This is some graffiti from a Banksy-like artist who’s working in Tehran. It’s a woman wearing an Iranian soccer jersey holding up a bottle of dish soap. Women are banned from attending soccer matches in Iran. More here and a collection of images is here.
I was going to write a post about the utter uselessness of Brian Schweitzer, or about how the New York Working Families Party screwed the pooch by not running a challenger to Andrew Cuomo because Cuomo is now in some hot water, but both of those topics are too depressing to contemplate on a beautiful summer morning. But if you have a stronger constitution than me feel free to discuss those topics in this open thread.
MattF
And this is why Facebook has to allow anonymous users. Advertisers are unhappy because ‘Black Hand’ doesn’t fit into their databases. Boo hoo.
Baud
Truly. Golden opportunity for he-who-shall-never-be-president to make up for his past douchebaggery and he won’t step up.
What’s the news with Cuomo?
Botsplainer
Rainy summer morning. I’m watching a documentary on the special German prison for American POWs they deemed Jewish.
Dolly Llama
If this is a double-post, forgive me (don’t know what happened to my last comment) but this is some fucked-up shit from the world of NASCAR. What the hell is Stewart doing driving on dirt anyway? Not that I care about that or NASCAR generally, but damn.
the Conster
So many deeply troubling events happening now, I’ve stopped paying attention. The utter failure of our institutions to address the multiple calamities of environment, politics and economics is devastatingly depressing. Street art is a wonderful response – I won’t say hopeful, but it’s powerful. One of the great street art capitals of the world is Valparaiso, Chile – every day I was there was a carnival ride of amazing images.
Botsplainer
@Dolly Llama:
I blame the alleged stewards of racing. They’re feckless assholeswho never suspend drivers for dirty driving, and this cute little trick of having angry drivers leap out to shake fists isn’t dealt with either.
Jalopnik says Stewart s going to race today. If the other drivers had a lick of integrity, they’d refuse to go on a track with that ragemonkey.
Mike J
@Dolly Llama: A guy dressed entirely in black walks onto a race track where cars are still racing, at night, and people somehow find it obvious that he was hit on purpose.
Dolly Llama
@Botsplainer: Actually, according to subsequent reports, the team has reversed that decision and he won’t race today. Which is a small-ass thing in the grand scheme of things.
Dolly Llama
@Mike J: I don’t know if it was on purpose or not. They say there’s video. Damn if I want to see it. I’ll leave that shit to the professionals.
c u n d gulag
Andrew Cuomo is proof that sometimes the fruit sometimes falls very far from the tree.
His father was great.
It’s too late for Mike Wallace to do it, but if I was Mario, I’d check Andrew’s DNA to make sure he’s my son.
Suffern ACE
@Baud: it is possible that Cuomo is going to be indicted. Or at the very least, a bunch of his senior staff will be. We’ll see how it goes, but allegedly a commission that was set up to investigate corruption wasn’t allowed to be independent. And people are wondering if he shut down the commission this spring because it’s investigations were getting too close to his friends. Hubris. If true, it’s Christie level stupidity.
Botsplainer
@Mike J:
If you watch the video, two drivers saw and avoided him. Stewart goosed it – you can hear it – in an apparent attempt to dust him as a big “fuck you”, and the back end whipped further than anticipated.
That is jailable conduct.
Suffern ACE
@c u n d gulag: entitled prick is entitled. It is unlikely that the republicans would win, but at least their candidate isn’t a drunken, racist, horse sexytime lovin buffoon like it was the last time. How republicans would win is if the Dems have no candidate. And by golly, Cuomo is just the man to give them that opportunity.
Amir Khalid
TPM headline: McCain Slams Obama: We Should have Stayed in Iraq
It seems McCain is proclaiming a new Republican talking point: the food drops and air strikes that Obama has decided are needed in Iraq are proof that the US should never have left.
No, you silly old git. W should have left bad enough alone and stayed the hell out in 2003.
Elizabelle
That is some beautiful street art. Thank you for posting the image. It’s a powerful one.
Heading off for a family BBQ a few hours south. Have a good Sunday, y’all. (Heading to the land of plentiful produce stands. Look forward to cooking some delish vegetarian dinners this week, and I am usually a carnivore. But these veggies dare one not to buy them, and they’re so inexpensive. Bountiful.)
Ciao.
Mike in NC
@Suffern ACE: The other day NoiseMax noted that Pataki might enter the presidential race in 2016. We are not worthy.
Suffern ACE
@Amir Khalid: the other new point is to refer to the air strikes as. ‘Pin pricks’ and compare them unfavorably to “shock and awe”. So what if the mission now is different.
Mnemosyne (iPad Mini)
We’ve started our vacation — getting ready to head over to my mom and brother’s to meet the new kittens. We are, of course, bringing toys with us.
I could think about all of the depressing things happening in the world and in my family, but right now, I’m just going to concentrate on kittens.
Suffern ACE
@Mike in NC: I thought Pataki was supposed to save the republicans last time, only to decide against it when he realized that for all the money he could raise, no one would vote for him who wasn’t a blood relative.
Mike in NC
@Amir Khalid: In 2008 The Atlantic had an article on McCain entitled “Why War Is His Answer”. He needs to spend eternity is his very own circle of Hell. OK, he can share it with Lindsey Graham.
Baud
@Suffern ACE:
Thanks. Assuming the unlikely event of Cuomo dropping out, could someone replace him on the ballot?
Unlike Christie, Cuomo was never the Dems great white hope, so that’s something to be thankful for.
danielx
Thinking of trying to revive a web site I saw back in the day during the Cheney Regency. The basic proposition was laying odds on how long it would take for the US govt to screw the Kurds in some fashion, since screwing the Kurds in one way or another has been a long term sport for the so-called Great Powers for oh, the last hundred years or thereabouts. Simple enough: if the Kurds don’t get some better weaponry than they’ve got, they’re goners, since for once these fucking ISIS savages appear to be every bit as bad as they’ve been portrayed.
It’s odd that ISIS just appeared, seemingly out of nowhere – I mean, six months ago who’d ever heard of them? How is it that our vastly expensive (and overrated, apparently) intelligence organs didn’t pick up on these guys?
c u n d gulag
@Mike in NC:
WOW!
Nothing is more exciting than George Pataki!
*YAWN!
ZzzzzzzzzzzzzzZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…*
Iowa Old Lady
@Baud: Cuomo and Pataki both have distorted views of themselves because of the way the NY media reflects them as larger than they are. Christie has a national presence, but these guys do not.
The average Iowan would confuse Cuomo with his father. If you asked what role he filled, they’d probably guess mayor of NYC.
They might vaguely have heard of Pataki, but if you told they he was a soccer player, they’d believe you.
Botsplainer
Just queued up a movie on Netflix that looks stupid enough for me to enjoy – humans in league with vampires during a zombie apocalypse.
OzarkHillbilly
Another.
What’s different now is that in post-racial America, it has become acceptable to be “post-racial,” and still fear black people. Policing strategies have legalized racism, and the media, beginning with the killing of Trayvon Martin, has made the view of black people as de facto threats just another side of the argument, and a persuasive one for many.
You can lock up all the killers of unarmed black people, or not lock them up, and it will make no difference the next time some panicky person with a gun shoots down the next Michael Brown, or Renisha McBride, or Jonathan Ferrell, or John Crawford, or chokes out the next Eric Garner. The people who have made it their business to legitimize the view of black culture as the wellspring of criminality have blood on their hands, and will continue to have blood on their hands.
