Pun Salad

⁶ The mocker seeks wisdom and finds none,
    but knowledge comes easily to the discerning.

I really have my doubts whether knowledge comes easily to anyone, even the discerning. Maybe they had lower standards for knowledge back in Ancient Israel. After all, there was less stuff to know.

The president divides the Right while he unifies the Left. Praise Trump on his controversial statements and you risk alienating suburban Republicans, particularly women. Criticize Trump and you risk not only his wrath, but also the wrath of the portion of his base that demands rhetorical fealty to Trump in all things. Because this constituency has disproportionate influence in conservative media and GOP primaries, the safest course of action is often silence, or some clever dodge like, “I don’t respond to tweets.”

The GOP has created a kind of collective-action problem for itself. By making these individual decisions out of self-interest in the moment, the party as a whole ends up getting pulled in a direction not of its own choosing.

I get it. And I'm not in the set of people Jonah is criticizing. But I would be dismayed if (somehow) it became part of my job description to give a thumbs-up-or-down for everything Trump says or does. Saying "Yeah, he can be an idjit" over and over… yeesh.

Republicans are once again proving why they actually deserve the label of the biggest swamp spenders. The latest gigantic omnibus spending bill would fund the government for the remainder of the fiscal year—with a price tag of $1.3 trillion. That doesn't include entitlement funding or payments for the interest on our debt—which continue to grow and drive our debt higher, as Republicans have apparently given up on slowing down spending.

I am in complete agreement with Veronique's further observation: "Democrats are, of course, loving it."

Pun Salad Truth-O-Meter: True. Yet all three principles will be ignored by agenda-driven "research".

CALL ME A KILLJOY but I am sick to death of hearing about Karl Marx. I am sick of his name, his -isms, his undoubted genius, and his “philosophy.” I am sick of him “having reason,” as the French say, or “being right.” But most of all I am sick of his “relevance.”

As someone whose parents were born and grew up in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, and who missed the same fate by the skin of her teeth, I know perfectly well what Marx’s relevance amounts to. Marx gave it a name, even if for him it meant something else than it did for the people of Yugoslavia. I am talking about the oft-quoted and seldom understood “religion of everyday life.”

A bitterly amusing essay about the guy that the lefties can't seem to let go of.