Month: November 2016

 
From Jon Perr at PERRspectives:

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has lied about almost everything in this election. But among his most insidious falsehoods is this. Hillary Clinton, Trump declared in Florida two weeks ago, “is going to cut your Social Security and your Medicare.” As he put it a rally in Pennsylvania last month:

She wants to knock the hell out of your Social Security. She wants to knock the hell out of your Medicare and Medicaid. And I am going to save them.

Now, there are two big problems with The Donald’s deception. For starters, Hillary Clinton and the Democratic platform alike have both insisted on no benefit cuts to Medicare and Social Security. In fact, in their final debate Trump called Clinton “such a nasty woman” after she explained “My Social Security payroll contribution will go up as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it.” But just as embarrassing to Trump is the actual truth that his Republican Party has demanded reductions to both programs for tens of millions of American seniors.

– More –
 

 
From PZ Myers at Pharyngula:

Wow. You’ve probably heard about the Harvard men’s soccer team scandal — they’ve been compiling a yearly “scouting report” of the women’s soccer team, rating each team member’s appearance and speculating about their sexual preferences and other such juvenile shit. They ought to be deeply embarrassed. Their team has been suspended, which is an appropriate step, although if it keeps up it ought to be just completely shut down, but I doubt that the boys who thought such nonsense was funny are at all ashamed.

But then you need to read the response by Kelsey Clayman, Brooke Dickens, Alika Keene, Emily Mosbacher, Lauren Varela, and Haley Washburn, members of the women’s soccer team.

– More –
 

 
From Iron Knee at Political Irony:

The Atlantic has a short, concise summary of what is going on with the FBI. You should read it.

Basically, anti-Clinton insiders at the FBI, with help from the Trump campaign — including Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon — leaked information saying that an investigation into the Clinton Foundation was likely to lead to an indictment. That information is now known to be false, and even Fox News apologized on-air for spreading it.

– More –
 

• Max’s Dad has a few choice words, as his words usually are, about the election, the FBI, Trump voters, and the Cubs. Max’s dad is often profane and pretty much always entertaining.
   
• Jon Perr at PERRspectives answers as Curt Schilling, the former Boston Red Sox pitching great who opposes Senator Elizabeth Warren, asks a questionable question about Jewish voters.
   
• At The Moderate Voice, Clarissa Pinkola Estés explains the reaction of Latinos to Donald Trump.
   
• tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors covers news about the news, as Brian Williams breaks the news rules and tells the truth about Mark Halperin to his face.
   
• A story has been quietly circulating. It seems the Trump organization complied with demands from a visiting gangster buddy of Donald that all women and black people be removed from a Trump gambling table.
   
  Trump had denied, in court depositions and interviews with casino regulators, even knowing the organized crime figure. He continues to deny any association.
   
  Tommy Christopher, at Shareblue, finds a bewildered response to these denials from Trump’s good mobster friend, along with a video showing the two chumming it up together for hours.
   
• Dave Dubya wonders how this presidential election can be so close.
   
• James Wigderson uses a political memo, uncovered by a Russian hacking exercise and released through Julian Assange and Wikileaks, to support, or at least oppose those who oppose, public funding of private charter schools in Wisconsin.
   
  I wonder if Marco Rubio would approve. It does kind of seem like using a dirty bomb when you’re losing at Bingo.
   
• In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce deconstructs the role of Satan in evangelical theology and how it plays into separation from worldly sinners.
   
• nojo at Stinque thinks a lot about the election, political issues, and the effects of official policy, before settling on penguin sex.
   

The Director’s Disfunction

Until this year, the FBI never released information calculated to influence an election: for an important reason.

Transcript

---

More – –

 

 
From Frances Langum at Crooks and Liars:

Nathan, Nathan, Nathan. Didn’t your mama teach you we say “African Americans” OUTSIDE the White trash barn?

Republican Georgia Governor and Trump supporter (of course) Nathan Deal gave a speech in which he said this:

– More –
 

 
From Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post:

“The needs of the many FAR outweigh the wants of the few! Live long and prosper!”
– Star Trek’s Mr. Spock –

Today’s post is directed at, and dedicated to, millennials, students, workers in dead-end jobs with stagnant wages, union members, intellectuals, craftspersons, new parents and new homeowners, retirees worried about the future, immigrants, minorities, and anyone who looks at our political and economic systems with disgust and disbelief. You may or may not realize it, but you are all united into one big American family – that of the exploited 99% MAJORITY of citizens who aren’t fabulously wealthy and cannot simply skate through life without much financial concern.

– More –
 

 
From driftglass:

As you might remember, former “Meet the Press” ruiner, Mr. David Gregory, was unceremonious exiled to the Land of Misfit Pundits back in 2014, Today, Mr. David Gregory survived by a much smaller version of the original model — mr. david gregory — who appears to spend a lot of time seated precariously on a bar stool between idiots on CNN’s “We Are The World”-sized political panels, speaking in various backwoods locales which have not yet gotten the word that he is no longer Mr. David Gregory and flogging his book on his personal spiritual journey which may or may not be entitled.“Zen and the Art of Selling Out Journalism For Money”.

However it would be cruel and wrong to think that mr. david gregory left no lasting influence on his profession.

For example, one of his innovations back when he was Mr. David Gregory of “Meet the Press” was to make sure that at no point were the fleeting and ridiculous opinions of Mr. David Brooks of the New York Times underrepresented.

– More –
 

 
From Capt. Fogg at Human Voices:

Hell is other people, said Jean-Paul Sartre. in No Exit, (Huis clos) and so is Democracy as I was reminded today in the New Yorker. A third of Americans can’t name one branch of government and examples of the massive failure of education to integrate the population into the process are more than abundant.

Perhaps it’s my prejudice speaking but I would guess, in the absence of further data, that this proportion is even higher among supporters of Donald Trump, many of whom seem to think that a president can do almost anything he wants, from “fixing the schools” to changing the ties in the affairs of men and rebuilding the world of the 1950’s within our walled borders. All of course without help or hindrance from the legislature or the Judicial Branch.

– More –