This one hits a little closer for me. I lived in Jennings for 3 years and spent a considerable amount of time in Ferguson. It is a really nice place for suburbia, a good mix of people in a working class environment, nice farmers market and their 4th of July celebration was #1 to me. (they have beer stalls and I never saw anyone drunk or ugly) The people there (black, white, and hispanic) are better than this. Apparently their police aren’t.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike in NC: Just heard Lindsey Graham quoted — no counter point, no context– in the top-of-the-hour NPR news saying that if we– if Obama doesn’t stop ISIS in Iraq, they are coming HERE! Just like Saddam Husssein was a direct and “imminent” threat in the winter of ’02-’03.
I don’t discount the desire or ability of these groups to commit terrorist acts in this country– Richard Clarke has laid out some terrifyingly simple scenarios– but the fact that this kind of ridiculous hyperbole is treated as foreign policy expertise is as depressing as anything happening on the ground in the region. Jodi Ernst in Iowa is embracing the “we should have stayed” talking point. I suspect David Gregory and his ilk will be making that confused dog face when they see this fall flat outside their area codes.
? Martin
@Dolly Llama: Tony Stewart got his start in Sprint car driving and along with some other NASCAR guys (Jeff Gordon, others) routinely go out and drive local Sprint races. They do it to boost local attendance and help keep local racing strong. Pretty much every NASCAR weekend they’re out friday/saturday night running a local race. It’s actually quite a cool thing that the do. They are VERY good Sprint track drivers.
Looking at the video, I don’t think they’re going to throw the book at Tony because it doesn’t appear to be intentional to me. Drivers approaching other cars on foot is a serious rules violation in and of itself, with the only real goal being that the approaching driver forces the guy driving to stop on track so that he can try and beat the hell out of him while he’s strapped in a seat. That never actually happens, but that’s clearly the intent. It’s handled one of 3 ways:
1) The driver stops for the guy on foot, who at a minimum yells at him, if not hitting him with his hands/helmet. Since the driver has a full helmet on, this isn’t actually dangerous to the driver, but it can be to the guy on foot. Sometimes they’ll actually climb into the car somewhat.
2) The driver maintains their pace with the guy on foot trying to keep up at 20-30 MPH, hanging on, reaching inside the car, etc. This is pretty dangerous as well as it’s easy to get hung up on a body panel and dragged under the car.
3) The driver hits the gas so that the guy on foot can’t even reach the car and waits for the marshals to restrain the guy on foot before coming back around. This is probably the most common reaction in NASCAR – make sure the pedestrian can’t reach the car.
None of them are good outcomes. All of them are dangerous in various ways. There are very strict rules on what drivers do when they get out of the car for this reason.
The driver that was killed was unusually combative while out of the car. Drivers will approach the side of a vehicle, but that’s the first time I’ve ever seen a driver go at a car head-on jumping from side to side. That’s just bonkers dangerous. It assumes the driver can see you, which at night wearing a helmet with mud kicked all over the front, closely following other cars, in a situation when you only ever need to watch out for marshals with reflective clothing and who will be in very predictable places is just all kinds of stupid. From the video it looks like Tony tried to drive toward the inside of the track to avoid him, and when he hit the gas the back end stepped out and clipped the guy.
Assuming that Tony didn’t just look up and see the guy with little chance to react (possible – again, under caution that’s when drivers have a chance to look down at their gauges, clean their visor, talk to the pits, etc. and not be total eyeballs ahead) I think that was just a dumb move if he was trying to sprint around the guy. In NASCAR, on asphalt when you hit the gas you pretty reliably go straight ahead. On dirt, you always do some combination of ahead and sideways, especially in those light little Sprint cars. Top-class Sprint cars have as much HP or more than NASCAR and the cars weigh nearly ⅓ as much. You’re looking at 1500 hp/ton so maintaining rear traction is damn near impossible on dirt. And NASCAR is closed wheel so if you bounce a pedestrian off the side, odds are you’ll do little more than knock him over. Open-wheel cars are vastly more dangerous and getting pulled under a wheel is extremely likely. That’s also why open wheel crashes tend to be so much more dramatic – wheel-wheel contact is enough to flip a car over at speed and those wheels go flying everywhere. So that speed past the guy tactic is pretty safe in NASCAR but much less so in Sprint cars. Maybe he forgot that.
It’s hard to tell from the video – you only see Tony’s car for a fraction of a second before he hits Kevin. The few seconds before that would tell us a lot more. New video should surface. They pretty commonly film these races for local TV, etc.
Not trying to blame Kevin for this, but he really, really, really shouldn’t have been where he was. Tony shouldn’t have been forced to make a decision there, and he obviously made the wrong one, but that doesn’t mean it was deliberate. I think it’s very unlikely that it was deliberate. Tony might be the guy to run at you back in the pits if you took him out, but he doesn’t have a history of being aggressive in this manner. And why would he, Tony was still in the race – why would he be mad?
Suffern ACE
@danielx: I’m going to guess we did, but were assured by our so-called allies who were funding them that they weren’t a threat.
Which reminds me. I keep hearing about this huge weapons store that ISIS picked up in Mosul. The tanks, missiles, etc. how easy is it to learn how to use those? I mean I think if I came across a tank, it would be difficult for me to drive if I didn’t have experience with one. I could probably figure it out, but getting the gun to fire accurately would be a challenge. Can someone just get in a modern tank and use it for anything other than another armored vehicle?
OzarkHillbilly
@Iowa Old Lady:
It is not polite to make fun of a persons weight. ;-)
Jay C
Sorry, mix: I’ll have to disagree with your assessment of the Working Families Party vis-a-vis Andrew Cuomo: despite some fairly desperate fantasizing from the Left Blogosphere, I think it was REALLY unlikely that the WFP was going to be the dealbreaker/kingmaker in the election with their “own” candidate: Andy C. had the Dem nomination sewn up (and a lot of the non-NYC Party behind him) – the Republicans are running running the usual idiot nonentity: a non-trivial third-party showing might have made a bit of a stir: but in terms of actual politics, I think the WFP did better by trading their ballot line for at least some sort of deal from the Governor: their alternative, IMO, would have been to have been shut out of the process entirely and get bupkis.
Mind you, I think the WFP has done a very good job “mainstreaming” themselves up from “crank fringe” Party to “serious contender”: but the notion that they are, or were going to be, a sort of left-wing Tea Party, leveraging a minority bloc vote into serious influence on their State Party is just
dreaming.
WereBear
@Botsplainer: What? No werewolves?
bemused
I’m still trying to wrap my mind around learning in a previous thread that “winsome” is a favorite word for Rick Perry. Seriously? I can’t imagine how he uses it in a sentence in any way, shape or form. Still giggling.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I want the GOP to go around talking about putting troops BACK IN IRAQ.
? Martin
@danielx: ISIS is mostly just Al Qaeda rebranded. Most of the same guys with some Sunni extremists thrown in. Same mission. After they were mostly defeated in Iraq they found new opportunities in Syria, armed up, reorganized with a lot of new pissed off people, and decided to roll over a weak Iraqi army. Al Qaeda went after Yazidi before.
The new bad guys are the same as the old bad guys.
And we are helping the Kurds. But I know where you’re coming from. We help them just enough to not get genocided out, but not enough to actually be autonomous. It would be easier to support them if not for the situation in Turkey. But none of this shit is easy.
Botsplainer
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Area code? Try zip code – it’s hella more narrow.
rikyrah
Anger On Streets After Black Teen Killed By Cop
A crowd confronted officers, with some shouting obscenities and threats including “kill the police,” following the fatal shooting.
By Sky News US Team
The fatal shooting of a black teenager by a US police officer has sparked angry protests in his Missouri neighbourhood.
