The inconvenience, having to get a majority

 If I told you Florida has 250,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans, but that the state Legislature has 73 Republicans and only 47 Democrats, would you be intrigued enough to ask why? Even Chief Justice Roberts thinks you would, but last week he and the four other conservatives in the Supreme Court decided there is nothing they can do about it.

 Fifty years ago I probably would have agreed with them.

 The whole answer is more complicated, but the simple answer is, of course, “gerrymandering.” The Republican lawmakers, being the majority, can draw election districts any way they want, and as long as they can do that, there will never be enough Democratic lawmakers to stop them from putting Democratic voters, in districts that overwhelmingly favor Democrats anyway – and keeping them out of districts where they could make a Republican seat competitive.

 The Chief Justice says gerrymandering is almost as old as the republic (correct) and that the Constitution doesn’t give the courts any license to stop it. (You won’t find anyplace in the Constitution where it says the courts can act if a president suffering from the Dunning-Kruger effect decides to ignore Congress and the courts and govern by fiat, either.)

  Anyhow, Justice Elena Kagan, writing for herself and the other liberals, dissented, and in the dissent she nailed a point that: a) the Chief  completely missed, b) is the reason I don’t agree with the Court now as I once might have.  I'll let her make the point in her own words after the break:

Public Art - Updated

Update 7/1/2019: I've added some additional murals at the bottom of the post, all references from commenters.  I'm continuing to look for others.

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I've mentioned before that my wife enjoys spending an occasional summer afternoon walking around quaint downtown areas with "cute shops".  There are several of these tourist traps within a short driving distance of where we live, including in the town of Geneva, IL.  A couple of years back, I agreed to come along on one of these jaunts and supplied my two appointed constructive contributions, i.e. carrying packages and keeping my tart thoughts to myself as we browse among the Christmas ornaments, Irish sweaters, jars of spices we'll use once and then never again, tea services decorated with images of cats, and similar nonessentials.

On this particular outing, I made myself useful a third way: I drove, and managed to parallel-park along the downtown strip.  The parking spot happened to be right in front of the village's tiny downtown post office, and for some reason I no longer recall, it seemed opportune, before plunging into retail purgatory, to duck inside to buy some postage stamps.

As I say, on these outings I'm under strict orders not to offer running commentary, but what I saw inside the post office loosed my tongue.  A large mural adorned one of the walls.  When we saw it, an involuntary "Ooh", or perhaps it was an "Aah", escaped me.  I've pasted a photo of it at the top of the post.

I'm sure yu'all agree! UPDATE

Still like Amy...Impressed with Cory Booker, who I have previously thought a bit of a dud. DeBlasio is an ass. Dellany and Inslee (fake smile) both made their points well, but they're not candidates. Beto was very lame (exhaustion?). Miss Haiwai!!? what's she doing there, pretty and nice smile, but woefully unpresidential. Castro made a splash, but probably unelectable. Ryan definitely unelectable. Warren becomes more likable, but she has that school marm persona that did in Hillary; she is policy-smarter than Hillary but not clear to me she has the political chops to be president.  So imho...nobody last night is likely to be the democratic candidate, booker could be VP... And I like Amy Klobuchar reminding us of foam with no beer.

UPDATE: I'll have to take it back. Night one was the better debate. Cory Booker?  Peter Buttigieg? Both looking like the adults in the platoon.

Waiting for Mueller -- Again

Here is the odd thing: On July 17, if Robert Mueller does what he said he would do – that is, simply repeat what is in the Mueller Report -- it will come as news to most Americans. Let’s face it: The report is on line, naked or annotated, and at least three editions are in print, but hardly anybody read it.

 I started reading on line the day it was released. I ripped off 137 pages out of the starting gate, but it took another two weeks to reach the end. My doctor made it to page 3 and called Amazon. My ex-boss didn’t even try it on-line and waited for a print copy. You can bring Tablets to us old folks, but you can’t make us use them.

 And the young get their news from social media.

 Donald J. Trump understands that. And that is why everybody I run into hasn’t read the Mueller Report but knows that it says No Collusion, No Obstruction, and maybe some other stuff. So if Mueller simply repeats it kinetically, it will be a shock in many quarters.

