Category: Uncategorized

 
From driftglass:

Noun: a literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of political fantasy.

As I have mentioned before, the Beltway media’s hot new genre is something I call Magic Ruralism.

…just as Thrilling Detective and Detective Fiction Weekly were in the business of cranking out hard-boiled crime genre fiction for the titillation of their readers, so have The New York Times and the Washington Post gone into the business of cranking out True Tales Of Rust-Belt Trump Murricans! for the titillation of their readers.

Of course, for those of us who actually live in Middle America and who have been actively yelling for decades about the monster factory the GOP has been building, this development is as pernicious as it was predictable. Because rich city folks live a million social and economic miles from the actual Middle America and because their lives are substantially untouched in any material way by the Republican madness abroad in the land, they are free to savor hair-raising tales (from today’s WaPo) —

White, and in the minority

She speaks English. Her co-workers don’t. Inside a rural chicken plant, whites struggle to fit in.

— of rural Murrican pity and terror (from yesterday’s NYT) —

How to Talk to a Racist

White liberals, you’re doing it all wrong.

— from a safe distance.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:

Rights are moral principles sanctioning every individual’s freedom of self-advancing action, not an automatic claim on material benefits that others must be forced to provide. Healthcare does not just happen in nature. It must be produced by the individual efforts of human beings, and that fact of nature cannot be arbitrarily wished away. For a government to guarantee a right to healthcare beyond what one can acquire through voluntary dealings with others, the government must force others to pay for and/or provide it. To do that, the government must have the power to commandeer the efforts and property of productive citizens: i.e., the government must enslave those citizens.

“Unconstrained capitalism” is an interesting package deal, since capitalism is the only social system that banishes aggressive force from human society by constraining the government to the task of protecting every individual’s inalienable rights to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, which necessarily includes the right to the product of one’s own, not others’, work. Once we accept the notion of a right to healthcare or any other material benefit that others must be forced to provide, we have abandoned the basic principle of capitalism—a society in which each person is free only to deal with others by voluntary, mutual consent. Then we’re left with the basic principle of socialism, the society of masters and slaves, in which material need makes one a master and the ability to satisfy that need makes one a slave—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” with the government as the tool of the masters rather than the institution to secure equal rights.

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From The Onion:

“There is absolutely no evidence to suggest that exquisite, handcrafted Trump–Russia meeting decorative plates are on sale for just $39.99 per plate or $199.99 for the entire six-plate set,” said the president, noting that if such collectibles did exist, they would no doubt feature the portraits and signatures of those who attended the meeting as well as a bonus silver souvenir spoon hand-stamped with the date “6/9/16” at no extra charge.

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From Bill Formby at MadMikesAmerica:

I don’t know about the rest of you but I am perplexed beyond imagination at how unsophisticated and just plain stupid the supporters of Donald Trump seem to be. I mean it seems that every other presidential swap we get a Republican and most of us disagree with that person’s philosophy. That is just the way game is played, but right now I would love to have either of the Bushes or Reagan back in the White House.

At least, even when G.W. said he could see into Putin’s soul, I did not think that he was going to hand him the keys to the country. With Trump, I am not so sure.

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From Frances Langum:

Bill Mitchell pretends he’s a right-wing radio “personality” and is an occasional guest on InfoWars. He also has, in my experience of bot-hunting, the highest percentage of bot responses of anyone on Twitter. From time to time I’ll check out right wing threads using the web-tool at botcheck.me and some of Bill Mitchell’s threads are 80% bot.

Today he tweeted this piece of “only Bill Mitchell” genius:

God favors America.
Trump favors America.
God favors Trump.

It's just math.

— Bill Mitchell (@mitchellvii) July 29, 2018

Actually Bill that’s Socratic Logic, not “math,” and it often fails…

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• While we debate whether the fair minded universe is more likely to defeat Trump and Co. by getting our folks to vote or by getting Trump supporters to change their minds, M. Bouffant at Web of Evil watches Trump voters as they are interviewed in a diner and makes an obvious choice.
   
