Come for the politics, stay for the snark.
Still waiting for the prosecutor to say something meaningful.
ETA: Christ. Spit it the fuck out, dude. Still waiting.
ETA 2: Seven minutes into a rambling prebuttle, McCullough finally makes the announcement we all saw coming: no indictment.
ETA 3: President Obama is scheduled to speak at 10 PM ET, just a few minutes from now. Will that clown McCullough still be yammering when MSNBC cuts away to the president? Will Fox keep its camera on McCullough? Probably!
Tanned, rested, ready. RT @EWErickson: Dick Cheney for SecDef!
— daveweigel (@daveweigel) November 24, 2014
Matt Yglesias, at Vox, points out the new Wingnut Wurlitzer meme:
Conservative pundits who didn’t like the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill that passed the US Senate in 2013 also didn’t like Obama’s deportation relief through executive action. They object to both the content of the president’s action and to the process through which it happened. A process that is being described not as a somewhat unusual pushing of the envelope, but as roughly akin to overthrowing the democratic constitutional order through military force in order to establish a brutal Latin American dictator…
There are many things one could say about this comparison, starting with the fact that unlike a proper caudillo such as Augusto Pinochet, Obama hasn’t had thousands of people detained and tortured without trial. Or, indeed, that it was actually Obama’s predecessor who was having people detained and tortured without trial. But perhaps the strangest thing about it is that when American conservatives analogize Obama to a Hispanophone military dictator, we are meant to understand this a criticism when the historical reality is that American conservatives have generally been quite enthusiastic about caudillos…
Indeed, thanks to the miracle of modern-day traffic recirculation methods, old National Review content singing Pinochet’s praises falls directly adjacent to complaints about Obama’s caudillismo…
Pictorial evidence at the link — NSWE (Not safe while eating).
***********
Apart from the Ferguson countdown, what’s on the agenda for the evening?
Remember last week and our good friend the incoming Speaker of Nevada’s General Assembly, Republican Ira “simple-minded darkies” Hansen? Turns out there’s a limit even to that as we’ve reached the “I’m sorry you people find my two decades of verbatim racial intolerance in my columns to be a problem”, I’m the real victim here” phase of the game. Jon Ralston details Hansen’s “apology”:
For the greater good of the State of Nevada and the cause I support it is necessary for me to withdraw as Speaker Designee. The tens of thousands of people who both read my columns and listened to my radio shows through two decades in the media know this has been a carefully orchestrated attack to remove a conservative Republican from a major leadership role in State government. The deliberate character assassination and the politics of personal destruction have totally distorted my views and record. Ultimately, this whole attack has very little to do with my views. The powers that be are planning a massive, more than one billion dollar, tax increase and I stood in the way as Speaker. I have already served two terms as an Assemblyman without any of these vicious attacks. It was only when I had risen to leadership that this smear campaign occurred. That is the real reason for this and it is vital the public understands that.
If it’s possible, it does actually get worse as Ralston points out.
Even in departure, Hansen played the victim Sunday, repeating what he had mewled in a Saturday email: “Politics of personal destruction win.” On Saturday, he had lamented that he had been targeted by character assassins (“Wasn’t it technically character suicide?” one wag wondered.) and he has been enabled by lunkheads and opportunists who cared more about their own influence and pocketbooks than Hansen’s political career.
But Hansen’s own pen was mightier than any of the swords unsheathed by those who never wanted him there. The release of his old columns by Dennis Myers, followed by more revelations of his contemporaneous beliefs by Anjeanette Damon and Steve Sebelius, shocked and offended even those who liked and supported him. And there was, undoubtedly, more coming as at least one TV station was/is working on damaging stories about Hansen.
Here’s the debate we should be having however:
Some have wondered why we in the Fourth Estate exposed Hansen now and did not do so earlier. Maybe we should have. But in our defense, Hansen was a backbencher who had been in Carson City for two sessions, so no one really paid attention until he was serendipitously elevated.
Pretty sure nobody gave a damn about the career of Nevada’s most awesome racist uncle until 1) he actually won the vote to be Speaker of the Assembly and 2) as Speaker his first order of business would have been taking a big steaming crap on that new Tesla battery plant in Nevada and the $1.25 billion they’re getting in tax incentives.
This would have been rather problematic for the state’s general revenues, so apparently being a giant racist asshole didn’t really matter to Nevada for 20 years until there was a good chance that the bad press and the legislative damage would have been an issue for the new guys from Cali with the money. Nice to have that delineated for us, Silver State.
Call me crazy on that one.
Post-Racial America Update: There Is A Limit EditionPost + Comments (29)
Yes, they are out of control:
In the past five years, more Utahns have been killed by police than by gang members.
Or drug dealers. Or from child abuse.
And so far this year, deadly force by police has claimed more lives — 13, including a Saturday shooting in South Jordan — than has violence between spouses and dating partners.
