…so…just for the hell of it…or rather before the hell of it, since there’s a bunch of hell coming up shortly…imagine for a moment if the person in charge of the Federal Government (or hell, even the person presiding over a controlling interest in the mathematics of the Senate) sounded like this
Here’s what the next federal response must include:
…yup…sure seems like it might be a different kind of a way to greet the day…but
‘The Whole of Liberal Democracy Is in Grave Danger at This Moment’
…but damn if he ain’t still looking like some kind of promised land measured against the alleged administration’s drive to institute full-blown pandemonium
The demonstrations that have shuddered through Portland for 54 consecutive days have drawn out a complicated mix of emotions and grievances.
Rejecting the deployment of camouflaged federal agents, big-city mayors said the Trump administration should use its resources to help tackle problems like gun violence.
Staving off a lawsuit, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed new regulations to hold airlines to the carbon dioxide emissions standards they created.
…& at the end of the day it surely isn’t any kind of justice that so much should hang on the fate of this Justice
Stay Safe, Justice Ginsburg
…or the efforts of the day-late-dollar-short gazillionaires club
The Latest in School Segregation: Private Pandemic ‘Pods’ If they become the norm, less privileged kids will suffer.
…oh, yeah…& that one lady at The Guardian who spent the last few years trying to tell people a bunch of this stuff must be feeling…well…probably not exactly vindicated since this isn’t exactly news in a bunch of senses…but maybe like more people share her frustration?
Russia weaponized information to interfere in the British political system and was widely ignored by successive governments, according to a long-awaited report by Parliament.
…& not for nothing…but that report was sitting around waiting to be released before (as in, yes, deliberately held back lest it have an adverse effect on his chances of hanging on to that PM slot he bagged himself) Boris held himself that little election he’s so proud of winning a while back…& he will literally bellow until he’s blue in the face that anyone drawing attention to that unflattering but undeniably self-drawn picture is in league with the anti-brexit forces of anarchy…who apparently are intrinsically bound to a bit of London called Islington…because he really would rather go back to ragging on Jeremy Corbyn that face up to the lawyering the new Labour leader has been beating him up with at the Dispatch Box…& is no doubt over the moon that Parliament just broke up for its summer holidays
Trump’s Request of an Ambassador: Get the British Open for Me
…probably best not to think too hard about any of that, I’m sure
This incipient movement risks being reduced to a fleeting instant of heightened consciousness.
…turns out when you look a little harder at some of the detail…sometimes it’s things we haven’t got around to feeling disposed against that don’t always come off as admirable as advertised
Planned Parenthood in N.Y. Disavows Margaret Sanger Over Eugenics
…but…& I know it seems like an odd place to go with the “but” approach only I don’t want to get all controversial here, so do me a solid & hear this bit out
…but let’s not be throwing the baby out with the bathwater?
Should We Cancel Aristotle?
…quite apart from anything else…& there’s a fair bit of else to be found in that article…Aristotle – while in no danger of resembling a thoroughly modern man or anything – none the less covered a lot of ground for a dude whose singular achievement in some several thousand years has been to be stone dead…he wrote on topics from the principles of dramatic fiction to what some would think of as the birth of the modern natural sciences…by way of ethics, morality & other such matters in respect of which he would perhaps be found wanting by modern standards…& to my mind there’s one principle of his the absence of which from that article I found odd on the grounds that it is surely a lesson more than a few of us might be well advised to heed
…he spoke of a thing called “the golden mean” & though many take a dim view of moral relativism it strikes me that there’s something to that idea that’s worth considering…certainly each of us may be capable of both good & evil but the truth is for most of us the best & the worst of which we are capable is never likely to move the needle on a scale of historical significance…& perhaps it’s likewise true that some of the great figures of history managed to perform more in the way of good works than any of us could hope to tally in our lifetimes
…which makes drawing direct comparisons sort of pointless in an apples-to-oranges kind of a way
Trump’s Remedy for Low Poll Numbers: Reminding People Polls Can Be Wrong [And if surveys of likely voters don’t look promising, turn to other measures. Like boat parades.]
…when you put it that way hoping people meet the expectation of being about midway between their best & worst selves seems like a modestly achievable sort of a baseline…& yet
The Trump campaign is spending millions on ads that promote a dark and exaggerated portrayal of Democratic-led cities, a tactic that reinforces his “law and order’’ campaign message.
