2017 archive
War and Mongers of War 0
At The Guardian, Paul Mason opines that Trump will indeed go there. A snippet:
Been nice knowin’ ya.
Afterthought:
It’s truly disturbing that we have reached a point of hoping that Kim Jong-Un is the sane one.
Also, I think Donald Trump and his dupes, symps, and fellow travelers grossly over-estimate China’s influence over Kim Jong-Un.
A Hostile Political Climate 2
Thom reports that the Trump administration is asking scientists not to refer to climate change or global warming.
Civic Duty, Reprise 0
Rekha Basu explains that “civic duty” means serving the civitas, not the privatas.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Fill your home with politeness.
Authorities say officers were flagged down Saturday by a woman crying hysterically and found the boy in a master bedroom of the home. A semi-automatic handgun was nearby and a drawer to a nightstand was open.
The Value of Labor 0
Robert Reich disputes those who argue that the working and middle classes’ income has fallen in real terms because the value of their labor has fallen. Here’s a bit:
(snip some more examples)
But they did the reverse: They spent more and more of their ever-growing wealth and power on rigging the game to their own advantage.
(Wording corrected.)
Have Cake, Eat It Too, Bitcoin Dept. 0
If it acts like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, and persons treat it like they treat ducks, why, then, clearly it must be a mongoose.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Do polite stuff.
Officials say the bullet struck a friend in the abdomen . . . .
“Erasing History” 0
Bruce Lowry observes the eraser marks:
The report found that “very few public commemorations of African Americans’ suffering during the post-slavery era exist today” and that “no prominent monument or memorial” existed to mark the deaths of the nearly 4,000 Southern lynchings that had been documented at the time of the EJI’s report in 2015.
Follow the link for the complete article.
A Rudderless Ship of State 0
Shorter Dan Simpson: Incoherent bluster is not a foreign policy.
Understanding the Trumpler 0
At Psychology Today Blogs, Joe Navarro, without naming names, offers a guide.
Profiled 0
A life-long Seattle resident tells the story of what happened when she pulled over (good on her, by the way) to answer a message on her cell phone. A nugget:
The driver left her car idling in the middle of the street and approached my window.
“Am I in your way? What’s going on?” I asked.
“Yes, you are. I live here.”
“I thought this was a public street? I could be waiting for my child.”
“Well, I have children, too. And I pay a shit ton of money to live here. You need to leave.”
I was shaken. I, too, live in this neighborhood. I lived on this very street. I learned to ride a bike here. My daughter plays at this playground. And yet, because I was a black woman, the other driver assumed I didn’t belong, and ordered me to leave.
Read it.