First Looks category archive

Marc Lamont Hill contemplates Mitt the Flip’s tax returns. A snippet:

I cannot complain about closing libraries in North Philly or unfilled potholes in Germantown if I’m actively resisting the responsibility of paying my fair share. I can’t cry about the crime rate if I’m not contributing the necessary funds for supplementing unemployment, building community centers, creating mentoring programs. Every year that I’m blessed to earn a good wage, I’m charged with a heightened responsibility to secure our nation, strengthen our schools and protect the most vulnerable members of society.

Sadly, we live in a moment when the rich are let off the hook. By constantly crying wolf that another penny in taxes will prevent them from spending, investing or risk taking, the wealthy have pump-faked us into passing the tax burden to the middle class and working poor. Any attempt to fix the system is declared “class warfare” or “wealth envy.”

Off to Drink Liberally.

Radio Times takes a look at the Great Pacific garbage stream. From the website:

Last year’s Japanese tsunami provoked fears of widespread radiation leaks and set off a nuclear crisis as clean up crews furiously raced to contain the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. Meanwhile another environmental concern resulting from the devastation has emerged. Several recent reports indicate that over 15 million tons of wreckage and debris are heading toward Canada and the West Coast, and some scientists have confirmed that it is beginning to wash up on the coast.

Among other appalling tidbits is this one: The most common items found in the stomachs of dead Albatrosses are plastic bottle caps.

Follow the link to listen or listen here (MP3).

Fun and fellowship for liberals. Join us.

When: Wednesday, January 25th, 6 p

Where:
Lubo Wine Tasting Room
1658 Pleasure House Road (Map)

More here.

No place to hide:

Meanwhile, the widespread domestic use of drones is on the horizon. In January, the Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the US aviation regulator for information about the deployment of drones by law enforcement and other public agencies in the US. Drone Wars UK published the results of their Freedom of Information request to the CAA on the same issue at the end of 2011.

While we might get excited by the potential for the use of commercial drones by citizen journalists to live-stream powerful footage from protests, we are likely to be less thrilled once drones are in the hands of the paparazzi.

Bill Maher:

Rick Santorum told an audience in South Carolina Mitt Romney was just a ‘paler shade of what we have in the White House now.’ And the guy in the back of the room stood up and said, ‘I thought that was the whole point.

We frequented the Capriotti’s (not a franchise) just up the hill from us when I lived in Delaware.

A promotion by a Capriotti’s Sandwich Shop franchise in Las Vegas that touted “a match made in Vegas heaven: boobs and Bobbies” is now at the center of a federal lawsuit.

The suit, filed in Delaware this week, claims the Las Vegas shop teamed up with the strip club Crazy Horse III to offer the famous Capriotti’s Thanksgiving-on-a-roll “Bobbie” sandwich and a beer or soda for $5 during happy hour.

The lawsuit alleges that the joint promotion was not authorized by Capriotti’s parent company and was in direct violation of the franchise agreement.

An anonymous spokesperson from Lost Wages says they will fight.

The “Bobbie” is Thanksgiving dinner on hoagie roll: Sliced turkey (not pre-sliced deli meat), (fully) dressing, gravy, and cranberry sauce; it is really tasty.

The boobie is–oh, never mind.

From Pine View Farm will go dark tomorrow in opposition to the “Let Hollywood Censor the Internet” bill, also known as SOPA.

More here.

At Psychology Today, Dr. Jack Shafer comments on the absurdity of the belief so dear to Americans, that wars are like John Wayne movies:

We teach our marines to kill and then wonder why they can’t do it humanely. Taking another person’s life is a difficult task. We need a reason to kill someone; a good one. Marines are told who the enemy is and ordered to kill them. The rationale for killing follows soon thereafter, for without rationale, killing becomes a difficult chore.

The easiest way to develop rationale is to place yourself above your enemy. I am better than he is; therefore, he deserves to die. In all military conflicts, the combatants demean their opponents, . . . .

Dick Polman considers Republican efforts to remove (or at least distract from) the stain of Bain:

If Bain’s efforts happened to benefit the workers, fine. If there was trickle-down bounty, fine. But Bain had other priorities. As Marc Woplow, a former Romney partner, told the Los Angeles Times last month: “I never thought of what I do for a living as job creation. The primary goal of private equity is to create wealth for your investors.”

