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

The National Prayer Breakfast is one of the more boring vestiges of 1950s country-club Republicanism. (Kevin Kruse’s One Nation Under God is the essential text on its origins.) As far as I’m concerned, it can be torn down and replaced by a poker tournament as soon as possible. And now, thanks to The New York Times, we learn that the NPB has turned into little more than an all-purpose crafts fair for influence peddling. And we also learn that a certain flame-haired Muscovite gun enthusiast went shopping there as well.

But there on the guest list in recent years was Maria Butina, looking to meet high-level American officials and advance the interests of the Russian state, and Yulia Tymoshenko, a Ukranian opposition leader, seeking a few minutes with President Trump to burnish her credentials as a presidential prospect back home. Their presence at the breakfast illuminates the way the annual event has become an international influence-peddling bazaar, where foreign dignitaries, religious leaders, diplomats and lobbyists jockey for access to the highest reaches of American power.

The subculture around the breakfast was thrust into the spotlight last week with the indictment of Ms. Butina, who was charged with conspiring to act as a Russian agent. Her goals, prosecutors said, included gaining access to the breakfast “to establish a back channel of communication” between influential Russians and Americans “to promote the political interests of the Russian Federation.”

Apparently, lobbyists use the NPB to entice their clients to network furiously with the Beltway power elite, many of whom are more devoted to their bacon and eggs than to the Almighty. And why not, since, as the Times points out:

Some describe the gathering as similar to the World Economic Forum, except that Jesus is the organizing principle.

I’ll go back and check, but I’m fairly sure the gospels don’t have anything in there about paying $220,000 for access to the disciples.

There is a scene in an episode of The West Wing in which Toby is tasked to get new pandas for the National Zoo. “Get two regular bears. Bucket of black paint, bucket of white paint,” was his sensible suggestion. Turns out, once again, Toby Ziegler was a grump ahead of his time. From the BBC:



Student Mahmoud Sarhan put the images on Facebook after visiting Cairo's International Garden municipal park. Aside from its small size and pointy ears, there were also black smudges on its face. The pictures quickly went viral, with experts weighing in on the species of the animal. A vet contacted by local news group Extranews.tv said that a zebra's snout is black, while its stripes are more consistent and parallel. Mr Sarhan told Extranews that the enclosure contained two animals and that both had been painted.

It turns out that zoo fraud of this sort is more common than you would think.

Mahmoud Sarhan/Facebook

I want to know what happened to that dog that played the lion. I also want to know why that isn’t the title of a mystery novel yet.

Regular visitors to the shebeen know that privatization in our prisons are about as popular around these parts as Ted Cruz cosplayers. Monetizing the incarcerated is something out of Dickens. Anyway, it turns out that, at the beginning of July, inmates at a private Idaho prison—yes, it is their own private Idaho—found a way to monetize themselves. From The New York Times:



The prisoners were not inflating their bank accounts, but rather their JPay accounts. JPay is a service that inmates can use to communicate with the outside world; for example, by using secure tablets or kiosks to send emails or listen to music. The Idaho Department of Correction learned about the hacking on July 2, and an investigation revealed that 364 inmates at five correctional facilities “had improperly credited their JPay accounts by $224,772.40,” Jeff Ray, the department’s spokesman, said in a statement. “This conduct was intentional, not accidental,” he said. “It required a knowledge of the JPay system and multiple actions by every inmate who exploited the system’s vulnerability to improperly credit their account.”

Only some people are allowed to make bucks out of the imprisoned folks.

Tablets have been marketed as a way to incentivize good behavior. But the companies that offer them have also been criticized for profiting from a captive market; when prisoners or their correspondents have to pay to communicate, the costs can add up. In 2014, a review by The New York Times of dozens of contracts found that states, counties and cities were seeking a substantial cut in return for letting such service businesses into prisons.

So these guys found a way to get back at having been exploited. I will be horrified in a couple of years, after I stop laughing.

John Moore Getty Images

On Friday, I taped my last segment for NPR’s Only A Game with the great Bill Littlefield, who is retiring. We’ve done this gig for a quarter-century, and it’s never been less than a joy. The show will go on and I, with it. But Bill’s humanity and gentle humor will continue to bless everyone who knows him. We signed off with one of the first things that brought us together—a little bit of the ol’ Firesign. We do know how radio works.



