Month: April 2016

• At Crooks and Liars, Frances Langum helps us get educated by Bill O’Reilly. The topic is unemployment among black youth. Apparently has to do, in part, with extraordinary personal appearance.
   
• Remember the boasts by sponsors of anti-gay Kentucky Clerk Kim Davis that Pope Francis had made it a point to meet with her? tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors has some additional news about the cleric who arranged that meeting, apparently without the knowledge of the Pope.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post believes enormous social good would flow if regulatory agencies would stop cowering and become active again.
   
• Nancy Hanks at The Hankster organizes protests in New York. The idea is that it is unfair that only Democrats can vote in the Democratic primary for Democratic delegates who will represent New York Democrats at the Democratic National Convention. Her open invitation includes times and places.
   
• Last Of The Millenniums urges Tea Party and militia patriots to protect their gun rights by staying home on election day in November.
   
• The Big Empty presents the Republican case for Ted Cruz.
   

Because Political Faith Demanded It

The conservative political faith of Governor Rick Snyder became more important to those in charge than any other consideration.

Ideology became more important than facts, evidence, or those affected.

People were sacrificed.

People died.

It hasn’t stopped.

Transcript

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More Voices —

 
From Jon Perr at Perrspectives:

GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump mystified economists with his prediction this week that the United States faces a “major recession.” Their confusion is well-founded. After all, with unemployment at 5.0 percent and the job-seekers returning to the work force, the U.S. just turned in its best two-year performance since the booming 1990’s.

That said, there is one scenario in which the United States will surely experience a cataclysmic economic disaster of biblical proportions.

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Raymond: We frequently link to Green Eagle, partly because of the insights, partly because of the writing skills, partly because Green Eagle is so good it makes Burr jealous.

From Green Eagle:

“Job Killer.” How many times have we heard the Republicans throw around that term, whenever the Democrats try to accomplish anything, and invariably without a shred of fact to back up their claims. No Democratic initiative has come in for more of this counterfactual name-calling than Obamacare. So, five years on, it is helpful, I think, to look at the reality, as shown by this chart, from an article at Forbes’ website, hardly a progressive bastion:

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From The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

Ray Lewis does it again.

Mr. Outspoken-Even-When-Wrong aka Ray Lewis, has found a way to find himself within the newspapers and the internet. Just recently, Ray Lewis posted a video that questioned the goals and validity of the Black Lives Matter movement. To his chagrin, he felt that the movement should be focused on “black on black crime”. Here are some of those wonderful words of wisdom:

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From Marc McDonald at BeggarsCanBeChoosers:

To me, the best music critics have always been the ones who simply stick to writing about the music and not calling attention to themselves. For example, off the top of my head, I don’t think I can name a single critic for my favorite music magazine, Britain’s excellent The Wire. But the reviews in that publication are some of the best around. They’re informative, in-depth, well-researched, and they give you a good sense of the music.

By contrast, the reviews of Robert Christgau, the self-appointed “Dean of Music Critics” offer none of these qualities.

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From Jordan Cooper at The Moderate Voice:

What’s that in your turban? What’s that in your burka? What’s that in the bottom of your sandals? Well, we have to check Egyptian-American Today show host Hoda Kotb who hid film in her shoes when doing journalism in another country, so an explosive device could fit in your shoes (laughs). It is jocular but this happens too regularly to Muslims and Arabs at an airport.

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From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who are deeply suspicious of twin studies, and those who welcome their confirmation that that their identity is fixed and heritable. I’m in the first group. I always have been. Maybe it’s something in my genes.

I first encountered the popular accounts of the Minnesota twin studies when I was a teenager, seeing the scientist and some of the twins doing the rounds of the afternoon talk shows — I think I saw them on the Mike Douglas Show (I’ve dated myself now). I remember them going on and on about the amazing similarities between the twins who had been raised apart. They both married women with the same name! They drank the same brand of beer!

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From Mike Conczal at :

Bernie Sanders gave some fairly normal answers on financial reform to the New York Daily News editorial board. Someone sent it to me, and as I read it I thought, “Yes, these are answers I’d expect for how Sanders approaches financial reform.”

You wouldn’t know that from the coverage of it, which has argued that the answers were an embarrassing failure.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara at Principled Perspectives:

The U.S. Supreme Court recently upheld, by a 4-4 tie vote, to uphold the power of public sector unions to impose union dues on non-union workers. In Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association, SCOTUS refused to overrule a lower court’s decision not to overturn a prior SCOTUS ruling granting this power to public sector unions.

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