- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson explains that this was a big week for America because of the massive economic rescue bill, to be sure, but for other reasons as well.
- At The Onion, the Stimulus Bill did pass this week, but only after the parliamentarian ruled the minimum wage part had to go, due to an obscure rule requiring poor citizens to needlessly suffer.
- Infidel753 takes a well deserved victory lap for pointing out, before it was widely acknowledged, that Joe Biden was a very smart candidate and would be a very smart President. Seems the first seven weeks, with a record-breaking win, proves our President is even smarter than that. AND the country does not yet seem tired of winning.
- In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott reports on President Biden’s condemnation of hate crimes against Asian Americans. There seems to be much more than enough to condemn.
- Reporters sometimes approach a dark sort of comedy as media tries to make both sides equivalent even when the effort is a mental strain. Tommy Christopher reports on one reporter who demanded to know what President Biden will do to reunite migrant families, the demand being voiced during a discussion on a task force the President has just created to reunite migrant families.
- At Ant Farmer’s Almanac, Vice President Harris denies a rumor about the President’s dog.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has figured out exactly why Trump lost.
- To be fair, not all on the right are what we euphemistically call cultural conservatives. Those would be conservatives who hate Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal because she is non-white, a woman, an immigrant, and a defender of religious freedom, even for Muslims. More classical conservatives join in disliking her left of center politics.
Now, those on the ragged right have another reason to grudge upon. Frances Langum reports as Representative Jayapal demands ethics investigations of three Republican House members to determine their role in preparing, inciting, then assisting January 6 rioters as said rioters searched the Capitol Building for legislators to assassinate.
- Where conservatives see outrages, Dave Dubya sees a pattern. If every conservative controversy was removed, they would seek and find others. At the core, conservatives are angry and upset because they want to be angry and upset. Seuss and potatoes? Really?
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged acknowledges that Republican legislators are not exclusively furious about decisions by private entities on whether to keep publishing children’s books containing racist imagery, and whether to address plastic potatoes as “Mister”. They are also angry about the refusal of intolerant liberals (okay, okay, like me) to express sufficient awe at the many and varied accomplishments of Mr. Trump. She seems oddly dismissive of their concerns. She must be one of those intolerant leftists (okay, okay, like me).
About Mr. Trump, while he did entice voters to destroy Republican majorities in the House and Senate, I admit I would rather focus on his failures than on those major accomplishments.
- The ever wise nojo watches Disney’s the Jungle Book again 50 years after it was released, looking for the inevitable racial stereotypes embedded in the writing of Rudyard Kipling. He doesn’t find them. Disney did a good job of employing good willed people of common sense even half a century ago.
But nojo notices something else about himself and many of us.
- News Corpse watches as the Fox network accidentally suggests to viewers that Republican legislators hate America.
- It is a frustration to hear about some frustrations. Like health care experts who wish more people would be willing to get vaccinated.
Here in Missouri, rural areas do have unused vials of vaccine, but that is largely because our Republican Governor decided that largely urban, disproportionately minority, disproportionately Democratic areas could wait another two weeks from now. Folks like me qualify, but search in vain for sites that are not 4 hours away.
I am frustrated, but apparently not as frustrated as nationally prominent Julian Sanchez of CATO Institute: - The first time North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz read about anti-Maskers, he thought it was satire. Nobody would purposefully react in such negligent disregard when it comes to the suffering and death of their neighbors. Now he wants those who have been wearing masks, and sometimes taking other steps, to know why he is grateful.
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson finds his frustration boiling into anger as COVID health restrictions affect baseball arena attendance. Okay, so COVID is about life-and-death. But this is baseball!
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara hates – just hates – HR1, the voting rights bill now pending in the Senate. He skips past the minor details like outlawing efforts to make voting lots harder and gets straight to the real issue: outlawing dark money financing by secret groups. Telling rich interests they can’t finance political campaigns unless they do it right out in the open is horrible, says Michael. In fact, he begins making his case in the headline itself, “HR-1 is An Assault on Free Speech, Property Rights, Freedom of Conscience, and Privacy”. That little distraction about not making it hard to vote should not disturb our focus.
- Andy Borowitz reports as Georgia acts to reduce out-of-control levels of voting. Republicans protest exaggerated objections, pointing out that some voting will still be allowed in some situations.
- Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo again join to discuss the Arkansas very bad ban of abortion and the maneuvering to get the Supreme Court vote of Amy Coney Barrett. You are given a choice of podcast or pdf transcript. Both are worth reviewing.
- Colbert’s take on last Sunday’s big huge interview was excitement that, at last, royalty, actual royalty, was about to appear on the very same screen with Harry and Meghan!!!
In the wake of that interview episode of the continuing saga, PZ Myers struggles to contrive any justification for the existence of royalty. The professor manages to come up with two. Whew.
