TooManyCops

The video of Samuel DuBose's killing illustrates one massive problem we have here in the US.

No, it's not that the cop murdered DuBose and then blatantly lied about it, despite having a body-cam on that showed he was, in the words of the prosecutor, "making an excuse for a purposeful killing of another person." (The prosecutor also said the killing was "murder" and "so senseless", and that "It was so unnecessary for this to occur. People want to believe that Mr DuBose had done something violent toward the officer. He did not. He did not at all." When a prosecutor says that, well.)

That is terrible, horrible, a huge problem, yes, absolutely.

But the fact is that at least one other cop backed up the killer's story 100%. He reported things that simply didn't happen. He lied to uphold the Thin Blue Line. And another one gave it a good shot, too.

So keep on saying "#NotAllCops". Keep on telling yourself and us that "most cops are good guys" and the "most cops don't kill people". Just realize that if 1 cop kills and 2 cops who wouldn't still lie to protect him, you've got 3 cops who conspired to cover up a murder. The whole barrel is becoming full of rotten apples.

If the Good Cops® cover up for the Bad Cops what is it exactly that makes them the Good Guys?

Why indeed?

"A neighborhood dispute gets ugly. Why an off-duty police officer is accused of pulling his gun on his neighbor."

I so hate that style of teaser-writing. Why is he accused of it? Don't mean you'll tell the alleged reason he did it, not the alleged reason he's being accused of doing it?

Well...

This is of course the point where she says "Daryl, what part of 'not necessarily' and 'quite often' do you not understand?"

You read what you expect

I vaguely noticed the "typo" in the headline "Oklahoma Guv's Daughter Living In Trailer Parked Outside Guv's Mansion" but really read right over it. To the extent that I was actually startled to realize she wasn't living in a "trailer park" (I figured the article was going to be about the governor's refusal to help her daughter or the daughter's crime-and/or-poverty-ridden life) but was in fact living in a trailer that was parked on the mansion's grounds. The story is about people complaining about taxpayers "footing her bills" - though, as the governor points out, if her daughter had moved into the mansion people would be paying for "her" utilities just the same.

By the way, I also was only vaguely aware that the daughter is in a band (which is why she's in a trailer). What can I say? Oklahoman politicians' families are not really on my radar.

Oh hell no

Just got an email from Care2 thanking me for signing up to the PETA newsletter.

They must have subscribed me when I signed a petition about the guy who shot the lion in Zimbabwe (follow the link only if you don't mind being really pissed off).

I unsubscribed as soon as I got their email. When they asked why on the form, I told them I didn't remember signing up, and I don't like to be auto-subscribed to anything and especially not PETA.

Do these guys make you feel safe?

a small group stands guard outside an armed forces career center in Colorado Springs.
Photograph: Michael Ciaglo/AP (picture source)

Okay. Would the sight of this bunch standing around a strip mall -the one with the jocular tshirt celebrating drinking and killing as much as the one hiding his face - make you feel warm and fuzzy and safe? I personally would take my business elsewhere.

Submitted for your consideration

Hey, Christians. If you don't like the Satanic statue, might I suggest that you try a tiny bit empathy? That is what (maybe not quite so viscerally discomforting but then again maybe moreseo) non-Christians feel when they have to pass your religious statues and monuments all the time.

Perhaps the answer isn't to fill the public square with statues of Jesus and Mary and Baphomet and Kali and Ganesh and the Koran and the Triple Goddess and whatever or whoever. Just perhaps the answer is to keep all such things on the grounds of your church, or in your own front yards.

Now is not the time

Because the time is like "tomorrow" in Alice - it's always coming but it's never here.

An angry right-wing white man who hates women buys a gun in a pawn shop in Alabama and drives to Louisiana. He swaps his car's license plate. He then walks into a movie theater showing a rom-com starring a mouthy woman, a theater with about 25 people in the audience, mostly women, and sits in the back.  Once the movie starts, he stands up and starts shooting. He shoots methodically, not crazily, and he tries to leave the theater but apparently spots the cops rolling up. So he walks back inside, fires off a couple more rounds and then shoots himself.

But we shouldn't do anything but pray for the victims and their families. Because doing anything else is politicizing the tragedy.

We shouldn't ask how it's legal for a man with his history to be able to buy that gun

We shouldn't ask why his record of "extreme erratic behavior" didn't trip any alarms.

We shouldn't ask why his behavior was alarming enough that he was denied a concealed-carry permit, yet was allowed to buy a handgun in a pawn shop.

