Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:
I haven’t seen much from the Parkland Children’s Brigade about the recent school shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. My guess is because that shooting doesn’t fit their narrative.
The gun-banners want a ban on “assault rifles” and large capacity magazines. Their claims, all along, have been that such bans would make them safer.
The Asswipe of Santa Fe has shown that their claims are false.
From M. Bouffant at Web of Evil:
Remember Republicans having fit after free-market fit when that Obama guy bailed out the Chrysler Corporation? An American corporation that hadn’t violated sanctions, lied to Federal investigators, yada yada? Now where’s the outrage?
President Trump said late Friday he had allowed embattled Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE Corp. to remain open despite fierce bipartisan opposition on Capitol Hill, defying lawmakers who have warned that the huge technology company should be severely punished for breaking U.S. law.
From John Scalzi at Whatever:
Solo is a film you can watch without having seen any of the others, because it takes place before all of them. So if you’ve never seen Star Wars but think this one looks kind of good, go ahead and see it, you won’t be lost.
This movie is seriously jam-packed with action. Chase scenes, battle scenes, more chase scenes, gun fights, high stakes heists, etc. It is like 90% action and 10% talking scenes. This is not a bad thing, in my opinion. In regard to the fights, I think everything was choreographed amazingly; the camera work was really on point. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s a fight scene where I can’t even tell what’s going on because the camera is shaking around wildly.
More than 40 years later, it still makes me kind of sick to think about it.
I didn’t know that much about Marvin Mandel when I campaigned for him in 1970. I just knew enough. His kind of political figure was the answer to the Nixons and Agnews and Mahoneys dominating the political landscape in those days.
George Mahoney was the last rancid blast from Strom Thurmond days. He was a Dixiecrat who made it possible for Spiro Agnew to get into office. He ran for Governor of Maryland in 1970 and got the Democratic nomination by running against Fair Housing laws. His slogan was simple.
Your home is your castle – Protect it.
It wasn’t hard to hear from what menace white folks needed protect their homes. It was black people who might want to buy a house.
In 1966, Mahoney became the Democratic nominee with 30 percent of the vote. Seventy percent voted against him in the Democratic primary, but that vote was divided, broken up among other candidates. He won the primary by one third of one percent. Non-bigots in Maryland voted Republican that year and Spiro Agnew became governor.
Yeah, Spiro Agnew was Maryland’s anti-bigot in 1966.
A year and a half later, when Martin Luther King was killed, Governor Agnew was furious about the riots that tore through Baltimore. Black leaders had walked through the streets all night long, confronting angry teenagers, trying to calm things down. When Governor Agnew called them to a meeting, many were still wearing clothes stained by soot and sweat from their all night efforts. Governor Agnew called them cowards.
And you ran.
He told them that they themselves were the cause of rioting, that they had cowered in fear.
You were beguiled by the rationalizations of unity; you were intimidated by veiled threats; you were stung by insinuations that you were Mr.- Charlie’s boy, by epithets like “Uncle Tom.”
Richard Nixon read about the tough talk and was impressed. Agnew had really told off those black leaders. So Governor Agnew became Vice President Agnew. Later on, convicted criminal Agnew.
Maryland had no Lieutenant Governor to take the place of ex-Governor Agnew. The legislature selected Democratic leader Marvin Mandel to be a sort of caretaker until a real Governor could be chosen in the next election.
But Mandel was no caretaker. He got into the nuts and bolts of government. He streamlined the way departments were organized. Efficiency was the word of the day. He got Maryland’s first Metro-rail system going. Pollution went down as commuters could leave their cars at home. Employment went up as hard working city residents found it practical to get to jobs outside their limited areas.
But most interesting to me, he stood up to all kinds of pressure for the sake of a medical theory. A close friend had almost died in an automobile accident. He should have died, but he didn’t. Mandel wondered if the fortunate fact that the accident had occurred very close to a hospital had something to do with his friend’s good luck. And that’s how Mandel came into contact with an American medical officer who had served in France just after World War II.
