FairAndUNbalanced.com

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

I got a taste of this when I had a surgical procedure recently. The doc gave me a prescription for a dozen Percocet tablets. From the reaction at the pharmacy, you’d have thought that I was asking for the limb of one of their children.

I know people who have severe back pain and other chronic pain issues. Mostly, the doctors are basically telling them to suck it up, stay home and suffer in silence. Because the doctors are afraid that some badged-up, gun-toting Federal beancounter is going to compare the number of patients, the number of prescriptions and pass judgment without a care as to what maladies are afflicting those patients.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

By nightfall, after weathering another turbulent day here, I felt disproportionately older than I should have.

I know I’m not alone.

This exhaustion is a national epidemic.

This fatigue has become commonplace here now.

In this Presidency, America is living dog years.

We’re all aging unnaturally rapidly, friends.

This is what happens when every day is packed to bursting with real and manufactured crises; with perpetual legislative assaults, with relentless nonsensical Twitter rants, with continually cycling bad news stories designed to heighten our urgency.

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From The Onion:

NEW YORK—Saying it can be as easy as doing a quick once-over in the shower, the American Dermatological Association released a statement Friday recommending thorough, regular checks of the entire body for screaming demonic faces bulging out of your skin.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Donald Trump has thrown a giant temper tantrum, both in appearances with the press and on twitter, after learning that his attorney had been served a search warrant and had documents in his possession seized (presumably that involved his connections with Trump). Part of his tantrum has been that he thinks the investigation being done by Robert Mueller is unfair, and nothing more than a “witch hunt”.

This has revived the possibility that Trump may try to fire Robert Mueller. We know he wanted to do that last December, and was talked out of it by cooler heads in the White House. But many of those “cooler heads” (both among White House advisors and his attorneys) are now gone — fired by Trump in an effort to get rid of people who did not agree with him. There may not be enough people left right now with enough sway over Trump to keep him from firing Mueller.

But if he did that, he would be getting himself in deep trouble. Many in Congress would see that as a bridge too far. Even more important is the opinion of the general public.

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But possibly not the last.

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil learns, from those in a position to know, the impact of Mr. Trump on national security. I have a few thoughts about that.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post does the research and screams at us about corruption in this administration. I wrote about that as well.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, engages in intelligent speculation about the raid on Donald Trump’s lawyer. One conclusion: there is much more involved than a porn star payoff.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has his own speculation, fueled largely by reports that lawyer Cohen had a habit of recording all his conversations. Ruh roh.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz says that his seeming obsession with Donald Trump is not really about Donald Trump.
   
• NOJO at Stinque has a few fair but tough words for those of our generation, his and mine, who vote to get ripped off. There is hope, isn’t there? We will eventually pass the torch to our betters. Right?
   
• The passing of the torch isn’t entirely good. @bjork55 at Bjork Report discovers that young folks have a shocking ignorance of one of the most tragic periods in modern history. I suppose there is an inevitability to it. As one generation fades into the next, and then into the next after that, the murderous injustice of current events fades into dusty books.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein watches Paul Ryan achieve his one consistent objective as he leaves office: ducking blame for failing.
   
• Infidel753 maps out the path to ending the decade with the demolition of the Republican party.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass seems bit taken aback. The governor of Kentucky is now accusing protesting teachers of causing child rape. Sounds like the head of state government is irritated at those who strike and then dare exercise their right to peaceably assemble.
   
• My friend, conservative T. Paine at Saving Common Sense, argues that leftists are violating free speech rights by failing to provide sufficient college platforms to conservatives. In fact, some students are pressuring college administrators not to invite anti-immigrant activists for campus appearances.
   
  I’m old, I guess. In my primitive high school classes, we were taught that free speech is sufficiently protected by not jailing citizens for airing even the most eccentric views. Are conservatives being imprisoned? I’ve got to start keeping up.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce goes to his previous life as a preacher to defend those of us who are still Christians from dismissal by non-Christians as insane, simply because of our crazy beliefs. He also explains freedom of speech with more mental acuity than even my friend T. Paine.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has figured out the exact way Democrats should use the Comey/Trump fight. Don’t.
   
• The Onion reports national confusion as James Comey devotes his entire book to past allegations of Martha Stewart insider trading.
   
• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from the Brookings Institution, explaining how the nature and volume of Trump lies corrode democracy.
   

One more thing: France, Britain, and the United States sent missiles into Syria to destroy a few air fields and chemical supply dumps. President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis threatened the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Unless the regime refrains from further chemical attacks on Syrian citizens, the Trump administration will continue the Moral Equivalent Of War (M.E.O.W.).

