Author: Raymond

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

On the merits, the president’s defenders can’t come up with much. That’s not a good sign.

I’ve argued that the House shouldn’t begin formal impeachment proceedings against President Donald Trump at this point because few if any Senate Republicans have indicated that they’d be willing to consider the evidence, and therefore impeachment and removal simply isn’t available.

But what about on the merits? One way to judge the strength of the case for impeachment is to consider the case made against it by the president’s defenders. And so far, at least, their arguments are awfully weak.

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From Dave Dubya:

A public service message.

What is a sociopath? It’s not a “crazy” or psychotic person. It’s not someone holding delusional beliefs that are provably false. This isn’t someone suffering from auditory or visual hallucinations from a neurological or mental illness. It’s not mania or depression.

Some argue that sociopaths are mentally ill, but it is different from any treatable mental illness.

“Sociopath” is a term for a person with an antisocial personality disorder. If you may be wondering if someone is a sociopath, here is the information you need to understand this personality disorder.

This is from the Mayo Clinic:

Antisocial Personality Disorder

Overview

Antisocial personality disorder, sometimes called sociopathy, is a mental condition in which a person consistently shows no regard for right and wrong and ignores the rights and feelings of others. People with antisocial personality disorder tend to antagonize, manipulate or treat others harshly or with callous indifference. They show no guilt or remorse for their behavior.

Individuals with antisocial personality disorder often violate the law, becoming criminals. They may lie, behave violently or impulsively, and have problems with drug and alcohol use. Because of these characteristics, people with this disorder typically can’t fulfill responsibilities related to family, work or school.

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From nojo:

Last weekend, the New York Times published a sympathetic profile of longtime Trump confidante and former presidential adviser Hope Hicks. We know it was sympathetic because it described Hicks’s anguish over a decision whether to testify about Trump to Congress.

The story called that decision an “existential question”.

Twitter had fun with that. Twitter also had fun with the fact that the existential question was whether to obey the law. Hicks wasn’t entertaining an invitation; she was deciding whether to comply with a subpoena.

The fashion-shoot portrait accompanying the story didn’t help, either.

Much of the malicious glee was directed at the story’s writer, Maggie Haberman. Haberman’s one of those White House reporters with regular scoops on Oval Office palace intrigue; it was suggested that Hicks was one of her main anonymous sources, and the sympathetic story was returning the favor.

The weekend passed, the Times quietly changed the offending word to “crucial”, and the party moved on to the next outrage — until Tuesday, when Jonathan Chait published a vociferous defense of Haberman and her work.

“The progressive loathing of Haberman draws some of its force from the mistaken belief that straight news reporters should stand up to the president and call him out for his unfitness to hold office,” Chait wrote. “Some people who believe this fail to grasp the distinction between news gathering and opinion journalism.”

And on Twitter, the Blue Checkmarks came out to join Chait in his praise, proclaiming the unassailable virtue of Haberman’s work and deep misunderstanding of journalism itself.

At which point our head exploded.

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Cato’s Julian Sanchez on C-SPAN:

The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board hosted a public forum to discuss the USA Freedom Act, a modified extension of the Patriot Act, which was due to expire at the end of 2019 if Congress did not reauthorize it. Privacy and data experts focused their remarks on the part of the legislation know as “Section 215”, which allows the NSA to collect phone records. Questions around whether a telephone records program violated privacy and civil liberties were also discussed as well as how technology has changed since the law was enacted back in 2015.

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From PZ Myers:

For last weekend’s Washington State 1B track and field championships, Rosalie Fish painted a red handprint over her mouth, the fingers extending across her cheekbones. On her right leg, she painted the letters “MMIW,” standing for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women.

It’s an epidemic right now. Imagine if a town the size of Morris, Minnesota were wiped out every year…but these deaths are scattered and spread out among a neglected population.

MMIW seeks to address the issue of the thousands of indigenous women who are missing or were murdered. According to a report by the Urban Indian Health Institute, 5,712 of these cases were reported in 2016, but only 116 were put into the U.S. Department of Justice database. With 71 cases, Washington was second only to New Mexico, which had 78 cases of murdered or missing indigenous women.

