The Lonely American (VIDEO)

An outstanding segment, from Laura Ingraham:

Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society

At Amazon, Ross Douthat, The Decadent Society: America Before and After the Pandemic.

Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid

I can't block quote this article. There's just too much that's too good. Outstanding. 

Read the whole thing, from Jonathan Haidt, "It's Not Just a Phase." 

Will Smith Expelled from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

The headline claims he resigned, but when you read his comments, it's clear the Academy left him with no other choice. 

At the New York Times, "Will Smith Resigns From Academy After Slapping Chris Rock at Oscars":

The producer of the telecast said that Smith had been asked to leave after slapping Rock, and that he had urged officials not to “physically remove” him.

LOS ANGELES — Will Smith, who slapped the comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars, said Friday that he was resigning from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, saying that he had “betrayed” its trust with conduct that was “shocking, painful, and inexcusable.”

The sudden announcement came late Friday afternoon, days after the Academy had condemned Mr. Smith’s actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.

“I have directly responded to the Academy’s disciplinary hearing notice, and I will fully accept any and all consequences for my conduct,” he said in a statement on Friday.

“I deprived other nominees and winners of their opportunity to celebrate and be celebrated for their extraordinary work,” he said in the statement. “I am heartbroken.”

He said that he would “accept any further consequences the board deems appropriate.”

“Change takes time,” he concluded, “and I am committed to doing the work to ensure that I never again allow violence to overtake reason.”

Now that he has resigned, Mr. Smith will no longer have access to academy screenings and events. He will also not be able to vote in the Academy Awards. However, he could still be nominated for an award, since being a member is not a requirement for eligibility.

Mr. Smith’s resignation came roughly 12 hours after Will Packer, the lead producer of the Oscars telecast, spoke publicly about the episode for the first time.

In an interview with Good Morning America” on ABC, the network which also broadcasts the Oscars, Mr. Packer said that after Mr. Smith had been asked to leave the ceremony, he urged the Academy leadership not to “physically remove” him from the theater in the middle of the live broadcast.

Mr. Packer said he had learned from his co-producer, Shayla Cowan, that there were discussions of plans to “physically remove” Mr. Smith from the venue. So he said he immediately approached academy officials and told them that he believed Mr. Rock did not want to “make a bad situation worse.”

“I was advocating what Rock wanted in that time, which was not to physically remove Will Smith at that time,” Mr. Packer said. “Because as it has now been explained to me, that was the only option at that point. It has been explained to me that there was a conversation that I was not a part of to ask him to voluntarily leave.”

In the interview, Mr. Packer also said that Mr. Rock’s joke about Jada Pinkett Smith’s hair was unscripted “free-styling.”

“He didn’t tell one of the planned jokes,” he said of Mr. Rock.

Someone close to Mr. Rock who asked to speak anonymously because the Academy’s inquiry into the incident is ongoing said that Mr. Rock was never asked directly if he wanted Mr. Smith removed. Had he been asked, it was not clear how Mr. Rock would have responded, the person said. Mr. Rock was only asked if he wanted to press charges, and he said that he did not, the person said...

 

Will Smith 'Perpetuated Stereotypes' About Black Americans

Following-up, "Academy Awards Condemns Will Smith and Begins Formal Review (VIDEO)."

*****

This was one of the first things I said to my wife as I was following this story on Twitter on Monday (like everyone else). 

After almost a decade of anti-police protests and Black Lives Matter riots, chaos, and destruction --- not to mention the epic surge in crime over the last year or two, especially black motherfucker "smash and grab" attacks -- people see African-Americans as violent thugs. 

And why wouldn't they? 

Will Smith is one of the top stars in Hollywood, of any race. He would have given a triumphant acceptance speech for his Best Actor win but instead got up there to credit the Lord for how wonderful he is, how deserving, beyond criticism of his actions, or whatever. He for sure did not apologize to Chris Rock until yesterday, and that was on Instagram. I don't know, but if you did someone bad, slapping him on live television with tens of millions around the world watching, hurting him and humiliating him, the decent godly thing to do is say you're sorry in person, or at least by a phone call.

That Will Smith could not do, and it pained me in the moment to think how he was simply confirming so many bigoted prejudices against blacks. 