We shouldn't ask why he joins the long list of angry white men who shoot people, because every white man acts as an individual and is in no representative of anything larger than himself.

In fact, we basically shouldn't ask anything at all - except maybe "How long, Lord?"

Because asking - let alone doing - is "politicizing the tragedy". We just have to wait till things cool down. Except by then, there'll have been another. So far this year there have been as many "mass shootings" (not necessarily multiple deaths) as there have been days and over 40 mass killings, and the average number of "active shootings" (an individual actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a confined and populated area) has gone from just over 6 per year from 2000-2005 to over 16 from 2006-2013).  By the time we're "ready" to talk about Lafayette, another big one will have come along to making talking about as heinous as doing it.

And one last note: we're always being told to pray for the victims ("Now it's time to shower the victims with love and prayers," says Bobby Jindal, and "The best thing we can do across Lafayette, across Louisiana, across our country, is come together in thoughts, in love, in prayer.") and not for a sea-change in our country's attitudes, not for people (men, mostly white men) to stop thinking shooting a bunch of strangers is the answer, not for the government to do something. No, "pray for the victims". So even the praying we do is meaningless by design. 

Happy Birthday with added deception

Today's Writer's Almanac offers the standard almost dateless capsule of birthday boy John Newton's life:

"In 1748, he had a spiritual conversion on a journey back to England. He almost drowned in a terrible storm, but he prayed to God, and the ship did not sink. After that, he stopped gambling and drinking, and he married a girl he had loved for many years. Newton was ordained as a minister. He gave up the slave trade entirely, and later in his life he became an outspoken abolitionist"

Notice how there's only one date, that of the miraculous prayer and intervention that set Newton on his new life. Or did it? Let us add 3 more dates:

• 1748 as noted.
  
• 1754 while still captaining a slave ship has stroke; stops sailing but continues investing in slaves.
  
• From 1757 to 1764 studies for the ministry and becomes first a lay and then ordained minister.
  
• 1788 publishes his pamphlet and becomes outspoken abolitionist.

In 1748 Newton prays to God during a storm and his ship doesn't sink. He reforms his life. But he continues to captain a slave ship and to trade in slaves. Even after he has a stroke that prevents him from being aboard a ship, he continues to invest in the slave trade. Clearly, slavery is not one of the things he thinks God wants him to give up.

This is important because the dateless biography strongly implies an immediate cause-and-effect sequence that simply isn't there. Slavery and Christianity went hand in hand for centuries in England and the US, and decades in Newton's life. "Amazing Grace" was not about seeing the light concerning slavery; he "stopped gambling and drinking " but he did not stop carrying, or trading in, slaves. Newton did do yeoman's work in the cause but he didn't start until 40 years after his conversion event. Implying otherwise is deeply dishonest.

And staggeringly common.

.... just wow.

I'm so glad this sort of thinking helps people, but ... I can't wrap my mind around it.

This is really bad news. Just telling you up front. Our dear friend has lost her amazing daughter to cancer. You may remember how hard Daughter fought this disease. I am broken-hearted for my friend. Please pray for Friend and her husband as they journey through this dark dark place. Thank you, God, for being there with them. I rejoice for Daughter.

God is with them? Seriously? Just now? Not when Daughter was sick and dying? Or was he there then, too, but just, you know, not actually doing anything? And yet still he's being thanked? For what?

And "I rejoice"? If you're going to rejoice that she's dead, why encourage her to fight? Why be sorry for her parents?

I never did get it, even when I was a Christian. I sure don't get it now.

(This is from a Facebook friend whom I will not interrogate on the point. She's a devout and liberal Catholic and it makes her happy and now especially is not the time.)

Some things that DO happen in "real America"

In today's Washington Times David Keene pens one of the most arrogant pieces I've read in a long time. "Flyover country is home to those who still believe in America," he says. He tells a story about a man who was bitten by a snake in Montana and how everybody pitched in to save him. He says folks in the rural heart of the country still think America is exceptional, still celebrate it.

At the end, he says

"The night before, a drugged-up 18-year-old stabbed a man to death while onlookers stood on both sides of a Metro car in the District. In January, a 77-year-old man collapsed and died of a heart attack across from a District fire station while people who banged on the door seeking help were turned away."

Of course, not everyone in DC is callous. In suburban DC a man saved another man from a beating, and DC is hardly the only place where 911 or EMTS don't respond, or medical personnel don't help.