The president is looking for a dangerous domestic enemy to fight.
Officers in riot gear cleared the makeshift camp in City Hall Park, which began as a protest against police abuses but then turned into a gathering of homeless people.
…& if you’re wondering what those last two have in common with the bit before…well…I could bang on about the fundamental principles of the rule of law…but you’d likely do better to have a look at the links Loveshaq left in the comments yesterday…which I’ll leave here just to be convenient if you happened to miss them
[…I already feel like this is overlong so I don’t want to get into it in any depth…but overreach is too small a term for the collosal fuck you that whole thing represents to the notion that laws govern the nation…it’s an absolute fucking disgrace it ever got written up much less treated as though it has any weight or credence…I am honestly a little bit in awe that they have contrived to be so utterly & irrevocably wrong in each & every aspect of that particular contrivance…although sadly I can’t claim that makes me feel any better about anything…oh, yeah…& then there’s the whole public health crisis of a generation]
C.D.C. Says Case Numbers Could Be 2-13 Times Higher Than Reported in Parts of U.S.
…they say you shouldn’t judge & all…& admittedly I don’t know the man personally (grateful for small mercies, yadda yadda) but however you add it up I’m not seeing a case for littlefingers the first, supreme ruler of wherever-the-fuck-it-is-he-imagines-he-fucking-lives scraping over that golden mean baseline…or to borrow the words of one better acquainted with the bloviating bag of bile, bullshit & blubber in question
…making you think you’re crazy is a million-dollar industry
…all is not lost…coffee, whisky & cigarettes are still available…& are not yet a recognized substitute for formal currency…so all is not yet lost…right?
12 Comments
Oh dear…biden spoke again
Apparently trump is the first racist president ever
Seems that pissed off enough people to make it on to my local news
…well, “campaigning” by hiding from everyone _ everything got Boris home so maybe that’s just the way the shit works these days…least said, soonest elected?
That’s exactly how it works *against Trump.* It wouldn’t be effective against anyone else, but Trump is consistently shooting himself in the dick, and basically all Biden has to do is let the orange idiot keep pulling the trigger. And he will! And don’t kid yourself — the Democrats know exactly what they’re doing. This isn’t something that’s “just happened.” Good article here on how successful the strategy is: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/dems-warm-to-bidens-bunker-strategy-338853
Holding back has served other presidents in the past, particularly if they had major weak points. Nixon famously withdrew from “politics” (read campaigning) for six months while campaigning against George Romney for the GOP nomination, saying about the media, “Let ’em chew on him for a little while.” https://www.historynet.com/in-66-johnson-slips-and-nixon-hits.htm
Trump is too stupid and too narcissistic to even contemplate such a “strategy,” which is fortunate for us. If he had a modicum of self-control and could shut up for longer than a minute or two, he’d see his poll numbers increase, but he’s utterly incapable of doing that. He’s also incapable of empathy or any sort of reasoning, so he keeps doubling down on sacrificing children to the virus at school, sacrificing old people to the virus, and sending stormtroopers to abduct protestors. So he’s alienating parents, senior citizens, and most of the rest us who aren’t fascists.
He keeps pulling that trigger, reloading, and firing some more.
Joe has benefited tremendously from not having as many opportunities to speak in public as Trump does. It’s allowed him to hide behind his gaffes, and even when he says something insanely stupid, you can count on Trump to say something even dumber within hours so that we all forget about it.
It also doesn’t help Trump that he keeps insisting that Joe is mentally incompetent. He’s doing the same thing Hillary did; setting the bar so low that all Joe Biden has to do is show up and not say anything completely insane to look measured and reasoned in comparison.
Baby with the bathwater, indeed. Humans are complex creatures, and even bona fide saints have their skeletons. Best to simply acknowledge and incorporate a person’s failings into their whole character, rather than just disavow them entirely. MLK is a classic example of this. Everyone knows he was screwing around on Coretta for years, but nobody with more than two brain cells to rub together is going to disavow him or his legacy because he was a chronic cheater.
Twitter kicking out the QuAndon accounts and blocking discussion of their crackpot theories is potentially good news. Facebook, of course, is bringing up the rear but may be getting shamed into doing something too.
I don’t think the media has really gotten what it means that at least one of them is going to be in Congress next year, or how much support there is already in the GOP members of Congress, who either buy into the chaos or see them as useful shock troops. They get significant platforms from being elected officials, they know the press will be looking for drama from fights with Democrats, and the odds are low of the press reporting fairly instead of retreating into both sidesism.
