Month: July 2020

 

From Burr Deming:

Part of a comment thread in response to
I’m Voting Against Trump in November. I’ve Already Won.

Thank you for your comment, Darrell. Your thoughts have always been welcomed here.

It strikes me as unreasonable for us to expect Dave Dubya to summarize your views in a way you will find accurate and fair. He does, after all, disagree with those views. He does acknowledge your factual points, when they are factual. He agrees, for example, that an early member of BLM proclaimed herself to have been trained in marxist activism. I’m going by memory here, so forgive me if I got her wording wrong. You and Dave seem to have it down.

Dave disagrees, as do I, with your exercise in guilt by association. When you simply repeat that logical flaw, it does not deflate that disagreement.

I address it this way: BLM began after Trayvon Martin, on his way to his uncle’s home (I think it was) from buying candy, was stalked and killed by a gunman who thought he didn’t belong. The gunman got off by saying he felt threatened and was attacked by the youngster who was armed with a bag of skittles. BLM was, at the start, composed of three young folks. One of them did proclaim herself to have had marxist training.

The movement grew in a tsunami of support, way beyond those three, after we watched a police officer smirk at a camera as he casually knelt on the neck of a victim for nearly nine minutes as the dying man whispered pleas for his life. The kneeling stopped only after the man was dead. Those three young individuals have been overrun by 26 million people who were horrified by what we all saw.

I suppose you could claim that those 26 million are participating in a marxist movement in the same sense that you could claim that Donald Trump leads a pro-voting rights movement because of Abraham Lincoln and Thaddeus Stevens. You could claim that Volkswagen is a Nazi corporation because Hitler once smiled at an automobile. You could claim that most Americans, for instance you and I and Dave, chant socialist slogans whenever we recite the Pledge of Allegiance because the author of that pledge was an avowed socialist.

I don’t find much to support the rest of your accusations against the BLM movement. Perhaps supporting evidence would help.

Your unsupported opinions are welcomed, however. That is not because you are my longtime friend, and not because you are a genuinely good guy, although those descriptions are true. Your views are welcomed because they deserve to be aired and examined.

Dave’s well argued vivisection of those views are welcomed as well, for the same reasons.

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From JoAnn Williams at Biased Unbalanced and Politically Incorrect:

I was deep in contemplation when a woman, my contemporary, interrupted the quiet. Accompanied by sunscreen, water, and a smartphone loaded with Leonard Skynyrd ring tones she plopped down on a lounge chair, prepared for what appeared to be a lengthy stay.

I acknowledged her with a nod hoping to convey that this is a time for silent reflection.

She did not receive the message.

After way too many Leonard Skynyrd text notifications, followed by loud lengthy conversations with family members who most likely share a commonality with wolves, she advanced to the pool.

I was willing to share the deep end of the pool, but her belly flop entry in my space indicated she did not respect boundaries.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

I know I keep saying this, but the pivot isn’t coming. People thought back in 2016, at some point, Trump would stop dishing out red meat to the rubes and start behaving like a person who wanted to win a general election. He didn’t pivot, and welp. So, after the election, he was gonna get serious once he was on the job, and behave presidentially. Welp. And now he is saying mean hashtags on Twitter are not just “very unfair!” but illegal. Sure. All bad news about him is “fake news” and all bad polls are “rigged”.

So when I see any story that suggests he’s got a “new tone”, let’s take that with a grain, it better include, as the link does, that that new tone is probably about re-election and his discovery that “his people” are also getting it. (Let’s just not take it with a grain of hydroxychloroquine, which the newly-serious Trump has been retweeting links about this evening. It still hasn’t demonstrated any proven effectiveness and has serious side effects, including death.) He wants to appear serious and concerned, but let’s not confuse that for actually being that way.

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From Joe Gandelman at The Moderate Voice:

The Forward also ran a graphic overlaying the black and white photo of the ad on top of the original 2017 Reuters photo. It clearly showed the nose was bigger on the ad photo.

The Senator’s campaign said it was an error due to a filter by an “outside vendor” when resizing took place that distorted the image and an accident due to photo resizing. They they deleted the ad (after a mini-firestorm on social media) and charged that anyone who suggests it wasn’t an error “is intentionally misrepresenting Senator Perdue’s strong and consistent record of standing firmly against anti-Semitism and all forms of hate.”

