Trump Cognate, Christianity, White Privilege, Pandemucate, Police State

  • Sarah Cooper shows us how to Person Woman Man Camera TV:
     

  • Well, that wasn’t bright. A Republican primary candidate writes an anti‑abortion‑rights piece and asks Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson to run it in the on‑line publication he edits. Despite reservations about publishing a campaign piece, Wigderson agrees, but suggests a couple of minor changes for clarity and style. The candidate then goes public, angrily accusing the publication of censorship.
     
    Result? How about an article telling the world the candidate is a liar? Sounds like a sort of substitute for my president’s minimal cognitive test. If a candidate can’t pass it, he’s not up to the job. Or much of any job.
     
  • Max’s Dad takes a position on the AOC vs TY conflict. Ty Yoho ambushes Alexandria Ocasio‑Cortez on the steps of a Congressional Building, yelling that she is “disgusting” and that “You are out of your freaking mind.” Seems she had suggested a link between crime rates and poverty rates. As she walks away, he calls her a “****ing bitch” (Sorry – Just couldn’t print it).
     
    Without naming her, Yoho later apologized for the “abrupt” nature of his conversation. That’s the word he used. Abrupt. So Representative Ocasio‑Cortez pretty much ripped out his liver and fed it to him. Max’s Dad cheers her on.
     
    Some pundits later accused Yoho of rank lying, denying that he called his colleague (aw what the hell) a “fucking bitch” (Sorry, Aunt Tildy). For the record, he did not actually deny saying that. He denied saying it to her. Max’s Dad gets it right. Yoho “who like most right wing chickenshits” called her what he called her “behind her back” as she walked away. He didn’t have the courage to say it to her face.
     
  • So David Brooks protests changing standards of discourse and what constitutes offense. John Scalzi at Whatever examines his prime example, that the great Christopher Hitchens would never get published today, and commits withering vivisection on the argument.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz meets thousands of people who recoil from Christianity, sickened by its insidious influence in our political system; who see it as a toxic presence in our nation—one that serves only to divide and perpetuate inequity and inflict injury.
     
    His message to those horrified by current Christian perversions: many of us are with you: and so is Jesus.

  • Hackwhackers takes a gander at new revised, rewritten, CDC guidelines on reopening schools and discovers they may have been ghostwritten elsewhere. If you guess where, you can stay and clean the erasers.
     
  • 40 or 50 years ago, the Republican leader in the Missouri legislature bragged that our state had more horses per capita than anywhere else in the country. Our favorite Earth‑Bound Misfit hears our current governor insist it’s safe to send kids back to school since they won’t actually die from the virus. They’ll just go home and recover. Comrade Misfit suggests Missouri may be on track to displace a Florida record concerning governors.
     
    For myself, I don’t know if Missouri still has the most horses, but we do have a governor who thinks like the southernmost portion of one.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica a cartoon welcomes kids back to school.
     
  • The campaign era narrative from the House is that Senate Republicans are dragging their feet on a stimulous package that would help folks survive the ongoing economic disaster caused by my president’s curious early inaction on COVID‑19. Jonathan Bernstein says it’s worse. The Republican Senate majority can’t get its two dragging feet to point in the same direction. Bad news for ordinary folks.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Rebecca Ralson explains that white privilege doesn’t mean any white person hasn’t struggled or suffered or worked hard. She points to what it really means.
     
  • My friend from the left, Dave Dubya, takes on my long time conservative friend, Darrell Michaels, over Black Lives Matter. I confess to a bias. Darrell has been a true friend over the years, offering comfort and counsel through serious family illness and through danger to our young Marine during deadly battle. On the other hand, Dave argues on the side of our better angels.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger doesn’t much care for my president’s new secret police. The organizing of unidentified police is actually nothing new. I’ve seen this kind of thing in movies since I was a little kid, although the actors playing those in charge always spoke with heavy foreign accents.
     
  • Acting head of Homeland Security Chad Wolf presents the case for secret federal police in Portland, listing several cases in which violent anarchists committed graffiti. Jon Perr at PERRspectives presents a stronger case. Seems violent anarchists committed more than simple graffiti.
     
  • The danger in Portland is not marxist anarchists, or even agitators ready to commit graffiti. Scotties Toy Box explains the vicious group from whom federal agents are protecting us.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony listens to my president’s justification for sending secret police into cities to destroy protests. In some way it has to do with the safety of little kids. Iron Knee looks at what prompted the protests and draws an obvious conclusion.
     
  • Can we please acknowledge that the overwhelming majority of police are good folks out to protect everyone? Can we, at the same time, acknowledge that the fraction of police who are malevolent make each encounter for minorities a dangerous game of Russian roulette? And that this is wrong? Tommy Christopher takes a look at a new poll showing that almost one in four police officers are sympathetic to views of white supremacists.
     
  • The usually cynical M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has an attack of heart melt. A masked bandit escapes a Riverside county jail with the help of police. Don’t paint all police with the same bloody baton.
     
  • Okay, so maybe the Black Lives Matter movement is addressing more global issues. But tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors can point to a few minor changes in merchandizing icons. Every symbol helps, right?
     
  • driftglass suggests that we look with a sense of perspective to reports of a split in the Republican Party over Trump. Think Chicago 91 years ago.
     
  • As my president plays escaladio with China, The Onion provides several suggestions on how to ease tensions.
     
  • Infidel753 argues that one fatal flaw in the governance of China can be seen in one dam on one waterway.
     
  • Better times, perhaps. Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes brings up memories and photos of a pieceful walk with his bride along a rural cycle path next to a small lake in Holland.

– Podcasts –