Hundreds of residents gathered at the scene of the killing outside an apartment building in Ferguson, a suburb of St Louis.
It is not known why the officer opened fire on the victim, 18-year-old Michael Brown, last Tuesday.
Following the shooting, a temporary memorial was set up and the crowd confronted officers, with some shouting obscenities and threats including “kill the police”.
But there were no reports of injuries.
Brown’s mother Leslie McSpadden said: “He don’t bother nobody. My son just turned 18 and graduated from high school and he don’t bother nobody.”
http://news.sky.com/story/1316289/anger-on-streets-after-black-teen-killed-by-cop
ThresherK
I know Ebola is really dangerous, deadly, and untreatable.
But does anyone else get more squicked out by images of any number of parasites ending in -worm, such as tapeworm or ringworm?
Violet
I am going to go to the gym. This is a big deal since I have been far too busy and exhausted from caring for my parents to have any energy left over to go to the gym. I have to get in shape for an upcoming event that requires physical strength and fitness. I have a deadline. I’m starting my training today. I am going to the gym.
jayboat
Stewart pulling out of the race is a no-brainer. He would be a distraction to every other driver on the track, and I am sure he’s not anywhere near mentally prepared for a NASCAR race less than 24 hours after running over another driver. Nobody has that level of concentration, professional driver or no.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Huh. Looks like Candy Crowley pushed back a teeny bit
That’s a slow fat one to Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow and their staffs, just go back and look at some of Bitter Old Warmonger’s “predictions” from ’02/’03. I have seen him say it’s simply not true that we couldn’t get a SOFA with Maliki to protect US personnel from arrest and prosecution by Iraqis. I suspect the old fool believes, deep in his bones, that his magnificent and radiant moral force would have changed Maliki’s mind, just like he was going to inspire a solution to the financial crash by suspending his campaign, my friends.
I just want someone to ask if he was/is willing to support tax increases to pay for his Endless Occupation, because it’s barely a year ago that we were about to become Greece because of Debt and Deficit.
? Martin
@Botsplainer:
I don’t think so. Consider that Kevin wasn’t trying to stop the two cars that avoided him. That is, Kevin was also avoiding those cars. Avoiding him was not just easy but probably required no effort on the part of the drivers. Kevin however wasn’t avoiding Tony’s car – he was running straight at it.
Let’s ask this another way: what was Kevin attempting to do? A Sprint car is all tires. You cannot safely approach one unless it’s stopped. The only point was to get Tony to stop on track. Is that a reasonable thing to do? Is that a reasonable thing for Tony to agree to? It’s not unheard of for a pissed-off driver to take off his helmet and starting hitting an opponent with it.
rikyrah
In stunning defeat, Hawaii Gov. Abercrombie ousted by state Sen. Ige in Democratic primary
By CATHY BUSSEWITZ, Associated Press
HONOLULU (AP) — In a stunning defeat for an incumbent, Hawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie was unseated by a fellow Democrat in Saturday’s primary election, as Democratic voters chose state Sen. David Ige as their nominee in one of two marquee races that have divided the party.
Abercrombie had tried to hold onto his seat while disgruntled voters turned their allegiance to Ige, who promised to bring a less confrontational political style. Voters rewarded Ige with a decisive victory Saturday.
In the U.S. Senate race, incumbent Democrat Brian Schatz also faces a threat from fellow Democrat U.S. Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, who believes the seat should have been passed on to her when her mentor, U.S. Sen. Daniel Inouye, died in 2012.
Hanabusa took a slight lead over Schatz with 49 percent compared with 47 percent for Schatz in early returns Saturday night, based on 104,000 votes cast early or absentee.
The winners of each race will face Republicans and independent candidates in the November general election, but such campaigns are often longshots in heavily Democratic Hawaii.
Ige mounted his challenge against Abercrombie despite being outspent by about 10 to 1. While Abercrombie tore through $4.9 million through July 25, Ige spent just $447,000, according to Hawaii’s Campaign Spending Commission.
http://www.usnews.com/news/politics/articles/2014/08/09/hawaii-dems-face-tough-battles-for-gov-senate
? Martin
@jayboat: Yeah, I’m glad he backed out as well. I’m sure the investigators have enough additional questions to keep him busy during the race.
But I suspect he wouldn’t think about it during the race. These are professionals, which means they got to where they are because they have freakshow focus and determination. These guys race with broken bones which must hurt like hell, but they block it out all the same. They just aren’t wired like you and me when it comes to this stuff.
danielx
@Suffern ACE:
Depends. Even if they can’t fire the main gun, a tank is a terrifying weapon against troops equipped with small arms only, which is mostly what the Kurds have at this point. Moreover, it’s not like men with military training, even as armored vehicle crew, are scarce upon the ground in that area of the world. But modern tanks are complicated machines, as our esteemed blogmaster will testify. It takes training and infrastructure to keep them in action – mechanics, spare parts, fuel, lubricants, ammunition, etc etc. Those ISIS bastards appear to be doing just fine (from their standpoint) with armored Humvees and technicals, those pickup trucks with heavy machine guns mounted on them, which are much simpler to keep running. Why screw with success by complicating your movements with a lot of complicated and slower vehicles if you don’t have to?
Same argument applies to the oher heavy weaponry ISIS has captured, like all the heavy artillery the Iraqi army abandoned when they fled. They can use it to some degree, but not to full advantage.
rikyrah
From Don over at TOD:
http://theobamadiary.com/2014/08/10/early-bird-chat-321/
Suffern ACE
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: yep. Malaki also wanted us to stay in the barracks until called upon. Which means that we would have been putting down his Sunni insurrection for him. So while there would be no “caliphate”, we would be killing lots of Sunnis.
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
No, that particular hat trick didn’t happen, but we got nubiles in bikinis, a full auto slaughter of zombies and some bone crushing hand to hand.
Awesome dialogue, including the requisite shout at a blonde running into a building with a pistol of “Summer, waaait!!!!”
tesslibrarian
@Mike in NC: I’m pretty most circles of Hell include Lindsey Graham. It’s just not Hell without his whiney drawl.
Chris
@OzarkHillbilly:
I really think the future will look on the white backlash era after civil rights exactly like the white backlash during and after Reconstruction – recreating and entrenching segregation in all but name in the same way sharecropping, poll taxes and racial terrorism in the 1870s and 1880s recreated the old slaveholding society in all but name. In the modern case, you have the war on drugs, the militarization of police and the rise of the prison-industrial complex; white flight to the suburbs, the rise of small government theology and the subsequent strangling of resources for the inner cities; and now, Stand Your Ground laws and the overall permissive gun culture trying to relegalize lynching, while voter suppression laws at the state level and Supreme Court decisions at the federal one do their very best to gut the Voting Rights Act.
Well. I should say, in my optimistic moments, I think history will one day look at that as as much of a blatant institutionalization of White Power as segregation and poll taxes. In my pessimistic moments, I think it’ll just keep getting worse.
WereBear
Actually, I do, and this makes me feel a little bit better about it being the right thing to do.
Which helps moderate the boiling rage about shooting a 17 year old for… what?
I do think we should ask these shooters how much Fox they watch. Because they aren’t reacting to reality.
Patrick
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
McCain predicted that pre-emptively attack Iraq was going to up in a disaster? I recall the opposite…
How a man who has been wrong on pretty much EVERYTHING regarding Iraq still gets airtime as beyond me.
Chris
@Patrick:
Better to be wrong in the same way as everyone else than to be right and stand out in the crowd. More company that way.
