First Looks category archive

Five years and over 7500 posts later . . . .

And the boast is yet to come.

The dog’s owner has been trying to keep the dog “contained,” but it seems to keep slipping through the cracks.

A Chihuahua named Coco is in quarantine as Animal Control investigates reports she bit a two-year-old.

An Animal Control officer’s report says Coco broke free of a collar/leash and got into Dwain Ware’s backyard on Friday.

(snip)

“(The dog) has been terrorizing the neighborhood,” said Mr. Ware.

Special Guest: State Senator Ralph Northam

Date: Saturday, August 28th Time: 9-10:30 a. m.

Location: Bubba’s Deli & BBQ, 3600 Dam Neck Rd, Virginia Beach (west side of Dam Neck Rd. between Princess Anne Blvd. and Rosemont Rd.; access via service road at Lansdowne Ct. next to the Farmers Market).

Cost: Adults $10.00, Under 12 &6.00 for all-you-can-eat buffet (it’s a pretty good buffet, too–plenty of variety).

More information and suggested items to donate here.

By definition, a truism is a statement that is so obvious it doesn’t have to be mentioned.

Except, I guess, when it does.

True Blue Texan: A prejudice held by the majority is still prejudice.

“Sovereign citizens,” members of an anarchist branch of extreme wingnuttery (I know that sounds redundant), are moving into foreclosed houses and filing false deeds claiming ownership of them. From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution:

Prosecutors say the $1 million brick home next to the Goddards’ farmhouse is one of at least 19 properties that have been taken over by a sect of anti-government extremists involved in criminal behavior.

They call themselves “sovereign citizens” and believe they are immune to state and federal laws. They assert, among other things, that banks can’t own land and that any home owned by a bank – including the thousands throughout Georgia – is free for the taking.

Police and prosecutors take a different view. The FBI has listed them on the domestic terrorist list, saying their crime of choice is paper terrorism and attempting to disrupt the U.S. economy.

Then, again . . . .

Certain trees are able to clone themselves, which raises the tantalising possibility that they could effectively “live forever”.

But a study published in the journal PLoS Biology has dashed that hope.

Dr Dilara Ally and her team at the University of British Columbia, Canada, found that the fertility of clones declines with age.

Two hours earlier than usual to allow persons to attend the debate among 2nd House District candidates Glenn Nye, Scott Rigell, and Kenny Golden at 7:00 PM, Princess Anne High School, Virginia Beach.

• What: Third Thursday Dinner
• When: August 19th, 5:00 PM
• Where: Kelly’s Hilltop Tavern, 1936 Laskin Road, Virginia Beach, VA 23454 (map)

Show up, order off the menu (separate checks), socialize, and talk politics–or whatever else interests you.

I have attended several of these. They tend to be smaller gatherings, highly informal, and a lot of fun.

For more information, email VaBeachBoy@aol.com

The Richmonder visited the USS Midway Museum in San Diego.

Neat pictures.

Via The Daily Dish.

And it can mean big money in tournaments:

When hundreds of thousands – sometimes millions – of dollars are on the line, nobody wants to hear the adage about how fishermen tell lies.

So tournament directors across the country use polygraphs to keep things on the up and up.

Yep – lie detector tests for fishermen.

The story contains this gem, down towards the end:

T.V. O’Malley, the polygraph expert who administered the Big Rock tests, agrees.

“The people who fish in most of these things own million-dollar boats and pay thousands of dollars to compete,” said O’Malley, who has performed polygraphs at fishing tournaments all over the world. “They are professional people who have to worry about their reputations. There is a lot of honor in this sport. They want the pride and bragging rights.

This quotation is supported by the sidebar detailing fishy frauds over the years.

Daniel Schultz writes in the Guardian:

The evangelical activist and historian Randall Balmer spilled the beans back in 2006 about what he called “the abortion myth”: Contrary to what its leaders would have you believe, opposition to legalised abortion was not the organising principle behind the religious right. Abortion was an after-the-fact justification – and sustaining principle – of a movement mobilised largely in response to a 1975 IRS attempt to lift the tax-exempt status of racially segregated Christian schools such as Bob Jones University.

Read the whole thing.

Aside: I visited Bob Jones University when I was a senior in college as part of research for a sociology paper I was writing on the radical right.

It was one eerie strange place.

Remember, my ancestors wore the gray.

Follow the link.

The first part of the Great Lie
Is to deny
That slavery was savage, barbaric—
Instead, bleating and placating
With soft metaphor and subtle explication
That so many owners were good and kind,
And most slaves redeemably well-treated,
Never whipped, never maimed,
Never shipped into coffle lines,
Iron masks or necklaces of horns,
But lofted with warmed clothes, adorned quarters,
And a living comfortable and soft.

There was nothing nice, no kindness, no benevolence, to chattel slavery.

George Fitzhugh said, Cannibals All.

I say to George Fitzhugh and his contemporary apologists, Liars All.

If you can take a liberty away from one simply because you don’t like him, you can take it away from everyone.

From the The Virginia Act For Establishing Religious Freedom, authored by Thomas Jefferson:

Be it therefore enacted by the General Assembly, That no man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burdened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in nowise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.

Excerpt:

This is America. And our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakeable. The principle that people of all faiths are welcome in this country and that they will not be treated differently by their government is essential to who we are. The writ of the Founders must endure.

Domestic terrorism.

I’m staying out of Massachusetts. All I have to do to get poison ivy is look at it.

Also, global warming:

An unusually moist spring and a hot summer have conspired to produce a particularly abundant crop of poison ivy this year, leaving more Massachusetts residents than usual scratching their skin raw.

Scientists believe the plant might also be gaining in potency because, especially in cities, it is thriving on increasing carbon dioxide levels, partly the result of burning fossil fuels and cutting down forests.

Leonard Pitts, Jr. on Anne Rice’s deciding to forsake Christianity so as to cleave to Christ:

To put that another way: The Christian Bible contains numerous exhortations to serve those who are wretched and poor, to anger slowly and forgive promptly, to walk through this life in humility and faith. The word Republican does not appear in the book. Not once.

Yet somehow in the last 30 years, people of faith were hoodwinked into regarding the GOP platform as a lost gospel. Somehow, low taxes for the wealthy and deregulation of industry became the very message of Christ. Somehow, hostility to science, gays, Muslims, and immigrants became the very meaning of faith. And somehow Christianity came to seem a wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party.

Consider that, after the 2004 election, a church in North Carolina made news for kicking out nine congregants because they voted for Democrat John Kerry. Has atheism ever had better salesmen than Jerry Falwell, who blamed the Sept. 11 attacks on the ACLU, or Pat Robertson, who ascribed Haiti’s earthquake to an ancient curse?

Taking the day off, at least most of it.