renewed Investigation of Brett Kavanaugh, write:

As the F.B.I. began its investigation this weekend into allegations of sexual misconduct by Brett Kavanaugh, President Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, several people who hope to contribute information about him to the F.B.I. said that they were unable to make contact with agents. President Trump has promised to give the F.B.I. “free rein” in its probe, but the Times reported on Saturday that the White House had asked the F.B.I. to question only four witnesses. In the course of the next day, confusion spread about whom the F.B.I. would be interviewing, and Senate Democrats demanded that the White House provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with a copy of the written directive that it had sent to the F.B.I. regarding the investigation.

With a one-week deadline looming over the investigation, some who say they have information relevant to the F.B.I.’s probe are suspicious that the investigation will amount to what one of Kavanaugh’s former Yale classmates called a “whitewash.” Roberta Kaplan, an attorney representing one potential witness, Elizabeth Rasor, a former girlfriend of Kavanaugh’s high-school friend Mark Judge, said her client “has repeatedly made clear to the Senate Judiciary Committee and to the F.B.I. that she would like the opportunity to speak to them.” But, Kaplan said, “We’ve received no substantive response.”

Compare that to another NR headline: White House Lifts Constraints on Whom FBI Can Interview about Kavanaugh. (First, allow me a minor rant. [rant]The White House is a building. Buildings can only house, protect from the elements, shelter, they cannot lift constraints. The people who work in the building do that and journalists should not allow the people who do lift constraints to hide behind an euphemisms.[/rant]. There, I feel better. Back to NR.) The headline might make a reader think that all aspects of Kavanaugh’s life are now on the table. That reader would be wrong. Jack Crowe’s piece for NR is riffing off a New York Times article: White House Tells F.B.I. to Interview Anyone Necessary for Kavanaugh Inquiry by Peter Baker and Michael S. Schmidt. They lede:

The White House authorized the F.B.I. to expand its abbreviated investigation into sexual misconduct allegations against Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh by interviewing anyone it deems necessary as long as the review is finished by the end of the week, according to two people briefed on the matter.

At an event on Monday celebrating a new trade deal with Canada and Mexico, President Trump said he instructed his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, over the weekend to instruct the F.B.I. to carry out an open investigation, but the president included the caveat that the inquiry should accommodate the desires of Senate Republicans. [Emphasis mine, JH]

What the fuck does that mean?

I’ve come to think that cartoonist Thomas Nast’s assigned mascots for Republicans and Democrats Republicans-light no longer represent who the groups are. I would like to suggest reaching to ancient Greece and the slave turned story teller Aesop to brand Republicans as the tortise—Senator Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is a great help there—and Democrats as the hare.

My thoughts go like this. Republicans during my lifetime, and long before—reaching back at least as far as 1934 and The American Liberty League—have played the long game uniting for the sole purpose of maintaining the power to protect and expand their wealth. Democrats, on the other hand, order the soup and sandwich because they can’t agree on what they really want.

Republicans have systematically used Republican presidencies and Republican majorities in Congress to pack the federal judiciary and, most importantly, the Supreme Court Of The United States. Hatched in the early ’70s, the plan gave birth to the Federalist Society and the grooming of bright conservatives, predominantly graduates from the University of Chicago and Yale, for legal careers leading to federal and Supreme Court judgeships.

The herd of cats that is the Democratic party has no strategic counterpart to the Federalist Society (or to backers such as The Heritage Foundation) The Democrats need to push out the calcified leadership that can’t see beyond next week, let alone the next election, and find visionary leaders willing to play the long game to plan for the good of the nation and not their reëlection.

Mehdi Hasan, writing in Pack the Supreme Court for The Intercept, has a suggestion of where to begin:

Despite telling brazen lies in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and despite Christine Blasey Ford’s compelling testimony, Republicans on the committee voted in favor of advancing Kavanaugh’s nomination to the full Senate for a vote. Only a new FBI investigation into Ford’s allegations, limited in time to one week, now stands in the way of Donald Trump entrenching a hard-right conservative majority on the Supreme Court for a generation or more.

To be clear, such a majority on the court would be an utter disaster for women, for people of color, and for the poor. One upside of Kavanaugh’s raw and angry rant on Thursday—he referred to the Democrats on the panel as “you people,” a “disgrace,” and accused them of exacting “revenge on behalf of the Clintons”—is that it exposed the Supreme Court for what it is: a partisan on the political battlefield, not a disinterested defender of the Constitution.

So it’s past time for liberals and the left to consider court packing: When they next have control of the House, the Senate, and the White House, Democrats should add at least two new seats to the Supreme Court and then fill them, ideally, with left-wing, well-qualified women of color. They could even call it “court balancing.”

That’s the start: create a short list of left-wing, well-qualified women of color and work tirelessly at every level to create the reality in 2020 to get those women on the Supreme Court.

Republicans need to be outplayed at their own game.

Start today.

Doctors are fallible. Hospitals make mistakes. Dosing humans with chemicals or subjecting them to the cutting of a surgeon’s knife is never without risks. The risks, however, are understood and precautions can be observed.

Yet, as Ralph Nader observes, thousands of patients needlessly die in our hospitals every week because corners are cut and precautions ignored.

Nader, in Gross Hospital Negligence Does Not Exempt Celebrities, writes:

Solid studies by physicians at leading medical schools have been warning of the huge casualty toll that flows from preventable problems in hospitals. A 2016 peer-reviewed study by physicians at the Johns Hopkins University of Medicine estimated that at least 5,000 people a week in the U.S. lose their lives due to such causes as hospital-induced infection, medical malpractice, inattentiveness, and other deficiencies. Media attention lasted one day.

What will it take to make the powers-that-be outside and inside the government reduce what medical analysts call the third leading cause of death in America? Let that statement sink in—preventable problems in hospitals are the third leading cause of death in America after heart disease and cancer!

Indignation and frustration over the massive avoidance of action to save American lives and reduce even more preventable injuries and sicknesses prompted the issuance of an eye-opening, factual report by the Center for Justice and Democracy (lodged at New York Law School) titled Top 22 Celebrities Harmed by Medical Malpractice. Surely in a celebrity culture, this documented report should have made headlines and Continue Reading »

[Updates below on 28 September… Confirm Kavanaugh and Justice Floppy and After Kavanaugh’s Stand, Republicans Abandon Him at Their Peril and Loudest and Longest and Samantha Bee and Key Moments in the Senate Testimony of Christine Blasey Ford and Brett Kavanaugh and Trevor Noah and Stephen Colbert Part I and Stephen Colbert Part II and Seth Meyers…]

[Update on 28 September: Samantha Bee gets the last word, for now…]