Some things to hold on to that reflect America’s basic goodness? Easy. That would be America’s founding principles. That includes things like individual liberty and nautral rights. The right to self determination, to own property and to trade that property in a free market. Rule of law and equal protection under the law. All these things are protected by our constitution because it is WE THE PEOPLE who lend our power to government to protect our natural rights and to ensure the common good.
These basic ideals are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as ammended. Turn to freedom and we will all be better prepared to pursue life, liberty amd happiness.
Finally, turn to God. Our country’s system is designed to serve and function under the a moral and a faithful people who recognize our rights come from “nature or nature’s God” (see Deckaration) . When a people serve authorities other then men (God), then they have humility, respect for their fellow man and a path of goodness to follow.
Today is day 55 of the Georgia Economic Recovery, a great and joyous place to be, outside of the two blue counties. I cannot improve on the essay by friend Brain Pudding.
Erick Erickson, the RedState founder and conservative talk show host, speaks a difficult truth to fellow conservative Christians. Excerpt:
But I continue to harbor a great belief that too many Christians are using Trump as a political savior for a spiritual problem both in their own lives and in the life of this country.
Trump cannot stop the culture from turning against the faith and, if anything, more and more data shows Trump is a catalyst for the cultural turn.
He is increasing the left’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as so many evangelical leaders constantly beclown themselves to hump his leg.
He is also increasing the right’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as more political apparatchiks on the right do what is expedient for political victory, including tossing grace, truth, and love for neighbors to the wind.
Besides, fair or not, conservative Christianity will be associated with Trump for the next few years, and no doubt beyond.
If conservative church leaders aren’t extraordinarily careful in how they manage their public relationship to the Trump phenomenon, anti-Trump blowback will do severe damage to the church’s reputation.
Trump’s election solves some problems for the church, but given the man’s character, it creates others. Political power is not a moral disinfectant.
Day 1244 of the Right Wing control of the Presidency, Supreme Court, and both Houses of Congress.
With a somewhat Left tilt for the House only, 533 Days ago.
Are you better off than you were on Jan 19, 2017?
~
The Trump family is taking 12 times as many Secret-Service protected trips as the Obama family did ― an average of about 1,000 more trips per year ― according to Treasury Department documents.
The president and senior White House advisers Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner all remain invested in their private companies but travel at taxpayer expense.
The trips raise concerns about conflicts of interest as taxpayer-funded travels intermingle Trump business promotion, White House power and foreign political leaders seeking American favors and special treatment.
“Because of the overlap between the Trump Organization, the Trump White House and the Trump campaign, taxpayer money all too often ends up facilitating President Trump’s conflicts of interest,” CREW said in a statement earlier this year.
An Air Force sergeant who was arrested in the fatal ambush of a Santa Cruz County deputy was charged Tuesday in connection with the killing of a federal security officer during George Floyd protests in Oakland last month, authorities said.
✄
“They came to Oakland to kill cops,” said John Bennett, special agent in charge of the San Francisco division of the FBI.
✄
Investigators found inside Carrillo’s vehicle a ballistic vest with a patch on it that featured an igloo and a Hawaiian-style print — symbols associated with the far-right extremist “Boogaloo” movement, according to his federal complaint.
✄
In Boogaloo groups on Facebook and Reddit, “soup bois” is shorthand for government agencies that are abbreviated in acronyms like “alphabet soup" such as the FBI and ATF.
Online Boogaloo communities frequently post memes about targeting federal agencies in advance of another civil war.
Looking at the graphic below for the podcast, it’s interesting to see that Carmen and Winslow have actually evolved away from neoteny, which is the opposite of the usual cartoon trend to make characters meant to be cartoony and appealing more and more babylike as time goes on.
“Solutions” require analysis of causation. From the WSJ today:
You’ve heard that a black American is 2.5 times as likely as a white American to be killed by police, but maybe not that a white homicide victim is 2.5 times as likely as a black homicide victim to have been killed by police. A black person is so much more likely to be a homicide victim generally that police killings are actually a smaller proportion of total black killings.
In the catalog of racial disparities, a black American is 50% more likely to suffer hypertension, 16% more likely to die of cancer—and nearly 500% more likely to be murdered and 600% more likely to become a murderer.
These homicide-related disparities not only are “historic and pervasive,” write Columbia University’s Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi in a 2010 paper, but weirdly disproportionate to every other black-white disparity associated with crime, including being poor, being a high school dropout, living in an urban neighborhood, being from a single-parent household, and even being a victim of a lesser assault.
The authors convincingly suggest: “Any satisfactory explanation must take into account the fact that murder can have a preemptive motive: people sometimes kill simply to avoid being killed” in places where law enforcement is utterly ineffective at deterring and solving murders.
I think for a lot of young people, they just don’t have the historical background, but I’m in my eighty-fifth year of life, and I grew up in the slums of North Philadelphia. At that time we did not go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. Most people left their doors open until the last person was in. I had a number of friends, I’d just knock on the door and somebody’d holler, “Come in!”
And there were no bars at the window; and other attributes about the black community is that my father deserted my mother and sister and I when I was three and she was two. We lived in Richard Allen Housing project … and we were the only kids in the neighborhood who did not have a mother and father in the house. Today it would be exactly the opposite.
