Jan 6, COVID, Climate, Defund, Racism, Creeps, iSpy, Cuomo, DeJoy, Tan Man

Shamelessly stolen from jobsanger

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony looks at the data and discovers a weird part of unvaccinated opinion that few of us would suspect.
     
  • On that COVID thing: Andy Borowitz reports as Governor DeSantis blasts the other 49 states for making Florida look bad.
     
  • At The Onion, DeSantis threatens to cut hospital funding if surgeons keep wearing masks.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook has another reason to take the jab. Vaccination costs nothing. COVID hospitalization, on the other hand, will take your bank account back a whole ton of money.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests that COVID is not the only deadly virus we face.
     
  • The best of those libertarians it has been my pleasure to meet have always struck me as delightfully naïve. Everything will be fine as long as we allow human nature to take its course.
     
    The classic Problem of the Commons is a case in point. When rewards come to those who benefit society (in market terms) we can envision viable social structures. But when harm can’t be individually accounted for, and no disincentive can be assigned – as in global environment – we are forced to envision a downward spiral.
     
    When evidence suggests that letting ill enough alone is not working, the libertarian approach seems not to find some exotic libertarian solution, but rather simply to deny the evidence.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara maintains manmade global climate change is a good thing because it will at least keep us from getting too cold.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil finds an MIT study from half a century ago that predicted with some exactitude where we are now, and projected further, indicating that this century will see us go the way of Krypton, except without baby future Superman, an escape rocket, or an Earth clone type destination. Apparently the survival of democracy is the least of our worries.
     
  • driftglass resents attacks on Representative Cori Bush for wanting to defund the police.
     
    I love Cori Bush. I am privileged to have voted for her in the primary, then general, last year.
     
    If she wants to abolish the police, then she advocates really bad policy. But at least I will be proud of her honest representation of her position.
     
    If she doesn’t actually want to abolish the police, but only seeks some change in humane and responsible law enforcement, then it is a dumb-beyond-words slogan. We know why. Because. it. has. to. be. explained (and explained, and explained).
     

  • Nojo seems weary of being told that racism in America is no longer a thing, having been vanquished decades ago. NOJO catches scenes that certainly look like the real deal.
     
    Seeing that racism is gone forever, how can this be?
     
  • This saddens me. News Corpse watches as the Fox Network brings on Newt Gingrich to promote a conspiracy theory that belongs in 1930s Germany.
     
    I used to regard as extremist those conservatives who blindly adhered to an infinite economic extension of the discredited Laffer Curve, that tax cuts will always pay for themselves. Now we’re back to brown immigrants don’t belong here? From a former Speaker of the House of Representatives?
     
  • Wonder why politicians get by with extreme creepitude? (Don’t argue about whether it’s a word. It IS a thing). CalicoJack, in The Psy of Life, finds that the public overwhelmingly agrees with such things as statehood for Puerto Rico and DC, abolishing the filibuster, and impeaching presidents for the sorts of things Trump flaunted. However, the public doesn’t quite care enough to punish politicians that vote against them. Which is why we’re screwed from so many directions.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is leery of the spying capacity of your smartphone.
     
  • So who the hell can object to Apple installing on its new iPhones software that can detect and report to authorities child pornography?
     
    Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez sees the same little problem as Earth-Bound Misfit. The new default software can also, with minor alterations, be used by authoritarian governments to detect and report memes and photos that ridicule officials.
     
  • Do you really think New York Governor Andrew Cuomo will leave office as a result of sexual harassment? Reductress reviews the latest reminder from the Cuomo team that the governor never murdered any aides.
     
  • Our once-upon-a-president Trump did not hire Louis DeJoy to run down the US Postal Service. He had to hire the folks who hired DeJoy. Only after that was DeJoy’s main job to gum up the post office enough to delay mailed votes so they wouldn’t count in the 2020 Presidential election.
     
    It didn’t work. Donald Trump lost. The Palmer Report says President Biden cannot fire DeJoy. He has to replace the people who won’t fire DeJoy with those who will. That is happening. But DeJoy still has enough time to execute a kick back scheme before he gets booted. Bill Palmer has the names and methods. Turns out kickbacks are illegal, and the Department of Justice is investigating.
     
  • The endless conservative frustration at the zero-scandal Obama administration came to a high point in August 2014 with tan-gate. Those on the right were outraged as Obama demeaned the Presidency by wearing a tan suit.
     
    It soon became an icon to Republican pettiness. With the scandal-an-hour Trump years, it has come to serve as a monument to conservative hypocrisy. Trump tried to overthrow the Republic? Well Obama wore that tan suit!!
     
    Seven Augusts later, Tommy Christopher sees a sort of celebration as President Biden holds a Press Conference on the July economic jobs blowout (Yay-y-y-y) wearing an Obama-style tan suit.
     
  • Everything is going to HELL!! California residents are fleeing their homes in droves as the state becomes a dystopia. President Biden is the victim of dementia. Immigrants, here illegally, are destroying the country. Liberals hate America. The Propaganda Professor takes a look at contra-evidence conservative everybody-knows factoids and how they became imbedded in right wing consciousness.
     
  • So it doesn’t shed much light on the mindset of those on the left. Or that of those on the right. Or of those in the middle.
     
    It does illustrate how lazier minds on the right see the left.
     
    My long-time friend Darrell Michaels of Unabashedly American creates a dialogue between a fictitious leftist he has created from the wrinkled cloth of his own brain on the one hand, and the well reasoned conservative, presumably himself, on the other. Guess who wins!!!
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist gets another email alert: the libs are coming to grab your guns so send money quick for your special instructions.
     
  • Green Eagle thinks about history, looks at a map, and notices a pattern.
     
  • Journalist Imani Gandy has a viewing suggestion:
     

  • PZ Myers trembles in fear as August 12 approacheth. For on that date, true believers are scheduled to join with Almighty God to end atheism in our time.
     
  • On the other hand, in The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce has a few ideas on how we can hasten the demise of religious fundamentalism.
     
  • Hackwhackers reads it out as Donald Trump weirdly attacks the US Olympic Women’s soccer team. They are losers who would have been winners with more conservative hair color.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, the Olympic team that brings inspiration and hope to millions, competes for no one nation, and represents much more than a single country.
     
  • Sarah Cooper lets me know there is hope for people like me:
     

    And that there isn’t
     

    Damn!
    ¯\_(ツ)_/¯


Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes or RSS
to get episodes automatically downloaded.