May, 2017 archive
Nixon Redux 0
Richard Nixon once said, “. . . when the president does it, that means it is not illegal.”* Shaun Mullen explains.
There is one overwhelming difference between Donald Trump and Richard Nixon.
Nixon was smart.
_______________
*Cite.
The -Gate of the Day Is Suffix Thereto 0
Jack Ohman suggests that it’s time to show -gate the gate. A nugget:
And the Grant administration had the massive Credit-Mobilier Scandal, which shattered the careers of Gilded Age politicos. Frankly, I’d love to revive both: Suffixgateghazidomemobilier.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite to your classmates.
Calcasieu (KAL-kuh-shoo) Parish Sheriff Tony Mancuso said the boy was shot a few minutes before 8 a.m. Monday. Police said in a news release that the boy was in surgery.
Mancuso says the loaded gun fell out of a first-grader’s backpack in the classroom, where a second student picked it up. The sheriff says the gun went off by accident.
The story goes on to say that the children will not be charged because of their youth, but the Real Big Man (or Woman) who owns the piece may well be.
(If both kids had been packing, no doubt this would not have happened.)
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
At the Guardian, Steven W Thrasher explains that it’s all about the racism. A snippet:
Read the whole thing.
Kitchen Cabinet, 21st Century Style 0
You can’t make this stuff up.
Sentenced Friday to 1½ years in prison, Brent Meisner was found to have left about $170,000 in income off his 2009 tax return. Federal prosecutors continue to contend, though, that the omission to the IRS was the least among Meisner’s crimes.
(snip)
“Meisner was not merely a tax cheat,” the prosecutors said in court papers. “He was a bully, a narcissist, and a white-collar gangster. He felt entitled to things to which he clearly was not. He took things from others, justifying the theft with an oversized sense of self-entitlement and self-worth. …
By the by, does that last bit of the remind you of anyone else?
Science Is 0
As a letter to the editor at my local rag points out, it’s not something you “believe in,” it is. Read the letter; it is truly a gem.
True, science can change over time as we learn more, and sometimes what is known to be fact is misinterpreted into fiction (think “social Darwinism” and “eugenics,” which were twisted misapplications of what was known at the time), but it still is.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
I suspect that Robert E. Lee, who knew when a cause was lost, would resent being a rallying point for the New Secesh.
The Tiki torch ceremony, which Charlottesville’s Democratic mayor, Mike Signer, likened to KKK tactics “designed to instill fear” in minorities, was staged by a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee that the Charlottesville City Council recently voted to remove. More than a hundred demonstrators chanted “You will not replace us,” “Blood and soil” and “Russia is our friend.”
Via Raw Story, which reports that there are racist twits on twitter.
Root Causes 2
Werner Herzog’s Bear cuts to the quick of today’s Republican Party. Here’s the gist; follow the link for the rest.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., points out that racism elected Trump (of course, if you have been paying attention, you knew that already). A snippet:
In words of one syllable: I told you so.
There was a neon line leading straight from the lavish abuse heaped on Barack Obama to Trump, who asks a black reporter to set up a meeting for him with the Congressional Black Caucus (“Are they friends of yours?”) and tries to hang a “No Muslims” sign on the Statue of Liberty. Yet many white journalists, pundits, authors and academics simply could not see it.
Amen.
