May, 2011 archive
Spill Here, Spill Now, Write It Off 0
The Miami Herald editorializes:
“Surely, the Gulf oil spill was the result of wrongdoing, and yet you want to claim that as a tax credit,” Sen. Nelson said.
BP, he added “may be entitled to this under the law, but that doesn’t make it right .?.?.” Exactly.
Reading the opening of the editorial is worth clicking the link.
Wilmington News-Journal Webmaster FAIL 0
If were that girl’s parents, I would consider this juxtaposition to be most unfortunate:
Freedom Riders 1
Leonard Pitts, Jr., talks with a veteran of the Freedom Riders,* young folks who offered their lives to end Jim Crow. The article appears today to mark tonight’s PBS documentary.
A nugget:
A bus was firebombed in Anniston, Ala. In Birmingham, police gave the Ku Klux Klan 15 minutes to beat riders to their heart’s content. Yet no Freedom Rider ever raised a hand in defense.
Get hit, don’t hit back. “You have to change your whole way of thinking,” Rip told me. “You have to love your fellow man, just like the Book says. He’s beating on you, kicking you, you’ve still got to love him.” It was not just a high Christian ideal, but also sound and effective strategy, the idea being that through the willingness to sacrifice your body, you made it clear as air to a watching world which side had the moral high ground, and which did not.
Which leads me to a thought I had the other day:
It’s common to hear folks say that “Americans are reluctant to talk about race.”
I have come to disagree.
White Americans are reluctant to talk about race, for to do so requires us to confront the legacy of white American society’s deeds.
______________________
*Where I grew up, many of the grown-ups considered the Freedom Riders to be “outside agitators” come to destroy Our Way of Life(TM). Some persons still hold that point of view.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
The Booman sums it up. A nugget:
It’s a racist, voter suppression drive. That’s all it is. It isn’t what they say it is. As someone who spent a year of my life working to register voters in our inner cities, I can tell you that a lot of young urban people do not have a driver’s license because they don’t have a car. And they don’t have a state-issued photo ID because they don’t need one. If you make having a photo ID a condition for voting, you are definitely going to limit these kids’ representation in the electorate. And that’s the point.
False Play of Trump 0
And this surpises us how?
Donald Trump says he’s not running for president.
The reality TV star said in a statement Monday that he won’t seek the Republican nomination.
I don’t know that I agree wholeheartedly with those who have said all along that he was only in it to pimp his lousy television show; Trump has had enough success as an empty suit blowhard that he could easily think he could pull off yet another con.
Then reality ate his lunch and his lousy television show and the horse he rode in on.
The Internet Is a Public Place 0
Science 2.0 reminds us of a news a recent news story:
The article goes on to suggest five rules for staying out of this sort of trouble.
No, “don’t get married” is not one of them, though “don’t get divorced in Connecticut” does make the cut–they are five rules for on-line behavior. Share them with your friendly local on-line hothead.
Government Fishing Expeditions 0
Your Fourth Amendment rights are being nibbled away. The ACLU is fighting to protect them.
More here.
Twits on Twitter 0
It’s reaching a critical mess.
Seen on the Street 0
Sidewalk chalk art by Holland Winslow at the entrance of the Chrysler Museum in honor of the Tiffany Lamps exhibit. Posted with permission.
Click for a larger image. You will be glad you did.
Pornistan 0
Andy Borowitz (full report at the link):
“It’s clear that Osama bin Laden acted alone,” said CIA director Leon Panetta. “And he spent most of his waking hours doing just that.”
I fail to understand the fuss.
A porn stach stash is normal; it’s mass murder that is not.
Also, Noz has a thought.
Meta: Seen on the Street 0
I have created a “Seen on the Street” category and aggregated all the “Seen on the Street” posts–pictures and reports of found items I find interesting, creative, striking, funny, or otherwise notable–under it.
You can access it from the sidebar, over there
———————————————->
“Categories” is the next to the last item.
The Galt and the Lamers 0
Ron Paul considers that property rights trump civil rights.
Bob Cesca transcribed the exchange. Here’s a little bit:
PAUL: Because — because of the property rights element, not because it got rid of the Jim Crow law.
MATTHEWS: Right. The guy who owns a bar says, no blacks allowed, you say that’s fine. … This was a local shop saying no blacks allowed. You say that should be legal?
That property rights trumped civil rights is exactly what Edmund Ruffin, Jefferson Davis, Chief Justice Roger Tanney, and others of their ilk, also thought.
Afterthought:
What I find most striking about Libertarianism is this:
Its adherents are either
- strikingly devious, building their frothy meringues of baseless logic with knowing intent to deceive or, what I consider more likely,
- blindingly naive in a touching faith that somehow, in Libertarian world, there would be neither sin nor iniquity.
Well, I guess there is a third option:
-
that they are strikingly, blindingly, stupidly, naively self-centered.
Now that would be the Libertarian Randian Way.
Driving While Brown 0
Lexington’s percentage of such deportations is well above the national average of 60 percent, according to a Herald-Leader analysis of a report on the program released by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 4.
There has been mounting national criticism in recent weeks of ICE’s Secure Communities program, leading Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to abandon the initiative earlier this month.
They forget that, in wingnut world, being brown is ipso facto evidence of criminality.