April, 2015 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite as you prepare for the processional.
Jason Wagler was sitting with his fiancee at Mass and heard the gunshot.
(snip)
Police say a man had a gun in his pocket and it discharged when he stood up. The bullet grazed the man’s hand.
An Altoona newspaper reported the trigger caught on the man’s pants and the gun’s safety was not on.
“I noticed the gun was handed to another gentleman. He immediately concealed it in a white program, so I took pictures of the gun inside this program,” Wagler said.
Via Juanita Jean.
Guns everywhere: NRA Paradise sure is working out well.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., considers the resilience of the Secesh. A snippet–read the rest.
Both times, the act was moral and necessary. But who can deny, or be surprised, that in forcing the South to do the right thing, the rest of the country fostered an abiding resentment, an enduring “apartness,” made the South a region defined by resistance. Name the issue — immigration, race, abortion, education, criminal justice — and law and custom in Dixie have long stood stubbornly apart from the rest of the country.
“Pity the Poor, Misunderstood Bigot” 0
A James Doblin points out, you don’t know how bad it feels to be a hater (emphasis added).
Minorities understand that completely – it means you can get run over in both directions by intolerant people. Pence wanted America to believe people who protest being the objects of discrimination do not understand what it feels like being the bigot hurling the insults.
Follow the link for the rest of his article, which bends in interesting directions.
Chartering a Course for Disaster 0
The Charlotte Observer reports on lack of accountability, a hallmark of the privatization scam.
Charters can keep salaries of supervisors, academic consultants, back-office staff – sometimes even school administrators – secret and still abide by North Carolina’s public records law despite being funded by tax dollars. These positions are often considered employees of the management company instead of the school, and therefore not subject to disclosure.
Not only do they get public money to provide a public service, they don’t have to tell the public where that money goes. As Atrios would say, it’s all about the grift.
“All about the grift”–there’s a brand for North Carolina.
Branding Together 0
E. J. Dionne, in a much longer column about the attempt to remake freedom from discrimination into freedom to discriminate, observes that appearances have become a new imperative.
“I think we need to show that if we approve this bill, that it will improve North Carolina’s brand,” said Tim Moore, the Republican Speaker of the state House of Representatives. “Anything we do, we have to make sure we don’t harm our brand.”
A new commandment now trumps some of the others: Thou shalt not spoil the brand.
North Carolina has a brand? If so, I suspect it’s not what Mr. Moore thinks it is.
I do think an argument can be made that the decline and fall began when “branding” replaced “quality” as management consultants’ favorite con. Too many folks concluded that, if you have “brand,” to hell with “quality.”
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Good sportsmanship necessitates politeness.
During the second half of the game, the younger coach’s team started losing, and the coach started arguing with members of the crowd, Walker said.
When the opposing coach, a 45-year-old man, tried to intervene, the other man drew a gun from his waistband and fired at him, Walker said.
NRA Paradise. It’s here.
Hope 0
But an alloyed hope: As the NCAA basketball circus draws to an end and big league baseball starts up, my local rag yesterday chose to remind everyone of football uber alles by covering the top half of the front page of the sports section, extending all the way to the fold, with a picture of a local college football player.
War and Mongers of War 0
Trevor Timm, writing at The Guardian, finds the Republican response to the tentative agreement with Iran to consider an agreement, to be quite telling.
The tentative Iran deal announced on 3 April, in which Western leaders and the Islamic republic agreed on strict limits to Iran’s nuclear program, was hailed by many as a breakthrough, given that it could avert yet another US-led war in the Middle East. So almost immediately, it was denounced by key conservative members of Congress, neocons, and Republican presidential candidates, whose unquenched thirst for blood almost always outweighs their supposed commitment to peace.
Do read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Make sport, politely.
Police say the victim is a 40-year-old woman who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition with an injury to her torso. HPD says she worked at the bar and knew the officer involved.
“An officer can carry his firearm 24 hours a day. However, the policy does restrict them if they are under the influence that they cannot carry a firearm,” said Kajihiro.
Natch, it’s being dubbed “accidental.”
CSI: Canine 0
Bad dogs! Bad dogs! Bad dogs!
Whatcha gonna do when they come for you?
You see, some of the tenants, they let their pets do their business pretty much anywhere.
It seems that the soil for this endeavor have been well-fertilized. Now the villains can be sniffed out.
Numbers Game 0
Farnsworth does the math.
The Rich Work Hard for Their Money (except That They Don’t) 0
Robert Reich contrasts the myth of the hard-working rich with the reality.
(snip)
As the French economist Thomas Piketty reminds us, this is the kind of dynastic wealth that’s kept Europe’s aristocracy going for centuries. It’s about to become the major source of income for a new American aristocracy.
The tax code encourages all this by favoring unearned income over earned income.
The top tax rate paid by America’s wealthy on their capital gains — the major source of income for the non-working rich — has dropped from 33 percent in the late 1980s to 20 percent today, putting it substantially below the top tax rate on ordinary income (36.9 percent).
Afterthought:
Some websites don’t seem to like it when I copy a small bit of text for “fair use”; instead, they try to force the whole darn page on me.