The Republican establishment doesn’t like to hear this kind of talk uttered out loud. Rushing to defend Romney this week, it wants to squelch any suggestion that free enterprise is not intrinsically wonderful 100 percent of the time. The party regulars are very upset with Newt Gingrich, for example, because Newt is voicing blasphemies like this: “I think there’s a real difference between people who believe in the free market – and people who go around, take financial advantage, loot companies, leave behind broken families, broken towns, people on unemployment.”

(snip)

Most importantly, the GOP establishment wants to ensure that downscale voters continue to support the party that traditionally does its utmost to line the pockets of the rich.

Read the rest. It’s worth the three minutes.

At the Guardian, ex-Marine and veteran of the Great and Glorious Patriotic War for a Lie in Iraq Ross Caputi considers war crimes and war crimes:

The video of US marines urinating on Afghan corpses does not shock me. Though their behavior is disgusting and unacceptable, I find the public’s reaction to this video far more troubling. People are not outraged that there are dead Afghans; they are outraged at the manner in which the dead are treated. This is indicative of our culture’s tolerance for war and war crimes – as long as they are done in a gentlemanly fashion.

Follow the link for his story of some of the things he witnessed and participated in.

At the Denver Post, Alan Breed and Julie Watson research the history of battlefield misconduct, from Achilles’s dragging Paris around Troy through the Middle Ages up to our most recent wars. Two nuggets:

Reserve Marine Lt. Col. Paul Hackett, who teaches the law of war to Marines before they are sent off to Afghanistan, made it clear Friday that he was not condoning the Marines’ actions. But he warned against judging them too harshly, saying: “When you ask young men to go kill people for a living, it takes a whole lot of effort to rein that in.”

(big snip)

But Maynard Sinclair, a Marine veteran of Vietnam and the peacekeeping mission in Beirut, said the outrage shows the public’s naiveté about war.

“I did a hell of a lot worse in Vietnam than urinate on some dead bodies,” he said. “We cut left ears off and wore them around our necks to show we were warriors, and we knew how to get revenge.”

Thoreau summarizes the dissonance.

Despite the rhetoric of those who monger war, there is not now, nor has there ever been any such thing as a “neat surgical strike” in the killing fields.

If you click on only one of the three links, click on Thoreau’s.

Offered without comment:

A Dover (Del.–ed.) woman allegedly found out the hard way that you should never text a police officer when looking to buy some Percocet pills.

That’s what police say 19-year-old Alisha M. West did Wednesday while repeatedly texting messages to a wrong number. The day ended with her arrest.

The FLOSS way:

The control of US military spy drones appears to have shifted from Windows to Linux following an embarrassing malware infection.

Ground control systems at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada, which commands the killer unmanned aircraft, became infected with a virus last September. In a statement at the time the Air Force dismissed the electronic nasty as a nuisance and said it posed no threat to the operation of Reaper drones, but the intrusion was nonetheless treated seriously.

Follow the link for details and links to screenshots.

Story found on LQ.

Off to drink liberally.

Drinking Liberally is a support group for liberals, where you can realize you are not alone.

When: 6 p., Wednesday, January 11.

Where:
The Public House
1112 Colley Avenue (map)

Details here.

I gave up New Year’s Resolutions years ago, not that I ever took them all too seriously in any case. The resolutions I have found that I keep are the ones I make because the time is right, not because the calendar flips.

I may reconsider after reading Charlie Booker’s list of suggested resolutions at the Guardian. Here’s a sample:

Stop pretending Lady Gaga and Beyoncé are endlessly fascinating.

Look, it’s not that I don’t see their appeal. I just can’t fathom the apparently infinite depth of it. I appreciate they’re both polished entertainers with a neat line in music videos and some very catchy songs, but beyond that – what are you all seeing, precisely? I mean, it’s nice that the openly kooky Lady Gaga inspires her fans not to give in to bullies and the suchlike, but she also inspires them to “put their paws up” and be a bit annoying, which kind of balances it out, really. They’re not Mayan gods.

From the website: Author Elizabeth Dowling Taylor tells the story of Paul Jennings, who served as one of James Madison’s slaves and ultimately purchased his own freedom.

And, I add, that of his wife and children.

A collection of local TV news bloopers.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

It’s a holy day of obligation.

Fall on your knees.

Chicago Bears vs. Green Bay Packers, 8 p. m. EDT.

I will skip this particular service.