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Weekly WWOZ Pick To Click: “Laura Lee” (Bobby Charles): Yeah, I pretty much still love New Orleans.



Weekly Visit To The Pathe Archives: Sixty-Five years ago Friday, the Korean War did not formally end with the signing of a treaty in Panmunjom. Here’s how it all began. “Communism is on the march, again.” History is so cool.

Blog Official Music Archivist, the great and powerful Oz in Kansas City, sends us a little news about a certain Arkansan immortal. From The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

The house, which was originally in Turkey Scratch, was moved to a pecan grove in Monroe County and then to Marvell, where it's being restored at the corner of Elm and Carruth streets, catty-corner from City Hall. Anna Lee Amsden of Cabot said Helm lived in the house from 1941 to about 1946 when it was in a cotton field in Turkey Scratch, 8 miles north of Marvell on Arkansas 243, a road that serves as the Lee and Phillips county line. "He lived there from the time he was a small baby," she said. "I don't believe he was living there when we started school." According to the nomination form, the Helm family later moved to Midway, between Turkey Scratch and Marvell. It was there a tornado blew the house over after a Fourth of July dinner. "There was leftover pecan pie and fried chicken on the table when the house started shaking," the nomination form quoted Helm as saying. "My father was about to tell everyone to run for the ditch when the whole house cartwheeled over and over, ending up in the cotton field as the wood stove, furniture, dishes and people crashed around in a mess of broken glass and debris. When the house stopped rolling, they climbed out a window and walked over to the neighbors, using the light from the flickering lightning to find their way." Then, when Levon was about 10 years old, the family returned from one of Levon's ball games to find their house destroyed by fire.

And, yes, Anna Lee Amsden of Cabot is the Anna Lee with whom the narrator is tasked with keeping company in the lyrics of “The Weight.’ History is so very, very cool.

Richard E. Aaron Getty Images

And, speaking of Arkansas, old friend of the Blog Gene Lyons sends along this week’s incantation. Is it a good day for dinosaur news, New York Times? It’s always a good day for dinosaur news!

In a study published this week in the science journal Nature Communications, paleontologists said they had discovered the earliest diplodocoid yet, and the only one to be unearthed in East Asia. Diplodocoids are part of the sauropod subgroup — the one known for those big plant-eaters with four legs and long necks. The fossils in China belonged to a previously undiscovered species, Lingwulong shenqi, and are about 174 million years old. That’s about 15 million years older than would be expected for a dinosaur of its type.

Dragons!

The fossils of Lingwulong shenqi, or the “amazing dragon of Lingwu” in Mandarin, were uncovered near the city of Lingwu in northwestern China. It was a stunning find: At least seven dinosaurs had died near each other, giving scientists plenty of material to work with. The study was led by Xu Xing of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, a paleontologist known for his groundbreaking discoveries. “Diplodocus-like neosauropods were thought to have never made it to East Asia because this region was cut off from the rest of the world by Jurassic seaways, so that China evolved its own distinctive and separate dinosaur fauna,” Dr. Xu said in a statement from University College London, which was involved in the study.

Part of the spiel at Ken Ham’s Creation Museum outside Cincinnati is that humans and dinosaurs co-existed and that this is the reason for the primal memories of dragons across many cultures. But that’s too complicated. Dinosaurs lived then to make us happy now.

The Committee loves Top Commenters who can tie a couple of news stories together in one Top Comment. Top commenter Dan Yeager rang that bell this week in his response to the post about the water crisis looming in Arizona.

Well, they found water on Mars! Sure, below the surface but tell Elon there's a boys' soccer team trapped underneath and he'll get right on it!

Thirsty is as thirsty does, my friends. Have 79.22 Beckhams, my good man.

I’ll be back on Monday when, undoubtedly, another deep cut from the Michael Cohen bootleg series will drop. Be well and play nice, ya bastid. Stay above the snake-line, and test all zoo animals for paint because this world is full of frauds.

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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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