- So an important Iranian General is killed in Iraq at the order of the American President. Peter Nicholas, at The Atlantic watches Donald Trump tell the American people and the world at large why this is a good, very good, thing and why he did it for reasonable reasons. Then Peter explains, slowly and carefully, why nobody will believe Mr. Trump. Seems to have something to do with earned trust.
- As always, Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged has a thoughtful perspective on Qassem Soleimani. She explains why this killing differs from that of Osama bin Laden.
- Senator Lindsey Graham is “Very proud of President @realDonaldTrump acting decisively in the face of threats to our embassy in Baghdad.” So are we all… sort of. Frances Langum has the timeline. As the attack on the US embassy in Baghdad results in an angry crowd finally bursting through the fortified perimeter into the embassy grounds, my president is preoccupied with tweeting attacks on Biden during a day of golf. That’s … decisive. Makes me kind of wonder how much deliberation later went into the killing of General Soleimani. Okay, I’m not really wondering.
- Before that killing, the protests in Iraq has faded out. Green Eagle looks closely at that very temporary resolution, which hadn’t stopped until a sort-of-successful attack on the US embassy, and determines who exactly benefited from it all.
- Jonathan Bernstein makes a couple of pertinent political points touching on Trump’s impeachment. The process has not affected his popularity. One reason may be that his approval rating is already historically low. It isn’t that so many folks don’t like him. It’s that so many folks really, really don’t like him.
- Dave Dubya points to a few reasons this year’s election means more than most.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil reads Sinclair Lewis and predicts when and how fascism can come to America.
- MadMikesAmerica is hopeful about the 2020 election for reasons that supersede polling data.
- Scotties Toy Box provides a brief layperson’s diagnosis of my president’s mental, emotional, and ethical condition. All in a sentence, actually. I’ve had similar thoughts about my President.
- Author John Scalzi at Whatever has some thoughts on conservative efforts to keep citizens from voting and adopts a new personal project.
- Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson is at it again. Conservatives in the Wisconsin legislature passed a caging law. Caging is the discredited practice of sending postal cards to voters in minority neighborhoods and quickly disfranchising anyone whose card is returned as undeliverable. Those who move within the same neighborhood, the most common move, are still valid voters but they are declared ineligible and wiped off the books.
Until recently, Republicans were found to have been guilty of abusing voters, and prohibited from using the practice anymore. In Wisconsin, a conservative group got a judge to order that voters numbering in the hundreds of thousands be taken off voting rolls immediately. James accuses the Wisconsin Election Commission of defying a lawful court order.
Actually, the Commission is awaiting the outcome of an appeal by the Wisconsin Department of Justice and a separate federal lawsuit by the League of Women Voters. Both are on behalf of legal voters who would illegally be put through additional requirements to reapply for the right to vote. He briefly mentions the DOJ lawsuit toward the end of his piece, but only to say that it was not authorized through a vote by the Election Commission. The federal suit is not mentioned at all. An oversight, I imagine (My imagination is expansive).
So, as conservatives see it, lawsuits to protect the rights of voters are not actually legal unless authorized by government commissions assigned to remove those rights. Such is the regard for citizenship in today’s conservative world.
- Jon Perr at PERRspectives totals the miracles provided to a grateful nation by the Republican party. Re-reading this a few times, I’m tempted to think it may be some form of satire. Just sayin.
- Seems fitting in an election year. Sometimes poetic justice leads to justice. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit provides 3 sentences and a link about a reckless driver who helped solve his own crime. Police were left with little to investigate. If only voters would react to self-revealing criminal candidates that way. Oh come on. You do too know who I mean!
- At The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce points out to religious folk like me that facts ought to matter. He’s right, you know.
- driftglass does not have fond thoughts of Chuck Todd, and doesn’t seem dejected at network moves to shift him to a less prestigious time slot. But driftglass doesn’t much care for their reasoning.
- nojo reviews all the progress we’ve made during the decade, and is not at all pleased.
- The Onion celebrates the new year with a review of the dogs and cats who were sure you would be the one to adopt them in 2019.
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Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair