December, 2016 archive
The Art of the Con 0
Shorter E. J. Dionne: Let the sell-out begin.
Michigan Nestles in the Poisoning of Flint 0
The government of Michigan chooses profits over people.
This is what happens when you “run the government like a business.”
Hero Quest 0
I think Farron might be onto something here.
Life is not a Marvel Comics movie, folks. No Silver Surfer will hang ten in the sky and save the day.
“The Truth Is What People Think” . . . 0
. . . or, perhaps more precisely, what people want to think.
Badtux, who has been on quite a roll the past week or so, mediates on Americans’ susceptibility to “fake news” (AKA “lies”). Here’s a bit:
What this points out, I think, is that for a lot of Americans, truth is not something you seek out. Truth is not a hypothesis that is constantly tested against reality to validate that it’s true. Truth is an absolute, handed down by an authority figure.
Do please read the rest.
Mixed Nuts 0
Michael Smerconish ponders whether firing “Pistachio Girl” missed the Aramark.
Closing the Corridors of Power 0
Gene Nichol sees an ominous trend in the behavior of North Carolina’s Republican Party (emphasis added).
(snip)
The Republican General Assembly has not been content to merely enact its substantive policy choices to stamp an imprint on life in North Carolina. It has moved repeatedly to reject the pillars and infrastructure of democratic governance.
Follow the link to find out why he says that.
Afterthought:
It’s not just in North Carolina, folks.
Jobs Con Job 1
Alan Caron points out an uncomfortable truth. A snippet:
But the notion that campaign promises can revive the 20th century economy belongs on the pages of the National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout stand. It’s nonsense.
For every one manufacturing job we’ve lost to trade deals and government actions, we’ve lost seven to eight to machines, computers and robots. Governments don’t control technological progress, new inventions, time-saving devices and brilliant breakthroughs. Heck, government is usually the last place to employ those things. And technological progress is what’s costing us jobs. The sooner we understand that, the better off we’ll be.
What’s missing from the “jobs” equation is this: The wealth created by this “progress” is not being shared; it’s being hogged.
And, as George Orwell told us, some pigs are more equal than others.
“Every Step Is Small” 0
Thom spots a disturbing trend. This is a must-listen.
Werner Herzog’s Bear shares Thom’s disquiet, though he approaches events from a different angle.
Reconcilable Differences 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Douglas G. Kenrick remembers how, when he attended Catholic Schools, the nuns would respond when he wondered how a merciful, loving God could allow misery and pestilence. Now he wonders how persons who loudly claim to worship a merciful, loving God could have supported Donald Trump and, in a larger context, what social function religious beliefs may play in the polity.
Here’s just a bit. Follow the link for the rest.
According to the Pew Institute, 58% of Protestants, 60% of White Catholics, 61% of Mormons, and fully 81% of born again Evangelical Christians voted for Trump. I just checked online, and found a very recent list Donald Trump’s cabinet picks so far. If I were back in St. Joseph’s today, I would ask the nuns how an all loving, all powerful, all merciful, and all powerful God could have allowed Christians to elect a man who has chosen:
- a CIA director who calls those who use torture: “heroes, not pawns in some liberal game played by the ACLU,”
- a treasury secretary nicknamed “the foreclosure king,”
- an attorney general who said he thought the members of the Ku Klux Klan were: “OK, until I found out they smoked pot,”
- a secretary of defense known for his warlike hawkishness (nicknamed “Mad Dog” Mattis),
- a secretary of labor who is a “staunch opponent” of the minimum wage
- a director of the Environmental Protection Agency who actively opposes environmental protections,
- a Secretary of Commerce who has been “dubbed a “vulture” and “king of bankruptcy” because of his knack for extracting a profit from failing businesses,”
- a chief strategist of whom the Guardian says: “His web site was a clearinghouse for hate speech of all kinds including white nationalism, anti-semitism, immigrant-hatred and misogyny.”
I guess the nuns might reassure me that “God works in mysterious ways, and we simply need to have faith in His infinite wisdom.”
“No Comment” 0
There’s a reason that I do not read the comments at news sites.
Dr. Consiglieri’s Cabinet 0
Once again, the Charlotte Observer observes:
Follow the link to find out what they made that observation.
All the News that Fits 0
Farron’s a bit off the mark about Y2K. Yes, the media overstated the danger and went all Chicken Little. Heck, one of our neighbors fell for the hype and went all prepper on us, installing a generator that would roar to life whenever there was a momentary blip in the electricity, tormenting the neighborhood for several years.
The potential problem, though, was real. I was working for a company that manufactured security software at the time, and our programmers were working overtime to update software so that it would work on January 1, 2000.
