Month: November 2017

 
From Jonathan Bernstein:

But of course President Donald Trump is not fairly popular; he’s the most unpopular president at this stage of his presidency in the polling era, and if we restrict it to elected presidents (excluding Gerald Ford) he’s the most unpopular by a wide margin.

Even though some of the specifics of Tuesday’s elections were surprises, the overall result wasn’t. Everything we’ve seen over the last nine months indicated that Democratic energy is high; they are recruiting tons of candidates; and Trump is dragging down candidates all over, with Democrats picking up several state legislative seats and beating their previous margins (on average) in all U.S. House and state legislative specials. You’re going to see a ton of analysis about it, but it’s really very simple: This is what happens when a president is unpopular.

So what can Republicans do?

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

If you voted for Donald Trump, you owe my children an apology.

You owe them an apology for making them grow up with a hateful, incompetent, petulant, predatory monster as their President.

For placing their safety in the hands of an impulsive child, who trolls world leaders with nuclear weapons and wields our military like an insecure coward brandishes a gun at a party.

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From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara at Principled Perspectives:

1– Consumption, as such, is not a primary factor in the economy. Production and trade are the primary factors. Consumption is the end goal of economic activity. Consumption is the motivator. But it is not the driver. Production is the driver. It’s not enough to need or desire something to consume. Need and desire won’t bring the non-existent consumer products into existence. Only productive work—reason-guided physical labor—can bring consumer goods into existence. To consume, we must work so we can consume what we created through our work—or trade our work product for the product of others’ work.

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From Mark Bear at MadMikesAmerica:

The fact that we need to have this conversation today, tells us everything we need to know about how far from grace the republican party has fallen. They are now officially morally bankrupt.

Last week, as each of you know, the Washington Post published a story indicating how Judge Roy Moore, then thirty-two years of age, forced a fourteen-year-old into a sexual encounter. No matter what way this is sliced, diced, marginalized, or explained away, Moore should arguably have a public relations nightmare for his campaign. But the problem is he doesn’t.

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From (O)CT(O)PUS at The Swash Zone:

How can we account for a rash of mass murders that defy explanation but have become all too commonplace?

Perhaps it is time to revisit the research of John B. Calhoun, who studied the effects of over-crowding on social animals at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). Originally published in 1962, his findings have profound implications in the fields of architecture, urban planning, criminology, and the psychosocial sciences.

Imagine a fully enclosed 9-foot by 9-foot square box. Introduce fours pairs of breeding mice and supply unlimited amounts of food, water, and nesting material. In essence, Calhoun created a perfect utopian environment free from predators. All things being equal, the only test variable under study was the confined space of a box.

Calhoun watched the population double every 55 days. He observed profound breakdowns in social structure over time and a dramatic increase in the rate of internecine violence.

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Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors:

Alleged child molester Roy Moore is drifting the Republican’s Kobayashi Maru (the unwinnable scenario) into Klingon territory, giving the ENTIRE Republican party the test to see the nature of their own character under stress.

It’s not pretty.

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From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Republican nut-job Roy Moore seemed to have an insurmountable lead in the Alabama Senate race. In a poll taken last Monday, he had an 11 point lead over Democrat Doug Jones. But then the Washington Post revealed they had learned that Moore had sexually assaulted a 14 year old girl in the past.

Normally, that would be the death blow for a senate candidate, but this is bright red Alabama, where Republicans are assured of winning just because they are Republicans — and many thought that Moore would probably win anyway (including me). But we could have spoken too soon.

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From Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson:

Here’s a bitter taste for you. Bill Penzey of Penzeys Spices says being upset at players in the National Football League (NFL) who protest during the national anthem is racist.

In his Veterans Day email to customers, Penzey explained the reason for the players protesting: “For Veterans Day, out of respect for Veterans, can we all just be honest and admit that the NFL protests really are about racism?”

Except they’re not. They supposedly started as protests against police treatment of minorities. And, of course, it’s impossible to separate the message from being a protest against America because it is during the national anthem.

But Penzey says people being upset about the protests by NFL players are really saying something else.

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