Suffern ACE
@Patrick: he also was one of many who predicted that the civil war in Syria would be over this year. But apparently, it’s still going on and on and on.
MomSense
@Suffern ACE:
It sounds like a plot from a past season of The Good Wife. Well at least we won’t have to worry about a Cuomo run for the Presidency.
Doing major digging/excavation in my backyard today and found a gorgeous glass jar with a beautiful cover. It looked hand blown and perhaps antique. Upon closer inspection, it was the final resting place for a bird. Decided to say a few words to the loved bird who must have brought joy to her human and buried it beneath a lilac.
Botsplainer
@rikyrah:
Conservatism’s flagship publication on race in the arguments leading up to the Civil Rights Act.
http://prospect.org/article/national-review-defends-its-segregationist-roots
Always remember that when a conservative proclaims his Christianity, his well-wishes and good intent. As he mewlingly shit-drawls about his personal relationship with his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, as he speaks worshipfully about the goodness of his ancestors, their courage, their morals.
Know about them, and spit at their iconic words and recollected ancestral deeds.
They lie, steal, power-monger and cheat with Bible in their hands, a pocket Constitution and an American flag lapel pin on their clothes.
Suffern ACE
@danielx: yeah. I get the same thoughts about SAMs they supposedly have. If I came across a missile battery – I guess I could figure out how to turn it on, and get the missiles pointed in the general “up” direction, but any plane I actually hit would probably be the most unlucky plane in the world.
Botsplainer
Now the movie has diversity pleas for tolerance for vampires….
This is awesome.
Botsplainer
One of the vampires sells stuff on ebay. Another writes an online advice column. They say the Internet helps them make a living and blend in.
The good guy vampire leader was a Green Beanie in the ‘Nam.
This movie is totally the shit.
Marc
@rikyrah: Yes–as loudly and frequently as possible, right up to election day.
Suffern ACE
“The debut also prompted distributor Paramount Pictures to announce a sequel, Teenage Mutant Nina Turtles 2, which will hit theaters June 3, 2016.”
Bah. I thought that threat could have been defeated.
Baud
@Botsplainer:
Let me tell you about the Negro…
Botsplainer
@Baud:
I was looking at the Green Book earlier.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Negro_Motorist_Green_Book
Fuck conservatives and conservatism.
Randy P
@ThresherK: My mom was a biology major. Sometimes for entertainment we’d pull her old parasitology textbook off the shelf and look at the pictures of all the lovely worm-caused diseases.
Elephantiasis was always one of my favorites.
rikyrah
Halstonette @MOSPDC
Follow
some wonder why POC aren’t concerned about dronez and NSA. Look at Ferguson.
10:50 AM – 10 Aug 2014
? Martin
@WereBear: I do as well. I smile and offer a ‘good morning’, etc. to everyone I pass where I live. Gave an interesting young man with gang tats a ‘good morning’ at 6:45 on my walk to get coffee. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with that.
I can’t be bothered to be afraid of everyone and everything. I’m not afraid of black people, of gangs, of ebola, of immigrants, of ISIS. Being afraid is like cancer for your life.
rikyrah
once again……
I DO NOT TRUST HILLARY CLINTON WHEN IT COMES TO FOREIGN POLICY.
………………………
Hillary Clinton: ‘Failure’ to Help Syrian Rebels Led to the Rise of ISIS
The former secretary of state, and probable candidate for president, outlines her foreign-policy doctrine. She says this about President Obama’s: “Great nations need organizing principles, and ‘Don’t do stupid stuff’ is not an organizing principle.”
Jeffrey Goldberg Aug 10 2014, 12:01 AM E
President Obama has long-ridiculed the idea that the U.S., early in the Syrian civil war, could have shaped the forces fighting the Assad regime, thereby stopping al Qaeda-inspired groups—like the one rampaging across Syria and Iraq today—from seizing control of the rebellion. In an interview in February, the president told me that “when you have a professional army … fighting against a farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in the midst of a civil conflict—the notion that we could have, in a clean way that didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the equation on the ground there was never true.”
Well, his former secretary of state, Hillary Rodham Clinton, isn’t buying it. In an interview with me earlier this week, she used her sharpest language yet to describe the “failure” that resulted from the decision to keep the U.S. on the sidelines during the first phase of the Syrian uprising.
“The failure to help build up a credible fighting force of the people who were the originators of the protests against Assad—there were Islamists, there were secularists, there was everything in the middle—the failure to do that left a big vacuum, which the jihadists have now filled,” Clinton said.
As she writes in her memoir of her State Department years, Hard Choices, she was an inside-the-administration advocate of doing more to help the Syrian rebellion. Now, her supporters argue, her position has been vindicated by recent events.
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/08/hillary-clinton-failure-to-help-syrian-rebels-led-to-the-rise-of-isis/375832/
big ole hound
@Dolly Llama: Why I gave up all interest in NASCAR 20 years ago. Allowing Cup drivers to compete on any day but Sunday is like allowing an NFL player to go to his alma mater and play on Saturday… involuntary manslaughter and I hope he is banned from racing after some prison time.
Botsplainer
@rikyrah:
The greatest tyranny in the world is suffered when white guys have to worry that their porn viewing habits may be collected into a government database.
Paul 2016!
Ruckus
@danielx:
You don’t need to use it to full advantage when your opponents don’t have anywhere near the same level of weapons.
You don’t have to run faster than the bear, just faster than the other guy.
Keith P
That Iranian version of Mr. Clean looks wayyyyy scarier than our version. I’d hate to see what their scrubbing bubbles look like.
J.D. Rhoades
@rikyrah:
My thoughts exactly. And I would love it if at least a few members of our supine national media would confront them with the question: “do you want to send american ground troops back into Iraq? Yes or no?”
Of course, I would also love a hot oil massage from Christina Hendricks and Michelle Monaghan, but I don’t think that’s going to happen either.
M31
@c u n d gulag:
WOW!
Nothing is more exciting than George Pataki!
Literally true.
PsiFighter37
@rikyrah: Ugh, and this is why I don’t trust Hillary when it comes to foreign policy at all…she has all the wrong instincts. Apparently 4 years at SoS in Obama’s administration didn’t give her any insight into the error of her ways.
The Thin Black Duke
@J.D. Rhoades: Thing is, the GOP doesn’t have to actually say that they want to send troops back into Iraq. All they have to say is what Obama is doing wrong, and unfortunately it appears to be working.
Villago Delenda Est
@J.D. Rhoades:
Being supine is one of the job requirements to get into the national media. So that’s not going to happen.
Schlemizel
@Mike J:
If you watch the video Stewart guns the engine as he passes the guy. this causes the backend to fishtail (not unexpected) hitting the guy. He may not have meant to kill him but it looks like a willful act and the results could be predicted. But, like pro rasslin, car race promoters love this sort of shit because it draws fans so they are not going to do much about it.
On a web site with a lot of people defending Stewart because th guy didn’t belong on the track walking someone posted a video of Stewart walking on the track & throwing his helmet at a moving race car & noting that people were not saying he shouldn’t have been on the track.
That said, they should forbid drivers from leaving their car until rescue has arrived unless it is on fire.
Patrick
@J.D. Rhoades:
And another question that should be asked but is never asked: “What item in the budget are you going to cut in order to pay for the additional war in Iraq? Or do you prefer to increase the deficit?”
Botsplainer
@M31:
Nice, subtle.
In Internet baseball, that’s a ground rule double.
Suffern ACE
@rikyrah: left unquestioned is why we needed to be concerned with Syria’s affairs at all.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick:
Things that will be cut:
Food stamps.
ACA subsidies.
Veterans’ benefits.
