- In Scotties Toy Box, we confront election disappointment. Scottie asks why Democrats play super nice while Republicans play cut throat. Do Dems want to always lose?
- Max’s Dad draws lessons from elections. Republicans don’t mind relying on hate and fear if it helps win elections. Democrats don’t mind losing elections if it means they still get to be the smartest guys in the room.
- In Letters from an American, historian Heather Cox Richardson listens to Republican plans as this week’s election results come in. She hears echos of Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and resistance to Civil Rights.
- The Onion has a few key takeaways from this week’s elections.
My favorite: The raw animal magnetism of Terry McAuliffe was not enough.
- Kevin Drum thinks that maybe, just maybe, Tuesday’s results might not be all that dismal for Democrats.
- PZ Myers watches and listens as conservative member of Congress Madison Cawthorn outlines the strategy for dealing with these liberals: strawman them, then murder them with your car.
- Okay, both days were violent. Both were attacks on America. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit knows what else 9/11/01 and 1/6/21 have in common.
- Tommy Christopher watches the report on CNN as a Capitol Hill Jan 6 rioter boasts that she won’t go to jail because she is white and blonde then gets sentenced.
A sense of overwhelming irony can easily come across as glee. And glee is hard to suppress in this case.
My reaction:
- Frances Langum listens in as QAnon conspiracists waiting for JFK Jr in Dealey Plaza discuss some bloodlines, not exactly gotten from lamestream ancestry sites, that some of you sheeple might consider exotic. I confess it took me a few replays to get past the Lincoln to Mussolini part.
- Abhorrent views are protected as freedom of speech, or else there is no freedom of speech. That includes those at school board meetings who object to masking requirements for students or who object to the teaching of the history of Civil Rights because it might make White students feel bad.
What are not protected are violence and threats of violence.
News Corpse covers the coverage by the Fox Network of violence by some among those protesting. Fox seems to conflate violence with protest. Who would have anticipated that?
Says one Fox guest: You’re going to end up with mom and pop at Gitmo, think about how outrageous that is!.
Yup. I’m outraged already.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life suggests a hidden leader, organizer, and financier of America’s current racial antagonisms, and he has the receipts.
- At The Moderate Voice Robert Levine gets impatient with Congress for inaction, but mostly Democrats for perpetual self-destruction.
I dunno. When you manage to get a Senate majority of 1, and even that by counting the Vice President, you do end up in WeakestLinkLand. Any Senator who wants to be President for a while can seize the limelight for as long as that individual ego needs to be fed. Even an actual small majority would have helped.
- In the Borowitz Report, Republicans name Joe Manchin Employee of the Month.
Congratulations are due. He works hard to earn it.
- Hackwhackers reads the economic report for October. Looks pretty good.
- Infidel753 takes a look at economic news and takes aim at the way economic news is covered. Underlying premise is antagonistic to working people.
As in, infidel’s accurate summary of CNN:
Rising wages for new hires, wage growth for existing workers, and higher annual raises constitute a risk. They’re a threat.
Yeah, I’d say the bias is clear.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony has a few stats. Like a clear state-by-state pattern in the identities of the highest paid public officials, the richest few individuals nationally and the effective tax rates for each.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has a partial list of issues through American history with liberal and conservative positions on each.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara insists that pushback on climate change is unusably vague. What is actually meant is pushback on government policies to “fight” climate change.
Michael then pushes back, denying that climate change is a problem at all. Makes the head spin like something from The Exorcist
Therein lies the problem with problem of the commons, for militant libertarians. Since there is no non-governmental answer to the issue, the only alternative is to deny that it exists, to prove that it doesn’t.
- Imani Gandy refers to negotiations on new proposed abortion restrictions in Mississippi as the Great Abortion Compromise of 2021. Except that it is less compromise than capitulation.
She’s correct, of course.
Rights can be regulated if they come into conflict with rights. Screaming fire in a crowded theatre, your right to swing your fist ending at my nose, carrying armed rocket launchers next to airports. That sort of thing.
