Author: Raymond

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

On one hand, the fact that some media frenzies have little or no long-term effects is important and accurate, and some presidents go four or even eight years without learning not to overreact to whatever minor flap people are obsessed with at the moment. One of Barack Obama’s enormous strengths as a politician was that he was aware of that early on, and while his administration didn’t always act accordingly, overall it was a real plus for him.

But, no, it’s certainly not true that “nothing matters.”

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From nojo at Stinque:

In the Declaration, right after the familiar bit about unalienable rights, there’s a passage with more than a little relevance to our travails some 240 years later:

“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”

This provides a simple, enduring definition of what qualifies as a legitimate government: Lacking the consent of its citizens, no government can claim to rule. Anything less leads to despotism.

The United States is, by the definition of its founders, an illegitimate, despotic government.

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From Max’s Dad:

But now the Q people are showing up as the ones who have gotten to the yeah he’s a nut stage drop off. Pretty soon the Q people will get the attention of this sick cult leader and he will aim to please. The Q people, a truly sick and demented bunch of conspiracy minded nitwits, are not necessarily growing in number, but they are getting bolder. Much like the white people who think now that a Racist in Chief is in charge, they have the right to call other people the N bomb, harass people with hijabs, tell anyone not white to go back where they came from, call the cops on anyone they dont like being in their space, beat up the gays, and just be plain assholes like him, the Q bunch is out there. With their stupid Q signs and their 5 XL t shirts they are now permeating the Traitor in Chief’s “rallies”.

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From Anthony Stahelski at The Moderate Voice:

The United States, which is technically still at war with North Korea, sees the country as a threat to South Korea, Japan, the East Asia region, and now to the United States itself. Through twelve American presidential administrations behavior modification has been our fundamental North Korean strategy. Behavior modification is a simple tool for guiding behavior: if people do something you like, you reward them; if they do something you don’t like, you punish them. Behavior modification can work on pets, children and employees, but, as implemented by American policy makers, it has not worked on the Kims.

Why not? The original Kim gained power through ruthlessness, and the latter Kims maintain power through fear. If the current Kim actually made the concessions required to gain rewards, he will be perceived as weak, which will diminish people’s fear and therefore Kim’s power. American presidents have failed to understand that behavior modification only works if the individual whose behavior one wishes to modify can actually be controlled by the rewards and punishments used. The Kims have proven to be uncontrollable. They have lied to receive the rewards (food and other economic aid) and gotten away with it, and our sanctions are not perceived as punishments because the Kims do not care about the suffering of their people, plus they always find ways to get around the sanctions. Regime punishment, not population punishment, is necessary and that would likely require a military intervention. No President, including Donald Trump, has been willing to seriously consider that option.

So what else can we do?

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From Green Eagle:

Donald Trump: “We’re on track to hit the highest annual average growth rate in over 13 years and I will say this right now, and I’ll say it strongly.”

A lie, of course, from the man who has told thousands of them in the last two years.. NBC news has this reply:

“President Barack Obama, whose first election coincided with a debilitating economic collapse, had four quarters of higher growth than this during his presidency. It would tie for the fifth strongest quarter under President George W. Bush and the 13th strongest quarter under President Bill Clinton.”

If you go online, you find various accounts, for some reason, of what the quarterly growth rate has been the last decade.

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From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

The Trump administration says people would drive more and be exposed to increased risk if their cars get better gas mileage, an argument intended to justify freezing Obama-era toughening of fuel standards. Transportation experts dispute the arguments, contained in a draft of the administration’s proposals prepared this summer, excerpts of which were obtained by The Associated Press.

By that logic, they might as well mandate that cars weigh a minimum of three tons. That way, the cars would get shitty mileage and people would take mass transit.

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From Professor PZ Myers:

This seems like a good loophole: he’s not really our president, he’s a president who leaked through from a parallel universe. For instance, he thinks we’ve got invisible airplanes.

Amazing job, and amazing job. So amazing that we’re ordering hundreds of millions of dollars of new airplanes for the Air Force, especially the F-35. Do you like the F-35? I said how does it do it in fights, and how do they do in fights with the F-35. He says we do very well, you can’t see it. Literally you can’t see. It’s hard to fight a plane you can’t see right? But that’s an expensive plane you can’t see. And as you probably heard we cut the price very substantially, something other administrations would never have done, that I can tell you.”

He repeated this claim several times!

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

The chart above shows the U.S. treasury securities held by Russia from 2011 through May of 2018. Note the sharp drop on the right side of the chart. Russia has sold off most of their holdings recently — going from $96.1 billion to only $14.9 billion.

That sell off has mystified investors, since the interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities is still high, and Trump’s recent overtures to Putin would seem to make those investments even better than in the past.

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From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Dear Readers,

It’s become a trite saying on the right, but Andrew Breitbart must be rolling over in his grave when he sees what has happened to the website that bears his name. Breitbart News has all the credibility of the Weekly World News, and it’s not nearly as entertaining.

The latest target of Breitbart is state Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield), a Republican candidate for U.S. Senate. Vukmir is running in the Republican primary against Kevin Nicholson who is the second coming of Hans Delbrück, according to Breitbart.

Designated Breitbart hitman Matthew Boyle attacked Vukmir last week for trying to hide the fact that she drives a Toyota. He actually accused Vukmir of leaving the trunk open on her car in a commercial to hide the Toyota logo, even though nobody at Breitbart has explained how else Vukmir was supposed to get the groceries out of the trunk to hand to the “union boss.” I didn’t like the commercial either, but that’s at the level of dope-smoking-induced paranoia.

Now Breitbart is attacking Vukmir for being Never Trump. Hey Breitbart, I was there in 2016. I remember Never Trump. I was Never Trump. Vukmir was not Never Trump, and she isn’t Never Trump now.

The attack on Vukmir is largely based upon how she has a few people in her campaign that were Never Trump, or at least Trump critics, in 2016.

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From former pastor Bruce Gerencser:

Many people exposed to Fundamentalist Christianity abandon it in their teenage years or when they go off to college. Others, such as myself and many of the readers of this blog, spent decades dutifully and faithfully serving the Christian God. I was part of the Christian church for fifty years, and I pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five of those years. Every crevice of my mind was saturated with Evangelical belief. The Bible said it is a fearful thing to fall under the hands of the living God, and I certainly feared God. In times of feeling guilt over my “sins” I felt that God was just around the corner waiting to mete out his wrath upon my life and my family. God lurked in the shadows, ready, able, and willing to chastise me for my sins. I may have been saved, but there were days I felt as if I was dangling over the pit of hell, and the only thing that kept me from falling in was God’s long-suffering patience.

It should come no surprise then, that people who grow up this way are indoctrinated and conditioned in such a manner that they have a deep reverence and fear of God. He was touted as the creator of all things who holds the entire universe in the palm of his hand. God was not one to be messed with. Yet, despite all of this, many of us left Christianity and embraced atheism, agnosticism, humanism, or some other non-Christian religion. We are so glad to be free from the bondage and chains of our Christian past.

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