Matt Taibbi: Look what you made me do!
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger reads the polls, this time about who voters see as most bipartisan and willing to reach out to make things work. By a substantial margin President Biden comes out ahead of, well, pretty much everyone.
- Imani Gandy welcomes the good news as President Biden takes a step toward abortion rights, keeps his promise, and and excludes the discriminatory Hyde amendment from his proposed budget.
- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson notes what seem to be the final days of Israel’s extreme right-wing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Netanyahu, we should recall, puts match to fuel by encouraging orthodox extremists to attack and force out Palestinians families who have lived for generations in the wrong neighborhoods.
Among US officials traveling to Israel to support Netanyahu in his hour of desperation are three Republican members of the United States Senate. They join to call President Biden weak, presumably for not supporting the soon to be ex-Prime Minister.
I sometimes think back wistfully on those halcyon days when partisanship stopped at the water’s edge.
- Green Eagle has seen a lot of zombie movies. Those living-dead folks just do not stay dead. So Large Green Bird reads, with some skepticism, news accounts of the dethroning of Netanyahu.
- Tommy Christopher chronicles the saga of an Indiana man’s awkward phone conversations with a co-worker who who recently formed a lynch mob to assassinate him.
You thought YOUR employment environment was harsh?
- Mr. Trump sent a mob over to the Capitol Building last January to see that Mr. Pence gets assassinated. Julian Sanchez watches the former Vice President this week describe the disagreement in minimalist terms: they don’t see eye to eye. Julian is amused:
- The Jan 6 insurrection commission gets voted down by a Senate minority. We don’t just learn a lesson about the filibuster. Dave Dubya points to a few things we have had proven to us, the world, God, and everyone about the Republican Party.
- Scotties Toy Box has a few unnerving, entertaining, cartoon type thoughts about Jan 6 rioting, voting rights, and the end of democracy.
- News Corpse covers the strange fit of rage from Mr. Trump as Facebook bans him for 2 years.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors watches as Facebook, having told my once-and-no-more president he can’t post there for a couple of years, suggesting there may be other outlets for him. As in you can always take you business elsewhere. Or perhaps he can start his own blog? Oh wait!
- At The Moderate Voice, Editor-In-Chief Joe Gandelman seems to have little sympathy for the spectacular, and very public, blog failure of Donald Trump, contrasting the not even a month of our once-upon-a-president with the 18 years of The Moderate Voice.
Come on, folks. Are we really gonna kick the guy when he’s down?
Well – – – Hell YEAH!
- Now that our once-upon-a-President has retired from blogging, Reductress has discovered an example for him to follow.
- Been reading about the coming reinstate as head-o-state? Turns out we may have it all wrong. Andy Borowitz reports that Trump has actually predicted that in August he will be reinstated as President of Trump University.
- We know the extraordinarily talented Sarah Cooper from her dead-on hilariously expressive reenactments of famous Trump moments. Now she has melancholy news about our diminished once-was-president:
- Frances Langum looks into a Republican Congressional representative targetted by BLM vandals in a series of incidents that turn out to have been faked.
Reminded me of a couple of similar events in the past, not all of them performed by conservative activists.
- Concerned about disgraced former General Michael Flynn and his calls for a military coup? Turns out he’s not the first. Hackwhackers time travels back 60 years to reveal history’s pre-Flynn Flynn.
- driftglass takes note of the mea culpa by recovering Republican Joe Walsh, an apology that is without the usual mushy caveats. driftglass is somewhat appreciative at the unusual degree of honesty.
- Not that long ago, I wrote about a beloved elderly relative who was distraught about a missing Social Security check. I pointed out that a missing check would be replaced. If it had been stolen, the government had ways to identify the thieves and put them in prison.
Her sticky-fingered husband became furious. How dare I threaten him with prison!!
Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has the video of President Biden talking about violent White supremacists as a national security threat. And she has Tucker Carlson, angry that President Biden would insult white Republican men that way.
Look, I know I’m elderly, and I sometimes miss a step or two. Didn’t Tucker perform a classic self-own?
- Okay, so tennis superstar Naomi Osaka wants to play tennis and, for her own mental health, wants to not face the frequently trivial, occasionally hostile, and always intrusive encounters with press representatives. So she is fined by tennis organizers who will, by God, show her who’s boss. And she walks away from the French Open.
CalicoJack in The Psy of Life defends Osaka from the supercilious likes of Piers Morgan with four quick thoughts mostly about taking mental health issues seriously. Also mentioned is Mr. Morgan’s apparent mental issue with talented Black women whom he seems to regard as too uppity for words.
I do have a thought about Piers Morgan:
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil has the details and the remarkable video as a couple of officials of Memorial Day ceremonies in Hudson, Ohio, cut the microphone of a decorated veteran. Seems they objected as he described how Memorial Day was started right after the Civil War by newly freed slaves as they honored soldiers killed battle.
- You can skip the rightwing distortions. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit explains why Defund the Police! is not just a bad slogan, it is even worse policy.
- Forget Schoolhouse Rock! At The Onion, Congress takes a field trip to Goldman Sachs to learn how laws get made.
- PZ Myers looks at the recent lab-leak stories coming out on the origins of COVID. He finds no supporting evidence, but does notice a couple of parallels with similar stories, stories that turned out to be spectacularly false, from a couple of decades back, including the singular individual who started them, with deadly results.
- SilverAppleQueen seems to have a problem with religious orthodoxy.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce suggests that a central common Christian belief, often called original sin, combined with that of eternal damnation, might not be as child-friendly as suffer the little children to come unto me might indicate.
- Nan’s Notebook has many reasons for abandoning Christianity to embark on her own journey. One apparently is that a 2000 year old story has no relationship to modern existence.
I dunno. If we do allow that some truths transcend time and technology, it would seem to me that we are allowed to follow an ancient belief to which those truths are central.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes cannot quite accept another core tenet of most Christian thought, but does respect its holy writings, along with other inspired books of spiritual wisdom. He especially values one, written at great personal cost, by a woman in France over 700 years ago.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz has a very important message for those who feel they must keep their sexual orientation hidden.
It is a message that I ought to have always given, have not always given, that I will always regret not always having given.
- Infidel753 describes his journey toward vegetarianism and the effect it had on his health. Interesting reflection on the moral issues involved with the routine, mechanized taking of self-aware life.
- John Scalzi at Whatever is currently flush with cash, so he does what any of us would do. He fills a room with musical instruments, some of which are really strange. I like the guitar that looks as if it was specially designed for someone with twelve arms. Or maybe for 6 people stuck in a phone booth. Readers too young to imagine phone booths can just say Okay, boomer and move on.
- The Ant Farmer’s Almanac has the headline as The New York Times investigates how these loathsome people find their way into the Real Estate articles of the New York Times.
- @momwino98 deals with an issue that, no matter how entertaining, I hope my grandkids never present to their parents. It’s a this is what my life has come to sort of moment:
@momwino98 Arguing about 💨….🤦🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️##tiktokmom ##foryourpage ##farts ##sweetjesus
- Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica has an irritating encounter with an officious clerk at a Doctor’s office. Something about violating obscure rules by simply having an appointment, rather than first setting an appointment to set an appointment. Rules being rules, you know.
She would fit well in the US Senate.
- Nojo and Vixen Strangely have become the twin founts of internet wisdom. If you need help emerging from Manchin levels of despondency, Nojo has come up with eight, count-em-8, things to think about instead of the crushing inevitability of our fate.
Wow! I feel better already!
– Podcasts –
Thanks for the mention … AND the visit to my blog. I offered a response.