2020 Redeux, Reichstag Moment, COVID Karma, Ayn Angst, Mad Moms

  • @momwino98 considers what she would do if faced with a home break-in
    @momwino98

    ##stitch with @ryankayaks ##comedy ##foryourpage ##tiktokmom ##stains ##wtff

    ♬ original sound – @Momwino98


     

  • Scotties Toy Box looks at the strange and dangerous things happening around Trump on and after election night 2020. Starts with drunken Giulliani and goes to declaration of martial whatever.
     
  • In Letters from an American, Heather Cox Richardson notes what should be seen as historic news: A Biden initiative that moves us closer to eliminating child poverty. But that report is overshadowed by new revelations about the Jan 6 insurrection and how those in the know saw outgoing President Trump closing in on ending representative government in America. The phrase used behind the scenes by military command at the time was Reichstag moment.
     
  • News Corpse makes a compelling case that the deadly Jan 6 insurrection should not be regarded as a singular event, but as an opening salvo in an ongoing agenda currently aimed at the overthrow of American representative democracy.
     
  • The Attorney General of Texas wants to demonstrate that elections are being stolen by fraudulent voters. So he finds someone who stood in line for 4 hours to vote, who by law was supposed to be allowed to vote, who thought he was registered but wasn’t, and who cast a provisional ballot. So that voter is now facing years in prison. Cato Institute’s Julian Sanchez reacts.

  • In case we get overwhelmed by news of America’s possible dissolution, CalicoJack in The Psy of Life suggests we accept inspiration from a much more desperate national time, and the Gettysburg Address.
     
  • I lived through one Presidential assassination. I never want to see another. So I have no qualms about the Secret Service spiriting the Chief Executive, any Commander-in-Chief, to safety at any hint of prospective danger.
     
    tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors takes a look at reports on Donald Trump’s panicked retreat to an underground bunker. News of that flight seems to have violated what Mr. Trump thinks of as his tough guy image. The only thing that frightened him more than the distant crowd of protesters was that anyone would find out that he was afraid of the distant crowd of protesters. So he tried to use the power of the federal government to identify whoever leaked the story and to have that person executed.
     
    Which, I suppose, makes him a tough guy after all?
     
  • On the other hand, Andy Borowitz reports that, although he instigated, Donald Trump did not actually lead the attempted coup to keep himself in office. He had a podiatrist’s note exempting him.
     
  • driftglass thinks he knows why Megyn Kelly now says the Jan 6 Capitol lynch mob wasn’t so bad after all.
     
  • Frances Langum admits to a bad case of superficiality watching one-time Trump Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin in horrible television lighting as he is not asked about millions in hijacked funds directed to himself, his family, and his friends. Mnuchin does insist he has no idea who won the 2020 Presidential election because he was too busy working on COVID to notice.
     
  • At The Moderate Voice, editor Joe Gandelman watches House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy’s pilgrimage, catching up with our once-upon-a-time president on a New Jersey golf course, then kneeling to kiss the ring of Donald Trump.
     
    A conservative friend once chided me for thinking of McCarthy as some sort of satanic figure. I was grateful for the opportunity, at long last, to use a line from an old television show. Don’t be silly. He’s not Satan, said I, He’s just someone who runs into the 7-11 to buy Satan his cigarettes.
     
    Folks my age don’t really need a keen wit. Just a dim, distant memory of better times and decent movies.
     
  • Eeeggg. The Palmer Report brings news of the new Donald Trump-Bill O’Reilly tour! The triumphant rallies are not exactly sell outs. Vast sections of seats are vacant.
     
    Just a thought: maybe they should go all Adam Smith and follow market theory. Lower ticket prices to increase demand.
     
    Or just give tickets away.
     
    Or maybe pay people to show up.
     
  • A conservative media personality suggests that vaccines go against nature. Vixen Strangely at Strangely Blogged speculates on just which groups of people are on his list of those he and nature want wiped out.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony sees the against nature suggestion as a form of unfortunate evolution in action. Those who believe vaccines are against nature are most likely to experience the raw power of nature without vaccination.
     
    Kind of like tornadoes being nature’s way of telling you to get your ass down to any anthropogenic cellar you can find.

  • There are sources of disinformation about vaccines that might qualify as quasi-evolutionary. Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit considers the phenomenon of Trumpers refusing vaccines as a sort of developing karma and documents one case.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil expresses a remarkable lack of sympathy for unvaccinated victims of COVID.
     
