I’m sure refugees are deeply grateful to have such respectful, serious advocates.
This is the most ridiculous, stupid and counterproductive mother’s day ad ever.
Ian McEwan gets a C+ for an analysis of his own novel. It’s not as big of a deal as people make it sound. Writers tend to be as good at analysing their own work as surgeons are at operating on themselves.
A single study that the Wikipedia cited 2,8 million times. It’s easy to guess its subject before even seeing the link.
It’s even kind of touching to see how desperately The Nation fellates the Russians.
I had no idea Julia Kristeva was a snitch. Everything else about her stinks, too. Unfortunately, one is often forced to cite her by forces beyond one’s control.
On turning 40: I love such posts by happy, wonderful people. Happy birthday!
Not very recent but fun. A middle-aged woman pretended to be a high school cheerleader.
Clarissa's Blog 
Discovered this magazine recently and I’m loving it.
Corporations break contracts whenever it serves their self-interest. Individuals shouldn’t hesitate to do the same…
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/you-should-care-about-your-bank-exactly-as-much-as-they-care-about-you
“It’s certainly not a moral failing to be unable to pay back your debts, nor is it a moral failing to choose not to pay back your debts. The people and institutions most responsible for pushing the idea that one must pay back one’s debts are, unsurprisingly, the lenders. And while the lenders are out moralizing about how their customers must pay or else they’re irresponsible deadbeats, corporations, including the lenders themselves, frequently refuse to pay money they owe even when they can afford to do so. ”
Critics of the left aren’t oppressed and they don’t believe in “rational debate.”
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/pretty-loud-for-being-so-silenced
The people challenging the political consensus are the ones you won’t hear about on television…
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2018/05/the-real-dangerous-ideas
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Nathan Robinson’s piece is either dishonest or uninformed to a weird degree. For every celebrity who has managed to escape from the wrath of the social-justicey Komsomol, there is a crowd of poor bastards who didn’t. I highly recommend the book Galileo’s Middle Finger by Alice Dreger. There are many stories in it of scholars, scientists, intellectuals who were destroyed and eviscerated because of some innocent statement that the “progressive” fanatics latched on to hound and bully them.
This is very real and nothing is gained by pretending it isn’t.
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Yeah, reminds me of that old Willie Nelson song, “Mamas, Don’t Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys.” (Nelson’s song was a much bigger hit!)
You’ve probably seen this idiot Tom Steyer’s ads on your television. He’s throwing away millions of dollars of his own money urging viewers to sign his petition to be sent to congress demanding Trump’s impeachment — as if congressmen are going to make a decision that historic and drastic based on anything as trivial as a list of names on a piece if paper!
BY THE WAY, CLARISSA, HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY TO YOU 🙂 🙂
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This is the most ridiculous, stupid and counterproductive mother’s day ad ever.
It’s not meant to reach people on the fence or any one who could actually be a subject of that ad. I honestly have never seen that ad before but that’s because I either stream online with all the ad-blockers in existence or I use a DVR. If they were going for satire, she needed to be oblivious that her parenting sucked and super defensive, freaking out that her kid did something monstrous. How many parents actually take responsibility for the results of their terrible parenting?
Sometimes I think about my coworker’s kid. He and his cousin took a firecracker, stuffed it up a frog’s cloaca and lit the fuse. She didn’t really see anything wrong with it. I’m sure they grew up to be healthy, well adjusted adults. Sure.
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John ‘I don’t support torture’ McCain.
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https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/amazon-used-neo-nazi-guards-to-keep-immigrant-workforce-under-control-in-germany-8495843.html
Amazon ‘used neo-Nazi guards to keep immigrant workforce under control’ in Germany
Internet giant investigates abuse claims by foreign workers in its German warehouses
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A nice short story:
Appointment With Love by Sulamith Ish-Kishor
http://janice142.com/JoyPage/AppointmentWithLove.htm
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Fascinating on Kristeva. I see there’s reporting on this but haven’t found commentary on it outside this Commentary piece — have you / has anyone?
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The question is why she agreed to collaborate with the secret police. There was zero danger if one said no in those years. People didn’t do it because of threats but to get rewards.
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I always said this person was reactionary and counterrevolutionary and it cost me a few grades. However, it is possible, as we can see, that I may have been at least partly right.
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I’m to dumb to know who Kristeva is, but….
when looking at claims of collaboration I don’t necessarily believe old documents,
I don’t think that the communists were any more competent at keeping truthful documentation than they were at anything else,
with recruiters being under constant pressure to get collaborators I assume some percentage of the material is just made up the same way that a good percentage of what collaborators told them was probably made up,
and if she did collaborate it may have been to protect people she knew still in Bulgaria (because of course they would make threats against them)
The foundation and working of communism is of such profound dishonesty that it takes a sober and calm head to look at the evidence on the whole and in context to be able to make any sense of it.
I’m not defending her as such, I’m just saying that communist records are probably about as reliable as twitter outrage there’s usually something there but not exactly what it seems on the surface
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That’s interesting although my snarky first reaction was, I wonder whether records of my university and the local oil companies are any more reliable. That is: I would bet they are as unreliable but it would be interesting to study different styles of unreliability.
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Actual quote from Hagee:
“..Hagee’s comments that Adolf Hitler had been fulfilling God’s will by hastening the desire of Jews to return to Israel in accordance with biblical prophecy.
“God says in Jeremiah 16: ‘Behold, I will bring them the Jewish people again unto their land that I gave to their fathers. … Behold, I will send for many fishers, and after will I send for many hunters. And they the hunters shall hunt them.’ That would be the Jews. … Then God sent a hunter. A hunter is someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter,” Hagee said, according to a transcript of his sermon.”
But he’s chummy with Netanyahu because he ‘supports Israel’. lol
https://twitter.com/BurkeCNN/status/995858004300967936
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Thanks for linking to my birthday post! It’s been a great first week in my 40s!
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Happy birthday! It’s a fantastic post and a great blog.
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