Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From the satiric Borowitz Report:
Calling the Duchess of Sussex “a nasty woman,” Trump said, “If I were a princess, I would not be nasty. People would say, ‘Donald Trump is the nicest princess.’ ”
Trump added that “all a princess has to do is sit on a throne, and I would be very good at that also.”
From News Corpse:
Fox News Issues a Ludicrous Defense of Laura Ingraham’s Support for White Nationalists
Fox claims that Ingraham was not defending Nehlen, but the actual comments on her show prove that Fox is lying. Contrary to Fox’s description of some “political extremists,” Ingraham explicitly portrayed Nehlen, and seven other ultra-rightists, as innocent victims of unhinged lefties:
“They’re trying to bully social media, satirists, people with comedic flair […] Their goal is to use Russian hacking threats and manipulation of social media as part of a larger movement to silence conservative voices ahead of the 2020 election.”
So Ingraham is painting people like Nehlen, conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones, Islamophobe Laura Loomer, et al, as merely comedians, but also as legitimate voices of conservatism. She says that they are only proponents of “border enforcement” and “national sovereignty.” And she regards these false allegations of censorship as akin to the Russian election interference in 2016. It takes phenomenal mental derangement to execute that level of dishonest spin-meistering.
The statement from Fox News also sought to wave off any criticism because the people that Ingraham chose to praise were mentioned in an article by the Associated Press. So what? The AP didn’t pay tribute to them as embattled heroes of the right.
Professor PZ Myers informs his readers that this performer’s name really is Randy Rainbow:
At Principled Perspectives, libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara defends unregulated capitalism…
The basic feature of capitalism, which is integral to Americanism, is individual autonomy and self-governance, within the confines established by the same rights of others. Consequently, the individual needs the freedom of action, as defined by the principle of individual rights, to live by the judgement of his own mind without coercive interference from others, including others as government officials.
…and attacks democracy.
Democracy is the rule of mob might, not objective law. “Freedom” is basically government permission, and individual “rights” can be restricted or discarded any time the government can claim it is acting on the “will of the people: that is, there are no inalienable rights-which means, no rights at all. Democracy, properly understood, is a manifestation of totalitarian collectivism.
We have a reader response from Trey:
No.
The basic feature of capitalism is where ownership lies. In capitalism, ownership is private. Private ownership of resources and the means of production. Capitalism has nothing to do with individual autonomy or self-governance as neither of those things has anything, whatsoever, to do with economics and the economy. Capitalism is, at best, indifferent to individualism. Capitalism doesn’t care if a coal mine is owned by John Osgood or if it’s owned by a Hippy-Dippy co-op, so long as it’s not a government entity.
Another helping of Libertarian Word Salad with Definitions Are What I Want Them To Be in a small carafe on the side for easy dipping.
I’m also curious as to what an “Objective Law” is. Looking it up, I only find Randian definitions which seem to forget that laws are malleable, alterable and imperfect. It’s like these people think living life is like playing a game of Monopoly. Except these people forget, and get upset, that most people make up their own house rules for Monopoly.
And from Art:
As far as I can tell the electoral college has never protected any minority, racial or economic (whathaveyou) from anything. Nor has it protected the nation from the morally and ethically deranged crowds or leaders. They had every reason and opportunity with Trump but utterly failed.
Of course there is another mechanism designed to protect individual rights; the Constitution.
Capitalism wants control over the market and consumers, monopoly if at all possible. Democracy, with its focus on listening to the people, and the fact that monopolies tend to cause a lot of economic pain, are always going to be in conflict. Capitalism is also always in conflict with free markets. Whereas democracy and free markets work together quite well, often as synergy.
A lesson can be learned, by design, from the game Monopoly. In the end one player has most of the money and is having all the fun. Of course there is one part of the game that often gets overlooked: the end. The part where all the players, even the winner, gives up all their money and it all goes back into the bank so the game can be played again. In the end thew game Monopoly includes the ancient tradition of Jubilee.
Continue reading “Mueller Reading, Trump Befuddled, Freedom Gas, Racism, Sins Original”
From Jonathan Bernstein:
Understanding how a president thinks can help make sense of his decisions. Trump’s case is harder than most.
The reporting is pretty clear: Trump doesn’t read briefings, on politics or anything else. He doesn’t appear to have absorbed the basics of public policy, whether on health care or national security or even issues, like trade, that he cares about. Instead, he seems to pick up fragments of information in conversation or, more often, from cable television. Often, it’s partisan talking points, which isn’t surprising since much of what airs on Fox News, CNN and MSNBC consists of partisan talking points. Trump then extracts some fact or detail he finds useful from that input, and comes up with his own way of expressing it. Usually, he pretties it up, smooths out any nuances and exaggerates significantly. Then he tests it out, on Twitter and especially at his rallies, working for the wording that gets the biggest reaction. And then? As far as I can tell, Trump winds up believing the final version of whatever it is he has produced.
From The Journal of Improbable Research:
A movie monster, appearing in different forms in a series of movies, proves inspirational to two calculating scientists. They explain their calculations, in this study:
“A Movie Monster Evolves, Fed by Fear,” Nathaniel J. Dominy and Ryan Calsbeek, Science, vol. 364, no. 6443, May 31, 2019, pp. 840-84.
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:
Flameouts Are No Fun
There is this stuff called “diesel exhaust fluid”. It’s not supposed to be used as a fuel additive. Diesel engines don’t like that.
But Murphy being the bastard that he is, DEF has been added into fuel stocks. it is really bad when it is added to Jet-A, which is essentially diesel fuel that is made to a higher purity level.
DEF has been found in Jet-A. What seems to be happening is that instead of adding anti-icing additive to Jet-A, the guys at the fuel farms at airports have added DEF.
From Dave Dubya:
Polls show a majority against impeachment, but what does that mean?
I would be interested in knowing what the breakdown would be in those opposing impeachment. How many are just Democrats afraid of the process backfiring, compared to Trump loyalists?
Why do people think impeaching Trump will make him more popular?
Just because his toadies in the Senate love him, doesn’t mean anybody else will join the cult. Either way, Trump will gloat about not being impeached, as much as he would crow about the senate’s non-conviction.
I wonder if there are really that many independents who would shrug and say, “Gee, Trump’s fellow Republicans in the Senate voted not to convict. I’ll have to side with them.”
If that is the state of our democracy, we are doomed.
From Infidel753:
This is a political earthquake. Labour and the Conservatives are the two traditional major parties, like our Democrats and Republicans, and the Conservative party is in power in the actual British government right now. The Liberal Democrats are the long-standing third party, which usually gets a substantial share of the vote but much less than the big two. The Brexit party is a single-issue party formed just a few weeks ago, which has barely had time to get organized, yet it won far more votes than the big two combined. Add in the votes for UKIP (UK Independence Party, an older anti-EU party which I didn’t realize was still around), and about 35% of the vote went to single-issue pro-Brexit forces which the mainstream media in Britain have relentlessly tried to marginalize and ridicule. And the voters massively repudiated the political establishment, especially the party in power.
Perhaps the results aren’t surprising. It is almost three years since the original referendum in which the people voted to leave the EU (by a margin, please note, of four percentage points, twice as large in percentage terms as the margin by which Hillary won the popular vote here against Trump), and the country still does not have an agreed-upon plan or schedule for getting out.