Someday, the people in power (who will not be Republicans) will accept the wisdom of an economist, a security expert, and a humor site. I’m not holding my breath, though.

But our job is to remain steadfast in the face of terror, to refuse to be terrorized. Our job is to not panic every time two Muslims stand together checking their watches. There are approximately 1 billion Muslims in the world, a large percentage of them not Arab, and about 320 million Arabs in the Middle East, the overwhelming majority of them not terrorists. Our job is to think critically and rationally, and to ignore the cacophony of other interests trying to use terrorism to advance political careers or increase a television show’s viewership.

That’s harder than playing Pick the Bad Guy, though.

I’m getting bits and pieces of the dreadful coordinated terror attacks in Paris while socializing at a meeting — I don’t have much to say, and the news sources I’ve checked all seem to reflect a state of chaos: at least 100 dead, at least 6 simultaneous attacks, France has closed their borders, and who knows where this is going to lead.

Talk among yourselves. I’m going to be checking the news at every break myself.

Let’s hear some clueless raving about how conservatives are more pro-science than liberals.

Joshua Jacobs, the smug libertarian being interviewed, believes in using the unbridled force of the free market to bring America back to unrivaled prosperity. The interviewer, Nick Gillespie, thinks that sounds good. It took a real effort to control my gag reflex so I could listen further.

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Lynna is your curator. I don’t think this thread will run dry for a long time.

Yeah, they’re all sending me messages bragging about the new Trudeau cabinet: gender parity, diverse, and representative of all of Canada. I am duly impressed.

Now can we get the American presidential candidates to pledge to do likewise with their appointees, once they’re in office? It would be the right thing to do.

I do worry a bit, though, about all the token men they’d have to sign up for positions, taking away slots from better qualified women.

I am a very reluctant debater. I definitely don’t think I’m the best debater around, and I also don’t think that debates are very good at resolving differences or even necessarily clarifying ideas. I’ve put together a set of my personal debate requirements that are just as much intended to discourage casually drafting me into debates as they are to making it as productive and informative a process as possible.

But I am lackadaisical and encouraging compared to the current crop of Republican presidential candidates. Take a look at their demands.

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Wake up. You should learn from yesterday’s elections that there’s no wave pushing your agenda along — you have to work every day to drag our country out of the ugly theocratic trends that run counter to rationality and justice.

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