Month: October 2022

Not So Good Family News

Our young combat hero is hospitalized.
The Marine Corps is transporting us to be with him.

There will be no posting this week.
Return is possible, not likely, next week.

Prayers from those who, in good conscience, can give them are appreciated.
Good wishes from my closely held, non-believing, friends are valued.

Thank you for staying with me.
I hope to return with good news.

Truss Tossed, VP Harris Distorted, GOP Violence, Fascism Considered

This is worth a few seconds:

  • In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson explains how Prime Minister Liz Truss applied conservative supply-side policies to British economic problems and achieved a new, spectacular record in rapidly forced retirement.
     
  • Green Eagle has a few unexpected words in defense of Liz Truss.
     
  • Reductress says the sudden resignation of Prime Minister Truss leaves her unsure about what new direction to take.
    Note: the headline is the whole point.
     
  • Vice President Kamala Harris gave an interview, talking at length about aid efforts to Florida during and after Hurricane Ian. Late in the interview, she mentioned that natural disasters often hit hardest those struggling with poverty including, disproportionally, Black people.
     
    Conservatives, being who they are, immediately fit those innocuous comments into something sinister. Hurricane aid, they charged, would target people based on skin color. White folks would be denied help.
     
    Unabashedly American is worth a review only to satisfy some interest in right wing caricatures of liberal beliefs.
     
    Darrell Michaels leads with a crude cartoon of Harris and Biden denying aid to Floridians based on a pigment chart.
     
    Just in case you have trouble getting the point, the Harris speech bubble is HA HA HA (CACKLE) (CACKLE) HA HA, while Biden peeps around the chart with SORRY, YOU AIN’T BLACK!
     
    Sadly, my old friend Darrell accurately represents the current state of contemporary conservatism. Among his many gifts, subtlety is notably absent.
     
  • So much for we report you decide. Fox News covers their reporter asking Biden Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what they see as an embarrassing question. Fox interrupts her response with
    We wanted to show you the rest of her answer but she didn’t make any sense.
     
    Scotties Playtime has a better explanation and links to what Fox would not show. Turns out her didn’t make any sense answer was factual, completely sensible, and pretty much shut the Fox interrogator down – as in to‑the‑ground.
     
  • Max’s Dad explains why he’s not contributing to Democratic campaigns. At least not until they toughen up.
     
    Republicans are all accusation, way past the point of absurdity. Defund police, release violent criminals, kill your family, tax you to oblivion, give it to illegals, take your house, and on and on.
     
    Yet here we continue with the Democratic ads about how they are lying about me and can’t we all get along?
     
  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac has a brief summary of the official campaign strategy for all GOP candidates. It’s mandatory.
     
  • Dave Columbo knows everything that matters about the midterms and GOP positioning.
    @davecolumbo Reposted now with fewer triggering jokes!!! #democrat #democrats #democratsoftiktok #midterms #midterms2022 #politicaltiktok #politicalsatire #politics #news #breaking #fy #fyp ♬ original sound – Dave Columbo

  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson does not seem especially intimidated by the turn of the Republican party toward an institutional fascination with political violence.
     
    This is what we end with:
    Such a civil war would more likely resemble Beirut or Baghdad than Gettysburg and Antietam.
     
    If we’re going to avoid such a fate because we’re all a bit too heavy around the middle, and I would obviously include myself in that description, then I have some simple advice for Gableman.
     
    Have another Twinkie. War is not the answer.
     
    Everything that leads in to that is worth the read.
     
    I hate that an occasional conservative writer is that good.
     
  • Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has little sympathy for today’s conservative nostalgia for 1930s and 40s fascism.

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged, reacts to a Republican reaction from a minor candidate to German history before and during World War II: All Nazis weren’t bad.
     
    One key passage:
    …Dr. Matt Keefer has a different take: wouldn’t you just do a little genocide, because everyone else was into it? It’s not like it makes you a bad person if basically everyone else was into it.
     
    Sure. Myself, I get that peer pressure makes people smoke, do crack, sleep with everyone they know and vote third party, but I tell you what, I draw the line at genocide.
     
    A lot of conservatives these days seem genocide-curious.

Continue reading “Truss Tossed, VP Harris Distorted, GOP Violence, Fascism Considered”

Alex Jones Verdicted, Nov Election, Walker Badged, Trump Trumped

  • Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged goes all out eloquent about Alex Jones, the verdict, the followers, and the enablers. And she does it with genuine style.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson has more on the not quite billion dollar judgement against Alex Jones.
     
