Category: Uncategorized

One slicker and a pair of rain boots

Michael Chabon considers the President’s speech:

Having struggled all the way through to make my own sense of sorrow and confusion congruent with what I saw happening in Tucson, having found that point of tangency at the rueful and admonitory heart, the father’s heart, of the speech, I fell all the way out again, right at the end. “If there are rain puddles in heaven,” the president said, evoking the words of an unnamed contributor to an album of photos of babies born on 9/11, “Christina is jumping in them today.”

I tried to imagine how I would feel if, having, God forbid, lost my precious daughter, born three months and ten days before Christina Taylor-Green, somebody offered this charming, tidy, corny vignette to me by way of consolation. I mean, come on! There is no heaven, man. The brunt, the ache and the truth of a child’s death is that he or she will never jump in rain puddles again. That joy was taken from her, and along with it ours in the pleasure of all that splashing. Heaven is pure wishfulness, an imaginary solution to the insoluble problem of the contingency and injustice of life.

But I’ve been chewing these words over since last night, and I’ve decided that, in fact, they were appropriate to a memorial for a child, far more appropriate, certainly, than all that rude hallooing. A literal belief in heaven is not required to grasp the power of that corny wish, to feel the way the idea of heaven inverts in order to express all the more plainly everything—wishes, hopes and happiness—that the grieving parents must now put away, along with one slicker and a pair of rain boots.

One slicker and a pair of rain boots

The Unfollow Button

correlationstonone:

kateoplis:

“I believe that for all our imperfections, we are full of decency and goodness, and that the forces that divide us are not as strong as those that unite us.”

I think there’s more then a few dead kids lately that prove you wrong. Goddamn Pollyanna platitude-spouting optimists. You know what the best part of America’s collapse is? Watching hope founded on nothing fade into the sadness of reality.

Uh, did you even bother to take a look at the whole speech?

Scripture tells us that there is evil in the world, and that terrible things happen for reasons that defy human understanding. In the words of Job, “when I looked for light, then came darkness.” Bad things happen, and we must guard against simple explanations in the aftermath.

You are free to carp about Presidential use of scripture in this day and age, but there is very little Pollyanna in there. In fact, I’d say that’s the strength of the piece. But feel free to go on living in your sad little world in which everything is a magically irrefutable sign of decay, collapse, and entropy. Some would even call that “simple explanations in the aftermath.” Others would call it the worst brand of faux intellectualism in which all news must be greeted with a world-weary chin rub, an “I seen that one coming,” followed by a “and that’s why I never vote.”

In which case: well played.

Prediction: Obama’s performance tonight is strong, so [conservative pundits] will pivot to attacking the crowd.

Adam Serwer, tweeting a hole right through the fabric of time and space. There really is nothing that will fail to aggrieve the pundocrats ruling our world.

Arguing Tucson

George Packer continues the good fight, incinerating false equivalencies as quickly as he can type:

In fact, there is no balance—none whatsoever. Only one side has made the rhetoric of armed revolt against an oppressive tyranny the guiding spirit of its grassroots movement and its midterm campaign. Only one side routinely invokes the Second Amendment as a form of swagger and intimidation, not-so-coyly conflating rights with threats. Only one side’s activists bring guns to democratic political gatherings. Only one side has a popular national TV host who uses his platform to indoctrinate viewers in the conviction that the President is an alien, totalitarian menace to the country. Only one side fills the AM waves with rage and incendiary falsehoods. Only one side has an iconic leader, with a devoted grassroots following, who can’t stop using violent imagery and dividing her countrymen into us and them, real and fake. Any sentient American knows which side that is; to argue otherwise is disingenuous.

I’d argue that this last point is why the Palin team was so furiously scrubbing her various feeds within seconds of the news breaking: the clarity of the situation crystallized immediately and pervasively. And I suspect that no amount of “oh, both sides do it” is really going to take over the long haul.

Well, that and this continuing meme that incoherent, rage-filled political statements somehow make this case distinct from typical Tea Klan output.

