FairAndUNbalanced.com

 
From Neil Bamforth at MadMikesAmerica:

Now it does need to be said that Britain, like every nation, has its fair share of idiots and thick people. Many years ago a newspaper published a picture of a double deck bus – an old London ‘Route Master’ as it happens – that had been supposedly found on Mars. I was, sadly, not amazed that there were people who actually believed it. I have no idea what they thought the fare for such a trip would have been.

What passes for headline news in America can often cause confusion in Britain. Many people didn’t believe Donald Trump was really called ‘Trump’. “It must be a misprint,” said one chap in my local pub, “nobody is named after a fart” – given that a ‘trump’, in Britain, is a polite word for fart. He meant it. He couldn’t believe anyone could actually be called ‘Trump’.

– More –
 

 
From Alinda at The Intersection of Madness and Reality:

In June of 1977, then President Jimmy Carter declared that in the United States June would be known as Black Music Appreciation Month. Barack Obama our 44th President renamed it to African American Music Appreciation Month. No one dare in good sense argue the tremendous influence that African Americans have been not only in music but to this country in general.

Our music has been our refuge historically and will continue even now. Leaning away from the obvious at times, but those true music geeks will peruse this list and appreciate the tracks and if not feel free to chime in your favorites for next year’s list.

Here are some songs and their influence on African American culture. Enjoy, pick up a few , and since it’s summer, you might want to fire up the grill.

– More –
 

 
From Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit:

The headline says it all:

Trey Gowdy, who headed the Benghazi investigation for more than 2 years, claims Mueller is taking too long

– More –
 

 
From driftglass:

From Bloomberg, with emphasis added:

A Morgan Stanley Star Wants You to Back His Political Movement
Will Americans embrace a new party founded by bankers?

Eric Grossman doesn’t look like he would want to do anything drastic. The top lawyer at Morgan Stanley is a 51-year-old homeowner in the New York suburbs with twin sons and a seat on the firm’s management committee. He’s another man in a power suit in a midtown Manhattan bank.

He also wants to topple America’s two-party system.

Grossman is trying to build a new party—called the Serve America Movement, or SAM…

Another day, another boutique, Third Party vanity project by another cloistered plutocrat hitting up his fellow entitled plutocrats for money because Both Sides!

“Perhaps it’s a fear of arrogance that people are like, ‘Wow you can’t say that, you can’t say you’re going to be a party,’” said Richard Bennett, a partner at investment firm B-FORE Capital who contributed $140,000 to SAM. “I’m like, why not? What else are we going to do? That’s the only thing that’s going to fix it.”

And what exactly does the Banker’s Cookbook Party stand against?

Divisiveness!

– More –
 

The Trump administration has announced a proposed new law regarding trade, the Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act.

I’m not making this up.

There is no word yet on the actual content of the proposed FaRT law.

 
From Blue in the Bluegrass:

There’s a ridiculous and counter-productive “debate” going on right now about how Democrats should handle the nomination of a face-eating leopard to the Supreme Court.

Should Democrats fight like rabid ferrets in a losing cause in order to inspire Democratic voters for the November elections?

Or should they surrender in order to protect red-state Democratic Senators up for re-election?

– More –
 

 
From nojo at Stinque:

They’re fine ideals, after all. They continue to inspire. Our cynicism arises from not living up to them.

And hey, we did fight a war over them. A revolutionary war.

What was that about?

The crux of the matter was not Life Liberty Etc., but despotism, rule by an unaccountable power. That is where we find the phrase that resonates most today, the “consent of the governed”, from which, and only which, a legitimate government derives its authority. Absent that consent, living under a government that is “destructive” of that consent, “it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it”.

And here we are.

– More –
 

 
From Andy Borowitz:

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Shortly after the United States Supreme Court upheld Donald J. Trump’s controversial travel ban, millions of people from other countries expressed puzzlement that anyone would want to travel to the United States at this juncture.

– More –
 

 
Treason is the only crime specifically defined in the Constitution.

If you wage war against the United States, or help those who do, you can be charged with treason. To be convicted, two witnesses have to testify or you have to confess.

But that is just the law. The less formal view has been that traitors to America were pretty much the opposite of patriots. They were those who were against America and the ideals for which America stands. When I was a kid, Senator Joe McCarthy helped us out in identifying traitors:

Traitors are not gentlemen, my good friends. They don’t understand being treated like gentlemen.

Senator Joe McCarthy, March 17, 1954

The definition of treason had to do with defining the enemy of America. In those days it wasn’t hard.

The most easily defined enemy was seen as expansionist, with the ultimate goal of world domination. And so, secondary enemies were just as easy to define. The enemy of my enemy’s enemy was my enemy.

Communism was the enemy. Congressional investigators were the enemy of that enemy.

Those who objected to the tactics used by investigators were the enemy of the enemy’s enemy.

So, aside from not being gentlemen, traitors could be identified in other ways.

You are seeing today an all-out attempt to marshal the forces of the opposition, using not merely the Communists, but the fellow travelers, the deluded liberals, the eggheads, and some of my good friends on both the Democrat and Republican Party, who can become heroes overnight in the eyes of the left-wing press if they will join in the, join with the jackal pack.

Senator Joe McCarthy

So traitors included Communists, fellow travelers, liberals, and eggheads. Traitors were the enemies of patriots. Patriots like Joe McCarthy.
Continue reading “Treason!”

• This week’s note in Trumpian ‘Alternative Facts’ comes from The New Republic, where Alex Shepherd learns from watching Jake Tapper how journalists can deal with Trump’s parallel universe. One possible flaw. It seems to involve journalists doing their homework in advance of interviews. Sounds like a rare occurrence.
   
• Jack Jodell at The Saturday Afternoon Post suggests that the Trump administration’s migrant policy puts it in violation of kidnapping laws.
   
• Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit is impatient with my President’s impatience with lawful due process. Has to do with some irritating technicality about Constitutional protections covering everyone equally.
   
• Max’s Dad is sickened by a picture of a crying little girl, and by those who call it fake news.
   
• M. Bouffant at Web of Evil perceives historical parallels after an ICE agent is ordered to lie, resigns instead, squeals about it to journalists, but finds the interview interrupted by government agents.
   
• Glenn Geist at MadMikesAmerica sees much to be ashamed about in the SCOTUS endorsement of Donald Trump’s thinly disguised Muslim ban. It isn’t a Muslim ban if it’s called a Muslim ban and bans Muslims but the words “Muslim ban” are not actually printed in the Muslin ban.
   
• driftglass stomps all over conservative Ron Fournier again. Fournier says Putin couldn’t have created a more pro-Russia US president in a lab. driftglass points out that Trump was carefully built by the Republican Party.
   
• Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger looks at the polling and tells us how Americans see what political parties care about whom.
   
• At Stinque, NOJO clings to our last, best hope of salvaging anything of what remains of our country after Republicans finish trashing the place. Past performance suggests they will do just that before January if they lose in November. But NOJO finds some glimmer of encouragement in a superb race in Texas, and a great campaign video, as a couple of small indicators.
   
• Wisconsin conservative James Wigderson notes that election expert Larry Sabato sees a trend toward Democratic Senator Tammy Baldwin, formerly endangered. James doesn’t entirely like Sabato’s methodology.
   
• Vincent is sort of back at A Wayfarer’s Notes and, in his own poetic way, suggests that the compassionate and the predatory sides of humanity are the Yin and Yang of life. Would help explain God, Satan, Trump, and mosquitoes I suppose.
   
• Dave Dubya has some good FOX News, in photo form. Even better, it’s not the cable network. More like honest wildlife.