You may not care, and I understand, but it's a tragic moment for black Americans, and the country as a whole. My dad was black and he spent most of his adult life trying not only to protect himself against racism but to defeat the stereotypes that coincided with violence and murder of people of his race. (My dad was highly educated, cultured, and professional. But he told me many stories. He was born in St. Louis in 1913 and lived through Jim Crow segregation, first in Missouri and then in Chicago and New York City, where he met my mom.)

When I was just 5-years-old I saw Lew Alcindor at the UCLA barber shop, where my dad used to take me for haircuts. This was of course before he converted to Islam in 1971, taking the name Kareen Abdul-Jabbar. Seen by many as the greatest basketball player of all time, his comments certainly carry weight. 

As his Substack, "Will Smith Did a Bad, Bad Thing"

Slapping Chris Rock was also a blow to men, women, the entertainment industry, and the Black community.

When Will Smith stormed onto the Oscar stage to strike Chris Rock for making a joke about his wife’s short hair, he did a lot more damage than just to Rock’s face. With a single petulant blow, he advocated violence, diminished women, insulted the entertainment industry, and perpetuated stereotypes about the Black community.

That’s a lot to unpack. Let’s start with the facts: Rock made a reference to Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, as looking like Demi Moore in GI Jane, in which Moore had shaved her head. Jada Pinkett Smith suffers from alopecia, which causes hair loss. Ok, I can see where the Smiths might not have found that joke funny. But Hollywood awards shows are traditionally a venue where much worse things have been said about celebrities as a means of downplaying the fact that it’s basically a gathering of multimillionaires giving each other awards to boost business so they can make even more money.

The Smiths could have reacted by politely laughing along with the joke or by glowering angrily at Rock. Instead, Smith felt the need to get up in front of his industry peers and millions of people around the world, hit another man, then return to his seat to bellow: “Keep my wife's name out of your fucking mouth.” Twice.

Some have romanticized Smith’s actions as that of a loving husband defending his wife. Comedian Tiffany Haddish, who starred in the movie Girls Trip with Pinkett Smith, praised Smith’s actions: “[F]or me, it was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen because it made me believe that there are still men out there that love and care about their women, their wives.”

Actually, it was the opposite. Smith’s slap was also a slap to women. If Rock had physically attacked Pinkett Smith, Smith’s intervention would have been welcome. Or if he’d remained in his seat and yelled his post-slap threat, that would have been unnecessary, but understandable. But by hitting Rock, he announced that his wife was incapable of defending herself—against words. From everything I’d seen of Pinkett Smith over the years, she’s a very capable, tough, smart woman who can single-handedly take on a lame joke at the Academy Awards show.

This patronizing, paternal attitude infantilizes women and reduces them to helpless damsels needing a Big Strong Man to defend their honor least they swoon from the vapors. If he was really doing it for his wife, and not his own need to prove himself, he might have thought about the negative attention this brought on them, much harsher than the benign joke. That would have been truly defending and respecting her. This “women need men to defend them” is the same justification currently being proclaimed by conservatives passing laws to restrict abortion and the LGBTQ+ community.

Worse than the slap was Smith’s tearful, self-serving acceptance speech in which he rambled on about all the women in the movie King Richard that he’s protected. Those who protect don’t brag about it in front of 15 million people. They just do it and shut up. You don’t do it as a movie promotion claiming how you’re like the character you just won an award portraying. By using these women to virtue signal, he was in fact exploiting them to benefit himself. But, of course, the speech was about justifying his violence. Apparently, so many people need Smith’s protection that occasionally it gets too much and someone needs to be smacked.

What is the legacy of Smith’s violence? He’s brought back the Toxic Bro ideal of embracing Kobra Kai teachings of “might makes right” and “talk is for losers.” Let’s not forget that this macho John Wayne philosophy was expressed in two movies in which Wayne spanked grown women to teach them a lesson. Young boys—especially Black boys—watching their movie idol not just hit another man over a joke, but then justify it as him being a superhero-like protector, are now much more prone to follow in his childish footsteps. Perhaps the saddest confirmation of this is the tweet from Smith’s child Jaden: “And That’s How We Do It.” 