Arguing Tucson

Another several of the big lies laid out by a single table. Last I checked, 590+-610=-20. This is something I learned in Two Minus Three Equals Negative Fun starring Troy McClure, which did have a decidedly liberal math bias now that I think back…

Full document available if you click. Note to Democrats: print out, laminate, and refer to often.

As if on Cue

Rest assured, gun violence only ever provides reasons to put more guns into circulation and never, ever serves as an argument for stricter regulations or requirements for those who wish to own or carry a gun:

Our model legislation is called the Giffords-Zimmerman Act,“ said Heller. (Giffords staffer Gabriel Zimmerman, 30, was killed on Saturday.) "It would require the Arizona Department of Public Safety to provide firearms training, using firearms confiscated by the state, to members of Congress and people who work for them. Facilities would be made available to them in a way that wouldn’t interfere with the training of police and other safety employees.”

Heller speculated that a response like this could prevent future attacks on members of Congress. “I don’t think having a firearm on her would do Congresswoman Giffords any good,” said Heller. “However, if it was known that members of her staff were well armed, that very well could have dissuaded [the shooter].

Arizona is already one of the easiest states in which to purchase and concealed-carry a gun, no licensing required. That easy availability did nothing whatsoever on Saturday, unless you count getting a gun into the hands of a 22 year old with apparent mental illness. The solution, as always: just make guns more available. That’ll solve it.

Now go die in those equally opportune streets like a well-armed man. Preferably by being shot; just don’t expect healthcare if you haven’t pre-paid or are any shade of brown. That is all.

DeLay Gets Three Years

Senior Judge Pat Priest sentenced him to the three-year term on the conspiracy charge. He also sentenced him to five years in prison on the money laundering charge but allowed DeLay to accept 10 years of probation instead of more prison time.

The former Houston-area congressman had faced up to life in prison. His attorneys asked for probation.

As one who assumed he’d never be convicted, much less sentenced to actual time… I guess I still say I’ll believe it when the bars slam shut behind him. If and when they do: Good riddance.

DeLay Gets Three Years

On Random Thoughts 306 and 307

politicalprof:

#306: Does anyone believe that the tragedy in Arizona would have been less dangerous and less tragic if 20 people had pulled out their guns and started firing at the shooter?

#307: Did anyone else notice that in Arizona, one of the most gun-friendly states in the United States, that the shooter was subdued by people who hit him and jumped on him? Not by armed vigilantes who wielded their guns?

On this topic I’d only add: does anyone think that Arizona’s gun laws, which basically amount to “anyone over 21 can buy, concealed-carry, and be armed at any time and in any place” make that state a safer place to reside?

Every time an incident involving a lone shooter occurs in a state with stiff gun laws, we’re treated to moans about “if only they’d let more people carry guns there, they’d have taken care of it before it ever started”; when it transpires in a gun crazed, heavily armed state like AZ: sounds of silence.

Journalists: How many folks on the ground in the immediate vicinity had guns on them? In the store? In the parking lot? Yet it was a well timed open field tackle that reportedly incapacitated the gunman.

peterwknox:stfuconservatives:roxanneritchi:

A deleted tweet from Sarah Palin. She is deleting anything that may show what she has said and done and advocated: TakeBackthe20.com, her tweets, posts on Facebook. She started doing this BEFORE she bothered to extend condolences to Griffords, the other victims of the shooting, and their families.

Do not forget this.

She should not be able to go out in public ever again without being shown or asked about this. Every day, every appearance, every press event.

Source: formerlyroxy-blog-blog

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning

It’s true that the shooter in Arizona appears to have been mentally troubled. But that doesn’t mean that his act can or should be treated as an isolated event, having nothing to do with the national climate.

Last spring Politico.com reported on a surge in threats against members of Congress, which were already up by 300 percent. A number of the people making those threats had a history of mental illness — but something about the current state of America has been causing far more disturbed people than before to act out their illness by threatening, or actually engaging in, political violence.

–Paul Krugman, who reports in his blog that he hated writing this piece. It is, however, absolutely essential reading.

Climate of Hate; Just the Beginning