Month: March 2021

@momwino98 explains how she maintains a contented, pleasant outlook:

@momwino98

God, I love that movie..##weeza ##fyp ##tiktokmom Yes, that’s ribbon on my lips..🤣

♬ original sound – kokisweet91

• After a gunman kills mostly Asian women at three locations during a bad day, Max’s Dad looks at killing sprees at Black and Jewish religious gatherings, mass murder of Latinos at a grocery store, a murderous riot at the nation’s Capitol Building, and detects a pattern.
   
• Police seemingly accepted at his word the shooter’s assurance the murders in Georgia did not constitute a hate crime. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit tries to understand that strange investigative procedure, by looking into the targeting of Asians, with a bit of help from a description of growing up Asian in Georgia. Not all physical violence results in death. Not all harassment is physical. But the toll can still be high. And the environment may affect the occasional police spokesperson.
   
• Okay, so it looks like the guy had to be targeting Asian women. But Glenn Geist at MadMikesAmerica protests. Yeah, there is a lot of anti-Asian bigotry in our history, especially in the century previous to the century previous to now. But this shooting? A pattern? Those three massage establishments each happened to be owned by Asians. If you shoot a lot of folks at random with eyes closed at those locations, you’ll hit a lot of Asians. Besides most every sex-for-sale establishment is overwhelmingly Asian, something I didn’t know.
   
  Well, Glenn sometimes writes such things. He recently encountered the phrase Jesus used to describe the chance of someone of great wealth making it into the Kingdom of God, that it would be easier for a camel to pass through an eye of a needle. Glenn responded that Jesus would never have voiced that socialist malarkey had he taken a walk through today’s America.
   
  Glenn is my brother-in-Christ, a self confessed Christian, as am I. One day, perhaps, he will teach me how to reconcile his belief that the vision of the Son of God is limited to His own place and time on earth, and that we ought not take what He says in scripture as Universal Truth.
   
  Just for the record, Cherokee County Georgia, where the suspect is being held, is less than 2% Asian. Atlanta, where two of the three shootings happened, is less than 4%. In little Acworth, where the other murders were committed, Asians make up about 2% of 1%, or .0002 of the population. But hey! Who knows who you’ll hit if you close your eyes on a bad day, especially if you target Asian owned businesses that, by some strange coincidence, also happen to have a lot of Asian employees.
   
• Imani Gandy and Jessica Mason Pieklo join once more in podcasting from Rewire News Group. This week they react to the shootings.
   
• Like me, she was born during the Truman administration. But unlike me, this elderly Asian woman was the target of unprovoked street violence. Tommy Christopher has the story as this 76-year old Chinese woman, attacked while waiting for a bus, put her attacker in the hospital.
   
  Sounds like a feel good story, like she’s a bit of a super-hero, or at least a hero. But reports are she was angry, frightened, injured, and lucky. She was yelling at her assailant as he was wheeled away on a gurney, but she was also bleeding from multiple punches to the face, and she was in tears.
   
  Let’s not feel good. We should be mad as all hell.

Continue reading “Asians Attacked, Defund, Capitol Riot, Dirty Dozen, Ron Johnson, Immigration”

• In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson explains that this was a big week for America because of the massive economic rescue bill, to be sure, but for other reasons as well.
   
• At The Onion, the Stimulus Bill did pass this week, but only after the parliamentarian ruled the minimum wage part had to go, due to an obscure rule requiring poor citizens to needlessly suffer.
   
• Infidel753 takes a well deserved victory lap for pointing out, before it was widely acknowledged, that Joe Biden was a very smart candidate and would be a very smart President. Seems the first seven weeks, with a record-breaking win, proves our President is even smarter than that. AND the country does not yet seem tired of winning.
   
• In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott reports on President Biden’s condemnation of hate crimes against Asian Americans. There seems to be much more than enough to condemn.
   
• Reporters sometimes approach a dark sort of comedy as media tries to make both sides equivalent even when the effort is a mental strain. Tommy Christopher reports on one reporter who demanded to know what President Biden will do to reunite migrant families, the demand being voiced during a discussion on a task force the President has just created to reunite migrant families.
   
