Today's Winner

Charlie Pierce is good clear voice in a very dull crowd, and wins Best Blog Post today.

Being our semi-regular weekly survey of the state of Our National Dialogue which, of course, is what the Penguins would have sung, had they recorded "Derp Angel."

We were roaming Iowa watching live politics all weekend, so we only caught a smidgen of a crumb of the Sunday Showz. Which is to say, we only caught a little, but we caught enough to hand the House Cup over to CBS, where John Dickerson continues to adjust the casters on the chair once occupied by former Angevin minstrel Bob Schieffer. After a pretty good bipartisan dose of the old boogedy-boogedy, Dickerson brought out the panel, and we heard this from Ruth Marcus, scourge of teenaged potty-mouths everywhere.

"This was a very ugly week for Republicans in terms of their response on refugees and I think it was something that was exacerbated by the failure of President Obama to explain to people that we weren't crazy to be nervous but to understand their nervousness and to explain it away."​

Holy Third Way No Labels! If that isn't the perfect distillation of the vaporlock caused by Beltway conventional wisdom, I don't know what is. (It's even worse than the hairball Fournier coughed up on the same subject, over at the Overlook Hotel, where my man Chuck Todd always has been the caretaker.) Apparently, it either has escaped Ruth's notice, or she thinks it's impolite to mention, that the Republican party is completely out of its mind, and that its current front-runner, the Libidinous Visitor, is one step away from invading Ethiopia. How in Broder's name is the president in anyway responsible for the xenophobic rantings of a party gone mad? I know the president has mad Kenyan telepathic skillz, but what precisely would Ruth have him say? "Only worry a little, Americans. We are extremely unlikely to be overrun by exploding Syrian toddlers"? Jesus, these people…

Here's a tip, gang. Short of "I resign," there is nothing the president can say that will stop the Republicans from mongering fear and mongering war and just plain making stuff up. The people who believe this indigestible fried crud are going to believe it no matter what this president says or does. The level of anti-Islamic panic is going to remain the same because it is an election year, and because the Republican field is now led by a guy wrapping himself in out and out fascism, and doing it for laughs. And that's the double truth, Ruth.

Music

I proclaim this to be Dylan Day.  No particular reason.  Just cuz.

Shelter From The Storm --Bob

Buckets Of Rain (cover) --Wendy Bucklew

Things Have Changed --Bob

I'll Be Your Baby Tonight (cover) --Nora Jones

To Ramona (cover) --The Flying Burrito Brothers

Most Of The Time --Bob

You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go (cover) --Shawn Colvin

Some Pix

Let's Throw A Study Into It

Nobody west of about Cairo knows more than this guy - Juan Cole:

1. Terrorism or hirabah is forbidden in Islamic law, which groups it with brigandage, highway robbery and extortion rackets– any illicit use of fear and coercion in public spaces for money or power. The principle of forbidding the spreading of terror in the land is based on the Qur’an (Surah al-Ma’ida 5:33–34). Prominent [pdf] Muslim legal scholar Sherman Jackson writes, “The Spanish Maliki jurist Ibn `Abd al-Barr (d. 464/ 1070)) defines the agent of hiraba as ‘Anyone who disturbs free passage in the streets and renders them unsafe to travel, striving to spread corruption in the land by taking money, killing people or violating what God has made it unlawful to violate is guilty of hirabah . . .”

2. Terrorism is above all murder. Murder is strictly forbidden in the Qur’an. 5:53 says, “… whoso kills a soul, unless it be for murder or for wreaking corruption in the land, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind; and he who saves a life, it shall be as if he had given life to all mankind,” Qur’an 6:151 says, “and do not kill a soul that God has made sacrosanct, save lawfully.” (i.e. murder is forbidden but the death penalty imposed by the state for a crime is permitted).

The list has 10 items on it, and they all seem pretty clear.

But there's this weird thing going on right now.  The debate over what is or isn't Islam - or Christianity or any other religion - is starting to sound a lot like one giant logical fallacy of "No True Scotsman", with a dash of "False Equivalence".