My niece’s college friends (in Wisconsin) apparently have her convinced that testing for COVID is actually creating cases, because (entity) has contaminated the swabs with virus, because (reasons).
Honestly, I’m not convinced the internet and social media have been a net plus for humanity.
I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. etc. Of those I check LinkedIn every couple of days, and Facebook maybe once a week. The rest are largely unused. As Facebook became more polarized, I looked at it less and less. Mostly I just found myself getting angry and/or blocking people. Who needs that?
My position is that stupidity is contagious and social media is the vector. I limit my exposure.
Oh dear…biden spoke again
Apparently trump is the first racist president ever
Seems that pissed off enough people to make it on to my local news
Biden can’t help himself. All he had to do was just agree with President Obama.
…well, “campaigning” by hiding from everyone _ everything got Boris home so maybe that’s just the way the shit works these days…least said, soonest elected?
That’s exactly how it works *against Trump.* It wouldn’t be effective against anyone else, but Trump is consistently shooting himself in the dick, and basically all Biden has to do is let the orange idiot keep pulling the trigger. And he will! And don’t kid yourself — the Democrats know exactly what they’re doing. This isn’t something that’s “just happened.” Good article here on how successful the strategy is:
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/24/dems-warm-to-bidens-bunker-strategy-338853
Holding back has served other presidents in the past, particularly if they had major weak points. Nixon famously withdrew from “politics” (read campaigning) for six months while campaigning against George Romney for the GOP nomination, saying about the media, “Let ’em chew on him for a little while.”
https://www.historynet.com/in-66-johnson-slips-and-nixon-hits.htm
Trump is too stupid and too narcissistic to even contemplate such a “strategy,” which is fortunate for us. If he had a modicum of self-control and could shut up for longer than a minute or two, he’d see his poll numbers increase, but he’s utterly incapable of doing that. He’s also incapable of empathy or any sort of reasoning, so he keeps doubling down on sacrificing children to the virus at school, sacrificing old people to the virus, and sending stormtroopers to abduct protestors. So he’s alienating parents, senior citizens, and most of the rest us who aren’t fascists.
He keeps pulling that trigger, reloading, and firing some more.
Joe has benefited tremendously from not having as many opportunities to speak in public as Trump does. It’s allowed him to hide behind his gaffes, and even when he says something insanely stupid, you can count on Trump to say something even dumber within hours so that we all forget about it.
It also doesn’t help Trump that he keeps insisting that Joe is mentally incompetent. He’s doing the same thing Hillary did; setting the bar so low that all Joe Biden has to do is show up and not say anything completely insane to look measured and reasoned in comparison.
Sage, Aesop and old Slug (after woman with tattooed hands he went severely down hill in terms of flow,) awesome!!!
Baby with the bathwater, indeed. Humans are complex creatures, and even bona fide saints have their skeletons. Best to simply acknowledge and incorporate a person’s failings into their whole character, rather than just disavow them entirely. MLK is a classic example of this. Everyone knows he was screwing around on Coretta for years, but nobody with more than two brain cells to rub together is going to disavow him or his legacy because he was a chronic cheater.
Twitter kicking out the QuAndon accounts and blocking discussion of their crackpot theories is potentially good news. Facebook, of course, is bringing up the rear but may be getting shamed into doing something too.
I don’t think the media has really gotten what it means that at least one of them is going to be in Congress next year, or how much support there is already in the GOP members of Congress, who either buy into the chaos or see them as useful shock troops. They get significant platforms from being elected officials, they know the press will be looking for drama from fights with Democrats, and the odds are low of the press reporting fairly instead of retreating into both sidesism.
My niece’s college friends (in Wisconsin) apparently have her convinced that testing for COVID is actually creating cases, because (entity) has contaminated the swabs with virus, because (reasons).
Honestly, I’m not convinced the internet and social media have been a net plus for humanity.
Deadsplinter is the closest thing I have to a social media account. I think I’m a much happier person for it.
I’m glad you’re here to socialize with us!!
I have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. etc. Of those I check LinkedIn every couple of days, and Facebook maybe once a week. The rest are largely unused. As Facebook became more polarized, I looked at it less and less. Mostly I just found myself getting angry and/or blocking people. Who needs that?
My position is that stupidity is contagious and social media is the vector. I limit my exposure.