Sunday Long Read: A Tale Of Angels

Isaac Butler and Dan Kois give us this week's Long Read from Slate as they document the oral history of Tony Kushner's seminal Angels in America on the play's 25th anniversary.

Twenty-five years ago this summer, Tony Kushner’s Angels in America premiered in the tiny Eureka Theatre in San Francisco’s Mission District. Within two years it had won the Pulitzer Prize and begun a New York run that would dominate the Tony Awards two years in a row, revitalize the nonmusical play on Broadway, and change the way gay lives were represented in pop culture. Both parts of Angels, Millennium Approaches and Perestroika, put gay men at the center of American politics, history, and mythology at a time when they were marginalized by the culture at large and dying in waves. It launched the careers of remarkable actors and directors, not to mention the fiercely ambitious firebrand from Louisiana who wrote it—and rewrote it, and rewrote it, and rewrote it again. Its 2003 HBO adaptation was itself a masterpiece that won more Emmys than Roots. But the play also financially wiped out the theater that premiered it; it endured casting and production tumult at every stage of development, from Los Angeles to London to Broadway; its ambitious, sprawling two-part structure tested the endurance of players, technicians, and audiences. Slate talked to more than 50 actors, directors, playwrights, and critics to tell the story ofAngels’ turbulent ascension into the pantheon of great American storytelling—and to discuss the legacy of a play that feels, in an era in which gay Americans have the right to marry but still in many ways live under siege, as crucial as ever.

Tony Kushner (playwright of Angels in America): Around November of 1985, the first person that I knew personally died of AIDS. A dancer that I had a huge crush on, a very sweet man and very beautiful. I got an NEA directing fellowship at the repertory theater in St. Louis, and right before I left New York, I heard through the grapevine that he had gotten sick. And then, in November, he died.

And I had this dream: Bill dying—I don’t know if he was actually dying, but he was in his pajamas and sick on his bed—and the ceiling collapsed and this angel comes into the room. And then I wrote a poem. I’m not a poet, but I wrote this thing. It was many pages long. After I finished it, I put it away. No one will ever see it.

Its title was “Angels in America.”

And I remember in college the massive, massive controversy over when the play came to Charlotte in 1996. Billy Graham went nuts, and eventually Mecklenburg County cut funding to the theater company that put the play on in 1997. The Charlotte Repertoire Theater folded nine years later.

That battle is still going on in North Carolina today, only now over trans people using bathrooms. North Carolina hasn't changed much.  I have, it's why I left and frankly I'm not coming back.

Sad when Kentucky looks less bigoted than the state you grew up in.

Meanwhile In Baghdad

Islamic State militants are still very much operating in Iraq, and as retaliation for Iraqi forces taking back the besieged city of Falluja this week, suicide bombers struck at Baghdad shopping area killing nearly 100 and injuring twice that many.

The attack is the deadliest since U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last month scored a major victory when it dislodged Islamic State from their stronghold of Falluja, an hour's drive west of the capital.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered the offensive after a series of deadly bombings in Baghdad, saying Falluja served as a launchpad for such attacks on the capital. However, bombings have continued.

A convoy carrying Abadi who had come to tour the site of the bombings was pelted with stones and bottles by residents, angry at what they felt were false promises of better security.

A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in the central district of Karrada, killing 91 people and injuring at least 200. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hard line Sunni group. It said the blast was a suicide bombing.

Karrada was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out and shop late during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week with the Eid al-Fitr festival.

Videos posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of Abadi as he departed Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.

Another video posted on social media showed a large blaze in the main street of Karrada, a largely Shi'ite district with a small Christian community and a few Sunni mosques.

I have to say, if a refrigerator truck full of explosives detonated in Paris or Brussels or London and killed 95 people, and Islamic State took credit for it, we'd have international coverage of the attack for weeks, not to mention Republicans talking about thoughts and prayers whenever possible.

But it happened in Baghdad, so nobody cares.

Oh well.

Is The Snow Job Coming To An End?

The adventures of Edward Snowden, the Dudebro Defector, seem to be winding down and not in a good way. If you blinked, you may have missed the fact that the nature of the relationship with his Russian handlers has taken a very dark turn as of this week.  NPR's Mary Louise Kelly explains:

MARK GALEOTTI: The point at which he put his first foot on Russian soil - at that point, he was bought and paid for.

