When both of your parents are news anchors @Robert7News pic.twitter.com/E1z2J0kyQb
— Jeannette Reyes (@Fox5DCJeannette) August 14, 2022
- Hackwhackers bids a fond farewell to Queen Elizabeth.
- Professor PZ Myers has little regard for the British monarchy, but little resentment against the Queen herself. He seems to hope all the mourning and exaggerated analysis will just go away.
Good summary:
The Queen is dead. My regrets to those who cared about her. Call me when the monarchy is dead, OK?
- Apparently, as the Queen got older, she asked that her hobby of dog breeding stop. Seems she didn’t want to leave a large number of dogs behind to be cared for.
So, of course, Tommy Christopher is left to cover actual live television interviews on whether existing puppies are scheduled to be buried alive.
- Reductress may have been the satiric source of the entire rampant buried-royal-puppies uproar.
- President Biden made a speech and talked, in part, about an extreme MAGA philosophy and characterized it as like semi-fascism. Well, anti-democratic, prone to political violence in place of elections, authoritarian seem to fit the definition.
Max’s Dad liked Joe Biden’s speech because he went against his own grain and stood clean-tough against the party of always-fight-dirty bullies.
- Nan’s Notebook reads one notable opinion about President Biden’s most dangerous, divisive, demagogic speech.
She wonders how anyone can be so certain and decides politics is akin to religious discussion.
I dunno. It seems the temptation may be to stray toward a both-sides premise. That is the human tendency, often practiced by journalists, of presuming without evidence that two sides of any question are equally valid.
I think of one hypothetical example: one side insists it is raining while the other maintains it is dry outside.
Many modern reporters quote both sides equally and accurately and call it a day. Fair and balanced.
Responsible journalism dictates we actually look outside to see what the weather is doing.
President Biden defined with some precision to whom who he was referring when he talked of semi-fascist MAGA folk. He was talking about those who would use or endorse political violence in order to overturn democracy.
He specifically exempted the majority of the Republican party.
The writer to whom Nan rightly objects defines MAGA types as traditionalists who want what I recognize as a Bill Buckley variety of conservatism.
And so the writer is outraged that the President would target him personally.
It is a tactic that has been with us since language began: setting up a strawman in order to knock him down.
My response to similar contrived anger:That is an extraordinary accusation.
And baseless.You really shouldn't smear folks just because they are to the right of most Americans.
Do you have any proof that all conservatives are unpatriotic, violent, insurrectionists?
— Burr Deming (@BurrLand01) September 9, 2022
- My longtime conservative friend Darrell Michaels, at Unabashedly American, speculates on what he would do if he was a fascist or even a semi-fascist who wanted to destroy America.
Oddly enough, what follows is mostly the familiar conservative caricature of what some on the right imagine that non-conservatives believe. A sample:
Well, I would first want to take over our education system in order to indoctrinate our kids into believing that they live in an unjust and racist nation that brings nothing but ruin to others throughout the world. I would ignore teaching them of the United States history where we overcame so many great sins, like slavery and women’s inequality in rights. I would bury the truth of how the United States fought and buried hundreds of thousands of men in defense against the true fascism of Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and Mussolini’s Italy.
None of which is advocated by anyone I have heard of.
It may not have occurred to my friend that those who wanted to destroy our democratic republic and eradicate the freedoms that our constitution was formed in order to protect might instead form a lynch mob, storm the Capitol Building, assault police officers, and hunt for legislators to assassinate.
Darrell is a kindly, peaceful soul for whom such a possibility would not occur.
I suppose it is worth pointing out that most of America has a somewhat different view of MAGAfolk than does my old friend:Most Americans see Trump's MAGA as threat to democracy: Reuters/Ipsos poll https://t.co/N14vWl3wP0 pic.twitter.com/WggzZLBvA7
— Reuters U.S. News (@ReutersUS) September 8, 2022
Nice to have you back, Darrell.
- Iron Knee at Political Irony sees a bit of political gamesmanship in President Biden’s speech. In his view, the President gave precisely the sort of speech that would goad a furious, and ugly, Trump response: a response that will make the election all about Mr Trump himself.
- CalicoJack in The Psy of Life speculates on professional Republicans, staffers to politicians, who must find ways to keep voters motivated. What motivates the motivators?
Continue reading “Queen Elizabeth, Biden Semi-Tough, Docs Nuked, DOJ Politicized”