In the news
If you read the news, and I can’t really recommend it given the dullards who are writing it, the quota of advertiser-vetted bilge they are asked to write, and the richer dullards who edit them, you may have noticed that people are getting shot and otherwise killed at the hands of the police. This has lots of people upset. Some people are upset that their family members and neighbors are being killed faster than innocent bystanders are when Blackwater goons get rowdy, others apparently are upset that people object to what until now was apparently a fine and ancient American tradition with as honored and venerable a history as stealing Native American land. Some people want to blame the victims of these police killings as if anyone who wasn’t bulletproof with an uncrushable trachea and an unbreakable spine is basically begging everyone they meet to kill them as soon and as brutally as possible. And that upsets me. I get upset that public employees are spending their time on the public payroll assassinating members of the public. It seems counterproductive. As a taxpayer, I object to paying the salary of someone who might return the favor by giving me (or, to be more accurate, an African American) a few new interesting holes through which to breathe, or to drown in blood as the case may be. Perhaps I am limited in my horizons, perhaps I lack perspective, perhaps I am too distracted by blood on the pavement, and grieving family members and the nauseating spectacle of yet another remorseless stormtrooper defending their butchery as just another tough task they dutifully perform with no expectation of recognition than a modest paycheck and a pension, except they totally do want to be seen as a thin blue line of heroes valiantly defending a soft and innocent (or decadent and naive) public from the savagery of an African American’s failure to affix a front license plate to their bumper. And the police have no shortage of defenders who seem to think the penalty for not displaying instant obsequious obedience to the police ought to be summary execution.
And I don’t get that. I get that we think a civilization needs rules to keep from descending into anarchy. I get that a group of people is necessary to enforce those rules. What I don’t get is why so many people think breaking a small rule (like a missing front license plate) justifies breaking one of the most fundamental rules in all of human civilization (don’t kill people). Why do so many people think there’s an “unless…” after “thou shalt not kill”?
I was going to highlight Jonah Goldberg’s nauseating call for calm in the face of summary police executions… but he didn’t write one. Good for him. He also doesn’t seem to think the murder of another black man by police in Cincinnati is worth writing about, maybe because he has nothing to say about what appears to be an open and shut case of murder caught on tape. But that is perhaps mean spirited of me, and an unfair criticism, given that I have spent time explaining that it is possible to care about multiple issues, and that silence on one issue doesn’t necessarily mean indifference. Lord knows there are plenty of issues Jonah cares enough about to write his special type of glurge, opposing the minimum wage increase, tantrums that people are supporting Trump for having the nerve to use a foghorn while other republicans were still farting about with racist dog whistles, criticism of Obama for not being bipartisan enough, as if there was anyone with an (R) after their names in congress who didn’t campaign on a platform of opposing everything Obama stands for. It’s kind of refreshing to hear Jonah’s silence on an issue he’d only get wrong. So here’s a rare congratulations and a job well done (so far) for mister Goldberg of the National Review. If only you could bring your new found reticence to bear on every other issue you know nothing about.
One of my personal favorites Victor Davis Hanson also has insightful commentary on this incident. Which is to say, he hasn’t written a damn thing about it. Good for him, and again, well done.
You know who else hasn’t written about it? George Will. John Hinderaker, normally the loudest of loudmouths hasn’t touched it with a ten foot pole. I was going to go looking for more, but I really don’t want to. If conservatives don’t have anything to say about this incident, maybe just maybe, it indicates they aren’t the complete moral vacuums they so often appear to be. I’m going to assume they’ve heard of the incident (I was going to write “are not ignorant of the incident” but stopped myself, because seriously is there any subject they aren’t ignorant of?) It’s nice to think they have a line. It’s nice to think there are some actions by police that are so egregiously evil, that they will not find defenders among the talking heads of the right.
And so on that happy thought I will conclude. Start your weekend early, if you need me to, I will write you a note to get out of work.
Why no mention of Cecil the Lion?
You must not have seen this : http://crooksandliars.com/2015/07/foxs-elisabeth-hasselbeck-blames-threat
http://crooksandliars.com/2015/07/foxs-elisabeth-hasselbeck-blames-threat
What I don’t get is the stop seemed so congenial until the officer asked him to get out of the car. I don’t get it… Obviously he couldn’t let someone without a license or registration ‘just drive away’…
…But neither did it need the officer to attempt to break into the vehicle, grab the guy, and then shoot and kill him.
Even if the officer’s story was true: Shooting the driver would not have stopped him from being dragged by the car at all.