• At Ant Farmer’s Almanac, Vice President Harris denies a rumor about the President’s dog.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has figured out exactly why Trump lost.
   
• To be fair, not all on the right are what we euphemistically call cultural conservatives. Those would be conservatives who hate Washington Representative Pramila Jayapal because she is non-white, a woman, an immigrant, and a defender of religious freedom, even for Muslims. More classical conservatives join in disliking her left of center politics.
   
  Now, those on the ragged right have another reason to grudge upon. Frances Langum reports as Representative Jayapal demands ethics investigations of three Republican House members to determine their role in preparing, inciting, then assisting January 6 rioters as said rioters searched the Capitol Building for legislators to assassinate.
   
• Where conservatives see outrages, Dave Dubya sees a pattern. If every conservative controversy was removed, they would seek and find others. At the core, conservatives are angry and upset because they want to be angry and upset. Seuss and potatoes? Really?
   
• Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged acknowledges that Republican legislators are not exclusively furious about decisions by private entities on whether to keep publishing children’s books containing racist imagery, and whether to address plastic potatoes as “Mister”. They are also angry about the refusal of intolerant liberals (okay, okay, like me) to express sufficient awe at the many and varied accomplishments of Mr. Trump. She seems oddly dismissive of their concerns. She must be one of those intolerant leftists (okay, okay, like me).
   
  About Mr. Trump, while he did entice voters to destroy Republican majorities in the House and Senate, I admit I would rather focus on his failures than on those major accomplishments.

Continue reading “Smart President, National Big Week, Jan 6, Right Fury, Hate Crimes, Dog”

 

 

Still trying to process the fact that Republicans voted against funding for vaccine distribution in the middle of a pandemic that’s left 525,000 Americans dead.

— Matt McDermott (@mattmfm) March 7, 2021

 
The current state of contemporary conservatism
 

We've come to the point that the entire conservative movement and the whole Republican Party are demanding that private companies keep publishing obscure racist content, just because it's racist.

It's a full-blown coercive authoritarian demand to enforce and celebrate racism.

— David Atkins (@DavidOAtkins) March 7, 2021

• Theoretical physicist Sabine Hossenfelder explains radically new developments in scientific thought and what they imply about future warp travel through space:
   

  Yahoo News has more.

• Max’s Dad has a not-exactly-balanced summary of CPAC. Man, I do enjoy what this guy writes.
   
• Dave Dubya considers the recent CPAC convention, with all its Trump worship, as a true reflection of the current state of contemporary conservatism. He examines several of the myths unequivocally embraced at the gathering.
   
• I’m still in awe at the comically explicit evil represented by the golden idol of Mr. Trump, presented for worship to the CPAC convention. North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz is more familiar with Exodus than most of us. But even those members of my religion who are just dimly aware of our Book of Faith know about Moses and the Tablets and idol worship. Pavlovitz wonders at the fate of the faithful, after the thousands of years since the disaster of the Golden Calf, when so many of us still can’t get it right today.
   
• If Cecil Price and Bull Connor found themselves in a 1960s grudge match, most folks of good will would have hoped both would lose in a double knockout followed by a long recovery in the same hospital room. Scotties Toy Box links to reactions as the Wall Street Journal criticizes very-former-president Trump, Trump attacks the WSJ, and the publication calmly slaps the retired insurrectionist around.
   
  Okay, okay. If we really have to choose, I suppose I’d vote for the publication. The old saying is you should never get into a fight with those who buy ink by the barrel.
   
• Iron Knee at Political Irony finds an apology floating around net for criticizing once-upon-a-time President Trump, but containing enough caveats that a cynical person might suspect a touch of insincerity.