Continue reading “My Hero the Thief, and the Role Model for My President”
From Jonathan Bernstein:
During the Watergate investigation, the Justice Department made sure that the White House was updated on every development, which White House Counsel John Dean then used to prepare the false testimony of the campaign and White House staffers involved, and otherwise keep Justice from learning the truth. It was the revelation of this situation that eventually produced the first Watergate special prosecutor, and the universal demand that he be replaced by another independent prosecutor after Nixon had him removed.
The outcome of all of this was a set of rules and norms about the independence of Department of Justice prosecutions from presidential and White House involvement. A lot of Watergate-era reforms have been either useless or counterproductive, but everyone up through the Barack Obama presidency agreed to abide by them, and they became an important component of how the U.S. system produces the rule of law.
It’s those rules and norms that President Donald Trump is bulldozing when he demands prosecution of his political opponents – a demand he’s making when there is, remember, already an inspector general investigation.
That’s not even counting the recklessness involved in outing intelligence informants.
From Infidel753:
“…you don’t have to look too hard to find voices on social media urging you to abandon the Democratic Party for various perceived heresies. Telling you to stay home, or to throw your vote away on a useless wad of cud like Jill Stein. These voices elected Trump once, and they’re hellbent on doing it again. I know y’all know that already, I just don’t want you to be shy in calling ’em out. There’s too much at stake.” — Shower Cap’s Blog
Look, I get it. Especially at times like this, when several Senate Democrats just broke ranks to help confirm Gina “Ve haff vays of making you tock” Haspel. Being up for re-election in a red state is no excuse; appeasing Trumpanzees doesn’t work, and you can’t out-Republican the real Republican in the race.
But as bad as some Democrats are, would you rather have Republicans in those seats?
From Helen Philpot, writing for Margaret and Helen:
Margaret, I grew up on a farm in Georgia. We had more guns than silverware. To this day, I still have a gun in my house. By all means, if it helps to keep children from being murdered, come and take it. Unlike that Dana Loesch, I don’t need it that badly. Bless her heart, when you spew that much hate, I guess you go through life thinking everyone wants to do you harm. She really should try adding a little color to her wardrobe. And maybe smile more… or at least once.
We’ve talked about it long enough. We need to do something about America’s gun problem. But if we leave it up to those asshats at the Capitol, we’ll be building schools with one door where students are allowed to wear only a leotard while carrying their books in a clear ziplock baggie.
Making it all about a mental health crisis sounds reasonable… until you realize that mental health isn’t exclusive to the United States and statistically speaking doesn’t correspond with our proportionally higher rate of gun violence nor does it specifically apply on a case by case basis. Ouch. That hurt my head a little bit to think through. Maybe that’s why NRA Neanderthals settle for low hanging fruit like too many doors and trench coats.
From Dave Dubya:
The polluter-friendly fascists are not satisfied censoring climate data. They are not satisfied having polluters dictate environmental policy.
They are going full “Lügenpresse” on our First Amendment, having a thug physically evict an AP reporter from a public meeting on water contaminants.
From Glenn R. Geist at MadMikesAmerica:
“Mad World, Mad Kings…”
Thus begins Shakespeare’s King John, about the king of England, forced to grant a bit of access to justice, amongst other things, to the Barons he controlled. The Church opposed it of course, which lends more of the appearance of similarity to our times when our three branches of government seem to be three branches of Donald Trump and the Evangelical Churches and our institutions seem impotent.
Witch hunt. It’s the meme he wears like some hollow crown.
The term has always been used negatively in modern times as though the conclusion will always be that there are no witches, but of course, it’s a metaphor. If what you’re hunting for is something that’s being revealed everywhere in large quantity in your own words and the hunt is prompted by a large body of evidence and attested to by witnesses, the only reason for trying to make it seem a hunt for something imaginary is the guilt of the perpetrator.