Seldom Balanced – Usually Fair
From Green Eagle:
On October 1 of last year, as most people will sadly remember, a man in Las Vegas barricaded himself in a hotel room and began shooting at a concert below his windows, killing 51 people and injuring over 800. The man seemed to be a prosperous middle class man with no known connection to terror groups, and his motives for this monstrous act seemed doomed to remain forever a mystery.
Now, however, it seems that the mystery has been dispelled.
From Frederic Lemieux of Georgetown University at The Moderate Voice:
At least 10 students were killed at a Santa Fe, Texas high school on May 18 after a classmate opened fire with a shotgun and a .38 revolver.
The shooting came just three months after another teen shooter killed 17 in Parkland, Florida, sparking nationwide youth-led protests over gun violence – and a familiar debate over what changes could really make a difference.
As a criminologist, I often hear misconceptions creeping into the debate that springs up whenever a mass shooting occurs.
Here’s what the research actually shows.
From libertarian Michael A. LaFerrara:
A socialist government program is not about the general welfare. It is about the welfare of some at the expense of others, and the power of the few over the lives of the many. The only thing “general” about socialist welfare state programs is the chains that bind all together and leave none with their rights. After all, rights can be boiled down to this: the freedom to say no, and go one’s separate way if one chooses. This freedom doesn’t protect the rich and powerful. It primarily protects the weakest among us—each of us as individuals. Under the American system, the rich have no power to coerce even the poorest individual, until and unless the government hands them that power by failing to protect the individual’s inalienable rights. In Rothman’s reactionary conception, no one has the right to say “no” to his neighbor or his government.
The American system embodied in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, which has come to be known as laissez-faire, or “let us alone”, capitalism, is designed to protect the life and liberty of the common person from mob and government alike. Rothman responds “Wrong! The American System is not about individualism. It is about collectivism, in which all are chained and enslaved to all, and dependent on all, via omnipotent government.” The fact that most of us are already partially chained via one government program or another shows how far the social statists—who disingenuously label themselves “Progressives”—have repudiated everything America stands for.
To wrap the rise of socialist tyranny in the American Flag: What can be more disingenuous than that!
From Max’s Dad:
I dont that much about Arturo Sandoval. I know he’s a legend. I know he has a Presidential Medal of Freedom which because Obama presented it may be rescinded by the current Traitor In Chief. I know he’s from Cuba. I know he plays my favorite instrument. Thats about it.
Arturo Sandoval and his band graced us with his presence last night here in the heartland. Sandoval, at 69 years old, idolized Dizzy Gillespie, and his latest tour makes sure we all know that. Called the Dear Diz tour, Sandoval plays Dizzy tunes with a love only he can know. That love entered me as soon as I heard Sandoval blow that trumpet. Oh my god, what a talent.
Backed by a band of talented musicians, Sandoval wore so many hats I couldnt believe what i was seeing half the time.
In the movie The Counselor, a lawyer sees an opportunity for quick money. But things go awry. A man is dead, a shipment is missing, and he finds himself accused by dangerous people.
His friend is not optimistic about his chances.
I am perfectly willing to believe you had nothing to do with this but I am not the party you need to convince.
The friend, played by Brad Pitt, offers little help.
They’re a pragmatic lot. They don’t believe in coincidences.
They’ve heard of them. They’ve just never seen one.
Most of us are not quite that skeptical – or that dangerous. We often find coincidence believable.
The national election of 2016 is just one example. We start with a series of facts that would require a series of connections much harder to believe than simple coincidence. Hillary Clinton stumbles in the heat of New York City while cameras roll. Paid speeches to Wall Street banks come back to haunt her. Her technical clumsiness with emails get amplified way beyond its actual significance. Key people, one a valued friend, are lost to killers in Benghazi. Votes are distributed in just the right way in a mishmash electoral system originally installed to preserve slavery.
Coincidence.
Add to that other coincidences: A frightened FBI director, scared down to his socks by the possibility that Republicans will see him as unfair, decides to act unfairly in order to look fair to conservatives. He administers a rhetorical beating while announcing that nothing legally wrong has been found. And, of course, the Wikileaks campaign using stolen, and occasionally edited, electronic documents.
All coincidence.
I do have to confess that other against-the-odds events form an accidental pattern that is hard to ignore.
Continue reading “Coincidence and ZTE”
From Infidel753:
Trump is restructuring the democratic world, though in ways not congruent with his intentions, and the changes will go deeper the longer he remains in office. He evidently believes that the power of the US enables it (well, him) to simply make demands on other countries and compel them to obey. Combined with his ignorance about the world, this belief produces a pattern of erratic and alarming behavior which is eroding the leadership role the US has held since the end of World War II.
His early comments calling into question the US defense commitments to the democracies of Europe and East Asia must have set off alarm bells for the governments of those countries, and no doubt quite a few very sober high-level meetings took place in Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, etc. around that time. The “axis of adults” in Washington eventually persuaded Trump to back down from some of his stupidest remarks, but his true attitude had been revealed, and other governments knew that they couldn’t count on the “adults” to remain in place (indeed, all are now gone except Mattis).
Since then Trump has further damaged the US leadership role with such moves as withdrawing from the Paris climate accord, after which other countries (and even some US states and cities) simply went on following the accord without him. His threats of trade war prompted Europe, not to submit, but to announce plans for retaliation. No other major country has emulated his pointless and inflammatory gesture of moving the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem. His abandonment of the Iran nuclear deal reeked of arrogance, with his new ambassador to Germany imperiously ordering the world’s fourth-largest economic power to slavishly fall into line.
From Dave Dubya:
In a nutshell.
FOX(R) v. Journalism: Exhibit A.
Sean Hannity asked Ted Koppel, “You think I’m bad for America?”
After being rudely interrupted three times by “Sad” Hannity, Koppel responded, “Yep. You have attracted people who are determined that ideology is more important than facts.”
From North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz:
Often our words are more than words—they are floodlights.
They pierce through our facades and our artifice, and into our shadow places, and they reveal who we are.
Many times our words illuminate what is most true about the contents of our hearts, even as we try to conceal them.
This week at a roundtable in California, Donald Trump said these words about undocumented immigrants and showed us who he is:
“We have people coming into the country—or trying to come in, we’re stopping a lot of them—but we’re taking people out of the country, you wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.”
From PZ Myers:
Wow, the New York Times opinion pages keep reminding me of what a craphole they’ve become. The latest entry is by Gerard Alexander, an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia, who appears to wag a finger at those dang liberals who keep pointing out that the electorate that voted Trump into office were mostly conservative white folks who were driven by racial bias.
Racist is pretty much the most damning label that can be slapped on anyone in America today, which means it should be applied firmly and carefully. Yet some people have cavalierly leveled the charge against huge numbers of Americans — specifically, the more than 60 million people who voted for Mr. Trump.
In their ranks are people who sincerely consider themselves not bigoted, who might be open to reconsidering ways they have done things for years, but who are likely to be put off if they feel smeared before that conversation even takes place.
“Consider themselves not bigoted”…well, now I’m convinced.