January, 2018 archive
Virginia Beach Drinking Liberally Thursday 0
When fellowship is needed, join us . . . .
When: Thursday, January 11, 6 p.
Where:
Croc’s 19 Street Bistro
620 19th Street (Map)
More here.
Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
Trumpling basketball in Cincinnati.
Some of the players identified themselves with phony names such as “Knee Grow” and “Coon,” which opponents believed were intended as racial slurs.
Neglecting Negligence 0
Warning: Language.
QOTD 0
Ann Landers:
>Television has proved that people will look at anything rather than each other.
Snow Daze 0
I once had a training class with out-of-town trainees staying in a nearby hotel; one of them told me this story at lunch.
It had snowed heavily over night, though nothing like what we got last week, maybe five or six inches, so the highway department had been able to keep the roads passable. This trainee was deputized to drive the carpool of the rest of the visitors from the hotel to the training site, since, being from Chicago, he “would know how to drive in the snow.”
He’s driving carefully along when one of his passengers asks, “Why are you going so slow?”
He replied, trying not to let his exasperation show, “Because that’s how you drive in the snow.”
The Hardcore 0
Josh Marshall explains.
Merger and Monopoly 0
One of the most pernicious acts of Ronald Reagan was to suspend enforcement of anti-trust laws, leading the corporate consolidation we see around us, delivering the polity into the hands of our own homegrown oligarchs.
Thom and his guest discuss how monopolies work.
Afterthought:
It’s ironic that Republicans simultaneously extol vociferously the virtues of competition while actively supporting–and are supported by–those who would eliminate it.
Sound like Anyone You Know? 0
Melissa Burkley offers simple guidelines for spotting a psychopath.
The Rule of Lawless 0
At The Charlotte Observer, Isaac Bailey finds Donald Trump’s assertion of absolute power over the Department of Justice troubling. A snippet (emphasis added):
(snip)
Any president who declares he has absolute power – which is what Trump’s admission amounts to, given that the ability to shut down any investigation means he can always protect himself and friends, no matter what kind of wrongdoing they commit – is a threat to the country’s foundation. In less than two and a half centuries, we’ve gone from a president who freely gave up power so there would be no kings in America, to one who wants to be treated like one.
Methinks he is correct to be troubled.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness takes practice.
That agency, in a post to Twitter, called the discharge a “malfunction” and said the shooter was hospitalized in “good condition.”
Afterthought:
Situations such as these could be avoided if one ensures that one’s portable penis is not pointing at anyone while one is caressing it.
Credit Where Credit Is Don’t, Reprise 0
Robert Reich does the recap.
Credit Where Credit Is Don’t 0
Rex Huppke analyzes Donald Trump’s rules for patting himself on the back. A snippet:
1) If it happened any time after Inauguration Day 2017 and it was good, Trump is responsible for it.
2) On the off chance it’s something not good, Trump is responsible for it only if it can be framed in a way that makes it seem good.
Follow the link, if only to read the most apt title of the article.
Tales of the Trumpling: Snapshots of Trickle-Down Trumpery 0
Here’s a tale of a Trumpled school. An excerpt (emphasis added):
The first time she encountered it was in early September as she walked home alone from school. She said a truck filled with white classmates, mostly boys, drove by.
“I was just minding my business and then a car with a group of white kids sticks out their heads and calls me the N-word with a hard ‘r,’ zooms away, and I’m just there like, ‘Well what do I do?’ ” she said.
Follow the link for the rest of the story.