9/11, COVID, Trump, GOP, Biden, Both Sides, Nazi Spencer, Religion, Dance

Still Recovering, Always Remembering     [Image from Jesse Mills on Unsplash]
  • At The Moderate Voice, Dorian de Wind remembers the attack 20 years ago today, recalls the national sense of unity that followed, and wonders if we can achieve it again.
     
  • About 9/11 and national unity. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger reminds us that the unity did not extend to Muslims or Arab-Americans, against whom hate crimes rose sharply.
     
  • In Hackwhackers, we are asked to remember the victims whose lives were taken, and the heroes who put their own lives at risk. We are also asked to consider the horrible miscalculations, the blunders and costs in the 20 years since.
     
  • Cato Institution’s Julian Sanchez goes to C-SPAN to talk about the 9/11 attacks, the anti-terrorist programs that followed, and how they evolved into potential threats to civil liberties. As usual, Mr. Sanchez carefully restricts his language to fit the available evidence. More analyst than advocate.
     
  • My longtime friend Unabashedly American Darrell Michaels briefly remembers 9/11 and the heroic rallying of America accomplished by President George W. Bush. Briefly.
     
    He then goes into hyper-partisan mode. It is “unquestionable” that President Joe Biden intended to capitalize on the anniversary to boast about ending the war in Afghanistan. It is a matter of conjecture, says my friend, as to why he changed his mind about that.
     
    He winds up with what a terrible president Biden turned out to be.
     
    Pretty much grist for the mill in contemporary conservative thought, with a bit of additional creativity: Darrell knows in his heart, and to a moral certainty, the President’s unstated intent and, since the President does not behave as Darrell expects, Darrell produces a reason Biden changed his mind.
     
  • Tommy Christopher covers the 9/11 statement by former president Donald Trump that was minimally devoted to those who lost their lives 20 years ago and to the rescuers who risked theirs at the time. Instead, he used his address to attack Joe Biden. Because it’s all about his resentments
     
  • SilverAppleQueen remembers her roof top witness, as she watched the towers burn.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson reacts to President Biden’s version of a vaccination/testing mandate:
     

  • John Scalzi at Whatever suggests that, had any other Republican been President last year, the party might not have become the party of death, pushing to bury, in cemetaries around the country, a substantial fraction of itself.
     

  • I’ve seen this on Twitter. Rachel Maddow reported that patients overdosing on ivermectin were backing up rural hospitals in Oklahoma. She linked to a story by a news station in Oklahoma. A rural doctor was their main source.
     
    So far so good.
     
    A hospital in which that doctor occasionally treats patients released a statement saying that they were not experiencing that problem.
     
    So conservatives have been attacking Maddow for spreading a false story.
     
    Well…
     
    News Corpse checked into it a bit. For example, actually reading the story. Turns out the doctor was not talking about that one hospital, and that the the story was true and the doctor was accurate.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony has the narrative and the video as a father at a school district board meeting finds an unusually direct way to illustrate the need for masks. Accent on unusual.
     
  • The premise that both sides are at fault often seems like an irresistable part of human nature. And Jake Tapper at CNN seems disinclined to offer any resistence at all. Hardcore anti-vaxxers, he says, might go along with vaccinated immunity to the dangers of COVID if the rest of us are just more understanding. Joe Biden, expressing the growing impatience with weak links in the pandemic fight, is making a big mistake, in Mr. Tapper’s judgment. He is too much of a scold. Frances Langum is impatient with the approach that begins with the unexamined both-sides premise, and finds lots and lots of support in Twitter.
     
  • Conservative Mona Charen is unimpressed with Donald Trump. But Biden isn’t nice enough. driftglass is unimpressed with Mona Charen’s less than compelling case that President Biden ought to pander to people like… conservatives like …well… like herself.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports the Fox News accusation that President Biden is blatantly using the federal government to improve the country. Increasing life expectency is intrusive. How long a person lives is a personal choice.
     
  • We hear occasionally well reasoned arguments that Donald Trump has been a symptom, not a cause, of xenophobic cruelty in America. North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz reviews recent incidents and sees a Trump effect that validates and encourages the worst impulses in our country.
     
