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In an uncivil and unproductive move, Seth Meyers called the Senate version of the Republican healthcare bill cartoonishly evil on Monday, saying that the only way it could be worse is if it mandated tying damsels in distress to railroad tracks. Never mind that the bill is terrible for everyone; our nations wheels are greased by a great unwillingness to call murder murder, whether its committed by cops or drones or laws. How are Republicans supposed to feel if Meyers points out on national TV that their signature policy goal is, in his words, a giant tax cut for the wealthy paid for with Medicaid cuts? Should right-wing parents have to explain to their kids what Meyers means when he says the secret Republican bill is, like a Slipknot tramp stamp: you definitely want to hide it, and the people whove seen it are terrible people? How long are we going to shame Trump voters for letting a bunch of rambling old men take a meat axe to health care?

The answers to these questions are, respectively: Republicans should feel fucking terrible, right-wing parents should have to constantly explain Republican savagery to their children, and no one who voted for Donald J. Trump to be President of the United States should be able to watch television without being insulted for at least a decade. That said, Meyers should maybe stop irresponsibly throwing around phrases likecartoonishly evil. Cartoons are funny.

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Seth Meyers: The Republican Healthcare Bill Is Cartoonishly Evil - Slate Magazine (blog)

As the Supreme Court makes ready to rule on the blatant gerrymandering in Wisconsin, the AP has conducted a study using "a new statistical method of calculating partisan advantage" to analyze "the outcomes of all 435 U.S. House races and about 4,700 state House and Assembly seats up for election last year" and report "four times as many states with Republican-skewed state House or Assembly districts than Democratic ones."

Both parties have engaged in gerrymandering, but in many Republican strongholds, the GOP attains majorities and supermajorities despite capturing a minority of the vote, in a way that is unmatched by Democrats in states where they dominate.

As the party pivots away from its post-Romney strategy of finding ways to appeal to Americans from all walks of life, and into an entho-nationalist party that uses white identity politics to secure massive wealth transfers to an aging, tiny block of super-rich financiers, it can only realize electoral power through fraud, because neither of those groups are, on their own, sufficiently large to take and hold political power.

Republicans held several advantages heading into the 2016 election. They had more incumbents, which carried weight even in a year of "outsider" candidates. Republicans also had a geographical advantage because their voters were spread more widely across suburban and rural America instead of being highly concentrated, as Democrats generally are, in big cities.

Yet the data suggest that even if Democrats had turned out in larger numbers, their chances of substantial legislative gains were limited by gerrymandering.

"The outcome was already cooked in, if you will, because of the way the districts were drawn," said John McGlennon, a longtime professor of government and public policy at the College of William & Mary in Virginia who ran unsuccessfully for Congress as a Democrat in the 1980s.

A separate statistical analysis conducted for AP by the Princeton University Gerrymandering Project found that the extreme Republican advantages in some states were no fluke. The Republican edge in Michigan's state House districts had only a 1-in-16,000 probability of occurring by chance; in Wisconsin's Assembly districts, there was a mere 1-in-60,000 likelihood of it happening randomly, the analysis found.

Analysis indicates partisan gerrymandering has benefited GOP [David A Lieb/AP]

Lauralot points out that the Jesus of the Bible doesnt have much in common with the right-wing, evangelical Christ canon Jesus was a brown Jew in the Middle East, conceived out of wedlock in an arguably interracial if not interspecies (deity and human) relationship, raised by his mother and stepfather in place of his []

The new questionnaire that US visa applicants have to fill in requires them to supply biographical information stretching back 15 years and all their social media handles for the past 5 years.

Hey, who knew? The reporter-beating crazed thug (and now Congressjerk!) Greg Gianforte is part of a long and dishonorable tradition of American Congressional reps who lashed out at the press!

If you struggle to get a good nights rest, consider replacing your pillows before dropping hundreds on a new mattress. You can give your tired neck a break with a 2-pack of memory foam pillows, available now in the Boing Boing Store.Each of these pillows is stuffed with cooling polyurethane foam that molds to your []

Although flagship smartphones are unlikely to adopt heavy-duty outer casing anytime soon, you can always prepare your device for the outdoors with a beefy case and and an external battery like this Nomad Tile Trackable PowerPack, available in the Boing Boing Store for $119.95.The Nomad Tile can fully recharge an iPhone 7 over three times []

Even though credit cards now feature an EMV chip for securing transactions, they still have to include the magnetic strip for compatibility with older point of sale systems. Because of this, theres no way for the chips new security capabilities to protect against card skimmers in the wild.How do you protect yourself from legacy-technology-induced fraud? []

The rest is here:
Republicans are the primary beneficiaries of gerrymandering - Boing Boing

Fifty-eight House Republicans signed a letter calling for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from the upcoming travel ban case due to her comments about President Trump during the election.

