Due Process

..is a Bee-atch.

Alleged movie theater gunman James Eagan Holmes is being evicted from his Aurora apartment because he booby-trapped his unit with bombs and "murdered numerous individuals," his landlord says in court filings.

Although Holmes has been jailed since July 20 for allegedly killing 12 people and wounding 58 others watching a midnight showing of "The Dark Knight Rises," he is technically still a tenant at 1690 Paris St., said Victor Sulzer, an attorney with the firm representing the landlord.

"His actions are a substantial violation of his lease," Sulzer said.

The Denver Post

There Are No Walk-On Parts

Barry Lopez interviewed by Bill Moyers

BILL MOYERS: So, is the new metaphor not nature, but the stage? That's a powerful idea that we all- have walk on parts in this drama that never ends.

BARRY LOPEZ: But who is it, Bill, that says, one person has a walk on part? You know? That's a political question. Who is it that's standing there saying, that person, this person, that person, those are walk on parts. And this person over here will be the star of the show. I don't like that. I don't like to hear it. What happens if a person speaks imperfect English in a culture like ours, is not articulate, but can dance in a way that makes you shiver? Why is that a walk on part?...

I and Thou, not I and It

BARRY LOPEZ: We have from, you know, the beginning of the Holocene, you know, the raising, the creation of cities in the Tigris/Euphrates, we have created a world in which we marginalize that which we don't think serves us as well as it could. We've turned nature into a thing. You know, Martin Buber's wonderful I/it relationship and I/thou relationship. This is an "it." The book is an "it." It is soulless. It is utilitarian. I can throw it on the ground if I want. But if it's an I/thou relationship, you never make those kinds of presumptions. So a lot of what traditional people when you watch- when you're in their environment, everything is I/thou. The relationship to the wind; the wind is alive. It has a soul. It's part of the moral universe.

And we've created something in which we have excluded from our moral universe everything but us. And in fact, a lot of people have been excluded from this central White Western European dominant culture. Everything else is an I/it relationship. With African Americans or, you know, in Aboriginal people, whatever it's going to be. But when you-- with traditional people, the relationships with everything are about the holiness of the other, the mystery of the other. That's that I/thou relationship.

And what I would like to I guess encourage people to understand is that for the sake of our own convenience, we created an "other," and that other was nature. And we said, if it doesn't serve us, kill it, move it, destroy it, crush it. Make it serve us. And if it doesn't, it's no good.

(hat tip = JR, from a very long time ago)

A Day Late

I wanted to post something that connected the recent murder sprees with the quasi-investigation of Right Wing Extremism from a few years ago, but of course, better bloggers beat me to it.

The Agonist

Crooks and Liars

You probably remember the earsplitting wingnut screeching that greeted this man's analysis of the threat posed to the country by right-wing extremism - a report, incidentally, commissioned by the Bush administration. (Dave Neiwert was, of course, on the case.) If only our politicians had enough spine to stand up to the predictable rantings of the armchair experts, Daryl Johnson's important work would have continued and maybe even expanded to the point where the Wisconsin shooting could have been prevented.

Even The Daily Beast is on it.

The report triggered a political firestorm. “The piece of crap report issued on April 7 is a sweeping indictment of conservatives,” thundered right-wing pundit Michelle Malkin. Rep. Peter King, a past and current chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in Congress, demanded an investigation. Another congressman, Rep. Gus Bilirakis of Florida, pronounced himself “very offended and really disturbed that they would even say our military veterans, our returning war heroes would be capable of committing any terrorist acts.”

--and--

“Since Obama took office, there have been nearly 20 extremist right-wing attacks and plots, including the killing of almost a dozen police officers in six separate attacks,” Johnson said in an interview last year. Among them was an attempt in 2011—foiled at the last minute—to plant a homemade backpack bomb at a Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in Spokane, Wash. The suspect in that case, Kevin Harpham, is an Army veteran trained in artillery.

I don't like the idea that DHS would get beefed up and start looking like a National Police Force, because eventually they'll get used as just another internal political weapon - and start acting like The Stasi or some damned thing.  And it REALLY gripes my ass when it seems like I'm lining up with the GOP on anything.  So I'm not really - I just want an honest assessment of real and potential threats.

Unfortunately, until we figure out how to free our dysfunctional Press Poodles from their choke chains so they can keep an eye out for the shit politicians love to shovel over us, we're not gonna get anything but more of the same and/or worse.

And BTW (at the risk of perpetuating the evil of centrism and false equivalence): Politicians only bitch about "the power" when they're not the ones who own the power.