• On the other hand, Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has polling data and presents it well. My President is losing support from the most reliable part of his base. Perhaps M. Bouffant will want to reconsider.
   
• Yellow Dog at Blue in the Bluegrass is giving out Trump-Speak decoder rings.
   
• Remember back when President Trump was caught on television worshiping at the feet of the Russian leader? Stinque finds it remarkable, although not surprising, that the outrage faded so quickly. America’s Attention Deficit Disorder.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit notes the widely accepted fact that our President is loyal to Putin, but has a different theory about why.
   
• Green Eagle explains how Donald Trump could have headed off the turn-around by Michael Cohen, who is now spilling the Trump-beans, and why he didn’t.
   
• My conservative friend T. Paine, at Saving Common Sense, suggests a shifting standard among those of us on the left. We are disturbed by Russian attempts to influence US elections, even though there is no credible evidence they changed the result. Yet we tolerate migrant workers voting in San Francisco school elections.
   
• driftglass beats up Glenn Greenwald, after GG slams everyone else over transparency then gets caught deleting tens of thousands of potentially embarrassing tweets. Five years ago, I suggested a different reason to despise Mr. Greenwald: one not calculated to generate much agreement from some friends.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson worries, then tries to convince himself not to worry, as a conservative Milwaukee talk radio station is sold to a liberal group. The punch line – at least I thought it was humorous – comes at the very last sentence, as a possible additional reason is revealed for the angst of James.
   
• Professor PZ Myers considers freedom of speech, fire in a crowded theatre, and a domain provider willingly hosting racist calls to violence.
   
• At The Onion, a panicking Mark Zuckerberg holds press conference explicitly welcoming Armenian genocide deniers to facebook.
   
• Irritating music has an effect on heart rate. The Journal of Improbable Research finds research demonstrating that reducing the length of exposure to music that subjects loath does not mitigate the effect. To test the study, I listened to a Trump speech. Yeah, the research bears out.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce quotes Clarence Darrow proposing a logical reason that atheists may be kinder than those of us who believe.
   
• This week’s note in Trumpian “Alternative Facts” comes from the BBC noting a pointless lie about an event to which the reporter is an actual witness, goes on to the major re-editing of a transcript, then finds my President summarizing his approach with a near quote from Orwell. Actually, the transcript re-editing was blown off by the White House as a clerical error, right up until the official video which was identically altered.
   
• One last thing: I came across what I have always thought was one of the funniest casual conversations on Johnny Carson. It’s from long, long ago, and I’m pretty old. Your mileage may vary.

 
From Infidel753:

Since long before Trump, the core of the Republican base has been the Christian Right. Evangelicals are Trump’s most loyal supporters. They’re willing to overlook the obviously non-Christian character of his personal life so long as he does all he can to attack gays, abortion, and separation of church and state. In that sense, they’re pragmatists. They care about winning battles, not about who’s delivering the victories.

But they’re very aware that, over a longer time frame, they’re losing.

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From Dave Dubya:

It was reported that Putin’s Puppet got angry at Melania for watching CNN. Like Dick Cheney, he demands his FOX(R) be on at all times.

Her spokeswoman announced Melania will “watch any channel she wants”.

You go, girl!

Jeff Mason of Reuters asked President Putin: “Did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”

Putin replied, “Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” The White House has omitted that part of the transcript and edited it out of their accompanying video.

The Stalinist message is: “You didn’t hear that. You didn’t see that. If you did it’s not happening.”

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From Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice:

Gowdy and Graham staged on-air teevee talk show interventions over the weekend for an audience of one, although we can be certain that the president, who had reversed field twice in the previous week in denying interference, grudgingly admitting Russian interference amidst the post-Helsinki fallout and then doubling back down in tweeting that it is all a “hoax,” wasn’t listening.

He was playing golf.

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