- Just a few years ago Fox personalities thought the notion of women defending our nation was screamingly funny. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is not at all amused that Tucker Carlson is outraged at the idea of weak, vulnerable little ladies making “a mockery of the US military.”
- Turns out it isn’t the first time Tucker has attacked military women for defending our nation while still being women. The Moderate Voice goes for clarity in recounting one earlier attack, contrasting the military history of Tucker with that of the wounded veteran he targeted.
- Hackwhackers reports that reaction to Tucker’s attacks on women in the Armed Forces does not come only from women.
- Green Eagle doesn’t much care for Senator Joe Manchin(D-WV).
- Iron Knee at Political Irony is saddened by the decision of Geraldo Rivera not to seek public office after all, in spite of all the support for the idea. I understand his supporters numbered literally in the tens.
- Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-QAnon) boasts that, for all the libtard criticism from libjerks like me, she is very, very popular. In fact, in the last election, only a quarter of the voters cast a ballot against her. Yes, she got 74.7% of the vote!! tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors raises hand, says excuse me, and points to one tiny little detail she left out.
- Make no mistake. driftglass has no love for recovering Republicans who semi-cover up past sins. As Bill Kristol asserts that, ten years ago, he would never have suspected the GOP would go so completely wacky, our host finds video from ten years back in which Bill Kristol goes so completely wacky his own self.
- Well, it seems we have another way to insult moralists. The Journal of Improbable Research discovers a joint study by the University of Oklahoma and Indiana University into what may be one measure of insecure masculinity. Seems those who conduct internet searches for ways to ummm enhance masculine size are disproportionately evangelical Christians. And all this time we thought google invasions of privacy had no social upsides (so to speak).
- In Scotties Toy Box, a Texas newspaper publishes an essay assuring us that science is wrong, and that humans and dinosaurs walked together. I assure my brothers and sisters in Christ: The Flintstones is a cartoon show, not a documentary.
Decades ago, I had a wonderful meeting with a noted evangelist. He explained to me how, the world being 6,000 years old, oil and ancient fossils and light from distant stars came to be: God had created everything with the appearance of age. I suggested that, since the Almighty had gone through that much trouble to deceive us, it would be unsporting not to be deceived. To his credit, he laughed, unperturbed. I liked him.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce draws on his previous existence as a pastor to explain how preachers put the Fear of God into attendees.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has the video as a preacher here in Missouri explains a woman’s sacred duty to stay trim and sexy, looking hot for her husband, and relates the sad consequence for that preacher.
- This is, for sure, the LAST time I suggest to @momwino98 what she and her husband might try for in their next pregnancy:
@momwino98 - SilverAppleQueen provides a sample from her ongoing poetry project, this piece about lost, unrequited love from long ago.
- My long time conservative friend, Darrell Michaels at Unabashedly American, makes a non-political suggestion. Perhaps we should give less weight to off-hand opinions offered by the wealthy, the famous, the influential, and pay more attention to those otherwise unknown heroes who have selflessly impacted our own lives.
- Reductress provides a few easy ways to tell whether the guy you’re with is truly funny or simply verbalizes popular memes. That does raise a question: Why are they suddenly picking on ME?
- Athena Scalzi at Whatever loves sci-fi books and movies, and detests sci-fi books and movies that involve time travel. Her reasoning parallels my own feelings about spells and magic within fantasy fiction. It becomes abused, introduced in a way that violates initial sets of plot premises. With what clever way will we get out of this impossible situation? I know, let’s cast a spell!. I enjoyed her rant.
- Nan’s Notebook posits time travel and asks each of us in which time direction we would want to go to live.
– Podcasts –
“Seems those who conduct internet searches for ways to ummm enhance masculine size are disproportionately evangelical Christians.”
I thought they dealt with that issue by just buying big pickup-truck tires and guns.
“God had created everything with the appearance of age.”
This concept actually goes back to Philip Gosse’s 1857 book Omphalos, which developed it in great detail. The newly-created adult Adam, he argued, must have had skin, hair, teeth, bones, etc, all of which in their very structure show signs of earlier development from infancy, even though in Adam’s case that development had not actually happened. In the same way, the Earth was created 6,000 years ago with traces of geological history, biological evolution, etc reflecting the earlier stages of development necessary to its present form and biosphere, even though that development never actually happened. He wasn’t arguing that God was being deceptive, only that these traces of earlier development were necessary and intrinsic to the nature of the things created.
It’s admittedly an ingenious idea, but it was rejected at the time by theologians and scientists alike, probably because the former found it inconsistent with how they picture creation as happening, and for the latter it’s definitionally impossible to test by looking at evidence (and there is no evidence supporting such a claim).