(Permanent Musical Accompaniment To The Last Post Of The Week From The Blog's Favorite Living Canadian.)

One of the dumber arguments that I've heard proposed in reaction to the 400-odd newspapers from around the country that took part in the #FreePress editorial campaign on Thursday is that it was a bad idea because now the president* has more proof that the media is out to get him. First of all, according to the available evidence, the free press of the United States should be out to get him. Where he is not corrupt, he's utterly incompetent, and vice versa.

Second, there is nothing ethically wrong that I can see with the press banding together in defense of doing its constitutionally protected job, if that job is going to be under attack from the very top of the secular government.

Third, if not the press, who? The Republicans in Congress are sleepwalking toward disaster in November. Most of them are just trying to make sure they have jobs next year. And, last, who cares? The president* is a half-mad paranoid who exists only to feed his half-mad paranoid base. He's going to say that the press is out to get him anyway, so the press might as well say it.

Mark Wilson Getty Images

I was most impressed by the small, local papers who joined in the project. For a number of family reasons, I've become familiar with the town of Seward, Nebraska. Ever since 1896, the town has been served by the Seward County Independent. It was revived in that year by a man named William H. Smith, a former newspaper apprentice from Iowa who was looking for a newspaper of his own to buy. The Independent had suspended publication a year earlier because it could not compete in a four-newspaper town. Yes, Seward, Nebraska had four newspapers. Smith had his hands full. As he told a researcher from the Nebraska Historical Society:

But the first years in Seward were rather tough. Back in Iowa, the editors used to receive cordwood in payment of subscriptions. Out in this section of Nebraska, however, there was no surplus cordwood, but in 1896 there had been a big crop of corn and there were a lot of cobs on the farms...I advertised to accept cobs in lieu of cash for subscriptions, having first arranged with a newly organized cooperative creamery to take them off my hands for a dollar a load. The money thus received helped pay accumulating bills.

On Thursday, William Smith's old newspaper joined with bigger newspapers at punching back at an incompetent authoritarian president* who is playing mischief with the most important parts of what makes this country what it is alleged to be. It reprinted the editorial that ran all over the country, but that also rang as true in Seward as it did in Boston. From the Independent:

We aren’t the enemy of the people. We are the people. We aren’t fake news. We are your news, and we struggle night and day to get the facts right. On bitter cold January nights, we’re the people’s eyes and ears at town, village and school board meetings. We tell the stories of our communities, from the fun of a county fair to the despair a family faces when a loved one is killed.

To hell with politics. It was the right thing to do.

There's a lovely piece in The Washington Post about the twilight years of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter down in Plains, Georgia, and about how the former president eschewed the big-money speaking circuit and corporate banquet-grazing that has become so popular among ex-presidents ever since Gerry Ford broke the bank after Carter beat him in 1976.

Among the other details: that Carter now has been an ex-president for longer than anyone else ever has been; that, after having been in blind trust for the four years of Carter's presidency, his peanut farm was pretty much broke when he came home, and that the Jimmy Carter National Historical Site is worth about $4 million a year to the local economy, which, truth be told, doesn't seem to have a whole helluva lot else going for it.



As they cross Walters Street, Carter sees a couple of teenagers on the sidewalk across the street.“Hello,” says the former president, with the same big smile that adorns peanut Christmas ornaments in the general store.“Hey,” says a girl in a jean skirt, greeting him with a cheerful wave. The two 15-year-olds say people in Plains think of the Carters as neighbors and friends, just like anybody else.“I grew up in church with him,” says Maya Wynn. “He’s a nice guy, just like a regular person.”“He’s a good ’ol Southern gentleman,” says David Lane.

He also has some choice words for the guy currently holding his old job, but that's not the point of the story. This is the ongoing story of a life that continues to be well-lived. Damned if we don't need more of those.

In case you were wondering, in his fight for re-election, and in conjunction with the president*, Scott Walker, the goggle-eyed homunculus hired by Koch Industries to manage their midwest facility formerly known as the state of Wisconsin, has decided to go full Colossal Dick. From Politico:



One of the most controversial changes sought by the states is Wisconsin's attempt to drug test its Medicaid applicants — an effort that advocates and lawyers say is illegal and that also drew objection from the Trump administration. Drug testing has never been allowed as a condition of Medicaid, in any state. Instead, Wisconsin is expected to win approval to ask applicants to disclose on their Medicaid applications whether they've used drugs or are in recovery, but won't make coverage decisions based on the answers provided, according to three officials with knowledge of the plan. "It's a political give to Walker," said an administration official briefed on the plan, noting the Wisconsin governor has sought drug testing across multiple social programs, including food stamps. Advocates say a partial effort to collect drug use information is still a step too far. "Even if it's technically benign, it might not be — the devil's in the details," said Georgetown's Alker. “If people hear there's a drug testing requirement, that might be a deterrent from even applying."

