FairAndUNbalanced.com

 

From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

For three years we have been wondering why Donald Trump has been pandering to Vladimir Putin of Russia. Immediately after taking office, Trump tried to remove sanctions against Russia (and only action by Congress stopped that). Then he was cowed by Putin at the Helsinki conference, where he said he didn’t believe Russia had interfered in the 2016 election (even though all of the U.S. intelligence agencies have offered proof that it happened). And since then, he has supported Putin and followed policies that hurt our European partners.

But this latest thing is beyond the pale, and once again has me wondering what terrible secret Putin is holding over Trump to make him dance to Russia’s tune. Trump has known since March that Russia is offering bounties to Afghans to kill coalition troops in that country — including United States soldiers. And our intelligence agencies says some of those bounties have been paid by Russia for killing our soldiers.

A real U.S. president would have taken immediate action to stop this. What has Trump done?

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From Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica:

A lot of young white people joined in their protests, seemingly oblivious to the fact that in the latest figures regarding deaths in police custody in Britain – 17 in all – only one was a black male. The rest were white. Most of the deaths seemed to have been related to drug abuse.

British black people have, for some time, had precisely the same opportunities as anyone else. Yet here we are, listening to them whinge on about how downtrodden they are.

Note: Readers should be prepared. Comments, so far, continue in the same tone. They focus on the complete non-existence of racial discrimination in Great Britain, and assert that BLM in the United States, with some minor exceptions, is a marxist movement dominated by ranting terrorists, at whose feet police are forced to kneel.

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Burr’s response at MadMikesAmerica:

Here in the United States, I have mixed feelings.

On the one hand, it is a relief to discover from these comments that a few supporters of BLM are not terrorists, since those supporters include 2/3 of the American public, according to reliable polling.

On the other hand, it is discouraging to discover from Mr. Bamforth that an overwhelming majority of my fellow citizens have suddenly become avowed Marxists.

I have no direct knowledge of predominant attitudes of the British public. I have thoughtlessly been influenced by my loved one, who glances through British news publications on line, publications that I have neglected. She reads to me a few of the comments by readers. They seem less inhibited in their racial comments than some folks in the states.

As you can imagine, I am now reassured by Neil’s report that “British black people have, for some time, had precisely the same opportunities as anyone else.”

Precisely, he reports.

I confess to a bit of trans-Atlantic envy. In my country such a high degree of precision has been an unattained dream since the founding.

It is unfortunate that Britain’s precisely equal black people, as a racial group, are so unreasonable. As Neil explains it, “Yet here we are, listening to them whinge on about how downtrodden they are.”

Such lack of gratitude is … well … ungrateful.

 

From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

According to the Bible, sin is transgression of the law of God. (1 John 3:4) Evangelicals, as a general principle, believe this to be true. However, when it comes to what, exactly, is the law of God — well, let the battle begin. Every sect and every pastor has their own idea about what constitutes God’s law. None of them actually follow and practice ALL the laws found in the Bible. Every follower of Jesus picks and chooses, cafeteria-style, which laws to obey and which to ignore.

Several days ago, a local group posted on Facebook that they were having a Black Lives Matter/Pride rally this Saturday. An Evangelical woman responded by posting comments about the evil of homosexuality, complete with Bible verses. I responded, so, you believe LGBTQ people, adulterers, fornicators, non-virgins, and Mormons should be executed? After all, that’s what God commands in the Bible. Of course, she ignored my challenge to her hypocritical use of the Bible to condemn behaviors she doesn’t like, choosing, instead, to attack me personally.

This woman is not unique in any way.

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From the Host of @TheDailyPOPcast:

Note from Raymond: FTBA (Freedom to Breathe Agency) is not a Government Authority

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• This is real. News Corpse details three separate studies that link watching Fox News with dying from COVID-19.
   
• Oh wow! This is a few seconds of impressive drama. Nan’s Notebook turns a boring graph into a rapid month and day race between COVID-19 and other illnesses. COVID-19 starts way behind. Guess who wins bigly?
   
• Here in Missouri, our governor feels no guilt about the spike in COVID-19 deaths while he refused to take steps against the pandemic. Iron Knee at Political Irony listens to Governor Mike Parson compare coronavirus deaths to car fatalities. After all, he doesn’t feel guilty at every accident. Political Irony performs vivisection on that logic and leaves it in quivering pieces.
   
• nojo watches my neighborhood as, down the street (okay, couple miles) from where I live, police cover a Black Lives Matter slogan with blue paint, and describes a deeper problem than Mr. Trump. nojo is right about that.
   
  However, local reports by the usually reliable St. Louis Post Dispatch have the repainting ordered and conducted by the City Department of Streets, who required police to stand by. There were a handful of arrests after the third repainting, which I find more satiric than does my loved one:
   
  We paint, they paint. We paint, they paint. We paint, police come. Hey Wait, it was our turn! Protests are supposed to be provocative, after all.
   