KELLY: That's Mark Galeotti, an authority on Russia spy agencies, also a professor at NYU. He believes Snowden has almost certainly shared what he knows - secrets about NSA operations - with his Russian hosts. I put this question to Frants Klintsevich. He's the equivalent of a senator here in Russia and deputy chairman of the powerful defense and security committee.

FRANTS KLINTSEVICH: (Speaking Russian).

KELLY: "Let's be frank," he says. "Snowden did share intelligence. This is what security services do," adds Klintsevich. "If there's a possibility to get information, they will get it." It's a possibility that Snowden's lawyer, Ben Wizner of the ACLU, denies.

BEN WIZNER: Of course, it's impossible to prove a negative. But as he has made clear, he didn't even bring sensitive information with him to Russia, precisely because he didn't want to be in a position where he could be coerced. He was approached. He made very clear that he had no intention of cooperating, and he has not.

KELLY: In the U.S., intelligence officials insist Snowden's disclosures did grave damage to national security. Whatever he may or may not have shared with the Russian government, Snowden still faces charges of violating the Espionage Act - crimes that could land him many years in prison. When I reached him in New York, I asked Wizner about the other big question looming over Snowden's stay here - how long it might last. Wizner conceded his client is not a man with a lot of options.

WIZNER: The first is to be where he is in Russia. And the second is to be in a maximum security prison cell, cut off from the world. Of course we're working on option three.

KELLY: Which Wizner defines as either somehow returning to the U.S., quote, "in dignity" or winning guarantee of safe passage to some other country. Snowden himself declined our request for an interview, but he's active on Twitter, with more than 2 million followers. Snowden follows only one account - the National Security Agency. Mary Louise Kelly, NPR News, Moscow.

Now, we have a highly ranked Russian lawmaker openly admitting that Snowden turned over US state secrets to the Russians, and that this admission happened just days after Snowden publicly criticized the Russians for passing a new mass surveillance measure.

Edward J. Snowden, an American who took refuge inRussia after leaking a trove of classified United States data from global surveillance, has criticized a proposed Russian law as an assault on freedom of speech, and has been rebuffed in an effort to collect a free-speech prize in Norway.

Mr. Snowden, who was charged by the United States in 2013 withviolating the Espionage Act, was invited to Norway by a writers’ advocacy group to receive the prize, and sought guarantees in court that he would not be handed over to the American authorities. News agencies reported on Monday that a court in Oslo rejected his bid.

His criticism of the Russian law came over the weekend, when he said on Twitter that it was “an unworkable, unjustifiable violation of rights that should never be signed.” The law was passed by the lower house of Parliament on Friday; the speaker of the upper house, Valentina I. Matviyenko, signaled on Monday that her chamber would pass it as well.

And so Putin and the Russians almost immediately outed him as a traitor as a result.  If you somehow thought this clown was going to come home and get a pardon before, that just ended thanks to the Russians admitting Snowden gave them intelligence.

Of course, anyone with a modicum of common sense knew very well that Snowden turned over intel and betrayed the US. And it looks like that ticket bought him three years as a guest at most.

What happens to Snowden now?  Well gosh, the life expectancy of an openly burnt spy isn't that long, now is it?

And I will repeat this again for the folks in the cheap seats: now matter how you feel about Snowden "starting a national conversation" about US surveillance (and he certainly did), the fact remains that the man is a traitor who broke the law, period. Both of these points can be and are very much true.

The Siege Of Cleveland

Any notion that the GOP convention in Cleveland is going to be a peaceful one can be disposed of rather quickly when you remember that the convention itself is supposed to be a gun-free zone, but the rest of the city of Cleveland is apparently fair game.

As the Republican convention in Cleveland approaches, several delegates from Pennsylvania who support Donald Trump say they are planning on bringing their guns with them to the GOP gathering. Why? They say they are worried about possible violent protest and even an attack from ISIS.

James Klein, a pro-Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, notes that guns won't be needed inside the convention hall and that delegates won't be allowed to bring in weapons. "But," he adds, "there's the hotels. There's going to be dinners."

