I wish I loved anything as much as this dog loves walks.
đź“ą: Jesse Stellick pic.twitter.com/EwWaeSwLbx
— Paul Bronks (@SlenderSherbet) October 4, 2022
- Scotties Playtime summarizes it all through news snippets (beautifully done) as the Republican Party in nominal charge of Congress
seems not in charge of itself:- Ousts Kevin
- Gets Personal with Gaetz
- Plenty Petty with Pelosi
- Blames Democrats for not keeping Republicans from attacking each other.
- Hackwhackers goes to the X‑box formerly known as the artist Twitter for reactions to the sQuashing of Kevin McCarthy.
- In the chaos that has become of the Republican House, the Palmer Report resorts to mathematics and discovers that it’s easier to predict who can’t be next Speaker than to forecast who can.
- At The Onion, the House is finally closing in on electing a new Speaker: Kevin McCarthy’s 8th grade bully.
- Author John Scalzi at Whatever cannot spare a lament for back-stabbed Kevin McCarthy.
Key tactical advice:
Don’t give a stabber a knife, a firebug a box of matches, or a sloppy drunk the keys to your car, especially when you’re riding shotgun without a seatbelt.
- Andy Borowitz reports as Republicans hold an emergency meeting to decide who has to sit next to Matt Gaetz.
- A few folks, including mr Trump, have floated the notion that mr Trump might become Speaker Trump.
Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson has a better candidate:
I WANT BIGFOOT FOR SPEAKER. pic.twitter.com/F6pPrbkEKM
— James Wigderson (@jwigderson) October 4, 2023
- Green Eagle has an interesting question about Constitutional law. If mr Trump is elected Speaker of the House (implausible, not impossible), would he be considered a member? And if he became a member, would he be immune from arrest or prosecution?
- News Corpse has a few of the wingnuttier members of the wingnuttiest fringes of the wingnut party pushing for Donald Trump as Speaker of the House, now being joined by cheerleaders at the Fox network.
Trump seems to want it.
Yeah, it’s news, but bored skeptics may be forgiven:
Meanwhile, Trump’s attack on the judge can be understood as the summary ruling orders the exposing of longstanding Trump company shady financial maneuvers.
Key translation of Trump’s panic attack aimed at the judge:
It’s a Travesty of a Sham of a Mockery of a Travesty of
Two Mockeries of a Sham!!
- After the Trump rage session, Tommy Christopher watches as CNN’s fact-checking knocks out each rant point.
I happened to catch Cato’s Julian Sanchez one sentence summary as well:
“I wasn’t committing financial fraud; I was committing TAX fraud.” https://t.co/I2J9bm3VL0
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 4, 2023
- Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has what may be the most accurate latest verdict on mr Trump.
Key judgment:
We are not saying this enough. Trump is not stable, not a genius, not sane. He’s not just a crook, he’s bent.
- Frances Langum has former Trump appointee, current Fox pundit, John Yoo arguing that the Trump trial will compel fearful Republicans to avoid investments in New York.
Keeping two sets of books, avoiding taxes with one set, bamboozling banks with the other, is illegal. His argument seems to be that dishonest practices are a requirement for Republican investors.
- In Letters from an American, noted historian Heather Cox Richardson delves into the significance of Donald Trump entertaining Mar‑a‑Lago guests with extreme top nuclear secrets. An Australian billionaire then shares those secrets with dozens of others.
Key National Security violation:
Trump allegedly shared the exact number of nuclear warheads U.S. submarines carry, and exactly how close they can get to a Russian submarine without being detected.
- Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit sees reports of mr Trump showing off as would most infants, sharing highly sensitive nuclear secrets with a guest. She perceives a more encompassing party pattern.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz proposes a simple comparison:
MAGA Americans,
Donald Trump has done every horrible thing you wrongly claimed Hillary had done or was going to do.
She is the patriot.
He is the traitor.
You owe her an apology.
You owe this nation one.
You were wrong.#TrumpIsATraitor #deprogramminghttps://t.co/dWDdrr8Byh— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) October 6, 2023
- At The Moderate Voice Kathy Gill points to headlines in mainstream press to demonstrate how news organizations run off the rails when covering Trump.
- driftglass takes new conservative allies to task for excessive both‑sides instincts.
- Dave Columbo goes time traveling and discovers a 2005 Republican.
- Nojo goes past‑decades‑ironic with up‑and‑coming young future Republican leaders in a promo that has not aged well.
- Even before the rest of a week of horrors for the GOP, there was a beginning day. Max’s Dad recounts the Monday of mangles.
- With all the drama, Margaret and Helen are back (Yay‑y‑y‑y!) and we can still take a few to read Helen Philpot’s impatience with last week’s meaningless Republican debate.
- Batocchio, the Vagabond Scholar, reviews The Tyranny of the Minority, a book by two Harvard Professors of Government about the growth of extremism in the Republican Party.
He transcribes portions of a television interview and adds his own measured reactions.
Batocchio keeps it tight and readable.