  • The Palmer Report watches Trump rallies shrink, and popularity polls slope downward, and makes a bold prediction about a change of residence.
     
  • Seems only fair. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit semi-celebrates as Trumpist lawyers trying out in court transparently bogus arguments against the 2020 election not only lost every attempt, but now must pay court costs and legal fees of both sides.
     
  • So should we ever rejoice in the misfortunes of another? PZ Myers helps us answer that with the sad tale of all the unexpected hardships experienced by white supremecist Richard Spencer.
     
  • Dave Dubya asks us to consider the foaming-at-the-mouth violent danger posed by the same believers of the big lie that Trump won last year. Law enforcement is paying attention to the signals and gearing up for violence next weekend.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life sees four pathologies, combined characteristics, having taken over the Republican Party.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson takes a look at the chances for any movement in the Senate for protecting the right to vote, a right that is under serious assault at the state level.
     
  • Nojo takes a look at new Texas anti-abortion law. Since it is designed not to involve government enforcement, it dodges Supreme Court review for the moment. It is, says Nojo, enforcement by anyone with a grudge, and resembles a form of government we thought we had defeated.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist takes a look at new Texas anti-abortion law from a Biblical perspective. Well, sort of.
     
  • At The Onion an inmate in Texas is granted a parole after a court determines the release poses no threat to the prison’s bottom line.
     
  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara reads an article based on what experts say about climate change and explains that it is all propaganda. After all, we’re all alive and nothing is going wrong around us. Besides weather always changes. Nothing to see here.
     
    Climate has always posed a problem for rigid libertarians. Free market economic theory is based on pretty much automatically rewarding productive good. If something bad is not penalized, the benefit of an unregulated economy falls apart.
     
    Regulation against harm is the obvious answer. But this is anathema to libertarians. So denial of the obvious is their only path.
     
  • If guns are outlawed, only outlaws … you know the rest. Sex education encourages kids to have sex. The country has to be militarily aggressive to protect Americans. Religion makes adherents more moral.
     
    I suppose I was in high school – it was so long ago I do not recall – that I learn that a priori reasoning is not reasoning at all. It simply assumes that something is true because we simply know it must be true.
     
    The Propaganda Professor dissects, then dissects again, assumptions that sound okay but don’t stand up to reality.
     
  • We all remember Sandy Hook, right? A nut who borrowed his mom’s AR-15 semi-automatic rifle walked into an elementary classroom, shot and killed 20 little kids as they sat at their desks. Also killed 4 adults. Parents have been suing gun manufacturers for producing a weapon whose only apparent purpose is to kill large numbers of people, and for marketing those weapons as the ideal way to go after your enemies. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged brings us news that one defendant, Remington Arms, has subpoenaed the academic, attendance and disciplinary records of some of the little kids.
     
    Really?
     
    Yeah, really. To what purpose? That the kids had it coming?
     
    My speculation, completely without evidence, is that they just might want to make the courtroom experience for the parents as painful as humanly possible. Maybe soften them up for a minimal cash settlement to avoid anymore legal suffering.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil listens to a sermon of sorts. Seems Jesus hates liberals and democracy itself. Christians have a sacred duty to weed out both.
     
  • Infidel753 sees the fundamental difference between religion and science is essentially the difference in endless evangelism based on certainty vs endless self-challenge in search of evidence.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a message from an evangelical angry at threats atheist Bruce has made generates a thorough search for any correspondence Bruce may have had. What impresses me is the amount of time and the degree of concern Bruce exhibits.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors finds video of creative interpretive dance as a human on the left mimics various foods and other kitchen objects on the right mostly crushed by what I take to be an orange compressor. Funny as hell.
     
  • The Reductress teaches readers how to date men even though their life their love and lady is the sea.
     
  • @momwino98 reacts to something we don’t see everyday:
     

    @momwino98

    ##stitch with @burgbearwatch ##wildlife ##mrbear ##nope ##strolling ##tiktokmom ##foryourpage

    ♬ original sound – @Momwino98


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