Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Frances Langum:
In 2003, Bill O’Reilly did an O’Reilly Factor Exclusive! on “Where Does the ACLU Get Its Money?” because “we believe the ACLU is hurting America by constantly suing to further an extremist agenda.” (Fox News Link)
O’Reilly might wanna run those numbers again.
This weekend the ACLU raised more in three days than they usually make all year.
Six times more.
From PZ Myers:
I hadn’t realized what a lovely example of chain migration was in my family history, where one or a few pioneers establish a foothold and then bring in friends and family at later dates to build up a community. It’s also an example of how immigrant families adapt over time, where time is several generations.
It’s also what’s going on with families from Somalia and Syria and all those other countries our government wants to ban — which is nothing less than an effort to disrupt that pattern of chain migration which is so important to accommodating people to a new country. There’s no difference in the general pattern between a Scandinavian family in the 1850s and a Somali family in the 2000s — let ’em live and grow and they will be a productive part of the American culture.
What part of your family would have been wrecked by current policies?
From The Journal of Improbable Research:
Is it possible to create a simple computerised system to cover all characteristics of necktie patterns – and that can also generate patterns similar to existing neckties? Researchers Hiroshi Fukuda, Tomoko Saito and Gisaku Nakamura of the School of Administration and Informatics, University of Shizuoka, Shizuoka-shi, Shizuoka 422, Japan – as far back as 1994* – said the answer is yes.
From (O)CT(O)PUS at The Swash Zone:
SIX DEAD, EIGHT WOUNDED IN QUEBEC CITY: Yesterday, gunmen opened fire on an Islamic Cultural Center in Quebec City, killing six worshippers and wounding eight. The shooting occurred days after an unconstitutional order signed by the president banned travelers from specifically named Muslim countries.
MORE BAD NEWS: The president defies court orders. On Saturday, federal judges in Massachusetts, New York, and the state of Washington issued temporary restraining orders to stop the deportations. In Virginia, another court ordered access to legal counsel for detainees. In response, a White House official replied: “All stopped visas will remain stopped. All halted admissions will remain halted. All restricted travel will remain prohibited.”
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:
I was almost forty-five years old before I drank alcohol, and then I only did it because I thought it might help with my pain. (It didn’t. I quickly learned that I have to drink a lot of alcohol before I feel its effects.) It has only been since I left Christianity that I have felt the freedom to drink alcohol at home and socially.
As a youth, the frequent sermons I heard about the dangers of drinking alcohol made a deep psychological impression on me. How could it not? Week after week, month after month, and year after year, the pastors and youth directors of the churches I attended made sure that congregants knew that drinking alcohol would lead a person straight to hell. As with many forbidden behaviors, preachers used violent, bloody, extreme stories to illustrate their anti-booze sermons, not-so-subtly reminding us that if we touched one drop of the Devil’s brew, we too could face such calamities and even death.
How did these men of God justify their anti-alcohol crusading on a Biblical basis?
From Infidel753:
We’re not even a full week into the orange dingbat’s minority-rule “Presidency” yet, and RawStory is reporting that some high-level Republicans are questioning Trump’s emotional stability (link found via Hackwhackers).
That’s far from surprising. Set aside the cabinet of cranks and kleptocrats. Set aside the ominous requests for names of government scientists working on climate change. Set aside the gag order on EPA scientists (it’s working already — I’m gagging, and I’m not even a scientist). Set aside the plans for Soviet-style military parades in our cities. These are characteristic acts of a despot, and while despots are evil, they are not necessarily mentally unstable.
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:
The last election put the fundamentalist right in charge of our government, and some might think the country has also taken a backward step on social issues. But that is just not true. On most social issues the United States is more liberal than it has ever been.
The latest Economist / YouGov Poll included questions on what is morally acceptable in this country.
From Julian Sanchez at the Cato Institute:
A New York Times report that Donald Trump continues to carry his ancient and insecure Android phone—despite having received a new Secret Service-approved secure device on Inauguration Day—has prompted a flurry of reports on the cybersecurity “risks” this entails. But “risk”—the connotations of which are both future-oriented and hypothetical—seems like the wrong word here. We should be asking how many foreign intelligence services have had access to the phone, for how long, and what sensitive information they’ve already gleaned from it.
Satire from The Onion:
WASHINGTON—Putting the nation on alert against what it has described as a “highly credible terrorist threat,” the FBI announced today that it has uncovered a plot by members of al-Qaeda to sit back and enjoy themselves while the United States collapses of its own accord.
From Jonathan Bernstein:
That’s normally how the process works: Senators support executive branch nominees, allowing presidents to have the people they want, but use the process to influence the policies that executive branch departments and agencies will carry out.
If, however, Trump is moving ahead with easing sanctions anyway, then whatever assurances Tillerson supplied were either false, or, more likely, irrelevant: It’s the White House, not State, making policy.
Fortunately for McCain and friends, Tillerson’s confirmation vote was delayed and is now scheduled for Monday at 5 o’clock. McCain has plenty of time to lay down the law to the new president: No sanctions? No secretary of State.