The world is a cacophony of noise, and we learn to tune it out. My professional background is news reporting and law; so I was trained to be careful about factual accuracy, and reach conclusions by a process of fact-based reasoning. In my lines of work, getting the facts right mattered. But then, th[...]
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August 19th, 2022 - 2:10 pm § in Politics
You can’t judge a candidate by his Bible quotes
Joshua Schopp (photo, left), 20, is a Republican school board candidate in Central, Louisiana, a Baton Rouge suburb. Living in Washington state, I don’t see much logic in electing 20-year-olds to school boards, but maybe in Louisiana they already have kids in school by then. In any case, Schop[...]
June 26th, 2022 - 12:27 pm § in Politics
Republicans aren’t for freedom
Republicans have long maintained they’re for individual freedom, but in reality this isn’t absolute, and must be put in context. The context is they want the freedom to do as they please, regardless of the impact on others. This is a one-way street; it doesn’t go in the other direc[...]
Putin likely will survive; what should America do?
The Russian people are being forced to live in a dreamland, whether they want to or not, in which Putin’s aggression against Ukraine is a “sacred” duty of “defending the Motherland” and those supporting Ukraine are “international terrorist gangs.” Moreover, [...]
What Tucker Carlson thinks an “insurrection” is
After noting that, “Several crew members filming a comedy segment at the U.S. Capitol for ‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ were charged with unlawful entry earlier this week,” Huffington Post says Tucker Carlson claimed on his show, “Last night, producers from Steph[...]
The Hunter Biden laptop trail
The purported Hunter Biden laptop, and at least some of the salacious material on it, apparently are authentic, Mother Jones says (in a story here). But the Chinese connection alleged by Trump backers is fake. “The effort to publicize compromising emails, images, and videos from the device in[...]
Still think conservatives believe in “freedom”?
The U.S. Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) is meeting in Hungary, whose strongman is teaching them how to seize power. Read stories here and here Conservatives don’t like social change and want to preserve a way of life they’re comfortable with. But they’re a voting minority, and[...]
Update: $10 gas? Not so fast. Here’s the backstory
A KIRO-TV news story (here) on Friday, May 20, 2022, clarified how that viral story about $10 gas in Washington state got loose into the wild. Their story (edited here for length, and to stay within “fair use” guidelines): ” … [T]here are headlines – not quite correct – t[...]
May 18th, 2022 - 1:17 pm § in Biden, Business, Donald Trump, Economics, Foreign Affairs, Politics, Russia
$10 gas coming to Washington state? Not so fast.
The Daily Mail, a U.K.-based tabloid with a rightwing slant that I sometimes use as a story source (because they publish suspects’ names and publish photos of the bodies when other media won’t) posted the following headline on Wednesday, May 18, 2022 (here): Gas stations in Washington re[...]
May 5th, 2022 - 3:59 pm § in Law and Courts
The issue that’s bigger than abortion
It’s true the conservative justices likely to overturn Roe v. Wade are right-to-lifers. But there’s more going on. While legal analysts like to refer to them as “strict textualists” (i.e., if the Constitution doesn’t explicitly state something, it isn’t there), it[...]