Knowing vs. Believing

Posted on Tuesday 10 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • RFK “retires” his vaccine advisory committee (because he knows better);
  • Robert Reich on how the MAGA Inquisition will destroy American science, and Reich tries to understand why;
  • Robert Reich on Trump’s war against California, and the central struggle of civilization;
  • And some movie score music by Carter Burwell.
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“There are two different types of people in the world, those who want to know, and those who want to believe.” – Friedrich Nietzsche.

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CNN, 9 Jun 2025: RFK Jr. removes all current members of CDC vaccine advisory committee

And

CNBC, 9 Jun 2025: RFK Jr. removes all members of CDC panel advising U.S. on vaccines

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The Insurrectionists Within

Posted on Monday 9 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • No, Los Angeles is not burning down. Trump and his minions are lying. And whatever is happening recently, they started it. And apparently they have motives to start it.
  • Also, Los Angeles is huge;
  • David A. Graham in The Atlantic: Trump is like a bad parent, “never there when you need him but eager to stick his nose in your business when you don’t want him to”;
  • Philip Bump on Trump’s incessant need to quash critics;
  • Trump’s view of law and order: “Can’t you just shoot them?”;
  • David French on how America is no longer a stable country.
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To hear Trump and his minions like Hegseth and Bondi (children playing at being adults) you’d think California was as devastated as the Gaza Strip, and Californians should all be grateful to Fearless Leader for trying to save us from our criminal governor.

It’s nonsense of course. Here are James Woods (the actor) and Ted Cruz spreading a photo of a car in flames that is actually from the 2020 George Floyd protests. Here’s Trump saying LA “would have been completely obliterated” were it not for the National Guard he sent it. Tommy Tuberville calls LA “a third world county” with “anarchists” in charge, and Gavin Newsom reminds him that Alabama has 3X the homicide rate of California. Continue reading →

Posted in Conservative Resistance, conservatives, Politics | Comments Off on The Insurrectionists Within

Clooney’s Murrow; Trump Calls Out the National Guard

Posted on Sunday 8 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Clooney’s Good Night, and Good Luck;
  • Trump calls out the National Guard (what’s next? Martial Law?);
  • Louisiana bans chemtrails;
  • Trump’s big bill prioritizes the religious right (of course)
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First of all. We watched the live stream of George Clooney’s Broadway play “Good Night, and Good Luck” yesterday afternoon (it began at 4pm West Coast time), on CNN. We’d seen the 2005 film starring David Strathairn. The Broadway version stars George Clooney as Edward R. Murrow. I think Strathairn might have been the better impersonation, but Clooney is the more powerful actor. I was impressed by the stage settings: the multiple sets on one stage that the lighting kept redirecting among; the occasional overlapping scenes in different places. But I’ve seen a couple Broadway shows ever; perhaps such stage-work legerdemain is routine. Clooney is very good, though he couldn’t keep his own self from sometimes seeping through — there’s a line half way through about Americans leaving for Europe, and Clooney couldn’t help a self-deprecating smirk.

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Meltdown; Reign of Errors; People Trump doesn’t want to exist; Harari on humans in 1000 years

Posted on Friday 6 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Details of the Trump/Musk meltdown;
  • The Trump administration’s reign of errors;
  • Such as DOGE firing people and quickly hiring them back;
  • The people Trump doesn’t want to exist;
  • Yuval Noah Harari on how humans won’t exist in 1000 years, perhaps not even 100.
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Heather Cox Richardson, June 5, 2025, summarizes the Trump Musk public fight. Selection:

Musk’s behavior is erratic in its own right, but if there is anything but pique behind it, it appears he is threatening Trump by making a play to control the Republican Party. In response to a post by conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer suggesting that Republican lawmakers are unsure if they should side with Trump or Musk, Musk wrote: “Oh and some food for thought as they ponder that question: Trump has 3.5 years left as President, but I will be around for 40+ years.”

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They Said It Wouldn’t Last, and It Hasn’t

Posted on Thursday 5 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • The Trump/Musk bromance implodes;
  • Hannity lies about the impact of the “big beautiful bill”;
  • Republicans try to discredit experts warning about the cost of tax cuts;
  • David French on Joni Ernst, and how Christianity has become a vertical, not horizontal, faith;
  • David Brooks on world-shifting political movements and how it’s somehow the Democrats’ fault for not properly responding to the current populist movement here and around the world; with my comments.
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And, Jeffrey Epstein!

ABC News, 5 Jun 2025: Trump Musk feud explodes with claim president is in Epstein files, subtitled “Trump has not responded to Musk’s attack regarding the alleged sex trafficker.”