Taxes on the 1%.
Things that won’t be cut:
Hookers and blow money to Defense contractor CEOs
Aid to Israel
Congressional salaries
Taxes on the 99%.
Mike J
@Schlemizel: Just because one person has acted like an idiot in the past doesn’t mean everyone should act like an idiot.
Anyone who walks onto a racetrack[1] deserves to be hit. If you wear solid black and do it at night, you deserve to be hit twice.
[1] who isn’t a safety marshal trying to pull somebody from a wrecked car
Schlemizel
Latest news is that the Kurds are taking advantage of the US air strikes and have taken territory back from ISIS. This may work out well for everyone. No US casualties and the hard slog is done by the actual parties involved. This was the Clinton era plan for Afghanistan & it worked perfectly. If not for diverting eerything to our illegal invasion of Iraq it might have been successful in saving the country from the Taliban.
Anoniminous
@danielx:
155s are now “heavy artillery?”
@Ruckus:
Pointing the tubes and sending ordinance off in the general direction of a vaguely defined target while not knowing where the shells are going to land is uncool. In the artillery it is usually considered Good Form to blow the crap outta the enemy, not the peeps on your own side.
PsiFighter37
@Suffern ACE: Hillary has Gramps McCain syndrome – shoot first, ask questions later.
That is my biggest fear if she is elected – she will be much more inclined to send troops somewhere they don’t need to be, mainly because the rest of the DC establishment will be yelling so loudly for it.
Villago Delenda Est
@Anoniminous: This is the catch with “captured artillery”. Unless you have the training to know how to use it properly, its effectiveness is significantly degraded.
Of course, most journalists do not have the slightest inkling of knowledge about this, so if it looks like a huge phallus, well, they’re impressed!
raven
@Anoniminous: What would you define as heavy? 175’s?
heavy artillery
noun
1.
guns and howitzers of large caliber.
2.
guns and howitzers of 155-mm caliber and larger. Compare light artillery ( def 2 ) , medium artillery.
shelley
Check out his latest quote in the NewsMax headline: “McCain: Obama’s ‘Disturbing’ Moves in Iraq Fall Short”
Guess that’s his political version of ‘The food was terrible, and such small portions!’
lamh36
Would love to hear Hillary defenders explain how this isn’t slamming Obama?
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: reading ruckus’ article, they could be used against ‘large area targets’, which I guess is military speak for firing on a city without concern as to what exactly you’re hitting.
Patrick
@lamh36:
Speaking of stupid; as I recall, she voted for the stupid Iraq war.
Villago Delenda Est
@Suffern ACE: It could be used that way. IF you know about gun elevations, and charges, and all sorts of other things that can give an M198 a 20 mile range. If a full course in how these weapons can be used is needed, I’ll defer to our resident redleg, Omnes.
If you do not know about these things, it’s far more likely that these guns will be used as line of sight weapons rather than the way an organized trained military uses it to bombard things like cities.
Suffern ACE
@lamh36: ok. What smarter stuff does she have in mind? Not doing stuff at all is where most Americans are at the moment. Does she think her smarter stuff is a selling point?
Patrick
@Villago Delenda Est:
No doubt. But it’s about time that the media asks these war hungry people like McCain/Graham on national TV and expose them for the hypocrites they really are. They want more unnecessary war at the same time they are crying about the deficit.
Villago Delenda Est
And, yes, M198s are basically heavy artillery.
Villago Delenda Est
@Patrick: Well, no one in the media ever figured out how the deserting coward managed to turn budget surpluses into massive deficits, because, well, talking about numbers is MEGO territory. Now, cocktail weenies, those they can understand.
raven
@Villago Delenda Est: direct fire
D58826
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: I have no idea if Obama is doing the ‘right’ thing in Iraq at the moment. I have no idea if there are other things going on behind the scenes that we just haven’t seen yet. What I do know, after watching this for to many years is there is no ‘right’ thing. You act based on the best incomplete and conflicting information that you have and then wait for the other guy to reach. Rinse and repeat as often as necessary. I suspect that if Obama had used massed waves of b1’s, b2’s and b52s, McNuts and Butters would be complaining that he used conventional weapons and not nukes.
I am getting more than angry at McNuts, Butters, the sage of Wasilla and the rest of the elephant echo chamber accusing Obama of treason every day of the week. Maybe these initial attacks won’t do the trick and maybe they are just the first step in a series of actions. But no the default mode is if Obama doesn’t fight them over there then we will have to fight them here .That one got old when Ho Chi Ming didn’t show up in Honolulu in 1975. Obviously Bush 43 didn’t ‘fight them over there’ soon enough since Ben Laden did show up in New York. That pesky PDB on 8/801 that the GOP doesn’t like to be reminded of..
Orangeman wants more Presidential action but still wants to be able to sue afterwards. The House has passed legislation (not sure about the senate) limiting the Presidents ability to re-introduce ground troops in Iraq. This is the same House that demanded action on Syria and when Obama asked for a resolution of support, they all took off like scared rabbits.
The GOP position can be summed up as ‘what ever Obama does, even if it’s what I demanded he do yesterday, I’m opposed to it. ‘
Chris
@The Thin Black Duke:
An unfortunate side effect of ending a war is that it instantly creates a class of backseat driver warriors who, now that it’s safely over, will hasten to tell everyone how THEY would TOTALLY have won it if they’d been in charge. No one was ever in more of a hurry to offer How To Win In Vietnam plans than during the testosterone fueled eighties… ie AFTER the war, and any chance that you might actually have to take responsibility for your ideas, had safely ended.
WereBear
Some people just reflexively kiss ass. I don’t think they are even aware of it.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826:
Look at the color of the man’s skin. This is the only course of action open to the GOP under such circumstances. They have a base of howler monkeys that they don’t want coming after them.
WereBear
@lamh36: Actually, I think “don’t do stupid stuff” is an excellent start.
Suffern ACE
@Villago Delenda Est: I think we should start referring to our future candidate as “Hillary “Heavy Artillary” Clinton.”
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: One thing that you have to keep in mind about these captured weapons and the skill level needed to operate them. A sizable chuck of ISIS is made up of the Sunni members of the Iraqi military who were fired by Breamer and the Bush team. While they are probably more familiar with Soviet weapons systems, it’s not like this would be the first time they saw the inside of a tank. This military experience seems to be what is giving ISIS some of its combat effectiveness and why it seems to look like a ‘real’ army rather than just a bunch of terrorists.
Baud
@lamh36:
I don’t consider myself a Hillary defender, but not a hater either. I followed the links to the Atlantic article, and the whole article is the reporter’s characterization of his interview with Clinton with quotes thrown in, rather than a transcript of the interview. I’ve seen too many bad and misleading reporting when it comes to Clinton (and Obama) to give it credence without seeing a transcript.
Villago Delenda Est
@WereBear: The corollary is of course “if you do something that turns out to be stupid, learn from the experience and don’t do it again.”
This is where McBomb and Huckleberry repeatedly get it wrong.
? Martin
@Schlemizel:
They do in some series. Wouldn’t matter, though. He’s was already forbidden from walking onto the racing line and that didn’t stop him.
Tony does have a history of doing the same thing – and there was never any excuse for it.
@Mike J: I don’t think they deserve to be hit, but nobody should be surprised when they are. If you watch other forms of racing, the reason is a bit more clear – often the crash was due to water/oil and the next car coming through may be every bit as out of control as the guy who crashed. Once saw a 10 or so bike pileup in Moto GP due to a patch of oil. First guy went down and another right behind him sliding across the gravel into the tyres. As they were getting up, trying to pick up their bikes, 2-3 more bikes came flying right at them. As the marshals jumped in to help, more bikes came barreling in and they red flagged the race. It was amazing nobody got killed. If you get out of the car, get over the wall, or go where the marshals point. Don’t fuck around with 1000 HP, 2000lb projectiles.
