Author: Raymond

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Should I report a right wing student in my class? Our university has a “Prevent” policy, requiring that we report extremism. This student is vocal in class, speaking of white supremacist views and labeling others ‘communist’.

I submitted this answer:

It would be proper to report the student only if the student’s behavior is disrespectful and disruptive. But really, it is the professor’s job to control his classroom.

That aside, the university’s “Prevent” policy is certainly within the University administration’s right. But that doesn’t make it right. The vague term “extremism,” like the term “hate speech,” is a smear tactic useful only in intimidating and silencing an opposing voice. Racial supremacism may be “extreme”; but so is the view that “all men are created equal” and should be treated as such under the law, regardless of race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.

It is intellectual cowardice to report the student for his views, thus silencing him in the classroom. It is also impractical.

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Whether you’re an activist or a minister or a parent or a caregiver, or just a citizen of the planet who is moved by other people’s suffering—you likely feel the immeasurable heaviness of these days. Sure, speed and activity can mask it for a while, but if you stop long enough, the reality of the fatigue catches up to you—you can measure the toll it’s all taken on you. I want you to measure it. I want you reckon with how tired you are. I want you to hear yourself exhale with the heavy sigh of someone who feels the weight of it all.

There is a cost to compassion, a personal price tag to cultivating empathy in days when cruelty is trending. There is in your body and head and in your midst, a collateral damage to you giving a damn when others do not, and it manifests itself in many ways: in irritability, impatience, physical illness, eating emotionally, addictive behavior, the inability to be present to the people who love you, an obsession with social media, a fixation on how jacked up everything is.

Notice these things in you today, and give them your attention.
Extend some of that compassion you’re so willing to extend to the world—to yourself.

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From Frances Langum:

The Fox News propaganda machine hit a snag this morning and it was glorious to behold.

Don’t get me started about so-called Democrats supporting this so-called president’s immigration policies in ANY way. See what happens? You get used by Fox News Propaganda to push baby cages.

But not this morning, because by accident Fox and Friends First connected with Barbara L’Italien, a Massachusetts Democrat who had no tolerance for babies in cages or any of the other racist BS Donald Trump brings to the immigration “debate.”

And she suspected that…Trump was watching.

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From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

I’m going to say it as clearly as I can: that tape is an insurance policy, and probably set up as a deadman’s switch. As an insurance policy, that tape would make its way to law enforcement if anything happened to him, and Cohen must have realized somewhere along the line that he needed an insurance policy so that he would not be getting any Russian Tea.

And pure speculation: there must be more than one tape. No one makes only one, so there will be more shoes to drop. Bank on it.

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From Jonathan Bernstein:

There’s a lot — a lot — going on right now, much of it extremely serious and seemingly dangerous. So I suppose it’s not right that I’m hung up on this bit from the top of President Donald Trump’s interview Wednesday with CBS News’s Jeff Glor, but nevertheless I am:

GLOR: But you haven’t condemned Putin, specifically. Do you hold him personally responsible?

TRUMP: Well I would, because he’s in charge of the country. Just like I consider myself to be responsible for things that happen in this country. So certainly as the leader of a country you would have to hold him responsible, yes.

Putting aside Russia and Vladimir Putin … no, Donald Trump, you are not in charge of the United States of America. You are not, in fact, “responsible for things that happen in this country.”

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From Julian Sanchez:

President Trump’s performance at a joint news conference with Vladimir Putin this past week was a stark illustration not only of his strange and persistent deference to the Russian president, but also of his profound alienation from his own government. In command of the most powerful intelligence-gathering apparatus in the world, Trump still prefers to get his information from cable news pundits and right-wing websites.

Helsinki was only the latest example of a pattern that has marked his administration from the outset. His tweets and off-the-cuff remarks constantly reference weird theories from the fringes of the right-wing media ecosystem, yet he exhibits little interest in the resources uniquely available to a president.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

I recently asked readers to submit questions to me they would like me to answer. If you would like to submit a question, please follow the instructions listed here.

ObstacleChick asked, “As an Evangelical Protestant pastor, what were your views on Catholicism?”

First, for many years I wouldn’t have labeled myself a Protestant. I was a Baptist, part of the True Church®. Protestants are people who came out of Roman Catholicism. As a Baptist I never came out of anything. I was a part of the church founded by Jesus. Thank you, very much!

Of course, this belief of mine had no historical foundation. None, nada, zip.

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From driftglass:

What does this “OMFG! Why are these assholes still tilling this shitty ground” story from Wednesday’s New York Times —

After Putin Meeting, Trump Voters Mostly Dig In. But Cracks Are Showing.

Maybe it was the F.B.I.’s fault for unnerving him. Or maybe the White House staff had left President Trump ill-prepared before his stunning remarks in Helsinki Monday, when he sided with Russia over his own intelligence agencies.

At a bar in central Pennsylvania, voters wondered if election meddling was really so terrible. At a mall in Arizona, they insisted that Mr. Trump had actually been quite tough on Russia until, well, whatever that was in Finland…

— have to do with Scientology?

I’m glad you asked!

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

Enough.

Really, friend—take off the big red hat and retire it.

That whole MAGA nonsense has about reached its expiration date.
All your flag-waving histrionics and your hand-wringing anthem outrage have proven to be nothing but fake news.
All that America First chest-bumping and God Bless America showy piety you’ve spent the past two years peddling, looks largely ridiculous at this point.

This week has fully exposed you.

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From Andy Borowitz:

PYONGYANG (The Borowitz Report)—The North Korean leader, Kim Jong Un, is reportedly “upset” and “hurt” that Donald J. Trump is seeing other dictators, sources in Pyongyang have confirmed.

According to an aide close to the North Korean leader, Kim was “devastated” to see images of Trump warmly embracing another dictator in Helsinki on Monday, just one month after jetting off to Singapore to spend a memorable and intense five hours with Kim.

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