So Klein, an insurance executive and economist, has decided to come armed to Cleveland, and he has urged his fellow delegates to do the same. "We're talking about ISIS," he remarks, citing the recent shooting in Orlando and the bombings at the Istanbul airport. Referring to protesters outside Trump rallies, he adds, "We're talking about people who have shown a propensity for violence."

"There are a whole bunch of things happening: You go to various events, receptions, whatever, outside the convention hall," says Ash Khare, a delegate from the northwest corner of the state who applied for a concealed carry permit in preparation for Cleveland. "And you walk on the streets and, you know, people know that you are a delegate, and who knows what the crazy people are going to do? So you've got to be vigilant about what's going on and prepare yourself."

Yeah, because paranoid Trump delegates walking around with guns is a great idea.  What if you don't want these assholes walking around armed in Cleveland, near your kids and family?  Too bad.  Ohio's an open carry state thanks to the GOP that has controlled the state since 2004. 

You can open-carry in the state without any license whatsoever as long as you legally own the firearm.  You can't carry a loaded gun in a motor vehicle without a concealed carry license however.  Ohio has reciprocity agreements with states like Pennsylvania, so yes, these bozos can happily be carting around whatever firepower they like, especially with a CCL.

Boy, doesn't that seem like a great idea?

Marc Scaringi, another Trump delegate from the Harrisburg area, says that during the past few weeks there have been many emails exchanged among the Pennsylvania delegates discussing whether to bring weapons to Cleveland.

A lifelong member of the NRA who carries a gun every day, Klein notes he is particularly concerned about the threat of international terrorism. "I'm not a terrorist, okay, but I'm an academic and a theorist, and I would think that if I were an ISIS guy that I might want to attack the Republican National Convention," he says.

Klein continues: "People will attack you at your weakest, at your softest." That is, he explains, attacks are not likely to occur at the convention hall but elsewhere in the city where police and Secret Service officers are unlikely to stop an attack.

In other words, there's going to be all kinds of jackholes like James Klein here wandering around Cleveland loaded for bear. 

Enjoy that, Forest City!

Forces Of Evil In A Bozo Nightmare

Banned all the music with a phony gas chamber
'Cuz one's got a weasel
And the other's got a flag
One's on the pole, shove the other in a bag

With all apologies to Beck, of course.

Anyway, speaking of bozo nightmares and flags, Donald Trump loves him some Confederate symbolism, and it's certainly helping his campaign in more than just Southern states.

A year later, the backlash against the Confederate flag has spurred a counter-backlash, one that is playing out in countless skirmishes in courtrooms, township council rooms, bedrooms and Facebook posts, especially in the South. In the six months after the Charleston shooting, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 364 Confederate flag rallies around the South. That doesn’t include a spurt of growth in the number of flags on private lawns and on bumper stickers.

“It’s like they say: Take one flag down and 1,000 go up,” says Tim Boone, who as founder of Rebel-lution, one of the many pro-flag activist groups that formed last summer and handed out “No votes for turncoats” stickers targeting the newly unpopular Haley and anyone else who might vote to take down a flag. 

The backlash has extended to the national scene as well. Haley, once floated as a veep choice, is no longer mentioned in elite GOP circles. She’s expressed a desire to see the Citadel remove the rebel flag from its chapel, but her hands are tied by the state Legislature. Haley has linked the tone of Trump's rhetoric to the kind of violence seen last year in Charleston, but she’s still indicated she’ll support him as the presumptive Republican nominee for president. 

Trump, meanwhile, has utterly dismissed the South Carolina governor, and he’s drawing support from many Confederate flag supporters who condemned Haley for her actions last year. And in contrast to his remarks about the flag a year ago, Trump has shifted rightward; many of those in the bizarre coalition of racists, anti-government radicals and states’ rights activists who’ve led the battle charge for restoration of the rebel flag believe the GOP presumptive nominee is dog-whistling encouragement to them. 

Not racist, just number one with racists.  Also just kidding, he's a racist. Let's stop pretending otherwise.

Trump’s face appears on the cover of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s annual report on domestic extremism, which found that from 2014 to 2015, right-wing hate groups grew 14 percent to almost 900. The Ku Klux Klan grew from 72 chapters to 190, although some of that growth came from the two largest groups splintering into smaller cells. Anti-government patriot/liberty groups, which have flourished over Obama’s two terms, grew to nearly 1,000. 

