Link Me Up, Scotty - Six Point Harness Edition

Slate takes on myths about slavery in America, including the idea that the Irish were also slaves (they weren't), that slaves were better off than poor people in the North (they weren't), and that only a small percentage of Southerners owned slaves (the number is actually 32%). I cannot tell you how sick I am of slavery apologists. It happened. It was awful. It's a shame on our country. It was the reason the Southern states attempted to secede. And denying the facts around it makes things more shameful, not less.
______________

A conservative think tank called the Tax Foundation has analyses on Trump's tax plan, and finds that the plan would add $11.98 Trillion to the national debt over ten years. I don't think that word means what you think it means.
______________

14 things parents of mentally ill children want you to know. Yes.
______________

The MacCarthur Foundation fellows have been announced, and they're a fine assortment of men and women from the worlds of the arts and sciences. Special shout out to Ta-Nehisi Coates, a journalist who always, always makes me think.
______________

Semi-Celebrity Platonic Boyfriend Eric Garland weighs in on Life After Boehner. Buckle up, cupcakes - it's going to be a strange, strange election season around here.
______________

Have you heard about the website where you get to rate other people like they were a business? Nothing like a business plan that brings out the worst in people. WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG.
______________

Editor's note: I don't have much to say about the latest campus shooting in Oregon. The massacre at Sandy Hook proved to me once and for all that things aren't going to change here in the United States as it relates to gun control, whackadoos having access to weapons, or gun culture. So I'm tired of arguing about it, and writing about it, and disagreeing with my friends and family about it. Because it's not going to change.

However, I will quote my friend David, a history professor, father and Smart Man:

Welcome to the United States. It has been "0" days since our last shooting massacre. That whirring sound you hear is the army of the stupid, the ammosexual, and the reality-challenged gearing up to call for more high-powered weaponry in the hands of people like themselves as a solution to the problem of high-powered weaponry in the hands of people like themselves. Watch your back.

 Laugh or cry, my peeps - reader's choice.