How bad does something have to be for this administration* to object to it? Now we know.

One of the best lines the Master has written in the past decade is to be found on the song "Pay In Blood" from Tempest: "I'll drink my fill and sleep alone/I pay in blood, but not my own." Suddenly, that seems to be the turn that the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh has taken. The Democrats in the Senate are not kidding around. From The Hill:

"We have already seen records that call into serious question whether Judge Kavanaugh was truthful about his involvement in the Bush Administration’s post-9/11 terrorism policies when he testified before this Committee during his 2006 nomination hearing," Democratic Sens. Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Patrick Leahy (Vt.) and Dick Durbin (Ill.) wrote in a letter to Grassley.



The Judiciary Committee has released more than 100,000 pages from Kavanaugh's time working as a White House lawyer for President George W. Bush. Those documents are being vetted and given to the committee by the Bush legal team. But Democrats argue that within the subset of papers still marked “committee confidential,” meaning they haven't been released publicly, are documents that raise questions about Kavanaugh's previous testimony.

You don't accuse a Supreme Court nominee, who also happens to be a sitting federal judge, of lying to Congress unless you're very serious. I still think he gets confirmed, despite his demonstrated unpopularity, but I don't make it the sure thing I once thought it was. Those hearings, and the Senate debate, are going to be a bloodbath.

Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: "Nightmare On Misery Train" (The Radiators): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Here is a military parade held in Berlin in 1939 to celebrate Hitler's 50th birthday. "This is the sort of show they put on in a country where national service is compulsory," says the narrator. "In this country, it is still voluntary but it seems just as well that recruitment is going strong." You think. I don't know why this particular clip leaped immediately to mind. I'll have to figure that out one day. Anyway, history is so cool.

Well, this here from Rolling Stone seems more than a little bit alarming.

The hacking attempts and the FBI’s involvement are described in dozens of emails and forensic records obtained by Rolling Stone. The target of these attacks, Dr. Hans Keirstead, a stem-cell scientist and the CEO of a biomedical research company, finished third in California’s nonpartisan “top-two” primary on June 5th, falling 125 votes short of advancing to the general election in one of the narrowest margins of any congressional primary this year. He has since endorsed Harley Rouda, the Democrat who finished in second place and will face Rohrabacher in the November election. Cybersecurity experts say that it’s nearly impossible to identify who was behind the hacks without the help of law enforcement or high-priced private cybersecurity firms that collect their own threat data. These experts speculate that the hackers could have been one of many actors: a nation-state (such as Russia), organized crime, so-called e-crime or a hacktivist with a specific agenda.

Funny how it's the opponent of the Kremlin's favorite congresscritter who gets hacked, though. Again, we point out that all it's going to take is definitive proof that the results were changed in one precinct in one election, and faith in the democratic process drops to zero. That should bother more people in the government than it does.

Getty Images

I can't imagine why the Republican Party suddenly has so many of these creepazoids in its ranks. 'Ees a puzzlement, no? From The Bayou Brief:

No reasonable elected official, regardless of their political party, would even consider promoting or legitimizing a violent band of anti-government vigilantes. Yet that is exactly what U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins did on July 27th, 20 A month after he had been billed as a speaker at a white supremacist rally, Higgins was, instead, the star of another rally, the Rally for America, which was organized by the Oath Keepers. “(P)lease join us for a great day in our Nation’s capitol, and please spread the word,” Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes urged his members. “You will be among thousands of like-minded American patriots from many groups and many states, with some excellent speakers, including Jan Morgan and Representative Clay Higgins (LA), the firebrand lawman.” The rally’s promotional poster reminded participants that “this is definitely not a riot,” because, apparently, that needed to be clarified upfront.

To repeat, this guy is a United States congresscritter.

Earlier this year, at a campaign event in Lafayette featuring Dog the Bounty Hunter, Higgins sold t-shirts that prominently featured the logo of the Three Percenters, as documented by The Advocate‘s Elizabeth Crisp. Make no mistake: This was not an innocent reference to Louisiana’s Third District. It’s the logo used by The Three Percent movement. The Hate Report‘s Will Carless and Aaron Sankin (who, by pure coincidence, was a friend of mine in college) document extremism and hate groups in America, and in March, they published a report on the Three Percenters. “Founded in 2008, the Three Percent movement takes its name from the idea that only 3 percent of American colonists took up arms against the British. Members fashion themselves as today’s version of those rebels,” they explain. “On its website, the overarching Three Percent group insists it’s not a militia, nor is its aim to overthrow the government. Instead, the goal is, ‘to utilize the fail-safes put in place by our founders to reign in an overreaching government and push back against tyranny.’”

