Ukraine Surprise, Jury Gossip, Train Tragedy, GOP Young Love, Soc Sec

HEY! I miss our pups, okay? (Damn early old age)

And we can’t go without a gratuitous slap at the head Twit:

Then down to business:

  • Vixen Strangely watches Mike Pence fight a subpoena and is impressed by whatever hope motivates the tortured logic he manages to evoke.
     
    Key beginning of the beginning paragraph:
    I really have to hand it to Mike Pence–it is astonishing to me that he has managed to swallow every ounce of pride a human being could have in fealty to Donald Trump. If you sent one goddamn lynch mob after me, my indignant ass would not wait a single day before I’m telling anyone with a camera, a microphone, a pencil what the hell you did in excruciating detail. But that apparently is not the Mike Pence way.
     
  • And this:
     
    They were perceived as a threat to the regime (even babies, apparently). Pol Pot wanted to establish a totally agrarian society with a totally uneducated populace, so he closed schools and exterminated teachers – or anyone else who even appeared scholarly. Some citizens were executed simply because they wore glasses.
     
    The Propaganda Professor visits a beautiful sculpture denoting an ugly bit of history in Cambodia, engravings that honor the victims of the Killing Fields ordered by Pol Pot.
     
    Key paragraph:
    People who perform mass atrocities, whether it’s slaughtering people with gardening tools or gunning down students in school or indulging in ritual group suicide with a poisoned fruit drink, are people who have given their radical beliefs complete control over them. Attacking the Capitol is only two or three steps away from bashing the heads of infants against trees. It’s a matter of degree, not kind. Cambodia is still recovering from what happened here decades ago. How long will it take the U.S. to recover if the MAGAts get their way?
     
  • Disaffected and It Feels So Good explores the irony: Republicans slash rules protecting the public from train accidents involving toxic chemicals and blame Democrats when accidents happen.
     
  • Joy Behar gets slammed for saying that the sickened residential victims of the East Palestine train crash had voted for Trump, so they had it coming.
     
    Tommy Christopher does a little journalism and discovers she never said that.
    Never implied that.
    Never came close.
     
    The honorable critics who apologized appear to number literally in the ONEs.
     
    Yeah! One.
     
  • Scotties Playtime has the reports as Wyoming moves to ban marriage to children under 16. The Republican party is outraged at the proposed limit.
     
    Key meme:
  • CalicoJack is back (Yaaaayy!!) at The Psy of Life with a mention of President Biden’s voodoo-like the ability to get Republicans, on camera in front of God and everybody to behave badly and to renounce their attacks on Social Security.
     
    key sentence:
    During the State of the Union speech, they insisted on booing and cat-calling Biden, which the wily Team Biden had clearly game planned for and “tricked” them into “promising” before God and the nation to not cutting Medicare or Social Security.
     
  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson reviews how President Biden goaded Republicans into renouncing their attacks on Social Security and Medicare.
     
    And Yet:
    This week, Mike Pence apologetically reintroduces the attack. Social Security and Medicare must be slashed as the Good Lord and the Republican Party have always maintained. Otherwise, insolvency.
     
    Historian Richardson examines the long, long Republican history of hostility to both programs.
     
    Key point:
    Reversing 40 years of Republican tax cuts would also address financial shortfalls, but that approach does not fit the Republican narrative that cutting taxes promotes growth and raises revenue.
     
  • Since Republicans are still angry about accusations they want to slash Social Security and Medicare, Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has a modest suggestion:
     

  • Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group take a look at the conservative push to require girls to wear skirts:
     
  • Frances Langum watches a special election Republicans tried to prevent. The Democratic win is unexpectedly huge.
     
    Key begin:
    When Democrats work together, Dems win.
     
    Key headline:
    Not Tired Of Winning: Dem Trounces In NH Special
     
  • Conservative Bret Stephans writes for the New York Times, lamenting how mainstream media provides no voice for him or his fellow conservatives. driftglass, always willing to help, generously provides an extensive list.
     
  • Green Eagle finds the issue on which to join with Marjorie Taylor Greene.
     
  • At News Corpse, Marjorie thinks she has a new way to prevent Democrats from voting.
     
  • The Onion tells us of Presidential candidate Nikki Haley’s panic when someone actually orders a campaign T-shirt.
     
    Key quote:
    I thought it was maybe my husband at first, but I asked him, and he said it wasn’t him—he didn’t even know I was running for president
     
  • It used to be that anti-vax activists were content to spread misinformation. Vaccines would make you dead, or at least magnetic, or less manly, or something. PZ Myers takes notice as a couple of Idaho Republicans propose a law to arrest doctors and nurses who give vaccines to anyone.
     
