That's the kind of western conceit that blinded the west to the threat of Islamic terrorism in the years approaching 9/11. It's a sort of Bug Blatter Beast of Traal logic: "If I don't believe in a god, therefore no one else does either; if my invocations of religion are cynical, so are everyone's."

It sums up where I am pretty neatly insofar as I want nothing to do with either of them, the one a bland modern contrivance, the other an atavistic relic of a past I thought we'd outgrown as a species, and it's depressing, sometimes, seeing how popular they are.

Technically he's right: His administration is "the talk of the world." Just—not how he means.

Sigh. Better buy that Band-Maid merch before August 1.

No, it doesn't. Rather, it comes down to whether people who *aren't* like us can be detached from the Trump coalition and persuaded to vote against him.

Really? Anger is the thing of which we need most right now?

Calibrate your enthusiasm.

And to think these people don't think they're in a cult.

Federal health authorities should treat it as a public health issue. Other parts of the federal apparatus can treat it as a different kind of problem. We can do both. I have no problem with appropriate parts of the latter investigating how it started, and finding patient zero is valuable.

Or just repugnant.

Outrageous.

The judges in these cases should move as quickly as they would want judges to be moving if it was they themselves who had been extraordarily renditioned—because in the days to come, it very well might be them.

Move. Faster.

The Supreme Court said that, being equally divided, it didn't have a majority to reverse the decision below. Nothing more. It happens.

This is normal. This is literally the way all 4-4 cases are dismissed.

Jesus Christ, it's Air America all over again. They've learned nothing.

I was a Metallica and Anthrax guy. I never understood Slayer, nor or its appeal. I understood why people liked Megadeth, but I never did.

To use an Amos-ism, people are caught up in the churn. The rules have changed, and people soaked in the old ways can't adapt. Change or die.