So, yeah, there's Jimi Hendrix, on TV in 1965. Can you even hear him? I want to concentrate on Buddy & Stacy. I'm surprised they got away with dancing like that on television:
Those were different times.
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Those were different times.
Saturday, 26 January 2013
Friday, 25 January 2013
"Your safety. It's no longer a spectator sport. I need you in the game. But are you ready?"
"With officers laid off and furloughed, simply calling 911 and waiting is no longer your best option. You could beg for mercy from a violent criminal, hide under the bed, or you can fight back. But are you prepared? Consider taking a certified safety course in handling a firearm so you can defend yourself until we get there. You have a duty to protect yourself and your family. We're partners now. Can I depend on you?"
Says Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. in a new radio ad (which you can play here).
Predictable pushback. From the office of Tom Barrett (the Mayor of Milwaukee who challenged Gov. Scott Walker in the recall election and lost):
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Says Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke Jr. in a new radio ad (which you can play here).
Predictable pushback. From the office of Tom Barrett (the Mayor of Milwaukee who challenged Gov. Scott Walker in the recall election and lost):
"Apparently, Sheriff David Clarke is auditioning for the next Dirty Harry movie."And from Jeri Bonavia, executive director of Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort:
"What (Clarke's) talking about is this amped up version of vigilantism.... I don't know what his motivations are for doing this. But I do know what he's calling for is dangerous and irresponsible and he should be out there saying this is a mistake."
Thursday, 24 January 2013
"GOP Senator Pushes Gun-Running Conspiracy Theory During Benghazi Hearing."
That's the way they put it over at Think Progress. I've watched the video. Rand Paul asks a question. It seems histrionic to equate asking a question with pushing a conspiracy theory, and the truth is Hillary Clinton's answer has the ring of... lying.
The effort on the left to stereotype Rand Paul as a nutcase is so strenuous that it stimulates my root-for-the-underdog instinct. And makes me suspicious. I feel a Rand-Paul-must-be-destroyed conspiracy theory blossoming within.
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The effort on the left to stereotype Rand Paul as a nutcase is so strenuous that it stimulates my root-for-the-underdog instinct. And makes me suspicious. I feel a Rand-Paul-must-be-destroyed conspiracy theory blossoming within.
Gallup poll: 64% of Americans agree that "The decision to have an abortion should be made solely by a woman and her physician."
In the summer of 1972, half a year before the Supreme Court decided Roe v. Wade.
(Feel free to relate this post to the previous post about Second Amendment rights, which Democrats don't believe in.)
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A majority of all identified groups, including Catholics, agreed with that statement. There was almost no difference between men and women. The group expressing the strongest agreement – 68 percent – was made up of Republicans. George Gallup’s syndicated column discussing the poll results, “Abortion Seen Up to Woman, Doctor,” ... was... in Justice Blackmun’s files.And Justice Blackmun, the Nixon appointee who wrote the Roe v. Wade opinion, had that column in his files. Also in his files:
[A]n account by Dr. Jane E. Hodgson, a Mayo Clinic-trained obstetrician/gynecologist, of her arrest in St. Paul in 1970 for performing a first-trimester abortion for a patient who had contracted German measles in the fourth week of pregnancy. (In those days before immunization eradicated the threat posed to pregnant women by German measles, the disease commonly caused serious birth defects.) Justice Harry A. Blackmun, formerly the Mayo Clinic’s lawyer, knew Dr. Hodgson’s story; I had found her account, published in the clinic’s alumni magazine, in the justice’s files at the Library of Congress.That's from a long column by Linda Greenhouse, referencing historical materials collected here. The column also talks about the post-Roe political strategy of the Republican Party, which we were just discussing a couple days ago here. The idea is that Republicans were for it before they were against it.
(Feel free to relate this post to the previous post about Second Amendment rights, which Democrats don't believe in.)
"How many of you all believe that there is a movement to take away the Second Amendment?"
Democratic Senator Joe Manchin asked a group of his supporters back home in West Virginia.
Democrats know this. They are part of this American culture of deeply engrained belief in constitutional rights. What is different to the Democrats is that they don't believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional right. They think the Supreme Court misinterpreted the Second Amendment when it found a constitutional right. District of Columbia v. Heller was a 5 to 4 decision, and the 5 are the 5 Justices, still on the Court, whom the Democratic Senators would love to have a chance to replace.
