June, 2015 archive
Doing the Charleston 0
John Romano visits Charleston, South Carolina, for yesterday’s services and tries to understand white Charleston’s continuing veneration of the Secesh.
One more time: when persons speak longingly of the “Lost Cause,” ask them what, specifically, was the cause that was lost.
Headline of the Day 0
From The Guardian:
Dylann Roof: far right denies links and disowns ‘act of purposeful evil’
Or, in other words,
Incubator denies hatchling.
Sticker Schlock 2
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tries to make sense of consumer health care prices and finds out that it can’t.
Facebook Frolics 0
In my local rag, Elizabeth Simpson describes what happened when she changed her profile picture on the Zuckerborg:
Sooner or later, I had to align my social media profile with the real me.
(snip)
Suddenly Olay anti-aging ads were popping up.
More tales of tracking cookies at the link.
In related news, Jeffrey Gillespie muses on the self-deception of “social networking.” Here’s a snippet:
“The Smart One” 0
He’s a taker, not a maker. He wants to take your Social Security and give it to the banksters.
In related news, Paul Krugman comments on Jebonomics. A nugget:
A Wealth of Water 0
The rich in Cali use more water than the not-rich. That wouldn’t be a surprise anywhere.
The disparity in usage, though, does take one aback (emphasis added):
The massive difference highlights an issue that has become more clear across California as the drought has worsened: Wealthy areas are using dramatically more water than lower-income areas.
The story goes on the explain that the rich are doing it because they can.
Rights for Me, Not for Thee 0
In other news, someone else who was raised Southern Baptist, as I was, meditates on the hateful gospel of Franklin Graham. (By the way, we also had a beer truck driver in our church. Our pastors periodically had to assure him that he was welcome.)
It’s Not Right To Fool Mother Nature 0
The only plants native to Southern California are cacti and tumbleweeds. Everything else is imported and irrigated. (The same goes, natch, for Arizona and most of Nevada.)
I used to have training gigs in Burbank. My Air America flight (Air America is now part of U. S. Scare DBA U. S. Airways) usually involved a change in Phoenix.
The flight from Phoenix to Burbank happened to follow the aqueduct carrying water stolen from the Colorado River to sate Los Angeles’s undying thirst for swimming pools and perfect lawns. Every time I made that flight, looked down on that artificial river through the desert, and watched as my plane cleared the mountains and started its descent above the swimming pools, irrigated lawns, and faux greenery of southern California, I thought to myself, “This is a sin.”
It looks as if reckoning is imminent.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Politeness requires class.
(snip)
The gun went off accidentally and the bullet grazed his leg, Hopkins said.
. . . and yet another gun that goes off on its own without reported intervention of human agency.
Afterthought:
I guess this aspiring Wyatt Earp is now a pawn star.
And, in more news of the polite . . . .
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Today’s edition of my local rag had a very good editorial about the Charleston shootings. Here’s a bit:
And so nothing like this can happen in a place like South Carolina without stirring the memories of the racial violence that has torn the South for so long.
It was the kind of violence, both overt and psychic, that burned black churches and lynched black men and closed black schools and churches. It slaughtered black children. It attempted to turn black people into something less than people.
That historic persecution was systematic and organized, while Wednesday’s massacre appears the work of one entirely cowardly man whose history and mental state we know little about.
But the bloody consequences are a haunting reminder of the uncivilized horror that is a stain on this nation, and a signal of how far we still have to go to recognize that hate and terror serve only as a path to ruin.
Afterthought:
I’m still trying to wrap my head around Republican attempts to claim that the Charleston shootings had nothing to do with race, despite the shooter’s overt statements to the contrary. They lead me to wonder, are Republicans stupid, are they pandering to their followers, or both? (“Neither” is clearly not an option.)
I’m voting for the second choice. Nixon’s odious southern strategy was always about pandering to the basest of the base.
Ex Post Afterthought:
I reckon there’s some wishful thinking mixed in there too. There’s precedent, as the Republican Party’s economic policies are based solely on wishful thinking.
Her Special Day 0
NRA Paradise meets the Wedding Industrial Complex:
The Post reports that bride Anna Goldshmidt and her husband Elan Stratiyevsky have hired lawyer Benjamin Brafman to sue the hotel, and the unintentional shooter, for millions for ruining the wedding day.
I predict the only winners in this will be the lawyers.
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Play politely.
Billeb said investigators don’t believe the boys intended for anyone to get hurt.
Pretzel Logic 0
Aurin Squire tries to understand the means by which conservatives are convincing themselves that the fellow who killed nine persons while declaring that he was doing so because they were black was somehow not motivated by race. Here’s one little example from the article.
Read it.
I do not think that the Republicans’ self-deception can be wholly attributed to bigotry on the part of every self-deceiver. Rather, it’s a matter of perpetually putting party over principle.
Nixon’s odious southern strategy is the centerpiece of the Republican Party’s appeal in the South. Maintaining that strategy is no longer a tactic; it’s a two-generation-old habit, deeply ingrained in Republican reflexes.
Another idea, also related to the southern strategy, is this: in attempting to appeal to the Southern bigot vote and its dupes, symps, and fellow travelers, Republicans have spent so much effort overlooking, ignoring, apologizing for, and explaining away racist acts that they can no longer recognize racism, even when it stands before them and shouts, “Here I am. Look at meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.
