The Trump Chicken visits Dana Rohrabacher's district to entertain the voters.Matt Masin/The Orange County Register via ZUMA

Last night, Donald Trump’s most loyal spear carrier in Congress, Rep. Devin Nunes, won his primary impressively with 58 percent of the vote. Trump’s #2 man in Congress, Kevin McCarthy, won even bigger, taking home 70 percent of the vote. But Trump didn’t bother congratulating either of them. Only one guy running for Congress got the coveted Trump tweet this morning:

Congratulations to Dana Rohrabacher on his big California win. We are proud of you Dana!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 6, 2018

Rohrabacher’s district is the one that put the jungle in jungle primary, featuring a total of 16 candidates. He has a pretty good chance of losing in November, but he is famous for one thing: being Vladimir Putin’s biggest booster in Congress. I guess that’s what it takes to get Trump’s blessing these days.

According to Bloomberg, here’s how women did yesterday in congressional primaries:

Here in California’s 45th district, the race for second place in our jungle primary (behind Republican incumbent Mimi Walters) was between two law professors at UC Irvine. With all the votes counted, the winner is Katie Porter, a progressive woman endorsed by Elizabeth Warren, who beat Dave Min, a moderate liberal who got the official party endorsement. The bad news, however, is that all the Democratic candidates together received only 44.4 percent of the vote, even though the tight contest should have boosted Dem turnout. It’s going to be tough to turn my district blue for the first time since Harry Sheppard managed to eke out a victory in the Democratic mega-landslide of 1936.

A rundown of all the California primary results is here. It appears that Democrats won a spot in every single one, despite fears that a fractured field could allow Republicans to run #1 and #2 in a few of them. November should be pretty interesting here in the Golden State, especially since the statewide contests are mostly pretty boring and Congress is going to get a huge amount of attention.

So far, 116 women have won congressional primaries this year. If they continue to win at the same rate in upcoming primaries, I figure there will be 240 women running for Congress this year. This would be a massive increase over any previous year:

Bill Clark/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

From House Speaker Paul Ryan, asked whether the FBI “spied” on the Trump campaign:

I think Chairman Gowdy’s initial assessment is accurate.

In other words, he agrees with Gowdy’s assessment that the FBI did nothing wrong and didn’t spy on Trump.

The fact that Ryan believes this is unsurprising. It’s pretty obvious even based on public information that no one was spying on Trump, and the FBI investigation was kicked off solely due to legitimate concerns about Russian misbehavior. What is surprising is that Ryan finally decided to say so publicly. Is this just because he, like Gowdy, is retiring? Does it suggest that congressional Republicans are finally getting tired of Trump? Is it because most of the primary elections are now over so it’s safe to speak the truth? Or what?

I don’t have any good reason to post this. It’s just to annoy Trump fans by showing yet again that the current economy is nothing more than a straightforward extension of the Obama economy. Trump hasn’t wrecked Obama’s legacy yet, but that’s about the most he can say for himself.

By the way, the Republican tax plan passed on December 19. Within a few weeks that brought the eight-year stock market rally to a screeching halt. Since the start of the new year, the market has been dead flat. Nice work.

Brian Cahn via ZUMA

I realize this is about a decade old by the standards of how news cycles run these days, but I want to make a brief comment about yesterday’s Masterpiece Cakeshop ruling from the Supreme Court.¹ It’s being widely described as a “narrow” ruling, and that’s not wrong. But it’s also incomplete. I think it’s pretty clear that the court simply didn’t want to rule at all on this subject.

Here’s the thing: this is pretty much a no-win situation for the Supreme Court. On the one hand, it involves obvious questions of free speech and freedom of association that are pretty important. They’re so important, in fact, that they apply even in cases of straight-up racism and sexism that have none of the subtleties of Masterpiece. The Augusta National Golf Club—a high-profile meeting place of the rich and famous that’s featured on network TV annually—refused to admit blacks until 1990. 1990! They refused to admit women until 2012. 2012! And that was perfectly legal.

The free speech issues are equally fraught. If an artist refused to paint a portrait of Jerry Falwell Jr. because she thought he was a sexist pig, liberals would probably think that was fine. And it is. I sure wouldn’t want to force someone to paint a portrait of a guy like that.

Now, sure, the cake store was not a private club. It was a public place of business, and there’s jurisprudence on what kinds of places are covered by the Civil Rights Act and what kinds aren’t. And portraits aren’t cakes, which are merely being used at an event, not necessarily carrying a message of their own. Still, it should be pretty obvious that there are subtle issues here that are all but impossible to decide on a bright line basis. Can a Jewish baker be forced to supply a cake for a KKK rally? Can a Christian sandwich shop be forced to cater a Planned Parenthood fundraiser? Can a gay movie star be forced to sign an autograph for Richard Spencer?

