Queen Elizabeth, Biden Semi-Tough, Docs Nuked, DOJ Politicized

  • Hackwhackers bids a fond farewell to Queen Elizabeth.
     
  • Professor PZ Myers has little regard for the British monarchy, but little resentment against the Queen herself. He seems to hope all the mourning and exaggerated analysis will just go away.
     
    Good summary:
    The Queen is dead. My regrets to those who cared about her. Call me when the monarchy is dead, OK?
     
  • Apparently, as the Queen got older, she asked that her hobby of dog breeding stop. Seems she didn’t want to leave a large number of dogs behind to be cared for.
     
    So, of course, Tommy Christopher is left to cover actual live television interviews on whether existing puppies are scheduled to be buried alive.
     
  • Reductress may have been the satiric source of the entire rampant buried-royal-puppies uproar.
     
  • President Biden made a speech and talked, in part, about an extreme MAGA philosophy and characterized it as like semi-fascism. Well, anti-democratic, prone to political violence in place of elections, authoritarian seem to fit the definition.
     
    Max’s Dad liked Joe Biden’s speech because he went against his own grain and stood clean-tough against the party of always-fight-dirty bullies.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook reads one notable opinion about President Biden’s most dangerous, divisive, demagogic speech.
     
    She wonders how anyone can be so certain and decides politics is akin to religious discussion.
     
    I dunno. It seems the temptation may be to stray toward a both-sides premise. That is the human tendency, often practiced by journalists, of presuming without evidence that two sides of any question are equally valid.
     
    I think of one hypothetical example: one side insists it is raining while the other maintains it is dry outside.
     
    Many modern reporters quote both sides equally and accurately and call it a day. Fair and balanced.
     
    Responsible journalism dictates we actually look outside to see what the weather is doing.
     
    President Biden defined with some precision to whom who he was referring when he talked of semi-fascist MAGA folk. He was talking about those who would use or endorse political violence in order to overturn democracy.
     
    He specifically exempted the majority of the Republican party.
     
    The writer to whom Nan rightly objects defines MAGA types as traditionalists who want what I recognize as a Bill Buckley variety of conservatism.
     
    And so the writer is outraged that the President would target him personally.
     
    It is a tactic that has been with us since language began: setting up a strawman in order to knock him down.
     
    My response to similar contrived anger:

  • My longtime conservative friend Darrell Michaels, at Unabashedly American, speculates on what he would do if he was a fascist or even a semi-fascist who wanted to destroy America.
     
    Oddly enough, what follows is mostly the familiar conservative caricature of what some on the right imagine that non-conservatives believe. A sample:
     
    Well, I would first want to take over our education system in order to indoctrinate our kids into believing that they live in an unjust and racist nation that brings nothing but ruin to others throughout the world. I would ignore teaching them of the United States history where we overcame so many great sins, like slavery and women’s inequality in rights. I would bury the truth of how the United States fought and buried hundreds of thousands of men in defense against the true fascism of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Mussolini’s Italy.
     
    None of which is advocated by anyone I have heard of.
     
    It may not have occurred to my friend that those who wanted to destroy our democratic republic and eradicate the freedoms that our constitution was formed in order to protect might instead form a lynch mob, storm the Capitol Building, assault police officers, and hunt for legislators to assassinate.
     
    Darrell is a kindly, peaceful soul for whom such a possibility would not occur.
     
    I suppose it is worth pointing out that most of America has a somewhat different view of MAGAfolk than does my old friend:


    Nice to have you back, Darrell.
     

  • Iron Knee at Political Irony sees a bit of political gamesmanship in President Biden’s speech. In his view, the President gave precisely the sort of speech that would goad a furious, and ugly, Trump response: a response that will make the election all about Mr Trump himself.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life speculates on professional Republicans, staffers to politicians, who must find ways to keep voters motivated. What motivates the motivators?

  • Dave Columbo welcomes us to another meeting of the Covert Evil Cabal of Secretly Well Organized Democrats
    @davecolumbo Heres a recap if you missed the last few meetings #democrat #democratsoftiktok #democrats #political #politicaltiktok #politics #maralagoraid #biden ♬ Fashionable and cool Parisian accordion(892415) – ricca


     
    Live long and Soros!
     

  • In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson detects a judicial pattern that will allow state legislatures to gerrymander themselves into near complete independence from voters, and to be immune from state or federal court review. She points to the next step: clear signals that the Supreme Court may also allow these self-perpetuating legislatures to overturn decisive votes in Presidential elections.
     
    And there goes democracy.
     
  • Some of the official folders warranted at the Trump abode are marked as so hyper classified even most top cleared people are not allowed to see what’s in them. Except what was in them has been removed. Where are those extreme secret documents?
     
    It’s toon time as YellowDog Granny speculates, briefly, on just where the FBI will eventually find the missing contents of those folders.
     
