Category: Uncategorized

 
From Infidel753:

The recent surge of interest and support for Pete Buttigieg appears to be real, if a bit overhyped. Most mainstream pundits still consider him a fringe candidate, not in the same league with the “serious” names like Biden or Warren. But I’m beginning to wonder if he might be just the man for the times.

This is not a period friendly to conventional candidates. Obama in 2008 and Trump in 2016 were both, in their own (very different) ways, outsider/insurgent candidates. Neither was expected to win his party’s nomination; both did so by beating, mainstream, conventional candidates. The smart money was on Hillary and Jeb in those races. The smart money was wrong.

In general elections, too, there is a constituency for insurgency for its own sake. These are the people who, to the bafflement of some pundits, voted for both Obama and Trump.

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From Dave Dubya:

The Barr/Trump Cover-up of the Mueller Report is rolling along, just as intended.

All we really have is, “Trust us. We promise.”

Nothing else. They don’t have to cover up the report forever; just long enough to dupe the public into buying their summary and spin as the actual report.

They’d like to stall on this until the election, of course.

It’s safe to say If Democrats hadn’t taken the majority of the House, we would never see the report. It will be enough of a fight as it is.

After all, Nunes and the rest of Trump’s House loyalists exonerated him with their not-so-thorough committee investigation, under coaching from the White House, of course.

Since there WAS obvious collusion and conspiracy with Russians, and there WAS obstruction of the investigation in plain sight, the propaganda machinery of the Party of Trump is working feverishly to distract us from what we already know.

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From driftglass:

Rebel, rebel, your face is a mess…

God bless Parker Molloy for doing actual journalism in public by going down into the archives of Bolshi Freedom Troll Glenn Greenwald to find out what Mr. Greenwald thought of people being damn-fool enough to go on Fox News and expecting a fair shake.

From Mr. Greenwald back in 2005:

What possesses people like Andrew Fois to go on national television and prostrate themselves before dishonest partisan shills like Sean Hannity and Victoria Toensig by showering them with lavish praise before he even gets to a single point? People like Hannity and Toensig make a living by depicting Bush critics as traitors and cowards and terrorist-loving subversives, and so many of the people who are the target of their attacks feel compelled to praise them before defending themselves. Do you ever hear Sean Hannity or Rush Limbaugh lauding Bush critics as “great Americans” for whom they have a lot of respect?
…

So I guess I must have been asleep for the last 14 years during which Fox News shed its unhinged, rage-drunk, conspiracy-mongering. White Power Hour, Own The Libs instincts and became a virtuous model of respectable, fair, broadminded, serious and fact-based journalism.

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From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

Cat herding is a good term for a political chief executive: Mayor, School Board President, Governor or President. While there is some inherent power in any of those jobs, the truly great ones know that their job is to both lead and persuade. The councilman for the fifth ward isn’t going to go along with the mayor’s desires just because the mayor want it. The mayor has to build either a consensus or a movement. That takes work.

The ones who are good at it are those know know this to their bones. A president can order the army about, but the congress can cut funding for that.Getting elected is not a carte blanche.

The problem is intensified with business guys who become political executives. They are used to a world where what they command eventually happens. It’s worse for those who come from family or private corporations, for they have never had to answer to anybody.

This is why Trump is failing.

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From Julian Sanchez:

“The FISA warrant issued against [former Trump advisor] Carter Page, based on a dossier prepared by Christopher Steele, is at a minimum disturbing,” said Graham last week, echoing a claim first championed by former House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes in a now-notorious memorandum. “Whether or not it’s illegal, I don’t yet know. So I’m going to get answers to this.”

I’ve written before that I find little merit in the arguments raised by Nunes, and the portrait they paint of a politically-motivated Deep State conspiracy to bring down Trump—are without merit. That assessment still stands. But what little we’ve learned about Mueller’s findings does suggest there are aspects of the FBI’s surveillance of Page that deserve further scrutiny. They’re just not the aspects Graham and his co-partisans are most agitated about.

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From The Onion:

“In my 20-plus years at East Lansing, I’ve had the privilege of threatening to pummel some incredible players, but none of them have ever responded to my murderous rants like these guys,” said Izzo, who showered praise on the team for winning the Big 10 tournament, so he didn’t have to follow through on his promise to “choke them out” if they lost.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Chairman Richard Neal of the House Ways and Means Committee, has officially requested six years of our Grifter-in-Chief’s personal and business tax returns from the IRS. The law (remember laws? seems quaint, dontit?) requires the IRS to provide those returns to the committee without exception.

The Treasury Department, run by human typo Steve Mnuchin (worst Bond villain ever) is required by law to provide six years of Comrade Trump’s personal and business tax returns to Congress.

[Ed. – Be prepared for a shock, Gentle Readers!]

Prznint Stupid intends to enlist the federal government to conceal his tax returns from Congress and the public.

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• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from CNN where the leader of the free world is upping his game, reaching 22 lies a day.
   
• driftglass takes a stroll down hypocrisy lane when Obama was President to contrast Mitch McConnell’s standards then with now.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger shows and contrasts two Presidents and how they inspired young Americans.
   
• Max’s Dad always comes up with the best rants. This time he lets his mind wander along with a road trip through Indiana. He doesn’t much like Notre Dame or anyone who attends, or an irate customer at a Steak N Shake, but does like Presidential candidate Pete Butigieg, going so far as to teach us how to pronounce his name – – sort of. He winds up not much caring for Democratic circular firing squads. Can superior, entertaining writing really be that easy for him?
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit doesn’t much care for on-and-off-and-on independent Presidential candidate Howard Schultz and his blame-both-sides approach to everything. But wow she conducts vivisection on the poor guy. If she ever gets mad at me, I plan to give her a friendly smile, abjectly apologize, then throw myself on the ground and beg for mercy.
   
• Dave Dubya takes on the Barr non-summary of the Mueller report. Partly through he says my President was exonerated in the same sense O.J. was exonerated. Fair enough.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post runs down 6 controversial members of the Trump cabinet. I did say run down.
   
• Green Eagle watches unbelievable governmental plans proposed by the executive branch.
   
• North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz finds many reasons for hope in the age of Trump, and begins with Anne Frank. I had somewhat similar thoughts as my President was about to take office.
   
• Author Caitlin Starling was nine years old when her mother died. At Whatever, she explains how the intensity of that early grief influenced her writing.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson recounts state election returns and kinda sorta credits the website he runs for the conservative victory for state Supreme Court.
   
• Libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara exposes the environmental conspiracy that is aimed at depriving NJ Residents of reliable energy with dubious tales of climate effects. I remain unenlightened about our sinister motives.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors reminds us that this week was the anniversity of one human’s murder and a great national loss along the arc of the moral universe.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce asks, since Jesus paid our debt for sin, why we still owe God. That strikes me as an interesting technical question that might lead to a worthy discussion of whether we believe and worship because of what we owe. More troubling, it seems to me, would be evil and suffering in the world. Harder still for many Christians would be evil in ourselves. I posted my thoughts on my own belief a couple of years ago.
   
• The Journal of Improbable Research finds a study that seems to show that the famed placebo effect, in this case relieving pain with a cream that contains no active ingredients, works on subjects who do not use the placebo.
   
• Infidel753 has a list of comments that range from pithy wit to genuine pearls of wisdom, all entertaining.
   

 
From The Onion:

‘Hare Rama, Hare Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare’

WASHINGTON—Proclaiming “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare,” Hare Krishnas issued a statement Thursday announcing “Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, Hare Rama, Hara Rama, Rama Rama, Hare Hare.”

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