August, 2014 archive
Fantasies in a Fantasy Land 0
Balloon Juice’s Anne Laurie does a masterful takedown of Libertarianism and its dupes, symps, and fellow travelers.
Just read it.
War and Rumors of War 2
Eugene Robinson comments on Alabama (it would be Alabama, woudn’t it) Congressman Mo Brooks farcical claim that President Obama and the Democrats are waging a “war on whites.”
But maybe not. Maybe Brooks has fully bought into the paranoid myth of white victimhood that gives the opposition to Obama and his policies such an edge of nastiness and desperation.
I do not believe it can be a coincidence that this notion of whites somehow being under attack is finding new expression — not just in Brooks’ explicit words but in the euphemistic language of many others as well — at a time when the first black president lives in the White House.
The myth of victimhood is not new. Long after it was understood that slavery was morally wrong, Southern whites justified its perpetuation by citing the fear that blacks, once liberated, would surely take bloody revenge against those who had held them in bondage. Jim Crow laws and lynchings had a similar purpose. In the minds of his assassins, 14-year-old Emmett Till was tortured and killed to protect the flower of Southern womanhood.
The myth surfaces whenever Obama comments on race.
Feeding that sense of victimhood has been one of the prime tactics of white supremacists, both thet blatant ones and the subtle ones, over the centuries. So long as they can maintain an “us and them” mentality, they can keep themselves in power. As Lyndon Johnson said
Read the rest.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Be polite when closing the sale.
The bullet struck the gun owner in the pocket area, and shrapnel from the bullet hitting the pocketknife ricocheted and struck the other man in the hip.
One-Note Samba 0
Noz:
He’s quite correct, you know. Thinking that something must always be done leads to doing the wrong something more often than not.
Stray Thought 0
We watched Sharknado yesterday. It was riveting in a way, keeping one wondering what the next bit of fantastickal stupid might be. I cannot say that “it was so bad it was good,” but it was so bad it was amusing.
Driftglass is fond of saying (I’m paraphrasing here) that what distinguishes science fiction from other genres is the science.
By that standard, Sharknado is not science fiction; it’s fictional science.
Chartering a Course for Disaster 0
Wayne O’Leary does his homework and uncovers the motivation for the charter school movement; he finds that it’s not educational excellence. A nugget:
Doin’ the Bitcoin Boogie 0
From El Reg:
Geeky details at the link.
Voodoo Economics . . . 0
. . . casts an evil spell in Kansas.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Keep playtime polite.
The Galveston County Daily News reported that the boy was shot by his 7-year-old cousin.
Texas City Police Captain Joe Stanton told the Daily News that the two boys were playing unsupervised with the victim’s 9-year-old brother when they found the weapon.
“The kids found the handgun inside the residence,” said Stanton, and were playing with it when it discharged.
And, in more news of the polite, politeness gets a Boost.
The Voter Fraud Fraud 0
Facing South crunches the numbers. Here’s a snippet; follow the link for more fun with figures:
- In a comprehensive study of voter fraud allegations nationwide from 2000 to 2014, number of incidents that involved someone pretending to be someone else at the polls — the kind of fraud that voter ID laws prevent: 31
- Number of ballots cast during that same 14-year period: more than 1 billion
- Of the few election fraud cases brought by the U.S. Justice Department between 2002 and 2005, when U.S. attorneys were under heavy pressure to pursue such prosecutions, number that would have been addressed by a voter ID requirement: 0
