Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From The Journal of Improbable Research:
Editing can be a slow process. A new study suggests that a famous novel published three centuries ago could and should be edited to correct a calculation error. The study is:
“Physiological Essay on Gulliver’s Travels: A Correction After Three Centuries,” Toshio Kuroki, The Journal of Physiological Sciences, epub 2019.
From Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass:
I don’t know how Phillip Shepherd can function these days, helpless from hysterical laughter as he must be.
A lot of state government’s big legal cases in recent years have landed in front of Franklin Circuit Judge Phillip Shepherd. And they haven’t always gone the way the governor or General Assembly want.
A Senate bill filed Friday would let Gov. Matt Bevin or other state officials avoid going before Shepherd.
Senate President Robert Stivers, upset with Shepherd’s handling of the big pension case last year, sponsored the measure, filed as Senate Bill 2. The low number indicates it’s a top priority of the Senate Republican majority.
Stivers, a Manchester Republican, complained in a floor speech Friday that all big state government cases and constitutional challenges should not be heard by judges elected from a single county.
Hey moron: State government cases are heard in the “single county” of Franklin circuit because that’s where state government exists.
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:
No one (but Putin and Trump) knows what was discussed in those meetings, and we only have Trump’s word that no treasonous actions took place. The American people don’t know what was said. The American (and world) press doesn’t know what was said. Congress doesn’t know what was said. Our intelligence agencies don’t know what was said. And even the senior staff at the White House doesn’t know what was said.
Why the extreme secrecy? Shouldn’t the senior White House staff, the Congress, and our intelligence agencies be privy to those discussions at the very least? What is Trump trying to hide?
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:
King is done in the House. With no committee assignments and being a member of the minority party, nobody in the House will give a cockroach-fuck what King wants. In all probability, any attempts that he makes to intervene on behalf of his constituents will be ignored.
He has, effectively, been removed from the House of Representatives. If he cared about his constituents, he’d resign.
Trump, uncharacteristically, has been keeping his mouth shut.
From Brenda W. Clough at Whatever:
I was born in Washington DC and have lived here, off and on, all my life. So a fascination with power comes naturally to me. All my novels revolve around power and the difficulties of acquiring and managing it, and my new time travel trilogy Edge to Center is no exception.
And what is time travel but the ultimate power? Think about it. Nothing is over, if you can go back and fix it. No battle lost, no relationship destroyed, no opportunity missed. You blew it big time. But you could go back and make everything right – couldn’t you?
Well … of course not.
From Tommy Christopher:
“I see I’m no longer your favorite person in the White House, which you said for such a long time,” Conway said, adding “That’ll keep you on your cable network.”
Karem laughed and said “You know you are.”
“Then you shouldn’t lie on Twitter,” Conway said.
“You all shouldn’t lie on Twitter,” Karem shot back.
Conway’s apparent sensitivity is ironic, given that she’s calling back to an incident that occurred last week in which she called Jim Acosta a “smart-ass” and claimed that “most of the people here don’t like you.”
From Mark at News Corpse:
I’m in the White House, waiting. The Democrats are everywhere but Washington as people await their pay. They are having fun and not even talking!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 13, 2019
Poor Donnie is once again whining about his lonely confinement to that big, old, drafty, White House. However, his version of events is perversely distorted. This week the Democrats in the House of Representatives passed several bills to fund the government that is currently in the midst of the Trump Shutdown – the longest, bestest shutdown ever. It is Republican Leader Mitch McConnell who refuses to call the Senate into session and allow a vote on those bills.
What’s more, contrary to Trump’s fictional account, most of the Democrats are in Washington working. But Trump, who is obviously paying more attention to Fox News than his presidential duties, found a story he could use to falsely malign Democrats as loafers. The article on Fox’s website is titled “Democrats At Play,” with a lede that says “As shutdown drags on, pols take chartered jet to Caribbean, see ‘Hamilton.’” So in that brief headline Fox crammed in a array of criticisms from their portrayal of this as recreation, to neglect of the shutdown, to elitist travel arrangements, to exotic locales, to exclusive theatrical events. Not bad.
The only problem is that none of that is true.
From Andy Borowitz:
According to the study, commissioned by the University of Minnesota Law School, thirty-five is the “bare minimum” number of lawyers that an innocent person should have on retainer in the event that he or she becomes the subject of an entirely unjustified criminal investigation.
“We found that many innocent people are going through life without taking the basic precaution of hiring thirty-five lawyers,” Professor Davis Logsdon, who supervised the study, said. “They are flirting with disaster.”
From PZ Myers:
Oh, look. The “race realist/scientific racist/just plain racist” gang is very upset that James Watson’s reputation has been besmirched. Errm, further besmirched. Um, OK, blackened to scorched ashes.
Brilliant DNA pioneer to be wiped from history books bcuz he said IQ differences exist between races & he was very sad about that fact. Cultural Marxist quacks hijacked his work, stab him in the back. It's only correct 'science' if it is anti-Whitehttps://t.co/Bxpmll1ckc
— Lana ❌ (@LanaLokteff) January 13, 2019
Let’s take this apart for the fun of it, shall we?
From Green Eagle:
The tale of Trump’s treason has been clear to those willing to see the truth since the day he took office. The response of Republican voting “patriots?” To invent a looking glass world in which it is the Democrats that are behind the most malignant conspiracy in all of history, and that it is Trump who is the champion of justice and morality who works every day to bring them to justice. To illustrate this, I have selected one online article which seems to encapsulate a wide spectrum of wingnut delusions. As usual with things like this, I will not identify its author or link to it. The internet is filled with thousands of this sort of thing; you can easily find them yourself if you are interested.
I have a secondary motive in choosing this example, as it demonstrates a phenomenon that I have noticed several times in the last month, and which I have never seen before. That is the incorporation into QAnon style conspiracy thinking of strong elements from the Sovereign Citizen movement, the most violent terrorist faction in the United States. To me this is a bad portent of where the Trump supporters are headed as their delusions are continually unmasked.