Per Dave Weigel, tomorrow’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on stand-your-ground laws (which would have given Rep. Louie Gohmert a chance to question Trayvon Martin’s mother) have been postponed due to the Navy Yard shooting.
Archives for September 2013
Give to me your leather
I have become fearful of the possibility that libertarianism may be on the rise. Let me explain. There are generally two types of libertarians: CEO-types (e.g. the Koch brothers) and basement dwellers who rock out to Rush (e.g. the staff of Reason magazine). Generally speaking, the latter group has not been economically or socially successful enough to have much of an impact on society, but technology may change all that. I’ve touched on the libertarian tech-world connection before, and many of your disagreed with me, but I present you with Pax Dickinson, glibertarian extraordinaire, and his new ephemeral photo sharing app with state-of-the-art cryptography. I know the singular of “data” is not “evidence” but you’ll enjoy laughing at this idiot anyway.
The liberal group Demos has begun a new initiative aimed at combatting the “myths and distortions” of glibertarianism. And the Fonz has responded, saying if both sides (apparently, Chris Christie said something mean about them a few months ago) are criticizing liberatarians, then they must be doing something right.
Here’s my question: is it worth monitoring libertarians and mocking them as needed?
MNF Football Open Thread
Rooting for the Stillers, but I’m kind of resolved to a serious ass kicking by the Bengals. If the Steelers win, it will be because of some seriously crazy shit going down.
*** Update ***
I don’t understand that reversal challenge at all. Don’t get me wrong, there is no doubt that Cincy stripped the ball out of Paulson’s hands before he hit the ground. It was clearly a fumble. What I don’t understand is the rules. Paulson was ruled down by contact and a whistle was blown while the ball was still on the ground. How do you challenge that and then give the ball to Cincy who only gained possession after the whistle was blown. If he was down by contact and the whistle had blown before the Cincy recovery, how do you award a post whistle recovery?
Again, cosmically, the right thing happened- Cincy forced a fumble and got the recovery they deserved, but I don’t understand how it groks with the rules. Unless I just don’t understand them.
Monday Evening Open Thread: Trouble Every Day
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Commentor Raven linked to this the other night, and it just seemed appropriate.
Besides mourning, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Monday Evening Open Thread: Trouble Every DayPost + Comments (73)
Things I Hate With The White Hot Heat Of A Thousand Suns
This, for one:
Gary Humes, a programs manager with the Navy, was entering the building where the shootings took place around 8:20 a.m. when he was met by people fleeing the building and warning of a shooter inside. He and more than 100 others ran to another building across the street, while others ran to the Navy museum nearby.
“I decided to go into work a little late this morning,” he said. “I guess God was with me.”” (from The Navy Times story on today’s mass shooting*).
Should we thus infer that God was not with the dead and wounded?
I’m not going to get into the problem of evil in this space. There are ways religious believers reconcile themselves to the obvious fact that bad things happen to good people — or at least people for whom the evil outcomes are undeserved by any reasonable calculation. There are certainly logically coherent ways to understand the presence of evil in the world as a strong indicator of the absence of deity actively intervening in human affairs. Neither of those true statements is in play here.
Rather: hosannas like the one above are to me the markers of failed religion. I don’t me Mr Humes himself. Dodging the kind of horror he did today would make anyone — me certainly – feel an almost giddy (and guilty) sense of relief. He gets a pass from me on anything he says in the moment. But it’s still possible to read something in the verbal formula that someone in such straits reaches for in such moments of trial. And the “God is with me” trope — that to me is the signal of a religious culture thoroughly getting it wrong.
Or, to put it in another frame, what would Jesus say?
This, for example:
40 “The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’
…
45 “He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’ (Matthew 25)
Image: Aelbert Culp, Landscape with Cattle, c. 1639-1649
Things I Hate With The White Hot Heat Of A Thousand SunsPost + Comments (136)
Open Thread: “Breach of Trust”
Rachel Maddow recently wrote a book review for the NYTimes:
… America is, truly, exceptional in the scale of our military commitments; it is the defining context of our role among nations. In his abrasive, heartbreaking new book, “Breach of Trust: How Americans Failed Their Soldiers and Their Country,” Andrew J. Bacevich starts from the assumption that our modern militarism is unsustainable and unwise. He then proceeds to assign blame, mercilessly: to the public (for our consumerist apathy); to the Pentagon (for its “generals who had slept undisturbed back when Warsaw Pact commanders had ostensibly been planning to launch World War III” but who “now fretted nervously over the prospect of their budget taking a hit”); to the contractors (whose profiteering steals honor from the soldiers they serve alongside); and, naturally, to the politicians. Even Fenway Park and the Red Sox come in for blame, for the staging of a sailor’s homecoming at a July 4 game that left Bacevich all but retching over the “convenient mechanism for voiding obligation, . . . a made-to-order opportunity for conscience-easing.”
Bacevich saves particular vitriol for pro-war writers of both the right and left: Christopher Hitchens, the Washington Post columnist Richard Cohen and the New Republic editor Leon Wieseltier all get filleted and neatly stacked in the corner, to make room for the unleashing of all hell on David Brooks for his commentary before, during and after the Iraq war — followed by what Bacevich sees as an unconscionable repeat of the same mistakes in the late phases of the war in Afghanistan. Bacevich’s scorching litany of what he sums up as “grotesque and contemptible irresponsibility” is a bracing indictment of my profession, and how no one suffers consequences for even the most humiliating failures in prediction and analysis, as long as those failures favor the use of military force. (I should mention here that Bacevich blurbed my own book, “Drift.”)…
Now Salon has (as Billmon expressed it) “picked the lowest-hanging fruit” with an excerpt where Bacevich explains that “David Brooks Is Constantly Wrong“:
A military composed of warrior-professionals suits the agenda of hawkish conservatives at least as well as hawkish liberals. For those who dream of liberating the oppressed abroad and reversing the corrupting tide of liberalism at home here is an instrument ideally suited to making those dreams come true. Not persuaded? Consider the views of the noted conservative commentator and New York Times columnist David Brooks.
Back in early 2003, eager to have the United States invade Iraq, Brooks mocked those expressing reservations or reluctance…
On April 28, 2003, beating President Bush’s “Mission Accomplished” speech by three days, Brooks declared that “the war in Iraq is over.” The political and cultural implications of victory promised to be profound. A collaboration between policy makers in Washington and troops on the battlefield had removed any last doubts as to American global dominion. Brooks sang the praises of “a ruling establishment that can conduct wars with incredible competence and skill.” The United States, he enthused, was an “incredibly effective colossus that can drop bombs onto pinpoints, [and] destroy enemies that aren’t even aware they are under attack.”…
What He Said
I’ll give it to David Frum, he knocked this one out of the park.
I’m going to hold off talking about this shooting until my conservative betters let me know whether this was terrorism or just a tragedy. Sounds like the guy might have been white, so it’s looking like this was just a tragedy and it would be horrible to exploit this to stop gun violence. /sarcasm