Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:
After her dad spent months on the campaign trail, bleating about Hillary Clinton using a private email account, one might suppose that everybody in Team Trump would have known not do do that.
But it’s apparent that the Trump Family regards obeying the law as something for “the little people” to do.
From John Scalzi at Whatever:
Thank you for calling the customer service line of Vacuubot, purveyors of America’s finest automated vacuum cleaners! In order to more efficiently handle call volume, we rely on automated responses. To continue in English, press one. Para Espanol o prima dos.
Let’s continue in English. Which Vacuubot product are you calling about? For the Vacuubot S10 model, press one. For the Vacuubot XL model, press two. For the Vacuubot Extreme Clean model, press three.
Congratulations on owning the Vacuubot Extreme Clean Model, America’s most thorough and comprehensive automated vacuum cleaning solution! If you need to order additional components for the Extreme Clean, press one. If you have a repair query, press two. For all other questions, press three.
You have additional questions. If you need help connecting the Vacuubot Extreme Clean to your home network, press one. If the Vacuubot Extreme Clean is conflicting with other automated home machines, press two. If the Vacuubot Extreme Clean has decided to purge your house of all living things, press three.
Congratulations on activating purge mode! While purge mode was designed to eradicate small pests like insects and spiders, in some models a beta software build was inadvertently released that also includes larger targets, like pets and some humans. We’re sorry for the inconvenience. To continue, please press one. Be aware that by pressing one, you are absolving Vacuubot and its owner, BeiberHoldings, Inc, of all legal and medical responsibility.
You pressed “0” to speak to a human representative. The current wait time for a human representative is six hours and fourteen minutes. To return to the automated response system, press one.
Welcome back to the automated response system.
From Frances Langum:
Martha McSally “conceded gracefully” but Stacey Abrams didn’t? Shut up. McSally did not have a vote-suppressing Secretary of State Brian Kemp running against her, but that did not stop Rich Lowry from making the comparison.
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. (Mark 16:15,16)
Those of us raised in Christianity recognize these verses as the “Great Commission,” the charge to go forth and spread the message of Christianity to the rest of the world. As the only Christian religion in the western world for nearly 1500 years, the Catholic church took this message seriously. Since the Edict of Milan in 313 CE decriminalizing Christianity and gaining Emperor Constantine’s patronage, and later the Edict of Thessalonica of 380 CE making Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, the Catholic church was intertwined with government for centuries. Spreading a religion is quite easy when supported by the government.
Some Evangelical Christians have taken the Great Commission seriously as well, raising large sums of money to support missionaries to proselytize the “lost” throughout the world. Sometimes the “lost” include Catholics, who are not considered “True Christians” by many Evangelical sects. Anyone who is not part of “True Christianity” is considered “lost” and thus ripe for evangelizing. Evangelical Christians are also exhorted by their pastors to proselytize to their neighbors, friends, and coworkers. Where I grew up in the Bible Belt, most of the people I knew were more or less the “right” type of Christians — Southern Baptists as we were, a variety of other types of Baptists, Church of Christ, Methodists, Church of the Nazarene, etc.
From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:
One of the most encoraging signs was how earlier this year, he became the first senior Saudi royal to publicly state his support for an Israeli homeland, even though his government does not as of yet officially recognize the state of Israel. When White House “adviser” Jared Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump visited his country in May of 2017, he met with them and has generally spoken in favor of strengthening ties with the U.S. He was given control of Saudi Aramco by royal decree in 2015, and was named Chair of the Council for Economic and Developmental Affairs that same year. Additionally, through his efforts, it is now possible for Saudi women to legally drive automobiles by themselves, as he has been instrumental in rolling back the power of the Saudi religious conservatives.
