Reads

reading a book, magazine, newspaper, other physical document, or online post
Read A Good Start by Jim Swift @JimSwiftDCJim Swift @JimSwiftDC (The Bulwark)

This is what YAF said as it broke ties with Malkin: “There is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists.”
That’s a good ethos and YAF deserves a lot of credit for taking a stand.
The only problem is that it isn’t true. Mainstream conservatism continues to harbor quite a few people who accommodate holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, and racists. The movement seems to think that, once the Trump fever breaks, these people will melt away and conservatism can return to its roots.
Maybe. Maybe not.

I’m not charitable enough to call this a good start on the part of YAF, because the fact is Malkin and her associates have always been like this, and they’ve been tolerated through minimization or at best no-true-scottsman arguments for decades.

Never mind that the reason this is suddenly a problem now that the white nationalists and holocaust deniers are going after the wrong people.

Anybody who spent any time as part of the online right knew this, and everyone who has joined it within the last four or five years has spent time rationalizing and excusing this while at the same time crying crocadile tears about how the left is mean and calls them racists for no reason.

And you don’t get points for finally quitting the rationalization when it becomes too hot to handle.

Are there conservatives who have been unfairly labeled racists? Sure there are. But in order for any discussion of that to take place, there has to be some openness and honesty about how lots and lots and lots of this stuff has been rationalized away or minimized away or excused, and what part all of that’s played when it comes to those accusations because I promise you I am not the only person who left the online right and have since become definitely left and who has also labeled someone racist after listening to them make the same excuses that have always been there with the online right.

Read Chick-fil-a’s Philanthropy by Chet (CHET | A PERSONAL BLOG.)

Political giving is a gamble: it either gets you the results you want or it’s 100% wasted. I don’t see this new giving strategy as CFA turning its back on previous gifts, but rather a strategy to guarantee an impact. Dollars that go to programs that strengthen education, get people into permanent housing, or reducing food insecurity has an immediate, personal, and human impact. Every one of those dollars will yield the desired results.

Read The Gunslinger (The Dark Tower, #1) by Stephen King (goodreads.com)

In the first book of this brilliant series, Stephen King introduces readers to one of his most enigmatic heroes, Roland of Gilead, The Last Gunslinger. He is a haunting figure, a loner on a spellbinding journey into good and evil. In his desolate world, which frighteningly mirrors our own, Roland pursues The Man in Black, encounters an alluring woman named Alice, and begins a friendship with the Kid from Earth called Jake. Both grippingly realistic and eerily dreamlike, The Gunslinger leaves readers eagerly awaiting the next chapter.

I’ve heard a lot about the Dark Tower series but this is the first time I’m reading it.This is only the first book so I haven’t yet decided whether it’s good fantasy or not. It’s not the worst fantasy I’ve read though so depending on how the rest of the series go it might get added to the rereads pile.
Read Absolute Power by David Baldacci (goodreads.com)

A grizzled professional cat burglar gets trapped inside the bedroom closet of one of the world’s richest men, only to witness, through a one-way mirror, two Secret Service agents kill the billionaire’s trampy young wife as she tries to fight off the drunken sexual advances of the nation’s chief executive. Running for his life, but not before he picks up a bloodstained letter opener that puts the president at the scene of the crime, the burglar becomes the target of a clandestine manhunt orchestrated by leading members of the executive branch.

Meanwhile, Jack Graham, once a public defender and now a high-powered corporate attorney, gets drawn into the case because the on-the-lam burglar just happens to be the father of his former financee, a crusading Virginia prosecutor.

Embroidering the narrative through assorted plot whorls are the hero’s broken romance; his conflict over selling out for financial success; the prosecutor’s confused love-hate for her burglar father; the relentless investigation by a northern Virginia career cop; the dilemma of government agents trapped in a moral catch-22; the amoral ambitions of a sexy White House Chief of Staff; and the old burglar’s determination to bring down the ruthless president.

Meanwhile, lurking at the novel’s center like a venomous spider is the sociopathic president.

Testing to see what happens with post properties and syndication using Jetpack.

This is a read post with a book cover as its featured image.

I want to see if the photo and other information goes through.

Read Wish You Well by David Baldacci (goodreads.com)

Precocious twelve-year-old Louisa Mae Cardinal lives in the hectic New York City of 1940 with her family. Then tragedy strikes — and Lou and her younger brother, Oz, must go with their invalid mother to live on their great-grandmother’s farm in the Virginia mountains. Suddenly Lou finds herself coming of age in a new landscape, making her first true friend, and experiencing adventures tragic, comic, and audacious. But the forces of greed and justice are about to clash over her new home…and as their struggle is played out in a crowded Virginia courtroom, it will determine the future of two children, an entire town, and the mountains they love.

I gave this three out of five stars on Goodreads mostly due to the narrator.

The story was good, but this was the third family-oriented book I’ve read in as many days, so I think I sort of reached my limit on that kind of story for a while.

Read Educators from C. Wayne Collier enjoy reunion by an author (The Fayetteville Observer)

Each time the door to the banquet room at Sammio’s Italian Restaurant opened last Thursday, a swell of laughter would follow. Every entrance was greeted by genuine warmth and appreciation — like a long-gone family member had come home.

This is so cool. C. Wayne Collier Elementary School is the school my mom taught at/drove a bus at/ basically lived at for a huge chunk of her career, and I’m glad they all got to get together and have some fun for old times’ sake.
Read Quillette Duped by Left-Wing Hoaxer Posing as Communist Construction Worker by Will Sommer (The Daily Beast)

“Archie Carter,” who pretended to be a blue-collar member of the Democratic Socialists of America, says he set out to humiliate the conservative site with his error-riddled story.

Something something glass houses and stones. There should probably be a discusion on the right about how all that media criticism could just as easily apply to conservative outlets, or about how conservative outlets need to be careful that they don’t do the things they accuse so-called mainstream publications of doing, or about how maybe the same “view-them-in-the-best-light” policy that’s applied to conservative publications when they fuck up maybe should also be applied to mainstream ones, but none of those discussions are going to happen.
Read Reform coming to Chemawa Indian School in Salem, say Reps. Schrader and Bonamici by Natalie Pate (Statesman Journal)

Kurt Schrader and Suzanne Bonamici visited Chemawa Indian School Thursday after almost two years of being stonewalled by school, federal officials.

Yes, residential Indian boarding schools still exist in this country, but (and I type this with the utmost sarcasm) yeah state-sponsored racism against Native Americans is totally not a thing and they should just quit focusing on the past or get over it or something.