Month: January 2018

• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from CNN in a posted video, as Jake Tapper pushes back after Sarah Sanders uses the famed Moynahan quote. Everyone has a right to their own opinion but people have no right to their own facts. Tapper answers with a list of Trump “alternate facts”. 50 seconds of truth.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post has had it with conservative efforts to end Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He suggests a electoral attack by ordinary citizens on Republican lawmakers and a grassroots financial attack their “entrenched and corrupt billionaire donors.”
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil points out yet another incident in the existence of Trump donors.
   
• nojo at Stinque celebrates a surprise Christmas week off from Trump abominations. Then, sadly, it’s back to the new normal.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson reports that the Bannon-Trump split is having an effect on the Republican senate primary.
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged seems to think that the effort by Trump to silence Bannon legally with a nondisclosure agreement is comically dumb.
   
• After my President denied he is stupid, that he is, in fact, a “very stable genius”, PZ Myers discovers and posts what turns out to be an easily available video of Trump tweeting. Who knew?
   
• Green Eagle makes a very good case that America must never again accept a President whose main qualification is experience as a CEO.
   
• My long time friend T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, reports on the uproar over the US recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He concludes that Palestinians who object do “not truly want peace”. After all, says my conservative friend, Israel’s title to Jerusalem has been determined by God.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein sees a shift in how lawmakers see marijuana laws, a shift during which President Trump is disengaged.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit explains what renowned physicist Edward Teller warned oil company executives about in 1959 and what they did about it.
   
• Dave Dubya looks at the war on democracy, science, and education, then concludes that Republicans would lead America into a new dark age.
   
• driftglass is still …uh… impatient with David Brooks, the worst journalist in America.
   
• Jon Perr at PERRspectives points to an important advantage Democrats will have in 2018 that Republicans did not have in 2010 when they won big in Congress against an incumbent President.
   
• At The Onion, delusional sources report that 2018 will be the year it will all fall into place.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce uses the popular series Good Behavior as a jumping off point as he takes on a Christian disdain for ever taking credit. He endorses the impatience of one character: Don’t thank God, thank me!.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research carries research into an ancient Englishe custom involving marriage and bacon.
   

 
The traditional libertarian argument against most business regulation is that governmental interference is not necessary. There is already sufficient incentive toward responsible behavior in simple self-interest: Harmful practices are bad for business.

But, at the core, Ayn Rand followers see government intrusion as inherently immoral, a violation of private rights. Loyal reader Trey found an image that capsulizes the weakness of the libertarian case.

Our readers react:

Ryan:

The resulting free market pressures closed the bar down shortly thereafter. That means everything worked out in the end, right?

Trey:

Or they lower prices temporarily, claim they changed suppliers, and, if the bar is part of a large chain with resources, buy off people to work at discrediting the story as a false narrative created by the bar’s competitors.

Ryan:

Or nothing really happens because they’re the only bar in the area.

S’toon:

Does closing down the bar due the free market fairy AFTER its killed people bring the dead people back to life?

We learned on my pharmacy technician course that regulations happen when bad things happen to prevent the bad thing from happening again.

Somehow preventing bad things from happening is bad in the minds of the right.

Trey:

A certain segment of the population think that the Federal Government is out to get people and implement regulations as some sort of power grab. What actually happens is that regulations are put in place when the free market proves that it’s not going to do what needs to do to ensure life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Zap Pow:

Which is a great satisfaction for the dead and their families!

Ryan:

Yes, S’toon and Zap Pow, that was the point of my comment.

We either have to depend on the “rational self-interest” of our fellow humans to not harm us or be satisfied that our injuries or deaths *might* cause someone financial hardship–at least until he moves to a place where no one knows him and opens up a new business. And somehow we can count on self-interest and the market to protect us even when a business has no competition because it’s part of a small town, occupies a niche market, or has the resources to crush others.

It’s difficult to caricaturize libertarianism when it has done such a fine job of doing it to itself.

Ed:

Statist Ideal: You walk into a doctor’s office. The doctor serves you regulated Fentynal. You die.

Ryan:

So because a government gets things wrong sometimes (I’m not sure that your example is great, but I’ll take it) or cannot account for every scenario in which someone could be harmed, we should do away with prevention and oversight through regulation. Better to die from the same situation in an unregulated or far less regulated market than to die because the government made a mistake.

Have a safe regulated weekend.

Even at my age, there is something to be learned each day:
 

 
Button?
It’s the first I’ve heard that particular euphemism.

