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

This will be shorter than the usual shuttering of the shebeen, but I wanted to make note that the Democratic Unity Commission is meeting in Chicago and people are being silly in the face of the ongoing catastrophe that is the current administration. There is an actual fight going on over whether the Democratic Party should change entirely to a system of open primaries or, even more horribly worse, a system of caucuses, to pick its presidential nominee.

Point The First: Who cares in 2017? The house is burning down and you're vetting the firemen.

Point The Second: Don't do this. A political party that conducts open primaries is a political party just begging to be hijacked by the loudest voice in the room and/or ratfcked by any half-witted operative on the other side. Your party's nominating process should be kept within your party. And caucuses are completely worthless, both in terms of practical politics and in terms of the basic function of finding a nominee.

Point The Third and Final: To go to open primaries and caucuses will work in many states to dilute the influence of minority voters, which is the true Democratic base and has been for several cycles now. I realize that the Sanders campaign was a transformative experience for a lot of people. But there is nothing in its history or its outcome that would lead anyone to believe that it was successful at anything except pushing the platform to the left, which was a very good thing. The 2016 Democratic platform was the most progressive of my lifetime.

But times and circumstances are different now. There is an existential threat to the Republic unfolding in Washington. Mass marches are fine; everybody should go to one. But the only actual vehicle with which to confront this political disaster is the battered old Democratic Party, which needs to consolidate itself as a force, and not spend all its time handing out participation ribbons to angry people.

Of all the hullabaloo about honoring the traitors of the 1860s, this was the story that brought me up short. From The Hill:

NBC 4 reported that the cathedral is considering removing the pair of 8-by-4-foot stained glass windows, which were installed in the 1950s to memorialize Confederate Gens. Robert E. Lee and "Stonewall" Jackson. The pieces were sponsored by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the church previously planned to decide on them next summer, but will reportedly make an announcement soon.

W. T. Actual. F?

How in hell, you should pardon the expression, did these two gombeens end up as windows in any damn church? (I know. The Daughters of the Confederacy played Johnny Appleseed here the same way they did all over the country.) The Confederate States of America was a failed government of slavers and the aristocrats who owned them. It was transformed into a virus in our history that affected the country's higher functions. We're only now getting clear of it.

WWOZ Pick To Click: "Dawn Of The Witches" (Swamp Motel): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.

Weekly Visit to the Pathe Archives: Here's a hurricane that hit Miami in 1926. I love that woman directing traffic on the bridge. History is so cool.

Narwhals are one of the coolest marine critters we have. (The closest thing to actual unicorns, except of course a moderate Republican.) It turns out that they're all soldiers in the fight against the climate crisis, too, as Fast Company explains.

Narwhals are some of the few animals who are happy that the glaciers are melting, so scientists from NASA's Oceans Melting Greenland (also known by the not-at-all subtle acronym OMG) have conscripted them into their climate change studies. OMG is trying to figure out how quickly Greenland's ice will disappear, and the feeding habits of narwhals are proving helpful. According to Bloomberg, "The whales tend to feed at the bottom of melting glaciers and can dive to depths of 1,800 meters, precisely the areas that OMG needs to survey." In short, follow the narwhals, and they'll show you the seasonal ebb and flow of glaciers, which could reveal how much ice is left.

Narwhals and oil companies: the only creatures happy about the whole business.

Is it a good day for dinosaur news, Phys.org? It's always a good day for dinosaur news!

The new species is a member of the gigantic, long-necked sauropods. Its fossil remains were recovered from Cretaceous Period (70-100 million years ago) rocks in southwestern Tanzania. Titanosaur skeletons have been found worldwide, but are best known from South America. Fossils in this group are rare in Africa. The new dinosaur is called Shingopana songwensis, derived from the Swahili term "shingopana" for "wide neck"; the fossils were discovered in the Songwe region of the Great Rift Valley in southwestern Tanzania. Part of the Shingopana skeleton was excavated in 2002 by scientists affiliated with the Rukwa Rift Basin Project, an international effort led by Ohio University Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine researchers Patrick O'Connor and Nancy Stevens. Additional portions of the skeleton—including neck vertebrae, ribs, a humerus and part of the lower jaw—were later recovered.

Seems like these cats may have wandered over from South America and then their descendants got caught in Africa when the continents "unzipped," which is not a phrase I'd ever heard before. I am now one phrase smarter than I was before I read about old Shingopana. More proof that dinosaurs lived then to make us happy—and smart—now.

The Committee was happy to see Top Commenter Charlie James bringing us some heartland wisdom concerning hunting in his comments about the free-fire zone that the Department of the Interior is creating in our national parks.

I have no use for blood sports of any kind, but the hunters I know are very respectful of wildlife and nature. I doubt any of them would think it smart to kill cubs, or fawn, or piglets for that matter. To them, it'd be like killing off next year's hunt as well as this year's. On the other hand, during deer season here in Minnesota a lot of farmers paint "COW" on the side of their livestock because some hunters are too stupid - or impatient - to see the difference between a heifer and a deer.

Me? I'd paint everything. "Car." "Beagle." "Car." "Small child." And I still wouldn't feel safe. Nevertheless, 71.34 Beckhams to this week's winner.

I'll be back on Monday. Hey, all you cats 'n kittens down on the Texas Gulf, y'all stay safe, OK? Be well and play nice, ya bastids. Stay above the snakeline, or I'm telling the Unity Commission where you live.

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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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