This is the first time Higgins has had to run for re-election and, with six candidates currently running, the field in the Third Congressional District is the most crowded of any of Louisiana's House races. The president* already has endorsed Higgins, but Rudy Giuliani has helped Josh Guillory, the field's only other Republican, raise money. (Louisiana has a come-all-ye general election system, and a run-off system if nobody gets 50 percent.) As the Times-Picayune pointed out, it's not looking good for any of the Democratic candidates.

3rd DISTRICT

Rob Anderson, D-DeQuincy

Aaron Andrus, Libertarian-Westlake

Incumbent Clay Higgins, R-Port Barre

Mimi Methvin, D-Lafayette

Larry Rader, D-New Iberia

Verone Thomas, D-Lake Charles.

Higgins was sitting on $201,731, and Guillory reported $94,564. The others had $35,003 among them.

C'mon, Louisiana. This shouldn't be that hard.

Baseball comes home to the Paris of Central Massachusetts! The old hometown has a ball club again. From the Worcester Telegram:

At a press conference before a standing-room-only crowd, Mayor Joseph Petty declared the Pawtucket Red Sox and the city of Worcester signed an agreement that clears the way for the team to relocate here and play in a 10,000-seat stadium that will be built on the former Wyman-Gordon property near Kelley Square and be called Polar Park...Plans for the multi-use facility at the stadium site also include an apartment building, a hotel and retail space. The reworking of Kelley Square is also in the plans. The development is due to be completed by March 2021.

(An aside, I don't mind "reworking" Kelley Square, which has been a traffic nightmare since my grandfather was walking his beat there. But if you're planning on mucking around with the Kelley Square Yacht Club, you're going to have to deal with me. Babe Ruth drank there, dammit. And so did my other grandfather, the sign painter.)

The first perfect game in professional baseball history was pitched in Worcester, by Lee Richmond, in 1880. The team, which played in what was then the National League, was referred to through history as the Worcester Brown Stockings or the Worcester Ruby Legs, but noted baseball historian Bill Ballou went looking and could find no contemporary use of either nickname. It seems that the team was simply called the Worcester Worcesters and, in 1879, they were the first American baseball team to visit Cuba.

Boston's Triple-A minor-league team will be moving up to Worcester from Pawtucket, where it has played for decades. Officials in Rhode Island declined to mortgage the local economy to keep the team there and it no doubt amused a few people to note that there is informed speculation in and around Providence that one of the reasons that Rhode Island declined to open the piggy-bank for the PawSox is that the state got burned so badly on the tax breaks it gave to Curt Schilling's video-game company. From WJAR in Providence.

On Friday, Block was tweeting and reflecting on what some refer to the “ghost of 38 Studios” and the reluctance of taxpayers and lawmakers to subsidize private businesses. Rhode Islanders were saddled with nearly $90 million in debt, when former Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling’s video game company failed.



“The worst aspect of 38 Studios wasn't so much the money that the state squandered,” Block said. “The really awful part of 38 Studios—we've had three governors, we've had two speakers, we've had two Senate presidents, none of whom have done anything to bring closure to 38 Studios.” Block pointed out that Gov. Gina Raimondo ran on a platform suggesting she would investigate 38 Studios. It never happened. “It’s no wonder that taxpayers feel burned by it and they just have no appetite to go down this road again,” said Block.

That would be Ken Block. Who ran for governor of Rhode Island in 2014. As a Republican. Hee, hee.



Is it a good day for dinosaur news, News.com.au? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!



Neither dino nor bird, pterosaurs — more commonly known as pterodactyls — emerged during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago and lorded over primeval skies until a massive space rock slammed into Earth, wiping out land-dwelling dinosaurs and most other forms of life more than 65 million years ago. The newly discovered member of the family, identified through remains found in northeastern Utah, had a wingspan of 1.5 metres and 112 teeth, including fang-like spikes sticking out near the snout.

I just have to point out that this is the most terrifying artist's conception of a prehistoric critter I have ever seen. I mean, this looks like some kind of monstrous reaping machine that goes rogue in a Stephen King novel. I sure am glad these bastards evolved into starlings or something. Nevertheless, it's scary enough to make us realize again that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee took an early lunch because Top Commenter Dan Yeager wrapped things up with his one-act drama about the president*'s now cancelled parade.

“They’re flying overhead now, sir!”

“What, I don’t see anything.”

“The fighter jets you ordered. They’re invisible!”

“Hahaha, I know that. I was just pulling your leg.”

“That’s not my leg, sir.”

As the great Lili von Shtupp put it, "It's twue! It's twue!" And 91.11 Beckhams to you, good sir.

I'll be back on Monday with whatever happens with the Manafort jury after the members are done playing pinochle and raiding the vending machines down the hall. Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snake-line and, remember, the press is your friend. Honest.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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