Villago Delenda Est
@D58826: I think a huge chunk of their military effectiveness is that they operate as units, not individuals brandishing assault rifles. That makes a huge difference on a battlefield, with infantry tactics alone, never mind full scale combined arms operations.
? Martin
@D58826: Don’t forget about the Iraqi army members that just bugged out when ISIS came rolling through. Some of them were trained on US weapons systems.
Sometimes your only loyalty is to who has the bigger guns – especially when they don’t take captives and aren’t keen on letting civilians live.
Suffern ACE
@WereBear: it’s so damn condescending. Not every liberation movement ends like South Africa, not every military coup is headed by “honest” Augusto Pinocet (lol), not every revolution is a Velvet Revolution, even if one can wish them to be thus. I think either she is incredibly naive or wants us to be naive.
drkrick
@Botsplainer:
At the risk of speaking ill of the dead, if he was anywhere near where drivers had to avoid him, he was in Darwin Award territory. If Stewart gunned the car at him (I’ll let others examine the video to decide, I don’t want to see it) it was a move he’ll pay for dearly, but the kid should never have been close enough to the car for something like that to result in contact. The fact that Stewart is among the many other drivers who have done the same thing proves only that lots of drivers have made boneheaded decisions without paying the worst possible price.
Drivers running in more than one series is a long, long tradition in racing. AJ Foyt won a Daytona 500 (when NASCAR was pretty much a lower division series) and was part of a LeMans-winning team while dominating Indy racing. Big names in lower-division races are good for business, and the guys running those series full-time more than hold their own. Whatever else Stewart did wrong last night, entering the race isn’t on the list.
Jewish Steel
@rikyrah:
One of the pet wingnuts I keep on posted some tea party shit about how Obama won’t commit 300k troops like he should. I had the same reaction. Keep this up, knuckleheads!
Anoniminous
@Villago Delenda Est:
Takes years to train and learn how to use a regiment of 155s. If ISIS tried to use ’em they’d probably run out of ordinance before they learned how to use ’em.
@raven:
Think of heavies as 8″ or 220mm.
schrodinger's cat
Reporting from SF, its hazy and breezy and I am tired, how are the other denizens of Tunchland?
D58826
@Villago Delenda Est: With apologies to the howler monkeys here is the latest from Ron Paul
Where do we keep finding these people
lamh36
@Baud:
Hillary Clinton blames rise of ISIS on Obama “failure” to intervene in Syria civil war
The likely future presidential candidate also argues criticism of Israeli actions in Gaza stem from anti-Semitism
drkrick
“Don’t do stupid stuff” may not be a fully realized theory of foreign policy, but for someone who voted for AUMF and the Patriot Act and wanted to ship weapons to Syria that would probably be in ISIS’s arsenal by now it’s still aspirational.
Baud
@D58826:
The fact that we haven’t seen any evidence just proves that the government is hiding it.
srv
@Schlemizel: Jeffrey Dahmer had fans too.
JPL
@Schlemizel: The first time that I watched the video, it was without sound. It looked like an accident. With the sound on, I had a different reaction. Stewart’s reputation precedes him and that’s not going to help his cause. I’m glad he dropped out of the race.
? Martin
@drkrick:
You really can’t tell, IMO. Stewart does hit the gas, but it’s a long shot from the side. You can’t tell how the car is lined up relative to Kevin. It looks like Stewart is on the outside of the track with Kevin’s car blocking the outside line and Kevin in the middle of the track. To my eye it looks like Stewart dives down toward the bottom of the track to get by, hits the gas to get down there and the back end steps out. But really you can’t tell – you only get Stewarts car for a fraction of a second. The better shot would be from behind Stewarts car so you can see what Tony’s line is and when he starts to react to Kevin’s presence on the track. And again, it’s unclear how closely Tony is paying attention coming into that turn – and there’s another car directly in front of him possibly blocking his view. Too many unknowns at this point to call it anything other than a racing accident instigated by Kevin. So far Kevin is the only person clearly not where he should have been doing what he shouldn’t have been doing. Better video may shift that blame to Stewart, but the current video doesn’t IMO.
JPL
@lamh36: Good news for me. If and when she announces her candidacy, I won’t feel obligated to donate. Of course, unlike the current President, I doubt that she’ll care. She’ll be looking for Wall Street money.
schrodinger's cat
@srv: Thanks for all your information on San Francisco and Fremont. I did go to the Half Moon Bay and then up to Monterrey. Got into SF just this morning.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: Hillary seems to be hell bent on dissing the Obama coalition and courting MSM. Unfortunately, for us Hillary seems to be stuck in the 90s still.
Baud
@lamh36:
All you did was to link to a second story about the original story.
Look, it seems that Hillary would have been more interventionist than Obama was in helping the rebels on Syria, and if you want to criticize her for that, I couldn’t care less. But I hated when firebaggers used reporters’ or bloggers’ characterizations about Obama as evidence against Obama, and I feel the same way when it comes to Clinton (or any other Democrat for that matter.)
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I don’t consider myself a Hillary defender, but not a hater either. I followed the links to the Atlantic article, and the whole article is the reporter’s characterization of his interview with Clinton with quotes thrown in,
And that “reporter” is former IDF volunteer and Iraq War advocate Jeffrey Golderberg. Per Wiki
If true… Little doubt what Saddam would do if… There is little doubt what I might do if I won the Powerball…
Not that I want to let Hillary off the hook; like you, I don’t hate her, but she does seem to have gone Villager to an extent that disturbs me, i.e. the apparent belief that the Iraq War was a difference of opinion, and of course didn’t go well as one would have hoped, but really that was a long time ago, and has no bearing on current events. This:
is an incredibly naive declaration of Green Lanternism given that we, under Bush’s decisive leadership, tried to build a coalition of “Islamists, secularists and everything in the middle” (WTF does that last even mean?) for five-plus years, and we wound up with a corrupt Iranian ally who did at least as much as any other regional actor to create ISIS by governing as a Shia partisan, and she wants/wanted to give that fantasy coalition weapons.
drkrick
@? Martin: Thanks, Martin.
Suffern ACE
@Chris: you know who else made a career from promulgating the idea that the Germans could have totally won that war if he were in charge at the time ?
JPL
@? Martin: This is the video that I saw and I agree there is nothing definitive but he should have been able to see him. link There was a caution flag and Stewart seemed further behind than the other video that I saw.
Suffern ACE
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: how did Egypt end? How is Libya doing? And what happens if, like in Egypt, you have this coalition and the elite still says. “No”
God. It’s not like all elite have to follow the script set forth by the Communists in 1989.
lamh36
@schrodinger’s cat:
I’ve already said, Hillary plan will be to take Obama coalition for granted, while holding onto “Clinton Democrats” (a supporter of Grimes in KY during the rally with Bill Clinton made that distinction) and attracting that “Reagan Dem” voter who didn’t vote for Obama cause you know….
It’s why you won’t see me giving any money to her nominee or not. Sure she’ll get my vote, I’m a loyal Dem voter, but you won’t see my money or boots on the ground for her. But like someone said I doubt she miss my money.
Suffern ACE
@Suffern ACE: I mean. Let’s just ask her how she plans to punish Qatar and Turkey for making sure that in any Arab Spring “grand coalition”, the secularists get pushed out?
