Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is irritated. If climate change is caused by humans and is dangerous to humanity, that means governments have to step in with rules and regulations.
     
    Libertarians like Michael are forbidden to even think along those lines. Otherwise their internal membership would be canceled by some sort of Trumpian mental process. Or something.
     
    So they can’t, just can’t, acknowledge even the possibility.
     
    Michael A. LaFerrara is put out because biased media doesn’t present both sides.
     
    Some folks do define responsible journalism as just presenting every viewpoint. If one side says it’s raining, and the other side says it’s dry outside, journalists should accurately quote both sides and call it a day.
     
    Other folks, which is to say me, think a responsible journalist will actually look out the window and report on Hurricane Ian.
     
    Even if Michael A. LaFerrara objects.
     
  • News Corpse takes on Fox as they seem loath to count some Americans as Americans. News Corpse posts just one thoughtless example:
     


    Should someone tell her?

  • Hackwhackers offers a fifteen second study on responses to Florida’s hurricane violence, with three contrasting leadership styles.
     
  • Dave Dubya has been paying attention to the legal saga of Alex Jones. He especially notes one bit of testimony from a parent who lost a child to gun violence. She talks about finally confronting Jones in court.
     
    I mean this is literally facing the biggest bully Iā€™ve ever faced.
     
    Dave determines why Alex Jones fits the description, then turns his gaze to another figure who may fit.
     
    If anyone in class can guess who, you get to stay and help clean the erasers!
     
  • Dave Columbo and Laura High go newsing (It IS a word! ‘Tis, ‘Tis!) and explain this week’s continuing Trump bad news saga.
    @davecolumbo Poor guy canā€™t buy a break. #news #breaking #politics #political #politicaltiktok #democrats #democrat #democratsoftiktok #fy #fyp #foryou #foryoupage ā™¬ original sound – Dave Columbo

  • driftglass is irritated that right-wing enablers, seeing the disaster Trump has wrought, now claim to have been warning us all the time.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us the courtroom conclusion of one Jan 6 adventure. An insurrectionist discovers that aiding in the assault of a police officer with what could have become deadly force will result in seven years of confinement. But first, the judge and the officer verbally slap around the defendant for MAGA excuses.

  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life has a few reasoned suggests on how to wean rural conservative Christian white voters off of MAGA type fascism.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the documentation. Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th US President, the general who led the allies to victory in World War II, would not fit in today’s Republican Party.
     
  • Vagabond Scholar brings his 2022 summary of banned books, with the titles, the reasons, and the encouraging pushback.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson does not care for the current Republican strategy of making it trickier for other folks to vote.
     
  • Max’s Dad takes a look at federal legislators and singles out five grifters: 2 who are smart who pretend dumb, 2 sociopaths, and 1 plain old evil.
     
  • Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has a remarkably low opinion of a Republican talking point:

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a one word response to a law and order boast:

  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors follows the debate on gun safety. You know: whether to run background checks to keep deadly firearms out of the hands of mentally ill, kids, and criminals. Whether to keep AR-15-style rifles, as well as other weapons of mass casualties out of the hands of non-military people.
     
    That sort of thing.
     
    Republicans say thoughts, prayers, more secure doors, more firearms in public places, and better mental health treatment will do the trick.
     
    So tengrain totals the tally as that last proposal, mental health care for troubled kids, goes to a vote. Guess who votes against it!
     
    Aw come on, give it a guess!
     
  • The Palmer Report reports. Justice Samuel Alito, author of the repeal of previous rulings placing decisions on abortion with individual women, is okay with criticism of decisions. Free speech and all.
     
    But critics go too far if they question the legitimacy of the Supreme Court.
     
    Here is the problem: The Court’s reasoning in repealing abortion rights is an absurdity.
     
    We have always been taught that the feds can’t violate the freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Right?
     
    Roe v Wade was based on the Fourteenth Amendment. The 14th says freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution also can’t be violated by state and local governments.
    You with me?
     
    The original decision on abortion freedom said the 14th included the 9th Amendment.
    Well, duh!
     
    The 9th Amendment says that any freedom the founders didn’t think to put in the Constitution or the Amendments should go to the individuals.
    Period!
     
    That’s why SCOTUS said the government of Missouri can no longer put my loved one and me in prison. Interracial marriage was once a felony under Section 563.240 of the Missouri Criminal Code.
     
    It’s also why folks can’t be prosecuted for gay sex. Or for making love in a style not conforming to the missionary position.
     
    It’s how gay marriage came to be legal.
     
    And it’s how, in 1973, the court said it’s not your neighbor’s damn business, or that of a religious group, or of some politician, if you decide you need an abortion.
     
    The Alito decision overturned that logic with two clear falsehoods.
     

