Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full article/ story.

Greg Sargent writes about the lazy and false pundit/ media narrative emerging about how Democrats are running in 2018:

There’s a narrative about our politics right now that you constantly encounter on social and political media. It goes like this: Democrats are too obsessed with the Russia investigation, or with Stormy Daniels, or they’re just too focused on “not being President Trump,” and as a result, they aren’t articulating an affirmative agenda and risk getting caught flat-footed by Trump’s supposedly rising popularity. 

But this narrative is entirely wrong, and two new pieces this morning help set the record straight. Taken together, they point to a much more accurate version of what’s happening: Trump’s unpopularity does in fact remain historically abysmal. This and Trump’s many scandals are in fact helping Democrats — but not in a way that is immediately apparent and not in a manner that betrays any unhealthy Democratic obsession with those things.

We've seen this movie before:  lazy, closed- loop media picks narrative based on desired outcome, obsesses on shiny object, hello "President" Trump.  Don't count on them "saving" us when it comes to the Trump- Russia scandal, either.

Leonard Pitts, Jr., on "putative Christians":

Today, we will discuss one of the most pressing threats to American Christianity. Meaning, of course, American Christians. 

Yes, that’s an overly broad statement. All those Christians whose faith requires them to live the Good News, to feed the hungry, to house the homeless, speak for the voiceless and welcome the stranger, surely do not threaten the faith. To the contrary, they empower it. They are what Christianity is supposed to be. 

But we’re here to contend with what Christianity too often is. Having seen putative Christians excuse the liar, rationalize the alleged pedophile, justify the sexual assaulter and cheer as walls are raised against the most vulnerable, it’s obvious that many of those who claim that name embody a niggardly, cowardly, selfish and situational “faith” that has little to do with Jesus.

Pitts provides the case of North Bend High School in rural Oregon as a prime example of how this "religion" is practiced by its faithful pharisees.

Charles Blow on what we must do in every election until we weed out the coin- operated Republican gun fondler caucus:

People seeking common sense gun control must become single-issue voters on gun control. Support for more restrictions may not be the only reason to vote for a candidate, but it must be sufficient to vote against one. 

We have to stop waiting for politicians to display courage and instead start to instill fear in them. 

As an individual voter, you don’t need to have a slate of reforms in mind, you only have to vote consistently for candidates who are committed to reviewing the issue and advancing smart, effective policy.

Silver Spring Bureau Chief Brian clued us in on a fascinating website, livingnewdeal.org, that tracks the thousands of ongoing projects begun in FDR's New Deal, and how those projects are living all around us today.  From high schools to national parks to libraries to dams to the National Institutes of Health, find examples in your state and across the nation of how progressive government yields fruits for the benefit of generations to come.

Lastly, please check out Infidel 753's link round-up of "various interesting stuff [he] ran across on the net over the last week."  Lots of humor and serious stuff, too, as usual.