Every time a cop unjustifiably1 kills someone, you can count on a statist talking head to explain that he was a bad apple. They never seem to grasp that the whole expression is “One bad apple spoils the barrel;” the idea being that isolated instances of bad behaviour can become endemic if not prevented or immediately excised. Even that expression misleads in this context, because police violence isn’t primarily caused by isolated bad actors, but instead is the product of a system which encourages violent responses to a large amount of harmless behaviour and then protects the perpetrators of the violence from scrutiny. Plus systemic racism. Continue reading “Bad Apples”
Opinions are like … # 1
“Not every silence is pregnant.”
State of Ill., Dep’t of Pub. Aid v. Schweiker, 707 F.2d 273, 277 (7th Cir. 1983).
But some are begging to be filled.
Name Checks Out
All the News that’s Fit to Tweet
Serous Journalism from the Times this morning:
I haven’t seen a grey lady’s attempt to be relevant fail so spectacularly since the Clinton campaign:
No one’s expecting you to be young and hip, Hillary, they’re expecting you to be a smart, savvy, highly-accomplished corporate crony. No one goes the Times to read listicles or do a survey to find out which Minion they are. Stay in your lane.
Oops
A friend asked me this morning:
“[W]here do you blog? I remember you mentioning before that you blog somewhere. I need some stuff to read these days that isn’t commentary on Trump’s Charlotte commentary.”
Oops. Continue reading “Oops”
Fly Over Pastry
NPR wants to teach us all about a Czech pastry that is popular in Texas but, lawdamercy, you don’t actually expect them to go somewhere the Acela doesn’t stop, do you? There are Trump voters out there!
Pickles
On to lighter fare: I absolutely love fermented foods. When I was a kid, my mum ate a lot of sauerkraut, and I hated it. I’m not sure when this changed, but it may have been when I spent about 18 hours in Korea waiting for a connection. KAL put me up in a tiny little hotel room in Incheon, and I went out for lunch and ate something unidentified, with a side of kim chi, and was hooked.
Man Date
Among the many insanities set forth by my fellow pontificator in his predictions about the threats of a Trump presidency, he hid this modest gem of accepted and completely wrong political wisdom: Continue reading “Man Date”
Prestidigitator Trump
November 20, 2020: The successful Maggie Hassan/Sherrod Brown ticket begins planning to assume the presidency, eager to repair a nation laid waste by four years of paranoid, kleptocratic rulership. In a bland hotel conference room in Bethesda, midlevel members of the transition team, suffering from months of frenetic campaign work, assemble around a table. Weary yet exuberant, and caffeine and/or sleep deficits notwithstanding, they go to work.
Donald Trump and the Rise of the Armed, Small-Government Left
This is not a prediction. It is my fervent hope.
It is now two days since Donald Trump was elected as the next president of the United States, and I am not as worried about it as many of my friends are. To be clear, I am not happy about it. I am not calm. I am very nervous. But many of my friends are people of colour, LGBTQ, immigrants, and women, and they are freaking the fuck out. Continue reading “Donald Trump and the Rise of the Armed, Small-Government Left”