FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Joe Hagstrom in MadMikesAmerica:

Seeing as how so many confuse my hero Donald Trump’s negotiating technique with haphazard confusion, it is my duty as a loyal conservative Republican to educate these deluded fools.

While the president is always calling for a deal on something or another, his real secret to success is never agreeing to anything. Or agreeing and later denying agreement and demanding more. His wall negotiations, not that there really are any are showing his negotiating genius.

There apparently are some cracks on both sides of the aisle that may convince some of the less ballsy to agree to Trump’s latest offer which really was no offer. His demand for 5.7 billion dollars may well pass the House and Senate though. And Trump will refuse to sign the bill. Instead he will demand another 5 billion or more and keep the government shut down.

– More –
 

 
From Infidel753:

From time to time I’ve touched on why I’m skeptical about the “inexorable rise of China” meme which dominates a lot of American thinking about the future — the issue of “zombie” state-owned enterprises which produce little value but are propped up at huge expense to absorb what would otherwise be dangerous numbers of unemployed workers, the likelihood that official figures on economic growth are exaggerated, and the stultifying effect of a totalitarian state upon the open society and free flow of information which are essential to real modernity. But there’s another problem which, while it superficially seems trivial, I believe will be a major factor holding China back. It’s the writing system used by the Chinese language.

– More –
 

We spent the other evening watching yet another showing of the Ian Fleming thriller with hero James Bond. Sean Connery remains the template, of course.

But I was, as always, most impressed with the lifelong versatility of Robert Shaw. Every new role made this early effort more amazing. It is hard to believe the same actor who later became Nazi Colonel Hessler, mobster Doyle Lonnegan, and crusty old shark hunter Quint so capably portrayed the evil villain trained to kill Bond.

The movie differed from Fleming’s original plot. The cinematic character was an Irish spy employed by an international crime organization dedicated to creating conflict between Western Powers and the Soviet Union.

In Fleming’s book, Shaw’s character was the pretend friend who turned out to be the dangerous agent of Russia, sent to destroy any defense Britain, and ultimately the West, would have against Russian aggression.

Robert Shaw deserved the acclaim he received at the realistic portrayal. Audiences still find it difficult to distinguish between the actor and his subject.

Shaw died in 1978, 38 years too early to witness Mike Pence himself become Vice President of the United States.

 
From Mock Paper Scissors:

…and now I feel the whole, monstrous thing is back in our faces, again. Lord of the Flies was a documentary.

Look, the thing I have learned as a White, Entitled, Male is that I DO NOT get to decide what is racist, classist, or sexist. When someone in those communities tell me that something offends them, I check my privilege and examine my assumptions. It’s taken me a lifetime to get here, but I arrived. It’s good to be here.

See, for me the problem is that I can easily understand how those kids got to where they are, because without pushback I could have been one of them. No one challenges them, they see themselves as future Masters of the Universe. This is the way white boys are socialized, the world is your oyster, and the pearl is ripe for plucking. The only thing holding you back is yourself. Go forth and plunder!

– More –
 

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

Early on, I noticed that many pastors used their position for material gain and upward social status. One of Polly’s young preacher cousins provides a good example of this. One day I called my in-laws and he answered the phone. This is Reverend James Overton. How may I help you? I snickered to myself, and said, Hey Jamie, this is Bruce. Is Mom or Dad there? I thought, Reverend James Overton? Really? I never played the Reverend game. I was comfortable with congregants calling me Bruce or Preacher. I also never asked for the “preacher discount” or special treatment. I had no regard for pastors who weren’t shy about announcing their clerical status, hoping that they would be granted discounts, free meals, or other special considerations.

I never told people out of hand that I was a pastor. Granted, a lot of people knew I was a preacher, but I never told strangers what I did for a living. I wanted to be considered an everyday guy. The reason for this was simple. As soon as I told someone I was a pastor, a snap judgment was made about me. After I stopped pastoring churches in 2005, we looked for a church we could call home. All told, we visited over one hundred churches. (Please see But Our Church is DIFFERENT!) At virtually every church, the first or second question I was asked was “what do you do for a living?” Early on, I would tell people I was a pastor, but I noticed that people treated me differently if I did: reverently, respectfully, with careful distance. One Sunday after visiting yet another new church, I told Polly, I am sick of being asked what I do for a living. I think the next time someone asks me I am going to say, I’m sorry, but I don’t have sex on the first date! Of course, I never did. I was too polite to ever say such a thing.

