Hammer Mill Days

All right, then. Ready? One, two, three, four .... wait, whaaat? That's not how that song starts. The bagpipes come in on the third verse, not right at the beginning. Where's that screaming guitar, Mitch? You promised me a screaming guitar! Oh, man. It's really been too long since we got out on the star-dusty trail and played a few remote venues. Pulling together a live show is hard when you're this rusty. In fact, it's starting to make interstellar space travel seem trivial by comparison. But what the hell, we're doing it - Big Green is going on another galactic tour, assuming we can find a spaceship worthy of such a journey. No matter what the difficulties may be, the daunting challenges ... we will not be daunted. Forward! Forward into the breech, me lads! So much for the motivational speech. Actually, I think the toughest problem we have on this project is, well, personnel. We're a little thin on the ground here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill....

While you were looking over there, this week the Trump administration set the wheels in motion to lock-in a structural electoral advantage for white people and conservatives for the next generation. They argued before the Supreme Court in favor of including a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, challenges to which have been upheld by lower courts, and it looks pretty promising for them, based on comments from the bench. A decision in favor of the administration would be very bad news for any hope of not only electoral and policy victories in the short term, but also equitable distribution of services and resources in the years and decades to come, so this is probably literally the most important story in the country this week, and the coverage has been relatively cursory. The fact is, there is already a slanted playing field, tilted toward the Republican party's core constituencies, regardless of what Trump claims. Just look at what happened in 2016. For the second time in f...