Ruckus
@Anoniminous:
Sure, that’s true. If you care at all about only killing combatants. If on the other hand you want to kill every living thing in your way, not so much.
lamh36
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: @Baud:
Mata Angelou had a quote saying “when someone shows you who they are believe them”.
Disregarding the reporter/reporting is one thing but when patterns emerge ignoring them or rationalizing them helps who exactly?
I guess I’m asking at what point do we take Hillary at her own word?
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I agree.
Josie
@Baud: I agree. I followed the link and read the entire article. The first part contains the reporter’s characterization of Clinton’s idea and the second part contains the transcript of the interview (or at least part of the interview). She didn’t seem to me to be criticizing Obama or suggesting military intervention anywhere. She was talking about finding a balance and looking carefully at each problem as it arises within the context of an overarching theme for progress. She actually said that quote about doing nothing stupid was a political construct and not what he uses for a theme. She was very complimentary about his care and intellect in approaching problems. I don’t have a problem with her saying that she took a different view on Syria since that was known at the time. It is entirely possible that there were several ways to approach the problem. I definitely did not see any moment when she advocating sending troops as a solution to any crisis. I am, and have been, an Obot from the very beginning, but I was not offended by the interview.
Phil Perspective
@Jay C: Have you heard about Cuomo’s actions since he struck that “deal”? Not exactly actions of one who intends to uphold his end of the bargain.
Phil Perspective
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: She’s always been an establishmentarian. Just because Versailles treated her like crap doesn’t change that. She was on the board of Walmart for how many years? And that’s before she became FLOTUS.
Patrick
@lamh36:
I doubt she would miss my vote as she would win my state easily anyway. I guess Obama will be the last politician I will have been really excited about for years to come. I volunteered and donated money to his campaign.
Eric U.
Bill Clinton seemed to be very cautious about using the miltary. There were not very many U.S. military fatalities during his tenure, and he was proud of that. It’s not like the republicans that are too afraid to serve themselves but use the military every time they need a distraction from their inadequacies. So I’m hopeful that HRC would run things a similar way.
JPL
@lamh36:
In Europe there is a sharp increase in violence against the Jewish community so she is correct. Hillary doesn’t seem to understand the why though.
Netanyahu’s relentless attacks on the citizens of Gaza, hasn’t helped and Europeans TV stations air the ugliness.
Betsy
@big ole hound: it’s at least *voluntary* manslaughter if he goosed that car intentionally and maybe even second degre murder, tho nearly impossible to prove.
Driving a car into a crowd of people just to see them scatter shows enough malice to be second, so it seems to me that driving a car at great speed at one individual, if with malice, could be too. Probably the short time involved would allow it to come down to vol. manslaughter.
I understand no charges will be pressed tho.
schrodinger's cat
@lamh36: I doubt that many of the so called Reagan Dems will vote for her.
Baud
@lamh36:
That’s fine. Take her at her word, when transcribed and presented in context. The fact is, she will, like any other Dem candidate, disagree with Obama on some things. That does not mean I’m going to take at face value some journalist’s attention grabbing headline that Hillary has “slammed” Obama, or that the relevant issue for me is their disagreement, rather than the underlying issue.
I haven’t decided whether to support Hillary in the primary, so I don’t care whether you do. But I have come to learn to distrust reporting about Democrats, so I don’t like to see opinions formed based on the reporting, as opposed to the underlying facts.
Davis X. Machina
@schrodinger’s cat:
Reagan Democrats aren’t just endangered. They’re mostly dead.
McComb Co. Michigan, 1980 is like 35 years ago….
StringOnAStick
@Suffern ACE: As to your comment about ISIS fighters not being well-trained enough to run a captured tank, well, three’s evidence now that some of the fighters joining their ranks are former Iraqi soldiers who are Sunni’s that are disaffected with the current Iraqi government. I found this article by someone inside Iraq to be really, really helpful about how ISIS fights and why we’ve overestimated the Kurds: http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/shock-and-awe
Baud
@Josie:
I didn’t scroll that far down. I’m glad you did. Thanks.
Ruckus
@? Martin:
Thanks for all your comments on this racing death. I worked in professional motorsports for years, as a part time official and as full time staff. We had situations like this before, luckily no one was killed. People do some incredibly stupid things in the heat of the moment and some people are hot heads all the time.
I have had to be on the track when racing is going on but I would never do that with race cars. You just can not get out of the way fast enough and even a half ton race car will squash you like a bug. People who think they are fast, when they start racing, most find out that speeds at a race track are far faster than they could imagine. It’s one reason (among many) you don’t start at the top level.
? Martin
@JPL: ‘Should’ is hard to say. It’s a caution. It’s when you have time to wipe the dirt off of your visor. Its when you can look down at your instruments. If you watch any form of racing under caution, the drivers spend a LOT of their time under caution not looking ahead, because the whole point of cautions is that everyone is holding position, maintaining a fairly constant speed, and you don’t have people running down the track at your car. Sprint tracks are short. From the video, Tony and Kevin touch wheels at 0:09 and Tony strikes him at 0:36. 27 seconds from start to end. Tony would have crossed start/finish around 0:22 or so and around then seen the yellow, not knowing where the accident was because it happened behind him. He sees it’s not in turn 1, starts cleaning his visor or checks his gauges, and the next time he looks up 5 seconds later Kevin is right in front of him. And 45 was ahead possibly blocking his view across turn 2. Your eyes are primarily on the car ahead. That’s your job under caution – follow the car ahead and the car in the lead directs everyone behind until a pace car arrives (if there is one). The rule assumes the cars behind can’t see everything that’s going on.
Yeah, I agree that Tony should have seen him, but it’s not unreasonable or irresponsible for him not to have seen Kevin. Tony’s job out there isn’t to look out for people running at his car. Kevin’s job was to get out of the car and get off the racing line to a place of safety. Kevin clearly wasn’t doing his job (to a degree I’ve never seen a driver do before – I’ve been watching racing pretty religiously for 30+ years and I’ve never seen a driver run directly at the front of a car on the racing line). Tony may or may not have been doing his job. We can’t tell.
People need to also consider that this isn’t like hitting a pedestrian (like a child) who may or may not know the rules of the road. When you are driving, you are told that you need to anticipate children and all manner of other unexpected things. This is a race track where only trained individuals should be. It’s a place where you should be able to let your guard down because you know every other person there is aware of the rules and is employed to follow them. Tony and Kevin were at work, and Kevin didn’t follow the rules. Workplace accidents happen all the time when people don’t follow safety rules. That doesn’t make those accidents the fault of everyone around them who had every reason to expect that their coworkers know the rules and follow them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@schrodinger’s cat: I always think “Reagan Democrats”, based on those of my own personal acquaintance, were really “Nixon Democrats”, but that label would be a mite problematic. Also based on my personal acquaintance, most of them have gone to their reward.
Cacti
@? Martin:
Tony Stewart is also a noted hot head with a history of physical altercations with numerous other professional drivers, which has been consistently excused throughout his career as “Ol’ Tony’s racin’ spirit”.
Just the mother of all coincidences that he happens to clip the pissed off guy that he just ran into the wall on the previous lap.
But whatever happens, I’m sure his whiteness and his status in a mostly white sport will afford him every possible benefit of the doubt.
srv
@schrodinger’s cat: Sorry for all the winter fog.
If you can handle the weather, you could try to get into the Festival if any of these bands tickle your fancy
http://lineup.sfoutsidelands.com/events/2014/08/10/
I’m presuming people aren’t going b/c of the weather, as usually it’s an absolute nightmare traffic weekend and Haight is packed with drunkards. Quiet last night and today so far.
