January, 2011 archive
Oops 0
Er,
yeah.
I say it’s worth noting because political violence was once a regular feature of American life; in the 20th century, four presidents survived assassination attempts, while two — William McKinley and John Kennedy — were victims. In the 19th century, violence claimed two presidents: Abraham Lincoln and James Garfield, while Andrew Jackson survived an assassination attempt. Attempts have been made on the lives of presidential candidates, some successful — like the assassination of Robert Kennedy — and others, like the attempt on George Wallace, less so. Dozens of elected officials have been violently attacked over the course of American history, and dozens more have been killed (including 24 officials in the Reconstruction South). And of course, this is to say nothing about periods of widespread mob violence, and violence against prominent social leaders, like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr.
It’s impossible to say whether we’ll see a renewed spike in political violence, but it suffices to say that this current period is remarkably calm, and something of an achievement.
Another nice catch by Feastingonroadkill.
Beached Whale 0
I know from my days in the security industry, because I knew persons who worked for manufacturers, that Walmart would volunteer to teach manufacturers how to move their factories to China.
Bruce Sterling:
American soft power is vanishing. Foreigners are much less interested in American television, movies, pop music… America once had a tremendous hammerlock on those expensive channels of distribution, but those old analog megaphones don’t matter half as much in today’s network society.
The USA has become a big banana republic; in other words, it’s come to behave like other countries quite normally behave. The upside is that we don’t get blamed for what happens; the downside is, nothing much happens. Decay and denial. Gothic
But, as a consolation, Goldman’s sacks are full.
Via Feastingonroadkill.
Twits on Twitter 0
This tale of suspense, betrayal, and the Golden Turnip is weirdly fascinating in a train wreck kind of way.
Background:
(Warning: Some language that you are likely to hear at your local school bus stop and on the Daily Show.)
Clowns to the Left, Jokers to the Right (Updated) 0
I received an email today from one of my leftie mailing lists with the subject line
Tell Sarah Palin: Violent threats have consequences.
You may recall that many found Sarah Palin’s gun sight graphic deplorable when it was first published.
It was indeed crude, rude, stupid, combative, tasteless, and silly all wrapped up in one cute little ball of yarn-spinning (much like Palin herself).
But it was not a threat.
Calling it one detracts from the larger problem and requires ridicule, for it clouds the issue, which is this:
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Adherents of the right wing quickly and casually label those with whom they disagree as traitorous, treasonous, and unAmerican (as well as perverted, godless, and whatever else pops up in their Roget’s–no insult is beyond their pale).
Rightwingers cannot brook disagreement. Anyone who disagrees with them becomes not just an opponent, but also their and the country’s enemy. Once someone is so labeled, he or she becomes fair game for whatever loony-toon decides that the violent rhetoric of the right is not rhetoric, but a call to action.
You seldom hear violent rhetoric from the mainstream left (such as it is). As Bob Cesca pointed out this morning:
Furthermore, the rightwing’s tactics of hate militate against reason and compromise.
After all, one cannot reason with a traitor, can one? If one’s political opponent is ipso facto a traitor, simply because he or she opposes you, conciliation becomes impossible.
So, why do they do it?
The facts lean left.
Fear and hate obscure facts. Fear and hate is what they got.
Addendum:
I did not expect to have an update for this post, but I really must direct you to Field’s remarks.
Untold Stories 0
Offered without comment:
(snip)
“Only they know what they were doing; we can’t speculate on that,” said Virginia State Police Sgt. Steve E. Lowe. “As to what they were engaged in, you can draw your own conclusions. She was on his lap – we’re going to leave it at that.”
(Some) Details at the link.
2nd Amendment Remedies (Updated) (Updated Again and Kicked to the Top) 1
(First published January 8.)
From AZCentral dot com:
“She was shot one time in the head through and through,” Dr. Peter Rhee said at an afternoon news conference at University Medical Center in Tucson.
The bullet entered one side of her head and exited the other after passing through her brain, Rhee said.
Giffords, 40, a third-term Democrat, was shot at an event in Tucson Saturday morning, at a Safeway at Ina and Oracle roads. Authorities identified the gunman as Jared Loughner and said the 22-year-old suspect is in custody. (Initial news accounts and reports from authorities misidentified the name as Laughner.)
Six people, including a girl who was about 9 years old, were killed and 18 were injured in the shooting at a Safeway in northwest Tucson at Ina and Oracle roads. Sources told The Republic that federal Judge John Roll was among the six killed.
President Obama speaks on the shooting:
TPM has the latest on the suspect. He appears to be a rightwing loonie of the type which calls itself “sovereign citizens.” (TPM is likely the best site for keeping up with this story as it breaks.)
No doubt this was completely unrelated to the drumbeat of anti-government and anti-Obama sentiment in Wingnut World.
This SPLC video, prepared for police to use for training during shift roll-calls, describes the particular form of sovereign citizen lunacy. The video is not for the squeamish.
Read more about sovereign citizens here.
Addendum:
The county sheriff speaks:
In the meantime, those who speak the rhetoric of violence are busily washing their hands, saying, “Oh, no. It wasn’t us.”
I need a drink.
Addendum-dee-dum-dum, Two Days Later:
Another indication of the shooter’s having been attracted to the “sovereign citizen” ideology (idiotology?) is his fascination with language, as outlined in the Guardian this Monday:
While a small number of defendants have previously sought, without success, to use Wynn Miller’s methods to defend themselves against tax avoidance charges, he has until now remained largely unknown outside of far-right US circles. His name was connected to the Loughner inquiry when an official from the Southern Poverty Law Centre, which monitors extremist groups, told US television that it seemed Loughner had been “getting some of his key ideas from David Wynn Miller”.