Rights are not actually rights if rights themselves are subject to negotiation. Rights are not negotiated. Their exercise is simply abolished.
- This is a short – 20 minutes or so – podcast, well worth the time investment. Julian Sanchez take a look at policy concerns as schools allow students to take home laptops, then use digital technology to monitor the kids during and beyond school hours.
- Green Eagle takes a look at characterizations of Israeli policies as apartheid, compares those with actual apartheid from South Africa’s history, and notices some distinct differences.
- My Senator from here in Missouri explains why everything is my loved one’s fault. I told her it’s official. Josh Hawley says she has to stop, stop, stop criticizing my masculinity.
Her reaction: Huh?
Waddya gonna do with someone that deep into denial?
Senator Hawley calls attention to the twin evils threatening our great American culture. Men are driven to pornography and video games by criticism of our masculinity.
Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has an alternate set of explanations. Pornography has been around since the beginning of beginnings. And it seems people have played games since Hector was a pup.
So humans, in varying degrees, enjoy lovemaking and want to have fun.
I, of course, have my own snide, rude, sneering, juvenile opinion.
And also my own experience:
- The Palmer Report points out that federal raids do not happen in a vacuum. And news stories told with a clear tilt often have sources with an agenda.
So a recent residential raid, and a featured article suggesting a couple of prominent Republicans were kind of, sort of, roped into criminality, combine into a reasonable guess. Maybe, just maybe, Rudy Giuliani has gotten sold out by his accomplices.
Speculation. But not that much of a stretch.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, a dialogue between atheist Bruce and a right wing pastor is published. Bruce gets angry reactions to his rainbow suspenders.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is not saying conservative Christianity is anti‑Jesus. Jesus is saying it’s anti‑Jesus. Chapter and verse.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil seems somewhat unsympathetic to militant Christians who want to make religion central to American life by any means including firearms training.
- Nojo conducts a survey, inviting readers to vote on the true meaning of this week’s Halloween experience. How was your candy?
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors caught sight of the best ever Halloween costume. Worn by a cuddly, transformed into extremely frightening, pet.
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson dresses up for Halloween as – I dunno. What the hell IS that?
- John Scalzi at Whatever has a super tip for when you find frost on your grass.
- @momwino98 is left speechless at what is needed to win the great British Bake Off
@momwino98 ##stitch with @britishbakeoff ##wtf ##foryourpage ##fyp ##food ##dirty ##SamsClubScanAndGo ##bake ##cook
- The Propaganda Professor describes one problem with today’s deluge of available information. It seems to be like trying to drink out of firehose. It becomes harder, not easier, to get a picture of reality.
The professor prescribes a few basic steps to shape the chaos into sense.
- In MadMikesAmerica, Glenn Geist looks at how projecting a world 20,000 years from now can liberate an author, and a movie, from normal fictional constraints. Glenn goes to the theatre with Dune.
- Dave Dubya trips into the future, looks around, trips back in a remarkably dark mood. Didn’t like what he saw.
- SilverAppleQueen brings us poetry from centuries ago as John Keats likens sleep to a gentle death as release from emotional suffering.
- The Journal of Improbable Research finds a publication devoted to scholarly, peer reviewed, studies on Bruce Springsteen. A partial list of articles, with links, is included.
- We can always use advice on building healthier relationships. Reductress explains how to rebuild trust after finding out your significant other ate dinner before you came over.
Couple of Tweets I thought worthy:
And I’m allowed a few of my own:
– Podcasts –
About John Keats … the day after I posted his poem on my blog, I was cruising Netflix & I found a movie called “Bright Star” which was about the last three years of his life. Written & directed by Jane Campion, it stars Ben Wishaw as John Keats (if you’re a James Bond fan, you’ll know him as Q in the Daniel Craig movies), Abbie Comish, & Paul Schneider. It was very good & filled with poetry. If you are a fan of John Keats, poetry or the Romantic era, I highly recommend it.
Thank you, Polly, for that thoughtful guidance.
You’re very welcome.