CPAC, Gold Calf, Corrupt, Obstruct, TX Cold Dark, COVID, Wage, Potato Seuss

  • Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains radically new developments in scientific thought and what they imply about future warp travel through space:
     

    Yahoo News has more.

  • Max’s Dad has a not-exactly-balanced summary of CPAC. Man, I do enjoy what this guy writes.
     
  • Dave Dubya considers the recent CPAC convention, with all its Trump worship, as a true reflection of the current state of contemporary conservatism. He examines several of the myths unequivocally embraced at the gathering.
     
  • I’m still in awe at the comically explicit evil represented by the golden idol of Mr. Trump, presented for worship to the CPAC convention. North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is more familiar with Exodus than most of us. But even those members of my religion who are just dimly aware of our Book of Faith know about Moses and the Tablets and idol worship. Pavlovitz wonders at the fate of the faithful, after the thousands of years since the disaster of the Golden Calf, when so many of us still can’t get it right today.
     
  • If Cecil Price and Bull Connor found themselves in a 1960s grudge match, most folks of good will would have hoped both would lose in a double knockout followed by a long recovery in the same hospital room. Scotties Toy Box links to reactions as the Wall Street Journal criticizes very-former-president Trump, Trump attacks the WSJ, and the publication calmly slaps the retired insurrectionist around.
     
    Okay, okay. If we really have to choose, I suppose I’d vote for the publication. The old saying is you should never get into a fight with those who buy ink by the barrel.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony finds an apology floating around net for criticizing once-upon-a-time President Trump, but containing enough caveats that a cynical person might suspect a touch of insincerity.

  • Frances Langum explains why anyone and everyone should recognize overt corruption by a member of the Trump cabinet. In fact, it fits any waking person’s definition of corruption. Okay, even more basic. It fits what we recognized as corruption when we were in the second grade.
     
    Which, for me, can’t be verified. Even college is too far in the dim and distant past.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook takes a look at the QAnon – occasionally Republican – conspiracy theory that insists Trump is the actual current president. Doesn’t that present an obvious problem in 2024?
     
  • The expression “old friend” strikes me as too descriptive once we get to be somewhat elderly. My long-time friend, Darrell Michaels at Unabashedly American presents as fact an array of conservative persecution fantasies. Well nobody is perfect.
     
    In his sad world, curbing illegal incitement to violence, promoting gun safety, safeguarding voting rights, and eliminating arcane Senate rules that are used only for Eddie Haskell type obstruction, all translate into attacks on free speech, gun ownership, election purity, and democracy: attacks by authoritarian leftists.
     
    Really! Nobody – Say it over again and repeat – Nobody is perfect.
     
  • Something else conservatives have been suspicious about for a while: The Borowitz Report covers the growing scandal around Joe Biden. Republicans are accusing the President of trying to score political points by ending the pandemic. They are resolved to keep that conspiracy from succeeding.
     
  • Green Eagle looks at COVID perpetuation by Republicans ruling Texas, COVID perpetuation by Republicans ruling Mississippi, and COVID perpetuation by Republicans ruling Alabama, and sees public servants who regard their official mission solely as obtaining political advantage, with resulting mega-deaths among constituents as the cost of doing business: Overhead, as it were.
     
  • Julian Sanchez of Cato Institute asks Alexa to define “chutzpah” and comes up with a picture of Texas Senator John Cornyn discussing a Biden nomination as too partisan for his vote.
     
  • Bill Formby in MadMikesAmerica tells us what we should know, that American recovery in health and economy depends partly on a bit of political destruction.
     
  • When both sides are wrong on an issue, I kind of like an analysis that says so. If fact, I enjoy an analysis that incorrectly concludes that both sides are wrong. The operative word is “concludes”.
     
    At The Moderate Voice, a premise is summarized at the outset:

    The nation’s current political parties are corrupt and self-serving, tethered to lobbyists, special interests and their own partisan bases, and unable to govern productively.

    The conclusion? A third party in the valid, true, uncorrupt, middle is needed. However, it is pretty much impossible unless valid, true, uncorrupt, middle-bound politicians become courageous

  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson offers an informed summary of each day’s events. Her talent for boiling the news down to its essential core makes her daily newsletter a must-read. Earlier this week, she told the story of how Republicans continue their quest to slow down and sabotage economic recovery and voting rights. She strives for fairness, however, detailing their energy in defending potatoes and a few racist images from a couple of minor works by the late Dr. Seuss.
     
  • Let’s face it: even with a new unTrumpian administration, the news is still dominated by negative reports. But not entirely: The Onion brings us the inspiring story of a courageous conservative who bravely risks his life to hide Mr. Potato Heads in his attic.
     
    I’m hoping Mrs. Potato Heads are included. We can appreciate that they are anatomically correct.
     
  • Perpetually witty tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has a pretty good take on the very serious conservative issue of the fate of The Cat in the Hat. Fortunately, the estate of Dr. Seuss has spared the feline. Other books with illustrations for children that depict Black people as nearly naked hilariously hopeless savages have been sacrificed on the unforgiving altar of political correctness. PC seems to have unreasoning objections to overt racism.
     
    I find especially striking, one powerfully astute comment.
     
    Okay, so maybe it isn’t that astute, but the comment does carry the virtue of being my own.
     
  • Via SilverAppleQueen, The Way of Improvement shows us the actual racist illustrations of those minor Dr. Seuss works. Sheesh, they are raw.
     
    I was born during the Truman administration, and I can remember how they might have seemed unremarkable in the 1950s. But now? These are what conservatives are defending? Angry at the Seuss estate? Blaming Democrats, who had nothing to do with pulling these books from further publication?
     