And you can look at the black family structure; in 1880, 85 to 95 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families. Today, we’re much further away from slavery and less than a third live in two-parent families. You look at illegitimacy rates: today, illegitimacy rate among blacks is 75% and among whites it’s slightly over 30%, but if you go back to 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 11% and among whites it was 3%.
And so it turns out that on a lot of measures of socioeconomic characteristics, blacks were better off in terms of family structure and violence in earlier times. Which is not to say I want to go back to the old days where was gross racial discrimination in our country, but I think that a lot of things that people are blaming on slavery and discrimination, it just doesn’t cut the mustard, unless you say that this stuff skips a generation or two.
“Yesterday the Democrats wore kente scarfs and knelt down for their photo op. So check this out, Kente cloth was worn by the Ashanti. It’s made of silk so the affluent wore it. The Ashanti were also known as slave owners and traders. Huh?” Dave Brandon posted on Facebook June 9. “This makes me wonder why they chose to wear this particular tribe’s garb.”
(The Borowitz Report)—In an Oval Office meeting described as “tense,” the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, explained to Donald J. Trump why he cannot fire Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
According to sources, McConnell rushed to the White House after being informed of Trump’s plan to terminate Gorsuch and replace him with the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
In the Oval Office, Trump adamantly told McConnell, “When I hire someone, I have the right to fire him if he turns out to be a jerk.”
McConnell slowly and carefully explained that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, but Trump refused to accept this position.
“I can fire this Neil Gorsuch joker just like I fired Jeff Sessions and Gary Busey,” Trump said, adding that he planned to add a ramp outside the Supreme Court to speed Gorsuch’s departure.
Sanspareil over 4 years ago
Just hold on to the constitution Carmen, see it for what is bedrock, without right wing misrepresentation!
Darsan54 Premium Member over 4 years ago
Is that pollution? Our center of gravity is the constant degradation we cause the planet?
Brain Pudding over 4 years ago
Some things to hold on to that reflect America’s basic goodness? Easy. That would be America’s founding principles. That includes things like individual liberty and nautral rights. The right to self determination, to own property and to trade that property in a free market. Rule of law and equal protection under the law. All these things are protected by our constitution because it is WE THE PEOPLE who lend our power to government to protect our natural rights and to ensure the common good.
These basic ideals are enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution as ammended. Turn to freedom and we will all be better prepared to pursue life, liberty amd happiness.
Finally, turn to God. Our country’s system is designed to serve and function under the a moral and a faithful people who recognize our rights come from “nature or nature’s God” (see Deckaration) . When a people serve authorities other then men (God), then they have humility, respect for their fellow man and a path of goodness to follow.
jbmlaw01 over 4 years ago
Today is day 55 of the Georgia Economic Recovery, a great and joyous place to be, outside of the two blue counties. I cannot improve on the essay by friend Brain Pudding.
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Erick Erickson, the RedState founder and conservative talk show host, speaks a difficult truth to fellow conservative Christians. Excerpt:
But I continue to harbor a great belief that too many Christians are using Trump as a political savior for a spiritual problem both in their own lives and in the life of this country.
Trump cannot stop the culture from turning against the faith and, if anything, more and more data shows Trump is a catalyst for the cultural turn.
He is increasing the left’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as so many evangelical leaders constantly beclown themselves to hump his leg.
He is also increasing the right’s turn against the faith at a more rapid pace as more political apparatchiks on the right do what is expedient for political victory, including tossing grace, truth, and love for neighbors to the wind.
Besides, fair or not, conservative Christianity will be associated with Trump for the next few years, and no doubt beyond.
If conservative church leaders aren’t extraordinarily careful in how they manage their public relationship to the Trump phenomenon, anti-Trump blowback will do severe damage to the church’s reputation.
Trump’s election solves some problems for the church, but given the man’s character, it creates others. Political power is not a moral disinfectant.
~
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/coming-christian-reckoning-trump-catholic-evangelical/
Silly Season over 4 years ago
Day 1244 of the Right Wing control of the Presidency, Supreme Court, and both Houses of Congress.
With a somewhat Left tilt for the House only, 533 Days ago.
Are you better off than you were on Jan 19, 2017?
~
The Trump family is taking 12 times as many Secret-Service protected trips as the Obama family did ― an average of about 1,000 more trips per year ― according to Treasury Department documents.
The president and senior White House advisers Ivanka Trump and husband Jared Kushner all remain invested in their private companies but travel at taxpayer expense.
The trips raise concerns about conflicts of interest as taxpayer-funded travels intermingle Trump business promotion, White House power and foreign political leaders seeking American favors and special treatment.
“Because of the overlap between the Trump Organization, the Trump White House and the Trump campaign, taxpayer money all too often ends up facilitating President Trump’s conflicts of interest,” CREW said in a statement earlier this year.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/donald-trump-jr-mongolia-hunting-trip-endangered-sheep_n_5edf126bc5b6948cbc5c971aSilly Season over 4 years ago
An Air Force sergeant who was arrested in the fatal ambush of a Santa Cruz County deputy was charged Tuesday in connection with the killing of a federal security officer during George Floyd protests in Oakland last month, authorities said.