I can imagine it: the reservations in Washington state are in many ways isolated, populated with poor people, but at the same time penetrated with highways and outsiders are encouraged to visit to buy cheap cigarettes or gamble, so some of the worst people from the outside are cruising through the place. Then there’s the problem of jurisdiction…if some predator is looking for prey no one with power will care about, reservations are targets of opportunity.

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From the satiric Borowitz Report:

Calling the Duchess of Sussex “a nasty woman,” Trump said, “If I were a princess, I would not be nasty. People would say, ‘Donald Trump is the nicest princess.’ ”

Trump added that “all a princess has to do is sit on a throne, and I would be very good at that also.”

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From News Corpse:

Fox News Issues a Ludicrous Defense of Laura Ingraham’s Support for White Nationalists

Fox claims that Ingraham was not defending Nehlen, but the actual comments on her show prove that Fox is lying. Contrary to Fox’s description of some “political extremists,” Ingraham explicitly portrayed Nehlen, and seven other ultra-rightists, as innocent victims of unhinged lefties:

“They’re trying to bully social media, satirists, people with comedic flair […] Their goal is to use Russian hacking threats and manipulation of social media as part of a larger movement to silence conservative voices ahead of the 2020 election.”

So Ingraham is painting people like Nehlen, conspiracy crackpot Alex Jones, Islamophobe Laura Loomer, et al, as merely comedians, but also as legitimate voices of conservatism. She says that they are only proponents of “border enforcement” and “national sovereignty.” And she regards these false allegations of censorship as akin to the Russian election interference in 2016. It takes phenomenal mental derangement to execute that level of dishonest spin-meistering.

The statement from Fox News also sought to wave off any criticism because the people that Ingraham chose to praise were mentioned in an article by the Associated Press. So what? The AP didn’t pay tribute to them as embattled heroes of the right.

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At Principled Perspectives, libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara defends unregulated capitalism…

The basic feature of capitalism, which is integral to Americanism, is individual autonomy and self-governance, within the confines established by the same rights of others. Consequently, the individual needs the freedom of action, as defined by the principle of individual rights, to live by the judgement of his own mind without coercive interference from others, including others as government officials.

…and attacks democracy.

Democracy is the rule of mob might, not objective law. “Freedom” is basically government permission, and individual “rights” can be restricted or discarded any time the government can claim it is acting on the “will of the people: that is, there are no inalienable rights-which means, no rights at all. Democracy, properly understood, is a manifestation of totalitarian collectivism.

We have a reader response from Trey:

No.

The basic feature of capitalism is where ownership lies. In capitalism, ownership is private. Private ownership of resources and the means of production. Capitalism has nothing to do with individual autonomy or self-governance as neither of those things has anything, whatsoever, to do with economics and the economy. Capitalism is, at best, indifferent to individualism. Capitalism doesn’t care if a coal mine is owned by John Osgood or if it’s owned by a Hippy-Dippy co-op, so long as it’s not a government entity.

Another helping of Libertarian Word Salad with Definitions Are What I Want Them To Be in a small carafe on the side for easy dipping.

I’m also curious as to what an “Objective Law” is. Looking it up, I only find Randian definitions which seem to forget that laws are malleable, alterable and imperfect. It’s like these people think living life is like playing a game of Monopoly. Except these people forget, and get upset, that most people make up their own house rules for Monopoly.

And from Art:

As far as I can tell the electoral college has never protected any minority, racial or economic (whathaveyou) from anything. Nor has it protected the nation from the morally and ethically deranged crowds or leaders. They had every reason and opportunity with Trump but utterly failed.

Of course there is another mechanism designed to protect individual rights; the Constitution.

Capitalism wants control over the market and consumers, monopoly if at all possible. Democracy, with its focus on listening to the people, and the fact that monopolies tend to cause a lot of economic pain, are always going to be in conflict. Capitalism is also always in conflict with free markets. Whereas democracy and free markets work together quite well, often as synergy.

A lesson can be learned, by design, from the game Monopoly. In the end one player has most of the money and is having all the fun. Of course there is one part of the game that often gets overlooked: the end. The part where all the players, even the winner, gives up all their money and it all goes back into the bank so the game can be played again. In the end thew game Monopoly includes the ancient tradition of Jubilee.