    1. The 9th Amendment doesn’t say what it says. It only applies to rights that were widely recognized in the 1700s.
      Nope. It doesn’t say anything like that. Nothing at all like what Judge Alito says it says.
    2. The right to an abortion was never recognized in the 1700s.
      Nope. That is historically wrong. The very first abortion law in the US was enacted by Connecticut in 1821. Before then it was legal and recognized everywhere in the country.

     
    Some decisions can be argued on the basis of legal reasoning.
     
    Some are so transparently non-factual and illogical as to defy legitimacy.
     

  • Like an undercover spy movie, Andy Borowitz points to the bravery of Ketanji Brown Jackson as she infiltrates a shadowy alt-right group.
     
    Having already plotted to destroy womenā€™s bodily autonomy, the group is currently scheming to eliminate voting rights and marriage equality.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice Robert Levine does a worldwide survey and concludes that the rights of women are under attack. Not just in Iran or the United States, but in a whole lot of countries.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit knows her history, including where Vlad Putin’s precise tactics have been employed before.
     
  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has gotten me to thinking about George Will’s observation about technology, war, and the inability of military leaders to grasp the impact of one upon the other.
     
    He described the general strategy at the beginning of World War I as trying to wear out machine guns with young men’s chests..
     
    Vixen explores explanations for Vlad Putin’s apparent game plan of piling up casualties of elderly veterans atop those of young, lightly trained conscripts:
     
    Slowing the Ukraine advance to reclaim lost territory by stacking Russian bodies in their way?
     
    Or is Vlad simply playing us? Is he exercising a grand master plan: making it appear that he is losing because that is what he wants us to think?
     
    She finally wonders if his only remotely viable scheme is to rely on the American front, composed of Tucker Carlson’s mouth.
     
    Could be, I suppose. Putin-TV is giving Tuck an abundance of play.
     
  • Tommy Christopher covers the coverage as President Biden courts a small gathering of rich folk interested in policy over their own self-interest. A whole lot of money is raised.
     
    At least some reporters are less interested in the policy discussion and the successful fundraising than in surveying, in great detail, the styles of shoes on the racks outside.
     
  • The headline in the New York Times reads:
    Factory Jobs Are Booming Like Itā€™s the 1970s
     
    In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson says President Biden has been working to undo past Republican efforts to concentrate more wealth with the highest income groups. The Republican hope has been that wealth will then filter down to ordinary people. It did not work.
     
    The new strategy of providing income opportunities at the middle class level seems to be getting results.
     
  • PZ Myers has a brief but pretty good summary of how evolution works, including stray characteristics that happen to become important, hybrids, openness to strangers, compassion, and like that.
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac covers NASA’s successful crash into an asteroid, and the denunciation by the asteroid of the unprovoked attack.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil wakes up cranky one morning, which is to say M. Bouffant wakes up.
     
    He watches the NASA practice crash into an asteroid and believes he has a better way to save the earth.
     
    Ummmm – not a solution I would endorse.
     
  • After generations of abuse from white colonialists, The Propaganda Professor finds a remarkable degree of curiosity, openness, and friendliness in India. He looks for cultural reasons and thinks he may have one answer in religion.
     
  • Green Eagle ponders divine retribution, and wonders how Christian fundamentalists regard the condition of Florida.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce attracts the attention of a bully. The fellow becomes so frustrated at the reasonable approach with which Bruce responds he suggests Bruce stand in front of a speeding train.
     
    As the hymn says, we Christians will be known by our love.
     
  • Rather a misstep.
     
    Scotties Playtime reacts to a story of a girl kicked out of a Christian school for refusing to take a photo of herself in a bathtub.
     
  • Infidel753 does not care for religion. He really, really doesn’t.
     
  • Clickbait from Reductress provides helpful advice on how to stop praying for God to kill you after the slightest inconvenience.
     
  • Give a man a fish… aw hell, you know the rest, right?
     
    Not so fast, Sparky.
     
    YellowDog Granny explains what you can do with your damn fish.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 says don’t mess with mom. Just don’t:
    @whiskeywhistle98 #duet with @itsme_scooter #genx ā€¦Just sayinā€¦.. #MadeWithKeurigContest #HausLabsFoundation #fyp #foryourpage #tiktokmom #gangsta #kids #donttryme ā™¬ original sound – āš”Scooterāš”

  • Imani Gandy is a sensitive soul:


    But she can still stomp on a critic:

  • SilverAppleQueen has a very comfortable cat.
     

A few tweets I thought worthy:




























And I’m allowed a few of my own:



























































– Podcasts –
 

4 thoughts on “Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion”

  1. I’ve thought for a long time that Roger Stone looks like one of the Goons from the old Popeye cartoons.

  2. thanks for that wonderful sound at the beginning of this great post – we need it to help us deal with the rest…

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