✄
“They came to Oakland to kill cops,” said John Bennett, special agent in charge of the San Francisco division of the FBI.
✄
Investigators found inside Carrillo’s vehicle a ballistic vest with a patch on it that featured an igloo and a Hawaiian-style print — symbols associated with the far-right extremist “Boogaloo” movement, according to his federal complaint.
✄
In Boogaloo groups on Facebook and Reddit, “soup bois” is shorthand for government agencies that are abbreviated in acronyms like “alphabet soup" such as the FBI and ATF.
Online Boogaloo communities frequently post memes about targeting federal agencies in advance of another civil war.
~
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/airman-charged-killing-federal-officer-during-george-floyd-protests-california-n1231187
Kip W over 4 years ago
Asked and answered, Winslow. You won’t see it if you’re passed out.
Kip W over 4 years ago
Looking at the graphic below for the podcast, it’s interesting to see that Carmen and Winslow have actually evolved away from neoteny, which is the opposite of the usual cartoon trend to make characters meant to be cartoony and appealing more and more babylike as time goes on.
jbmlaw01 over 4 years ago
“Solutions” require analysis of causation. From the WSJ today:
You’ve heard that a black American is 2.5 times as likely as a white American to be killed by police, but maybe not that a white homicide victim is 2.5 times as likely as a black homicide victim to have been killed by police. A black person is so much more likely to be a homicide victim generally that police killings are actually a smaller proportion of total black killings.
In the catalog of racial disparities, a black American is 50% more likely to suffer hypertension, 16% more likely to die of cancer—and nearly 500% more likely to be murdered and 600% more likely to become a murderer.
These homicide-related disparities not only are “historic and pervasive,” write Columbia University’s Brendan O’Flaherty and Rajiv Sethi in a 2010 paper, but weirdly disproportionate to every other black-white disparity associated with crime, including being poor, being a high school dropout, living in an urban neighborhood, being from a single-parent household, and even being a victim of a lesser assault.
The authors convincingly suggest: “Any satisfactory explanation must take into account the fact that murder can have a preemptive motive: people sometimes kill simply to avoid being killed” in places where law enforcement is utterly ineffective at deterring and solving murders.
koszegi_andris over 4 years ago
Green economy maybe?
koszegi_andris over 4 years ago
https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2020/06/america-giving-up-on-pandemic/612796/https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/when-does-trump-leave-white-house/613060/
Could those be true?
jbmlaw01 over 4 years ago
The great Walter E Williams:
I think for a lot of young people, they just don’t have the historical background, but I’m in my eighty-fifth year of life, and I grew up in the slums of North Philadelphia. At that time we did not go to bed with the sounds of gunshots. Most people left their doors open until the last person was in. I had a number of friends, I’d just knock on the door and somebody’d holler, “Come in!”
And there were no bars at the window; and other attributes about the black community is that my father deserted my mother and sister and I when I was three and she was two. We lived in Richard Allen Housing project … and we were the only kids in the neighborhood who did not have a mother and father in the house. Today it would be exactly the opposite.
And you can look at the black family structure; in 1880, 85 to 95 percent of black kids lived in two-parent families. Today, we’re much further away from slavery and less than a third live in two-parent families. You look at illegitimacy rates: today, illegitimacy rate among blacks is 75% and among whites it’s slightly over 30%, but if you go back to 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 11% and among whites it was 3%.
And so it turns out that on a lot of measures of socioeconomic characteristics, blacks were better off in terms of family structure and violence in earlier times. Which is not to say I want to go back to the old days where was gross racial discrimination in our country, but I think that a lot of things that people are blaming on slavery and discrimination, it just doesn’t cut the mustard, unless you say that this stuff skips a generation or two.
jbmlaw01 over 4 years ago
Fact check: Yes, Kente cloths were historically worn by empire involved in West African slave trade
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/06/16/fact-check-kente-cloths-have-ties-west-african-slave-trade/5345941002/
“Yesterday the Democrats wore kente scarfs and knelt down for their photo op. So check this out, Kente cloth was worn by the Ashanti. It’s made of silk so the affluent wore it. The Ashanti were also known as slave owners and traders. Huh?” Dave Brandon posted on Facebook June 9. “This makes me wonder why they chose to wear this particular tribe’s garb.”
Silly Season over 4 years ago
(The Borowitz Report)—In an Oval Office meeting described as “tense,” the Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, explained to Donald J. Trump why he cannot fire Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch.
According to sources, McConnell rushed to the White House after being informed of Trump’s plan to terminate Gorsuch and replace him with the Fox News host Jeanine Pirro.
In the Oval Office, Trump adamantly told McConnell, “When I hire someone, I have the right to fire him if he turns out to be a jerk.”
McConnell slowly and carefully explained that Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life, but Trump refused to accept this position.
“I can fire this Neil Gorsuch joker just like I fired Jeff Sessions and Gary Busey,” Trump said, adding that he planned to add a ramp outside the Supreme Court to speed Gorsuch’s departure.