Apathy

found online by Raymond

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

I’m not sure that it is a lack of empathy or if it is a lack of imagination.

They don’t worry about mass shootings in the school, or their kid being shot for the crime of being black with Skittles, or their daughters being denied opportunities because, well, women might decide to have a family someday, or worse: asking for it because they are wearing fashionable clothes.

They cannot imagine getting the phone call to ID the body in the morgue.

It doesn’t impact them. Until it does.

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Trump Leaked Classified Tactical Intel On Baghdadi Raid

found online by Raymond

 

Posing Two Hours Later (Everyone Scowl on Three)

From Frances Langum:

When will this end?

Once again, blabbermouth Don’s piehole spews out classified tactical information that the US Military would prefer was not broadcast on cable news worldwide.

Republicans in the US Senate are complicit in allowing this breaching of both our national security and safety of our troops to continue.

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Trump Hears a Crowd … And Hates It
Pundits Have … Opinions

found online by Raymond

 

Grin Fades as Crowd Boos and Chants

From driftglass:

Mika Hears a Who … And Hates It

After four years of bigots and imbeciles bellowing their paranoia and derangement at carefully staged Trump Hate Rallies being aired live on teevee, the general public got a chance to spontaneously let the Mad Republican Tyrant know that they disapproved of his mad Republican tyranny…

…using the mad Republican tyrant’s own words…

…taken from the mad Republican tyrant’s own Hate Rallies.

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HBO Does Good – Watchmen

found online by Raymond

 

Kirk-Holden War

From PZ Myers:

Watchmen

I had never heard of the Kirk-Holden War before. This was a real war in North Carolina, in which the Ku Klux Klan declared war against the state, the army was called in, and the KKK won, dictating terms to the government…terms that included allowing no Northern intervention in how they “regulated” elections, where “regulation” included murdering black elected officials. One outcome of that kind of action was that the victors celebrated by erecting Confederate monuments all over the place. Our country supported the oppression of a democratic majority! It still is.

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Fox News: Shaping the Reality of Fools

found online by Raymond

 

Fox: Shaping Reality

From Mark D. Bittner at MadMikesAmerica:

Karl Rove warned us:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will —we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…”

I would contend that Fox News helps to shape that reality of fools.

Never before have we seen that, and any Patriot SHOULD be stunned. That is straight out of Mein Kampf and Goebbels’ famous speech:

“We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem… We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.”

These are the times in which we need to recognize the inherent sense of urgency that is now upon us.

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MAGA Violence, Colorado Walled, Lynch, Corruption, Barr, Biden Lips

MAGA Pepper Spray
  • How many MAGA folks will turn violent if provoked by that with which they violently disagree? M. Bouffant at Web of Evil notes a pepper spray attack on some non-violent anti-Trump protestors (videos included), followed by the arrest of the attacker, and sees a sign of more violent things to come when Trump gets tossed.
     
  • After 7 months or so, Margaret and Helen are finally back. YAY!
    Helen talks about Trump’s wall in Colorado right on the border with Mexico.
     
    Uh…
    HaHaHa. He was just joking, really he was.
     
    She suggests that something is seriously wrong with someone who ties himself and his administration into pretzel shaped knots because he can’t ever, ever be wrong, even about little mistakes that can’t possibly be m-m-m-mistakes. Because … Trump.
     
  • Laurie Baron at The Moderate Voice explains to my President, I suspect with exaggerated care, the difference between impeachment and lynching.
     
  • It’s all in the headline as Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post manages a bit of pity for those trying to defend Trump lies. Or maybe the lack of content after the sympathetic headline is the message. Symbolism can be hard.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony brings us Tom the Dancing Bug to explain the absurdity of current Trump defenses and why Trump still doesn’t seem worried.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors quotes my president on Rudy (“He looks for corruption wherever he goes”) and discerns a bit of irony.
     
  • Let’s see. GOP Congressional Reps object because Impeachment Proceedings are following unfair procedures, including conducting investigatory hearings in private. The rules were established in 2015 by … uh … the Republican controlled Congress. News Corpse suggests a bit of hypocrisy as Trump Attorney General Barr conducts a baseless investigation of FBI investigators of 2016 Russia interference. Seems Barr’s Russia probe is being done entirely in secret.
     
  • Green Eagle goes to the history books (which, for me, would largely be memory) to count Attorneys General in Republican and Democratic administrations and which retired with reputations intact and which did not.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica Michael John Scott likes Bernie Sanders. Might even support him. One drawback: Bernie’s reckless minions who helped serve up Trump. Michael didn’t exactly say Bernie Bros are jerks, so I suppose there may yet be peace in the valley.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us a couple of lip-reading videos with Joe Biden as the subject, both videos hilarious. Other campaign targets are promised.
     