The Black community also takes a direct hit from Smith...

Keep reading.

 

Academy Awards Condemns Will Smith and Begins Formal Review (VIDEO)

This is the obligatory Will Smith Slaps Chris Rock at the Academy Awards Show post. 

I can't add much to all the commentary that's already been delivered, and I'm sure there's more to come. 

I wrote this last night after Will Smith accepted his Best Actor award for "King Richard," in which he invoked God in his apology, but *did not* apologize to Chris Rock at the time: "'I’m being called on in my life to love people and to protect people and to be a river to my people' — Will Smith, accepting his Academy Award after striking fellow brother Chris Rock across the face. God called on him to do that, you know."

Smith's assault on Rock has dominated the 24 hour news-cycles, and my continue to dominate for a few more days. Both astonishing and reprehensible behavior. 

At the New York Times, "Will Smith Apologizes to Chris Rock After Academy Condemns His Slap:"

“I was out of line and I was wrong,” said Smith, who hit Rock at the Oscars after the comedian made a joke about his wife. The film organization opened an inquiry into the incident.

LOS ANGELES — Will Smith apologized to the comedian Chris Rock on Monday evening for slapping him during Sunday night’s Oscars telecast after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, which administers the awards, denounced his actions and opened an inquiry into the incident.

Mr. Smith, who had pointedly not apologized to Mr. Rock on Sunday night when he accepted the award for best actor, wrote on Instagram Monday evening that “I would like to publicly apologize to you, Chris.”

“I was out of line and I was wrong,” he said in the statement. “I am embarrassed and my actions were not indicative of the man I want to be.”

His apology came as the academy, a major Hollywood union and others criticized his actions, which stunned viewers around the world and overshadowed the Oscars.

“The academy condemns the actions of Mr. Smith at last night’s show,” the film organization said in a statement. “We have officially started a formal review around the incident and will explore further action and consequences in accordance with our bylaws, standards of conduct and California law.”

The academy’s statement came after a meeting Monday. A five-page document on standards of conduct that accompanied it spells out behavior the organization deems unacceptable. It prohibits “physical contact that is uninvited and, in the situation, inappropriate and unwelcome, or coercive sexual attention.” Also not allowed is “intimidation, stalking, abusive or threatening behavior, or bullying.”

Disciplinary action, according to the bylaws, could include “suspension of membership or expulsion from membership.”

The Academy was not known to have expelled a member before 2017, when Harvey Weinstein was removed amid allegations of sexual harassment and rape. Then, in 2018, after adopting a code of conduct for members, the organization expelled Bill Cosby, who had been convicted of sexual assault, and the filmmaker Roman Polanski, who had fled the country years earlier while awaiting sentencing for statutory rape.

The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, the union representing thousands of people who work in film, television and radio, called the incident “unacceptable” but said that it “does not comment on any pending member disciplinary process.” “Violence or physical abuse in the workplace is never appropriate and the union condemns any such conduct,” the union said in a statement Monday. “The incident involving Will Smith and Chris Rock at last night’s Academy Awards was unacceptable.”

The incident unfolded Sunday night after Mr. Rock made a joke about the buzzed hair of Mr. Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, who has alopecia, a condition that leads to hair loss. Mr. Smith responded by walking onto the stage of the Dolby Theater and slapping Mr. Rock, leaving stunned viewers wondering at first if the blow might have been scripted until Mr. Smith returned to his seat and warned him to stop talking about his wife, using expletives.

Behind the scenes at the Oscars, there were serious discussions about removing Mr. Smith from the theater, according to two industry officials with knowledge of the situation who were granted anonymity to describe internal deliberations. But time was short, because the best actor award, which Mr. Smith was heavily favored to win, was fast approaching, one noted — and stakeholders had varying opinions on how to proceed. There was also concern about further disrupting the live broadcast, the other said.

As the show went on, the actor Denzel Washington spoke with Mr. Smith during a commercial break. Not long after that Mr. Smith won best actor. (Mr. Smith said in his speech that Mr. Washington had told him: “At your highest moment, be careful. That’s when the devil comes for you.”) In his onstage remarks, Mr. Smith apologized to the academy and to his fellow nominees — but not to Mr. Rock — and defiantly sought to draw parallels to the character he played in “King Richard,” the father of Venus and Serena Williams.