Despite his 2015 flag statement, his “New York values” and his status as a genuine Yankee, those groups, along with the rest of the disparate coalition that has vocally supported the Confederate flag over the past year, have aligned behind Trump. 

“I’m voting for him despite that [his statement about the flag],” says Boone. “The reason I’ll vote for Trump is probably the reason I feel most of the country is going to vote for him: They’re sick of the political correctness. We’re so worried about the minority getting their feelings hurt, with the flag, with transgender bathrooms and all that. Sometimes, the minority has to understand that their feelings get hurt too, and majority rules most of the time.”

Understand that this theory of Boone's here is called the Tyranny of the Majority for a reason. It's nothing new, John Adams was kicking it around in 1785 for a reason, guys. The notion that majority rule also means that rights and needs of the minority are ignored is frankly a founding principle of the country that took centuries to address, and even then only partially.

We're still having that struggle today, and the reason why Trump is so popular is that he wants to end that struggle, and not in a good way.

Rubio In The Gray Zone

The Republican party wants to somehow avoid wresting defeat from the jaws of victory in Florida's Senate race, but now that Marco "Private Citizen" Rubio is back in the contest, the focus is now on which Democrat he will face: resume-challenged Patrick Murphy or ethics-challenged Alan Grayson.

In one dramatic day this month, the entire race — one of roughly a half-dozen on which control of the Senate rests — was turned on its head. First, GOP Sen. Marco Rubio dropped his retirement plans and announced plans to run for reelection. Within hours, the CBS affiliate in Miami aired a bombshell investigative story accusing the Democratic establishment's chosen candidate, 33-year-old Rep. Patrick Murphy, of rampant résumé inflation.

Now, Republicans smell blood in the water, and they're looking to damage Murphy so badly that Democrats are forced to spend heavily on his behalf ahead of the state's Aug. 30 primary — or abandon the race altogether. The GOP is adopting a strategy that's been used against it repeatedly in recent election cycles: Propping up a politically toxic, outside-the-mainstream candidate in the other party's primary, in this case firebrand liberal Rep. Alan Grayson. 

"I think anybody would rather run against Grayson” in the general election, said Sen. Dean Heller of Nevada, a vice chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
The reversal of fortunes in Florida could hardly have come at a better time for Republicans, after weeks of negative headlines about their presumptive presidential nominee, Donald Trump, and increasing concerns about a down-ballot disaster for the party. If Republicans can put the Sunshine State race out of reach, it would substantially boost their hopes of retaining the Senate. The party is clinging to a four-seat advantage, but faces an electoral map tilted decidedly in Democrats' favor. 

Florida was seen as a better-than-even Democratic pickup before Rubio changed his mind, given Trump’s lousy poll numbers in the diverse state and a slate of underfunded and little-known Republican candidates. Now, Republicans have not only a top-tier incumbent, but a major TV takedown of the leading Democrat: The CBS story, which Murphy's campaign has aggressively sought to refute, questioned his stated credentials as a CPA and other business experience. Republicans promptly launched an ad off it, backed by $45,000. It's running on cable in the D.C. area, to sow doubt among donors and operatives about whether Murphy is worth their investment.

The Murphy story is bad.  The comically stupid Rubio flip-flop mess is definitely worse, and given Trump's disastrous albatross status, it should be enough to offset Rubio's incumbency and make it an even race, which the polls show.

But Alan Grayson's ethics problems are lethal, and Republicans are hoping to pick their opponent, one so bad even Rubio can win.  The optimal answer is for Grayson to drop out, but we all know that's not going to happen.

Hillary Clinton can relate, you know?

The Lynch Pin Of The Investigation

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch is already under fire for meeting with Bill Clinton this week, with Republicans demanding her immediate resignation for the crime of "Talking To The Big Dog".

An airport encounter this week between Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and former President Bill Clinton has welled into a political storm, with Republicans asserting that it compromised the Justice Department’s politically sensitive investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email practices while she was secretary of state.

The Obama administration declined to say on Thursday whether the meeting between Ms. Lynch and Mr. Clinton, in Phoenix on Monday night, was appropriate. The press secretary, Josh Earnest, said that the investigation of Mrs. Clinton would be free of political influence and that he would leave it to the attorney general to explain the meeting.

