Category: Uncategorized

 
From David Brin at Looking Toward the Future:

The most important advance in civil liberties in this century so far, in the U.S. and by extension the western world, was in 2013 when the Obama Administration and then five U.S. district courts ruled that citizens have a powerful right to record the actions of officials – especially police – in public. No interaction with authority is more needful of accountability than at the level of the street. Moreover, a citizenry who are accustomed to that right will apply sousveillance also upward, as I have long held and as I describe in The Transparent Society and in EARTH.

Now the U.S. Eighth District Court in Missouri has declared the exact opposite, allowing cops to seize or break your camera or arrest you, even when you are clearly not interfering.

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From News Corpse:

The saddest story of the year has got to be the tear-jerking saga of a lonely president who is desperate and frightened about the monsters under his bed. Donald Trump is once again rage-tweeting on a Saturday morning because he has nothing better to do – no presidential stuff, no holidays with a loving family. It’s enough to make you wanna take him in your arms and throw him into a jail cell where he can weep in the warm embrace of the other members of his crime family.

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From driftglass:

…of the worst people in America.

How about both sides stop blaming each other for the dead children at the border. https://t.co/wH8LMKI8TO

— Erick Erickson (@EWErickson) December 30, 2018

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• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from The Daily Beast as Kellyanne Conway insists that it’s a slur to accuse Donald Trump of lying.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems skeptical about a couple of presidential claims.
   
• Mark at News Corpse thinks the newest Trump shutdown has less to do with the anti-immigrant wall than we think.
   
• Dave Dubya watches along with the rest of us as our President, in a phone call, chides a little girl for believing in Santa. At age 7, says Mr. Trump, that sort of belief is “marginal.” Dave comes up with what strikes me as a perfect response.
   
• PZ Myers has a couple of sensible observations about the second migrant child, at least the second we’ve been told about, who died in US custody. The initial official explanation has a couple of gaps.
   
• Max’s Dad, the True Ruler of Rant, uses the holiday season to take stock of the State of the Union under the tender care of this administration.
   
• It is a rare honor: Andy Borowitz reports as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, on behalf of ISIS, names our own President as Man of the Year. Yeah, yeah, I know it’s satire, Aunt Tildy.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit has mixed feelings about the latest details on my president’s bone spur deferment back when we were young.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post details how the penchant for financial corruption flows from our national leader to the family, friends, and subordinates who surround him.
   
• There has been a lot of ink, or internet traffic, or whatever fits our technological age, as conservatives in some states, like Wisconsin, lose governorships to Democrats. Still, Republicans manage to gerrymander themselves back into legislatures. Then they pass laws restricting the ability of those new, non-conservative, governors. Seems a little unfair – almost an attack on the democratic process.
   
  Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has some fun with those who complain of a violation of the “peaceful transfer of power” that is intrinsic to Democracy. Seems the complaint has no merit because James has seen no tanks in the streets.
   
  Get it? No unpeaceful violation? No actual military coup? Tee-hee. I had completely forgotten that James is hilarious.
   
• driftglass gets irritated enough to perform vivsection on leftist Glenn Greenwald. Driftwood has an unfair advantage since Greenwald is burdened by a loathsome personality.
   
• Every two months or so, he rises again as if to renew our hope in the resurrection. Batocchio writes again! Yay!
   
  Batocchio at Vagabond Scholar doesn’t write enough, by which I mean Batocchio doesn’t write often enough. The latest two posts are, as always, wonderful. The first is the annual Jon Swift Roundup list of best blog posts from all over the net, as chosen by bloggers. By some oversight, FairAndUNbalanced was missed, but nobody is perfect. It’s a great gathering of great thought expressed in great writing.
   
  The second is even better. A little, just a little, maybe more than a little, okay a lot long, long, very a lot long. Reading it is a little like binge watching your favorite show, interrupted occasionally by the need to eat, sleep, shovel snow, mow grass, and earn a living. It’s a remarkable compilation of pithy wisdom about conservatives, journalism, politics, Trump, outreach and subtopics that entertain, inform, and provoke. Might even have been better if it started with “Call me Ishmael.” A great way to spend a season. Or two. When I eventually finish reading it, I’ll have to find another hobby. Won’t be as much fun, though.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony seems to have an observation about readers, possibly including us, by which I mean you, certainly not me.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass doesn’t much care for religion. Lots of decent folks agree. Some of those decent folks serve as ethical models I hope to emulate. But then this: “The Golden Rule has nothing to do with Jesus. It’s not in the bible.”
   
  Okay, that made me go back to Matthew and Luke. It’s still there.
   
  Treating others as you want to be treated is an ethical truism that is not restricted to any religion. It is a firm principle in pretty much every belief system, and in ethical systems that have nothing to do with belief. It’s the Goose and Gander stuff your mom taught when she demanded to know how YOU would have felt if someone had mistreated you. True enough, it does not depend on Biblical scripture.
   
  Maybe that’s what Yellow Dog means. Or … it could just be an alternative fact.
   

 
From Infidel753:

Like most people, I’m concerned about protecting privacy. Just as happens in politics, those who hope to profit from invading privacy seek to undermine our morale and paralyze us by convincing us that it’s already a lost cause. I recently read this essay, which is a good example of the “they’ve already won so you might as well give up” school of defeatism-mongering.

It asserts that Google already knows a terrifying amount of personal information about me, and that there’s nothing I can do about it.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

And of course, most of the members of Congress have already headed home for the holidays to the warm and loving embrace of their donors, and you know what? A lot of Representatives got You’re Fired’ed by We the People, and they ain’t coming back for a symbolic vote.

So every day between now and January 3 is either a holiday or a weekend, and many of the remainder are days that white collar workers who can take them, do take them as vacation days. Then, on January 3, the new congressional term will start.

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From Frances Langum:

But Noelle Nikpour went there.

Newly-elected Democrats are “doing a disservice to the people who elected them to office, to work with Republicans for immigration…for healthcare.”

She went on to predict that if Democrats do nothing but impeachment “we’ll flip the house back to Republicans in 2020” because they won’t do anything to help the American people!!!!

And she was saying this to Jason “Mr. Benghazi” Chaffetz filling in for Hannity.

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From Tommy Christopher:

At a contentious congressional hearing, Rep. David Cicilline (D-RI) blasted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen for not knowing how many migrants — like 7-year-old Jakelin Caal Maquin — have died in her department’s custody this year.

Cicilline was among several Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee who Nielsen to task at that hearing Thursday. He began his questioning by incredulously asking “Madam Secretary, did I understand you correctly to say that as you sit here today, you do not know how many human beings have died while in the custody of the department that you lead?”

“And you, in preparation for today’s hearing, you didn’t ascertain that number, but you don’t know it today?” he asked.

“I don’t have an exact figure for you,” Nielsen replied.

“Do you have a rough idea?” Cicilline asked.

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From Green Eagle:

The whole of these policies could have very well been a wish list straight from Putin.

Well, even the lamebrained mainstream press seems to have now awakened to the overwhelming evidence that the Russians materially aided Trump’s campaign for the Presidency, and that without their help, he would in all likelihood have lost. But the other side of this deal- the constant action by Trump to promote the interests of the Russians and diminish our country’s own authority on the world stage, is still being ignored.

The man is a traitor. And not in some minor way, or through an extreme interpretation of the law.

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