“Richard Williams was a fierce defender of his family,” Mr. Smith said. 

He received a standing ovation.

American society is completely (and perhaps irrevocably) degenerate.  

See Allahpundit for lots more, "No, Will Smith isn't going to lose his Oscar."

Why God is Masculine

From the awesome, incredible Dennis Prager. The dude's a freakin' rabbi!

At Prager University:

Generation Incel

At the Other McCain, "Generation Incel: 15% of U.S. Males Ages 22-29 Had Zero Sex Partners Last Year":

"Since 2009, the percentage of U.S. males 20-29 'reporting no sex in the past year' has increased more than 50%." https://t.co/zfniJDtfeM

h/t @jackmurphylive @WilcoxNMP
cc @EdDriscoll @RationalMale @MsEBL pic.twitter.com/dzkML7d9yP

— The Patriarch Tree (@PatriarchTree) March 22, 2019

A rising percentage of young American men report they are unable to find sexual partners, according to data from the General Social Survey (GSS) at the University of Chicago. The percentage of U.S. men 22-29 “reporting no sex in the past year” has increased more than 50% since 2009, from less than 10% to more than 15% of respondents in 2018, according to GSS data compiled by University of Virginia Professor W. Bradford Wilcox. The declining sexual activity of Millennial generation males has reversed normal behavioral patterns. Until 2010, young females in the GSS were more likely than males to report no sexual contact in the past year; now, the “no sex” number is significantly higher for under-30 men than women in the same age cohort...

RTWT.

Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism

*BUMPED.*

Released on Tuesday last week.

At Amazon, Shoshana Zuboff, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power.

The Rise in Suicide and an Epidemic of Loneliness

From Karol Markowicz, at the New York Post, "Soaring suicides are another sign of our toxic social disconnect":

Opinion: Soaring suicides are another sign of our toxic social disconnect https://t.co/7zeJa1q7Zy pic.twitter.com/Kun7wkhtCs

— New York Post (@nypost) December 18, 2018

Americans are dying — earlier than they have been and often at their own hands.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2017 tally, there has been a dramatic rise in the numbers of US deaths by suicide and drug overdose.

As Tamar Lapin noted in these pages, “The last time the US experienced this long of a general decline in life expectancy was in the late 1910s, when the Spanish influenza and World War I killed nearly 1 million Americans.” This time we’re doing it to ourselves.

Suicide is hard to combat. Often there are no signs. It’s quiet and hidden until its devastation is out in the open. There is rarely a particular cause to blame. Two recent cases highlight the bedeviling ­nature of the problem.


“SNL” star Pete Davidson gave the world a scare over the weekend with a cryptic Instagram post in which he said: “I really don’t want to be on this earth anymore.”

Davidson has received an outpouring of support and been accounted for. Not so for Jessica Starr. Last week, the 35-year-old Detroit meteorologist took her own life. A successful TV journalist and mother of two decided she couldn’t live anymore. It could happen to anyone — and it does.

The spike in the number of people taking their own lives is a public-health emergency. It’s something we have to combat — and not just when the victims are famous.

After high-profile suicides, like those of Anthony Bourdain and Kate Spade, we’re bombarded with stories about how to detect the signs of someone in trouble and how to help. But we need to be doing more on a regular basis to support those around us who are struggling.

One wider issue is that Americans have lost the ability to cope. The power to persevere and go on is an important one to develop. It helps to have people to turn to in times of trouble.

But many Americans are bereft of people to lean on. The demise of tight-knit communities has had a profound effect on us. We’re increasingly living our lives on the Internet, alone amid vast digital crowds. Social media have replaced socializing. We’re all guilty of staring too often at our phones. We curl up at night with the latest Chrome browser.

The loneliness is killing us...

Still more.

Drug Overdoses Caught on Video

This is a devastating, heart-wrenching piece, at the New York Times, "How Do You Recover After Millions Have Watched You Overdose?" (Via Althouse, "'In October 2016, Ron Hiers and his wife, Carla, feeling despondent after years of addiction, had made a suicide pact to get high until they were dead, and ended up passed out by a bus stop in Memphis'.")

