1. Rick Newman of Yahoo! Finance has a handy explainer on “Why We Have a Debt Ceiling in the First Place.” Really it’s an explainer on why no other country, business or entity has such a thing and why no one should.
Every other government passes a budget mandating a certain level of spending. Here in America, we do that in two pieces: First we pass a law saying the government must spend X amount, and then later we amend the debt limit so that government can spend X amount. When we do the first without doing the second, then the government is in a situation in which it is simultaneously legally required to spend X and legally prohibited from doing so. The insanity of that is what we call “American exceptionalism.”
2. Kudos to Amy Mitchell for having the patience to wrestle with the pernicious nonsense of this post from James Prescott. A “Christian worldview,” Prescott says, means that just because something is “ethical, legal, consensual and doesn’t hurt anyone” doesn’t mean it’s permissible. He doesn’t say why this is so, but then I don’t suppose anyone could say why that would be so.
3. I read “Male Gamers Only” by Mallory Ortberg at The Toast, and was prepared to say it was the most pitch-perfect, incisive piece of satire I’d read all day. But then I read “My Female Students Don’t Seem as Impressed With Me as They Used To,” by Mallory Ortberg at The Toast, and now I’m going to call it a tie.
4. All kinds of trigger warnings here for what Emily Bazleton rightly calls an “impressively reported and very upsetting story” from the Kansas City Star’s Dugan Arnett, “Nightmare in Maryville.” Young girls. Football players from politically connected families. No charges. Nodaway County, Missouri, seems to be a place where they breed monsters and then proudly defend them.
5. Defeating the Dragons: “ordeal of the bitter waters, part five”
6. Ta-Nehisi Coates: “What This Cruel War Was Over”
I don’t know if I am effectively communicating what is wrong with that picture and why it is deeply infuriating. If a patriot can stand in front of the White House brandishing the Confederate flag, then the word “patriot” has no meaning. The Nazi flag is offensive because it is a marker of centuries of bigotry elevated to industrialized murder.
But the Confederate flag does not merely carry the stain of slavery, of “useful killing,” but the stain of attempting to end the Union itself. You cannot possibly wave that flag and honestly claim any sincere understanding of your country. It is not possible.
7. This looks horrifying, but not in the way it was intended to be horrifying.
The authors’ site includes endorsements from professional liar Walid Shoebat (who poses as an ex-terrorist, but is not an ex-terrorist).
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