Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Iron Knee at Political Irony:
This blog recently posted about Jimmy Kimmel and the near-death of his newborn son. Kimmel made the point that nobody should be put in the position of having to decide if they can afford to save their child, and scolds Trump and the Republicans for being heartless.
Well, conservative Jonah Goldberg decided to respond to Kimmel in National Review. His response is ironic in that it actually confirms Kimmel’s arguments.
From PZ Myers:
I watched Guardians of the Galaxy, vol. 2 this weekend. It was a fun bit of fluff. I’m also a fan of movies that portray god-like aliens as inherently inimical to humans and evil by nature, and that therefore our purpose, if we have any at all, is to kill gods. And then there are lots of space battles with funky ’70s music and funny one-liners. Groot is adorable, but my favorite character had to be Drax.
But, I have to say, I was also distracted by the horrible science. I know, I know, this is a fantasy story based on a comic book, but I am compelled to judge.
First up, the video game-style space battles. They’re fun to watch, but come on — World War I dogfights and weapons with such high energies that you can use them to carve your way to the center of a planet? And when your ship gets hit by them it might chip the paint but otherwise just bounce off? Also, those streams of little ships in formation getting zapped by the good guys, I recognized those — I played Galaxian in my misspent youth.
Secondly, everything in this galaxy seems so cramped and close-up. “Radio” your coordinates to the galaxy at large, and in minutes hordes of space ships show up to hunt you down. Activate your doomsday device on your remote world and all of the evil death weapons start blossoming simultaneously on worlds separated by a hundred thousand light years. It’s a cartoon, but I miss the idea of the vastness of the universe.
My biggest gripe, though, is with the lazy biology.
From Green Eagle:
Today’s chapter of this endless story is motivated by the news that our “Liberal” TV news outlet. MSNBC, after soiling itself by bringing Greta Van Susteren and Hugh Hewitt, two of the most nauseating right wing liars the country could produce, onto its airwaves, has now furthered its degradation by hiring George Will to be one of its commentators.
This will seem irrelevant, but before continuing, I want to discuss the case of one Janet Cooke, who virtually everyone has totally forgotten about. In 1981, Cooke, who was a reporter for the Washington Post, wrote a story about a young heroin addict. The story turned out to be made up, and as a result, Janet Cooke was fired by the Post (nothing wrong with that, I guess) and was driven out of journalism forever.
Here’s what George Will was up to at the time, in the way of journalism:
Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.
From Michael John Scott at MadMikesAmerica:
Our classy former president graciously accepted the John F. Kennedy “Profile in Courage” award Sunday night in Boston. Barack Obama delivered remarks on the merits of “political courage” — when elected officials do the right thing in spite of how unpopular it might make them.
From Jonathan Bernstein:
The biggest questions now are about what will happen in the Senate. This is a “reconciliation” bill, which means it will be protected against filibusters and will need only a simple majority to pass. But it also means that only certain provisions (those that affect the federal budget) can be included. It’s entirely unclear what the Senate parliamentarian — an unelected official who singlehandedly makes major decisions on the reconciliation process — will allow, and what Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans will do if the parliamentarian turns what the House has done into Swiss cheese by stripping various provisions from it.
From driftglass:
“Not on my watch!” — Andy Lack, chairman of NBC News and MSNBC
File under: “The Wingnut Welfare Trough Contains Multitudes.”
From Politico:
George Will joins MSNBC
Washington Post columnist George Will has joined MSNBC and NBC News as a contributor.
From Sean O’Neal at A.V. Club:
Yesterday, we reported that a passel of grotesque Dickensian caricatures gathered in the House of Representatives to vote, by a margin of 217-213, to let poor people die and to punish women for the blasphemy of having a vagina, effectively putting some 24 million Americans at the perpetual risk of poverty should they fall victim to accident or debilitating disease—a monstrous display of selfishness that, by their own admission, many of them performed solely out of adherence to partisan dogma and unabashed spite, and a ghoulish, symbolic bloodletting ritual that they then commemorated by drinking Bud Light. However, we have now learned that they did not, in fact, drink Bud Light.
We hereby offer this retraction.
Wondering why a few conservative friends are less than impressed.
From Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice:
Ivanka Trump did not, of course, get to choose her father. And as a rule, the children of presidents should be off limits from media scrutiny, or at least have a modicum of privacy away from the harsh glare of the 24/7 world in which celebrities live. But Ivanka is not just any president’s kid. She is the First Daughter of a man whose vileness is without bounds, and her choreographed effort to portray herself as a president whisper whose voice of reason is a foil to Daddy’s ignorance is utterly phony.