Like Althouse, I'm not embedding videos --- for me, they're just too sad and they seem like things that shouldn't be watched.

From the article:

It's a new genre of horror film — the drive-by video, often taken by a stranger, of someone who has overdosed. What is it like when millions have seen your worst moment? https://t.co/NI8cglsTsD

— NYT National News (@NYTNational) December 12, 2018

In Lawrence, Mass., a former mill town at the heart of New England’s opioid crisis, the police chief released a particularly gut-wrenching video. It showed a mother who had collapsed from a fentanyl overdose sprawled out in the toy aisle of a Family Dollar while her sobbing 2-year-old daughter tugged at her arm.

“It’s heartbreaking,” James Fitzpatrick, who was the Lawrence police chief at the time, told reporters in September 2016. “This is definitely evidence that shows what addiction can do to someone.”

Mandy McGowan, 38, knows that. She was the mother unconscious in that video, the woman who became known as the “Dollar Store Junkie.” But she said the video showed only a few terrible frames of a complicated life.

As a child, she said, she was sexually molested. She survived relationships with men who beat her. She barely graduated from high school.

She said her addiction to opioids began after she had neck surgery in 2006 for a condition that causes spasms and intense pain. Her neurologist prescribed a menu of strong painkillers including OxyContin, Percocet and fentanyl patches.

As a teenager, Ms. McGowan had smoked marijuana and taken mushrooms and ecstasy. But she always steered clear of heroin, she said, thinking it was for junkies, for people living in alleys. But her friends were using it, and over the last decade, she sometimes joined them.

She tried to break her habit by buying Suboxone — a medication used to treat addiction — on the street. But the Suboxone often ran out, and she turned to heroin to tide her over.

On Sept. 18, 2016, a friend came to Ms. McGowan’s house in Salem, N.H., and offered her a hit of fentanyl, a deadly synthetic painkiller 50 times more potent than heroin. They sniffed a line and drove to the Family Dollar across the state line in Lawrence, where Ms. McGowan collapsed with her daughter beside her. At least two people in the store recorded the scene on their cellphones.

Medics revived her and took her to the hospital, where child welfare officials took custody of her daughter, and the police charged Ms. McGowan with child neglect and endangerment. (She eventually pleaded guilty to both and was sentenced to probation.) Two days later, the video of her overdose was published by The Eagle-Tribune and was also released by the Lawrence police.

The video played in a loop on the local news, and vaulted onto CNN and Fox News, ricocheting across the web.

“For someone already dealing with her own demons, she now has to deal with public opinion, too,” said Matt Ganem, the executive director of the Banyan Treatment Center, about 15 miles north of Boston, which gave Ms. McGowan six months of free treatment after being contacted by intermediaries. “You’re a spectacle. Everyone is watching.”

Ms. McGowan had only seen snippets of the video on the news. But two months later, she watched the whole thing. She felt sick with regret.

“I see it, and I’m like, I was a piece of freaking [expletive],” she said. “That was me in active use. It’s not who I am today.”

But she also wondered: Why didn’t anyone help her daughter? She was furious that bystanders seemed to feel they had license to gawk and record instead of comforting her screaming child.

“I know what I did, and I can’t change it,” she said. “I live with that guilt every single day. But it’s also wrong to take video and not help.”

Nobody recorded the chaos that unfolded next. After Ms. McGowan was released from treatment, the father of her daughter died of an overdose. Two months later, that man’s 19-year-old son also died of an overdose.

Reeling, Ms. McGowan had a night of relapse with alcohol. She checked herself into treatment the next day. But at the same time, she had stopped reporting to her probation officer, a violation of parole that led to 64 days in jail. She was kicked out of a halfway house and stayed briefly at a shelter. She said she was raped this year. She checked herself into a hospital psychiatric ward for five weeks.

Ms. McGowan finally felt ready to start actively rebuilding her life. This spring, she moved to a halfway house in Boston, where her days were packed with appointments with counselors and clinicians, and meetings of Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous. She had weighed just 90 pounds when she overdosed; now she was happily above 140.