 That is part of the devious plot House Democrats stumbled into.

 The other half is that Trump now has three weeks to make bellyaching comments about Mueller, and maybe three weeks under the Twitter will provoke the stolid Mueller to give some clue to what he really thinks of Trump.

  A bunch of A-list actors gave Book II a dramatic reading Monday in New York. You probably can still see it here. It runs about an hour and 20 minutes. Joel Gray tries a Southern accent as Beauregard Jefferson Sessions II. John Lithgow takes Trump's lines.

  I still say the impeachment action is in Book I, where it says the Russians tried to beat Clinton and elect Trump, and that made Trump happy, and the Russians will do it again. Impeachment hangs on the fact that the president knows all that and has done nothing to prevent it, and some little things to hamper efforts to prevent it.

 But I still think the brain dead Democrats will fumble the opportunity. The Rs understand the new media, and the Ds don't understand much of anything. The better hope is that Trump irks Mueller into responding.

Not Everything in the ME is a mess. Update

Sunday's mayoral election in Istanbul (formerly known as Constantinople!) showed that strong men and populists can be delivered a set-back if enough people go out to vote because they know what they are up against.

Turkey is an amazing place; I visited as a tourist some years ago. Its politics have always been verging on democracy, but have had to struggle against the politics of a secular state established by Ataturk after WW1 run by a string of military leaders. That changed when the AKP party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, took power. He created a Islamist, democratic state, Middle East style. As time passed, he has come to seem more a pasha than a democratic leaders. The AKP's loss of the mayoralty this past spring led him to call for a new election. This one sent him a message.

This NYTimes story is by Carlotta Gall whose writing from the ME going back to the Balkan and Iraq Wars, if not before, I have eagerly read and long admired.

UPDATE: Al Monitor a Middle Eastern blog has this headline, Why Erdogan's historical Istanbul defeat is irreparable, and a short take on what happened in the election. "Erdogan’s setback amounts to a political earthquake. The June 23 result is nothing less than a tectonic shift in Turkish politics, the impact of which was felt in all of Istanbul’s districts. Imamoglu increased his vote in all 39 districts, while Yildirim saw his vote decline across the city, barring only one district."

Unagidon on Insurance

Right.

1. When Commonweal killed the blog, they offered me a job writing two articles a month for the online edition for which they would pay be $200 a month.  But when I was writing for the blog, they paid me $200 a month to write two articles a week.  I burned out.

Background.  From August 2013 to August 2014, I had cancer, a heart attack, depression, got "laid off" by my insurance company (they didn't want a sick executive), and I found out that my wife had been cheating on me through all of this so I also lost my wife, family, house, and almost everything that I owned (the ex blamed me for everything so she kept most of my stuff and discarded it and I ws too poor to stop her).

Bad times.  I was out of work for three years (no one wants to hire an old CFO who had health problems). 

And Trump was elected.

So it's been a rough patch. I am now working night shift as a grocery clerk at a buck and a half above minimum wage.  Despite the cancer and heart attack, I have not been to a doctor since 2015.  Can't afford it. Somehow all of this has had a bad affect on my writing.  I ended up not being able to write for Commonweal anymore.  Or for anyone.  About anything. Too bad,

so sad.

Anyway, to the important stuff.

2. Trump has decided that he wants to run (in part) on health care.  He has no plan, of course, despite saying once again that he has one.  But he is trying to do something.  He wants to sign an executive order requiring providers and insurers to publish all of their discount data.  That is, they are to tell us what kind of discounts all providers receive from insurers.  It won't work  Why?  Here are some points.

Reporting bishops

The United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) met in Baltimore earlier this month, on June 11-13, for their Spring General Assembly.  Their major business was to take a series of votes on proposed actions to address the problem of bishops who personally commit abuse, or who fail to report abuse committed by others to the appropriate church and civil authorities.  By taking those votes, the bishops have broken from the starting blocks, but haven't crossed the finish line yet.  Below the break, I've used a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) format to try to explain what happened.