Far be it for me to imply in any way that it was intentional that the Senator’s opponent who just happens to be Jewish wound up with a bigger nose which accidentally happened in photo resizing.

I’ve done The Moderate Voice blog since 2004 and have resized literally thousands of photos and not once did someone’s nose turn out different than on the original photo.

I’ve also resized many photos of people who are Jewish and their noses didn’t turn out bigger.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

“Ooh, I can’t wait until November! You’re going to be so sorry when he wins.”

“Boy, are you gonna be crying on Election night!”

“Can’t wait to see you lose in November, snowflake.”

Well, sure MAGA friend, if he’s reelected, it goes without saying that I’ll grieve that reality terribly.

It will mean America has failed the most fundamental test of its collective sanity.

It will mean the system our forebears constructed has irreparably failed us.

It will mean the racists and the bigots and the zealots will have run of the house.

It will mean our nation will be more cruel and more violent.

It will mean we are past the precipice of moral collapse.

It will mean this place is a planetary disgrace.

But it won’t mean I’ll have lost.

I measure my life differently than you do.

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From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

Trump is a bully, but when you stand up to him, he backs down like the loser he is. Just this week, he’s retreated several times:

• He insisted that Congress cut payroll taxes, but his own party members in the Senate said no. Probably because Trump would have benefited more from such a tax cut than the economy would.
• He restarted the coronavirus briefings that he had earlier killed, but without real information from real scientists, nobody cared.
• He even admitted that the pandemic was going to get worse before it got better. Duh! So I guess he was either wrong (or just lying) when he kept saying that it would get better soon. Why would anyone believe him?
• He tried to get all schools in the country to open in the fall, even threatening their federal aid, but they said no, and he backed down.
• He claimed that wearing masks wasn’t necessary, until he did an about-face and not only wore one, but said they were a good idea.
• And probably worst of all, he kept demanding that he could stroke his own ego by giving a speech at the Republican National Convention to 20,000 people cheering for him. And then pretended to cancel it because he was too busy with the coronavirus. As if.

Trump absolutely hates to change his position. And as we are seeing, even when he does change his mind he can never admit that he was wrong. That makes him a loser.

The Democrats (especially Speaker Nancy Pelosi) figured out that they could stand up to Trump, and it now looks like the Republicans are figuring out the same thing. Thank goodness.

Once your victims stop being scared of you, being a bully stops working. And now everyone knows that Trump is weak.

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From Infidel753:

As society’s attitudes about homosexuality have evolved, those of most evangelical churches have remained stubbornly stuck in the 20th century (the 20th century BC, in fact). As a result, among younger Americans, the adjective most strongly associated with evangelicalism (and even Christianity in general) is anti-gay, which is one reason younger people have been abandoning religion in droves.

With the rise of Trump, evangelical pastors and voters have overwhelmingly supported the most vulgar, dishonest, greedy, and immoral man ever to occupy the presidency. This rush to sell their supposed principles for a mess of anti-abortion judges has branded them as hypocritical in the eyes of the rest of the country — though in truth they had already richly earned that label through their history of excuse-making, victim-blaming, and “forgiveness” fetishism on behalf of an endless succession of church leaders caught committing sexual or financial abuse.

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From Bill Formby in MadMikesAmerica:

It certainly is nothing to announce to the world about “acing” unless you were suspected of being a 6 year old. Even a 6-year-old would score pretty high on this test. One of the tougher questions was to count backward from 100 by 7s. (Speed does not count).

I might agree that the question about what is today? (Day, month, year) or Where are we right now (city, county, state) may be a little tough for a 6-year-old child. But I am sure that a fifth grader would know.

Other questions like Here is a sheet of paper; fold it in half and put it on the floor, or ‘I am going to show you two objects like a pencil and a wristwatch and you name them’ could likely be completed by a five-year-old.

Announcing how well he had scored on any test would be in line with Mary Trump’s assessment of Donald Trump’s raising in her description of the Trump family. Donald was raised to expect praise for anything he did whether it was worthy of praise or not.

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From The Onion:

“It’s quite frankly insulting that these federal agents think we need their assistance violating the civil rights of lawful protesters by rounding them up and throwing them into jail cells,” said Wilson, explaining that the federal government couldn’t even begin to match the Chicago Police Department’s ability to terrorize the community.

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