Month: January 2018

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From Mark Bear at MadMikesAmerica:

It’s important you understand I have sufficient faith in my God that should He wish to get in touch with you, He can do so and He in no way needs me to do so. I am NOT trying to proselytize you.

I am, however, about to lose my metaphorical mind over here. During the campaign, if you watched most of it, you noticed a familiar face from evangelical circles, well, actually two; Franklin Graham, and none other than the eminent Dr. Robert Jeffress, who has since banned me from his Facebook page, due to me calling him out on his endorsement of Trump.

Let me be perfectly clear: Every single citizen in these United States has a right to choose the candidate they believe will do the best job for the nation. Dr. Jeffress and I just disagree with HIS REASONS he endorsed Mr. Trump. You see, he didn’t endorse Mr. Trump because he thought he would bring jobs to the country, oh no.

– More –
 

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

Darrell Issa is the second California Republican to retire from the House of Representatives this week, joining Ed Royce, the chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs. Democrats are now favored to pick up the seat that Issa had won very narrowly in 2016.

He won’t be missed in Congress.

– More –
 

 
From Frances Langum:

It appears to be Mike Pence’s job to sit there.

He sits there while Donald Trump says “shithole countries,” and he sits there while a pastor tells a congregation that that comment was racist and shameful.

Only when he has to praise Trump to the skies in a cabinet meeting does he actually take a stand on anything. So much for your good Christian background, Mike.

Pastor Maurice Watson didn’t hold back.

– More –
 

 
From Infidel753:

We find ourselves in the midst of a low-intensity but intermittently-deadly war which we can only fight effectively if we understand it properly. It appears to be a war between the two “occupation zones” into which our civilization has been divided for more than a millennium, and the enemy, the real enemy, wants you to believe that that is indeed what’s going on.

In fact, it’s a war being waged by that enemy — the “occupiers” in both regions — against the mass of people in both regions. But they also strike at each other’s subjects, paradoxically, in an effort to inflame us all, and to drag us all down into the bloody morass of violence and slavery they seek to impose.

These “occupiers” are not physical armies but ideas, ideas possessing a terrifying power to take over and rule human brains, like parasites. Today they are inflamed with hate and rage because more and more humans are breaking free of their toxic control. They have names — Christianity and Islam, the bloody twins.

– More –
 

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara at Principled Perspectives:

So why would King uphold the moral principles of capitalism in his most famous speech while repudiating it in his politics? It’s obvious that King didn’t understand capitalism or fully grasp the moral implications of the Declaration of Independence that he so eloquently honored.

He undoubtedly viewed the America of the 1960s as capitalist, when in fact what America had was a mixed economy; a mixture of economic freedom and government controls—that is to say, an economy corrupted by heavy political interference, which included the virulently anti-capitalist Jim Crow segrgation laws. America in the 1960s was just emerging from a time when large segments of blacks were legally oppressed and hence unable to enjoy “the riches of freedom and the security of justice” that is capitalism. Blacks, King failed to understand, were not victims of capitalism but of statism.

King’s legacy includes an end to state-sponsored segregation and oppression—a monumental achievement. But his democratic socialist political policies also “succeeded,” strengthening and entrenching the mixed economy in America, which he mistakenly perceived as capitalism—the result being, in turn, to reduce economic opportunities for many poor but ambitious people, including African-Americans.

– More –
 

 
From The Onion:

WASHINGTON—In an effort to provide students with at least a modicum of supervision in the afternoon, the Department of Education on Monday announced a new nationwide after-school program specifically aimed at keeping children off the streets for an additional 45 minutes.

– More –
 

 
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

2017 was not a good year for American workers — thanks to Donald Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress. The good folks at the Economic Policy Institute have reviewed the year that just finished, and they give us the 10 actions taken by Trump and the GOP that hurt workers the most. I post those actions here with part of their discussion. You can go to this link to see their more in-depth discussion.

– More –
 

 
From Julian Sanchez:

You couldn’t ask for a clearer illustration of the Trump administration’s incoherent stance on intelligence surveillance. Late Wednesday night, the White House released a statement urging the House to reauthorize the FISA Amendments Act, the controversial law authorizing warrantless electronic surveillance of foreigners’ communications, and opposing an amendment co-sponsored by Reps. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) that would require FBI agents to obtain a warrant before searching for Americans’ messages in the vast database created under the authority.

Just hours later, apparently reacting to a segment on Fox News, however, Donald Trump appeared to condemn the very legislation his administration had just endorsed:

About 90 minutes later—presumably following frantic appeals from staffers and Hill allies—Trump reversed his seeming reversal:

It’s worth pausing for a moment to note that nearly everything in both of these tweets is wrong.

– More –