As the tally of fatal police shootings rises, law enforcement watchdogs say it is time to treat deadly force as a potentially serious public safety problem.
“The numbers reflect that there could be an issue, and it’s going to take a deeper understanding of these shootings,” said Chris Gebhardt, a former police lieutenant and sergeant who served in Washington, D.C., and in Utah, including six years on SWAT teams and several training duties. “It definitely can’t be written off as citizen groups being upset with law enforcement.”
Through October, 45 people had been killed by law enforcement officers in Utah since 2010, accounting for 15 percent of all homicides during that period.
How about that douchecanoe giving up the game- cops don’t look at the general population as “us” anymore, they are “them.” It’s the same kind of mentality that allows people to be dehumanized, so the “enemy” isn’t a person, it’s a gook, or a kraut, or a nip, and you don’t have to think about what you are doing because you are in the right no matter what. It’s so internalized that while struggling to show some concern for the fact that 15% of fatalities in Utah are from cops shooting people, he points out what we all know- they dismiss their critics and the watchdog groups. Why? Because they can. No politician is going to stand up to these guys, and rush for their endorsement.
Add to that the military grade weaponry, the demagoguery of the war on drugs and the fact that the Supreme Court has basically given law enforcement carte blanche when it comes to civil rights, and it is no surprise that there is blood in the streets in the town of New Haven or that civil forfeiture is out of control or that people locked up in jail for decades for nonviolent offenses. It’s no surprise that the first thing we see in everyone of the videos of police wrongdoing is a cop beating the hell out of or shooting some cowering civilian all while screaming “STOP RESISTING! STOP RESISTING!”
Our current situation would make the STASI blush. Or jealous.
BTW- anyone have a figure on how much the state of Utah spends annually on gang violence?
How About Blue on Red, White and Blue Crime?Post + Comments (44)
The Wilson grand jury finally made up its damn mind. Press conferences due later today. Try not to shoot yourself in the head.
Here comes your nineteenth nervous breakdownPost + Comments (42)
Valued commenter Currants has a talented family member who works in the champagne wire medium. Here’s an interesting still life with seasonal produce:
And here’s another:
Very clever. Please feel free to discuss whatever.
Daniel Davie’s 1 minute MBA or how to conduct policy analysis fast and cheap has a critical point in looking at the validity of an argument:
Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance. I was first made aware of this during an accounting class. We were discussing the subject of accounting for stock options at technology companies. There was a live debate on this subject at the time. One side (mainly technology companies and their lobbyists) held that stock option grants should not be treated as an expense on public policy grounds; treating them as an expense would discourage companies from granting them, and stock options were a vital compensation tool that incentivised performance, rewarded dynamism and innovation and created vast amounts of value for America and the world. The other side (mainly people like Warren Buffet) held that stock options looked awfully like a massive blag carried out by management at the expense of shareholders, and that the proper place to record such blags was the P&L account.
Our lecturer, in summing up the debate, made the not unreasonable point that if stock options really were a fantastic tool which unleashed the creative power in every employee, everyone would want to expense as many of them as possible, the better to boast about how innovative, empowered and fantastic they were. Since the tech companies’ point of view appeared to be that if they were ever forced to account honestly for their option grants, they would quickly stop making them, this offered decent prima facie evidence that they weren’t, really, all that fantastic
I was reminded of this point as I read through a very interesting post at Talking Points Memo on Uber’s business model:
Uber’s massive PR/propaganda efforts and its aggressive attacks on regulators, competitors and journalists tend to support the hypothesis that its growth/valuation objectives are highly unrealistic. If the business analysis outlined here was substantially wrong, and Uber’s growth/valuation objectives were based on highly credible new sources of competitive advantage, then one would expect Uber to devote major effort to lay out reasoned arguments and evidence supporting its business case to the capital markets. Those markets know there have been a huge number of well-publicized startups whose founders harbored dreams of staggering wealth but had business plans that could not withstand any objective scrutiny. If Uber was convinced it had a powerful plan, it should welcome scrutiny from independent financial analysts and respectfully engage financial analysts and journalists who might have questions or concerns. Instead, Uber has mounted a massive PR effort that ignores the substance and approach of business startup cases, and treats the company’s development as a no-hold-barred political campaign. Instead of explaining how today’s niche business would be transformed by a decade of Ebay-level growth, or addressing any of the other questions that investors might have, Uber’s PR emphasizes soundbite claims about current service (quotes from Silicon Valley tech workers who love the app or from rich Manhattanites who like Uber cars better than yellow cabs). To distract from business issues like cost competitiveness or the scalability of growth, Uber’s uses explicit political propaganda based on ideological/tribal hot buttons…
Okay, I’ve not invoked the Android v. iOS flame war bait, but this should be good… open thread