FairAndUNbalanced.com

• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from The Baltimore Sun with the lie of the week. The Trump policy of putting little kids in cages was begun by Obama. Trump is the hero trying to end the Obama practice.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post puts the focus on my President’s behavioral and policy oddities.
   
• News Corpse compares the active love fest between WikiLeaks and then candidate Donald Trump in 2016, then contrasts that with the very new Trump after the arrest of Julian Assange: I know nothing about WikiLeaks, it’s not my thing.
   
• Frances Langum asks why the Trump inaugural ticket guy gets no jail time, and concludes it’s not good news for Trump.
   
• At the beginning, “Department of Homeland Security” sounded kind of Teutonic to me. At least it wasn’t called the Department of Fatherland Protection.
   
  Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged observes that the Department of Homeland Security seems to have changed direction. The unit tasked with tracking domestic threats of terrorism is being disbanded – tracking known as “Homeland Security.” Resources are instead flowing to locking little kids in desert cages to keep them away from their parents.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger brings us a five second glimpse at the agony of departing DHS Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, scholar Anthony W. Fontes spends time on the ground with migrants and reports on why they flee to the US.
   
• Tommy Christopher watches as Republican Congressional Representative Thomas Massie (KY) attacks John Kerry for possessing a fake science degree. Apparently the Congressman was shocked to discover the little known fact that Political Science is not really science. Tommy quotes an incredulous Kerry: “Are you serious? I mean, is this really a serious happening here?”
   
  Actually, the word “Science” in the name of Kerry’s degree is like “Honorable” in front of Thomas Massie’s name.
   
  Doesn’t mean a thing.
   
• PZ Myers explains a little of the wonder of an actual image of a black hole. Lot of excitement centers on a primary team leader of the imaging project, Katie Bouman. And, of course, there are attacks by what Myers justifiably calls internet trolls. Some on the right are upset at accounts that, that, that a woman is associated with an important development in science. There turns out to be a great answer to those attacks.
   

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Proposed NJ legislation would “force . . . political organizations that raise money to influence elections and policy in New Jersey” to disclose their donors’ identities (Susan Liveo, N.J. lawmakers ready to change law that lets ’dark money’ donors keep their identities secret). But anonymity can be crucial to political advocacy, and was used throughout history by activists to avoid harassment and intimidation by governments, political opponents, and thugs. Revolutionary era advocates of independence remained anonymous to shield themselves from British reprisals, as did 20th Century Civil Rights advocates to shield them from private and political intimidation. And as Liveo reported, New Direction New Jersey, a political activist group, refused to disclose its donors due to “attacks from powerful special interests.”

Spending is integral to speech. Anonymous spending equals anonymous speech.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

Does a high quality (e.g. fabric as opposed to paper) tablecloth affect customers’ enjoyment of a meal in a restaurant? Surprisingly perhaps, up until 2019, this question had not been scientifically examined. But now a team from the Department of Food Science, at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and the Center for Food and Hospitality Research, Institut Paul Bocuse, France, have completed the first such study, examining the reactions of 247 paying (26 € per person) customers in a controlled experimental setting.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

I feel sorry for professed Christians who support this President.

They have a profound and fundamental spiritual problem: their God is too small.

They passionately worship a deity made in their own image: white, American, Republican, male—and perpetually terrified of just about everything: Muslims, immigrants, gay children, Special Counsel reports, mandalas, Harry Potter, Starbuck holiday cups, yoga, wind turbines, Science—everything.

Their God is so laughably minuscule, so fully neutered of power, so completely devoid of functioning vertebrae that “He” cannot protect them from the encroaching monsters they are certain lurk around every corner to overwhelm them.

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From Andy Borowitz:

Barr, who had been working around the clock to redact the report before its release, reportedly lost consciousness while trying to black out a seventy-four-page section detailing Donald Trump, Jr.,’s contacts with more than three dozen Russian individuals.

“You cannot use that many Sharpies, for hours on end, without proper ventilation,” a Justice Department staffer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said. “This was a disaster waiting to happen.”

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

The president wants to run immigration policy from the White House. History suggests that’s a big mistake.

After ousting Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, President Donald Trump has continued what everyone is calling a “purge” of the department this week. The gist seems to be that Trump is frustrated because he can’t get his way on border and immigration policy and seems to be empowering White House aide Stephen Miller to conduct a broader overhaul.

There’s nothing wrong with a president removing a cabinet secretary or the head of an agency if they differ on policy. At least, it’s perfectly within the president’s authority. But it’s generally a sign of failure: It means that something went wrong in the process of choosing the official, or that the president hasn’t managed to persuade the official to do what he wants. If a president decides to sack a whole department, or much of it … well, that’s a sign of a much bigger failure. It means a whole bunch of nominations went wrong, and that the president can’t get anyone to do what he wants.

Now the really dangerous path is if Trump decides to simply ignore the department and use White House staff such as Miller to implement policy.

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From Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica:

Trust and faith in Britain’s ‘mainstream’ political parties had been at an all time low for quite some time. More lately, it has, frankly, not just dropped through the floor but carried on through the basement, down through the foundations and, when last heard of, was heading swiftly down to where no political trust and faith had ever gone before.

Without a shadow of a doubt, the blame can only be put, fairly and squarely, at the mainstream parties themselves.

A by-election in Newport, Wales, (called as a result of the death of the sitting Labour incumbent), saw a ‘safe’ Labour seat elect a Labour member of parliament. That, on the face of it, suggests that, perhaps, the decline in voter trust may not be terminal.

However, one swift look at the facts suggests it is, at best, on permanent life support.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

The most-read post on The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser is the post titled, Why I Hate Jesus. Written four years ago, this post is also the most misunderstood post. Many Evangelicals wrongly believe I hate the man, myth, and legend named Jesus Christ. Bound by a literalistic approach to life, they fail to see that the post is really about their religion and not a flesh and blood dead man named Jesus. As I shall make abundantly clear in an upcoming post, there are many, many, many Jesuses; that every generation of Christians shapes and molds Jesus into their own image, according to their peculiar theological, political, and social beliefs. To deny this is to deny reality. To suggest that you worship the first century Jesus and practice Christianity (Judaism) just as the Apostles did in 35 CE is ludicrous and a denial of 2,000 years of Church history. Christianity started evolving the moment Jesus called twelve illiterate men to be his disciples. These men and other followers interpreted and reinterpreted the life and words of Jesus, fashioning their own versions of Christ and what it meant to be a follower of him. This evolutionary process continues even to this very day.

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From Infidel753:

The recent surge of interest and support for Pete Buttigieg appears to be real, if a bit overhyped. Most mainstream pundits still consider him a fringe candidate, not in the same league with the “serious” names like Biden or Warren. But I’m beginning to wonder if he might be just the man for the times.

This is not a period friendly to conventional candidates. Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016 were both, in their own (very different) ways, outsider/insurgent candidates. Neither was expected to win his party’s nomination; both did so by beating, mainstream, conventional candidates. The smart money was on Hillary and Jeb in those races. The smart money was wrong.

In general elections, too, there is a constituency for insurgency for its own sake. These are the people who, to the bafflement of some pundits, voted for both Obama and Trump.

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