FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Frances Langum:

The Fox News propaganda machine hit a snag this morning and it was glorious to behold.

Don’t get me started about so-called Democrats supporting this so-called president’s immigration policies in ANY way. See what happens? You get used by Fox News Propaganda to push baby cages.

But not this morning, because by accident Fox and Friends First connected with Barbara L’Italien, a Massachusetts Democrat who had no tolerance for babies in cages or any of the other racist BS Donald Trump brings to the immigration “debate.”

And she suspected that…Trump was watching.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

I’m going to say it as clearly as I can: that tape is an insurance policy, and probably set up as a deadman’s switch. As an insurance policy, that tape would make its way to law enforcement if anything happened to him, and Cohen must have realized somewhere along the line that he needed an insurance policy so that he would not be getting any Russian Tea.

And pure speculation: there must be more than one tape. No one makes only one, so there will be more shoes to drop. Bank on it.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

There’s a lot — a lot — going on right now, much of it extremely serious and seemingly dangerous. So I suppose it’s not right that I’m hung up on this bit from the top of President Donald Trump’s interview Wednesday with CBS News’s Jeff Glor, but nevertheless I am:

GLOR: But you haven’t condemned Putin, specifically. Do you hold him personally responsible?

TRUMP: Well I would, because he’s in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes.

Putting aside Russia and Vladimir Putin … no, Donald Trump, you are not in charge of the United States of America. You are not, in fact, “responsible for things that happen in this country.”

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From Julian Sanchez:

President Trump’s performance at a joint news conference with Vladimir Putin this past week was a stark illustration not only of his strange and persistent deference to the Russian president, but also of his profound alienation from his own government. In command of the most powerful intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world, Trump still prefers to get his information from cable news pundits and right-wing websites.

Helsinki was only the latest example of a pattern that has marked his administration from the outset. His tweets and off-the-cuff remarks constantly reference weird theories from the fringes of the right-wing media ecosystem, yet he exhibits little interest in the resources uniquely available to a president.

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My patriotism is not attacked everyday.

Joe McCarthy had come and gone by the time I had grown. Younger folks might not even remember reading about those times. Even back then, not every attack on someone’s love of country deserved a response.

But T. Paine and I have a history. He offered words of encouragement when our own young Marine was under fire in Afghanistan. He sent prayers and good wishes, worrying along with us, when a beloved family member contracted a life-threatening illness. He entrusted me with confidences, with knowledge of similar catastrophic events in his own past.

So he deserves a response.

Even if none of that was true, there has been a change in our own political environment. History is engaged in its own way of rhyming. Not everything passes with time.
Continue reading “My Pinko Commie Patriotism”

• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara defends the campaign by the late Ayn Rand to stamp out pure althuism, which he seems to suggest is pretty much any altruism. Altruism, says Mr. LaFerrara, leads to horrible totalitarian atrocities. So I guess we should thank him, and his posthumous teacher, for their campaign. Kind of selfless of them.
   
• My longtime friend, T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, repeats a common cold war slur, a conservative stereotype of liberals in bygone days. Seems we all were Commie-symps, “…when Russia was still Communist and many on the left adored them…” Now that he discovers we don’t conform to that old accusation, we must be hypocrites. Waddya say we straighten him out tomorrow?
   
• If my clock is right, we should have had a coup last night that overthrew my President. M. Bouffant at Web of Evil counts it down after hearing from right wing conspiracist Rick Wiles who said the plot would be carried out by left wing mobs who would, said Mr. Wiles, behead the First Family on the White House lawn.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors shows how my President’s hang-dog, droopy tailed performance while being petted by Vladimir Putin has caused a momentary bifurcation of conservative commentary. Some admit he more than blew it, some try to hide what we know they know about that performance.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit plays the tape of my President’s Director of Intelligence learning, while on stage, from a reporter, that Vladimir Putin has been invited to the Oval Office. As if my President didn’t tell him beforehand. Wait… he didn’t? Her conclusions about Mr. Trump are less than flattering.
   
• Tommy Christopher reports as former Secretary of State Madelline Albright blasts my President for praising the part of Vladimir Putin’s offer that involved Russia interrogating those former US diplomats whom Putin dislikes. All President Trump has to do is turn those Americans over to Russia.
   
• Frances Langum transcribes as Stormy attorney Michael Avenatti analyzes the Cohen tape of my then-future President plotting to suppress another sexual story and speculates about what future revelations will …uh…reveal. Michael Cohen, says the lawyer, is an evidence hoarder.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein argues that the current set of Trump scandals do not rise to Watergate levels. He adds a “yet.” It could explode into something more. Ya think?
   
• So many scandals coming at us so quickly. How does anyone focus on any one of them? At The Moderate Voice, Military Affairs Columnist Dorian de Wind manages to focus on one. It turns out to be a surprising choice.
   
• This week’s note in Trumpian “Alternative Facts” comes from Michiko Kakutani at The Guardian reminding us of words by post‑World War II author Hannah Arendt in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism:
  

  The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.

   

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

I recently asked readers to submit questions to me they would like me to answer. If you would like to submit a question, please follow the instructions listed here.

ObstacleChick asked, “As an Evangelical Protestant pastor, what were your views on Catholicism?”

First, for many years I wouldn’t have labeled myself a Protestant. I was a Baptist, part of the True Church®. Protestants are people who came out of Roman Catholicism. As a Baptist I never came out of anything. I was a part of the church founded by Jesus. Thank you, very much!

Of course, this belief of mine had no historical foundation. None, nada, zip.

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From driftglass:

What does this “OMFG! Why are these assholes still tilling this shitty ground” story from Wednesday’s New York Times —

After Putin Meeting, Trump Voters Mostly Dig In. But Cracks Are Showing.

Maybe it was the F.B.I.’s fault for unnerving him. Or maybe the White House staff had left President Trump ill-prepared before his stunning remarks in Helsinki Monday, when he sided with Russia over his own intelligence agencies.

At a bar in central Pennsylvania, voters wondered if election meddling was really so terrible. At a mall in Arizona, they insisted that Mr. Trump had actually been quite tough on Russia until, well, whatever that was in Finland…

— have to do with Scientology?

I’m glad you asked!

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Enough.

Really, friend—take off the big red hat and retire it.

That whole MAGA nonsense has about reached its expiration date.
All your flag-waving histrionics and your hand-wringing anthem outrage have proven to be nothing but fake news.
All that America First chest-bumping and God Bless America showy piety you’ve spent the past two years peddling, looks largely ridiculous at this point.

This week has fully exposed you.

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From Andy Borowitz:

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, is reportedly “upset” and “hurt” that Donald J. Trump is seeing other dictators, sources in Pyongyang have confirmed.

According to an aide close to the North Korean leader, Kim was “devastated” to see images of Trump warmly embracing another dictator in Helsinki on Monday, just one month after jetting off to Singapore to spend a memorable and intense five hours with Kim.

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