And I’m not convinced the car was driven off at all, it seemed to me that happened after the officer disabled the driver.
Don’t worry, new dog whistles are even now being laboratory tested…
“Black on black crime is the REAL issue!!!”
“Abortion killing more blacks than cops is the REAL issue!!!!”
Some people are upset that their family members and neighbors are being killed faster than innocent bystanders are when Blackwater goons get rowdy, others apparently are upset that people object to what until now was apparently a fine and ancient American tradition with as honored and venerable a history as stealing Native American land.
Now that you mention it…
Short of an actual road-to-Damascus conversion like Charles Johnson’s or John Cole’s, shutting up is the closest conservatives will come to admitting they’re wrong. Actually apologizing or admitting you were wrong, that’s a sign of weakness, so it rarely happens. But being in a situation where you realize there’s nothing you can say without making yourself look like so much of an idiot or so much of a prick that it’s too much even for you, incredibly, that does still happen to them from time to time. And the world is a better place for it.
(Not all of them and not all the time, as we saw from Sister Sarah’s immortal “what’s killed more black people, the Confederate flag or Planned Parenthood?” tweet. But some is better than none).
Did somebody say, “Natoinal Review”?!
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122413/national-reviews-bad-conscience
Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. was _not_ a cross-burner. He was too young and his daddy wouldn’t let him go.
The reason they are silent is perhaps that they know anything even on the same planet as reasonable would do nought but anger their readers and also it would fly in the face of EVERYTHING they stand for.
Deviled eggs, cheese straws, liverwurst canapes.
Mesclun, roasted red and gold beets, candied pecans , Supremes of Orange, thinly sliced red onion, sherry vinegar vinaigrette.
Center cut pork loin chops dry brained with sugar and salt, with rosemary
Phucking Fone.
Rosemary in the vac bags, sous vide couple hours at 139. Will make a pan sauce after finishing them with roasted chicken stock, white wine, leeks, garlic, BUTTER.
GRILLED eggplant, (olive oil on the salted and drained slices and some herbes de provence) dressed with cherry tomatoes burst in a pan in olive oil, feta, mint.
Potato, leek, fig gratinee.
Cherry clafoutis.
Don’t you wish you were our lucky guests this evening.
Some Greek oregano from the balcony herb garden also for the eggplant.
There’s gelato also too.
Teh food pr0n obsessed emperor of Dallas (ex Portland) has been cooking his ass off today.
You have guests ?? TEXANS ??
And yes, I am green with envy. You knew I would have to google mesclun and clafoutis, didn’t you? You tease me with these posh cooking terms because you just love to tease the Hick from the Sticks.
And it all sounds simply divine. Sigh.
The Republican world view is very contradictory: The police are evil, jackbooted thugs who need the right to shoot people without question….
Compare and contrast the take on Ruby Ridge and Waco versus Ferguson, say.
Suez, if I could cook for you I would be more than happy to. Maybe someday we’ll make to SA – if so I’ll drop in and make something special for you.
FWIW, our guests were, like us, temporary Texans. An oncologist from New Orleans, where he still has a house, and an engineer from Ohio who is here only because of work. They’re a rather odd couple, actually, but hey what are you going to do – they live in the corner apartment just down the hall and we have no one else in this town to call friends.
I picked a couple of gallons of cherries at work, one gallon was made into authentic (boozy) maraschino cherries, the second gallon is macerating in rum to make cherry bounce.
Pitting those suckers with a chopstick was a pita.
I am currently eyeing a peach tree on site, hoping it doesn’t produce clingstones. Those babies will end up macerating in wine.
Life is good.
Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk…
http://shorensteincenter.org/conservative-media-influence-on-republican-party-jackie-calmes/
“what’s killed more black people……”
So they’re in favor of more black people? Well, that’s at least good to know.
Of course they are. Somebody has to flip the burgers, pick up the trash, clean the floors, mow the lawns, and carry the heavy things. Not to mention go to jail and provide cheap labor for whoever’s in business with the prison system.
Also, gotta have an enemy, a scapegoat to invoke when attempting to “angry up” the base,
New post.
Maybe they’re just letting their trained flying monkeys of the discussion boards take over by simply ignoring the overwhelming evidence of this summary execution by cop and saying that DuBose deserved what he got (and the rationals will nauseate, guaranteed). Fucking. Racist. Scum.
Maybe they’re just letting their trained flying monkeys of the discussion boards take over by simply ignoring the overwhelming evidence of this summary execution by cop and saying that DuBose deserved what he got (and the rationales will nauseate, guaranteed). Fucking. Racist. Scum.