Goldman’s Sacks 0
Writing at Bloomberg, David Pauley dissects Goldman Sachs’s behind-the-scenes trading of Facebook in the “shadow stock marked.” He is skeptical of their valuation:
Investors with short memories will pay whatever the shadow market and Goldman Sachs, the prospective underwriter, say they should.
Back in 2000, Cisco Systems Inc., then already the dominant company in computer network gear, had a P/E approaching 200. It’s now 15.
There’s another even more down-to-earth problem for the company. Facebook is now seen by analysts as a threat to Google as a gatherer of ad revenue. Who’s to say a few years from now another startup won’t pose a similar threat to Facebook?
Based on Goldman’s past, it could easily be that they are betting against the investors in the shadows. They have done it before.
The “shadow” part of the “stock market” should provoke extreme caution.
Remember, in three-card monte, the marks always lose.
Can’t Win for Losin’ 0
Wasserman:
QOTD 0
Jim Morrison:
Violence isn’t always evil. What’s evil is the infatuation with violence.
Additional reading here.
The Morning Show 0
Effectively captured by Comically Vintage.
The President’s Weekly Address 0
From the transcript:
Twelve million families will benefit from a $1,000 child tax credit and an expanded Earned Income Tax Credit. Eight million students and families will continue to benefit from a $2,500 tuition tax credit to make college more affordable.
And millions of entrepreneurs in big cities and small towns across the country will benefit not only from the business expensing plan I mentioned, but from additional tax cuts that will spur research and development.
2nd Amendment Remedies, Reprise (Updated) (Updated Again) 0
Delaware Liberal has a timeline of domestic political violence, both committed and exhorted, from 2008 to the present.
The drip-drip-drip has not been so noticeable, but the total accumulation is quite appalling sizeable.
Addendum:
TPM’s Josh Marshall on Countdown with sane and sensible comments:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Addendum-dee-dum-dum:
Michael Tomasky talks sense on the relationship between rhetoric and violence at the Guardian. A nugget:
If buffoons run about for months and months spouting nonsense about “second amendment remedies” and “by force if necessary,” they lose the moral right to be shocked, shocked! shocked! if some fugitive from a looney-bin takes them up on it.
“But I never expected this to happen despite calling for it for the last two years” really doesn’t make it to the rational excuse list.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Polite maybe. Stupid, yes.
Quibble: I don’t think “supervised” is a good word in the first line. How in the world can a 15-year-old be expected to “supervise” a grown-up, even when the younger is plainly the more grown-up of the two?
(snip)
Spano said he offered the micro Uzi because Dr. Charles Bizilj wanted his two sons to shoot an automatic weapon and a regular Uzi the father had picked out was failing to fire in automatic mode.
“I told him it wasn’t a good idea because it shoots fast and kicks hard,’’ said Spano, who was 15 when the shooting occurred.
The story goes on to report that one juror has been dismissed because she could not contain her tears.
Clownstitutionality 0
(I know that this has been amply echoed in the echo chamber, but I really just cannot resist.)
The hollowness of the Republican declaration of loyalty of the Constitution of the United States of America is exceeded only by their ignorance of its provisions.
Sessions and Fitzpatrick sent letters to every member late Friday apologizing for the episode, saying they were deeply committed to “maintaining the integrity of the People’s House.”
In the immortal words of Bugs Bunny, “What a maroon. What an ignoranamus.”
Afterthought:
Hanlon’s comments seem appropriate. A nugget:
Chucking Finn 0
Clarence Page discusses the recent silly attempt to bowdlerize Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn.
Twain was a man of his time who rose above his Southern heritage to reject the bigotry and prejudice of his upbringing. And even though the Civil War ended outright slavery when Twain was a young man, explicit and outspoken bigotry, prejudice, and racial oppression were accepted in the public discourse long after Twain’s death.
Page comments:
Young Huck’s moral compass is warped by his drunken, brutal father and the culture in which Huck was raised, as his casual use of the N-word illustrates. Escaping his father, he unexpectedly teams up with the slave Jim. He feels guilty at first about helping his neighbor’s “property” escape. Yet as he gets to know Jim and his desire to rescue his wife and children, the slave becomes a better father figure than the one Huck left behind. To me, the book is that rare classic that I not only praise but still enjoy reading.
Huckleberry Finn, despite the burlesque humor, is a novel of transcendence, of Huck’s realizing that the beliefs he was brought up with were evil.
The discomfort that Huck Finn causes today says more about the persistance of those same beliefs in our society than it does about Twain’s honest confronting of them, counched as it was in the common speech of his time, in the pages of a book.
Seeing Red. Not. 0
Computers are stupid.
They just do what they are told, but they do it really really fast.
If they are operated by incompetents, they automate incompetence.
Case in point (emphasis added):
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Grandma writes Christmas checks in red ink. Recipients deposit checks at ATM. ATM scan reports checks as blank because scanner is not seeing red. Bank closes account for fraud. Consequently automated payroll deposits are rejected and checks bounce.
No human being ever looks at checks.
Bank branch and customer service claim that they are powerless to fix the problem.
Newspaper intervenes. Between efforts of customer and newspaper, problem is finally resolved in customer’s favor.
Stupid is as stupid does. Q. E. D.
Facebook Frolics 0
According to the story, they were arrested the same day as the Nebraska school shooting.
It’s not a Facebook issue, really.
It’s that the internet is a public place, and these folks don’t know how to behave in public.
When I was a teenager, “Don’t get caught” was one of my primary guidelines.