Month: March 2017

Burr recovers and will be back soon. Really he will.

In the meantime, we are entertained by a rare event.

Our own sweet and gentle Aunt Tildy found it necessary to spank an unruly commenter.

The exchange followed a link to a post by Dave Dubya:

From majormajor:

You used to be a respectful intelligent liberal blog. That was until you published this thread.
Disgusting.

From Raymond:

Thank you for your comment, majormajor.

I will certainly pass it on, although it might help if you could think of a more specific objection.

From majormajor:

You don’t understand “disgusting”?

From Aunt Tildy:

Now, M&M, I’m sure Raymond knows that “disgusting” means “nauseating” and “stomach turning”.

He just wanted to know what it was that specifically upset your little tummy.

One other thing, child:

Please try to play nicely with others.
Remember, I know your mother.

We have been walking softly around Aunt Tildy ever since.

 
From Infidel753:

In this post a little over two years ago, I ended with what was actually my main point, though it may have looked like an afterthought at the time:

“But we mustn’t confuse strategies and necessary defensive measures with the goal. It would be a terrible failure if, after the final overthrow of Christianity and conformist traditional values, we were left with a sort of Ottoman-style millet society which defined itself as a jigsaw puzzle of discrete communities (gay, black, Anglo, neo-pagan, etc.) with each individual categorized as merely a member of one or another such grouping. The only real success will be a society where individuals are free to be themselves, with whatever combination of traits, desires, and quirks make each person who he or she is, but not defined or categorized by them.”

It’s a point which I think needs more emphasis and elaboration. Humans seem to have a habit of classifying and pigeonholing other humans, assigning them to categories and then defining them primarily as members of those categories rather than as individuals.

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From PZ Myers:

He simply doesn’t know when to shut up. He was interviewed about his previous racist comments, and guess what he babbled about? The coming Race War.

Iowa Rep. Steve King said Monday that blacks and Hispanics “will be fighting each other” before overtaking whites in the US population.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

Wilders understands that culture and demographics are our destiny. We can't restore our civilization with somebody else's babies. https://t.co/4nxLipafWO

— Steve King (@SteveKingIA) March 12, 2017

Although I’d like to think I speak fluent “white asshole” having grown up around that dialect my whole life, I spent a long while staring at this comment wondering why Iowa Rep. Steve King (R) thought babies of any particular parentage weren’t capable of carrying on with “our civilization”. There’s nothing about what I think of as American culture that excludes the children of immigrants–on the contrary! Our American way is made up of immigrants who wanted to work hard and achieve a good standard of living, to experience freedom of thought, religion and political access denied to them in their home countries. I, like Steve King, am the descendant of European immigrants. There is nothing about me that privileges me to better understand America as a German/Irish/English, etc. mutt, than a child of any other heritage because we are a nation on paper, made of laws and words and ideals, but not bloodlines.

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From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

These Koch brothers, and their like-minded billionaire allies, are attempting to subvert our government by legally (but unethically) changing the Constitution in such a way as to basically dismantle ALL of the necessary regulations and federal agencies which have been carefully set up from the Teddy Roosevelt era up to the present – in effect negating or eliminating a vital part of all progressive legislation passed from 1901 onward! Unfortunately, their followers include such prominent politicians as Florida’s Republican Senator Marco Rubio, Republican Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, and numerous other right-wing fanatics. You may not know or perhaps are unfamiliar with these Kochs, but they are for real, I can assure you!

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With apologies to our friend Vincent:

Wondering why a few conservative friends see our former President as “an arrogant buffoon”.

 
From Capt. Fogg at Human Voices:

Certum est, quia impossibile.

Tertullian – De Carne Christi

It’s been too easy to hope, to tempting to giggle as the President makes a bloody fool of himself with tantrums and childish lies like the spoiled brat he is who just can’t understand why things don’t automatically go his way. I still look forward to enjoying his further humiliations and embarrassments even if all we’ll be able to get from him is increasingly irrational accusations of the WTF kind. But it’s not about Trump really, any more that it’s the Flying Lady hood ornament that makes a Rolls what it is.

The gates to hell don’t say “abandon all hope” they tell you to keep the faith. That way the disappointment will be eternal.

Total, absolute and utterly conclusive proof that there was no wiretapping by Obama or Alexander Graham Bell for that matter will not do one thing to tarnish the myth that it did happen, just as Obama always will have been born in Kenya or Malaysia or both even with a birth certificate notarized by 9 Supreme Court Justices and filmed in wide screen Technicolor.

Absurdity is traditionally a cornerstone and a buttress for belief, not an argument against it. We’re dealing with a religion in the Trump movement, a bit of a new religion.

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From Dave Dubya:

On behalf of the American people, I’d just like to say this.

Thanks a lot, Vlad.

First came Dear Leader’s open invitation to Russia to hack Hillary and side with him in the election. That began with the famous words, “Russia, if you’re listening…”

Apparently they were.

We recall Trump had praised Putin for being a “better leader” than President Obama. I guess killing critics is a sign of good leadership to our Dear Leader.

That’s comforting.

Then Trumpist Paul Manifort had his ties to Russia that included working for the pro-Russian former president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych.

Next General Mike “Kremlin Boy” Flynn, Trump’s appointee for national security adviser, had to resign over his dirty dealings with Russia.

Is something is starting to smell here?

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From conservative James Wigderson:

The Wisconsin Assembly voted 68-31 on Thursday to amend the state constitution to eliminate the position of treasurer. The amendment now goes to a referendum in April 2018.

For an amendment to be successful, it has to pass each chamber of the state Legislature in consecutive sessions and then be approved by the voters.

“It is my belief that the Office of State Treasurer in the State of Wisconsin is outdated, not needed and a waste of taxpayer money,” state Treasurer Matt Adamczyk said in a statement after the vote. “For this reason, I ran and was elected on the platform of eliminating the treasurer’s office.”

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From CATO’s Julian Sanchez:

I’ve already explained, in a post over at Just Security, some of the law and background surrounding what we know about Donald Trump’s incendiary claim that his predecessor wiretapped his phones at Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, and I’d suggest reading that if you want to delve into some of the wonky details, but I thought it might be worth a separate point to pull out some of the critical points and remark on how the story has evolved since Saturday.

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