  • Tennessee Republicans succeed in preventing children from getting any vaccines against anything at all. North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz suggests that this newest cruelty has a point, and that cruelty is not it. He wishes it was.
     
  • NOJO reads an angry missive from Utah Republican Senator Mike Lee. Senator Lee wants to celebrate diversity but is angry because diversity is being weaponized. Which sounds pretty frightening, but means nothing except that everyone should be scared.
     
    NOJO finds one additional meaning: Civic debate is impossible in the face of that degree of manipulative tactics from those who are most accurately described as liars.
     
  • The Propaganda Professor looks at the campaign against teachers teaching anything about racism having played a role in US history and objects to the current misuse of the phrase pushing back. Anti-truth bullies don’t push back. They just push.
     
  • We are taught always to hope for redemption. Wouldn’t have thought it likely here in Missouri with former Governor Eric Greitens. Avid political enthusiasts may remember our esteemed head of state government as having resigned in disgrace amid allegations of sexual blackmail. He was accused of threatening to release a nude photo of a sexual acquaintance if she did not extend their relationship.
     
    Greitens sank so low that now even Donald Trump wants nothing to do with him. And many of us will remember that, just a few years ago, Trump supported Roy Moore of Gaetz-like fame in Alabama.
     
    Tommy Christopher reports on the once-Governor’s current campaign for US Senate. Seems he has acquired the virtue of having enraged Mr. Trump, complete with expletives.
     
    His campaign has engaged the girlfriend of Donald Trump, Jr. as a campaign advisor without senior Trump’s permission. The presence of Kimberly Guilfoyle might make it look like Trump, former friend of Epstein, subject himself of allegations, might be associated with a sexual predator. He doesn’t want his reputation sullied.
     
  • In MadMikesAmerica, Michael John Scott offers a defense of wealthy people who want to ride to the edge of space. They are, after all, willing to pay the price of their tickets.
     
  • Libertarian? No, Objectivist Michael A. LaFerrara is offended by a question about an obscure charge against what may have inspired the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
     
    We get this sort of debate in religious circles. Close examinations of arcane scripture might tell us which words in worship rituals are preferred by God.
     
    As I told one friend, we may differ but we can agree that you can worship God in your way, while I worship Him in His.
     
    In the end, there is no particular consequence to what inspired what part of Libertarian or Objectivist or Anarchist (or whatever label is prefered) philosophy.
     
    Just DON’T call me Shirley.
    Damn, I’m old.
     
  • Sarah Cooper has a new edition of This can’t be real:

  • Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger has possible good news on a federal level about marijuana.
     
  • I know it’s sometimes hard not to gloat, but you and I know it’s wrong to rejoice when someone gets cheated. We do try to forgive Hackwhackers as MAGA folk go wild over a new Trump phone that turns out to be an overpriced ripoff secretly manufactured and sent from China.
     
  • SilverAppleQueen mourns the loss of a profound and prolific writer on women’s spirituality.
     
  • In The Life and Times of Bruce Gerencser, an evangelical writer acknowledges that there is a problem in houses of worship. Women are showing cleavage.
     
    Is there an upside to this scandal? Perhaps a partial remedy to the problem of declining attendance?
     
  • The Onion goes theological as God regrets never learning Spanish.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever points to the latest outrage that threatens our moral standing in the world, a new product from the m&m people. This, he says, is why we can’t have nice things.
     
  • PZ Myers has a big, BIG arachno-issue with the movie Black Widow.
     
  • Reductress explores generational divides with a helpful quiz on whether your mom is mad at you or just using punctuation in a text.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research notes a major scientific breakthrough as researchers in Colorado succeed in training ferrets to smell bird flu in duck droppings.
     
  • Infidel753 cites personal experience to which we can all relate to decisively illustrate how perspective influences perception. We may not react to visual appearance as much as we believe. What is in our minds may drive what we see.

– Podcasts –
 

2 thoughts on “2020 Redeux, Reichstag Moment, COVID Karma, Ayn Angst, Mad Moms”

    1. Let me simply point out that I am ashamed of you for publishing that.

      And I’m ashamed of myself for laughing and laughing and laughing and reposting the link and sending it to all my friends and laughing along with them.

      Please let this be a lesson and don’t do it again.

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