Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Ben Cohen:
Thank you, Alabama, for electing Democrat Doug Jones, a decent man who has stood up for the poor, women and minorities his entire life. Thank you Alabama, for rejecting the disgusting politics of Roy Moore, a racist, misogynistic, sexual predator, who targeted and abused children and stood for nothing more than hate.
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
Sometime truth is just volume.
The loud people get to write the story that everyone hears, the one they come to believe is the only story. In this way, they get to define what is true for those looking on who may not hear anything else.
Right now there is a story being written about Christians in America; a story saturated with cruelty, one absent of compassion, and because the author’s volume is so great and their profile so high—that is becoming the singular story. It is becoming true for all of us.
But that is not our story.
There is another story.
There is a different kind of Christian.
We are such people.
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
I recently listened to NY Mayor Bill De Blasio, speaking on CNBC post-election, urge us to “fix our educational system.” It’s the same old mantra. Everyone from the president on down has got their scheme to fix what can’t be fixed–our one-size-fits-all, monopolized government education establishment.
We need to get politicians out of education and get the parents and educators in charge. There are various ways to accomplish this. While I don’t believe in the morality of wealth redistribution, Americans won’t accept a fully free education market at this time. What we can do is redirect the dollars now spent on each child’s schooling by recognizing the moral right of parents to direct the course of their own children’s education through universal school choice. This can be accomplished by essentially giving the education tax dollars now spent on each child to the parents, to use according to their own judgement.
From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:
“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and that’s our target market.” That perversion of Abraham Lincoln’s timeless adage might as well be the slogan of the modern Republican Party, especially when the topic is taxes. After all, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the Joint Committee on Taxation, (JCT), the Wharton School, the Tax Policy Center and a host of think tanks have concluded that the GOP tax bill will produce between $1 trillion and $1.5 trillion in additional debt over the next decade. But if “tax cut pay for themselves” is a cynical myth designed to force deep spending cuts in the future, so too is the notion that the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA) produces either tax relief or jobs for lower- to middle-income Americans.
From Frances Langum:
UPDATE: AP has called it for Doug Jones!
Yes, you read that right. Doug Jones, the DEMOCRAT, who currently leads by about 11,000 votes.
IN ALABAMA, y’all.
Turnout was nearer to 50% than 25%, and African-American voters turned out in numbers similar to 2012 for Jones.
From Dave Dubya:
Cults. Just the word evokes images of mindless death and tragedy. Jonestown, Waco, Heaven’s Gate. The grisly evidence of cult brainwashing is there for all to see, but sadly too late to save the victims.
The existence of cults is evidence that humans have an innate herd instinct that induces those with anger and hate, or simple fear, uncertainly, and anxiety to join groups of true believers. True believers blindly follow their leaders.
Believing leaders frees them of the need for self-examination and intellectual curiosity to adapt to the world. Believing leaders frees them of doubt and moral ambiguity. Believing leaders endows them with the belief that they alone possess the truth and superior morality. Believing leaders means rejecting all facts and information their leaders want them to reject.
Let’s look at some examples.
From Green Eagle:
Well, as I am sure you saw, a couple of weeks ago, North Korea launched a missile which is said to be capable of reaching Washington, DC.
Trump did not care a shred, of course, that if he started his war, hundreds of thousands of Koreans and Japanese citizens could die to provide a distraction from his crimes, but God forbid that there should be one thousandth of a percent chance that a missile might fall on him personally. Yes, folks, the Most Powerful Man On Earth has been beaten down and made to run for cover by a fat thirty year old punk with one of the most obsolescent armies on earth.
So all of a sudden it’s all about how we have to have talks with North Korea, and the attention of the White House has totally turned to fomenting violence in the Middle East, where there are also millions of people who can be killed without Trump caring a bit.
From driftglass:
I’ve already said all I had to say about Mr. David Brooks’ garment-rending-hand-wringing column on Friday and his appearance on the Intelligence Squared debate stage and his dizzyingly non-linear understanding of recent American political history, so I will just note that this Sunday morning was something like the 3,785th time he was invited to appear on Meet the Press to reprise portions of his most recent column for the reading-impaired.
CHUCK TODD: David, I want to get to a point you made in your column on Friday, which is a victory by Roy Moore for the Republican Party is, I guess, the ultimate in empiric victory, isn’t it?
DAVID BROOKS: Right.
Also featured on Meet the Press was noted tosspot, torture-whisperer and Respected NBC Employee, Peggy Noonan. Because I suppose given the state of swooning fidgets which have temporarily afflicted Mr. David Brooks this week, NBC brass thought he might need some help bearing the Both Sides banner on his own.
Peggers was more than up to the task.
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:
As we all know what comes next in the saga of giving Billions to Billionaires is to have conference committee that combines the House and the Senate bills, and then both houses have to pass that.
Now, consider this: amply be-chinned Mitch McConnell (R-KY) made desperate promises to get the votes he needed, including doing something about DACA and stabilizing Obamacare, which has about as much chance of happening as monkeys flying outta my pretty pink ass.
So if any of the Senators who gave McConnell a hamburger today for repayment on Tuesday realize that they have been grifted, they might not vote for this stitched-together Frankenstein tax bill. And please recall that Sen. Corker is already a lost vote. So if any two Senators feel that they got screwed, the bill is dead an buried. Looking at you, Jeff Flake and Susan Collins: you got played, suckas.
