Author: Raymond

 
From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:

If Donald Trump was a Marvel character, his name might be something like “DeceptiCon.” That is, the never-before-seen frequency and magnitude of Trump’s lies combine to create a Cloak of Confusion, a black hole-like force from which the truth seemingly cannot escape. Defying the laws of physics and logic, he was after all a Schrödinger’s Candidate, often for and against the same thing at the same time. And now as the Heisenberg Uncertainty President, it is virtually impossible to ever simultaneously know what Trump would believe, say, and do on any issue. Most insidious of all, DeceptiCon has produced learned helplessness in almost all who observe him, especially among members of the media. Slowly but surely, the search for objective truth is abandoned as Trump’s unceasing torrent of frauds, falsehoods, and fictions is gradually accepted as routine, normal, and even entertaining.

This process was essentially complete well before Election Day in November 2016. On August 18, 2016, Trump relaunched his campaign under the guidance of Kellyanne Conway and Steve Bannon. In what was billed as a major address in Charlotte, North Carolina, Republican nominee Trump pledged:

“One thing I can promise you is this: I will always tell you the truth.”

Of course, his meta vow wasn’t true. Not even close.

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From Infidel753:

The bad-hairstyle summit in Singapore has ended with news of a deal — but there’s less here than meets the eye.

The full text of the joint statement is here; an analysis is here. Most of it is diplomatic fluff and vague promises about improving relations in the future; there is language about recovering POW/MIA remains which will be meaningful to those who have POW/MIA relatives. The main issue is addressed in a single sentence:

3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

Note that even this is explicitly presented not as something new, but as a reaffirmation of something already declared at the April 27 summit between North and South Korea. The phrase “work toward” is odd. North Korea is a dictatorship.

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From Tommy Christopher:

Trump’s “spy” lies took a serious beating this week. Even Fox News legal analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano absolutely crushed them in about 20 seconds.

On Tuesday night’s “The Story With Martha MacCallum,” Napolitano was asked to weigh in on Trump’s false claim that the FBI was “spying” on his campaign at the direction of the Obama administration.

“The allegations by Mayor Giuliani over the weekend, which would lead to us to believe that the Trump people think that the FBI had an undercover agent who inveigled his way into the campaign, and was there as a spy on the campaign, seem to be baseless,” Napolitano said. “There’s no evidence for that whatsoever.”

Napolitano added that the FBI’s alleged use of an informant “talking to people on the periphery of the campaign, that is standard operating procedure in intelligence gathering, and in criminal investigations.”

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From The Journal of Improbable Research:

What correlation, if any, is there between the study of chemistry and talents for classical music composition?

Answers are unclear, but the late emeritus professor of chemistry at the Catholic University of America, Leopold May, provided an excellent resource for those wishing to investigate further.

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From Sanofi:

People of all races, religions and nationalities work at Sanofi every day to improve the lives of people around the world. While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication.

— Sanofi US (@SanofiUS) May 30, 2018

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Stelter is one of the better people on CNN, I enjoy him a lot, but his show is a lot of inside baseball analysis of the media (ratings! money! box office!) and one can make the case that it is the Villagers praising themselves. It’s often an awards show without the awards, and a lot of high-minded drivel about their own importance, interrupted by ads.

In this summary of his show, I think Stelter tries too hard to keep his impartiality cred. A lie, regardless of its intent, is still a lie.

I think having some sort of sliding scale from “a deflection, an exaggeration and a straight up lie” is a disservice. So when does a factually untrue statement slide from a deflection into an exaggeration? When does it become a straight-up lie? How do we know when a journalist is letting it slide for some reason? We don’t.

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From CATO’s Julian Sanchez:

We had no contact of any sort with Russia.

OK, there was contact, but not about the campaign.

Ok, there was contact about the campaign, but no collusion.

Well, look, nobody used the WORD “collusion.” pic.twitter.com/XnFdnlcnwk

— Julian Sanchez (@normative) May 21, 2018

 

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

America,

Your children are beautiful.

They are original, once-in-the-history-of-the-planet human beings with a near limitless capacity to do and be extraordinary. They are wild and bright and funny and lovable.

But they aren’t special.

The fact that your children were born here, doesn’t endow them with greater worth or deeper humanity than children who weren’t.
It doesn’t make them more deserving of defense or protection or advocacy.
It doesn’t make their fear more valid or their wounds more grievous.
It doesn’t make their needs more pressing or their disappearance more outrageous.

Or at least it shouldn’t.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Last week, I wrote a post entitled, Catch-All Bible Verses: Is the Human Body the Temple of the Christian God? Today I want to deal with another catch-all Bible verse, Psalm 101:3:

I will set no wicked thing before mine eyes: I hate the work of them that turn aside; it shall not cleave to me.

Evangelical preachers love this catch-all verse because it allows them to demand of congregants abstinence from seeing and using things or having contact with people, churches, and ministries they have deemed “wicked.” Whether something is wicked is determined by the pastor’s personal interpretations of the Bible, social, cultural, and religious experiences, and personal preferences. In other words, something is wicked because the pastor says it is, end of story. Since he is the man of God, the one chosen by Jesus to lead and teach the church, congregants are expected to believe and follow his “Biblical” pronouncements. If he says a certain behavior or inanimate item is wicked, then congregants are expected to nod their heads up and down and say, Amen brother, preach it!

Things labeled “wicked” are considered off-limits — Kryptonite to true Christians. Congregants, wanting to be obedient to God and his man, the pastor, bow — at least outwardly — to the subjective pronouncements of church leaders.

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From The Onion:

This is truly the worst of both worlds. The only thing more painful than listening to a relative spew ignorant, hateful views is not being able to leverage those outbursts for online attention.

Twenty-five-year-old Zack Daley has tried over and over to film his uncle Dave when he starts up on a thinly veiled racist rant about how “immigrants are stealing American jobs,” but the tirade never gets quite toxic enough to be the kind of thing that would get hundreds of thousands of retweets and end with his uncle’s address getting published on Reddit.

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