    Key headline:
    Why not just skip ahead and try them for witchcraft?
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil notes that, as America abandons even the smallest anti-COVID precautions, older citizens are especially expected to die: because Hey! Life is filled with little trade-offs.
     
    Key interesting value:
    Americans do not agree about the duty to protect others.
     
  • YellowDog Granny has a couple of thoughts on the glories of aging.
     
  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger presents David Hogg on one tragic irony involved with marajuana legalization.
     
  • Infidel753 takes a look at the growing practice of substituting words and phrases to bring books up to accepted modern standards, proposing that it is not only wrong, but is a form of cultural vandalism precisely predicted with exactitude decades ago.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen is for trans rights, but argues that what is known as affirmative care is harmful for non-adults, linking to an interview with an outspoken drag queen.
     
    Key sentence:
    When a child insists that they are born in the wrong body, you do NOT agree with them. You tell them that NOBODY is born in the wrong body & they are PERFECT THE WAY THEY ARE.
     
  • Cato’s Julian Sanchez has a thought or two on conservative attacks against Advance Placement studies:
     

  • North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests that we are at a pivot point in American history. He offers a vision of the America worth fighting for.
     
    Key choice:
    It is the place we collectively turn toward back toward our best selves or slide into the abyss of the very worst of who we are capable of being.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony takes a look at the Fox Network’s legal defense against the Mega-Million-Plus lawsuit from Dominion (Nobody takes us seriously: we’re just wild and crazy pretend news) and discovers it has worked for them in court before.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound retired Misfit attorney has some thoughts about Dominion’s amazing Fox hunt.
     
    Key Headline:
    Is Fox News’s Goose Cooked?
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports on the Fox Network’s acquisition of Kevin McCarthy.
     
    Key summary:
    Rupert Murdoch said that he was “delighted” by the purchase of McCarthy and noted that Fox had snapped him up at an attractively low price.
     
  • Michael John Scott is back (Yayyy!) at MadMikesAmerica with three dogs and an entertaining way of telling us about them.
     
  • Dog owners will want to pay attention as da-AL hosts writer Jimmy Aki, who turns out to know a lot about sleep disorders in dogs and what to do about them.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, atheist Bruce, a once-upon-a-time true believer, reveals one of the stranger aspects of the Christianity in which he once pastored. It seems there are no women in heaven.
     
    Key religious logic:
    God, the father is male and Jesus is male. In Heaven, Christians will receive perfect resurrected bodies just like that of Jesus. Thus, everyone in Heaven will be a thirty-three-year-old male. This means, of course, that God promotes and supports Transgenderism for women.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook asks what the world would be like if belief in God had never happened.
     
    Reminds me of an interview with the late wonderful Madalyn Murray O’Hair during which she suggested that, had it not been for religion, mankind would have landed on the moon by 200 AD.
     
  • My long time conservative true friend Darrell Michaels provides a quiz on American demographics (eg. What percentage of the country is transgender?), helpfully provides his readers with the answers, and contrasts those answers with those of a representative sample of Americans.
     
    Key observation:
    Of course these skewed viewpoints are often exacerbated by our media, entertainment, news sources, and even our sports and politics.
     
    Strikes me as about right.
     
  • Clickbait satirist Reductress explains why conspiracy theories are dangerous except this one that makes sense.
     
  • Science fiction author John Scalzi reads an alarming article and wonders if AI is coming after HIS job.
     
  • @whiskeywhistle98 finds joy in a home cure:
    @whiskeywhistle98 #duet with @ortizfamily275 #couples #pee #fyp #foryourpage #tiktokmom #pimple #gross #hilarious #couples #marriage ♬ original sound – @Whiskeywhistle98-


    Gaaaa – Once more: No idea why TikTok goes to autoplay and defaults to zero volume. Try clicking volume, then reload (such a bother)
     

  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a helpful guide by a professor at the University of Washington on how to invite crows into your daily life. A lifelong goal of mine.
     
  • Vincent the elder (I can relate) at A Wayfarer’s Notes has an unlikely romantic dream, to the later amusement of his wife (I can relate).
     

– Podcasts –
 

One thought on “Ukraine Surprise, Jury Gossip, Train Tragedy, GOP Young Love, Soc Sec”

  1. seems like I’ve been hearing a lot of complaints about crappy comments lately – so far hasn’t hit my site – then again, I never look in my spam bin… tx for including me here. I love your format of including key points 🙂

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