Ms. Lynch said the meeting with Mr. Clinton was unplanned, largely social and did not touch on the email investigation. She suggested that he walked uninvited from his plane to her government plane, which were both parked on a tarmac at Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.

“He did come over and say hello, and speak to my husband and myself, and talk about his grandchildren and his travels and things like that,” Ms. Lynch said at a news conference in Los Angeles on Wednesday, where she was promoting community policing. “That was the extent of that. And no discussions were held into any cases or things like that.”

It's rather insulting that Republicans automatically assume everyone in the Justice Department is as incompetent as, say, Alberto Gonzales or as nasty as John Ashcroft.  Regardless, Lynch says the decision on any action on the Clinton e-mail nonsense will be up to the FBI, not her, as she will follow their recommendations.

Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch plans to announce on Friday that she will accept whatever recommendation career prosecutors and the F.B.I.director make about whether to bring charges related to Hillary Clinton’s personal email server, a Justice Department official said. Her decision removes the possibility that a political appointee will overrule investigators in the case.

This is the correct choice to make, as Lynch is all but recusing herself from the decision-making process here and giving it instead to James Comey's FBI.

Of course, if it were up to Republicans, every Democrat in America would have to resign for something, so let's not actually take anything they have to say seriously on things.

StupidiNews!

• US officials believe that the mastermind behind this week's deadly Istanbul airport attack is ISIS terrorist Akhmed Chatayev, placed on a US terror watch list last year.
• Electric car company Tesla Motors is now under federal investigation following the death of a test driver in a crash that involved the company's autopilot driving systems.
• Czech President Milos Zeman is now calling for a referendum on remaining in the EU and in NATO in the wake of Brexit, although he says he favors remaining in both organizations.
• Austria's highest court has ordered a second presidential election this fall after agreeing with the far-right Freedom Party that voting irregularities could have cost them the election.
• Some 12 years after launch, the European Space Agency's comet-hunting Rosetta probe will end its journey and crash as it will be too far from the sun to recharge from solar panels.

Last Call For Berned Out, Con't.

The big question on the Democratic side of the race remains: will Bernie Sanders finally call it and endorse Hillary Clinton?  President Obama hasn't been able to cajole him into it, the DNC certainly hasn't, and the voters?  Well, Bernie listens to them selectively at best.

Enter the Biden!

Vice President Joe Biden is confident that Bernie Sanders is going to endorse Hillary Clinton and that the Democratic party will unify.

"Oh, I've talked to Bernie, Bernie's going to endorse her, this is going to work out," Biden said in an interview with Rachel Martin, host of NPR's Weekend Edition. "The Democrats are coalescing even before this occurs."

Sanders was asked about Biden's comment in an interview with MSNBC on Thursday evening and said he wasn't quite ready to endorse Clinton.

"I talked to Joe, I think it was three weeks ago," Sanders said. "Look, on that issue we are trying to work with Secretary Clinton's campaign on areas that we can agree." The Vermont senator also repeated his pledge "to do everything that I can to defeat Donald Trump."

Sanders said that the two camps are discussing issues like free public college and universal healthcare, which he says are critical to get his supporters to back Clinton. Those discussions may come to a head at a Democratic National Committee platform meeting in Orlando, Fla., late next week.

"Right now my hope is that we can reach an agreement on some very important issues and I can go forward to the millions of people who supported me and say, 'Look, this is the progress that you've made. This is where we're gonna go as a country,'" Sanders added on MSNBC. "So, I hope it happens. As of this moment, we're not there quite yet."

Biden's coming in to do what he does best, and that's force people hands.  He was a master of it in the Senate, and did it more than a few times as Vice President (remember him backing same-sex marriage back in 2012?) Bernie can dance around it all he wants to, but it looks like Joe has boxed him in.

So what now?  Bernie's going to have to either call out the VP or endorse Clinton, and do one of the two very soon.

We'll see how long it takes.
 

Chris Bag O' Veeps?

Don't look now, but Donald Trump's Guy Friday and McDonald's gofer Chris Christie (who may actually be Governor of New Jersey in his spare time, we're kinda cloudy on that) may be Trump's sidekick on the ticket come November.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie is being vetted as a possible vice presidential pick for presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, according to two ranking Republican officials. 