In the letter, the congressmen call for Ginsburg to recuse herself in the case International Refugee Assistance Project v. Trump. The case centers on President Trump's travel ban, which seeks to restrict refugee settlement in the U.S. as well as prohibit travel to the U.S. from seven Muslim-majority countries.

The congressmen argued Ginsburg's previous public comments about Trump, which included calling him a "faker" and saying he has an "ego," merited her recusal from the case.

On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear the case, scheduling oral arguments for the first session in October. The court also lifted the injunction on the ban except for individuals with a bona fide relationship to the U.S.

Ginsburg subsequently apologized for her comments, though she was criticized by the editorial boards of both The New York Times and The Washington Post. Excerpts from those editorials were included in the letter sent to Ginsburg.

This story has been corrected to reflect that 58 Republican lawmakers signed the letter.

Read more here:
Republican lawmakers want Ruth Bader Ginsburg to recuse herself from Trump cases - Washington Examiner

Common Dreams

Sister Simone: Republican's Trumpcare Plan Is Opposite of 'Pro-Life' Common Dreams As Senate Republicans seek to rush through a plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act in the most secretive manner, I want to call their bluff on their proclaimed pro-life stance...The House and Senate healthcare proposals are the antithesis of a pro ... and more »

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Sister Simone: Republican's Trumpcare Plan Is Opposite of 'Pro-Life' - Common Dreams

There are two central problems facing Senate Republican leaders this week as they try to rush through a health-care bill that's gaining opposition by the day:

1. It's gaining opposition by the day. As of Sunday evening, we count 10 senators who either have strong concerns or who can't support the legislation as is. Republican leaders can afford only two defections of their 52-strong caucus.

2. Not all of their concerns are the same. This bill the one with 10 senators who could vote against it is as close as Senate Republican leaders can get to compromise. Any changes to the bill in one direction, say to lessen the impact of Medicaid cuts, will almost certainly make it unpalatable for the opposite side of Republicans' ideological spectrum, such as conservatives who think there's too much government help in health care as is.

Senate Republicans' attempt to roll back Obamacare is a balance between traditional Republican orthodoxy and a recognition that government will probably have a role insuring people for the foreseeable future. On the first point, the bill cuts taxes for the wealthy to grow the economy to give everyone else more money to buy health insurance, if they want it.

But it also keeps some level of government subsidies for people to buy health care, because Republicans don't want to be the party cast as taking away health care people like.

That kind of compromise is necessary to craft a health-insurance bill that won't crater, say health-care experts. Gary Claxton, an analyst at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation, said health-care policy is like a stool. You can't take away the unpopular parts of it, like the tax penalty for people who don't have health insurance, without destabilizing the popular parts, like people having health insurance.

It's easy to say, 'I want to go down these paths,' " Claxton said, but once you go down them, they're pretty hard to back their way out of.

But compromise isn't something Republican senators, both moderates and conservatives, feel like they can sell. Here's what compromise means for Sens. Rand Paul (Ky.), Ted Cruz (Tex.), Mike Lee (Utah) and Ron Johnson (Wis.), who came out against the bill hours after it was introduced: Get rid of most of Obamacare instead of all of it.

Ive been telling leadership for months now Ill vote for a repeal, Paul said Sunday on ABCs This Week. And it doesnt have to be a 100 percent repeal. (The Senate's bill keeps much of Obamacare's structure intact.)

Meanwhile, moderates such as Sens. Dean Heller and Susan Collins feel like they can't go home to people in their states and say: Okay, thousands of you especially the older, sicker and poorer and people with substance abuse problems are going to lose health insurance.

I cannot support a piece of legislation that takes away insurance from tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Nevadans, Heller said in a news conference Friday.

Sen. Dean Heller (R-Nev.) announced on June 23 that he would not support the Republican Senate health-care bill. (Reuters)

Senate Republican leaders have one key leverage point to try to get three of these five likely no votes in line. They can ditch trying to compromise altogether and offer these senators an ultimatum: This is as close as you're going to get to repealing Obamacare. Take it or leave it. And if you leave it, you'll have to explain to your constituents, who have been electing you for years on repealing Obamacare, why Obamacare is still the law of the land.

To that end, a pro-Trump outside group launched a take-no-prisoners ad campaign this weekend accusing Heller of basically standing with Republicans' political enemy, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).

And President Trump is tweeting this:

So far, though, neither compromise nor ultimatums seem to be working. Opposition to the bill is going up, not down, the more time Senate Republicans have to think about it. Which means it's a very real possibility that, if a vote is held this week, Senate Republicans' health-care bill fails to pass.

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Yes, there's a real chance Senate Republicans fail to pass a health-care bill - Washington Post