There are rules that would cover all these cases that the Supreme Court could adopt. But why? For the most part they never come up, and when they do they’re generally just ignored because they’re so obviously heinous. So perhaps the better part of valor is just to tap dance for a while. Soon enough, refusing to serve a gay couple will be broadly viewed as equally heinous and the issue at stake will simply disappear. In the meantime, there’s no need to make a potentially disastrous ruling.

I think this is what happened, and even half the court’s liberals decided to go along. They figure it’s basically an ephemeral issue, and both liberals and conservatives have good reason to let it slide since any definitive new ruling would almost certainly hurt everyone in one way or another. Instead the court decided to muddle along until everyone forgets the whole thing, and that was likely a wise decision.

¹In case you’ve just returned from vacation on Mars: a gay couple wanted a cake for their wedding. The Masterpiece Cakeshop refused to make one for them because the owner believed that same-sex marriage violates biblical teachings. A state commission in Colorado ruled in favor of the couple but foolishly made some statements that could be interpreted as hostile to religion. This gave Justice Anthony Kennedy grounds to overturn the decision without ever really touching the merits of the case.

On our last day at Yosemite this year, Marian stayed in the Valley while I zipped around in the car trying to get to various places when I thought the light would be best. At the tail end of the day I made it to Bridalveil Fall, and as I pulled in there was a group of kids horsing around right in the middle of the parking lot. Instead of running them down, I turned into a nearby space and got out. When I did, I saw what they were doing: trying to pose for pictures with a Bridalveil rainbow right behind them. So I joined in and got a picture of the rainbow too.

And it’s a good thing I did, because I really had made it there just in the nick of time. By the time I walked up the path to the foot of the falls—a matter of five or ten minutes—afternoon shadows were already racing up the rock wall. The only picture I took that was any good was the one from the parking lot. Thanks kids!

Is this the stupidest man in the world? Maybe!Imago via ZUMA

I never quite got around to writing about this, but it’s worth highlighting just how baldly and relentlessly Donald Trump has lied about Don Jr.’s meeting with a Russian attorney at Trump Tower during the 2016 campaign. Here’s an abbreviated timeline:

June 2016: Don Jr. meets secretly at Trump Tower with Russian attorney Natalia Veselnitskaya, a “trusted insider” of the Putin regime who has promised dirt on Hillary Clinton.

A year passes…

July 7, 2017: The New York Times, which has learned about the meeting, calls the White House for comment.

July 7, evening: President Trump meets in private—totally in private—with Russian president Valdimir Putin. Trump later explains that they talked about “adoptions.”

July 8: The White House releases a statement from aboard Air Force One explaining that the Trump Tower meeting was a big nothingburger that included no discussions of any substance. It was just about adoptions.

July 20: Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Trump’s legal team, quits because he’s afraid the statement amounts to obstruction of justice.

Rest of 2017: Various Trump spokespeople insist over and over that Trump himself had only recently learned about Don Jr.’s meeting and had nothing to do with the statement issued from Air Force One.

January 2018: Trump’s lawyers admit privately in a memo to Robert Mueller that Trump was not only involved in the statement, he dictated it.

June 2: The New York Times publishes the memo to Mueller, making Trump’s repeated lies public.

There’s more to the story, but it’s sometimes useful to see the bare skeleton in a single place. Whatever happened at that meeting in June 2016, Trump has spent a considerable amount of time trying to cover it up; lying about it when it was eventually discovered; and then lying some more when the lies were discovered. Maybe this is just his usual MO, but we’ve never seen it in the past because Trump was never under such intense scrutiny. Maybe. But these sure don’t seem like the actions of an innocent man, do they?

Tom Williams/Congressional Quarterly/Newscom via ZUMA

Oh come on. This is entering bad sitcom territory:

Three months after Scott Pruitt was sworn in as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, his executive scheduler emailed Dan Cathy, chairman and president of the fast food company Chick-fil-A, with an unusual request: Would Cathy meet with Pruitt to discuss “a potential business opportunity”? A call was arranged, then canceled, and Pruitt eventually spoke with someone from the company’s legal department. Only then did he reveal the “opportunity” on his mind was a job for his wife, Marlyn.

“The subject of that phone call was an expression of interest in his wife becoming a Chick-fil-A franchisee,” company representative Carrie Kurlander told The Washington Post via email.

It’s not just that this stuff is wrong, it’s that it’s so hilariously penny ante and ridiculous. Pruitt seems to think he was appointed archduke of a presidential fiefdom or something, complete with courtiers, imperial writs, and Amway dealerships. Why don’t Republicans get rid of him? There are plenty of people willing to destroy the environment, so Pruitt is hardly irreplaceable. Do they really not care what a laughingstock he’s making of the party with his embarrassingly nickel-and-dime corruption?

