Weekend link dump for July 1

If you want to know the status of all the honorary degrees Bill Cosby has received, now you can.

Things not to call older employees, if you want to avoid having your tuchus sued off.

“Does any company want its logo on the page next to a kid in a cage?”

“Indeed, Nielsen and Miller would have been hard-pressed to find any restaurant, serving any kind of food, that didn’t rely on the labor of the same individuals their immigration policies seek to expel at all costs. Latino workers are the backbone of the restaurant world, at bistros, pizzerias, sushi counters, and rotisseries across the country—many of them are Central American, like the majority of the migrant families being torn apart in recent weeks. (And, it’s worth noting, many of those workers are undocumented: the hospitality sector is one of the largest employers of undocumented labor in the country.)”

“This means that all European light pickup trucks face a 25 percent tariff when they enter the US—a tariff so high that it effectively bans all light truck imports. That’s bad news for American consumers who want to buy a VW Amorak, reputed to be a very nice small pickup. I suggest that the EU immediately threaten to levy a 25 percent tariff on all Ford and GM pickup trucks until Donald Trump agrees to level the playing field here.”

“So my suggestion that white evangelicals’ lockstep, reptilian partisanship was so extreme that they would even support someone like Donald Trump really did seem extravagantly harsh back then. But it’s not 2011 any more.”

Congratulations, you crazy kids.

“The most insidious thing about the descent into illiberalism is that it is incremental. There’s no dramatic moment, no Rubicon. Every step seems bad, but only a little worse than the previous step.”

Godwin’s Law was never meant to block us from challenging the institutionalization of cruelty or the callousness of officials who claim to be just following the law.”

Thirty Friedman Units ago, in a galaxy far, far away…

Please stop harassing the female reporters at the World Cup.

“If you or I lie to federal investigators, or we obstruct an investigation, or we don’t register as lobbyists, then we should not expect any mercy or any editorials urging leniency in our case. And this is the lens through which I interpret the reaction to Sarah Huckabee Sanders not being allowed to eat at a small Virginia restaurant.”

The Trump tariff layoffs have arrived. Are you tired of winning yet?

Hank Aaron remains a role model.

“And what about civility? Well, fundamental to, and governing the practice of, civility is the principle of reciprocity: your place at my table implies my place at yours. Conservatives and liberals, right-wingers and left-wingers, Jews and Muslims and Christians and Socialists and round- and flat-Earthers—all should have a place at any table and be welcome to sit where they like. On the other hand, someone who has decided to make it her public role to extend, with a blizzard of falsehoods, the words of a pathological liar, and to support, with pretended piety, the acts of a public person of unparalleled personal cruelty—well, that person has asked us in advance to exclude her from our common meal. You cannot spit in the plates and then demand your dinner. The best way to receive civility at night is to not assault it all day long. It’s the simple wisdom of the table.”

“It’s curious, though, that it’s Heimlich, of every athlete who has ever made a mistake and of every human who has made a mistake, who gets to demand our forgiveness, or have it demanded on his behalf. He has never shown contrition, never said he learned, and never even feigned regret about anything that might have happened during that time in his life. Neither has anyone done so on his behalf, or even simply claimed that his abilities trump any other considerations; all that has happened is that he has pleaded guilty to doing an awful thing and had mercy pleaded on his behalf, without any of the steps in between being so much as gestured at.”

“These are simple facts, ones impermeable to propaganda and ones that illustrate the trouble with an organization happy to depict itself as inhabitants of the moral high ground. There is no whitewashing. There is no concealing. There is, first and foremost, honesty, and if Moore is going to talk about signing Luke Heimlich in the same context as watching pornography and taking PEDs, he’d best assess the viability of that argument before using it again.”

“Throughout history, activists have seldom won battles against injustice by asking politely.”

RIP, Harlan Ellison, prolific and influential author, screenwriter, and editor.

“Trump thought he was talking to a U.S. Senator. Instead, it was a prank caller with a podcast.”

“Read more about the victims of Thursday’s shooting at the Capital Gazette: Gerald Fischman, Robert Hiaasen, John McNamara, Rebecca Smith and Wendi Winters.”

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