Donkey Feed, August 8, 2018

By Michael Bryan

Welcome back to the Donkey Feed. Those who feel I’m too verbose will be glad to see I have just 7 Arizona stories, 8 national stories, and 5 world stories for you to enjoy today.

But first, I found some cool tools this episode: Native-Land.ca has fantastic interactive maps of the native peoples, territories, and languages of the native peoples of North America and Australia, which I found fascinating and informative; Also interesting is this illuminating (and infuriating) comparison of income inequality in the United States vs. western Europe (this is not “natural” market forces at work, these charts are the result of political choices we have made):

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Arizona:

• Sacha Baron Cohen gets Joe Arpaio to admit that he would accept oral servicing from Trump and to talk about graphic sex acts; is it a total humiliation (AZCentral) of Arpaio, or is any attention at all (AZCentral) good for him, or does it merely prove he’s mentally unfit for office (Phoenix New Times)?: Crooks and Liars.
• Kelli Ward melts down and throws a twit-fit over losing The Arizona Republic’s endorsement to Martha McSally: AZCentral.
• Two men in Arizona have been arrested based on illegal actions taken to foil the QAnon conspiracy (See the National section if you aren’t familiar with QAnon): AZCentral.
• Arizona State Senator Juan Mendez toured a Southwest Key detention facility and what he saw shocked and disgusted him: USA Today.
• Democratic U.S. Senate Candidate Deedra Aboud is seeking your vote to take on Martha McSally, you’ll want to hear what she has to say:
  
• Arizona Public Service is the largest power supplier in Arizona and they have invested over $7 million in elections for Corporation Commission, which then raised rates that created windfall of over a $100 million for APS; and this isn’t corruption somehow?:  AZCentral.
• Maricopa County is taking its Joe-Arpaio-immigration-patrol case to the U.S. Supreme Court in hopes of reducing the estimated $120 million bill to taxpayers for Uncle Joe’s racism: AZCentral.

National:

• Meet Stephanie Kelton (YouTube), Bernie Sander’s economic advisor, who claims most what we believe about government deficits is wrong (NYT Opinion), and is a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory (Harvard International Review), which states that deficits don’t matter except to the degree that running one that outstrips available human and material capital stocks can cause inflation (Parts 1 and 2 of the argument); the upshot is that all the ambitious things Democrats want to do CAN be done without harming the economy, deficits be damned (The Week).
• Amy Siskind records the outrages of week 90 of the White House under occupation by a madman: Medium.
• Is ICE unreformable, needing to be abolished, or did Trump radicalize a useful agency?: Atlantic.
• Trump has now admitted that the purpose of the Trump Tower/Veselnitskaya meeting was to gather dirt on Clinton from a hostile foreign power; is Trump compelled somehow to confess his sins via tweet (Vox)?: Truth Dig.
• Claiming his tariffs will help pay down the national debt, Trump provides yet another example of just how little he understands (Vox) our nation’s economic situation: WaPo.
• The pain points for the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh are becoming clear; sexual harassment, undue deference to the Presidency, a terrible record on the environment, questioning whether the President has to follow laws he thinks unconstitutional, and a scheduling-based concealment of a paper trail through his stint in partisan politics: Atlantic.
• Meet QAnon (Gimlet Media), the batshit crazy right-wing conspiracy community who spawned in the fever dreams of Trump supporters; Anonymous has just declared war (The Hill) on them.
• Trump is doing his best to undermine the Johnson Amendment, which keeps tax-exempt organizations (read, CHURCHES) out of funding or advocating for political candidates: Salon.

World:

• The Trump Administration is renewing sanctions against Iran waived under Obama in the wake of the JCPOA; but Europe is doing it’s best to counter (Financial Times) them: Buzzfeed.
• Liberation Theology still has powerful truths to speak to power, world-wide: Aeon.
• Iraq is being rocked by a wave of protests this summer; are we seeing the emergence of genuine Iraqi civil society and real people-power?: Informed Comment.
• National Security Advisor John Bolton (boy, those words make me shudder with fear…) is the latest official to attempt to walk back the expectations set by Trump for the North Korean nuclear “agreement”; he says “”there’s nobody in [t]his administration starry-eyed about the prospects of North Korea actually denuclearizing,” except the President, that is…: Spacewar.
• The world may be much closer to an unrecoverable climate tipping point than we thought: Truthdig.