But Keene certainly wants us to think so. He follows up by saying

"In the real America that wouldn’t have happened."

Maybe. But here's what does happen in "the real America" - in, in fact, that very Montana - recently:

• book burning
  
• a man who dies in swimming pools while employees watch
  
• a man who kills his families and himself
  
• people plotting to kill one's wife's divorce lawyer
  
• a man setting traps for teenagers and shooting one
  
• a woman shoving her bridegroom off a cliff
  
• a man shooting a television host in a jealous rage
  
• a man abducting and murdering a school teacher
  
• a man who raped his 11-yr-old granddaughter

Look. This is not an indictment of Montana, which is no worse than any other state, I'm sure.

It's an indictment of the "real America" myth.

The Weeks in Entertainment

Being on vacation is bad for blogging ... or at least it was this time. I didn't do much at all, and I even kept forgetting to create one of these with a delayed post date. So here are several weeks' worth:

Film: Inside Out, which was delightful. Avengers: Age of Ultron, which was good - though my friend who had seen precisely one other Marvel film was pretty much confused. And Woman in Gold which was extremely good.

TV: A lot of baseball games. Some episodes of House Hunters International, which my father enjoys a lot. I usually enjoy looking at the houses.

DVD: My Old Lady, a story not entirely worthy of the stars (Kevin Kline, Kristin Scott Thomas and Maggie Smith) but they make it worth watching - which is not to say that it's bad, it's just that it's a little bit predictable. From Up on Poppy Hill (コクリコ坂から, Kokuriko-zaka Kara), beautifully animated and a touching story.

Read: All of the Whidby Island trilogy (The Edge of the Shadows, The Edge of Nowhere, The Edge of the Water). The Annihilation Score, the latest in The Laundry - this one narrated by Mo, which was a change of pace and quite enjoyable. Shadowshaper, which was truly brilliant, and which led me the author's Bone Street Rumba short stories (all excellent) and the novel Half-Resurrection Blues, almost equally excellent. I've preordered the next one, because this was heavily invested in origin stuff and the next one will probably be better - though I hasten to say that this one was really very good. Deadly Election, the latest Flavia Albia book, which was well up to standard. The first three of Marissa Meyer's Lunar Chronicles (Cinder, Scarlet, Cress) and the back-story novella Fairest (which you should read after Cress), all extremely good - I can hardly wait for the final book, which is pre-ordered. Superposition, another SF book from Scalzi's Big Idea, an intriguing mystery entangled with quantum physics.

At the Water

A few shots from the lake during my vacation

First, a black vulture who was just standing around on the dock. He had his wings spread when we got there, but tucked himself up and watched warily as I took his picture.



Some of the ducks



A red-spotted purple



More ducks, including one leucistic female:



A closer look at her























Some of the Canada geese are banded, like this one. (Made me think of Mark Trail!)



A big turtle catching late afternoon sun



A double-crested cormrant



A closer view



A tree full of cormorants



A pair of ospreys

Heritage ...... of Hate

In their own words.
The Cornerstone speech, which describes the reasons for the founding of the Confederate States of America. Given 21 March 1861 at The Athenaeum in Savannah, Georgia, by the Hon. A. H. Stephens, Vice- President of the Confederate States of America.

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other — though last, not least. The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away... Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the "storm came and the wind blew, it fell."

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.

. . .  May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system. The architect, in the construction of buildings, lays the foundation with the proper material-the granite; then comes the brick or the marble. The substratum of our society is made of the material fitted by nature for it, and by experience we know that it is best, not only for the superior, but for the inferior race, that it should be so. It is, indeed, in conformity with the ordinance of the Creator. It is not for us to inquire into the wisdom of his ordinances, or to question them. For his own purposes, he has made one race to differ from another, as he has made "one star to differ from another star in glory."

The great objects of humanity are best attained when there is conformity to his laws and decrees, in the formation of governments as well as in all things else. Our confederacy is founded upon principles in strict conformity with these laws. This stone which was rejected by the first builders "is become the chief of the corner" — the real "corner-stone" — in our new edifice.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Fourth of July! to all my American readers

“You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism.” – Erma Bombeck.

Priorities: She has 'em

What I really, really like about this strip is not how the narration describes her ducking while dropping her gun as "defends herself". No, it's how she stops to pick up her purse before her gun.

Inside looking out ...

I took the card out of my father's camera to look at some pics I took of a cardinal and found this on it - from February.

Maple in Ice