Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From The Journal of Improbable Research:
Those who wish to appear irresistible to others can always try sitting in a prestige car, say a Bentley Continental GT, in an attempt to boost their attractiveness. But, according to a 2010 research project conducted at the School of Health Sciences, Centre for Psychology, University of Wales Institute, UK, this strategy might work considerably better for men than for women.
From Blue in the Bluegrass:
A coworker who is a republican and trump voter just commented on a shooting at a Louisville Kroger yesterday, and asked me “what is going on?”
“No comment,” I replied, which he took exactly as I meant it: “we both know goddamn well what’s going on here and who’s to blame.”
From The Saturday Afternoon Post:
As your gnash your teeth in anger and disbelief, here’s a scary one just in time for Halloween. Much has been written about the un-American admiration Donald Trump has for authoritarian leaders and powerful mobsters. From Turkey’s Erdogan to Russia’s Putin to Dutarte in the Philippines, to the apparently murxderous Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, to a number of other dictators throughout history, and by the fact that Trump keeps close by his bedside a number of Adolf Hitler’s speeches, it is little wonder that the president’s priorities are so very misplaced.
From Green Eagle:
Or specifically, those fifteen “tourists” who murdered Mr. Khashoggi. I am labeling this a guess because I have absolutely no evidence to support my conclusion except a lifetime of experience watching people like this.
Mohammed bin Salman obviously never had the slightest thought that he wouldn’t get away with this brazen crime without anyone really giving a damn. Well, things didn’t work out that way; it turns out that to journalists, the death of one journalist is more important than the massacre of thousands of Yemenis or hundreds of thousands of Syrians. So he got himself into a little bit of a jam. What to do now?
From Iron Knee at Political Irony:
A new survey conducted by YouGov and The Economist teases out something that we have long suspected. Trump voters say that men are discriminated against more than gays, women, and ethnic minorities.
According to the result, the percentage of Trump voters who believe that the following groups face “a great deal” or “a fair amount” of discrimination in America today are:
From PZ Myers:
The latest excuse from Saudi Arabia for the death of Jamal Khashoggi is that he started it — he started a fist fight with a team of 15 professional killers, and they had to defend themselves by hacking him apart with a bonesaw. Our president* might well be willing to accept that story, but it’s out of character for Khashoggi and not compatible with the intent of Mohammed bin Salman and the ruling class of Saudi Arabia.
The murder is nothing new: the regime has been vicious and repressive for a long time, and this is just one case that has erupted into the public eye — it is actually a major error by Mohammed bin Salman, who has been trying to misrepresent himself as a progressive reformer. He’s not. He’s just another criminal thug who has been handed vast sums of money and excessive power by an archaic political system. We’ve seen all the warning signs that he was not a power for reform. Remember Raif Badawi?
From Rolling stone:
Brian Kemp, Georgia Secretary of State and the Republican nominee for Georgia governor, expressed at a ticketed campaign event that his Democratic opponent Stacey Abrams’ voter turnout operation “continues to concern us, especially if everybody uses and exercises their right to vote,” according to audio obtained by Rolling Stone.
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
Dear Non-White Evangelicals,
I’ve been a pastor in the local church for the past 24 years, much of that in megachurches in the Bible Belt. I’ve been shoulder to shoulder in ministry and in life with white Evangelicals, I’ve sat in Bible studies with them, served alongside them in staff meetings, attended hundreds of pastoral gatherings and heard how they think and what drives them.
I need you to understand something:
Conservative white Evangelicals need to be stopped.
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
People should not be mocked or treated disrespectfully for peacefully practicing their private religious beliefs, even though even offensive comments are expressions of free speech. And certainly no peaceful person should be subject to physical threats or intimidation, which should be subject to criminal prosecution. Freedom of conscience, religious or secular, is an unalienable right.
But I don’t think religious intolerance equates to racism. Race is not a matter of choice. Religion is. A person’s ideas, including religious ideas, are chosen and thus legitimately open to scrutiny and criticism. Granted, mocking a person for their attire is childish and ignorant, and the 101.5 hosts should be brushed off as such.
But mocking a person for their religious beliefs is not the same as racism. I get mocked regularly for my rejection of climate catastrophism and my belief that fossil fuels are a net benefit to man’s life: I get called a “denier”–an equation to Holocaust denial. But that is not the same as when, as a child, I witnessed my father being called a “Mafia gangster” simply because of his Italian descent. You can rationally defend your chosen beliefs from attack. How does one defend against attacks based on attributes for which one has no choice about?
Being called “turban man” is no different in principle to being called “climate” or “science denier.” Such smearing should be called out. But they do not sink to the level or evil of racism. They are not racist.
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
If there is a Christian apologetics argument that irritates the heaven out of me, it is the God of the gaps argument. Can’t explain something? God. Have something happen in your life for which there seems to be no rational explanation? God. Any place you have unanswered questions, you will find Evangelicals suggesting “God did it.”
Earlier this year, two Patrick Henry High School students, ages fourteen and seventeen, were killed in a tragic automobile accident. The Defiance Crescent-News reported at the time:
Two Henry County brothers were killed Wednesday morning when their vehicle became submerged in a Wood County creek just west of here.
Killed were Xavier Wensink, 17, and his passenger, Aidan Wensink, 14, both of Deshler. They were students at Patrick Henry Local Schools.