  • Lots of retractions. So, okay, turns out Hillary didn’t say, or imply, that Tulsi is a Russian asset, but rather that she is being groomed by the GOP for a third party. The always insightful Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, insightfully makes an insightful observation. Tulsi pretty much underscores the underlying under lying by making Trumpy talking points on, of all places, Fox. Okay, so maybe shes a groomee after all. Still I do kind of wish Hillary would start of new tradition that losing presidential candidates are best not heard or seen or thought about. Like …uh… Jill Stein. Did I mention insightful?
     
  • Julian Sanchez of Cato Institution is interviewed about 2020 election security in a posted podcast.
     
  • Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit briefly explains the how the crisis in higher education spreads to a similar crisis in military recruitment. Trump/Miller immigration policy makes both crises close to hopeless.
     
  • In about 5 seconds, Scotties Toy Box explains what the issue of deficit spending is really about.
     
  • driftglass briefly recites the story of how upstart Einstein with his weird theories was vindicated and ties it to media history of false equivalence. Balance at the expense of documented truth.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research finds a documentary about ongoing research into talent and meritocracy. Apparently, luck has more to do with it than is generally acknowledged. One study provides mathematical proof that organizations would be more efficient if promotions were awarded randomly.

Beware of Silly Season Campaign Reporting

found online by Raymond

 

No They Won’t

From Jonathan Bernstein:

There’s not much happening in the 2020 race at the moment. That’s when reporters start chasing dubious stories.

We’ve apparently reached the silly season of nomination politics. That’s not surprising. There is, after all, very little happening on the surface at the moment. The basic stories about most of the top candidates have been told. And there hasn’t been much movement either in the polls or in endorsements for weeks. Even the latest round of campaign-finance reports was fairly dull. As Nate Silver points out, this is exactly the formula that gets reporters chasing new — and potentially dubious — stories.

And so we get late speculation about new candidates jumping into the race, fueled by quotes from big donors who aren’t thrilled with the current lineup.

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New Quinnipiac Poll Numbers Are Terrible For Trump

found online by Raymond

 

Quinnipiac University Poll (Question 33)

From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Trump continues to be very unpopular. These are some of the worst numbers he has had. By a 30 point margin, voters oppose his betrayal of the Kurds. By a 19 point margin, voters think he has weakened the U.S. position in the world. By a 21 point margin, voters believe he has made the world less safe. By a 26 point margin, voters believe he was pursuing his personal interests in Ukraine, By a 12 point margin voters approve of the House impeachment inquiry. By a 2 point margin, voters believe he should be removed from office. And by a 20 point margin, voters think he is not doing a good job.

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Recaptured

found online by Raymond

 

ISIS families escape

From Tommy Christopher:

Reporter Confronts Trump Over Escaped ISIS Fighters Seconds After He Claims They’re ‘Largely’ Recaptured

On Wednesday afternoon, Trump spoke for about 15 minutes to announce a ceasefire agreement in Syria between the Kurds and the government of Turkey. During those remarks, Trump claimed that the ISIS fighters who escaped after Trump’s snap decision to abandon the Kurds have “been largely recaptured.”

“There were a few that got out, a small number, relatively speaking, and they’ve been largely recaptured,” Trump said.

But as he exited, a reporter confronted Trump, saying “Mr President, you said that the ISIS fighters who escaped have been recaptured, but today your top envoy said that’s not true, that they don’t know where they are. Do you have a comment?”

Trump ignored the question as he strode from the room.

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What do Evangelicals Consider “Moral Failing?”

found online by Raymond

 

Evangelical Morality

From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Evangelicals believe the Bible is the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God. Sin is transgression of the Law of God (as found within the pages of the Bible). Thus, you would think that Evangelicals would be diligent in keeping the more than 700 laws, commands, precepts, and teachings found in the Old and New Testaments. If the Bible is what Evangelicals say it is, wouldn’t it stand to reason that these followers of Jesus would commit themselves to studying, understanding, and practicing ALL that the Bible teaches — even the hard things? Yet, we know that Evangelicals don’t live differently from the unwashed, uncircumcised Philistines of the world. Outside of what they do with their time on Sunday mornings, there’s little difference between saints and sinners.

Every Evangelical is what I call a Buffet Christian®. Evangelicals, clean plate in hand, walk down the Bible buffet line, picking and choosing what to believe and practice, ignoring the rest. No one obeys all the teachings of the Bible. I don’t know of one Christian who even believes and practices the red words in the Bible (words attributed to Jesus) or Jesus’ most famous sermon, the Sermon on the Mount. Years ago, I told the church I was pastoring, that Christianity would be better served if Christians shut their mouths and spent the next five years putting the Sermon on the Mount into practice. Of course, neither I nor the people I pastored listened to what I was saying. We had a culture war to fight. Jesus would just have to wait until we conquered the United States for God.

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