First Looks category archive

The Philadelphia Inquirer interviews one of the railroad men involved in the incident that inspired Unstoppable, the movie whose relentless onslaught of advertisements has annoyed me so much that I shall probably avoid it (no link provided to the movie because I’m already sick of it).

Aside: I used to work for the railroad. I can tell they phonied up the facts just from the ads.

No real railroader would be heard saying, “I’m starting to like this job.” They may love railroading–the railroad is fun and I miss it–but real railroaders aren’t going to admit that they like their jobs.

They’d rather talk about back pay.

Shaun Mullen tells the rest of the story of the girl in the photograph.

Addendum:

Link removed. Shaun emailed me that he had to delete the post because it was giving the rest of Kiko’s House the vapors for some reason which he could not figure out.

Computers. Great when they work. Otherwise, otherwise.

Read this one instead.

And not meant the way the Cream meant it.

Via Andrew Sullivan.

I’ve been distracted by computer problems for the past few days (you can read about them at Geekazine) and have put off responding to this comment, from which I’ve excerpted the opening sentence. I’m promoting it because, in my view, it deserves the plain light of day:

Mississippi has more registered voters than residents is that not a problem?

Startpage is your friend.

• The U. S. Census reports Mississippi’s 2009 population as slightly less than three million.
• As of 2004, the most recent year for which I could find voting registration figures, as opposed to voting turnout figures, the voter roles totaled slightly more than 1,500,000. I rather doubt that the voter rolls have more than doubled since then.
• Mississippi’s turnout in the recent election was slightly under 800,000.

I have not argued and will not argue that keeping accurate voter records is not a good thing.

Nevertheless, the right-wing hysteria over voter fraud is a redstate herring.

It is simply not true that large numbers individual persons are registering fraudulently in order to throw elections.

The voter fraud fraud is the spiritual and intellectual bastard child of the poll tax and the literacy test–Sunday go-to-meeting clothes on a strategy to keep the poor, the downtrodden, the dispossessed from having a public voice.

Elections are stolen in the counting room, not in the voting room.

I have a computer to troubleshoot, or perhaps just shoot.

Image via All Things Amazing.

Working a polling place for Andrew.

Vote, if you haven’t already.

The higher the turnout, the higher the chance that virtue will triumph not-virtue will fail.

Not voting ensures sullied virtue.

Normal insanity will resume late tonight or tomorrow.

Afterthought:

Jamie’s Top Ten Reasons Not To Vote:

10. I am really looking forward to nonstop investigations of President Obama over the next two years.

9. It will make Sarah Palin proud.

8. Majority Leader Mitch has a real jazzy sound to it.

7. Insurance companies should have the right to deny coverage to anyone and jack up the prices whenever they want.

6. Who really cares about that pesky environment?

5. Wall Street needs more money!

4. The top 2% needs more money!

3. Shutting down Congress is a great idea right now. We don’t have any problems to fix.

2. Glenn Beck can shift all his focus straight to the White House instead of having to split it between the White House and the democratically controlled Congress.

1. Speaker Boehner!!!!!!

Listen now: He’s the only President on the Ballot (mp3).

To quote Donovan Leitch.

Excerpt:

That big sucking sound you don’t hear? That’s the war—spending that’s getting away with murder.

Join us.

Addendum:

Mucho fun. Thanks to the moving spirit.

Out and about.

When:

Thursday, 6:00 p. m.

Where:

CROC’s 19th Street Bistro
620 19th St. (19th at Cypress Ave., one block east of the Virginia Beach Convention Center)
Virginia Beach, Va.

More information.

“Come for the beer, stay for the check.”

StevenD comments on the consequences of tea-hate-full-ness.

I cannot do it justice with an excerpt or summary. Just please read it.

According to Andy Borowitz:

In a performance guaranteed to raise some eyebrows in Delaware and beyond, Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell said at a senatorial debate last night that she strongly supports “the separation of speech and thought.”

The alarming thing is that O’Donnell’s reading of the Constitution is typical of that of the teabaggers. They are the Humpty-Dumpties of historical interpretation–they make it mean what they want it to mean, one thing today, another tomorrow.

She is just the most incoherent at expressing it.

This does not seem right (emphasis added).

A US gunship crew was cleared to attack two insurgents on the ground even though the pilots had reported that the men were trying to surrender, the leaked Iraq war logs reveal.

The Apache helicopter pilots killed both Iraqi men after being advised by a US military lawyer that they could not surrender to an aircraft and therefore remained valid targets. A leading military law expert consulted by the Guardian has questioned this legal advice.

Follow the link. Read it all.

Aside:

No wonder the Pentagon wants to keep this stuff secret. Claiming that it endangers lives in the future is sophistry.

It endangers careers in the now.

Addendum, Slightly Later:

The Guardian comments (emphasis added):

Most of the official justifications for war, on grounds of security from terror and weapons of mass destruction, have been discredited. The only element of moral authority left in the decision might be that Saddam Hussein ran a murderous regime, characterised by torture and extra-judicial killing. It could indeed have been the duty of western powers to intervene against such atrocity. But the western occupiers quickly became complicit in atrocities of their own, as new leaked military documents reveal.

(snip)

But each extra piece of evidence builds a portrait of a military occupation deeply implicated in practices that were illegal under international law and unconscionable in the eyes of any reasonable observer.

The terrible truth about British and American involvement in Iraq seems increasingly to be that it was not just a strategic failure, it was, for the occupying powers, a moral catastrophe.

Thank you, Phillies, for a great run.