1. If you haven't seen this video about a "man losing his temper" at a meeting with Rep. Tom MacArthur, you should spend the eleven minutes of your life it takes on it.
MacArthur is one of the evil architects of the Republicans' House health insurance plan, and the man in the audience gives us an extremely eloquent and well-informed speech on what is inherently and morally wrong about the Republican attitude toward health care, pre-existing conditions and the facile assumption that well-informed and careful consumers would somehow fix the high costs of health care.
2. Lawyers, Guns and Money has an interesting post about the possible Hillarization of Kirsten Gillibrand.
I have coined the cumbersome term of "Hillarization" to refer to a process I think is starting to take place with Elizabeth Warren and now perhaps with Gillibrand.
The right has always pursued the demonization of Democratic politicians, of course, but my strong impression is that the process is stronger when the politician is female and that a faint echo of that can be also heard from the left. In short, Hillarization is when we take your average run-of-the-mill politician, if she is a particularly uppity (read: powerful) female, and then turn her into the caricature of a cold, ruthless and greedy vampire bitch.
My theory is tentative and must remain so until we have more politicians in the top power positions. But it's a good hypothesis to keep in mind when you read about the past evils of some female politician. Just ask yourself if the strength and the viciousness of the attacks would be identical if she was male.
Hillarization doesn't apply to all female politicians equally, and that's also important to keep in mind. Women who behave as followers by keeping themselves in a supporting role below the peak of the pyramid are less often Hillarized. It's also possible that the process would be different for women of color in the US.
And I could be wrong about the whole concept. We shall see.
3. Trump's exclusive interview with Lester Holt is the kind you want to watch with popcorn and the beverage of your choice. I loved the way Trump insisted that he was not under investigation, and he had asked Comey about that!
Because of this bit:
It would be highly unusual for someone who might be the focus of an FBI probe to ask whether he was under investigation and to be directly told by the FBI director that he was not. Several legal experts told NBC News the president's action was improper.Trump doesn't even know the word "improper," and neither seem those large numbers of fundamentalists who voted for this pussygrabber as a saviour of their religious rights.