Month: March 2018

Pete Souza:

First Lady Michelle Obama first met Evans, who was wounded in Afghanistan while on his fourth combat deployment, during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in 2010.

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

If trade wars were such a good idea and “easy to win”, as Trump seems to think, then why are they so rare?

But don’t worry: In a few years, they’ll be calling the encampments “Trumpvilles”.

– More –
 

 
From Wisconsin conservative Dave Blaska:

Sue Robinson is why Fake News. The University of Wisconsin-Madison journalism professor is why Sean Hannity and Donald Trump, Rachel Maddow and Bernie Sanders.

To every excess there is an opposite and even crazier reaction. Professor Sue Robinson is proof of the postulate. The lady teaches the sneering Don Lemons of tomorrow to scour the ground with righteous indignation — the facts be damned if they don’t serve the cause of “social justice.”

Sue and her ilk are why few real journalists ply their trades these days, entangled as they are by the platitudes of the moment. Healthy skepticism has succumbed to the cant of identity politics, victimhood, and race shaming. The result is that all news is suspect, the wildest conspiracies gain credence. John McCain is a Vietnam traitor, the NRA bayonets babies, and the white power structure murdered Michael Brown in cold blood.

Here’s to you, Sue Robinson. You helped elect Donald Trump with academic piffle like this (from Madison Magazine, January 2018):

… I was attending a three-day workshop on social-justice training. … I was face-to-face with the realization of how much my white, middle-class unearned privileges had played in my success to date. My thoughts drifted to the stories I had written as a white business reporter about “the American dream” [NOTE the ironic quotation marks] and my fervent commitment to the notion that hard work was all it took to achieve success. …

How foolish, the young Sue! Assiduously completing her homework assignments, for what? Those unpaid internships, a waste! Now, properly recalibrated, the professor understands that she was accepted into college thanks only to affirmative action for white folk. Her cushy, tenured faculty position? The Rainbow Coalition of competitors for the job was never seriously considered.

The lady’s guilty whiteness goes back generations.

– More –
 

 
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:

I came across your Tweet today; the one about these “arrogant snot teenagers” protesting gun violence—how they “stomp, pout, and cry when everything doesn’t go their way.”

I saw you dismiss these young people, by referring to them all as “laundry detergent pod-eaters.”

I shook my head and thought to myself, “These friggin’ bots are out of control.”

Then I looked more closely, and my stomach turned because I realized it was far worse than that.

I realized you’re an actual person.

You’re a supposed human adult; a professed “proud Christian” who raises children and votes and goes to church and drives past me every day.

You’re a 45-year old American man who manages a business and coaches a middle school baseball team.

That grieves me more than anything, because that I can’t fathom.

– More –
 

 
From Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged:

Leaving aside the obvious problem of nepotism, Kushner is crazily in debt, his family has shown a willingness to use his position to get mad unethical, and, as was revealed today, a pattern of financial insecurity and poor, naïve decision-making has made foreign countries decide he is a super great halfwit to work with. This was kind of a no-brainer–Kushner should not have high security access because his position is really insecure.

It’s also probably a no-brainer to suppose that this means he either can’t do his presumed job (which is, last I checked, all the foreign policy things we’re supposed to have a State Department for) or, Daddy Trump and Ivanka are going to let him crib from their notes. This is a situation of such abominable stupidity it could only be happening in the Trump White House.

But in the world of “Jared can’t catch a break”, he’s also facing a Hatch Act violation for talking up President Trump’s 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, while using his official White House title. Kushner, of course, brought Parscale on to the 2016 campaign and worked closely with him, so he has a good idea about the quality of his work-product from the digital end of the campaign, but even that is darn problematic. Parscale went from being pretty much no one in politics, to being a weird 2016 success story, but the funny thing is, he’s tied to Cambridge Analytica, which is tied to Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and, obviously, the Russia investigation. Parscale has already had a chat with Congress, and is probably going to get another one with Robert Mueller and friends. (Don’t sweat, pets, there’s other hang-ups this cat likely has.)

– More –
 

Wondering why a few conservative friends fail to be impressed.

 
From Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger:

Early primary voting is now over in Texas. It shows that Democrats seem to be energized to vote in this off-year election. In 2014, Republicans outvoted Democrats by 138,693 in the primaries. That was flipped in 2018 — with Democrats outvoting Republicans by 44,916.

Both parties increased their votes in the primary early voting. The Republican increase was a respectable 15.02%. The Democrats increased their primary voting by a whopping 105.12%.

– More –
 

 
From The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser:

It took me until I was in my 40s before I realized that striving for holiness and perfection was a fool’s errand; that no matter how much I devoted myself to God and the ministry, my life was never going to measure up. Decades of denying self had destroyed my self-worth. Jesus was preeminent in my life, but Bruce was nowhere to be found (and my wife, Polly, could tell a similar story). I spent a decade trying to be a “normal’ Christian, but I still battled with thoughts about not doing enough for the cause of Christ; not doing enough to win souls; not doing enough to advance God’s kingdom to the ends of the earth. By the time I left the ministry in 2005, a lifetime of thirsting for God had led to dehydration and almost killed me. I have no doubt that my commitment to serving God day and night; to burning the candle at both ends; to working while it is yet day, for night is coming when no man can work, played a part in my declining health. And, at some level, I knew this, but I told myself, it’s better to burn out than rust out.

Come November, it will be ten years since I walked away from Christianity; ten years since Jesus and I divorced; ten years since I realized that the Bible was not what Christians claim it is; ten years since I concluded that the Christian narrative was false.

– More –
 

 
From Dorian de Wind, Military Affairs Columnist at The Moderate Voice:

Navy Adm. Michael S. Rogers, commander of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency (NSA)and chief of the Central Security Service, testified today at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Cyber Command’s posture.

It was an eye-opening hearing during which the NSA chief bluntly told lawmakers that President Trump has not given our intelligence services the specific authority or direction to confront the Russian election cyber attacks and that the U.S. response to Russia’s attacks has been insufficient to prevent ongoing attacks or prevent future ones. “We have not opted to engage in some of the same behaviors we are seeing…They have not paid a price that is sufficient to change their behavior,” Rogers said.

– More –
 

 
From PZ Myers:

Is it just me, or do you see it too?

Several of those guys pictured are dead. One, Neil deGrasse Tyson, doesn’t want to be associated with movement atheism. But that isn’t what bothers me most.

One problem is that they’re all guys, every one, except for Ayaan Hirsi Ali. They couldn’t be bothered to copy and paste a picture of Susan Jacoby or Annie Laurie Gaylor or Madalyn Murray O’Hair or Margaret Downey in there — heck, not even Ayn Rand, but maybe that would be too revealing of their political philosophy. If you wanted to demonstrate that atheism is a boys’ club, all you have to do is look at how they advertise themselves.

– More –