Seems fitting and probably should have been predictable – for a believer in the Iron Law of Irony – that an application meant to facilitate blogging, in this case by making aggregation of interesting material an easy “few clicks” operation, would annihilate my blogging. Anyway, is what happened.
Just a quick note on fixing problem affecting one of my favorite WordPress Plug-Ins in use at this site, and possibly affecting many others as well.
A helper function extending the WordPress Amazon Affiliate Tag (Amazify) plug-in to Comment as well as Post text.
Line-by-line on how to write a WordPress filter function utilizing the “the_content” filter hook.
Solution of a problem for bloggers who want to use WordPress Press This on their “shared hosting” accounts at HostGator and possibly at other aggressively security-conscious web hosts.
I learned a lot WordPressing at OT, and wish the best to everyone over there – a group that as a matter of fact still includes me, if in a much-reduced role. So, you’re welcome, and right backatcha.
If any of you human beings have anything to say on the major uptick in use of these commenting features, please let me know. The spiders and robots don’t answer questions directly.
At the point in the post where you want the number-link to appear, type a space then opening double parentheses. Place the text you wish to appear in the footnote after the double parentheses. Close the footnote with closing double parentheses.
To go much further would require a willingness to suspend judgment and start as though at a beginning, yet from closer to an end, on the part of all participants. Yet that requirement, even if the one thing needful, will always be too much to demand of the citizens of a democratic republic, CKM included.
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Ironic how Trump apologists, especially certain types of "American Conservative" paleo-cons, self-styled republican constitutionalists, and diverse fellow travelers all the way extending to everyday "Deplorables" drunkenly hurling foul epithets at campaign reporters, have adopted a main strategic rationale of the despised Neocons and Globalists.
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TV pundits and op-ed writers of every major newspaper epitomize how the Democratic establishment has already reached a consensus: the 2020 nominee must be a centrist, a Joe Biden, Cory Booker or Kamala Harris–type, preferably. They say that Joe Biden should "run because [his] populist image fits the Democrats’ most successful political strategy of the past generation" (David Leonhardt, New York Times), and though Biden "would be far from an ideal president," he "looks most like the person who could beat Trump" (David Ignatius, Washington Post). Likewise, the same elite pundit class is working overtime to torpedo left-Democratic candidates like Sanders.
For someone who was not acquainted with Piketty's paper, the argument for a centrist Democrat might sound compelling. If the country has tilted to the right, should we elect a candidate closer to the middle than the fringe? If the electorate resembles a left-to-right line, and each voter has a bracketed range of acceptability in which they vote, this would make perfect sense. The only problem is that it doesn't work like that, as Piketty shows.
The reason is that nominating centrist Democrats who don't speak to class issues will result in a great swathe of voters simply not voting. Conversely, right-wing candidates who speak to class issues, but who do so by harnessing a false consciousness — i.e. blaming immigrants and minorities for capitalism's ills, rather than capitalists — will win those same voters who would have voted for a more class-conscious left candidate. Piketty calls this a "bifurcated" voting situation, meaning many voters will connect either with far-right xenophobic nationalists or left-egalitarian internationalists, but perhaps nothing in-between.
From: There is hard data that shows that a centrist Democrat would be a losing candidate | Salon.com
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Understanding Trump’s charisma offers important clues to understanding the problems that the Democrats need to address. Most important, the Democratic candidate must convey a sense that he or she will fulfil the promise of 2008: not piecemeal reform but a genuine, full-scale change in America’s way of thinking. It’s also crucial to recognise that, like Britain, America is at a turning point and must go in one direction or another. Finally, the candidate must speak to Americans’ sense of self-respect linked to social justice and inclusion. While Weber’s analysis of charisma arose from the German situation, it has special relevance to the United States of America, the first mass democracy, whose Constitution invented the institution of the presidency as a recognition of the indispensable role that unique individuals play in history.
From: Trump’s Charisma
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[E]ven Fox didn’t tout Bartiromo’s big scoops on Trump’s legislative agenda, because 10 months into the Trump presidency, nobody is so foolish as to believe that him saying, “We’re doing a big infrastructure bill,” means that the Trump administration is, in fact, doing a big infrastructure bill. The president just mouths off at turns ignorantly and dishonestly, and nobody pays much attention to it unless he says something unusually inflammatory.On some level, it’s a little bit funny. On another level, Puerto Rico is still languishing in the dark without power (and in many cases without safe drinking water) with no end in sight. Trump is less popular at this point in his administration than any previous president despite a generally benign economic climate, and shows no sign of changing course. Perhaps it will all work out for the best, and someday we’ll look back and chuckle about the time when we had a president who didn’t know anything about anything that was happening and could never be counted on to make coherent, factual statements on any subject. But traditionally, we haven’t elected presidents like that — for what have always seemed like pretty good reasons — and the risks of compounding disaster are still very much out there.
From: Trump’s latest big interview is both funny and terrifying - Vox
Comment →I enjoyed this one.
I have been immersed in a similar matrix of issues on the Tibetan Buddhist side now for almost 2 years. The [...]
I typed out a brief response at CT, somewhat in a hurry, since I had to attend a local environmentalist meeting, but it failed to [...]
CK, I love this. Like you, I've had misgivings about the liberal feminism that's popular right now, and I've found it hard to articulate [...]