Despite Christie going through the vetting process, the two ranking Republican officials told ABC News they doubt Christie would ultimately be Trump’s pick. 

Christie endorsed Trump for president in February, just weeks after suspending his presidential campaign, and has been a surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. 

In addition to having been tapped to lead Trump’s potential transition in May, Christie has emerged as an influential voice on the Trump team.

At a press conferenceat the New Jersey statehouse, Christie denied that he would be vice president. 

"All I can tell you is that my intention is that I'm going to serve the rest of my term as governor until Jan. 16, 2018, and then return to the private sector," Christie said.

All I have to say is that New Jersey will be happy to get rid of the guy if he goes, but that would mean he'd be VP, and Trump...well...yeah.

I understand Mars is nice this time of year.

Anyway, I wouldn't be surprised if it's Christie, he's just as mean as Trump is, only without the charisma. We'll see.

Trump Cards, Con't.

It's not a question of whether as president, Donald Trump would have an enemies list or not, the question is how many people, including Republicans, are already on it.

Donald Trump said Wednesday that he thought his Republican primary opponents who vowed to support the Party's nominee should follow through or be banned from running for public office.

Trump, speaking at a campaign rally in Bangor, Maine, said those who signed the RNC's pledge should "honor the pledge."

Trump went on to note that some of his former opponents, such as New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie (R) and Dr. Ben Carson, had endorsed him. But not everyone has given Trump the support he desires.

"But just remember this, they signed a pledge saying they will abide, saying they will back the candidate of the party. And now they sit back," Trump said. "They broke their word. In my opinion, they should never be allowed to run for public office again. Because what they did is disgraceful."

Yeah, as president and commander-in-chief of America's armed forces as well as our nuclear assets, I would totally feel like Donald Trump would be calm and level-headed leader who would never take petty revenge on people for slights either real or perceived.

Don't you?

In all seriousness, it's not surprising to see Republicans shrug and look away when Trump displays all the behavior that they have accused President Obama of engaging in for the last seven plus years, the narcissism, the anger, the need to settle scores.  Trump is all that and more, and yet Republicans are more than happy to nominate and vote for the guy.

Anyone still surprised at the rise of Trump really has been living under a rock for the last decade.

StupidiNews!

• The Pentagon says US airstrikes hit an ISIS convoy of hundreds of trucks fleeing Fallujah, where coalition forces have driven militants out of the city and reclaimed it.
• President Obama will make his first campaign appearance along with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Tuesday.
• Congress has passed legislation to bail out Puerto Rico ahead of a looming debt default tomorrow, but critics including Sen. Bernie Sanders say austerity provisions are far too harsh.
• Several UK ministers are challenging Conservative Party heir apparent and former London Mayor Boris Johnson for leadership of the Tories as fallout from Brexit continues.
• A new study on US women and grooming habits finds that 84% shave their pubic areas for reasons ranging from hygiene to sexual reasons, and 40% groom to prep to see a gynecologist.

Last Call For The Gas Face

Gas is around $2.30 a gallon here in the Cincy/NKY area right now, and it looks like once again the Memorial Day - July 4th stretch will be the year's peak as gas prices are expected to fall again.

Gasoline prices may have peaked for the year, already falling as the busy Fourth of July travel weekend approaches, according to analyst projections. 

Prices at the pump typically top out near the end of June - absent major swings in crude oil costs - and this year gasoline prices likely will fall throughout the second half of 2016, according to a forecast by GasBuddy, which tracks fuel costs nationwide. Gasoline costs started decreasing just before the July 4 holiday in seven of the past 10 years.

"This defies the general consensus on Main Street that prices rise ahead of a major travel holiday," said Gregg Laskoski, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy. 

Motorists will enjoy the lowest Fourth of July prices since 2005, according to GasBuddy. The average cost of a gallon of regular unleaded gasoline on Tuesday was unchanged in the Houston area at about $2.11 from the past week, down from $2.54 for the same week last year and $3.48 in 2014. Nationally, pump prices fell an average of about 3 cents to $2.30. 

GasBuddy predicts the national average will dip to $2.27 per gallon on July 4, down significantly from 2014, when the national average hit $3.66 per gallon.