Yesterday I was directed to an article about the Faroe Islands, which have apparently been on a tunnel-building spree for years. Instead of taking ferries, you can now drive from island to island via tunnel, and the Faroese are quite taken with the whole idea.

That’s all interesting enough, I suppose, but how do they afford this? Their population is only 50,000. How can they afford to build billions of dollars worth of undersea tunnels? The answer is that they don’t build billions of dollars worth of tunnels:

The Vaga tunnel required more complicated engineering works than onshore frozen fish tunnels, but it was still surprisingly cheap and efficient to build. The government provided DKK 160 million ($20.3 million) in financing, while local banks provided the remaining DKK 140 million ($17.8 million), with the tunnel and roads used as their guarantee. “Many people thought that we were crazy when we started to build it, but it showed to be an extremely successful project,” recalled Magni. The tunnel provided a link between the airport and the rest of the island, which was particularly important for the export-oriented fishing industry. “The tunnel is one leg to the global world,” Danielsen described.

They built a two-mile tunnel for $40 million? Granted, it’s a fairly rudimentary tunnel, and it’s not like there are lots of utility lines to worry about, but still. That amount of money wouldn’t buy you the design work for a tunnel in the US, let alone the actual construction. What gives?

Whatever the answer, it strikes me that Elon Musk should offer his services to the Faroe Islands. He claims that he can bore tunnels super efficiently, and this would be a good chance to prove it. Can he build a tunnel even more cheaply than the Faroe Islanders can already do it? He should put his money where his mouth is and let us know if he can really do it.

Take a selfie while you can. We're not getting enough of this in California.Jebb Harris via ZUMA

Last night I received the following peculiar tweet:

Off-topic, but do you know if a new California law prohibits taking a shower and doing laundry on the same day? A lot of conservative sites are claiming that, but they’re not known for their factual accuracy.

— Rapid Rar (@rapid_rar) June 4, 2018

It just so happens that on Monday I took a shower and did a load of laundry. I’m pretty sure this is still legal, even here in the Golden State. But, um, what brought this up?

Long Glenn Beck rant today.

Limited to 55 gallons a day. One shower is 18 gallons. 40 to water the grass. Sorry California. Very sad.
Don’t even think about a bath.

— Shannon Ragland (@JuryReporter) June 4, 2018

Yeah, they’re claiming that Jerry Brown just signed “Assembly Bill 1668” into law, prohibiting people from using more than 55 gallons of water per day.

— Rapid Rar (@rapid_rar) June 4, 2018

Oh. But wait. I thought Glenn Beck had become a monk? Or was now running a honky tonk saloon or something. I guess not. Still ranting for a living, apparently. But in case you’re curious, here’s a simplified version of what really happened and how it’s now turned into a bizarre conservative meme:

1. California is suffering through an epic drought. This is not due to liberal idiocy, it’s due to the fact that we aren’t getting much rain up in the Sierras lately.
2. So we have to conserve water. To that end, way back in 2009 Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed a bill requiring urban water suppliers to reduce water consumption 20 percent by 2020.
3. As the drought of the 20-teens progressed, that goal became laughable. We didn’t even have that much water. We blew past the 20 percent conservation goal years early because we had no choice.
4. As it became clear that our drought was likely to stay around for a good long time, it made sense to do some long-term planning for more serious water conservation. Eventually, the result was AB1668, signed into law a few days ago.
5. AB1668 does a number of things, and one of them is to commit urban water districts to more stringent water-use targets. But there are a few things to keep in mind about this.
6. First, the actual target is a 20 percent reduction in overall residential water starting from the 2020 baseline.
7. This target includes both indoor and outdoor water use.
8. The provisional target for indoor water use is 55 gallons per capita. That’s 110 gallons for a family of two, 165 for a family of three, etc. It’s plenty for showers and laundry and toilet flushing for everyone, and it’s likely to be replaced by a more flexible target before anything goes into effect anyway.
   

   

9. The target for outdoor water use hasn’t been set yet.
10. These targets are overall averages, not individual daily limits. Individuals can still do whatever they want, whenever they want. However, all the individuals together will need to meet the goal of an overall 20 percent reduction.
11. Most likely, this goal will be met mostly via (a) recycling, (b) cutting back on outdoor watering, and (c) better efficiency. The impact on ordinary indoor residential use will be fairly modest.
12. And that’s about it.

So, yes, California needs to save water thanks to a lack of rainfall in recent years. The overall goal is a 20 percent reduction in residential water use compared to the 2020 baseline, and that goal will be met via some combination of cuts in indoor and outdoor residential use. However, there will be plenty of water for ordinary day-to-day use, and it will remain perfectly legal to shower and do laundry on the same day if you’re feeling up to it.

Nonetheless, I’m sure a wingnut meme has been born. We’ll probably be hearing this idiocy for years.