ISIL is to Islam what the KKK is to Christianity.

Real Christians don't fire bomb Planned Parenthood Clinics, the same as Real Muslims don't hijack airplanes and crash them into American office buildings.

In the end, we're back arguing degrees of fucked-up-edness concerning the other guy's religion.  We're only saying this or that religious nonsense is less bad than this or that other religious nonsense.  --Update: It's all nonsense, and btw, it's not the same as having to choose the lesser of two evils.  Politics gets evil enough all by itself - we don't need the extra layers of bullshit that (really) only religion can bring.

Mostly, we gotta stop pretending that anybody's religion makes for good government.

Government is about law, and law is about what you can prove, out in the open, where everybody can see it.

Let's get the debate back where it belongs.

Getting It Right

I really dig this kinda shit even tho' it usually gives me something of a headache.

Mary Norris, aka The Comma Queen:

Watch this on The Scene.

My mnemonic is:

He = Who

Him = Whom

Key phrase: Err on the side of 'who' - it's better to be casual than it is to be super wrong.

Today's Best Rant

Reprinted here in its original form:

JESUS CHRIST THE SYRIAN REFUGEES AREN'T COMING TO WHATEVER GLORIFIED TRAILER PARK / FEMA CAMP / OPEN AIR METH LAB OR DYSTOPIAN INNER RING TRACT HOUSING AND STRIP MALL FART-FUCK OF A SUBURB YOU CALL HOME, THEY WOULD TAKE ONE LOOK AT YOUR SAD EXCUSE FOR A LIFE AND THINK "I'LL GO BACK AND TAKE MY CHANCES, DID YOU SEE THAT WOMAN WITH THE 'BAD BITCH' TATTOO HER TORSO LOOKED LIKE SOMEONE WAS BAKING BREAD IN A HALTER TOP." THE FACT THAT YOU GOT A SECOND HARDEES (NEXT TO THE PELLAGRA CLINIC) DOES NOT MAKE PIGSKNUCKLE COUNTY AN APPEALING TERRORIST TARGET, IF ISIS ATTACKS THEY WILL ATTACK A CITY BECAUSE CITIES HAVE LANDMARKS AND PEOPLE WHO WALK PLACES. WHY WOULD ANYONE EVEN BOTHER TRYING TO KILL YOU WHEN THEY COULD SIT BACK AND LET CONGESTIVE HEART FAILURE DO THE JOB, BE SURE TO BUY MORE GUNS THOUGH THEY'RE REALLY KEEPING YOUR VINYL SIDED RANCH HOUSE SAFE. YES THERE ARE PEOPLE OUT TO GET YOU BUT THEY'RE NOT CALLED "ISIS" THEY'RE CALLED THE COLLECTION AGENCY AND YOUR GUNS WILL ONLY IMPRESS THEM TO THE EXTENT THAT THEY WILL FETCH SOMETHING AT AUCTION WHEN YOUR PROPERTY IS SEIZED TO PAY THE MEDICAL BILLS FOR YOUR LAST SIX ANGIOPLASTIES BUT YOU REALLY SHOWED OBUMMER BY NOT SIGNING UP FOR INSURANCE YOU DANIEL FUCKIN' BOONE RUGGED INDIVIDUALIST YOU.

hat tips = bluegal and Crooks & Liars 

Can We Chill A Little?

From The Migration Policy Institute:

The reality is this: The United States has resettled 784,000 refugees since September 11, 2001. In those 14 years, exactly three resettled refugees have been arrested for planning terrorist activities—and it is worth noting two were not planning an attack in the United States and the plans of the third were barely credible.

As the more than 4 million refugees who have spilled out of Syria overwhelm neighboring countries and roil Europe, many Americans have been asking what more the United States can and should do to help cope with this crisis. Fewer than 2,000 Syrians have been resettled in this country since the Assad regime’s crackdown on peaceful protests ignited a savage civil war in 2011.