These days, I NEVER tell someone who doesn’t know me that I was a pastor. I don’t want to have to explain why I am no longer in the ministry. Yes, if someone does a web search on my name he or she will quickly find out I was once a pastor. However, I am not going to volunteer that information. I am not ashamed or embarrassed by my former life as a pastor. I have many fond memories of the years I spent in the ministry, along with a boat load of dark, harmful experiences too. What I want to avoid is being judged by people who don’t know me.

– More –
 

 
From Tommy Christopher:

But then Giuliani added that “if, for example, a president said, leave office or I’m going to, you know, have your kids kidnapped or I’m going to break your legs — I prosecute a lot of obstruction cases.”

“I’ll give you an example,” Giuliani continued. “When the president said, ‘Please go easy on Flynn,’ I know of no obstruction case that begins with the word please. It goes something like this, ‘If you don’t go easy on Flynn, I’ll break your kneecaps.”

But the federal obstruction of justice statute does not, in fact, require an act like the ones Giuliani describes, although it does include them as examples of obstruction

– More –
 

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

The thing you learn in a city with diversity or various viewpoints is that not everything is about you, concerns you, or needs you to confront it. You can be called a blue-eyed devil whore, and that’s just some shit someone has to say about you because they are working out their demons in public, where about a hundred other people can also see them being ugly, and you not listening. There is no reason to call out or call back. The Covington Catholic kids were confronted by the Black Hebrew Israelites, and had no reference for how to not confront them. They weren’t ever told this kind of provocation existed. These kids never took a downtown subway somewhere, I guess. They were going to be unnecessarily confrontational, and it looked like there were no adults who would tell them not to do this.(Not to turn the other cheek? Even if there was a pretty solid Christian basis for not starting shit, the chaperones weren’t trying to be about it.) Nathan Phillips thought he was peacefully intervening because from his point of view, these young people needed their attention turned away from the negative energy the BHI were bringing and hoped they would be respectful of his prayerful positive energy.

But they didn’t know how to confront that, either. These were, to them, just other people of color acting weird at them, and they could not determine if this was a threat or on their side, and not knowing how to just not react, they behaved with ignorance, because that was what they had.

I’m not going to say they were necessarily behaving hatefully right there, because I don’t think they knew how they would be seen. They didn’t react as if they would be seen, even though many phone-camera angles captured them. I think they behaved ignorantly, because this is what they had. A lot of crappy white behavior (me just speaking as a white person) probably boils down to ignorance. This is sometimes called “Hanlon’s razor”: Never ascribe to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity. Because I work for the government, I have had to make myself very much aware of how this variation on Occam’s Razor really works.

But there is ignorant, and there is ignorant.

– More –
 

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

One month into the government shutdown, there’s finally something resembling movement toward a resolution. Maybe.

After weeks of offering nothing new, President Donald Trump on Saturday proposed a bargain on immigration. To be sure: It’s not a very promising offer. Trump starts by reiterating his demand for $5.7 billion to build his border wall. Then, for Democrats, he adds temporary protections for immigrants who fall under Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and an extension for those under Temporary Protected Status. But then he adds something more for the anti-immigration side: new restrictions on asylum. That isn’t a trade-off Democrats would ever likely accept, even leaving the border wall aside. It’s an offer intended to give the impression of flexibility without actually moving in the Democrats’ direction.

Nonetheless, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised a vote on the proposal. And that’s where the opportunity to end the shutdown comes in.

– More –
 

 
From Dr. Arif Ahmad at The Moderate Voice:

Recently someone I know approached me with his experience of being at the receiving end of the Me Too Movement, an experience which devastated his life as he felt wrongly accused. I do not know the merits of the case, but it did get me thinking some.

Me Too Movement, is real and here to stay and has brought with a lot of virtue, awareness, and justice. There may however be another edge to this sword.

– More –
 

 
From The Journal of Improbable Research:

Philosophical disagreements on possible reason(s) ‘Why Flatulence is Funny’ – Professor Sellmaier v. Professor Spiegel
If you want a reliable method of raising laugh, you can always resort to references of flatulence – a comedic ploy that goes back (at least) 2000 years. But the question as to why it’s considered funny, remains, to this day, a hotly debated subject.

In 2013, Professor James Spiegel of the Philosophy Department at Taylor University in Upland, Indiana, US, took a stab at explaining the phenomenon in issue 35 of the journal ‘Think’ (a journal of The Royal Institute of Philosophy, UK)

– More –