Rationally Thinking Out Loud
Just one guy thinking out loud on a the issues in religion, atheism, politics & science The Blog ArticlesFeatured Pages TOCOpinion | Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’ – The New York Times
Opinion | Warren Buffett and the Myth of the ‘Good Billionaire’
Warren Buffett appears to be the safest kind of billionaire: the good kind. Mr. Buffett is neither Zuckerbergian messiah nor Musky provocateur, neither Bezosist space cadet nor Sacklerian undertaker. He is, or seems to be, quiet, humble, indifferent to money, philanthropic and critical of the system that allowed him to rise.
The Last Days of the President – The Atlantic
The quote is from this Atlantic article…
The Last Days of the President
After leaving the presidency in 1969, Lyndon Johnson lived out the remaining four years of his life in retirement. One of his former speechwriters recounts how he spent it. On the night before Christmas, 1971, Lyndon Baines Johnson played the most improbable role of his varied and controversial life.
Opinion | What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor – The New York Times
Opinion | What the Rich Don’t Want to Admit About the Poor
I’m not going to pretend that I know how to interpret the jobs and inflation data of the past few months. My view is that this is still an economy warped by the pandemic, and that the dynamics are so strange and so unstable that it will be some time before we know its true state.
Clinton’s Responsibility
Clinton’s Responsibility
In 1992, when Bill Clinton announced that he planned to “end welfare as we know it,” he was taking up a unique position for a Democrat. The party of Lyndon Johnson typically had to fight hard to preserve the country’s limited social safety net; it was unprecedented for a Democrat to strongly disparage welfare and vow to destroy it.
Trump Cower Moscow – PREVAIL by Greg Olear
…By failing to properly inform the American public of the true nature of Donald John Trump, our media, our intelligence services, and our FBI allowed a Russian asset to take the White House. Those three institutions failed, catastrophically, and their combined failures cost almost half a million lives and came this close to ending the republic.
James Comey, the FBI Director, disclosed the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails, but not the far more dangerous one into Trump’s ties to Russia; that dunderheaded decision effectively handed Trump the presidency. The intelligence services did not speak out in 2016, because of the strict practice of not discussing counterintelligence cases—as if there could be a bigger counterintelligence failure than a Russian puppet installed in the White House who subsequently killed half a million of us. The media didn’t speak out because of institutional fear, or shoddy leadership, or worry about ratings and clicks, or laziness, or incompetence, or corruption, or all of the above. The Russia story exposes Trump, but it also highlights these enormous, embarrassing institutional failures.
By the grace of God and Nancy Pelosi, or else just dumb luck, we made it through four years of Trump with the republic intact. But if we do not learn from our mistakes, another Trump will come along—a Josh Hawley, maybe—who will succeed in ending the American experiment. It’s time for these institutions to come clean and admit they fucked up. The first step to recovery, after all, is admitting there is a problem.
Trump Cower Moscow
IN THE EARLY 90s, a New York executive who worked for a prominent financial services company flew to London to attend a conference. While there, he hobnobbed with another executive, an American who worked in the firm’s Moscow office. Accompanying the Moscow executive were some Russian nationals-KGB officers moonlighting as security and logistics detail for the company.
Does Capitalism Actually Reduce Poverty? (with Richard Wolff) – YouTube
‘No Blame?’ ABC News finds 54 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults. – ABC News
‘No Blame?’ ABC News finds 54 cases invoking ‘Trump’ in connection with violence, threats, alleged assaults.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly distanced himself from acts of violence in communities across America, dismissing critics who point to his rhetoric as a potential source of inspiration or comfort for anyone acting on even long-held beliefs of bigotry and hate.
A basic fact about Trump is now clear | Tampa Bay Time
A basic fact about Trump is now clear | Column
The behavior and rhetoric of Donald Trump and his most ardent partisans since he was defeated for re-election have brought into sharp focus a fact that has lurked in the background since the day he became a candidate in the 2016 presidential election: Trumpism is a specifically American iteration of generic fascism.
Astrophysicist Debunks Horoscopes with Basic Astronomy (+ SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT!) – YouTube
Fox Geezer Syndrome | The American Conservative
Fox Geezer Syndrome | The American Conservative
A reader sent me an e-mail about the Rush Limbaugh caller who, near tears, said he was prepared to die for Donald Trump. I wrote about the guy here, and offered a reader’s thesis that the caller was a man who had been disappointed by the church, and looked for a substitute.
Rally brings together Trump voters, far-right leaders in Washington, DC – CNN
Washington, DC, rally brings together Trump voters and far-right leaders
Thousands President Donald Trump’s supporters of all stripes, including right wing and far right groups, rallied in Washington, DC, on Saturday to protest the election results.
Who Has Profited Most From the Trump Presidency?
The Winners of Trump’s Washington
This article was featured in One Great Story , New York ‘s reading recommendation newsletter. Sign up here to get it nightly. A collaboration with WNYC’s Trump, Inc. podcast. On April 30, 2018, nine top executives from T-Mobile checked in to the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., with their names on a list of VIP arrivals.