- Nan’s Notebook has some fun with the latest conspiracy kookiness, but I admit that this photo makes me chuckle at Jonah’s skeptical wife.
- Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez has an insight on rightist theories about leftist conspiracies:
I think it’s underappreciated how much of our politics is shaped by bored people with boring lives desperately looking for a dramatic narrative to make them feel excited and important. https://t.co/GIUCphKsDM
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 5, 2023
And suggests it is a demand side illness:FWIW, I don’t mean Logan, who seems not so much bored as frankly unwell. I mean the people who constitute the audience for this sort of tripe.
— Julian Sanchez (@normative) October 5, 2023
- Michael John Scott imagines a world in which Marjorie Taylor Greene is VP and Jim Jordan is Speaker.
- tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors makes a compelling, though limited, case for Joe Manchin. His votes are disappointing, unless we recognize him as a closet Republican who voted to keep the Senate gavel away from McConnell.
So one hand clapping?
If not applause, maybe at least applau?
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil notes that Elon doesn’t much care for refugees fleeing to any country, and M. Bouffant doesn’t much care for Musk.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life offers a psychology lens to the life’s end of Diane Feinstein, the UAW strike, and racism in America.
He finds room for kind (much appreciated) words about me.
- Disaffected and it Feels So Good brings up the Tommy Tuberville experience as Senator Tommy gums up national security by holding up all military advancement, then nominates himself as the epitome of military heroism, and finally gets crushed by legislators who actually are heroes.
Key Tuberville objection to race mixing:
I heard some things that he talked about, about race and things that he wanted to mix into the military. Don’t give me this stuff about equal opportunity.
Key Tuberville comparing himself to actual veterans:
There is no one more military than me.
- The Strategic Studies Book Club goes back a century and a half and turns a few pages from French military theorist Ardant du Picq.
du Picq looked to how military institutions can be successfully supported by a democratic society, writing with a penchant for pithy, often cynical, aphorisms. He was killed in battle in 1870.
Key cynicism:
Man is merely a friend of equality but a lover of domination.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has very simple advice on aid to Ukraine.
- Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo of Rewire News Group go to podcast, covering the new SCOTUS term, with likely decisions on access to mifepristone, racist gerrymandering, and insurance coverage for gender‑affirming care.
- A woman is seriously hurt on a dangerous Disney ride. PZ Myers reads about it on the Fox site, and learns more from the comments.
Key damage:
Disney has a ride that, if you don’t cross your legs, water will jet up into your guts and rupture your bowels, and some people think that is perfectly reasonable.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony gets some help from cartoonist Jen Sorensen as NYTimes David Brooks complains about the cost of airport whiskey.
- Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara says You didn’t build that is a hopelessly flawed argument, because it denigrates individual effort.
Key point:
You inherit the achievements of others that came before you, therefore anything you build owes to those prior achievements, not your own efforts.
But this is self‑evidently false. True, prior achievements are your starting point. But what you make of those is key.
This is known as setting up a strawman and then knocking him down.
The actual argument has to do with corporate owners who take legitimate advantage of roads, police oversight, fire protection, military protection, and the educational system that provides a talented workforce.
Those basic conditions, providing a framework of opportunity, are what you didn’t do.
Certainly, you should be rewarded for your efforts, talent, and luck. You should also make sure the next generation shares those same advantages.
It is an argument for progressive taxation of the fabulously wealthy.
Michael can make a stronger argument than this.
Hell! I am no libertarian, and I could make a stronger argument for his position.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce contemplates the morality of Curt Schilling’s violation of the right to privacy of a dying teammate because Curt knows prayer works.
It is a cautionary lesson for those of us in the faith. Are we to sacrifice simple decency because we know the mind of God?
- Infidel753 has remarkable video of the huge 1996 disaster at the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in China.
- The Propaganda Professor has a temporary teaching gig in Cambodia and finds that living abroad gives him a different perspective on the US.
- @whiskeywhistle98 would make a great therapist:
- In Happiness Between Tails the most important of da‑AL’s observations may have to do with her efforts to edit down a too‑long manuscript.
She finds herself cutting too radically and introduces the important concept of balance.
Could be important to any writer, and perhaps could apply to other areas of life.
- For those of us who have wanted to look cool but couldn’t: Clickbait satirist Reductress has advice on how to take part in Business Cool by wearing only a briefcase.
- SilverAppleQueen has cool sleeping cats.
- Don’t quite know what to make of this transition from Mark Waulberg (No, not Mark Wahlberg, the other Mark) but it appealed to my juvenile sense of humor:
- YellowDog Granny has a few dozen observations on aging gracefully, et al.
- Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes writes about getting out of bed. Seriously.
It is an essay on debilitating medical conditions. My take is a lesson in the fragility of the human condition. Your mileage may vary.
– Recordings from the past: How do they hold up? –
am such a sucker for dogs – especially humorous that owner is so blase. will trump ever cease to send icicles down my spine? many tx for including me here. wishing you a great week, Burr 🙂
Happy to hear from you.
Thank you for your generous comment, and especially for your thoughtfully constructed posts, da_AL.