Month: July 2017

• Dave Dubya has listened to conservative leaders long enough to finally stop thinking and believe. Took you long enough, Dave.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger remembers why it’s harder to be a liberal than to be a conservative.
   
• At The Swash Zone, (O)CT(O)PUS suggests that 58,000 mental health experts are ignoring their own ethics rule for good reason and that we had better pay attention.
   
• Manifesto Joe at Texas Blues had one last hope for my President. But it turns out Donald Trump has something unfortunate in common with his base.
   
• When it comes to ending democracy, Stinque maintains that the real red line has not been crossed, but it is very close. He defines the single event that will mark it.
   
• Abuse of presidential pardons will pose another clear and present danger to democracy. Frances Langum listens as Juliette Krayyem explains.
   
• During the rapid collapse of the Soviet Empire, one common bit of humor was a riddle. What is the difference between the United States and the Soviet Union? The answer was: In the United States, the Communist Party is still legal. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit answers a new riddle involving Donald Trump and Iran.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony analyzes different versions of Jeff Sessions meeting with Russians during the campaign and concludes that it doesn’t matter which version is true. Either way, the Attorney General has to go.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors notes that my President may get his wish regarding his Attorney General, but has little sympathy for Jeff Sessions. Seems also to have precious little for Sean Spicer, except maybe missing the routine from Melissa McCarthy.
   
• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from The Telegraph noting the professional passing of Sean Spicer with the best, possibly the funniest, 23 deliberate alternates to the truth.
   
• Andy Borowitz reports from Walter Reed Army Medical Center that Mitch McConnell has been hospitalized with low white-vote count.
   
• Infidel753 doesn’t much care for those who hate Israel. Infidel doesn’t much care for those haters of haters of Israel who want to step on the rights of those who hate Israel.
   
• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara insists the Peace Corps is not volunteerism.
   
• Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes reluctantly takes a look at one work from the self-help genre for insight on life’s purpose. Turns out one need is to release unhelpful beliefs. Like the belief that life has a purpose.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz tells us why atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians may be the ones to be counted on to save the church.
   

Why Trump Goes Flake Squeezing

Spiro Agnew purged a Senator in 1970. Trump hates a Senator in 2017.

One was about policy.

The other is simply petty.

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From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

Albeit for much different reasons, the electorate of Venezuela is split, just as is that of the United States. On one side is the ruling government party, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV), knwn as the Chavistas (the name given it to describe its pro-Socialist followers of the late President Hugo Chavez), and on the other side, the Opposition, which is made up of upper middle class and upper class people and business owners, who cannot wait to return to power. This opposition charges that the PSUV, now led by President Nicolas Maduro, is attempting to set up a dictatorship along the lines of what exists in Cuba. It claims that since it first came into power in 1999, the Chavanistas have steadily been eroding Venezuela’s democratic institutions. They claim media censorship, but Ms. Martin went freely to different newsstands and found 4 opposition newspapers on display, as well as 2 pro-government ones and one neutral paper.

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