A kidnapping that might not happen:
@momwino98 figures out what to do if the baby doesn’t sleep.
@momwino98
- John Scalzi at Whatever had his 2nd vax a couple of days before I did and had about the same after-effect: which was pretty much nothing. I felt extra sleepy yesterday morning so I didn’t get to work until 6:00 AM. Not sure if that was an effect or was independent. I know, I know, Tobacco Institute. Point is, after the jab I’m fine, Scalzi is fine, pretty much all God’s children are fine (Halleluia). So do it!
- CATO fellow Julian Sanchez joins fellow fellows in a podcast about vaccine passports and vaccine certifications. The distinction is that passports are government administered (bad), and certifications are issued by private corporations and organizations (good).
Well… probably good if done correctly. Which it would be, if it is done by corporations (excellent) and not government (horribly evil).
I am somewhat elderly, so I may be missing something. I don’t know of any national figure promoting a federal vaccine passport.
- Coca Cola and baseball have denounced restrictive voting laws. Now Ant Farmer’s Almanac reports on a similar stand by another, even more universally beloved, icon.
- Advocates for harsh voter laws do bob & weave a bit to dodge the accusation. Keep people from voting? Who, us? Don’t be ridiculous. We just want election integrity. That’s it! No more than that.
Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged takes a close look at the newest argument for restrictive voting: that it’s a really good idea to make it hard for those people to vote. Yup, they’re saying it out loud, in front of God and everybody.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara makes his point with the headline: Statistical Disparities Don’t Proof Discrimination in Voter ID Laws. Proof? Okay, perhaps he was relying on spell-check and posted what he didn’t Nintendo.
Michael is unimpressed with statistics that show voting restrictions pose a disproportionate burden on minority voters. After all, shouldn’t citizens be willing to demonstrate their patriotism by putting a lot of extra effort into exercising their rights?
Besides, just because a restriction happens to put more of a burden on minorities doesn’t prove that the discrimination was intended. It could be mere coincidence. So it really doesn’t count.
- Andy Borowitz is following the ongoing voting rights debate as Coca Cola, Delta, and baseball boycott Georgia. Senator Mitch McConnell urges corporations to follow the good example set by Congressional Republicans and refuse to get involved in actually governing the country.
- nojo observes the growing number of corporations objecting to choke holds on voting and the resulting Republican anger at those companies. How cynical, how opportunistic of these CEOs.
nojo points to marketplace logic. Politicians might succeed in keeping folks from voting. But people who can’t vote can still buy stuff. And paying attention to the consumer is what politicians once did for voters.
- If you would like to cut through competing claims to see what the Georgia law actually says, Scotties Toy Box helps out with a brief overview you can scan, and a few lines of law in between to back up each point. Nice to be able to glance through the dozen or so large headings to get the drift, and look to the normal print for the details. Color highlighted so you won’t miss what relates.
- Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo at Rewire News Group go to free-wheeling podcast with everything we need to know about three new legislative trends: voter suppression, abortion bans, and anti-trans discrimination.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz asks Christians to look to instructions directly from scripture, teachings explicit in our faith, and what we know from the depths of our souls: that voter suppression is not only undemocratic, it is evil.
- Max’s Dad sees a thread going through a series of incidents: the George Floyd murder, one of several mass shootings last week, the Georgia restrictions, and the echo in several other state legislatures. He concludes with an observation about “Cancel Culture”. If the culture is “based on hate, ignorance and meanness”, then “The culture sucks.” I like to think it doesn’t because I hope it isn’t, but that depends largely on the direction in which we move.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life is haunted by images. He describes part of what shocks in photos and videos he has seen documenting the death of George Floyd. I was especially struck by the nonchalant pose of the officer, hands casually pocketed, expression both detached and defiant, showing the crowd the pointedly unruffled ease with which he could effortlessly inflict any deadly force he chose.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit contemplates a pattern, asking what Wilmington in 1898, Tulsa in 1921, and Capitol Hill in 2020 have in common. Anyone who gets it right can clean the erasers while the rest of the class studies.
- News Corpse recounts a Tucker rant with, you know, quotes as Tucker remembers January 6, the day that unfashionable older people wandered weaponless through a government building with dangerous ideas, like that the election was not entirely fair.
And on and on toward Euphemism City.
Was that what we witnessed on our screens?
I’m thinking how Mr. Carlson might have covered other historical events.
Julius Caesar, perhaps illicitly high, stumbling drunkenly into a sharp object as a helpful Roman Senator attempts to intervene, trying to snatch it out of the way.
The Empire of Japan ruthlessly attacked in an FDR speech after they symbolically tossed a few objects to the ground while touring Hawaii.
- So Matt Gaetz has the written support of the women on his congressional staff. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors looks at the letter and notices something odd. It reminds him of someone’s childhood experience.
- At The Onion, a 17-year-old asks her friend what it might mean when a guy you like wants a blanket pardon. No mention of the age or occupation of the guy.
- Most reporters at White House press conferences really focus on discovering facts. But not all.
At The Moderate Voice, David Robertson takes notice of President Biden’s press secretary. When antagonists contrive gotcha questions, Jen Psaki smiles gently, turns each question around, provides well-reasoned answers reporters didn’t quite expect, then goes on to casually slice and dice each would-be adversary. In the friendliest way imaginable.
Have I answered your question?. Ub, duh, yes ma’am.