 
So the US Attorney in New York acts on evidence originating with the Mueller team. The home and office and hotel suite of President Trump’s personal attorney are raided.

Burr Deming suggests a contrast:

Only a few years ago, conservatives were attacking President Obama for such scandals as disrespecting his office by wearing a tan suit and for putting his feet up on his desk. Those were the days.

Now we do not need to search for some whiff of corruption. It seems to exist everywhere there is an office of a department of the executive. If you could lob a tennis ball down any hall of congress, a corrupt official will catch it for you. If you pay him enough.

Infidel753 and Dave Dubya, who write persuasively at their own sites, react:

Infidel753:

The suspected money laundering that would be involved seems to me too little to justify the enormous effort required for the raid to have taken place.

True. Rich men paying off women to keep quiet about affairs is probably pretty common. The true reasons for the raid likely extend far beyond Stormygate. We already know that for most of his adult life, Trump has been engaged in shady deals with shady characters. If Trump trusted Cohen to handle Daniels, he’s probably trusted him to handle a lot of other sleazy stuff too, and may well be continuing to do so now. The fact that Rosenstein handed this off to other officials separate from the Mueller investigation suggests that whatever they’re looking into isn’t connected with Trump’s official acts, nor potential grounds for impeachment. Nevertheless, if he’s involved in criminal activity unconnected with the government, that still matters. Anything that erodes his support among the Trumpanzees will make Congress less scared to impeach him for the things that are relevant, when the time comes.

I’d bet that the real grounds for the raid involve things that haven’t yet become public knowledge at all.

Dave Dubya:

the entire criminal enterprise that, under Mr. Trump, has come to be known as the federal government.

Libertarians and conservatives have long whined about the “unconstitutional” or “criminal federal government”.

And so have liberals.

The difference being for one side, taxes, regulations, and public health care are the “crimes” and oppressive “tyranny”. Never mind the Constitution calls for taxes, regulation of commerce, and provision for the general welfare.

For the other side, illegal and unprovoked war, torture, corruption by wealth, conspiracy to engage with Russian interference in an election, voter suppression, and unaccountable brutality from law enforcement are the crimes.

None of these are sanctioned in the Constitution.

So who are the “real Americans” here?

Infidel753:

“Illegal and unprovoked war, torture, corruption by wealth, conspiracy to engage with Russian interference in an election, voter suppression, and unaccountable brutality from law enforcement” generally don’t involve raising taxes on the wealthy or otherwise infringing the libertarian view of their property rights (especially since Republican governments pay for wars by running up the deficit, not by raising taxes). Therefore, libertarians as libertarians do not feel concerned about them.

Trump’s corruption mostly involves greed. Libertarians generally consider laws and regulations which restrain greed to be illegitimate. They might be a bit discomfited by his using the power of government to boost income via emoluments, but as long as he signed off on a giant tax cut for the wealthy, that’s what counts.

Infidel753:

PS: As for vote suppression, I recall many years ago reading a piece by a radical libertarian arguing that any participation in the mechanisms of the “tyrannical” state is so immoral that it is absolutely morally wrong to vote, even if you had the chance to cast the deciding vote to prevent Hitler from coming to power. It was the purest example of the ideological-purist, non-pragmatist stance that I had ever seen. I don’t know how more mainstream libertarians feel about voting.

Have a safe weekend.

 
From PZ Myers:

There is also the part where Harris declares that he has black friends, therefore you can’t accuse him of casual racism. The part where he reveals that he knows nothing about Charles Murray’s work outside of The Bell Curve and can’t comprehend how anyone can think he has racist motivations. But mainly, Harris is all about how others have dared to criticize Sam Harris.

I think it’s damning enough that Harris thinks so highly of himself that he would walk unarmed into a duel with Ezra Klein, and get fairly and politely slaughtered on all points.

Of course, Harris probably emerged thinking that Klein never even touched him.

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From Ben Mathis-Lilley at Slate Magazine:

For years and years, Rep. Paul Ryan’s self-projected “thing” was that he was a geeky budget wonk who was gravely, gravely concerned about the American government’s unsustainable fiscal future. Liberal critics, meanwhile, have claimed for almost as long that Ryan’s vaunted plans to balance the budget were baloney and that his only actual interest was in passing massive tax cuts for high earners and corporations. Now that he’s leaving Congress after having just passed major tax legislation and a budget as Speaker of the House during a period of total Republican control over the federal government, we can finally determine who was right.

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