Just after Thanksgiving she moved in with relatives, and now hopes to find a place of her own. Her treatment continues. If she stays sober and shows progress, the charges against her will be dropped in April.

She spends part of her day doing volunteer outreach along the open-air drug market in Boston known as Methadone Mile. One recent drizzly afternoon, as she made her way down the sidewalk, she hugged old friends, asked them whether they had eaten, if they were O.K. On her rounds, she picks up hundreds of used needles that carpet the streets...

RTWT.

This whole epidemic makes me very sad, and fine-grained stories like this are frankly out-of-this-world to me.

There but for the grace of God I go...

Leftists Politics Closing In

This is really phenomenal, from John Zmirak, at Pajamas, "The Fences Are Closing In":

The Fences Are Closing In https://t.co/xFm8CVVVan pic.twitter.com/s1V12VxSKr

— PJ Media (@PJMedia_com) August 20, 2018

There’s an old expression, we’ve all used it: “It’s a free country!” Now, sometimes people abuse it. If you catch somebody spraying graffiti on the side of your house, he might just say that. Which, of course, is stupid.

But people only hijack an expression because it’s powerful and true. This is a free country, that’s what defines it. It’s what made America great.

But will America stay free? Or are powerful forces eating away at our freedoms? I won’t say nibbling, because they’re tearing off great big chunks of it at a time. Our freedom of speech, of religion, our right to back political candidates and stand up for what we believe in. All that’s now threatened. I think you know that.

Would you feel comfortable wearing a MAGA hat? Or would you worry you might get assaulted? That happened to 16-year-old Hunter Richard in Austin, Texas, last month. An adult man confronted him, ripped the hat off his head, screamed profanity at him, and threw a drink in his face.

But don’t worry, Austin is on it. They’re getting ready to change the name of the city because Stephen Austin owned slaves. I wonder how long it will be until the Washington, D.C., city council gets around to renaming our capital. Seriously, I think we should start a pool. Ten years? Five? Maybe two? That slope’s getting pretty slippery. If you ever want to see Mount Rushmore while it’s still intact... I think you should book your tickets now. Be sure to take lots of pictures, so you can show your children. The same with the Jefferson Memorial, Monticello, and most of the statues in Richmond. They’re on the List. You know they are.

The Democrats are now embracing “democratic socialism.” Their activists are dressing up in hoods and masks and terrorizing citizens. Assaulting cops and reporters. Trashing government buildings in Portland and occupying them for weeks. Lawmakers are actually having to use old anti-Klan laws to stop the violent radicals of Antifa from terrorizing Americans.

But we’re not supposed to complain about it. It’s getting dangerous to speak your mind. Dangerous to your career, and even to your safety...

Keep reading.

American Men Are Failing

This is actually sort of depressing.

Watch, from Tucker's show last night:

Rise of the 'Bromance' Threatens Heterosexual Relationships

Boy, society's all messed up. Everybody's gay, for one thing.

At the Telegraph U.K., "Rise of the ‘bromance’ threatens heterosexual relationships, warn social scientists."

.@PatriarchTree Rise of the ‘bromance’ threatens heterosexual relationships, warn social scientists: https://t.co/ohiQt0n9tU

— Donald Douglas (@AmPowerBlog) October 18, 2017

'Like Joaquin Phoenix in Gladiator, McCain then makes a thumbs-down gesture, killing the bill. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell watches on grimly with his arms folded, as other GOP senators hang their heads in disappointment...'

This is something else.

At BuzzFeed, "Watch The Shocking Moment John McCain Killed The Republican Health Care Bill: There is so much going on in this clip. I can't stop watching." (Safe link.)

And watch here, "I can't stop watching this: the moment McCain votes no with a 👎🏻. Watch Bernie notice what's happening. Then Look at McConnel's grim reax..."

Senate Rejects #ObamaCare 'Skinny Repeal', 51-49, in Dramatic Light-Night Vote

I actually really liked "skinny repeal." It would have removed ObamaCare's individual and employer mandates, and it would have rescinded the medical device tax. I've said all along that protections for pre-existing conditions should remain. Plus, since I have a 21-year-old kid, I can see how allowing young people to remain on their parents insurance can be helpful (even though I still shake my head sometimes to think that 26-year-old Americans should be dependent on their parents, but wtf?).