    After losing their little kids to a gunman who walked into a school and murdered the children as they sat in a classroom, the parents were subjected to a decade of harassment by followers of Jones.
     
    Parents answering their phones got late night death threats. Mothers were told they would be targeted with rape.
    The children’s burial sites were desecrated, including midnight urination activities.
    One grief stricken father eventually committed suicide.
     
    Experts determined that Jones had made over $100 million broadcasting his conspiracy theories:

    • The shootings were fake. Nobody died.
    • Nobody was shot. The children did not exist.
    • The parents were actors.
    • It was all a plot to promote gun confiscation.

    At trial, Alex admitted he had been somewhat incorrect. However, he shouldn’t be penalized.

    • How was he to know anyone would take his theories seriously enough to actually act on them?
      Why hold him responsible just because a few maniacs reacted to his broadcasts with a bit too much enthusiasm?
    • Besides, the so-called suffering of parents was not all that serious:
      What I think of as the can’t-they-take-a-joke defense.
      No harm, no foul.

    As the trial wound down, he went on brat-casting, making fun of the proceedings.
     
    The jury apparently forgot that Alex Jones is hilarious.
     
    $965 million.

  • No matter what you think of Alex Jones all he did was speak words..
     
    And with that, tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors highlights a Republican Congressional representative with an unusual understanding of the 1st Amendment.
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports as Tucker Carlson warns us that the billion dollar judgement against Alex Jones will have a chilling effect on lying.
     
  • Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson writes in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel why he simply cannot bring himself to vote Republican this year, and gets a an important endorsement himself:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has a quick and reliable guide on how to look inside and decide how to vote in a couple weeks.

Continue reading “Alex Jones Verdicted, Nov Election, Walker Badged, Trump Trumped”

Listless – This Week

I do love writing here.
To give an idea how much:

Apologies to those who favor me with their readership.
Age and this week’s workload have taken their toll.
I have nothing prepared this week.

Fortunately, retirement is imminent.

I expect to resume listing essential links to appreciated bloggers next Saturday.
I hope you will return with me then.

Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion

  • Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara is irritated. If climate change is caused by humans and is dangerous to humanity, that means governments have to step in with rules and regulations.
     
    Libertarians like Michael are forbidden to even think along those lines. Otherwise their internal membership would be canceled by some sort of Trumpian mental process. Or something.
     
    So they can’t, just can’t, acknowledge even the possibility.
     
    Michael A. LaFerrara is put out because biased media doesn’t present both sides.
     
    Some folks do define responsible journalism as just presenting every viewpoint. If one side says it’s raining, and the other side says it’s dry outside, journalists should accurately quote both sides and call it a day.
     
    Other folks, which is to say me, think a responsible journalist will actually look out the window and report on Hurricane Ian.
     
    Even if Michael A. LaFerrara objects.
     
  • News Corpse takes on Fox as they seem loath to count some Americans as Americans. News Corpse posts just one thoughtless example:
     


    Should someone tell her?

  • Hackwhackers offers a fifteen second study on responses to Florida’s hurricane violence, with three contrasting leadership styles.
     
  • Dave Dubya has been paying attention to the legal saga of Alex Jones. He especially notes one bit of testimony from a parent who lost a child to gun violence. She talks about finally confronting Jones in court.
     
    I mean this is literally facing the biggest bully I’ve ever faced.
     
    Dave determines why Alex Jones fits the description, then turns his gaze to another figure who may fit.
     
    If anyone in class can guess who, you get to stay and help clean the erasers!
     
  • Dave Columbo and Laura High go newsing (It IS a word! ‘Tis, ‘Tis!) and explain this week’s continuing Trump bad news saga.
    @davecolumbo Poor guy can’t buy a break. #news #breaking #politics #political #politicaltiktok #democrats #democrat #democratsoftiktok #fy #fyp #foryou #foryoupage ♬ original sound – Dave Columbo

  • driftglass is irritated that right-wing enablers, seeing the disaster Trump has wrought, now claim to have been warning us all the time.
     
  • Frances Langum brings us the courtroom conclusion of one Jan 6 adventure. An insurrectionist discovers that aiding in the assault of a police officer with what could have become deadly force will result in seven years of confinement. But first, the judge and the officer verbally slap around the defendant for MAGA excuses.

Continue reading “Ian in Florida, Puerto Rica IS US, Trump, Alex, Jan 6, Books, Abortion”