  • With the pandemic on the run, vaccine production accelerating, but dangerous COVID variants on the way, our President says this is no time for Neanderthal thinking. Okay, so it’s an opportunity for Republicans to make that term into another “basket of deplorables” moment. As in Who you callin’ Neanderthal?
     
    Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit says conservatives are actually taking a different tack. They are offended, yeah. But they are angry because Biden should not have insulted Neanderthals. Thankfully, President Biden didn’t further provoke them by denigrating dinosaur raptors.
     
  • More wisdom from Sarah Cooper:

  • JoAnn Williams knows. She describes life in Texas in the dark midnight cold, contemplating Texas politicians.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems increasingly impatient with Arizona Democratic Senator Kyrsten Sinema. Seems she’s a bit inconsistent on whether working people should be provided a minimum wage as a right.
     
  • So many tweets, so few minutes in a day. Fortunately, Hackwhackers surfs Twitterdom for a sampling of the best of the best, starting with Steve Scalise, a politician who actually boasted being “David Duke without the baggage”, becoming enraged about a Congressional bill to revive voting rights.
     
  • Imani Gandy at Rewire News Group documents efforts by conservative groups to manufacture evidence of voter fraud. The evidence disappears on even cursory examination, but the impression remains. The aim is clear, though. Restrictive laws are intended to keep Black people from voting.
     
  • William F. Buckley once quoted another conservative about debate opportunism:

    “The Jesuits,” he wrote acidly, “score off the exaggeration of their critics. Accuse them of killing three men and a dog, they will triumphantly produce the dog alive.”

    There are many opportunities on the left if we diligently look for them. It becomes easy during furious debate to conflate clever rhetoric with effective persuasion.
     
    Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has no difficulty aiming at his chosen target, as a Wisconsin Democrat implies that anyone who opposes higher taxes is mentally deficient. Oh my.
     
    However, James is far from patient with the new Republican routine embrace of delusions about dark liberal conspiracies. He points at Wisconsin’s US Senator Ron Johnson and his refusal to accept that 82 million Biden votes exceeds 74 million for Trump.
     
    Wigderson is troublesome. What are we to do with conservatives who insist on periodic reasonable thought?

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is easier in that regard. He doesn’t like attacks on Facebook for “censorship” since that term should be reserved for governmental suppression of opinion. He also doesn’t like criticism of the harmful falsehoods Facebook allows, since it is a mere platform. He suggests an analogy. You wouldn’t blame a road construction crew for building the highway used for a getaway after a crime.
     
    I dunno. A highway crew has no control. Facebook does. They can prohibit calls for violence (will no-one rid me of my troublesome opponent?), or dangerous misinformation (inoculate yourself with household cleaning products), or documented falsehoods (John Q. Anon is a child molester).
     
    To Michael’s analogy: If highway administrators lowered a drawbridge when they saw the getaway car approaching with police pursuing, we might reasonably object.
     
  • driftglass covers the high-speed journey from the radical left left to the racist right of Glenn Greenwald, when it comes to immigration and White supremacy.
     
    I do take a rueful sort of pride in having been anti-Greenwald way long ago when Glenn criticism wasn’t cool.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has the data. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has dropped from hero to bum and continues in free fall. Has something to do with elderly people dying and women being sexually harassed.
     
  • The election of President Obama in 2008 was accompanied by a huge and sustained, largely unreported, spike in assassination threats. More widely seen were memes, posters, signs, and performance art depicting the new President, Michelle Obama, and their then small children as stereotypically savage jungle dwellers. Respected conservatives, including friends of mine, attacked Obama as arrogant, the conservative politically correct replacement word for “uppity.”
     
    Tommy Christopher brings word on a parallel incident as a reporter posts, defends, and eventually apologizes for what he thought was a hilarious photo making fun of Vice President Kamala Harris for being, well, a woman.
     
    Let’s hope we don’t see another trend.
     
  • We’re taught not to feel, or at least not to express, joy at the misfortune of others. nojo violates this informal commandment in a review of a prospective gender reveal party complete with an explosive device that exploded before the party even began, qualifying the party host for a Darwin Award.
     
    We should all be ashamed at nojo for making fun of a tragic death.
     
    And I, for one, am ashamed of myself for laughing and laughing and laughing.
     
    But the laughter and nojo’s presentation is mitigated by his analysis of what is funny and what is not. nojo can provide insight in just about any subject.
     
  • Well, maybe this experiment will be transferable to human utility? Maybe? The Journal of Improbable Research has found a joint study by a couple of Pennsylvania Universities on how to rock fruit flies gently to sleep. Lullabies alone apparently do not work.
     
  • Infidel753 has another set of carefully considered thoughts about cultural battles and historical context. Judging shakers and movers from the past by today’s standards is not only unfair if we don’t think through the environment to which they reacted, but also in what was historically possible at the time. It is a profound insight that never occurred to me before.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce covers a conservative Christian iconic hero and exposes his self-aggrandizing lies.. As in never let the truth interfere with a good story.
     
    I wrote a decade ago about a less selfish motivation for lying in service to the Lord.
     
  • PZ Myers has a problem with Christians who refuse to call out destructively extreme fellow Christians. He suggests that at least some of his fellow atheists deserve similar criticism.
     
    Well, he is correct about some of us who embrace Christianity.
     
  • The usually hilarious @momwino98 gets seriously concerned with suicide and makes the strongest possible emotional case for holding off in desperate times:
    @momwino98

    ##duet with @shane.nickels ##suicidesucks ##misshim

    ♬ original sound – John Dewees

  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life commemorates the anniversary of the murder of a black teenager, armed with a bag of skittles, who was confronted by a vigilante, armed with a real weapon, who decided the youngster didn’t belong. The vigilante was found not guilty in a stunning act of jury nullification.
     
    Reminded me of similar verdicts by former-confederacy area juries after lynchings in the bad old days.

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