2016 archive
“An Armed Society Is a Polite Society” 0
Get an unload of all the politeness:
State police Trooper Rob Hicks said the men were cutting wood in an area of Loop Road and one was unloading a pistol when the gun accidentally discharged.
Afterthought:
In that part of the world, having a gun can make sense. There may be rattle snakes about. Just don’t use your gun to cut wood. Or something.
Merchants of Death 0
Part One:
Part Two:
There Are None So Blind . . . . 0
Shorter Elie Mystal: “What you see is what you got.”
Move over Occam 0
Meet Trump’s razor.
Knee-Jerk Jerks 0
At the Portland Press-Herald, Alan Caron takes on those who would defend the police against any charges of misconduct, regardless of how blatant and egregious and deadly–and of how captured in video–that misconduct may have been. A snippet:
Harmon did a good job representing the conservative ideologue’s response to race problems in America, which seems to mirror its response to climate change and income inequality. Dig a small hole. Put your head into the hole, and bury your eyes and ears. There, in the silence, racism will not exist. Climate change will be a myth. Income equally will not matter.
Here’s a link to Harmon’s column cited by Mr. Caron. (I glanced at it when it first appeared and decided it was the usual right-wing claptrap.)
Lies and Lying Liars 0
Werner Herzog’s Bear points out that Donald Trump’s political success is built on decades of Republican lies. Indeed, Mr. Bear’s catalog of Republican lies rivals Homer’s catalog of ships. Here’s just a few from the list:
That’s just part of his list. Follow the link for the rest.
I do have one quibble.
I do not believe that “our media have failed to see” any of this.
I believe that our corporate media, with a few exceptions as unheeded as Cassandra, have actively chosen not to see it; they prefer horse-race coverage and the broadcast ratings it brings, false equivalences, made-up scandals such as Whitewater and Benghazi, and the on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand both-sides-do-it narrative to accuracy, principle, and truth.
Like little Beltway Pilates, they wash their hands even as they cash their checks.
American Taliban 0
Shorter Newt Gingrich: Sharia and Sharia alike.
Conventional Bloggery 0
Don’t expect much about events at either the Republican or Democratic conventions in these electrons. I’ve long considered what happens at political conventions, like election results, to be something to read about over coffee the next morning.
Besides, at least this week, I couldn’t bear to look, even if I wanted to. Cleveland is already turning uglier than I feared it might.
Aside:
I wonder how long the corporate media can maintain their fiction that the Republican convention is “politics as usual” and that “both sides do it” in the face of events in Cleveland? Yesterday, the headlines at Raw Story and Crooks and Liars looked like stuff the Onion Mad Magazine would not have dared to make up.
(Indefinitely, I suspect. It’s what they are paid for.)
The Meat of the Nut in the Gun Nut 0
The Rev. Robert Winter gets to the point:
Stripped to its essence, the point of owning a weapon is power.
Follow the link for more.