  • One of the many Trumpy excuses for the hyper-top-secret theft is that Trump was spiriting away evidence that Vlad Putin’s Russian interference in the 2016 election was all a hoax. And so was Trump’s cooperation with that hoax. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged takes a look at that theory, examines it forward and back, inside and out, and develops a plausible alternative.
     
  • Frances Langum takes notes as Hillary and Chelsea Clinton are asked by Jimmy Fallon how easy it could be to walk out of the White House with boxes of classified documents.
     
  • Green Eagle applies a little humor to a serious purpose.
     
    Using documented security lapses, he explains how easy it would have been for pretty much anyone – foreign spy, domestic terrorist, Putin agent, teenage prankster, to get into TrumpLand and find quick access to the most vital of US security secrets.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil watches interviews. Two public figures use similar language how did that happen? to trivialize National Security. Our host is unimpressed with their trivia.
     
  • In the satiric Ant Farmer’s Almanac, Trump lawyers look to the personal history of their client to clarify what he wants from a Special Master.
     
  • Humorist Andy Borowitz covers Vlad Putin’s accusation. The Russian dictator says he is losing the war in Ukraine only because the FBI seized the stuff he needed.
     
    “If I had those things right now, I wouldn’t be getting my ass kicked all over Kharkiv,” the Russian President said.
     
  • Dave Dubya is tired of descriptions of mr Trump as the only one as in the only one who can fix it. Dave has a few only-one points to add.
     
  • News Corpse ticks and tocks as Fox actually airs an anti-Trump ad by the Lincoln Project, then Trump Threatens to sue Fox and the Lincoln Project, then the Lincoln Project goes public and dares mr Trump to file the court papers. The prevailing past pattern is expected to repeat. mr Trump is expected to back down. Again.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit reads the book! It turns out that when Trump and Trumpers complain about a Politicized Justice Department it really is a case of projection. A Trump insider spills it.
     
  • The Palmer Report makes the case that the Republican Party is rapidly going all Orwellian.
     
    Key passage:
    And Big Brother is precisely what the GOP idolizes. They want to watch women carefully dictating where they can travel and imprisoning them if they dare to make their own decisions to get abortions.
    They want to do away with things like Social Security, leaving people dependent on them for survival. And they want vengeance.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson just can’t understand why it would be worth any controversy at all when a candidate for office contributes to anti-abortion activists.
     
    I suspect it might have to do with whether such a candidate supports public policy contrived to take that decision out of the hands of individual women.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the polls. The right of individual women to decide on abortion is supported across demographic lines.
     
    Well, except for one shrinking group.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has quotes and sources. Wisconsin Republican Senator Ron Johnson explains why he’ll vote against legislation to protect gay marriage from a renegade court. Seems he doesn’t like gay marriage after all. When he said before that he would support the right of gay people to marry, he was only kidding. Says he wanted to get the press off his back.
     
    On the bright side, it may provide a respite from the hammering he still gets for his proposals to put the existence and funding of Social Security and Medicare up for reconsideration every year.
     
  • Libertarians have a lot invested in making sure climate change is out of the reach of government. Their entire ideology has a single overarching principle: Government is evil.
     
    Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara knows that record-breaking horribly deadly high temperatures around the world are not caused by climate change.
     
    Climate change? That’s just silly.
     
    Hot weather is simply caused by atmospheric conditions.
     
    Similarly, it occurs to me that when I am stopped for driving too fast, I can explain that the speed of my car has nothing to do with the pressure of my foot on the accelerator.
     
    You see, the speed of my car is caused by how fast the tires are rotating.
     
    So, will there be anything else, Ossifer?
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, Anthony Stahelski tries to figure out why so many communities want to disband the police.
     
    He analyzes in detail three misconceptions that fuel the movement.
     

    • Either criminals do not exist, or, if they do exist they can be easily transformed into law-abiding citizens.
    • If criminals do exist non-criminal civilians can easily defend themselves against criminal behavior.
    • The police are the real criminals.

     
    He fails to examine a fourth misconception, largely because he embraces it himself:
    That the Defund the Police movement exists as a movement in any meaningful sense. It doesn’t.
     
    It is true that San Francisco dabbled briefly in diverting genuine police funding to social programs. They quickly abandoned the effort when crime spiked.
     
    Other communities have moved some non-police tasks from the police to other departments, making the defund concept functionally meaningless.
     
    And there remain a few stray activists who mouth the words.
     
    The original slogan, and that’s all it was, was most often explained as meaning something other than disbanding police departments. Which summarizes the problem.
     
    A slogan that has to be explained is a horrible slogan.
     
    That is a possibility Mr. Stahelski might want to consider.
     

  • At The Onion, a shocking video captures police officers calmly handling a situation nonviolently.
     
