Maiello: Defeat the Press
Ramona: Pointers on Bad Disaster Coverage
Miami Fans Mistakenly Chant "Let's Go Eat" During Playoff Game
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Maiello: Defeat the Press Ramona: Pointers on Bad Disaster Coverage Miami Fans Mistakenly Chant "Let's Go Eat" During Playoff Game |
Blowing |
I assume that Assad has constructed a golden parachute. He could bail out and land in a well feathered nest in any one of several countries. But, if he did so, his minority tribe would almost certainly lose and suffer terrible retribution. So far Assad is hanging tough and so are his followers. We often bandy the term, "existential threat" lightly, but there are many people fighting for the very life of their families, themselves, and their country as they know it. [Read more]
I just stumbled onto a pretty good movie that is coincidentally quite timely. It is a comedy played seriously. It is called We Have A Pope. I liked it from the beginning where there is what I presume to be a realistic portrayal of the pomp and ceremony surrounding the death of a Pope. It quickly goes to the election process for the new Pope which reminded me of a comical twist on Putney Swope that might actually be quite inciteful. The movie is completely non-polemic. Wiki's description;
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Today I read a column by my old buddy whom I have never met, Fred Reed. I suppose it could be called a poem but it definitely is not a feel-good piece. After reading it I considered putting a link here but felt that it needed some context, so after thinking about it for a while I started doing some googling. [Read more]
A few evenings ago I linked to an article at Anti-War.com written by Justin Raimondo.
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2012/09/18/the-pro-israel-network-beh...
In the article Raimondo traces what he was able to find out about the people responsible for the movie, Innocence of Muslims. He goes on to describe connections with other political activists and then to suggest that there is circumstantial evidence that supports his inflammatory title, The Pro-Israel Network Behind the Innocence Video.
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The Penn State sexual abuse scandal was big news for a while, as it should have been. As it should be. Articleman presented here at Dagblog a long, well researched, well presented opinion piece which I felt made some good arguments. Others did as well. Respondents who disagreed with parts of A-man's argument made strong points as well.
The main point of contention revolved around the issue of sanctions against those individuals directly involved versus actions penalizing the entire organization which provided the situation in which the crimes took place and then, as an organization, tried to hide the crimes so as to avoid any harm to Penn State and its idolized football coach, Joe Paterno.
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I am not endorsing the charge made in this article, but it is worth reading, that the men charged with making Molotov cocktails to use at the NATO demonstrations were framed. How would I know at this time? People stupid enough to act as we are told they did do, in fact, exist. What I will say is that I would not be surprised if it turned out that they were. Would anyone else here be surprised? [Read more]
In the early days of my 725-day army career, I spent some time at Ft. Hood, Texas. Luck of the draw, I guess. I had been sent there out of AIT along with about a billion other bald-headed idiots to be fodder in the new Americal Division that was being formed. We were about to surge, and we hadn't even heard the term, but look out, Charlie, here we come. Yeeee ha! Somehow, though, they filled it before they got to me. That was my luckiest number draw to that point, the lottery not yet being in place. And, since everybody has to be somewhere, someone decided to assign troop number U.S. 5 444 ---8 to a short timers unit. [Read more]
Matt Taibbi has a recent blog giving his analysis of a jobs bill signed into law by our President, Barack Obama. Taibbi believes it is a very bad law. He gives his view and quotes the opinion of others in position to have informed opinions. [Read more]
There is an interesting article from the New Yorker in the news section that was linked to by Artappraiser. For the purposes of this rant I will only refer to the introduction and not the document the article presents.
Most people in this country have taken a side in the controversy surrounding the arguably "legal" shooting of Trevon Martin. Everyone I have read here believes that his killing was an appalling injustice, and if the killers actions are protected by law then it is bad law which should be changed. Significantly, we are all speaking out, all venting our outrage, all feeling righteous in our conviction that this is the sort of wrong towards a specific human being which is brought about by the feelings of some, too many, against a class of human beings. The Americans who justify such action are heartless, twisted, racists. So, most everyone here can comfortably blame the other side in our national politics for their attitudes that created the situation which ended in tragic death of a human being who had as much right to walk the planet eating skittles as do any of us. We can blame the other political side because we see the error in their thinking, in their attitudes, and in their solutions. We know better, and we wouldn't allow those things if it was up to us, if it was in our ability to stop or prevent them. Yes, but we, we must speak up, we must demonstrate our outrage. There are lives in the balance. We must make our conscience a comfortable place to rest. [Read more]
A bridge collapsed over Skagit River tonight near Mount Vernon. This was on Interstate 5 both north bound and south bound, four lanes total. No word yet on how many cars went into the water. This is so sad. How many of these will we have to have before we start financing infrastructure? Most of our bridges are in sad shape.
I'm not sure how many of you have read the Seattle newspaper The Stranger. "Goldy" is a sudonym (I hope I spelled that right) - the writer is pretty hardcore and unrelenting on many progressive issues, gun ownership no exception.
By Cass R. Sunstein, Bloomberg View, May 20, 2013
There is no standard definition of the all-important term “wing nut,” so let’s provide one. A wing nut is someone who has a dogmatic commitment to an extreme political view (“wing”) that is false and at least a bit crazy (“nut”).
A wing nut might believe that George W. Bush is a fascist, that Barack Obama is a socialist, that big banks run the Department of the Treasury or that the U.S. intervened in Libya because of oil.
When wing nuts...
By Elias Groll, Passport @ ForeignPolicy.com, May 22, 2013
[....] The rioting -- the worst social unrest to strike the country in many years -- was sparked by the lethal police shooting of a 69-year-old, knife-wielding man last week in the suburb of Husby, the epicenter of the riots. Roaming gangs of angry youths have since clashed with police and Husby residents have complained of racist treatment by police officers, who they say have used epithets such as "monkey."
What's happening in Husby is clearly a symptom of Sweden's failed effort to integrate its massive immigrant population. Housing segregation is rampant in the country, and Husby is a case study in how immigrant populations have come to dominate Stockholm's outer...