Month: February 2019

 
From Frances Langum:

Kellyanne Conway falls head first into the “Is that the house you robbed?” trap.

Speaking with Chris Cuomo on Tuesday, Kellyanne Conway gave the game away:

Chris Cuomo: “[Trump] and others have lied about Russia-related matters, and I don’t know why.”

Kellyanne Conway: “Not me. I have no exposure.”

No exposure? Exposure? Who said anything about exposure?

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

A couple of days ago, he was again bragging that he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He said the Japanese prime minister had nominated him for his meeting with Kim Jong-Un of North Korea (even though that meeting accomplished nothing other than to increase Kim Jong-Un’s standing on the world stage).

But there’s another part to that story that Trump won’t tell. It now comes out that the Japanese prime minister only nominated Trump because the U.S. government (i.e., the Trump administration) asked him to do that.

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Remember where you heard this?

Lyrics

It’s only been a week
the rush of being home and rapid fading
Failing to recall
when I was busy all that time in England

Has sent me aimlessly
on foot or by the help of transportation
to knock on windows where
a friend no longer live, I had forgotten

and everywhere I go
there’s always something to remind me
of another place and time
of a love that traveled far and found me
Continue reading “Remind Me – Röyksopp”

 
From Tommy Christopher:

On Sunday morning’s edition of MSNBC’s AM Joy, host Joy Reid played a clip from Wallace’s contentious interview with Miller, in which Wallace asked for a single example of another president using a national emergency to secure funds that Congress had denied.

“He couldn’t name one, Jonathan,” Reid noted, incredulously. “Shouldn’t he have prepped himself with at least one example?”

“That’s the thing, it’s like ‘Oh my God the teacher got me, I have no answer,” Capehart said.

“I mean, I always make fun of Fox News and call it, you know, state media for Earth Two and everything, but God bless Chris Wallace,” Capehart continued.

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From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

J.D. Greear, current president of the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) said:

Having an SBC database places pastors in an investigative role that we do not have the expertise or objectivity to fill. Managing the database alone poses significant problems. In fact, pushing for any kind of ‘internal investigation’ from a church level has proven to be one of the main problems in cases of abuse within the church.

We best protect by leaving investigation to people qualified to fulfill that role. The most effective thing we can do right now is educate pastors about the problem and the resources to deal with it and hold them accountable for doing so. [Since this quote, Greear has been calling for training videos, but still no database.]

And therein lies the reason Southern Baptist, Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB), and other “independent” denominations/churches will NEVER fix their sex abuse problem. Greear SHOULD be calling for the immediate establishment of database that lists every pastor, deacon, Sunday school teacher, youth pastor, choir director, children’s church pastor, evangelist, and congregant who has been accused of, arrested for, convicted of, or imprisoned for a sex crime, using their position of authority to sexually manipulate a woman, or any other crime that makes them unfit to be a church leader (or a Christian, for that matter). Instead, he hides behind the notion that pastors/churches are unqualified to “investigate” such claims. And I agree. All allegations of sexual misconduct or criminal behavior should be immediately reported to law enforcement, and not to the pastor or other church leaders. This does not, however, negate the necessity of having a database.

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From Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—The former Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis announced on Tuesday morning that he would seek the Democratic nomination for President, declaring, “Everyone else is.”

Explaining his rationale for running, the 1988 Democratic Presidential nominee told reporters, “As everyone else started jumping into the race, I started feeling a little left out.”

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From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

It deserves better than nonsensical all-caps tweets in the middle of the night.
It deserves better than unprepared, uninformed, rambling, and incoherent press events.
It deserves better than abject lies and anti-immigrant propaganda and token religion.
It deserves better than lazy shithole country insults and demeaning nicknames of political adversaries.
It deserves better than vilification of the Press and undermining of Intelligence and pandering to murderous dictators.
It deserves better than the molotov cocktail of fear and lies and violence it has daily tossed into its citizenry.
It deserves better than an unapologetic kleptocracy formed of career white-collar criminals, known supremacists, and serial grifters.
It deserves better than incendiary rhetoric and gaslighting lies and manufactured crises and phony emergencies.

The millions of men and women who have given lives and limbs in defense of this country deserve better.
Service people and police officers and first responders and teachers and caregivers deserve better.
Harriet Tubman and Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King Jr and Harvey Milk and John F. Kennedy and Angela Davis deserve better.
The abolitionists and the Suffragettes and the gay activists at Stonewall deserve it.
The Little Rock Nine and the students of Parkland deserve better.
My children and your children, and the children who will inherit the planet we leave them, deserve better.

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From nojo:

Years ago, back when we were in grad school, studying Kant and Descartes and Aristotle and Plato, a friend of ours had an interesting remark:

A philosophy of comedy needs to be funny.

What was interesting about his remark, besides its cleverness, was what he was getting at: The essence of something needs to be what it is. If you’re getting at the essence of comedy, what it’s about, how it works — which is what you do in philosophy, and why philosophers get laid so hard — your understanding of it needs to be funny itself. Which is the classic problem with explaining a joke: There are the ingredients, but where’s the soufflé?

Note: nojo saves the best for last.
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John Scalzi at Whatever celebrated romantic love last week by showing us how to make the ideal Valentine burrito.

Our own Trey reacted:

First I was intrigued. Then a little concerned. The crumbled heart-shaped cake frightened me. Then back to intrigued. Then, yes, interest became piqued with the butter. Then I saw that there was a video of my dude Scalzi actually biting into the monstrosity and nearly being devoured himself by its near-sentient marshmallow fluff.

After seeing all that I said to myself, No. No, Trey. You will not attempt this. In fact, Trey, you will wipe your memory clear of this.

So I did.

What were we talking about again?