In any case, even the skinny repeal got rejected, owing a lot to Sen. John McCain, who's generated some enormous animosity since last night.

In any case, at the New York Times (FWIW), "Senate Rejects Slimmed-Down Obamacare Repeal as McCain Votes No":

WASHINGTON — The Senate in the early hours of Friday morning rejected a new, scaled-down Republican plan to repeal parts of the Affordable Care Act, derailing the Republicans’ seven-year campaign to dismantle President Barack Obama’s signature health care law and dealing a huge political setback to President Trump.

Senator John McCain of Arizona, who just this week returned to the Senate after receiving a diagnosis of brain cancer, cast the decisive vote to defeat the proposal, joining two other Republicans, Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, in opposing it.

The 49-to-51 vote was also a humiliating setback for the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who has nurtured his reputation as a master tactician and spent the last three months trying to devise a repeal bill that could win support from members of his caucus.

As the clock ticked toward the final vote, which took place around 1:30 a.m., suspense built on the Senate floor. Mr. McCain was engaged in a lengthy, animated conversation with Vice President Mike Pence, who had come to the Capitol expecting to cast the tiebreaking vote for the bill. A few minutes later, when Mr. McCain ambled over to the Democratic side of the chamber, he was embraced by Senator Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California. A little later Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, put her arm around Mr. McCain.

The roll had yet to be called, but the body language suggested that the Trump administration had failed in its effort to flip the Arizona senator whom President Trump hailed on Tuesday as an “American hero.’’

Many senators announced their votes in booming voices. Mr. McCain quietly signaled his vote with a thumbs-down gesture. He later offered an explanation on Twitter:

Skinny repeal fell short because it fell short of our promise to repeal & replace Obamacare w/ meaningful reform...

After the tally was final, Mr. Trump tweeted:

3 Republicans and 48 Democrats let the American people down. As I said from the beginning, let ObamaCare implode, then deal. Watch!

The truncated Republican plan that ultimately fell was far less than what Republicans once envisioned. Republican leaders, unable to overcome complaints from both moderate and conservative members of their caucus, said the skeletal plan was just a vehicle to permit negotiations with the House, which passed a much more ambitious repeal bill in early May.

The “skinny repeal” bill, as it became known at the Capitol this week, would still have had broad effects on health care. The bill would have increased the number of people who are uninsured by 15 million next year compared with current law, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. Premiums for people buying insurance on their own would have increased roughly 20 percent, the budget office said...

More.

Also, at Politico, via Memeorandum, "How McCain tanked Obamacare repeal." And at the Los Angeles Times, "McCain's surprise vote doomed GOP healthcare bill, but did it open the door for Senate bipartisanship?" (No.)

Adam Greenfield, Radical Technologies

Just out last week, at Amazon, Adam Greenfield, Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life.

Everywhere we turn, a startling new device promises to transfigure our lives. But at what cost? In this urgent and revelatory excavation of our Information Age, leading technology thinker Adam Greenfield forces us to reconsider our relationship with the networked objects, services and spaces that define us. It is time to re-evaluate the Silicon Valley consensus determining the future.

We already depend on the smartphone to navigate every aspect of our existence. We’re told that innovations—from augmented-reality interfaces and virtual assistants to autonomous delivery drones and self-driving cars—will make life easier, more convenient and more productive. 3D printing promises unprecedented control over the form and distribution of matter, while the blockchain stands to revolutionize everything from the recording and exchange of value to the way we organize the mundane realities of the day to day. And, all the while, fiendishly complex algorithms are operating quietly in the background, reshaping the economy, transforming the fundamental terms of our politics and even redefining what it means to be human.

Having successfully colonized everyday life, these radical technologies are now conditioning the choices available to us in the years to come. How do they work? What challenges do they present to us, as individuals and societies? Who benefits from their adoption? In answering these questions, Greenfield’s timely guide clarifies the scale and nature of the crisis we now confront —and offers ways to reclaim our stake in the future.

The Frightful Five

This is pretty good, from Farhad Manjoo, at NYT.