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Harvey Milk, DEI, Lysenko, Jesus

Posted on Wednesday 4 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Pete Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk’s name from an oil tanker as part of reestablishing “the warrior culture”;
  • Trump fires head of the National Portrait Gallery, because ridding the government of DEI is about “the mere presence of nonwhites and women the president doesn’t like in positions of authority.”
  • The administration now wants to regulate science, with Heather Cox Richardson recalling how that worked out for the Soviets with Lysenko;
  • And how Joni Ernst’s “we’re all going to die” is grounded in religion fatalism, and a reliance on belief in Jesus Christ.
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The Trump administration is upfront with its bigotry.

Salon, Blaise Malley, 3 Jun 2025: “Shameful, vindictive erasure”: Hegseth orders removal of Harvey Milk’s name from Navy ship, subtitled “One defense official told reporters that announcing the renaming during Pride Month was intentional”

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Posted in Lunacy, Politics, Religion, Science | Comments Off on Harvey Milk, DEI, Lysenko, Jesus

Feudalism, Suicide, Ignorance, Disease, Conservative DEI

Posted on Tuesday 3 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly

Quite a round of doom and gloom essays today. This is where we are.

  • The drive toward privatization will lead to feudalism;
  • Max Boot on the suicide of a superpower;
  • Paul Krugman on how we’re no longer a serious country, as the world is noticing;
  • Robert Reich on ignorance and tyranny;
  • Jonah Goldberg on how loyalty to Trump is all that matters;
  • Two pieces about Elon Musk: “a legacy of disease, starvation and death”;
  • Jerry Coyne on how the call for conservative balance in academia is just another version of DEI;
  • And the irony of denouncing antisemitism from an administration driven by white supremacy.
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This is what those who want the shrink the government by privatizing everything would lead to.

The Atlantic, Cullen Murphy, 3 Jun 2025: Feudalism Is Our Future, subtitled “What the next Dark Ages could look like”

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Posted in History, Human Nature, Politics | Comments Off on Feudalism, Suicide, Ignorance, Disease, Conservative DEI

MAGA Stereotypes, Whataboutism, Monarchy

Posted on Monday 2 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Paul Krugman on MAGA hate on New York, and the reality;
  • Beware “whataboutism,” which is easy and wrong;
  • Long New Yorker piece about a reactionary blogger’s call for an American monarchy.
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Let’s see…. is it fair to say that conservatives in general, and MAGA types in particular, are more given to stereotypes, especially mean-spirited ones about how awful other people and other places are, than more enlightened people? That’s certainly consistent with simple-minded black-and-white thinking.

Somebody said recently that the US should be more like Florida and less like New York. This is someone in the MAGA-inspired Trump administration, of course, where MAGA seems to define itself by what it hates.

Paul Krugman, 2 Jun 2025: Hating New York, subtitled “What we can learn from a MAGA obsession”

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Rubber-Stamps, Clones, Conformity, and Fate

Posted on Sunday 1 June 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • How Republicans loyal to Trump want Congress to rubber-stamp his every proposal, never mind America’s system of government;
  • Trump thinks Biden was executed in 2020 and was replaced by a robotic clone;
  • Trump has great ambitions to carve up the world, but he’s too dumb (why don’t his fans realize this?);
  • Republicans would ban student clubs, to enforce conformity to the tribe;
  • More about Joni Ernst and “we all are going to die”.
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Following up on yesterday’s item by Peter Wehner about how Republicans no longer believe in the rule of law. (These examples come along every day. This one, though posted a couple days ago, is on the front page of today’s paper.)

NY Times, Anne Karni, 29 May 2025: For These Trump Voters, a Rubber-Stamp Congress Is a Key Demand, subtitled “In a recent pair of focus groups, voters loyal to President Trump judged members of Congress almost entirely according to whether they backed him — and rejected lawmakers who dared to dissent.”

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Fareed Zakaria, Peter Wehner, Brian Tyler Cohen, and Anton Bruckner

Posted on Saturday 31 May 2025 by Mark R. Kelly
  • Fareed Zakaria on Trump vs. Harvard;
  • Peter Wehner on how Republican principles gave way to Trump;
  • And so now there is justice for Trump supporters, and justice for others;
  • “Happy Memorial Day”
  • Brian Tyler Cohen about Trump’s confusion about “asylum”;
  • And an anecdote about the MAGA thought process;
  • And Bruckner 4, movement 2. The slow movements are the best.
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Fareed Zakaria (whose book I admired here) on the Trump/Harvard situation.

Washington Post, Fareed Zakaria, 30 May 2025: Trump’s war on Harvard is bizarre — and incredibly damaging, subtitled “He is wrecking American competitiveness.”

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