 
From Tommy Christopher:

According to The Times, Papadopoulos bragged to Australian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom Alexander Downer that the Russians possessed “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in May of 2016. After hacked emails began showing up online, Australian intelligence officials shared Papadopoulos’ revelation with U.S. intelligence officials.

“The hacking and the revelation that a member of the Trump campaign may have had inside information about it were driving factors that led the F.B.I. to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia’s attempts to disrupt the election,” the Times reported.

On Tuesday afternoon, MSNBC host and longtime Republican consultant Nicolle Wallace pointed out that this new reporting effectively kills Trump’s new favorite talking point that the infamous “Steele dossier” was the genesis of the investigation, and that it was tainted by that dossier’s political origins.

“That ruse is dead,” Wallace declared.

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From Infidel753:

As expected, the Iranian theocracy has begun cracking down on the protests that have raged in several of the nation’s cities for days now. In Tehran alone, 450 people have been arrested, and that number will certainly grow. Though the protests have focused on economic issues and to some extent on nationalism and the repressive nature of the religious state, the regime has predictably blamed outside provocateurs, namely “the United States, Britain and Saudi Arabia” (well, at least they didn’t do the traditional thing and blame the Jews). It remains to be seen whether the crackdown will intimidate the population back into quiescence or inflame further resistance.

One other thing is noteworthy about the crackdown:

Ghazanfarabadi said the detainees will be soon put on trial and the ringleaders would face serious charges including “moharebeh” — an Islamic term meaning warring against God — which carries the death penalty.

This is what happens in a theocratic state, the antithesis of a secular system where religion and government are kept strictly separated. Where the state represents God, all resistance to the will of the state is blasphemy, sin, morally outrageous, and indeed “warring against God”.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Yet, right smack in the middle of the article, Samenow finds it necessary to say this:

Although it may be tempting to question global warming when temperatures are so frigid, the abnormally cold weather over the eastern U.S. and parts of Canada is an anomaly compared to conditions over the rest of the world. Most locations are presently experiencing weather that is considerably warmer than normal.

It is also worth remembering the following: The three warmest years on record globally, since records began in the late 1800s, are 2014, 2015 and 2016.

2017 is expected to rank among the top five warmest years on record.

So far this year, warm weather records have outpaced cold by a factor of 3 in the United States.

Now, this may all be true. But why change the subject? Is the press so obsessed with the Left’s climate change agenda that they have to sneak it in even as 200 million Americans shiver in record cold?

It’s irrelevant and misleading. The facts cited are a statistical illusion, even if true. It sounds dramatic, right? The warmest years globally, measured as the average temperature, are all recent. More record highs than record lows. More areas globally experiencing above average temperatures. It sounds downright startling—or is at least intended to.

But think about it. The Earth, globally, has warmed by about one-two degrees Fahrenheit since about 1880. It stands to reason that the warmest years, on average, would have occurred toward the end of the 1880-2017 period. It stands to reason also that we’d get more record highs than record lows.

But keep in mind that the temperature differences are matters of fractions of a degree.

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From the Borowitz Report:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Starting 2018 with a political bombshell, House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that he will retire once he is satisfied that he has completely wrecked the country.

“I came to Washington with the goal of destroying life in the United States as we know it,” Ryan said in an emotional press conference. “Once I look around me and see nothing but smoldering ruins, I’ll call it a day.”

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From Bill Formby at MadMikesAmerica:

But through all of this, he has had one underlying theme. Disrespecting the traditions of his office and how it should be carried out. Disrespecting the underpinnings of the country’s democratic way of operating. Disrespecting the freedom of the press and of the very governmental agencies under his control. The highlights of demeaning his Attorney General to the public, demeaning the finest Law Enforcement agency in the world, the FBI, and bullying through a tax reform that is really a tax cut for the wealthy and the corporations while leaving the average person out in the cold after the first two years.

He has weakened the separation of powers by having his minions in Congress get on board his bandwagon about the incompetent FBI and the corrupt Special Counsel.

A quick note here; if you notice he starts the demeaning of whoever or whatever he is after and gets his followers going in that direction then pull back while they attack. Example, he is now saying he thinks the Special Counsel will be fair while his followers in Congress and Fox News look to remove him.

He is, right now as close to being a dictator as this country has ever seen. How difficult would it be for him to actually take over the country if this path continues? Everyone keeps saying, “He won’t do this, or he can’t get away with that.” But he does it and no one stops him.

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