Understanding

The nasty little piece put up by a pro-Obama Super PAC:



And from Balloon Juice, some good analysis:

Mark Halperin has a major sad about the pro-Obama SuperPac ad featuring the guy whose wife was killed by Mitt Romney’s corporate policies:

This new super PAC spot, called “Understands,” which the White House and the Obama campaign decline to repudiate, is a horse of a different color. It really isn’t about policy (although some Democrats will claim otherwise). It is meant to use the emotion of a tragic story told by a bereaved widower to make voters think Governor Romney is callous and indifferent, and even is accountable for a woman’s death.

Responsible journalists will continue to do their best in the Freak Show environment to truth squad every ad, video, and communication. But when lines of decency are crossed, more strenuous efforts are required.

A few points here:

• Are these the same “responsible journalists” who give the SwiftBoat attacks a pass?

• The actions of rich and powerful people have consequences. Sometimes these consequences involve the deaths of other people. Deal with it. This isn’t beanbag. Ayn Rand’s heroes didn’t sit around whining about what the moochers and looters said about them. Today’s Galtians shouldn’t either.

• When Mark Halerpin says you’re playing dirty, you’re winning. I love it when wingnuts whine about “Chicago-style” politics. It means they’re afraid. And I want them to be afraid.

On Speaking Up

A TED talk about establishing a culture of advocacy, even at the risk of being seen as simply querulous.

Flippin' Willard

Sometimes, a 30 second attack ad has to be 4 minutes long just to get it all in.

Twilight Of The Elites

I guess I really need to read the book.

From a blurb by Chris Hayes about his new book:

But extreme inequality of the particular kind that we have produces its own particular kind of elite pathology: it makes elites less accountable, more prone to corruption and self-dealing, more status-obsessed and less empathic, more blinkered and removed from informational feedback crucial to effective decision making. For this reason, extreme inequality produces elites that are less competent and more corrupt than a more egalitarian social order would. This is the fundamental paradoxical outcome that several decades of failed meritocratic production have revealed: As American society grows more elitist, it produces a lesser caliber of elites.

Romney Fail

From The Guardian:

Ann Romney's horse fails to win Dressage,

but avoids offending British

Short of mocking Shetland ponies over their lack of stature or laying into zebras for their failure to make a significant contribution to the world of equine culture, Ann Romney's horse Rafalca was always going to struggle to match the sheer incredulity that her husband managed to provoke on his recent overseas trip.

Parade Of Stupid

Stoopid shit we say about teachers:

"Teachers are just glorified babysitters."

So let's pay 'em according to current babysitting rates.
($10/hour x 6 hours) = $60/day
($60/day x 5 days/week) = $300/week
($300/week x 36 weeks) = $10,800/year
($10,800/year x 30 kids) - (30% discount group rate) = $226,800

"My kids never act out at home, I wonder what the teachers are doing wrong in the classroom."

This is most strange.  Maybe if the teachers came to observe you in your home for a few days, they could figure it out.  When's a good time for 30 teachers to drop by your house to get some solid tips on how you go about controlling one or two children?  Or maybe it'd be better if one teacher brought 30 kids to your place and just sat back to watch you work your magic.

And the big one - "We pay those teachers with our hard-earned tax dollars."

Speaking for myself, I pay about $4,200 per year in local taxes (property, sales, car, etc).  I'm not dumb enough to think that all of that money goes to the high school where two of my kids are going this year, so I did a little fairly easy digging, and found out that the school budget total for 2012-13 is about $151 Million, out of a total budget for the whole county of $313 Million.  The arithmetic is pretty simple at the top here.  Schools account for about 48% of what I pay in local taxes - that's $2016.
Now let's pretend the whole $1008 (per kid) goes to "my" high school - what are the basics that I get for my contribution?

• 1260 hours of instruction (for the year) in English, History, a foreign language, Geometry, Algebra, Earth Science, Chorus, Phys Ed, Applied Computer Science, Graphic Design and Marketing, Intro To Psych, etc
• In-school tutoring
• Mentoring, coaching, counseling, etc

(Plus, the joint is clean and safe and well-maintained; the kids get Annual Eye and Hearing tests, and a full time on-sight School Nurse; it has a new turf field, and the building was recently upgraded/updated with a bunch of other new goodies - plus they provide door-to-door transportation every day)

But let's just take the main point here, and further pretend that the whole cost of the school is devoted solely to the teaching of one of my kids for the year.  1260 instruction hours + 20 (or so) tutoring hours = 1280 hours.  Divide that into the 1008 bucks I pay, and suddenly it starts to look like I'm gettin' a pretty good fucking deal at less than 79 cents/hour.

At some point, we have to start to understand that we deserve a much better debate than this endless carping about bad government, unions, taxes; and how everything'll be  peachy if we just apply some common sense and remember how great it all was back when Grandma was girl.

What you really need to remember is that Nostalgia was once classified as mental illness.

Today's Pix