Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Jonathan Bernstein:
We’re now more than a week into heavy coverage of Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant families — but it’s already hard to argue that the backlash has dented the president’s approval ratings.
As I write this, FiveThirtyEight estimates Trump enjoys an approval rating of 42.5 percent — a bit higher than in early June, and basically the best since his brief — and historically bad — honeymoon after taking office.
From Frances Langum:
If this poor woman had not received treatment to remove the CORPSE from her uterus, it could have prevented her from conceiving another pregnancy. Not very pro-family, there, wingnut.
Many on Twitter want to punish Walgreens, and while I’m all about being anti-corporation, the fact is the pharmacist was protected by Arizona state law. (Anti-woman pharmacists are “protected” in six other states.) However, he disobeyed state law by not handing her prescription to another pharmacist at the same location, and he should have been fired immediately for violating company policy by shaming her out loud in a franchised store.
This kind of baloney isn’t limited to pharmacists.
From Mock Paper Scissors:
The 5-4 ruling by the court’s conservative justices said only one state House district was designed by using race impermissibly. It upheld the state legislature’s maps, based largely on a federal court’s 2013 requirement, for all others.
This is really bad news, not just for Texas but for all of us. It justifies gerrymandering as long as it looks like racism isn’t the motive behind it. And if there’s one thing old-school Republicans know how to do is be racist without leaving fingerprints. The GOP freshman class, however, are proud of their white supremacy bonafides.
This decision might be of shorter duration than we dread, just because The New Confederacy loves to let the blah’s know that they are comin’ fer ’em.
From Tommy Christopher:
In a series of tweets Sunday, Trump also demanded the elimination of due process, and referred to immigrants like the children he has imprisoned as “invaders.”
“Democrats, fix the laws. Don’t RESIST,” Trump wrote. “We are doing a far better job than Bush and Obama, but we need strength and security at the Border! Cannot accept all of the people trying to break into our Country. Strong Borders, No Crime!”
“We cannot allow all of these people to invade our Country,” Trump continued. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came.”
Trump’s comments Sunday are echoes of things he has said in the past. He has previously referred to immigrants like the children he’s locked up as an “infestation,” and just a few weeks ago, mocked the very idea of due process for immigrants in an interview with “Fox & Friends” host Brian Kilmeade.
“Who ever heard of a system where you put people through trials?” Trump asked, and promised to “change the system.”
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
I lost hundreds, perhaps thousands of former church friends and co-ministers who disconnected, went silent, or actively ridiculed me for “falling away from the faith.”
A former pastor publicly disparaged me for losing my way. Longtime Christian friends ghosted me, avoiding eye contact at stores and at funerals for mutual friends. I now get the cold shoulder on social media from people I used to live and work alongside, trying to teach me a lesson about my heresy by their silence.
Since then I’ve watched many of these same people move lock-step with this completely immoral President, and betray nearly everything about the life and ministry of Jesus—like Peter repeatedly denying Jesus in the garden.
Not into country? Consider getting into it for four minutes.
Country music artist Toby Keith wrote this in the 1990s about achieving success after predictions of failure by naysayers.
One touch of irony, the song became a major hit after it was rejected by Mercury Records.
It was the worst disaster of its kind ever. It was accompanied by horrific photographs of the aftermath. Photographs in newspapers were still a bit of a novelty in 1912.
The loss of life affected even our language. More than a century later, we still occasionally talk of rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic, inhibited only by excessive familiarity: the phrase has become trite because we all know it.
The tragedy is iconic in another sense. It has become an archetype of class division: lifeboat passengers who complained about having to submit to the instructions of a crew member who looked Asian, navigators of those lifeboats who were offered bribes to ignore the cries of those still in the icy water, immigrants who were caged by iron bars in steerage until upper class passengers could be safely sent off.
A recurring theme remains the disgust of the wealthy British about those iron gates confining lower class passengers. The indignation was said to have come, not because the access to lifeboats was blocked, but because access had to be blocked. Simple morality ought to have been enough to hold back third class passengers until their betters were evacuated.
Of course, we now wonder at such values. People of means considered the lives of the lower classes to be of little value. Their reactions went from bemusement, as they discovered that those lower class people did not agree, to outrage as those same lower class people could not be relied upon to obey simple rules of class order as rising waters engulfed them and their children. Amazing.
The existence of shipboard rules, the obedience of staff to those rules, may have imposed a degree of order in a chaotic situation. Forcing everyone into line, enforcing limits on the number allowed into lifeboats, may have made possible the rescue of additional survivors.
Today, we do not find it hard to defend those lower class passengers. Even if rules are a necessary part of orderly life, humans are under no moral obligation to respect rules that they had no part in creating, rules that put their lives at risk.
Unless, of course, those rules apply to immigrants.
Continue reading “Don’t Compare Us to Nazis”
From Jonathan Bernstein:
If both the farm bill and an immigration measure actually reach the floor on Thursday, the House is going to look like a real legislative body, at least on the surface. Don’t be fooled. The Republican majority is just passing the buck as usual. Or, I should say: Speaker Paul Ryan is passing the buck, as he usually does. Which is why he’s been such a disappointment.
From Robert A. Levine at The Moderate Voice:
Maine took a different path to changing its voting process. Collecting enough signatures, they had a referendum and passed a ranked choice voting system (RCV). In this method, when a person fills out a ballot for a party primary, the voter marks his or her first choice, second choice, third choice, and so on, depending on the number of candidates. If there is no one on a majority of ballots in the first round, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his or her second choices are distributed to the remaining candidates. If there is still no majority, another candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and his or her votes distributed to the remaining candidates. This continues until someone has a majority. This method is the fairest because a candidate must be on a majority of the ballots. Also, it helps independents who are running without party backing and party money. It seemed to work well in the recent primaries.