From Pine View Farm

QOTD 0

James Noble, in the voice of Governor Eugene Xavier Gatling, and Robert Guillaume, in the voice of Benson DuBois:

Eugene: I don’t have the qualifications to be President.

Benson: Never stopped anybody before.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Devolution 0

Frame One:  Man and woman look at early car.  Man says,

Click to view the original image.

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Fly the Fiendly Skies 0

They get fiendlier every day.

We are a society of stupid.

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This New Gilded Age 0

Thom wonders, “How did the land of Lincoln and Roosevelt, of Eisenhower and Kennedy, become a playground for billionaire sociopaths?”

Listen for his answer.

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Still Rising Again after All These Years 0

The Trump maladministration has taken off its mask–or, perhaps more accurately, put on its hood.

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Artificial? Yes. Intelligent? Not So Much. 0

Properly secured? Not according to security expert Bruce Schneier.

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One Thing Is Not Like the Other Thing 0

Wearing a mask to protect your health and slow the spread of a pandemic is not the same thing as wearing a mask to hide your identity while violating persons’ Constitutional rights, regardless of what some pipsqueak pol who’s in way over his head might say.

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QOTD 0

Kazuo Ishiguro :

Many of our deepest motives come, not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

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A Tune for the Times 0

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Vaccine Nation 0

At the Sacramento Bee, Richard Pan looks at RFK Jr.’s record at HHS and concludes that it–er–does not inspire confidence.

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If One Standard Is Good, Two Must Be Better 0

At the Tampa Bay Times, Daniel Ruth finds a slight whiff of a double standard in the current who-shot-john stirred up by Jake Tapper’s recent book alleging that Joe Biden is getting old. A snippet:

Did Biden not remember the name of actor George Clooney? Yes. Not good. Trump can’t remember the emoluments clause.

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That Was the Week that Was Very Very Weird 0

Seth takes a closer look at some of the events of the past week.

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The Disinformation Superhighway 0

Elvie:  It's a scourge on society--a virus whose malign effects spread easily among the poor and ill-educated, propagated by humanity's inherent need for social interaction.  Caller:  No, no--not

Click to view the original image.

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“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0

Also at the Idaho State Journal, Larry Gebhardt hears a rhyme.

Here’s a bit of his parsing of the poesy:

A Project 2025 tactic is to stop all Federal involvement in education, a shift to states’ rights and privatization. . . . .

Throughout history, tyrants and oligarchs have understood that their major enemy is an educated citizenry. Slaveholders prohibited the enslaved from learning to read. Nazis burned books. Putin and Xi censor the media. Big tech and well-funded political action spread mis- and disinformation. Ignorance is the handmaiden of tyranny.

___________________-

*Mark Twain.

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The Rule of Lawless 0

At the Idaho State Journal, Kim Shinkoskey states that Donald Trump is

offending specific provisions in the Constitution

and goes on to offer a bill of particulars.

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QOTD 0

Charlotte Bronte:

Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education; they grow firm there, firm as weeds among stones.

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The Breakup 0

More in the monologue from last night’s show.

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The Disinformation Superhighway 0

At Psychology Today Blogs, Rebecca Dolgin outlines several ways in which “social” media isn’t. Here’s one; follow the link for the others.

Social media gives the illusion of a public square, but it actually doesn’t accurately reflect offline reality because a small percentage of users generate the majority of posts, and those voices are often the loudest, most polarized, or most extreme.

Given how many persons think that “social” media is a reliable source for news, I find this a timely and disquieting read.

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“The Trump Doctrine” 0

Jackie Calmes sums up Donald Trump’s approach to foreign policy in four words:

A Trump Doctrine is easily discernible in the president’s foreign policy record: It’s “Me, Myself and I.”

Follow the link the evidence.

(Broken link fixed.)

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From Pine View Farm
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