? Martin
@Cacti: Yes, Tony is a hothead, but why would he hit this kid? He’s never done anything like that on track. He only goes off on people when he’s the victim (perceives himself to the victim). He wouldn’t even have known that Kevin crashed out. Why hit him? It makes no sense to accuse him of something like that.
Botsplainer
@Patrick:
Me, I’ll crawl over broken glass to keep Rand Paul, Ted Cruz or Rick Santorum away from power.
Mandalay
@StringOnAStick: Yes, that is a great article. This comment was especially enlightening:
ISIL’s approach is also what allows the government in North Korea to maintain control so well: “If you oppose us we will round up your family”. It’s devastatingly effective (as long as you can keep the genie in the bottle).
Cacti
@? Martin:
I don’t think he meant to kill him. I think he was swerving toward him as an “in your face” move and that it ended up killing him.
Cacti
@? Martin:
I don’t think he meant to kill him. I think he was swerving toward him as an “in your face” move and that it ended up killing him.
StringOnAStick
@Mandalay: Yes, exactly. The battle tactics described in that article have scared the hell out of the Iraqi army and Kurdish fighters, and as was pointed out, the Kurds did well back in the early 2003’s because of the no-fly zone and US air support. This actually gives me a bit of hope in that (1) Obama took note of this prior source of success, and (2) decided to try something that had worked before instead of listening to Gramps and his flighty favorite Auntie. Seriously, McCain and Graham need to get a room, and stay there.
JPL
@? Martin: Thank you for your insight. I just read the NY Times article and it’s not balanced at all.
This was in the comment section of the NY Times…
I agree with Graves that Stewart saw him. Stewart pointed the car at Kevin as he rounded the turn. I was sitting in turn 1, and saw it. The video doesn’t show this action by Stewart. When he hit the throttle and got sideways is when Kevin Ward was sucked under the car and spit out the back like a rag doll.
It may or may not be true though.. Who knows if the author was really there…
Cacti
I personally can’t wait to watch the white sports media to tie itself in knots to explain away Tony Stewart’s career-long violent behavior.
It will be the exact opposite of the tar and feather calls for Ray Rice.
cckids
@Cacti: That’s my take too. I put weight in the accounts of the people who were at the track, which are largely saying that Stewart was at fault. They also report (tho I don’t know if it is fact), that he had his pit crew change his rear tires right after the hit. Which looks very bad, as to his state of mind.
And the statement he put out today is spineless & cringe-worthy.
JPL
@cckids: My comment at 160 includes a witness’ statement. I took it with a grain of salt because it was in the comment section of the NY Times. The Times article did not paint Stewart in a good light, so I don’t think this will be swept under the rug.
I saw another comment though.. Tony has one of the biggest hearts in NASCAR, evidenced even in this tragedy when he decided not to race today. His heart is broken and his life has been changed by Ward’s actions. Stop making it something it was not! Since Tony was going to race this morning, it sure took awhile for his big heart to kick in.
D58826
@Cacti: What I know about auto racing would fit comfortably on a higgs boson but what struck me about this was these top tier drivers racing on second/third/fourth level tracks. I don’t mean that in a snobbish way but can these guys dial it back to the level of competition that is on the track with them. Tactics and tricks that work at the Daytona 500 might not be appropriate when racing with minor leaguers or semi-pros. It just seems like an accident waiting to happen.
cckids
@JPL: That was my thought as well. Most people, if involved in someone’s death, even in a case where no possible blame could be attached, wouldn’t be driving the next day, especially in a race. Seems pretty callous.
Cacti
@cckids:
I’m actually willing to cut him a little slack on that one.
He’s probably in shock that he just killed someone (whether intentional, unintentional, or negligent), and racing is his refuge from having to think about that.
? Martin
@JPL: When it comes to sports fans, you’re probably more likely to get an unbiased opinion from the athletes than from the fans. I just ignore them. There are stewards and marshals and other drivers. They’ll have the unbiased view.
And regarding Tony driving or not, that’s as much a decision of the team and his manager. There’s sponsors that expect the car to race, there’s a championship on. It’s a business, after all. Everyone would have advised him to not make the decision until he needed to make the decision. I wouldn’t read anything much into it.
Cacti
@? Martin:
The people with the most immediate financial interest in protecting the sport will have the unbiased view?
Laughable.
Might as well say police will have the unbiased view of police misconduct, or physicians will have the unbiased view of medical malpractice.
? Martin
@Cacti:
The marshals are volunteers. It’s unclear which outcome hurts the sport more, but I’d argue that if fans think an injustice was done that would hurt the sport the most. Tony Stewart continuing to drive has no impact on the sport – there’s plenty of drivers to take his place. And that applies to NASCAR, not to Sprint.
So far the racing commentary from the people paid within the sport is pretty neutral. I don’t see anyone rushing to judgement to defend Tony.
Juju
@c u n d gulag: He’s like a Democratic Mitt Romney. That apple fell quite a distance from the tree as well.
Ruckus
@Cacti:
Stewards and marshals don’t normally have a financial interest in the sport. That they may have a prejudiced viewpoint is entirely possible. The track owners/promoters, car owners and yes drivers have a financial interest. However drivers have to live with their decisions and prejudices at a much costlier level and that is with their lives. That tends to level most drivers outright money grubbing and that puts them in a good position for a voice. Certainly not the only voice but a good one.
Chris
@lamh36:
I think she’s living in a dream if she thinks she can peel off a meaningful number of Reagan Dems and assorted White People With Racial Anxieties.
Nixon was a half century ago. The migration of liberal Republicans over to the Democrats and conservative Democrats over to the Republicans is at least that old, and at this point, most all the fruit that could be harvested has been harvested.
More importantly, demographic changes being what they are, we need to stop pretending that white social conservatives are this country’s demographic center. Carter and Clinton had to play in their sandbox: we don’t.
Joel Hanes
@Anoniminous:
155s are now “heavy artillery?”
I’m pretty sure that the nuke-capable M110 self-propelled 8-inch howitzers that my battalion used have all been retired (as has my FA). A few were used in Desert Storm.
According to Wikipedia, the US Army no longer uses guns bigger than 155s, because larger calibres “are no longer effective as technology has closed the range and firepower gap, and heavier weapon systems require more resources to operate”.
ThresherK
@Randy P: I’m not clicking that link about elephantitis, but am impressed you found it.
Most of my images about worms are on warning posters at the vets’. They’re very effective!
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@drkrick: Darwin award, yes; deserves to die? No.
Don’t go on and on about how great race drivers are, how clean the sport is, how wonderful it is when you can’t do the ONE THING real professional drivers (that is, drivers with a commercial driver’s license) aspire to do, which is to protect the lives of others on the road.
If he spoiled the race by running on the track, that’s a sorry sport that they can’t deal with that in an appropriate way. Other “sports” have foul and interference calls, you know, a rulebook to deal with such things. They certainly do not condone trying to maim or kill opposing players for rules violations.
If someone wandered onto a highway, would you say they deserved to die? Most professional drivers would use all their skills to prevent killing someone, not gun the engine and damn the consequences.
Racing’s “pro”‘s seem to be anything but if this is the mentality that prevails.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Chris:
Fixed.
As I’ve said many times here before, some of Hilary’s biggest supporters in my extended family have already died.
Another Holocene Human (now with new computer)
@Cacti: That driver who fell asleep right before Spuyten Duyvil and derailed a train leading to four deaths certainly wasn’t demanding to drive after that accident. He was cooperating with the police as soon as he regained consciousness and his demeanor reflected the gravity of what he had done.
That is how a PROFESSIONAL driver behaves.