- We’re seeing on our television screens what certainly looks like a double standard. Tommy Christopher reviews the treatment of two reporters, both while on camera within a block of each other, as they separately encounter police.
- North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests the secret ingredient in racism’s triumph is complicit white people.
- As a few of my brothers and sisters in Christ demand the right to worship in church, to endanger themselves, to imperil their families, to compromise the safety of their neighbors, to put the rest of us at risk, Nan’s Notebook wonders where in scripture it says God needs a church building. I, on the other hand, am reminded that siblings can be an embarrassment to the rest of the family.
For me and most of my fellow believers, this is a very simple article of faith. God makes house calls.
- In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, Bruce reports on a Christian patriot who harasses an elderly woman at a local market for violating her freedom to yell in her face. The account is in the attacker’s words.
- A guy in Dallas goes on social media to threaten grocery workers whose job it is to tell him to wear a mask. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit speculates on the professional future of this fierce fellow. Seems he soon lost his position with a law firm. Something about guns and hollow point bullets.
- So the extremely conservative Wisconsin Supreme Court says any stay-at-home order is unconstitutional. tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors watches folks crowd into bars. Now it’s two weeks later and some of those folks are crowding into hospital ICUs.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony looks at the deadly secret that Pennsylvania’s Republican legislators kept from everyone in the room and one Democrat’s reaction as he discovers that his and other families have been put into mortal danger. You thought this sort of plot twist only happened in movies about terrorists?
- Our favorite libertarian, Julian Sanchez of CATO, hosts an hour video discussion about proposals to fight COVID-19 with medical testing and cell phone tracing. It’s partly a technical education and partly an exploration of privacy versus public health issues along with what might go wrong.
- Short term gloom. Long term hope. It didn’t have to play this way, nojo suggests, but here we are. The economy will not bounce upward anytime soon, even if government releases all restrictions, since most folks are smarter than a gnat. Recovery won’t even start as President Joe takes office. Maybe the year after.
- So word is my president is sacrificing lives to bet his election on an economic recovery. Jonathan Bernstein pours through the data, examines past elections, and concludes a rebounding economy, even right now, would not affect what happens in November.
- driftglass tells us the one weird trick guaranteed to make any Republican go berserk.
- Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger points to an under-reported fatal flaw that leads my president on dangerous paths, imperiling us all.
- In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson reviews Trumpday, a day of TwitterMelt, and Anti-Voting screeds, and teeny-tiny Republican reactions to the firing of Inspectors General. In other words, a typical 24-hour run in the madcap world of Trump.
- Andy Borowitz reports that database servers are bursting into flame as Twitter fact-checks tens of thousands of Trump falsehoods.
- Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post takes a look at multiple minor corruptions, the prolific petty theft that interweaves the tapestry of this administration.
- M. Bouffant at Web of Evil gets enraged at my president and goes all Dont-mince-words-what-do-you-really-think. Short rant. Lets off some steam. Then back to business, move along folks, nothing to see here.
- Infidel753 details parts of the nightmarish fascism that China has become.
- In Scotties Toy Box, we discover a different sort of Monopoly, a new board game designed around economic reality.
- PZ Myers finds himself attacked by a “Whack an Athiest” YouTube-caster. Interesting debate, I’m thinking, except it turns out Myers wasn’t invited to his own debate. AND it turns out the video does not actually attack ideas propounded by Myers, but rather discredited theories once held by Ernst Haeckel, who died a century ago.
That’s kind of how science works. Observations and measurements are made. A hypothesis develops to explain what is seen. This sometimes survives into a theory, which is tested by predictions and more observations, and is thereby confirmed or disproved.
- Max’s Dad characterizes AIDS activist Larry Kramer as “rude, crude, nasty, mean, loud, profane” and mourns his loss this week at age 84.
– Podcasts –