Todd's Mischief Blog

If men were allowed to be themselves, the stench alone would be overwhelming.

from Twitter Left: “ROSEANNE is an attempt to whitewash middle-American bigotry.” Right: “ROSEANNE is an attempt to erase middle-American values.” *** My take: ROSEANNE sits squarely between those poles, and a lot can be gleaned if we look at where it sits and why rather than trying to fit it somewhere else. *** In 1988 when it premiered, ROSEANNE had one central theme, the one everyone still associates it with, the struggle of working class families. *** In 1988, Roseanne had a factory job she hated and Dan had apparently sufficient if irregular work as a contractor. This was how “the struggle” was defined in the Reagan era. *** As the show moved from the Bush 41 years into the Clinton years, the Connors’ lot improved little, though by this point the couple were serial entrepreneurs with a shared penchant for picking crummy business partners. Again, this was “the struggle” in that time. *** It was in the Clinton years that ROSEANNE moved into its “very special episode” phase, tackling...

from Twitter Notorious Augusto P (@GenAugustoP) Mar 30 2018 Protectionism isn't "crass." It's the American school economic principle that goverened the U.S. and was a staple of Republican party from Hamilton, Clay and Lincoln through McKinley, Coolidge and Reagan. My reply... More to the point, the term “protectionism,” like so many others, is being abused. In the broadest sense, protectionism is any trade policy designed to protect domestic industry. However, this definition is so akin to common sense, it’s rarely used that way. ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ More often, “protectionism” refers to policies that tend to isolate the domestic market from the rest of the world. A basic tariff falls under this definition, as does cancelling a trade agreement. However, even this usage can’t parse whether such moves are justifiable. ₪₪₪₪₪₪₪ Trump’s foreign trade policy, like that of virtually every other country and past president, is mixed. It may be more aggressive than usual for the US, but it ...

from Twitter   Clever and sophisticated satire is not the same as a hoax. ☺☺☺ Soon it will be difficult to tell what is real and what is not. Unreality will be coming at us from all over the political spectrum. Objective reality will start to break down and reality will be whatever someone is having. ☺☺☺ Satire is a tradition older than antiquity, and it has been fooling fools all the while. It is predicated on an objective understanding of what is real in order to poke at artifice. ☺☺☺ Sweeping away satire is not protective of reality. It’s giving into the notion that reality cannot be investigated and agreed upon. In fact, it seems to be the only tool which causes the otherwise postmodernist to insist upon a single interpretation of things. ☺☺☺ I love satire. It's an important part of free speech. It's problematic when its intention is to deceive. It becomes a lie and no longer commentary. There is a distinction. ☺☺☺  Satire must at least hope to deceive a few if it is to be...

This is the future that liberals want. They just don’t understand it.

from Twitter The way that pundits, politicians, and frankly most people measure political success is so absurd, it can hardly be applied to any other facet of life. 🏆🏆🏆 To use a common metaphor, imagine you’re taking a roadtrip to Scottsdale (or the destination of your choosing). Your plan is to take the interstate all the way there, stopping as little as possible. 🏆🏆🏆 While en route, a pileup accident ahead of you on the interstate causes a leg of it to close, so you must take a detour. At this point, if we were measuring success by political standards, the trip to Scottsdale is already a failure. 🏆🏆🏆 The pundits and your opponents all line up to mock you for not having the foresight to predict a sudden road closure. The trip is marked as ill-fated from the start, a fiasco that should have never been undertaken. 🏆🏆🏆 But it doesn’t stop there. Let’s say the pile up is so bad that you might consider abandoning the trip. Well, the press would have a field day with that! But l...

from Twitter Rafael "Ted" Cruz picking on Robert "Beto" O'Rourke's nickname is only a dumb move if Republicans and Democrats play by the same rules. But they don't. CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) 7 Mar 2018 DNC Chairman Tom Perez says Sen. Ted Cruz’s mocking of his challenger Rep. Beto O’Rourke’s name shows “Ted Cruz is desperate” http://cnn.it/2oZtX5E  ♜♞♝♚♛♝♞♜ Republicans, according to their own rules, may vote for anyone of any race. Republicans know from recent experience that a man who shares his father's name might go by a middle name or a nickname instead. ♖♘♗♔♕♗♘♖ Republicans are also likely to realize that Ted is a common nickname for Edward in both English and Spanish. There are no cognitive barriers for Republicans to vote for Ted Cruz. ♜♞♝♚♛♝♞♜ On the other hand, Democrats, according to their own rules, ought to support a minority candidate over a white one. Democrats also frown on cultural appropriation, such as an Irish-American taking on ...

The Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930, of Ferris Beuller fame, seems to be about the only point of reference that most people have on the newly and unexpectedly hot topic of tariffs. (Future readers, Donald Trump just proposed a 25% tax on foreign steel.) Obviously, you can't look at the date of the Act and not connect it to the Great Depression, the greatest economic disaster in (barely) living memory. The thing is, Smoot-Hawley is linked to the Depression chronologically more than anything. It's accurate to say that it did nothing to solve the economic crisis, and even to say that it contributed to its prolonging. Even so, tariffs were pretty much the norm before the 1930s and well into the 1940s. Even if we cede that tariffs and subsequent trade wars were the proximate cause of the Great Depression (they weren't), the chart shows that Smoot-Hawley was more-or-less a last hurrah of a prior-to economic norm. They shocked economies all over the world by imposing a 50% tax on everyth...

from Twitter Hold hope, Kaiju. There are places even Armageddon cannot reach. Kaiju (@kaijubushi)  1 Mar 2018 I’ll see her again, if not in this life then the next. My hybrid electric chariot and I have things to do until then. The world’s on fire, and I’ve got nothing but time to burn. 🔥🔥🔥 If there is one thing they drummed into us, it's that what affects us here doesn't affect anyone anywhere else. I suppose it works in reverse, too. 🔥🔥🔥 To management, it doesn't matter if there's hail, flooding, three feet of snow. You get your ass in here and you answer the phone. 🔥🔥🔥 So that's what we did, dutifully, and well beyond the point where the only calls coming in were incoherent ravings. 🔥🔥🔥 Even as the convoy rumbled past our low rise, we did our best. "Sorry, could you repeat that? There was some noise on my end." 🔥🔥🔥 Somewhere along the way, the job changed, even if the work didn't. 🔥🔥🔥 New scripts were handed out, still warm from t...