From Pine View Farm

September, 2017 archive

Into the Darkness 0

Subject:  Roy Moore's Alabama primary victory.  Image:  Highway with sign saying,

Via Job’s Anger.

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“Free Weights and a Bicycle” 0

Some Weights

I have a new podcast up at Hacker Public Radio.

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Twits on Twitter 0

Tool twits.

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The Grift of Grab 0

Man wearing MAGA hat says,

Via Balloon Juice.

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

Expose children to politeness (emphasis added).

A 4-year-old boy is dead after accidentally shooting himself in the head Thursday afternoon, police have confirmed.

(snip)

Captain Kevin Riley of the Parma Police Department says that it appears the boy gained possession of a gun that was inside the car and appears to have accidentally shot himself with it. Police believe that the shooting was an accident and no foul play is suspected.

“Gained possession of a gun” seems a somewhat convoluted way of saying “some jerk negligently left an unsecured firearm lying about.”

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Vile 0

Words fail me.

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Data Corruption 0

If it goes viral, double-check it.

Twice.

Per The Smoking Gun:

Somehow, voter information available through a LexisNexis commercial database lists Kushner’s gender as female (as reported yesterday in Wired).

But Kushner’s current voter registration form (seen below) reveals that he is, in fact, 100% male. The document is on file with the New York City Board of Elections.

Follow the link for the image.

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Facebook Frolics, Yet More Racist Frolickers Dept. 0

In the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Tony Norman comments on the (now ex-)Fire Chief who posted a racist statement about NFL coach Mike Tomlin and then claimed it was not racist, no sirree, not racist at all. A snippet:

Mr. Tomlin is the scariest kind of black man — a successful husband and father who has navigated a “white owned” institution and learned to wield its power at the highest levels. Because of the asymmetry of the power dynamic with Mr. Tomlin, Mr. Smith did the only thing available to him as a civilian volunteer fire department chief going up against a black coach who doesn’t know he exists — he played the race-ish card.

I know what you’re thinking: What’s the race-ish card?

Follow the link for the answer.

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QOTD 0

Harold W. Dodds:

A thick head can do as much damage as a hard heart.

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Geeking Out 0

Debian Sid with the KDE Plasma desktop environment.

Screenshot

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And Now, a Musical Interlude 0

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The Court Is in Sessions 0

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Schism 0

Using the contrast between reactions to a kneeling Colin Kaepernick and a kneeling Tim Tebow as a starting point, Michael Frost explores what he suggests is an increasing division with Christianity.

Of course, there has never been a monolithic Christianity, not even during Medieval times. Early on the Roman Catholic and the Orthodox Churches split, largely over political and cultural issues; for a short time, there were even two Popes, one in Rome and one in Avignon which was overtly political.

American Protestantism has long been a hodge-podge with a relatively staid main stream, but with fringes richly populated with con artists, fakers, and cultists. (“Place your hands on your television and prey pray with me.”)

Despite this checkered history, Frost discerns two primary and competing themes becoming dominant, at least in American Protestantism. I’m not sure that I buy his conclusions in toto, but I do think his piece is worth reading, as a growing number of religionists seem again to seek terrestrial political power and influence.

Here’s a bit:

One is reading the Epistles of Paul. The other is reading the Minor Prophets.

One is listening to Eric Metaxas and Franklin Graham. The other is listening to William Barber and John Perkins.

One is rallying at the March for Life. The other is getting arrested at Moral Monday protests.

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It’s All about the Benjamins 0

Bob Molinaro, sportswriter extraordinaire, checks a fact:

Lining up players for the national anthem wasn’t standard practice in the NFL until 2009. Believe it or not, coaches were against it, believing it created distractions. Really. That was before the U.S. Department of Defense and National Guard gave the league millions of dollars to wrap itself in the flag. The pregame pageantry – the unfurling of 100 yards of stars-and-stripes – began as a marketing strategy to gin up patriotism. Follow the money.

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Facebook Frolics, Mining the Depths Dept. 0

Will Bunch critiques the minecraft:

The organizers of the “Miners for Trump” rally, the news site reported, were part of a Russia propaganda campaign. During last year’s presidential race, Being Patriotic amassed an astonishing 200,000 followers — who apparently hated Hillary Clinton more than they loved good grammar — and sought to organize pro-Trump rallies in at least 17 U.S. cities, including a couple in Florida where folks apparently actually did show up.

Follow the link for thoughtful and considered discussion of what happens when forces of deception and disruption prey on ersatz patriotism.

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Dialectic 0

Monopoly Man as capitalist.  Frame One:  I'll pay my workers as little as possible to maximize profit.  Frame Two:  Why can't persons afford to buy my commodities?

Via Job’s Anger.

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“Let No Good Deed Go Unpunished” 0

The Des Moines Register’s Rehka Basu reports on what she calls “the new self-righteousness.” (Hint: It’s all self and no righteousness.)

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“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0

A polite society is a clean society.

An Apple Valley father apparently shot his 2-year-old daughter late Wednesday night when his gun discharged in what investigators described as a cleaning accident.

(snip)

Investigators believe the girl’s father was downstairs cleaning a gun when it was negligently discharged and struck the girl in an upstairs bedroom.

Aside:

I doubt seriously that the gun “negligently discharged” itself.

Furrfu.

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QOTD 0

Xun Kuang:

The petty man is eager to make boasts, yet desires that others should believe in him. He enthusiastically engages in deception, yet wants others to have affection for him. He conducts himself like an animal, yet wants others to think well of him.

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“Nonsense Debt” 0

Josh Marshall looks at the developing war within the Republican Party between the absurd and the absolutely crazy, witness the recent Alabama primary victory of Judge Roy Moore.

Marshall suggests that Republicans have done it to themselves. (Unfortunately, they are poised to do it to the rest of us, also.)

Here’s a crucial bit; follow the link for the rest (emphasis added).

Indeed, when the President is Donald Trump and people elected in the Tea Party wave election of 2010 (and successive elections) dominate the congressional GOP, it is a bit hard to say what the GOP ‘establishment’ even is at this point other than the current occupants of the top of the GOP hill trying to fend off radicals calling them sell-outs who can’t deliver for the base.

This is the crux of the issue. Last spring I said the Trump phenomenon was a product of what I termed ‘nonsense debt‘. Republicans had spent years pumping their voters up on increasingly extreme and nonsensical claims and promises. This worked very well for winning elections. But it had also built up a debt that eventually had to be repaid. Concretely, they were making claims and promises that were either factually ridiculous, politically unviable or unacceptable to a broad swath of the voting public. Eventually, you get elected and need to produce. By definition that’s never really possible: both because the claims and promises are nonsensical and unviable but also because a politics based on reclamation, revenge, and impulse is almost impossible to satisfy through normal legislative politics.

Two Republican Elephants in Civil War uniforms fighting each other as a Civil War monument.  The pedestal reads,

Image via Job’s Anger.

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