Month: June 2019

• Green Eagle reacts to a Supreme Court decision that may become as much an attack on democracy as is the ongoing subterranean campaign by Putin’s Russia.
   
• Subversion of democracy takes other forms as well. Bribery can work in a lot of ways. One involves campaign finance. Vote for bills that will benefit me and I’ll buy a lot of ads for you. Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara hears the argument, sort of, and is having none of it. It’s about free speech. And, after all, “Each of us is free to consider the issues and candidates before we vote.” Since dark money has no effect, why object to it? No harm, no foul.
   
  I don’t quite buy it. If dark money has no effect, what is purpose of providing it? Why hide it? And what is the harm in discouraging it through full disclosure?
   
• Interesting account at Scotties Toy Box. Twenty years ago, Anthony Breznican meets a friendly, low key photographer who does exemplary work. He discovers the man once saved a life after taking a tragic photo that changed the world and may have saved countless more lives.
   
  Two decades after finding that his brief companion was THAT photographer, he sees another horribly tragic photograph that we can only hope performs that terrible task again, saving other lives once more.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz tells us, convincingly, compellingly, how America would be looking at migrants if they were white. I believe the record tells us exactly how those who represent us would react. And why.
   
• At Blue in the Bluegrass, Yellow Dog explains why both sides are the same. I suspect satire.

Continue reading “Supremes, Gerrymand, Dark Money, Migrants, Race, Both Sides, Kamala”

 
From nojo:

We thought we understood fascism.

The American kind, anyway. The kind that almost consumed the country in the 1930s, as it had consumed others. The kind rooted in economic depression, in desperation, in opportunistic leadership. The kind rooted in fantasy, a quick fix to an unsolvable, unendurable crisis.

We thought we understood that.

We thought we understood that all problems are economic, when you cut through the bullshit. Healthy countries — economically healthy countries — don’t have these problems. We all get by, we all get along. We all have a roof over our heads.

We wuz wrong.

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From author John Scalzi:

Yesterday I came across a recent fanzine with a rather emphatic editorial about (and against) me, and my influence on the Hugo Awards and on science fiction and fantasy fandom in general. I posted a link to it on Twitter, and the editorial — and I — became the subject of much comment online. I was busy most of the day yesterday with business meetings and (because I’m in LA) driving to business meetings, so I didn’t have much to say about it. But I have a bit of time this morning to talk about some of the topics it brings up, so let me touch on a few of them.

1. First and most obviously, the author of the piece is perfectly within the bounds to have the opinion she has, even if she’s being mean to me, and even if I think the thesis of her argument and the general procedure of it is largely incorrect. I can take it, and I will remind people never to be an asshole on my behalf to anyone else, please, and thank you.

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From Julian Sanchez of the Cato Institute:

In testimony before the
Subcommittee on Intelligence and Counterterrorism
Committee on Homeland Security
United States House of Representatives

Algorithms may be able to determine that a post contains images of extremist content, but they are far less adept at reading contextual cues to determine whether the purpose of the post is to glorify violence, condemn it, or merely document it — something that may in certain cases even be ambiguous to a human observer. Journalists and human rights activists, for example, have complained that tech company crackdowns on violent extremist videos have inadvertently frustrated efforts to document human rights violations, and erased evidence of war crimes in Syria.

Just this month, a YouTube crackdown on white supremacist content resulted in the removal of a large number of historical videos posted by educational institutions, and by anti-racist activist groups dedicated to documenting and condemning hate speech.

Of course, such errors are often reversed by human reviewers — at least when the groups affected have enough know-how and public prestige to compel a reconsideration. Government mandates, however, alter the calculus. As three United Nations special rapporteurs wrote, objecting to a proposal in the European Union to require automated filtering, the threat of legal penalties were “likely to incentivize platforms to err on the side of caution and remove content that is legitimate or lawful.” If the failure to filter to the government’s satisfaction risks stiff fines, any cost-benefit analysis for platforms will favor significant overfiltering: Better to pull down ten benign posts than risk leaving up one that might expose them to penalties. For precisely this reason, the EU proposal has been roundly condemned by human rights activists and fiercely opposed by a wide array of civil society groups.

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From Frances Langum:

At the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference, the so-called president said “We needed 60 votes & we had 51, & sometimes we had a hard time with a couple. Fortunately, they’re gone now. They’ve gone on to greener pastures. Or perhaps far less green, but they’re gone. Very happy they’re gone.”

There was reportedly embarrassed laughter during this segment. He also praised “TiVo” as being a cool way to watch tv, declared victory in the War on Christmas, and blamed Obama for family separations.

He’s nuts.

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From The Onion:

WASHINGTON—Calling the measure “a solution that satisfies both the Democrats’ desire for representation and the and Republicans’ job-creation strategy,” Congress announced Wednesday they had reached a bipartisan compromise and will admit the District of Columbia into the Union as a slave state.

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From Glenn Geist at MadMikesAmerica:

Whether or not the Love Thine Enemy trope is uniquely Christian or ever practiced, it doesn’t carry much momentum these days with the woke folk. You make someone feel uncomfortable and after 40 years of a virtuous life you still need to be ruined – et in saecula saeculorum, amen. No deposit, no return.

So, Joe Biden is wrong to work with an opponent, because opponents are the devil and immutably evil. Never mind that it produces your desired result or even accomplishes an increment of your goal. What do we want? Everything. When do we want it? Now! Never mind that people have epiphanies, conversions, moments of enlightenment or even slow revelation. They’re just the enemy. We don’t want success, we want triumph and so we fail.

No, it’s not that my halo is at the cleaners, I never had one. I don’t love my enemies, but there’s a degree of acceptance that one will always have them, because that’s how humans are. There’s a degree of acceptance that the man I see as the devil may none the less have a degree of compassion and desire to make things better that can be used to change him while moving toward the better world – and I still, even after three quarters of a century, have hope that our prodigal sons will return.

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From David Robertson at The Moderate Voice:

Being that Joe Biden is the current front-runner in the Democratic presidential race, it is inevitable that his Democratic opponents will attempt to discredit him.

Apparently, at least a couple of those opponents are so scared of his presidential campaign that they have twisted his words.

In short, Biden described how he is able to maintain civility even when forced to work with the worst of politicians. He mentioned a time early in his senatorial career when he had to work with a couple of Democratic senators who were anti-black segregationists.

In a series of tweets, Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard explains why Biden’s critics are wrong.

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