FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Frances Langum:

Republicans have been given over 50% of the airtime on Cable News for so long they can’t understand why social media shouldn’t follow.

And the House Majority Leader until January 2019 is so outraged about censorship of conservative “thought” on Twitter…that he tweeted about it!

Turns out Laura Ingraham opened her Twitter pie hole about the violent Arab takeover of Sweden (yeah) and Kevin McCarthy got a notice that her tweet might contain “sensitive content.” CENSORSHIP of conservative thought!

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From John Pavlovitz:

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.” — Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride,

The first Christians didn’t call themselves Christians.

It wasn’t some congratulatory self-identifier as it is today; a way of loudly trumpeting one’s own supposed goodness, quickly slapped on Twitter bios and bumper stickers and t-shirts without forethought or personal cost or empirical evidence. It wasn’t about a place you visited for an hour on Sunday before Cracker Barrel, either.

The term Christian was originally a designation of the community of people following Jesus, by those outside of it after his death—and it was quite likely a slur; a scarlet letter attached to a marginalized group who’d traded comfy allegiance with Caesar for dangerous devotion to an itinerant Hebrew street preacher from Nazareth.

In the Roman Empire in which it was born, Jesus’ movement was fully countercultural; shunning its power and material wealth, breaking its barriers between the important and the inconsequential, fighting the stereotypes of the in and the out. It was a table builder and a wall breaker.

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From Mock Paper Scissors:

There are 18 charged and the jury is going over each count and discussing the issues at length. It will take a few days to do that.

But what I am worried about: Ellis said that he has received threats (of an unspecified nature) and is now guarded by U.S. Marshals.

“I had no idea this case would excite these emotions, I can tell you frankly.”

I guess Ellis has never heard of Comrade Trump’s base, who regularly make death threats to the press for poor coverage of Dear Leader.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

Donald Trump couldn’t do a better job of teaching everyone how the presidency works, according to classic political scientist Richard Neustadt. Today’s lesson: the costs of acting alone.

All presidents are frustrated by the limitations of the office. As canny observers have noticed, Trump tends to deal with that by gravitating toward things that he can do all by himself, so we get pardons, stripping people of security clearances and holding summits. Richard Nixon, when he couldn’t get things done he wanted, went around the system to try to do those things (such as, say, spying on political opponents when the FBI refused to do it). Trump, facing the same obstacles, instead retreats to those things that the system does allow him to do without anyone’s permission or cooperation. And when he doesn’t do that, he attempts to order those around him to do what he wants even if they have the ability to say no.

So we have two new stories. One is Trump’s decision to strip former CIA director John Brennan of his security clearance (and floating plans to strip clearances from other former government officials who have criticized him). Trump was able to do that basically just by giving the order.

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See you next week.

• This week’s note in Trumpian “Alternative Facts” comes from CNN where Rudy Giuliani explains to Chris Cuomo that all facts are only opinions.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit watches as Admiral William McRaven scorches the petty Trump move to revoke the security clearance of John Brennan for daring to criticize the President, and is reminded of the Tony Curtis role in an old Kirk Douglas movie based on an anti-Roman slave rebellion. You’ve read this in a dozen places so far, right?
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors explains just how revoking the security clearance of someone with enormous security experience makes Putin a winner along with any other enemy of America.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein argues that Trump is entering a a dangerous phase that could cost him …well… hugely.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil reads about a conservative proposal to consider making the n-word publicly acceptable.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson likes the idea of selling old school buildings to charter schools. Well, kind of. He likes an editorial that criticizes Milwaukee for not doing it. Plus minus minus might equal plus.
   
• In one Georgia county, Republican election officials plan to continue a pattern that is currently repeated throughout much of the south, closing more than 75% of polling stations in predominantly black areas.
   
• Max’s Dad watched BlackkKlansman and says it will end up as best picture of the year.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Leah Kardos reviews the origins and musical development of Aretha Franklin, and her effect on us.
   
• In a piece of deeply personal analysis, nojo at Stinque explains how stories are an intrinsic part of the human experience.
   
• Infidel753 explores how differences in language influence the way we experience the world. Turns out they pretty much don’t. Another good sounding theory turns out to be a hoax. Kind of like Supply Side.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research finds a few studies on how to break spaghetti into two, and only two, pieces. One applies the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle.
   

 
From Michael Kinsley:

Is a conservative someone whose core belief is that courts should follow precedents, be slow to change established laws — even laws that a judge may disagree with? Would a conservative vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade, for example, or would he or she reason that abortion rights are now so embedded in society and law that it would be “activism” for a judge to meddle with them?

Or is a conservative — at least in the legal context — someone who feels most strongly that the laws and the Constitution should not be used to impose a judge’s political preferences? This is what Justice Antonin Scalia called “originalism.” This kind of conservative would say about abortion, “Find it for me in the Constitution, buddy.”

Yet another type of conservative would say (not out loud!) “Look — we’re in power; we won’t always be in power: why shouldn’t we impose conservative policies on the country? The libs did it when they had the chance.” This crowd would probably try to impeach Justice Kavanaugh if he didn’t vote to overturn Roe vs. Wade.

Although liberals hope that if Kavanaugh is confirmed he will turn out to be the first kind of conservative, why should I, or any other citizen, have to guess?

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From Green Eagle:

I guess I will file this report on the great national Unite the Right 2 march that happened in front of the White House this weekend, on the first anniversary of the great Charlottesville riot that did so much to establish Nazis as deserving of a place in our national political life, just to keep up my record.

This event was the beneficiary of an immense amount of publicity from both right wing sources and our mainstream press, so I think it should be indicative of the real strength of the right in the United States. Well, here it is…

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Via Nancy LeTourneau at Washington Monthly:

In 1998, Luciano Pavarotti developed a sore throat just before a scheduled performance of his famous operatic piece Nessun dorma. An emergency call was made to a surprise substitute who sang with virtually no special preparation.

She brought the house down, the audience was just blown away: