Category: Uncategorized

 
From nojo at Stinque:

The world should be reacting in horror.

It is not.

Not all of it.

And that’s the problem.

Let’s call them White Nationalists. There are many other expressions we could use — Violent Racists comes to mind — and really, call them what you will. The problem isn’t what we call them, but that they exist, and a significant number of people, including many who hold power in the United States, and many more who empower them, fundamentally agree.

The problem is that we are afraid, as a nation, to call them out.

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From Joe Gandelman, Editor-In-Chief of The Moderate Voice:

Apparently, to some people real, timeless, eternal friendship is like incest: relative.

One of them seems to be South Carolina Sen. Lindsay Graham, who for years was considered the political best bud, a best friend, and near political twin of the late Arizona Sen. John McCain. But then a strange thing began to happen. Once McCain came down with cancer and started to weaken, Graham, who had been intensely critical of Donald Trump both as politician and someone not qualified to serve in the Oval Office, started to grow closer to Trump. And when Graham went golfing with him, he soon emerged as a nearly male version of Trump spinner Kellyanne Conway and even in some ways a Devin Nunes lite. To the extent that Grahman now is the living anthesis of McCain — and the old Graham.

Now, in recent days, with McCain not around to defend himself, Trump has renewed his attacks on the dead Senator who was once McCain’s political best bud, a best friend, and near political twin. McCain’s daughter Meghan has called Trump out.

And Graham? There was silence, until he got blasted on Twitter. After all the social media heat, Graham finally did defend McCain — but carefully avoided mentioning Graham’s name in the criticism. Was that because he’s up for re-election? Or are the conspiracy theorists right in their unproven suggestions that someone has some dirt on Graham? Most likely, his political cowardice is about a)his wanting to regain re-election at any cost b)his finger in the wind tells him if he wants power and a role in the GOP he has to be seen as not just a Trump supporter but Trump’s biggest defender.

But his stale nothing burger defense of McCain coming after all of Trump’s fierce attacks will do little to undo more adding to his image as a political jellyfish.

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From Tommy Christopher:

John Oliver skinned alive Jay Leno‘s recent call for “civility” in late-night comedy by playing a string of revolting Monica Lewinsky jokes, for which Oliver says Leno has never apologized.

On Sunday night’s edition of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, Oliver tackled the issue of online shaming, and presented Lewinsky as patient zero in the phenomenon of people being pulled out of their private lives, and into a life-ruining public maelstrom.

Along the way, Oliver copped to his own participation in the decades-long pile on, but singled out former Tonight Show host Jay Leno as someone who trampled on Lewinsky and never apologized for it.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

I do not know what to do other than stand with Muslims in NZ in your dignity, sit with you in your grief, hold you in my thoughts, and fight against bigotry against you, and hope that future bigotry against you can be averted. I have hardly the words nor the capacity for prayers, but I have all the sympathy for your losses and hopes for the healing of your community.

The criminals who wronged you are part of a philosophy that wrongs us all. I know we must stand together as siblings in this world to get by, and that to do harm to any of my siblings diminishes me by denying me seeing the fulfillment of their lives’ promises, the knowledge of their joys and sorrows, the reality of their continued existence–because this world includes us all, and their promise could very well intersect with my own life. I know lights have gone out in your community, and offer what light I have–you are not alone, and the horror of the bigotry that damaged your world is a horror I share. The enormity of this act will remain in our memory along with the memories of these blameless victims. We are one in suffering.

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From The Onion:

Since its implementation in 1979, the Federal Emergency Management Agency has served as the U.S. government’s main response team to natural disasters, but often faces criticism for efforts perceived as insufficient. The Onion takes a step-by-step look at how FEMA responds to disasters.

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• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from WENY News in Elmira, NY, as President Trump holds a photo-op with Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and manages to define his entire presidency in 16 minutes.
   
• After the tornado outbreak, my President signs the covers of Bibles in Alabama as if he authored them. Andy Borowitz explores the theological event that follows as God offers to replace the Bibles signed by Trump.
   
• Tommy Christopher reports on the text of an early message from White House folks to Michael Cohen. They now say it was meant only as reassurance that Trump wasn’t mad at him. I dunno. I think Tommy’s right. Message sounds a lot like the promise of a pardon.
   
• Vixen Strangely takes all the Manafort pleadings, judgments, sentencing, and state level indictments and explains, in her clear careful way, what it all means, what it all signals.
   
• The Onion tells us of a new campaign pledge to build a 2,500 mile intercontinental riverwalk.
   
• Columnist Max Boot wants to retire the term “neocon.” driftglass is good with that as long as we come up with a good substitute. He has a suggestion.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson knows what is in our hearts better than do we. As gun safety advocates, we are not at all interested in gun safety. In fairness I have projected the same sort of insight onto gun owners
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass is angry at discovering that an embryo, not yet developed into a fetus, can sue a 16 year old girl for wrongful death.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, one time pastor, current atheist Bruce carefully explains to evangelicals why threatening atheists with hell never works. Ever.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Neil Bamforth looks into the case of a young woman who, at age 15, ran away to join ISIS, then came back. Neil suggests she may be the victim of mob mentality.
   
• How will Michael Jackson be remembered? At The Moderate Voice, Rachel Hope of the University of Victoria seeks an answer in the legacy of a famous author who dominated much of the first half of the 20th century
   
• Professor PZ Myers posts as poignant a farewell as I have seen for a while. He forever misses his little sister who died as a child.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil finds an interesting instagram ad on a city light pole.
   

 
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

I was disappointed to read Paul Mulshine’s column advocating a change in the law allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices with private drug makers (The Medicare drug issue: ‘Conservatives’ who don’t want to bargain for better prices? No way). He criticized other conservatives for labeling such “bargaining” as price controls. But that is precisely what this would be–back-door price controls.

Mulshine did make the valid point that America doesn’t really have a functioning free market in drugs, and did advocate for free market reforms:

The genuinely conservative position on Medicare is to call for the entire program to be privatized so private insurance companies can make whatever deals they want with the drug companies.

But if we’re stuck subsidizing those drugs, the very least we can demand is that the government pay the lowest price possible to the drug companies.

It’s the “But if we’re stuck” phrase that stuck in my craw.

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From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

A Solid Reason to Vote Democratic in the 2020 Election

The measly 47 month sentence given by Judge Ellis is a mockery of justice – period. It reinforces the fact that there is a separate, more lenient, form of justice for the wealthy and a more stringent one for those who are poor, workers, or are minorities. “Arch-conservative” is a term for Ellis that is not being bandied about carelessly by this blogger alone: none other than the conservative Forbes magazine has referred to this most un-just judge as such.

Republicans have long decried the supposed evils of what they term as “activist” (LIBERAL) judges, who have sided against monied, conservative interests in favor of the poor, or minorities, or everyday workers who are not business-owners or professionals. For many decades, they have insisted on the appointment of judges at all levels who fit their more conservative, “strict constructionist” pattern of legal interpretation. Since the presidency of the criminal Richard Nixon, they have made certain to appoint only those who profess to be “conservatives” as judges – and the horrible consequences of this pattern emerged with the undeniably light sentence given Paul Manafort.

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