The Prince has taken leadership over restructuring his country’s economy. In 2016, he introduced Vision 2030, a group designed to help it strategically plan for the next 12 years or so. Its aim is to develop more diversification and especially to strengthen non-oil companies and those involved with systaubable fields and the creation of a $500 billion economic zone across thousands of miles of Saudi territory next to the Red Sea. He has also been pioneering Saudi investment in renewable energy. The prince has been described as both a nationalist and an economic populist – and that is perhaps why Donald Trump has been so warm to him. Regrettably, and also much like Trump, he has revealed himself to be a bit of a thug.
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:
Trump fires Jim Comey for “reasons”, partially because he claims the Clinton email investigation was handled badly, and had Sessions and Rosenstein fig leaf that justification with letters that sound serious enough, and then blows that reason up in a nationally-viewed interview with Lester Holt. (He also tells a few Russians, in a particularly stupid way.) And that is how he ended up with a Special Counsel.
So how does he go about the firing of his AG this time out? Well, for one thing, he picks a very Trump-sympathetic hack (Bigfoots! Time travel hot-tubs! Massive hog toilets!) and then lets it be known he basically picked this person because he was a Trump-sympathetic hack. This might be construed, even to a layperson like myself, like even more obstruction of justice. (Like the Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, etc., things.) But then he has so little idea that what he is doing is abusive of justice, he just says what he did!
Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation does it’s quiet and necessary work, despite obstacles.
From Jonathan Bernstein:
How chaotic are things now?
There’s no nominee to replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was fired a week ago, and the acting attorney general is under fire from multiple directions. It’s already highly unusual to go this long without naming a new regular successor for such a critical post, and it’s not clear there’s any intention to choose one. There’s also no nominee to replace United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, who announced her resignation back on Oct. 9. Nor is there one for the Environmental Protection Agency, which has been headed by Acting Administrator Andrew Wheeler since July 9.
That’s three cabinet vacancies without a nominee.
And that’s not all.
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
Stacey Abrams won.
The fact that she officially announced she will not be taking the office she ran so beautifully for, is a mere technicality—one that good people who were paying attention, realized was likely a foregone conclusion before a single vote was ever counted. Today is less a terrible surprise, than a long-expected moment of grieving.
For months, her opponent made sure this day would come. Already the beneficiary of years of insidious gerrymandering and historic voter suppression that had stacked the deck precariously in his favor—he resorted to blatant theft for safe measure. He chose the same filthy, soulless path that he has seen blazed by similarly small men when facing strong women they are outmatched by and unworthy of: lie and steal and fix the game until you win.
Stacey Abrams won.
Burr has the day off after a tiring week of productivity, as he strives to become one of Mr. LaFerrara’s American heroes.
One notable exchange this week included an inspired bit of prose from Trey. We began with a quote from libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara about Veterans Day.
But America’s veterans are not the whole story. So, I’d like to use this Veterans Day post to acknowledge the unsung hero of America’s military prowess, the productive American citizen. No military as strong and as competent as America’s can exist in a vacuum. It requires something else – something indispensable – a great economy.
America’s economy, historically the most productive the world has ever seen, is the foundation that supports our military personnel.
Trey responded to a reminder that Mr. LaFerrara’s definition of “economically productive” is usually “economically successful” as measured by wealth. Trey expressed a bit of poetic irritation at the subordination of the bravery demonstrated, and sacrifices made, by those in military service:
Ah yes. Many a’war have been fought and won from an Executive Suite. Many a’revolutions and freedoms have been secured from the Stock Exchange.
Who could forget the Allied Victory at Midway or the Battle of the Bulge by these giants of industry when they achieved market capitalization by hedging their losses with short term cuts to their dividends? They realized, faster than America’s enemies did, through market analysis that their yields would experience an uptick when the moving average was adjusted following the capitulation of the Axis Powers in Europe and Asia.
The blue chip is mightier than the sword.
But, yeah, Happy Veterans Day. But also let’s not forget about the John Galts of the world you little toy soldiers.
Well done, Trey.
Burr expects to return in Thanksgiving next week.