Continue reading “CPAC, Gold Calf, Corrupt, Obstruct, TX Cold Dark, COVID, Wage, Potato Seuss”

 

From Reductress:

…That You Don’t Know Who Billy Joel is Because Your Dad is an Immigrant

But remember, it’s not your fault – it’s your dad’s. It’s nice that he gave up everything he ever knew to raise you in a country halfway across the world, but it’s left him in a position where all his American pop culture references start in the year 1994. He effectively failed at his primary duty as a father, which was to play popular music in the car as a kid so you would later be able to relate to your white friends who are far too enthusiastic about Gordon Lightfoot for their age.

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From The Propaganda Professor:

“Cancel culture” is such a big deal to conservatives that one of their leading (if that is the correct word) voices, Congressman Jim Jordan (Q-OH) went on Fox “News” and declared it to be the biggest problem facing the nation today. Yep, bigger than the pandemic, the economy, terrorism, climate change, or even Jewish space lasers. And given Jordan’s backstory, he clearly considers it a graver threat than sexual assault.

Whenever these folks are penalized for their actions, they invariably scream and whine that they are being censored, oppressed, persecuted, marginalized and socialized by Orwell, Hitler, Goebbels, Marx, George Soros and Hillary. They have adopted the cute phrase cancel culture for this imposition of accountability. They would have you believe that they yearn for a society in which anyone is free to say absolutely anything, anywhere, anytime, with absolutely no repercussions. And hey, maybe some of them actually mean it. Because the thing is, if that were the case, they would have a huge advantage — even bigger than the one they have now.

A forum that has no holds barred would be hugely tilted in favor of right-wingers for the simple reason that they are willing to say absolutely anything. And the truth is no match for lies; after all, for every single truth there can be an infinite number of lies. This is why right-wingers have flocked to Parler, which claims to have no “censorship”, no “cancel culture”; that isn’t true, of course –Parler has been known to ban people for being too progressive. But the very promise of having no restrictions lures conservatives like a stockyard lures flies.

In the narrative about “cancel culture”, which is really being driven into the ground on the social media from which they supposedly have been cancelled, there are five myths they consistently promote. Let’s take a look at them.

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From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

I get that CPAC is about right-wing signifying, but the CPAC stage being laid out to resemble the Odal rune once used by the SS Waffen and preferred by some neo-Nazis over the swastika is a little bit….much, right? I mean, surely it’s a dumb coincidence.

Nope, we’ve been here before. The argument over “accident” vs. “on purpose” is partially about fucking with the libs, partially about letting the white supremacists (who would know what it looks like, even if regular folks don’t) feel included. The way some fash or fash-adjacent person might flash white power hand gestures and then pretend they are just feeling A-OK. At some point, there is no benefit of the doubt left.

I mean, when Josh Hawley explicitly says he is paraphrasing a quote by Daniel Webster (“Union now, union forever”) but changes it to “America now, America first, America forever”, it’s that little detail of three clauses that might make you hear echoes of George Wallace at first, but the insertion of “America first” is what drives it home for people with long memories.

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Pastor from North Carolina summarizes current national debate
 

Republicans seem to love America the way wolves love sheep.

— John Pavlovitz (@johnpavlovitz) February 28, 2021

 

From News Corpse:

As a testament to the efficiency and competency of Donald Trump and his ultra-rightist brigades, the website for the Conservative Political Action cult (CPAC) has been down for hours, and still is at the time of this writing. And this is on the big day when Trump is delivering his first “Post-Presidential Losers Address.” Metaphors abound.

Why anyone is looking forward to Trump’s speech is a complete mystery. Anyone who has been watching him for the past few years knows exactly what he’s going to say. He will touch on the only four speaking elements he knows: Lying, whining, insulting, and bragging.

Prior to the Trump keynote, Matt Schlapp, the head of the American Conservative Union that stages this affair, delivered his own remarks. The interview that followed began with the moderator asking what he said was the question uppermost on the minds of the conference attendees:

Moderator: I went around the lobby this morning asking people what they wanted me to ask you. And person after person said “Ask Matt what are our marching orders.”

It shouldn’t surprise anyone that these glassy-eyed devotees of Trump are pensively pacing the halls of the Hyatt wondering what in hell they should be doing and pleading for some authority figure to provide the guidance they require to function.

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