February, 2014 archive
Why Do Republicans Lie? 0
Dick Polman thinks it’s because they keep getting away with it.
Read the rest.
Down in the Sea in Ships 0
The National Transportation Safety Board on Monday released its 16-page report. A separate Coast Guard investigation is ongoing.
This is no surprise. Anyone who knows anything about boats could have predicted this.
When I worked for the railroad, I occasionally got to read NTSB reports on train wrecks. I found them fascinating, but, then, I worked for the railroad. Anyone else might have found the mass of detail boring.
The NTSB takes so long to issue their reports because they don’t miss the teeniest tiniest thing.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall inherit the earth. Or at least a little bit of it.
Sixteen-year-old Shaleek Williams, a freshman football and basketball player, was shot on the campus of Salisbury High School on Monday afternoon.
Sources told WBTV the shooting happened while Williams was trying to break up a fight between two people.
Aside:
When I was growing up, a trip to Salisbury, Md., was always a big event. It was the nearest Big City accessible without a ferry ride.
It’s about Power 0
Stokely Carmichael:
Racism is not an attitude. If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem.
Via Contradict Me.
Chris-Crossed Correction 0
New Jersey, always classy.
“An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated Drewniak referred to the Port Authority’s executive director as a ‘piece of crap,'” the correction said. “While Drewniak did call him a ‘piece of excrement,’ it was David Wildstein who referred to the executive director as a ‘piece of crap.'”
Droning On, the Cookbook 1
Warning: Language.
Drinking Liberally Norfolk Tomorrow 0
Drinking Liberally is a gathering place for liberals. Socialize and laugh in a friendly atmosphere.
When: 6 p., Tuesday, February 11.
Where:
Uno Chicago Grill
5900 Virginia Beach Blvd
(Janaf Shopping Center) (map)
Tuesdays for Norfolk, Thursdays for Virginia Beach to make it easier for persons with commitments on either day to catch at least one per month.
Zero Tolerance, Zero Sense 0
“Zero tolerance” must be one of the stupidest ideas the educational industrial complex has ever come up with.
On other hand, it does seem to show that school administrators have no judgment, so it may be wise not to allow them to exercise any.
(snip)
Betterson received a 10 day suspension under the Fort Myers-area school’s zero-tolerance policy around fighting, but he plans to appeal, he told Fox 4 Now. “It’s not fair for somebody to get beat up for something that he is,” Betterson said. “I’m not going to sit there and watch someone get bullied. I’ve been bullied too.”
The Prison Industrial Complex 0
Cons for cash.
The Fee Hand of the Market 0
“Anti-regulation” Republicans attempt to regulate wind energy out of business.
Zellot 0
Back when I was a road warrior, leaping on airplanes and trains to travel all over the country, I always enjoyed reading the local rag, wherever I happened to be. Nothing tells you more about a place than the letters to the editor in the local newspaper.
I particularly enjoyed the Boston Globe, the Chicago Sun-Times (before Rupert Murdoch), and the Los Angeles Times. When Murdoch destroyed the credibility of the Sun-Times by his very presence, I moved to the Chicago Tribune, which leaned conservative, but sane.
That was then.
I commend to your attention George Smith’s discussion of how Sam Zell destroyed the Chicago Trib and the L. A. Times. It is a text-book illustration of how extracting maximum return from a property by shafting persons who do honest work and expect an honest return for their labor conflicts with the legitimate capitalist notion of providing good value for a reasonable return.
There is a difference between an capitalist economy and a leech economy.
We do not have a capitalist economy.
We have a lamprey economy.
Spill Here, Spill Now . . . (Updated) 0
. . . then do the forensics.
A water sample taken Monday, two days after the spill was discovered, was four times higher than the maximum level for people to have prolonged contact, such as swimming, the state Department of Environment and Natural Resources said.
“We made an honest mistake while interpreting the results,” state Division of Water Resources director Tom Reeder said in a statement.
Damned regulations. If we did away with them, we wouldn’t have to hear about this stuff. Corporations could just kill us quietly in our creeks.
The Rude One has a picture. More about the honest mistake at the link.
Addendum, the Next Morning:
Not only do they have trouble with chemical analysis, the North Carolina’s laughingly called “environmental agency” has actively resisted efforts to get its ash in gear.
Each time, they say, their efforts have been stymied — by the N.C. Department of Environment and Natural Resources.
The Quadrennial Winter Athletic Marketing Event as Misdirection Play 0
Dave Neiwert looks behind the curtain.
(snip)
One of the reasons I have railed in the past about right-wing efforts to confuse the public’s understanding of the meaning and nature of fascism — embodied in Jonah Goldberg’s travesty, Liberal Fascism — is that people would cease being able to distinguish the real thing when it came along. Well, it is on our doorstep in much of Eastern Europe now, as we speak, and particularly in Russia. And hardly anyone, it seems, recognizes it.
As I’ve noted previously, the real red flag when it comes to fascism isn’t merely the spread of scapegoating politics (focusing for now on gays and immigrants), producing eliminationist thuggery in the classic Brownshirt mold — it is when officialdom, the government authorities and church leaders, not only condone such behavior but encourage and reinforce it.
Follow the link for more and for the video.
All Talk, Need Action 0
Clarissa Hayward argues that wishing for “that conversation about” is magickal thinking; what’s needed is action.
It would be nice if that were so. But it’s not.
(snip)
But think back to the middle decades of the twentieth century, when a national conversation about race did alter dominant beliefs. It was in the 1940s that scientists in the United States and elsewhere dismantled the 19th-century understanding of race as biological difference. It was in that same period that the strong association of racism with Nazism drove many white Americans to reject racial hierarchy as morally repugnant.
These changes did not radically alter how race was practiced in the United States . . . .
Do read the rest.