  • It isn’t exactly a new idea. I’ve written about something similar over the years. But there does seem to be a revival of sorts.
     
    Scotties Playtime brings to our attention the conservative take on what should be taught to kids. Slavery wasn’t really all that bad. Many slaveholders were nice people.
     
  • In Happiness Between Tails da-AL touches on abortion, anti-racism, how to write and promote a book, and podcasting in the nude.
     
    She’s always a fun read.
     
  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz poses an obvious truth about one unfortunate version of Christianity:
     

  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce takes a blowtorch to rosy eyed Christians who see the bright side of everything.
     
  • A county official is arrested, and Cato’s Julian Sanchez seems to think it not a good idea to murder a reporter for writing critical stories:

  • Imani Gandy is delighted to watch Vice President Kamala Harris who is delighted to speak to astronauts who are delighted to hear from her:

  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a French example of one famous method of teaching us how to draw a century ago. I wonder if my grandmother taught this technique in her one room schoolhouse.
     
  • Infidel753 has the photo as our Lord perhaps overreacts to half a dozen evil fish.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen has beautiful flowers.
     
A few tweets I thought worthy:

And I’m allowed a few of my own:

– Podcasts –
 

3 thoughts on “Queen Elizabeth, Biden Semi-Tough, Docs Nuked, DOJ Politicized”

  1. I missed Darrell, too. He always inspired me. I’m so happy he’s back to vent his anger, resentments, scapegoating and misunderstanding of almost every issue.

    For he is a righteous man.

    He inspired me to follow his example and consider what I’d do if I were a fascist.

    If I were a fascist I’d praise Kim Jong Un and Xi Jinping. I would idolize Putin.

    I would meet with him in secrecy, give Russians state secrets in the Oval Office, (And probably later with stolen top secret documents), and take Putin’s side in denying his election interference, over all our intelligence agencies and my Director of National Intelligence.

    If I were a fascist I would praise Putin as a genius after he invaded Ukraine and started slaughtering human beings to make Ukraine part of Russia.

    If I were a fascist I’d called for the imprisonment of my 2016 election opponent, demonize the Democratic Party as “communists” and lie about winning the 2020 election.

    I would insist any election I lose would be “rigged” and stolen from me, even though I never once polled higher than my opponent.

    If I were a fascist I would gladly end our nation’s proud history of peaceful transfer of power because I am too much a narcissist and liar to concede defeat.

    I would tell a secretary of state he would be a criminal if he didn’t find 11,780 votes for me to win Georgia.

    If I were a fascist I would demand the FBI to “Just say it was corrupt and leave the rest to me and the Republican congressmen.

    I would send my lawyers out to enlist fact electors.

    I would disregard my own Attorney General if he said I lost the election and there was no evidence of election fraud that could change the outcome.

    I would send my toady lawyers to 60 courts and lie about fraud to get them to overturn the will of the voters

    Then I would summon an angry mob to Washington DC to obstruct Congress from their Constitutional duty to certify the election. I would tell the mob I would march to the capitol with them and fight like hell to stop the steal.

    If I were a fascist I would then watch my mob terrorize Congress and beat cops bloody, sending dozens to the hospital. I would watch them for three hours on TV and do nothing to stop them until I knew they would fail to overturn the election.

    If I were a fascist I would then tell my Proud Boys and Oath Keeper thugs “We had an election that was stolen” and PRAISE them, “You’re very special. We love you.”

    I would support my very special thugs by telling them “I will look very, very favorably about full pardons” if I was reelected.

    If I were a fascist I would steal top secret documents, just in case they come in handy to share with Putin or the Saudis.

    I would NEVER stop whining about being the most victimized person in history. More than Lincoln and JFK!

    If I were a fascist I’d agree with Trump when he said, “Hitler did some good things.”

    “The National Government…regards Christianity as the foundation of our national morality, and the family as the basis of national life.” – Adolf Hitler “My New Order” – Proclamation to the German Nation, Berlin, February 1, 1933

    In 1941 Hitler said, “I am now as before a Catholic and will always remain so.”

    Hitler’s army’s belt buckles were embossed with Gott Mit Uns, “God with us”.

    On October 10, 1936 Heinrich Himmler created the Reich Central Office for Combating Homosexuality and Abortion, or Special Office (II S), a sub-department of Executive Department II of the Gestapo.

    If I were a fascist I would believe anyone who is against Trump hates America, and he alone can fix it.

    So yes, if I were a fascist, I’d agree wholeheartedly with Trump and Darrell.

    1. Oops.

      I was embarrassingly remiss to forget what I would do first if I were an aspiring fascist.

      I would emulate the German NAZI’s use of the term “Lügenpresse”, or lying press, for journalists who questioned me.
      I would declare any news media “fake news” and the “enemy of the people” if they didn’t endorse and praise me.

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