Month: May 2020

 

From Infidel753:

The most fervently-religious groups, in order to preserve their belief in their ancient myths and superstitions, have trained themselves to reject science and the general concept of establishing truth by evaluating evidence (that’s what science basically is). Once that mental pattern was established for the sake of rejecting evolution, it easily got broadened to dismiss other inconvenient truths like global warming.

So we now have tens of millions of people who are culturally primed to react with hostility against any manifestation of expertise or any assertion of fact based on evidence instead of on ideology or tradition.

Most of the public figures now promoting stupid responses to covid-19 are Republican politicians. The Republican party for decades has represented the interests of the ultra-wealthy against the rest of society, and has exploited religious fundamentalism to win elections; over time the fundamentalist element has become more and more dominant even in the upper levels of the party due to the rising influence of its grass-roots supporters. What started off as a strategy to manipulate the rubes into voting for the party has become its real soul.

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From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:

Some people are just born stupid. One can only believe if their brains were put into thimbles they would rattle upon shaking. The day before Mother’s Day, the owners of a Colorado eatery declared on Twitter,

“We are standing for America, small businesses, the Constitution and against the overreach of our governor in Colorado!!”

On Sunday, it became clear what C&C Coffee and Kitchen in Castle Rock meant…

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From Dorian de Wind at The Moderate Voice:

The U.S. Navy has been especially hit hard, with coronavirus cases on more than two dozen Navy battleships. Most strikingly, the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt has been sidelined for more than a month, with the number of coronavirus cases now exceeding 1,000.

Fortunately, our nation is not engaged in any major military combat action nor is it facing any direct and imminent major military threat.

Such was not the case during World War I when the apocalyptic Spanish Influenza or “Spanish Flu” broke out.

The Spanish Flu, unrelated to Spain, broke out in the United States in March 1918 as the Great War was raging in Europe.

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From Dave Dubya:

75 years ago the war in Europe was ended. On May 8, 1945 Hitler’s Nazi regime was finally annihilated. Hitler was dead, but not before inflicting immeasurable destruction, loss of lives, and human suffering.

His racism, fascism, police state, war of aggression and murderous holocaust should have taught humanity a lesson. And it did for many people through the following few decades.

That was then.

Now the hated swastika flag and emblem of racist white supremacy has found a new home.

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From The Onion:

GRAND RAPIDS, MI—Training night and day in an abandoned strip mall complex, a conservative militia group has been preparing for societal collapse by training as hairstylists, nail technicians, and cosmetologists, sources confirmed Wednesday. “When the shit hits the fan, we’ll be the ones who are ready to take care of ourselves with the latest hair colors, nail applications, and specialized skin-care treatments,” militia member Wayne Donnell, 54, said as he drilled a group of children, some as young as 7, in the basics of administering a seaweed body wrap.

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• Sometimes mainstream press becomes so anxious about avoiding criticism for lack of balance, reporters forget to tell the unbalanced truth. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors takes Politico to task for a report on Obama’s fading accomplishments. tengrain’s title says it: Politico Sees The End of an Era, But Cannot Say Why It’s Ending.
   
• 75 years later, M. Bouffant at Web of Evil remembers the day the Thousand Year Reich ended, 988 years early.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post goes after my president’s facial expressions. It’s petty but it is entertaining, at least to my very active juvenile sensibilities.
   
• Jonathan Bernstein looks at Trump activism in dealing with COVID-19 and sees … well … nothing. “The president still shows no sense of urgency in dealing with the pandemic, and Senate Republicans are along for the ride.”
   
• News Corpse kind of … well … gloats, actually, at Donald Trumps pain at one poll in particular. Americans trust CNN more than their president.

Continue reading “Balanced News, Nazis Down, Trump Face, Trump Trust, Trump Worries”

 

From Tommy Christopher:

Prominent figures on social media reacted with grief and outrage to sickening video that has emerged of the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed black man, after being chased down by two white men in Georgia.

The crime occurred February 23 when by their own account, former police officer Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael saw Arbery jogging and chased him down in their pickup truck. They claimed to police that they wanted to question Arbery about recent burglaries in the area because they thought he resembled a “suspect” in the break-ins. They claimed Arbery “violently attacked” when they confronted him with firearms.

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I heard Jessie Reyez a couple years ago. A new song and new style in a shock title Fuck It. (Sorry Mom). It was sound effects and poetry. It was an almost-song backed by instruments. So I said That’s different and I turned round and went to sleep.

Not interested.

But I heard a few things and caught on a little. She does great eclectic with bop or hop or R&B or guitar, or some combo. A lot of it is rap or near-rap. A lot of it has a lot of Latin in it.

And she has a way with lyrics. Her parents are Colombian so she sings about being imported.

She does interviews. I looked her up.

She uses a little retro slang. They were dope. The song was really dope. The experience was dope. She describes the reaction of her elementary school teacher to something she wrote as a child: That’s dope. Really? A teacher: Hey lil girl, that’s dope.

But she’s self-aware and engaging as hell. What she says about herself makes sense. She doesn’t try to evoke emotion, but listeners get emotional, they feel it. She just sings what she experiences. She has an ugly romantic breakup and sings about betrayal and heartache. She gets sick and sings pain. A car accident? Sing a crash.

Same when she sings about social issues. It’s only as a sort of side-effect based on a personal event. Some recording manager goes beyond hitting on her for a little lovemaking, threatening her budding career unless she graces his bed. She tells him off in song that happens to be inspiring in its feminism.

Immigration the same. She sings about not belonging.

I don’t know what got her to this piece. I just like the style and power and words.

I especially like the joyful feminism here. The change ups in style are playful (Let’s pause for a pretty little moment), the very end is fun. Made me laugh.

You do want the words.

 

From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

The general consensus on cable TV was that the Coronavirus pandemic was going to hurt Joe Biden campaign for the presidency. That was because he’s is not getting much TV coverage, while Donald Trump is able to put himself on TV every day with Coronavirus briefings.

But it’s not working out that way. Biden finds himself leading in all the polls. The RealClearPolitics average of all recent polls has Biden ahead by 5.3 points (47.6% to 42.3%).

It turns out that Trump’s briefings are not helping him with the voters. In fact, it’s doing the opposite. His boasting, blaming, lying, and refusal to grieve for the dead is not playing well with the voters. He is making it clear to most voters that he is lacking even basic leadership skills — skills that are necessary in a crisis like this pandemic.

And it’s not just Trump who’s getting hurt.

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