The most common arguments against resettling more Syrian refugees, made by some Republican presidential candidates and members of Congress, is that the resettlement program could be a path for infiltration into the United States by ISIS or other terrorists. But the refugee resettlement program is the least likely avenue for a terrorist to choose. Refugees who are selected for resettlement to the United States go through a painstaking, many-layered review before they are accepted. The FBI, Department of Homeland Security, State Department, and national intelligence agencies independently check refugees’ biometric data against security databases. The whole process typically takes 18-24 months, with high hurdles for security clearance.

So lemme see - 3 bad guys outa 784,000 is ... uhmm ... less than .0004%

We're gonna let some short-fingered vulgarian like Trump get our panties in a bunch over something that's about as likely to happen as dying in a shark attack at the YMCA in Topeka?

Y'know, that .0004% figure seems to pop up with some regularity.  I'm thinking that's the same number we get when we look empirically at "Voter Fraud"(?)  Hmmm.  I'm not ready to say there's a real pattern, but there seems to be something - a kind of threshold ; or more like a Bullshit Benchmark; an upper limit that indicates that this is so unlikely to happen, it's safe for us to jump all over it and then take credit for "preventing it".

And here's how I see that working now, btw (this keeps Glenn Beck and Alex Jones and certain god-knobbers in bidness, and bidness is fucking great): 

• First, you "warn" the rubes about the stoopidest shit you can think of - radicalized librul UFO pilots are plotting to swoop down on our homes while we're at church and spike our favorite frozen breakfast entrees with MDMA and fluoride so we'll be dull-witted when Obama's secret Muslim Citizen's Patrols break down our doors to confiscate our guns and rape our house pets.
• Wait for a bit, while being diligent and watchful - reporting "further details as we learn them".
• When it's run its course - and you know this because your marketeers and their army of unpaid recently graduated "interns" tell you the donations tied directly to that particular impending disaster start to drop off - you make a splashy presentation about how your good-and-loyal-real-American listeners have once again thwarted the evil genius du jour, and you're just so darned proud (but humbled) to have the privilege of leading and I hafta stop this now before I make myself puke.

And there ya have it.  The less likely something is to actually happen, the more we can expect to be loudly and wildly "warned" about it by people who have nothing more in mind than looking for their next shot at fleecing the rubes.

Try not to be the rube.

Today's Idle Speculation

I remember quite a bit from all that sales training I went thru for all those years, and the big one is that Communications is:

• 10% words
• 20% Tone & Inflection
• 70% Body Language

None of that makes me no kinda special or expert or nuthin', but when something like this pops up right in front of me, I can't help but notice.

(update)

I'll let Eddie Izzard 'splain it all to youse.

Today's Quote

The Prez:

“We are not well served when, in response to a terrorist attack, we descend into fear and panic. We don’t make good decisions if it’s based on hysteria or an exaggeration of risks.

“When individuals say we should have a religious test and that only Christians, proven Christians should be admitted, that’s offensive.

“I cannot think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL [ISIS] than some of the rhetoric that’s been coming out of here during the course of this debate.

“ISIL seeks to exploit the idea that there’s war between Islam and the west, and when you see individuals in positions of responsibility suggesting Christians are more worthy of protection than Muslims are in a war-torn land, that feeds the Isil narrative. It’s counter-productive. And it needs to stop.

“And I would add, these are the same folks who suggested they’re so tough that just ‘talk to Putin’ or staring down ISIL [will work] … but they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America as part of our tradition of compassion. At first they were too scared of the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are scared of three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”

Where's that guy been for the last 7 years? 

Today's Podcast

OUR NATIONAL CONVERSATION ABOUT CONVERSATIONS ABOUT RACE

Authors Baratunde Thurston (How To Be Black), Raquel Cepeda (Bird Of Paradise: How I Became Latina) and Tanner Colby (Some Of My Best Friends Are Black) host a lively multiracial, interracial conversation about the ways we can’t talk, don’t talk, would rather not talk, but intermittently, fitfully, embarrassingly do talk about culture, identity, politics, power, and privilege in our pre-post-yet-still-very-racial America. This show is "About Race."