Midday open thread: Musk's plans include semis, buses; Donald the delegator

Today’s comic by Ruben Bolling is Pokemon Go: The Trump Edition:

• The Labor Dept. reports big drop in initial unemployment claims: For the week ending July 16, seasonally adjusted initial claims for unemployment compensation fell to 253,000. The four-week running average that smooths out volatility in the weekly number fell to 257,750. This makes the 72nd consecutive week that initial claims have been below 300,000, the longest such streak since 1973. The level of initial claims is at record lows.

• Trophy wives and professional daughters:

You can tell a lot about a person by whom they choose to marry. As the nominees selected at this week’s Republican National Convention and next week’s Democratic one take the stage along with their family members, they will display not only stark policy differences, but also two competing views of marriage, kin and the role of women in society. What we’re seeing from Republicans: Men who want their wives at home while they celebrate the professional successes of their daughters.[...]

The qualities Mr. Trump seeks in his romantic partners are remarkably retro.

• Donald Jr. says his dad would delegate power over domestic and foreign policy to Vice President Pence: What would President Trump do then? “Make America Great Again” obviously.

• Firing Ailes won’t clean up Fox’s misogynist cesspool:

[R]emoving one lascivious man can’t turn around the mess of misogyny that is Fox News. This is a network that bans its female on-air talent from wearing pants, where a host characterized a military operation against Isis led by a woman as “boobs on the ground” and the ethos of the coverage is shockingly antagonistic to women’s rights.

There was the time, for example, that Fox contributor Erik Erickson said that men should be “dominant” over women in families. Or when an all-male panel bemoaned the rise of female breadwinners in the United States. Or when a host wondered if there was something about the female brain that was a “deterrent” to being a business executive. 

• EPI—How discrimination, societal norms, and other forces affect women’s occupational choices—and their pay:

Women are paid 79 cents for every dollar paid to men—despite the fact that over the last several decades millions more women have joined the workforce and made huge gains in their educational attainment. Too often it is assumed that this pay gap is not evidence of discrimination, but is instead a statistical artifact of failing to adjust for factors that could drive earnings differences between men and women. However, these factors—particularly occupational differences between women and men—are themselves often affected by gender bias. 

• Elon Musk’s plan for world domination includes buses and semi-trucks:

Beyond creating a vertically integrated company that builds electric vehicles, batteries to store the power to propel them, and the solar panels to generate that power, he wants to create whole new vehicle lineups. Some of them sound like they’re in advanced stages of development.

• The National Education Association has voted to support the “Portland resolution” to encourage schools to adopt climate literacy programs.

• On today’s Kagro in the Morning show: Greg Dworkin & Armando on Day 3 of the Great Garbage Fire. Trump dumps NATO for hotter allies. Everybody boos Cruz. Ben Carson may have left a surgical sponge in his own brain case. Meredith McIver, Professional Fall Gal. Lewandowski suckers CNN.

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