Jamelle Bouie successfully crams yet another dissertation into a short essay.

Does anyone remember compassionate conservatism?

The important thing for our Democratic friends to remember is that you may not be in total control in the future, and anytime you start fiddling around with the rules of the Senate, I think you always need to put yourself in the other fellow’s shoes and just imagine what might happen when the wind shifts.

— Mitch McConnell AKA the senator who has worked the hardest to unravel the much lauded anti-majoritarian norms of the U.S. Senate

The New York Times:

TikTok users and fans of Korean pop music groups claimed to have registered potentially hundreds of thousands of tickets for Trump’s campaign rally as a prank. After @TeamTrump tweeted asking supporters to register for free tickets using their phones on June 11, K-pop fan accounts began sharing the information with followers, encouraging them to register for the rally — and then not show.

Gen Z is alright with me.

Six years ago Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) was briefly dating some woman whose mother dies and then he takes her now orphaned kid brother under his wing and doesn’t mention it publicly until he claims to have been “triggered” (his word) in a Judiciary Committee markup session in which he feels the need to claim he has a non-white son and therefore understands the challenges facing African Americans as a rhetorical justification for trying to delay/torpedo a police reform bill.

So basically Gaetz is using an orphaned teenager as a prop to justify the continuation of white supremacy. He might be a great father figure and positive influence on this kid’s life but like so much of what happens in Congress, it seems like all that good intention died in committee in the service of politics and vanity.

Don’t turn your back on 2020, this year will not quit.

I don’t read Twitter, I only write on it.

– Marco Rubio

A tremendous essay on the failure of libertarianism from a longtime libertarian think tanker.

I’ve told you many many times, it’s a loud world now and the churn is high.  Listen and learn. Be mindful.  Even out here on the Thames Delta, where some of us think this is all happening a very long way away – it never really is. And stay safe. You already know all this…. But in case anyone actually for some reason needs to see me say it: fuck racism, defund militarised police, and, while we’re at it, fuck transphobes too.

– Warren Ellis, in his newsletter “Orbital Operations”