May, 2022 archive
A Tune for the Times 0
Mangy comments at the Youtube page:
While Republicans keep attempting to score points by hinting that there was something sinister (yet undisclosed) on Hunter Biden’s discarded laptop hard drive, Donald Trump actually physically stole top secret government documents and took them to Mar-a-Lago, in a breach of national security and every record-keeping protocol imaginable. Somehow the Repubs haven’t wanted to weigh in on that. Nonetheless, a federal grand jury has now been convened to investigate just that, and they don’t convene grand juries for illegally sharing casserole recipes.
All the News that Fits 0
Afterthought:
A “free marketplace of ideas” is of no use if you don’t stroll its aisles from time to time.
Our Mounting Multiplicity of Massacres 0
Gina Barreca thinks it’s time to stop with the double-talk about America’s recent spate of racist, bigoted mass shootings, most of them by young white men, boys even. Here’s a tiny bit of her article:
This is not about mental health; this is about guns, race, anti-Semitism, misogyny, ignorance, and social media. They get onto distorted and deforming social media platforms and then—whoosh, they are gone—down the drain of cults, 4Chan, and conspiracy theory.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Field predicts that those who profit from America’s original sin will continue to foment death. An excerpt from his poat (emphasis added):
We are a failing state.
And we will continue to be a failing state as long as there are those among us who look away, look away, look away to Dixie Land.
All the News that Fits (and Very Little of the News that Doesn’t) 0
At northjersey.com, Jim Beckerman reports on the news that wasn’t reported. A snippet:
We waited and waited.
There was one reference, somewhere between 9:30 a.m. and 10 a.m. A shooting in Buffalo had occurred, Fox told its viewers, and people were dead. But no elaboration, no commentary, no on-the-scene interviews. Perhaps 15 seconds, all told.
He goes on theorize that this was because the shooter embraced “replacement theory,” which a number of Fox News voices have been spreading energetically.
Follow the lin for his reasoning.
Originalist Sin 0
At the Bangor Daily News, Gordon Weil looks at the implications of Justice (sic) Alito’s draft abortion decision. He is not sanguine. A nugget:
That’s constitutional originalism. That logic could raise the question of whether the Second Amendment right to own a gun, adopted in 1791, should be limited to protecting only muzzle-loader ownership.
If the only rights the federal government can protect are limited to those expressly listed in the Constitution and then only as they applied when the document was adopted, the U.S. would plunge headlong back to the late 1700s.
The Formulaic Monopoly 0
In case you wondered, as I did, why there could possibly be a shortage of baby formula, Thom explains how it is a direct result of Ronald Reagan’s decision to stop enforcing anti-trust laws, which in turn has allowed one company to dominate the baby formula market. That company’s manufacturing defects and a resulting factory closure led directly to the current shortage.
And, because of the monopoly, there are no significant competitors to pick up the slack.
Paper Trail 0
The Orlando Sentinel’s Scott Maxwell explains why it’s important to follow the money.
American Establismentarians 0
Michael in Norfolk calls out the duplicity. A nugget:
The Republican Platform 0
PoliticalProf sums it up.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
The Arizona Republic’s E. J. Montini dissects the deception behind the dog whistle (emphasis added).
They were playing off a book published in France some years earlier claiming that Europe was being overrun by immigrants (in this case, Muslim and Black immigrants) under a plan by “elites” to replace native-born Europeans.
This ugly “replacement theory” was quickly picked up by nativists here and expanded to “you will not replace us.”
(snip)
Creating an honest and fair immigration system, and a secure border, is a sensible, necessary national policy. This isn’t that.
This is an attempt to use fear and deep-seeded insecurities to win elections. And it works.