Steve Thorngate
Other people saying things
"The real-life adult answer would have acknowledged that (a) we don't have the capability to save Kobani, and (b) our NATO ally Turkey has chosen not to save Kobani. ...
In which liberal commentators write strange things about Christians
I don't have much use for the notion that hostility toward religion generally or Christianity in particular pervades American media. Yes, Bill Maher can be kind of horrible, but there's really just the one of him on TV. What is common (if still hardly pervasive) among left-leaning commentators is an attitude toward religion that includes little hatred or vitriol but plenty of puzzlement, ignorance, and mild condescension.
Here's an odd example by science writer Brian Palmer, on medical missionaries in Africa:
...Haïm Korsia's solidarity
In case you missed this last week: Haïm Korsia, the recently elected chief rabbi of France, used the occasion of an event commemmorating Holocaust victims to ...
"Too high a price on making sure our children are disciplined"
In all the commentary around Adrian Peterson and his son, one of the more interesting threads has been about the particular history of African American parenting and corporal punishment. Charles Barkley weighed in of course; so did Michael Eric Dyson. Jamelle Bouie pushes back against Dyson in this thoughtful post.
But the most provocative thing I’ve seen is by Brittney Cooper.
Other people saying things
"My anecdotal gestalt impression is this SC shooting is actually a Road to Damascus moment for a nontrivial number of conservatives...
Against corporal punishment, but not very
About a dozen years ago, I was back home visiting from my young-adult life in the city, sitting around drinking coffee with my mom and my sisters, when I suddenly heard my much-younger b...
Poverty's down, but not enough
Some modest good news this week from the Census Bureau [pdf]: for the first time since the Great Recession began, the poverty rate is down a little and the child poverty rate is down a little more. The latter was driven by a bit of job growth and—among families with children—higher income.
But at this pace it'll take years for the poverty rate to get back down just to where it was in 2000.
Obama won't do what the people want until after November. Congress just won't do it at all.
“There is something odd,” writes Ezra Klein, “about accusing Republicans of po...
Other people saying things
"If and when a majority of Palestinians start demanding the rights of citizens within...
Other people saying things
"If only the real Jackie Robinson could pop up as a public service announc...
New batch of music reviews
I'm on vacation for the next week, so this is just a quick post to point to something from the print magazine: every so often I write a music column with a couple very short reviews and one slightly longer one.
Bluesamericana, by Keb’ Mo’
You can call Keb’ Mo’ a lot of things, but “unpredictable” isn’t one of them. His blues tradition is more down-home than hard-charging, more Delta than Chicago....
A "loophole" that helps hungry Americans buy food
On Friday, President Obama signed the 2014 farm bill into law, complete with a change to the food stamps program intended to save the federal government $8.7 billion. Republicans wanted much deeper cuts, and some of us liberals thought it was unwise to make any cuts to a vital, extremely effective antipoverty program (crazy bleeding hearts). So, yay compromise. If that’s your thing, you can join the president in praising Congress for being bipartisan, solving problems, etc.
Some lighter reading on violence and race
Joe Klein:
Blacks represent 13% of the population but commit 50% of the murders; 90% of black victims are murdered by other blacks. The facts suggest that history is not enough to explain this social disaster.
Matthew Yglesias:
Yet the disturbing truth, according to the FBI's most recent homicide statistics, is that the United States is in the wake of an epidemic of white-on-white crime.
Other people saying things
"You don’t get $321 in fines and fees and 3 warrants per household from an about-average crime rate. You get numbers like this from bullshit arrests for jaywalking and constant 'low level harassment involving traffic stops, court appearances, high fines, and the threat of jail for failure to pay.'”