2021 archive
Cancel Culture, Republican Style, If One Standard Is Good Dept. 0
At Above the Law, Tyler Broker calls out the two-facedness. A nugget:
(Inadvertently posted for a short time yesterday, then rescheduled for today, when I wished it to post.)
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Practice politeness at your friendly local retail emporium.
Through reviewing the video surveillance, according to police, it was determined that the shooting was clearly accidental. The male appeared to have the gun in his hand, inside his jacket pocket, when it suddenly went off and injured his leg.
The Sentry 0
H/T my brother in Virginia’s Northern Neck.
Kraken Up 0
Trumpette lawyer Sidney Powells “Kraken” election law suit is crackin’ up on the rocks of reality.
Craven Images 0
Trevor Hughes reports on the use of Christian symbols by right-wing extremists, whose credo is antithetical to a Gospel of love in any form (as their actions repeatedly prove), but which is entirely consistent with Leonard Hitchcock’s analysis of what he refers to as “Christian Nationalism.”
Here’s a bit from Hitchcock’s article; follow the link for the rest.
A broader underlying motivation is a deep resentment of cultural change and the ongoing collapse of a hierarchical social order in which their ranking might not have been very high, but it was secure, and lots of people were below them. For CNs, Trump’s slogan, “Make America Great Again,” signaled an intention to return to a past with which they were comfortable, a past in which the class and racial barriers between people were still intact, where Black people and immigrants, gays, atheists and women “knew their place,” and where white Protestants knew that they were the “real Americans” and were in charge.
Gaming the Gamers 0
There’s nothing really new in this clip about the Game Stop kerfuffle, but Pap’s guest gives on of the most understandable non-technical explanations of “selling short” that I’ve heard.
Still Rising Again after All These Years, Santayana Redux Dept. 0
George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
I herewith propose the Hawley corollary:
Those who deny history desire to repeal it.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Yet more neighborly politeness . . . .
One more time, “accidentally” and “negligently” are not synonyms.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
At the Inky, Harold Brubaker takes a look at hospital fees for various services that have been recently made available under a new federal regulation strongly opposed by hospitals and insurers. He concludes that they make no sense when exposed to the light. A snippet; follow the link for more.
Those are the prices consumers with high-deductible plans would have to pay to scan their knee and find out how serious the source of their pain is.
And replacing that knee would cost from $12,300 to more than $44,000 under insurance plans that IBC sells to employers and individuals.
The notion, often promoted by persons who call themselves “conservative,” that someone who is sick will comparison-shop for health care has always been fanciful. The reality is that, if there is a choice, a patient will go where his or her doctor says, and, in rural areas, there is often little or no choice from the git-go. Add in a landscape of wildly variable and irrational pricing schemes, comparison shopping for health care becomes an impossible dream all-too-possible nightmare.
Know Them by the Company They Keep 0
E. J. Montini suggests that Arizona’s Congressman Paul Gosar’s actions belie his words.