The "frightful five" are Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google. Which ones could you do without, from the easiest to the toughest? I'd ditch Facebook with no problems, lol. After that, though, it's not so easy to ditch any of these. We're not just talking about ditching one product, but the entire company. I like Microsoft Word, and at work I like Microsoft Outlook for email. And I'm on Apple all the time, since I have an iPhone, which I love. Amazon's mostly for books and stuff, but Google's my bread and butter. I blog on Google, email with gmail.com, and of course search Google exclusively. It'd be hard to give up. So, you get the picture. Manjoo would be bummed to bail out on Amazon, because he uses it for everything and has been since it first went online, which is interesting.

Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook and Google dominate our lives. What would happen if we had to give them up? https://t.co/Q5jJX0h9y7

— The New York Times (@nytimes) May 14, 2017

Court Rules Kentucky Print Shop Has Right to Avoid Making Gay Pride T-shirts

Good.

Screw the homosexual Nazis.

At WSJ (via Memeorandum and Vox Populi):

Court Rules Kentucky Print Shop Has Right to Avoid Making Gay Pride Shirts... https://t.co/xEoLZoiPgp

— DRUDGE REPORT (@DRUDGE_REPORT) May 13, 2017

A Kentucky appellate court on Friday ruled that the Christian owner of a printing shop in Lexington had the right to refuse to make T-shirts promoting a local gay pride festival.

The dispute represents the latest court fight testing the limits of antidiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2015 landmark ruling legalizing gay marriage nationwide.

The cases have led to a number of state court rulings against Christian-owned businesses that refused to bake cakes, design floral arrangements or take portrait photographs for same-sex weddings.

The ruling by the Kentucky Court of Appeals favored the business owner. A crucial difference in this case was the expressive nature of the service denied: literally words on a shirt.

In a split vote, a three-judge panel concluded that the store, Hands on Originals, couldn’t be forced to print a message with which the owner disagreed.

The dispute started in 2012 when Gay and Lesbian Services Organization in Kentucky asked Hands on Originals to make T-shirts with the name and logo of a pride festival...

Flashback to the Weekly Standard, "You Will Be Assimilated":

You Will Be Assimilatedhttp://t.co/1gu8Ivan7U pic.twitter.com/dguZejRK72

— The Weekly Standard (@weeklystandard) June 26, 2015

What Happens After Tuesday? The Mood is Bleak

From Cathleen Decker, at the Los Angeles Times, "What happens after Tuesday? Dismayed voters weigh in on the future of a divided nation":

The uncivil war of rhetoric and resentments is ending, but few have any idea how to bind the nation's wounds. https://t.co/Jqrc1RdvxC

— Cathleen Decker (@cathleendecker) November 6, 2016

The presidential campaign eight years ago is forever wrapped in the soaring and optimistic Obama slogan: “Change we can believe in.” This one’s imagery is the detritus of FBI investigations, a candidate’s vulgarities, accusations of dishonesty, racial dog whistles, misogynist insults.

Any campaign belongs to its times, and this one fits squarely into a worldwide dislocation of the masses from the elites — those of governments, businesses, religions, media. In Great Britain, those sentiments led to the vote to leave the European Union. Here, it has helped to fuel Trump’s rise and limit Clinton’s success.

In an October tracking poll by SurveyMonkey, 50% of Americans said that the country was more divided now than ever before and that the splits would persist “far into the future.” Another 30% agreed that America was more divided than ever, but said the nation could knit itself together in the near future.

That left fewer than 1 in 5 people to assert that the country hadn’t actually sunk to its most divided state.

A cycle of distrust has bred pessimism, no matter the improving unemployment rate or other favorable statistics.

“Even when the news is good, people don’t trust it,” said Nathaniel Persily, a Stanford law professor and political scientist who has studied the national mood. The randomness of threatening events — whether economic collapse or terrorism —  also “makes people jittery,” he said.

That sense of pessimism and dislocation is particularly strong among America’s shrinking white majority.

“Whites are feeling like the earth is moving beneath their feet. Whether it’s an African American president or immigrants, they feel the meaning of America is changing for them,” he said. “And it’s heaped onto the other insecurities.”

All of that can be found in the campaign...

RTWT.