Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Frances Langum:
Trump only hires the best and brightest, folks.
And the breaking news on Friday is that Trump’s genius lawyer Michael Cohen used Trump.org email account to discuss a payoff of hush money to the porn star.
Because of course he did.
Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.
Professor PZ Myers is a confirmed atheist. He has many issues with movement atheism. Among them is their public presentation:
Several of those guys pictured are dead. One, Neil deGrasse Tyson, doesn’t want to be associated with movement atheism. But that isn’t what bothers me most.
One problem is that they’re all guys, every one, except for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They couldn’t be bothered to copy and paste a picture of Susan Jacoby or Annie Laurie Gaylor or Madalyn Murray O’Hair or Margaret Downey in there — heck, not even Ayn Rand, but maybe that would be too revealing of their political philosophy. If you wanted to demonstrate that atheism is a boys’ club, all you have to do is look at how they advertise themselves.
Yeah! And where are all the world-renowned Chinese atheists? What about the Hispanic ones? The Middle Eastern ones? The gay ones?
Maybe, just maybe, the faces here were chosen because they are the most recognizable atheists. Even the average person who doesn’t pay much attention to atheism has heard of some of them (Dawkins, Tyson, Maher, Gervais, MacFarlane, Carlin, maybe Jillette and Hitchens — most of whom are in entertainment) and the others are commonly discussed in atheist circles, whether atheists like Myers likes it or not. Myers offers Susan Jacoby, Annie Laurie Gaylor, Madalyn Murray O’Hair, and Margaret Downey as alternatives, but these are not household names and I do not often hear their thoughts on atheism discussed.
Of course, it’s not enough for him to declare these groups sexist and racist on the basis of their pictures despite not knowing their creators or members. He has to invent sentiments for them, like pining for the days “when the atheist boys’ club could be all rational and shit without some girl or social scientist or somethin’ coming along and putting a damper on the party with complexity and exposing your underlying assumptions.” I don’t think that this attitude does his own “movement atheism” (Atheism+) any favors, except among the already indoctrinated. It certainly doesn’t encourage me to listen to what he has to say on the subject.
It’s also strange to see Myers criticize these atheists for being “vigorously anti-Muslim.” Myers himself once said that “Islam is the religion of ignorance and hate.” I’m not sure when that sentiment becomes vigorous enough for Myers to oppose it, but I don’t think that the atheists in these pictures support rounding up the peaceful, non-theocratic Muslims and deporting them or for banning their religion, so I’m not sure why this point is important to him. Given how broadly he sometimes talks about Christianity, it also seems hypocritical.
Soooo… see you all at worship tomorrow?
Have a safe weekend.
From Andy Borowitz:
According to one aide, when Pence opened the can, it made “an unusually loud noise,” sending Trump ducking under his desk in a millisecond.
At a news conference, minutes later, the press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, attempted to tamp down speculation that Trump had acted in a cowardly manner during the Diet Coke incident. “The President prudently repositioned himself under his desk in an aggressive crouch,” she said. “He was ready for anything.”
From Joe Hagstrom at MadMikesAmerica:
The greatest danger coming out of this situation is not the usual spin about children being exposed to this nonsense or the denigration of the Office of President, or our Nation being robbed of its innocence for the 47 millionth time since I’ve been aware we have no innocence. The real danger is that the sweet Ms. Daniels intimated there may be pictures. Naked pictures. Maybe naked pictures of Donald Trump.
Then again maybe it was the threat of pictures of President Trump naked being dropped on North Korea that got their latest version of “Dear Leader” to say he may be willing to talk about North Korea giving up its nuclear program.
From The Onion:
“Look, I know how easy it is to get all hot and bothered while reading these tantalizing stories about the president, but Americans need to focus on the concrete problems affecting our nation,” said a sweaty, visibly aroused Huckabee Sanders, who flushed noticeably and bit her bottom lip as she encouraged reporters to concentrate on the issues concerning everyday citizens instead of whatever filthy, animalistic sexual acts may or may not have occurred during a hedonistic weekend in Beverly Hills.
From The New York Times:
An article on deception and the new trade policy of President Trump
Skip to the correction:
Correction: March 6, 2018
Because of an editing error involving a satirical text-swapping web browser extension, an earlier version of this article misquoted a passage from an article by the Times reporter Jim Tankersley. The sentence referred to America’s narrowing trade deficit during “the Great Recession,” not during “the Time of Shedding and Cold Rocks.” (Pro tip: Disable your “Millennials to Snake People” extension when copying and pasting.)
Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.
Sam Nunberg has never impressed folks as a nice guy.
He came to the public eye when he was fired, for a little while, by Mr. Trump for what polite people call racially provocative internet posts. A more accurate description is simpler. They were racist. After basking in notoriety for a few days, Sam denied authorship.
Today, he doesn’t even bother. What was wrong with those posts? he asks. Did they cost any votes?
Okay the fact that I was fired for Facebook posts which were … Fine! … racially intensitive (sic)?
Do you think that would have cost us a vote?
He is fascinated with tough guys who thought it was funny to subvert democracy during the Nixon years. They performed dirty tricks and laughed about various illegalities later.
Sam thought they were too cool for words. He attached himself to Roger Stone, one of the original dirty tricksters. Stone boasted of his own ethical models: Roy Cohn of Joe McCarthy fame, Dick Nixon, and the Duke of Windsor who brought Nazism to English royalty. Sam Nunberg regards Roger Stone as a father figure.
Roger Stone is like a surrogate father. He’s like my father.
Sam has been hired and fired and hired and fired over the years by the man who became our President.
Generating sympathy for such an individual is not an easy task. But this was his week in Bizarro World, as he went on one cable news interview after another. He wanted to talk about his part in the Trump-Russia-election-hacking investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller.
He is clearly under pressure. To say that he seemed to crack is understatement. He self-scrambled on screen. Print does not do justice to the spectacle. He was not unraveling. He was already there, a rolling mass of torn yarn littering the floor.
Continue reading “A Witness Turns to Froth as Interviewers Try to Save Him”
