Author: Raymond

 
From Tommy Christopher:

As Trump headed to Singapore for high-stakes nuclear diplomacy with dictator Kim Jong Un, the rest of the world pointed and laughed at Trump’s childish performance at the G-7 meeting.

Trump ducked out of the summit early on Saturday after lobbying hard on behalf of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin and continuing to insult our allies and trading partners at a brief photo op for reporters.

Then, after getting wind that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had gently restated Canadian trade policy to reporters, Trump melted down on Twitter, and reneged on his commitment to sign the G-7 communique. Trump’s behavior earned him mockery of varying intensity from political figures around the world.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Hyles taught pastors how to handle accusations and conflict in their churches. One line that stood out — I heard Hyles say it several times was If You Didn’t See It, It Didn’t Happen. Hyles often talked about gossip and false allegations, telling pastors that they should teach congregants not to believe such things unless they saw them for themselves. Hyles had Biblical support for his approach:

Rebuke not an elder, but intreat him as a father … Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine. For the scripture saith, thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward. Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. (1 Timothy 5:1, 17-19)

Elders (pastors), according to the Apostle Paul, are to be considered worthy of double honor and revered as fathers are. Accusations leveled against pastors were to be rejected unless they could be confirmed by two or three eye-witnesses. Thus, if a woman says the pastor raped her, the church was to reject her allegations unless two or three people saw their pastor rape the woman. In other words, if you didn’t see it, it didn’t happen.

Since most church sex crimes involving pastors, youth directors, missionaries, deacons, church bus drivers, and Sunday school teachers take place in secret without others seeing the abominable behavior, this means, according to Jack Hyles, that allegations of sexual misconduct should be rejected out of hand. No eye witnesses? No crime. Welcome to the Jack Hyles Rule®.

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From Frances Langum:

As you may know I keep track of mentions of “Trumpism” in the media. I do so in part because often, “Trumpism” is word indicating the speaker is building a lifeboat for Republicans to float away as Donald Trump goes down.

Here at my house we have a full-time project known as “Burn the Lifeboats.”

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Hey! Michigan must feel left out! What with Washington’s Republicans having elected a White Supremacist to the GOP central committee, Michigan needed to do something to get back into the GOP Clown Car Driver’s Seat…

Michigan State Senate candidate Mike Saari argues men being attracted to 12-year-old girls is normal because it’s in the Bible.

Saari made headlines last February after making deplorable comments about the female judge in the Larry Nassar trial concerning the sexual abuse of underage gymnasts, at one point calling the judge a “feminazi” and making crude reference to her sex life.

Oh, dear.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

Two memos from Donald Trump’s lawyers to Special Counsel Robert Mueller that assert broad presidential privileges, and a tweet from the president claiming that he could pardon himself, provide the case for an entirely unconstrained presidency. That’s not the whole story.

1. Presidents — and especially their lawyers — can claim anything they want, but that doesn’t make those claims true. Trump isn’t the first commander in chief who wanted to stretch the office far beyond what the Framers intended or the plain text of the Constitution can support. And his lawyers aren’t the first to make improbable cases about the presidency to prosecutors.

2. Even so, the claims of Trump and his lawyers are extraordinary. Presidents can obstruct justice: If they really could demand criminal investigations whenever they wanted, and shut down investigations whenever they wanted, they would truly be above the law even without the pardon power. The definition of what is legal would depend on what the president wanted at the moment, not on the bills he or she signed.

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

The teabag composition initiative—or, to use its even more formal name, the TeaComposition initiative—aims to measure how fast teabags decompose in different settings.

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From Glenn R. Geist at MadMikesAmerica:

Samuel Johnson is a hard man to figure out, at least for me. Americans are fond of insisting that taxation without representation is tyranny unless it’s Puerto Ricans being taxed. Johnson insisted that the colonies had no right to direct representation – because they were colonists.

Of course, the out of context quote about patriotism being the last refuge of a scoundrel might be his most repeated trope and of late the very word has begun to stink as it has so many times int he past when it’s become a metonym for obedience to authority especially as concerns moral and ethical abdication.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Economic inequality is indicative of capitalism’s greatest virtue; that people are free, through work and trade, to individually prosper as far as their ability, ambition, values, goals, personal circumstances, and moral character will carry them.

Prospering through work, no matter how great or modest the level of wealth, comes not to the detriment but to the benefit of others. Prospering involves trade, and trade involves a win-win outcome—the mutually beneficial exchange of value for value. It necessarily follows that personal betterment involves the betterment of everyone one trades with. The level of a person’s earned wealth correlates to the value added to the economic lives of others.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

I am a Dallas Cowboys fan. I have something good to say about the Philadelphia Eagles about as often as Philly fans speak well of the Cowboys — pretty close to never. But today is different.

Donald Trump had invited the Eagles players to the White House. For him, it was a photo op, and likely another event where he could denigrate NFL players for having the audacity to exercise their free speech rights. But he cancelled the event after learning that 10 (or less) players were going to attend the event.

Trump then tweeted that staying in the locker room was as disrespectful as kneeling to the country. His inference that those players were being disrespectful to the flag, our soldiers, and the country is patently ridiculous. The Eagles were one of only 7 NFL teams that had no player kneel during the anthem (or stay in the locker room).

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From driftglass:

Short answer: No.

Because if one spouse is hiding in the bathroom trying to defend the kids, and the other spouse is a MAGA Hat psycho who is gleefully coming after you with an ax, the marriage is over.

Longtime readers know that Mr. David Brooks The New York Times has a long-established habit using his column to to subtweet about the state of his marriage in the guise of of as shitty, ill-fitting metaphors about “relationships”. From me back in 2014:

At this point, guessing at “Why?” is a reflex, so of all the subjects available in the world, I had to ask myself why is Mr. Brooks — whose bread-and-butter has been pumping out horrid tripe about Fake Centrism, the sins of imaginary hippies and the merits of various crackpot Conservative economic schemes and military adventures — suddenly writing about grief and loss?

And if I had to guess, I’d guess because Mr. Brooks is currently going through a divorce, and that experience permeates everything.

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