So why the good news?  Ask Nigel Farage.

The decision by United Kingdom voters to exit the European Union will add even more downward pressure to summer gasoline costs despite record-setting demand, Laskoski added. That's because the so-called Brexit is weakening global economies, depressing oil demand and prices. Cheaper oil - the primary feedstock of gasoline - means less expensive fuel. 

GasBuddy projects that average gas price nationally will again slip below $2 a gallon as early as November as demand falls after summer and refineries begin pumping out cheaper winter-blend fuels. The average U.S. price for gasoline is expected to fall to an average of $2.21 in August, $2.02 in October and $1.88 in December, according to GasBuddy.

Gas under $2 a gallon again this winter?  More than likely.  We'll see.

NC GOP Goes Down The Crapper, Con't

With heavy pressure coming from businesses (mainly the NBA) and activists alike, NC GOP lawmakers are thinking about tweaking the state's awful HB2 bathroom bill discrimination law.  If this sounds like feebly trimming the edges on a lawn full of evil mutant plants that are eating the neighborhood pets, you're probably right.

The draft bill would not change a key part of HB2 – the prohibition on transgender persons using the bathroom or locker room of their gender identity in public facilities.
It would restore the right to sue for gender discrimination in state court, a right removed by HB2 but sought by Gov. Pat McCrory. 

And it would use federal anti-discrimination standards in determining discrimination, not the standards in HB2. That could extend protections to sexual orientation, according to a lawyer familiar with the legislation. Critics, however, said the changes would do nothing to protect the LGBT community. 

The impact of certain rewritten sections of the law is difficult to gauge at first glance, said Charlotte lawyer John Gresham, an employment law specialist. 

For example, the revisions appear to reinstate and even broaden LGBT and transgender protections on hiring, firing and other workplace issues, Gresham said. But it excludes bathroom access from being classified as discrimination. 

The draft would make it easier for people who’ve had reassignment surgery to be recognized by requiring a “certificate of sex reassignment,” not necessarily a birth certificate, to prove their new gender. It would also increase penalties for violating people’s privacy in bathrooms or locker rooms. 

And it would create an “anti-discrimination task force” to review issues surrounding the law, including how claims of discrimination are handled in North Carolina.

This is a hideous compromise. Are you seriously telling me that the process of "fixing" the law is creating a legally separate class of human beings who need a certificate from the state in order to use the damn bathroom?  Have you guys even remotely read a histroy book down there?  Last time I checked, they still taught the humanities in the state concerning why this might be a bad, bad idea.

God I hope the NBA pulls All-Star Weekend from Charlotte.  This is repugnant.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/politics-government/article86419362.html#storylink=cpy

Terror In Istanbul

Three suicide bombers armed with guns as well as explosives hit Istanbul's Ataturk International Airport late Tuesday, killing 36 and wounding dozens more.

"There was a huge explosion, extremely loud. The roof came down. Inside the airport it is terrible, you can't recognize it, the damage is big," said Ali Tekin, who was at the arrivals hall waiting for a guest when the attack took place.

A German woman named Duygu, who was at passport control entering Turkey, said she threw herself onto the floor with the sound of the explosion. Several witnesses also reported hearing gunfire shortly before the attacks.

"Everyone started running away. Everywhere was covered with blood and body parts. I saw bullet holes on the doors," she said outside the airport.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the latest in a string of suicide bombings in Turkey this year, but the Dogan news agency said initial indications suggested Islamic State may have been responsible, citing police sources.

A Turkish official said it was too soon to assign blame.

The attack bore some similarities to a suicide bombing by Islamic State militants at Brussels airport in March which killed 16 people. A coordinated attack also targeted a rush-hour metro train, killing a further 16 people in the Belgian capital.

Paul Roos, 77, described seeing one of the attackers "randomly shooting" on the departures floor of the terminal.

"He was just firing at anyone coming in front of him. He was wearing all black. His face was not masked. I was 50 meters (55 yards) away from him," said Roos, a South African on his way back to Cape Town with his wife after a holiday in southern Turkey.

Both Turkish nationals and foreign tourists were killed in the attack, but to see something like this happen during Ramadan is going to draw nearly immediate accusations of Islamic State from President Erdogan, regardless.

We'll see.