FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Tommy Christopher:

John Oliver skinned alive Jay Leno‘s recent call for “civility” in late-night comedy by playing a string of revolting Monica Lewinsky jokes, for which Oliver says Leno has never apologized.

On Sunday night’s edition of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, Oliver tackled the issue of online shaming, and presented Lewinsky as patient zero in the phenomenon of people being pulled out of their private lives, and into a life-ruining public maelstrom.

Along the way, Oliver copped to his own participation in the decades-long pile on, but singled out former Tonight Show host Jay Leno as someone who trampled on Lewinsky and never apologized for it.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

I do not know what to do other than stand with Muslims in NZ in your dignity, sit with you in your grief, hold you in my thoughts, and fight against bigotry against you, and hope that future bigotry against you can be averted. I have hardly the words nor the capacity for prayers, but I have all the sympathy for your losses and hopes for the healing of your community.

The criminals who wronged you are part of a philosophy that wrongs us all. I know we must stand together as siblings in this world to get by, and that to do harm to any of my siblings diminishes me by denying me seeing the fulfillment of their lives’ promises, the knowledge of their joys and sorrows, the reality of their continued existence–because this world includes us all, and their promise could very well intersect with my own life. I know lights have gone out in your community, and offer what light I have–you are not alone, and the horror of the bigotry that damaged your world is a horror I share. The enormity of this act will remain in our memory along with the memories of these blameless victims. We are one in suffering.

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From The Onion:

Since its implementation in 1979, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has served as the U.S. government’s main response team to natural disasters, but often faces criticism for efforts perceived as insufficient. The Onion takes a step-by-step look at how FEMA responds to disasters.

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• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from WENY News in Elmira, NY, as President Trump holds a photo-op with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and manages to define his entire presidency in 16 minutes.
   
• After the tornado outbreak, my President signs the covers of Bibles in Alabama as if he authored them. Andy Borowitz explores the theological event that follows as God offers to replace the Bibles signed by Trump.
   
• Tommy Christopher reports on the text of an early message from White House folks to Michael Cohen. They now say it was meant only as reassurance that Trump wasn’t mad at him. I dunno. I think Tommy’s right. Message sounds a lot like the promise of a pardon.
   
• Vixen Strangely takes all the Manafort pleadings, judgments, sentencing, and state level indictments and explains, in her clear careful way, what it all means, what it all signals.
   
• The Onion tells us of a new campaign pledge to build a 2,500 mile intercontinental riverwalk.
   
• Columnist Max Boot wants to retire the term “neocon.” driftglass is good with that as long as we come up with a good substitute. He has a suggestion.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson knows what is in our hearts better than do we. As gun safety advocates, we are not at all interested in gun safety. In fairness I have projected the same sort of insight onto gun owners
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass is angry at discovering that an embryo, not yet developed into a fetus, can sue a 16 year old girl for wrongful death.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, one time pastor, current atheist Bruce carefully explains to evangelicals why threatening atheists with hell never works. Ever.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Neil Bamforth looks into the case of a young woman who, at age 15, ran away to join ISIS, then came back. Neil suggests she may be the victim of mob mentality.
   
• How will Michael Jackson be remembered? At The Moderate Voice, Rachel Hope of the University of Victoria seeks an answer in the legacy of a famous author who dominated much of the first half of the 20th century
   
• Professor PZ Myers posts as poignant a farewell as I have seen for a while. He forever misses his little sister who died as a child.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil finds an interesting instagram ad on a city light pole.
   

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

I was disappointed to read Paul Mulshine’s column advocating a change in the law allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with private drug makers (The Medicare drug issue: ‘Conservatives’ who don’t want to bargain for better prices? No way). He criticized other conservatives for labeling such “bargaining” as price controls. But that is precisely what this would be–back-door price controls.

Mulshine did make the valid point that America doesn’t really have a functioning free market in drugs, and did advocate for free market reforms:

The genuinely conservative position on Medicare is to call for the entire program to be privatized so private insurance companies can make whatever deals they want with the drug companies.

But if we’re stuck subsidizing those drugs, the very least we can demand is that the government pay the lowest price possible to the drug companies.

It’s the “But if we’re stuck” phrase that stuck in my craw.

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From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

A Solid Reason to Vote Democratic in the 2020 Election

The measly 47 month sentence given by Judge Ellis is a mockery of justice – period. It reinforces the fact that there is a separate, more lenient, form of justice for the wealthy and a more stringent one for those who are poor, workers, or are minorities. “Arch-conservative” is a term for Ellis that is not being bandied about carelessly by this blogger alone: none other than the conservative Forbes magazine has referred to this most un-just judge as such.

Republicans have long decried the supposed evils of what they term as “activist” (LIBERAL) judges, who have sided against monied, conservative interests in favor of the poor, or minorities, or everyday workers who are not business-owners or professionals. For many decades, they have insisted on the appointment of judges at all levels who fit their more conservative, “strict constructionist” pattern of legal interpretation. Since the presidency of the criminal Richard Nixon, they have made certain to appoint only those who profess to be “conservatives” as judges – and the horrible consequences of this pattern emerged with the undeniably light sentence given Paul Manafort.

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From Mock Paper Scissors:

Giving It The Ol’ College Lie

We’ve long said that the one thing that John Edwards got right was that there are two Americas, and I gotta tell you, the whole notion of meritocracy just got blown out of the water. America is about money and power. Our great wealth inequality problem has not been laid so bare —in public—in a long time.

The fact that you can get into Stanford and Yale based on sailing prowess is why giving the finger is the only response to any article complaining about affirmative action.

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From Frances Langum:

Everybody knew Manafort’s attorney Kevin Downing was going to go before the microphones and lie about “no collusion.” This time truth-tellers were ready for him.

But Downing is speaking directly to Trump and hoping for a pardon for his client, so he says what Trump wants to hear and what Trump will repeat.

Kudos to the volume-blessed protestor who interrupted Downing’s microphone schtick with a nice loud “LIAR! THAT’S NOT WHAT SHE SAID.”

“That’s not what she said” then becomes the story, rather than the lies of a mouthpiece for a criminal. More like this please.

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