  Peaceful violation of the law, with the expectation of arrest, strikes me as respectful of the rule of law. That tradition traces back to Henry David Thoreau, continues with Mohandas K. Gandhi, and becomes iconic in the segregated south with the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King.
   
• Scotties Toy Box, in one brief sentence, explains what joins bigotry and a flag to produce irony.
   
• I’m unsure of the year. All I know is it was before I was 7. I do know I was a little kid when I first heard a neighbor insist he was not racist because he had black friends. Now that that’s passé, Frances Langum finds another bit of logic. Right wing folk prove they are not racist when they gather with friends and talk about something else.

Continue reading “Fox Kills, COVID Kills, Tremble Glass, Trump on the Bounty, BadBarr, Aw Hell”

 

From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Senate Democrats blocked debate on a Republican police reform bill that essentially was going to let The Invisible Hand of the Marketplace deal with our police brutality pandemic. Is there nothing that TIHotM cannot do? The Republicans love Ameros so much that they cannot imagine any problem that the carrot/stick of dangling Benjamins cannot solve. I would say it is bizarre, but money is the only thing in which they consistently believe.

The GOP plan relies on incentives, federal reporting requirements, and training, without actually, you know, outlawing killing citizens or addressing systemic racism.

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From author John Scalzi at Whatever:

Europe considering travel restrictions on US residents: I mean, I would, in their shoes. They actually made an effort to tamp down coronavirus transmission, while we basically farted about and can’t get a sizeable percentage of our population to wear a friggin’ mask. I traveled to the continent last year and was happy to have been able to have the privilege, but I totally understand if they’re not in a huge rush to have me back. They know where I’ve been, i.e., here in Covidvania.

Speaking of travel restrictions: Severe restrictions this year on the Hajj, the journey to Mecca every ablebodied Muslim is enjoined to make at least once in their life. Mllions usually go each year; this year it will be limited to 10,000. Which is wild. And historic, as the article notes that the last time restrictions were this severe it was because of Napoleon. That’s… a lot to take in. Sympathies to my Muslim friends.

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From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Wisconsin’s state motto may be “Forward,” but leftist protesters in Madison are more interested in destruction than progress. The statue in front of the state Capitol representing “Forward” was brought down by leftist vandals Tuesday night.

A statue of Hans Christian Heg was also destroyed by the rioters who then threw the statue into Lake Monona. Heg was a Norwegian immigrant, an abolitionist leader, a journalist, a prison reformer, and a soldier in the Union Army in the Civil War. He died at the Battle of Chickamauga.

There were other violent attacks on bystanders as well, including an attack on state Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee). “I don’t know what happened … all I did was stop and take a picture,” Carpenter told a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter. “… and the next thing I’m getting five-six punches, getting kicked in the head.”

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

The real answer here is that it almost certainly doesn’t matter whether the president actually gave a formal order to slow down testing. That’s because we know that Trump just doesn’t have very much clout in the Trump administration. His orders are often ignored. To be fair: Many presidents have great difficult controlling executive-branch departments and agencies. But Trump seems to have an unusual amount of trouble within his own White House. That’s clear in the Washington Post’s recent reporting about the administration’s infighting over the next round of economic relief, in which Trump is presented as at best one minor voice among many in the discussion. Trump, we’re told, has decided to support another round of direct payments, but no one in the White House seems to care — not even enough to keep their lack of respect for his decision quiet. So my best guess is that if Trump ordered people to slow down testing they would’ve ignored him.

That said, Trump’s overall coolness on the subject probably did have some effect. Bureaucracies tend toward the status quo. Presidential leadership matters in encouraging action, especially quick action. That kind of leadership certainly hasn’t been apparent during the pandemic. Trump’s public statements have waffled between outright hostility to testing and a kind of “Mission Accomplished” swagger about having ramped it up.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Former Senator Barney Frank, who is gay, defended the U.S. Supreme Court’s narrow procedural ruling in favor of a Christian baker who refused to serve a gay wedding cake. From Barney Frank to LGBT Voters: ‘People Have a Right to be Bigots,’ Don’t ‘Trash Them in Return’:

Reacting to the Supreme Court ruling in favor of a baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple, former Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) said that people “have a right to be bigots,” which is not “a license to trash them in return.”

“He was moved to decide this in part because people on the Colorado Human Rights Commission may have been well-intentioned, but they were mean-spirited when they made nasty comments about religion. And so there’s a very important point for people on our side to understand: You can’t have a one-way standard,”

My emphasis.

Strictly speaking, the Colorado Masterpiece Bakeshop case is not fundamentally about bigotry. Bigotry is certainly part of it. Fundamentally, it’s really about faith—which is actually worse.

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