- driftglass believes he knows what Fox conservatives are dying to say about Prince Philip.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony summarizes a summary of why politics now differs from that of the past. Voters often do not back candidates for their legislative abilities or the solutions they propose to common problems, but rather for the lifestyle brand they affirm. It is an observation I have supported for a while.
- The Republican party is following the set of tactics it began more than a generation ago. It drifts ever further rightward, obstructing any proposal by any Democratic President no matter the degree to which they would otherwise support it. The pattern has semi-worked for them as long as low-to-no information voters kept traveling to familiar party lines. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger looks at recent data. The familiar strategy appears to present a new problem to the GOP. It is the Republican party.
- Not especially significant as election events go, but Wisconsin conservative Doreen Wigderson has a pithy comment about IQ as a Republican candidate hopes people will notice his announcement over Easter weekend.
- Dave Dubya reflects on the intricate intertwining of the Republican party, Donald Trump, and the Q cult into a deadly tapestry.
- Green Eagle looks through Q predictions of the Trump-phant return of our once-upon-a-time president Trump and finds the this-is-it, final, absolute, no-more-postponement return-of-the-real-ruler date.
- In the midst of COVID, gun violence, and Gaetz news, Hackwhackers urges us to pay attention as Vladimir Putin initiates a massive buildup of Russian troops at the Ukraine border.
- Frances Langum brings video and a brief summary as President Biden says we have offered enough prayers about gun violence. It is time for some action.
Biden is taking executive steps on gun safety, and encourages Congress to do its part.
- Poor Piers Morgan! CNN’s Don Lemon makes a remark about a remark about a remark about racism and a television personality “more aggrieved about the possibility that someone might perceive her as racist than the actual act of racism.”
What follows does remind me of how a vigorous defense can itself indicate guilt. Many years ago, I reassured an elderly friend that her missing Social Security check could be quickly replaced and, if it was stolen, the thieves could be easily found and jailed. Her ne’er-do-well husband jumped to his feet, clearly angry. How dare I threaten him with prison!
Tommy Christopher covers the interview as Piers angrily denounces Don Lemon for calling him a racist, when all he did was innocently observe that Megan Markle lies with every breath.
Besides, Piers recalls that he has objected to the recent killing of George Floyd by a police officer. Not only that, but he also objected years ago to the killing of young Trayvon Martin by a vigilante who thought he didn’t belong in a white neighborhood.
Given those credentials, how dare Lemon call Piers a racist!!
(For the record, it seems Don Lemon made no such remark.)
Also for the record, I haven’t accused Piers Morgan of stealing anyone’s Social Security check. I just mentioned that whoever DID steal the check…oh never mind.
- In MadMikesAmerica, Neil Bamforth has opinions about Facebook’s unreasonable standards which, by his estimate, roughly coincided with criticism by and toward Donald Trump.
Neil has “absolutely no idea what Trump did, or didn’t say, via Facebook”.
He has no idea “whatever the hell ‘algorithms’ are” except that they involve “‘key words’ and ‘algorithm’ thingamabobs.”
He says he is “certainly no expert in this but…” he does know Facebook has gone into overdrive.
He knows because he read somewhere that a young lady got banned for a time because one of the faceless algorithms mistook a tube of lipstick for a bullet.
He also knows because a gay man he read about thought he was posting explicit pictures privately to a friend and got banned, losing a bunch of posts and contact information.
AND Neil knows because he himself got bumped for a few months because some automated thingamabob could not see the humor in an innocent joke about how desperate migrants might be caused to drown in the English channel.
Since migrants are famous for causing COVID, Neil wants them banned from the United Kingdom, so Facebook is biased against the right.
- Reductress interviews a White man, one of many, who is now too terrified to walk the streets alone at night in case a stranger calls him a racist.
- Infidel753 suggests that a common Christian metaphor demonstrates that my faith is a blood cult. Sadly, he makes an uncomfortably good case (I hate when that happens). And the point to which he leads is one we ought to embrace.
- In Nan’s Notebook, Nan suggests that many Christians are resistant to independent thought, particularly ideas that may conflict with faith. This makes debate difficult.
It is a suggestion with which I am personally familiar.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil apparently does have religious views, but they are somewhat pessimistic.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce encounters “Jesus plus nothing” Christians, who forego any particular Biblical reference. Their faith is based only on a personal relationship with Christ, not on any nuanced theology. Bruce doesn’t buy it. I wrote in with a thought of my own. (You knew I would, right?)
- PZ Myers goes a little too far in a personal criticism and admits he must work on his sensitivity. Okay, perhaps a bit of satire is included.
- Ulysses S. Grant woke up one morning with a vicious migraine. He forced himself into his daily duties. In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson suggests that General Grant, on the day of a sudden meeting at the village of Appomattox Court House, became the embodiment of what had won the Civil War.
- SilverAppleQueen has writer’s block that keeps her from writing poetry, so she writes a poem about writer’s block.
Well, of course.
- The Journal of Improbable Research points us to a scholarly abstract on how the misplacement and rediscovery of trivial items has profound, but easily overlooked, meaning. Evidently, there is hope for those of us who are perpetually befuddled.
– Podcasts –
Thank you for the cite. I appreciate your open-mindedness.
For Ant Farmer, I think you might have meant to use this link.
Thank you, Infidel.
Making the correction now.
Thanks for citing my poetry.
Are you kidding? I love your poetry!
And I’m not a guy who loves poetry.