Yes, Virginia, Meet the Press did in fact have Erick Erickson on this past Sunday to discuss civility in politics. John Whitehouse does an excellent job tabulating the many things Mr. Erickson has said which would lead one away from calling upon him to discuss civility in politics, though he leaves off all those times Mr. Erickson called Justice David Souter a "goat-fucking child molester," perhaps out of politeness. Odd how quickly the extremists become mainstream in America. Why, it's almost like Our Glorious Elites are constantly cranking out new extremists so that yesterday's extremists can look moderate!
Surprise, surprise, Amazon tried using an AI program to hire "top talent," but their AI tool showed a disquieting bias against women. And I'm not sure the male-dominated nature of the tech industry explains that, or else their little AI machine wouldn't have docked women for running a women's chess club. And I don't think developing an AI tool that "focuses on diversity" will do the trick, either -- don't people value developing top talent by, you know, meeting and interacting with other people? I guess that's why these big corporations need to pay out absurd bonuses to executives who don't do anything to earn them -- because actually developing the top talent to replace them simply isn't part of their skill set anymore.
Texas Attorney General "Ramps Up Voter Fraud Prosecutions," so far prosecuting as many cases of voter fraud just this year as the state prosecuted over the previous twelve years. But the numbers are still laughably small -- 33 total defendants for 97 prosecutions, in a state with over 15 million registered voters, and that's before we get to the fact that "prosecutions" doesn't mean convictions. But I guess dutiful right-wing liars are already typing out ZOMG TEH VOTUR FRAUDZ IN TEH TEXUZ IZ UP BY TEH 1200 PERCENTZ!!!!!!
Rep. Paul Ryan (E-WI) says that our President "sometimes" foments division with his rallies and "sometimes" fails to try to unify people. Easy to say Mr. Ryan is like the guy who brings a couple of wine coolers to the party two hours after it's over, but then he's also one of the folks who've been causing division in this nation for many years, and the fact that he's not as obnoxious about it doesn't excuse him. In fact, it indicts him further: anyone can pretend to be civilized while acting uncivilized, even if our President seems to find that double game difficult, and Mr. Ryan's meek criticisms exist mainly to promote the fatuous notion that right-wingers disagree with each other in any significant way.
Finally, this lengthy profile of Philadelphia D.A. Larry Krassner -- who, as an opponent of mass incarceration, plans to "reinvent the role of the modern prosecutor" -- has, by my count, at least two major insights. The first, from Mr. Krassner himself, explains that most prosecutors and judges don't change their ways quickly because that would involve "look(ing) back on their entire careers and say(ing) to themselves, did I get it all wrong?" I mean, you or I would have (and perhaps have had!) trouble with that. The second comes from a prosecutor who did do that looking back, and says prosecutors are "judged internally and externally by our convictions and our trial wins, so (they) aren’t really incentivized to be creative or to take risks on people we might not otherwise." Once you know what to fight, you can figure out how to win.
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