Tuesday, December 18, 2018

Reading archive 2018-12-18

Hey Democrats, Fighting Fair Is for Suckers: Court-packing! Puerto Rican statehood! Votes for felons! Why—and how—the next Democratic majority should play dirty. - "This means that a strategy of Democratic norm-breaking is justifiable only if it can be reasonably expected to result in a lasting political realignment—to break the cycle rather than escalate it. It must so thoroughly disempower the other side that it forestalls serious reprisals. Put simply, the strategy that Faris and others on the left are proposing had better work—because the tit-for-tat conflict that would result from a halfhearted or incomplete attempt would be even worse than the status quo."

Friday, November 2, 2018

Reading archive 2018-11-02

Maryland Sold Its Soul Only to Fire D.J. Durkin: Just one day after announcing that it would retain Durkin, the university fired its head coach amid a wave of public outcry. What does this reversal say about college football’s power structure—and its history of prioritizing winning above all else?

Congress thinks the public is way more conservative than it actually is. Deep-pocketed lobbyists are to blame, according to new research.

‘Hi, I’m Oprah’: The Georgia governor’s race is at full boil — and now the cavalry has arrived

Reading archive 2018-10-28 through 2018-10-31

Trump’s Caravan Hysteria Led to This: The president and his supporters insisted that several thousand Honduran migrants were a looming menace—and the Pittsburgh gunman took that seriously.

Trump, GOP defiant amid allegations that incendiary rhetoric contributed to climate of violence

She was ‘white and hot’ in a racist video. Now she’s viral and unemployed.

A Doctor Who Died In The Pittsburgh Shooting Is Being Remembered As A Hero To Patients At The Start Of The AIDS Crisis: "He would hold my hand, without gloves, when I was feeling really bad," one of his patients said. He "kept us alive the longest."

Police and a big-time columnist called a woman’s 1994 rape a ‘hoax.’ Here’s why police are now apologizing.

U.S. borrowing on pace to top $1.3 trillion this year, the highest since 2010

Mueller Wants the FBI to Look at a Scheme to Discredit Him: The special counsel says a woman was offered money to fabricate sexual-harassment claims.

Trump isn’t to blame. His entire party is.

This is how republics end: Warnings from the fall of Rome.

Tuesday, September 25, 2018

Reading archive 2018-09-25

At the U.N., Trump finds the world literally laughing at him

No, I Will Not Debate You: Civility will never defeat fascism, no matter what The Economist thinks. - "There’s a term for this sort of bad-faith argument: it’s called the justification-suppression model. The theory is that bigots refrain from directly defending their own bigotry but get hugely riled up justifying the abstract right to express bigotry. So instead of saying, for example, “I don’t like foreigners,” they’ll fight hard for someone else’s right to get up on stage and yell that foreigners are coming to convert your children and seduce your household pets.

"Focusing the conversation on the ethics of disseminating speech rather than the actual content of that speech is hugely useful for the far right for three reasons. Firstly, it allows them to paint themselves as the wronged party — the martyrs and victims. Secondly, it stops people from talking about the actual wronged parties, the real lives at risk. And thirdly, of course, it’s an enormous diversion tactic, a shout of “Fire!” in the crowded theatre of politics. But Liberals don’t want to feel like bad people, so this impossible choice — betray the letter of your principles, or betray the spirit — leaves everyone feeling filthy.
...
"Steve Bannon, like the howling monster from the id he ushered into the White House, exploits the values of the liberal establishment by offering an impossible choice: betray their stated principles (free, open debate) or dignify fascism and white supremacy. This weaponizes tolerance to legitimize intolerance. If we deny racists a platform, they feed off the appearance of censorship, but if we give them a platform, they’ve also won by being respectfully invited into the penumbra of mainstream legitimacy. Either way, what matters to them is not debate, but airtime and attention. They have no interest in winning on the issues. Their image of a better world is one with their face on every television screen."

Brett Kavanaugh and the Cruelty of Male Bonding When being one of the guys comes at a woman’s expense.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

Reading archive 2018-07-25

Before her arrest as an alleged Russian agent, Maria Butina’s proud defense of her homeland drew notice at American University

Trump pushes 25 percent auto tariff as top advisers scramble to stop him

She was eager to meet her college roommate — until the racist text arrived, screenshots appear to show

‘You have corrupted discourse for the entire world’: Sean Spicer gets the lecture and grilling he deserves - "Spicer argues that this is the way things have always been done — that spokesmen like him have always simply passed along their bosses' spin. That's not true. I've worked with hundreds of flacks over the years, and the vast, vast majority of them guarded their credibility fiercely by making sure they at least remained within the bounds of plausibility. Maybe Spicer had a boss who made that impossible or maybe he just wasn't that good at it; the answer isn't to torch the truth and pretend like you have no choice."

A British man gave his girlfriend what he thought was perfume. It was a Russian nerve agent.

Farmers like me put Trump in office. Now his trade war is smothering us.

Monday, June 18, 2018

Reading archive 2018-06-18

Lowest number of criminal offences since 1992: Official police statistics on crime and politically motivated offences for 2017 presented -

Trump tells ridiculous lie about German crime to argue against taking in asylum-seekers The president likely got the idea for his tweet from his favorite show, "Fox & Friends." - "Crime in Germany is not way up. Official figures from last month show that the national crime rate fell 5 percent since last year in Germany, dropping to the lowest levels since 1992. The number of crimes committed by non-German individuals fell 23 percent. The one area of crime which saw a 2.5 percent increase was antisemitic attacks — with 94 percent of them committed by far-right German nationals."

Monday, June 11, 2018

Reading archive 2018-06-11

Trump Upends Global Trade Order Built by U.S. - "Among the developed nations that make up the Group of 7 that met in a resort town near Quebec City this weekend, the United States has tariffs that are slightly higher, on average, across all its imported products than Canada or Japan and exactly equivalent to the four European nations in the G-7.
...
At a news conference on Saturday, Mr. Trump said his ultimate goal was eliminating all trade duties and subsidies. But in his short tenure in office, he has scrapped potential agreements like the Trans-Pacific Partnership with Japan and Canada and a sweeping trade pact with Europe that would have slashed the tariffs he is now criticizing."

A Senior White House Official Defines the Trump Doctrine: ‘We’re America, Bitch’: The president believes that the United States owes nothing to anyone—especially its allies.

“SAVE OUR TIPS,” THE CAMPAIGN AGAINST D.C.’S MINIMUM WAGE HIKE, IS RUN BY A TRUMP CONSULTANT

Friday, April 27, 2018

Reading archive 2018-04-27

Rachel Dolezal’s Grotesque Idea of Identity: In a new Netflix documentary, ‘The Rachel Divide,’ the controversial “transracial” activist makes her case—and it still doesn’t make sense - "Dolezal talks about blackness as if it were reducible to two qualities, and only two qualities: scholarship and aesthetics. It cannot occur to her that blackness—a social construction, indeed—is a comprehensive and involuntary realm of experience. White power invented it, and white power enforces it, but, paradoxically, black people own blackness.
...
"Ideally, a white person should be able to empathize with a black person, and enjoy black culture, without mistaking themselves for a black person. Ideally, Dolezal would see herself for who she truly is: a white woman with peculiar but nonetheless righteous interest in black culture and black liberation. Instead, Dolezal is a tourist with a fetish who must swear she’s a native."

Who (really) wants gaydar to be accurate anyway?