The NYT portrays the folks back home in West Virginia as misinformed, troublesome, and hysterical. That’s what we’re dealing with.
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About half the hands in the room went up.That's the anecdote that leads off the NYT article "Democrats in Senate Confront Doubts at Home on Gun Laws." The article ends:
Despite his best attempts to reassure them — “I see no movement, no talk, no bills, no nothing” — they remained skeptical. “We give up our rights one piece at a time,” a banker named Charlie Houck told the senator.
During the lunch, Mr. Manchin shared a recent conversation he had with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., the Obama administration’s point person on gun control.How are we to think about rights? It's good for politicians to hear the deeply engrained American attitude: We give up our rights one piece at a time. There's a long tradition — predating the Bill of Rights — of thinking like that. Here's James Madison in 1785:
“I said, ‘Mr. Vice President, with all due respect, I don’t know how many people who truly believe that you would fight to protect their rights.’ ”
The senator added, “That’s what we’re dealing with.”
[I]t is proper to take alarm at the first experiment on our liberties. We hold this prudent jealousy to be the first duty of Citizens, and one of the noblest characteristics of the late Revolution. The free men of America did not wait till usurped power had strengthened itself by exercise, and entangled the question in precedents. They saw all the consequences in the principle, and they avoided the consequences by denying the principle. We revere this lesson too much soon to forget it.The issue there was not guns but the use of tax money to pay for teachers of religion. In the paragraph quoted above, Madison went on to say that citizens should object to the requirement of paying even "three pence" to support a religion because a government that extracts even that trifle may go on to coerce religious conformity. The small things are not small. The small things are where the people still have the capacity to fight authoritarian government.
Democrats know this. They are part of this American culture of deeply engrained belief in constitutional rights. What is different to the Democrats is that they don't believe that the right to keep and bear arms is a constitutional right. They think the Supreme Court misinterpreted the Second Amendment when it found a constitutional right. District of Columbia v. Heller was a 5 to 4 decision, and the 5 are the 5 Justices, still on the Court, whom the Democratic Senators would love to have a chance to replace.
The NYT portrays the folks back home in West Virginia as misinformed, troublesome, and hysterical. That’s what we’re dealing with.
Monday, 21 January 2013
Sunday, 20 January 2013
Real or political theater?
About that Bulgarian gun-pointing, gun-jamming incident... I'm feeling truther-y. How about you?
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"Please take away my Second Amendment right."
"Do more to help us protect ourselves because what’s most likely to wake me in the early hours isn’t a man’s body slamming at my door but depression, that raven, tapping, rapping, banging for relief. I have a better chance of surviving if I never have the option of being able to pull the trigger."
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Bill Clinton says: Do not look down on the bitter clingers.
"Do not patronize the passionate supporters of your opponents by looking down your nose at them..."
He feels their pain, which includes feeling that they are getting looked down on, so don't let them notice, he's saying, even as he lets the big Democratic donors see that he knows just as well as they do that the bitter clingers are a bunch of losers.
Don't look down you nose at them. Whenever you eyes are trained on the bitter clingers, project feel-your-pain empathy. Save your condescension for the off-camera, off-mike back rooms.
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"A lot of these people live in a world very different from the world lived in by the people proposing these things... I know because I come from this world."...He feels their pain...
"A lot of these people … all they’ve got is their hunting and their fishing... Or they’re living in a place where they don’t have much police presence. Or they’ve been listening to this stuff for so long that they believe it all."
He feels their pain, which includes feeling that they are getting looked down on, so don't let them notice, he's saying, even as he lets the big Democratic donors see that he knows just as well as they do that the bitter clingers are a bunch of losers.
Don't look down you nose at them. Whenever you eyes are trained on the bitter clingers, project feel-your-pain empathy. Save your condescension for the off-camera, off-mike back rooms.
Saturday, 19 January 2013
Video from the "Guns Across America" rally here in Madison, Wisconsin today.
Here's some edited video showing the crowd and the signs.
In the middle there is a prayer, and at the end is the national anthem. Once you get to the national anthem, it's all national anthem from there on. I decided not to edit that part down because you get a good view of the people who attended the rally and their attitude.
The prayer is quite interesting, including some discussion of what Jesus said to Peter after he cut off a man's ear. (Jesus didn't tell Peter to surrender his sword. He told him to "put it back in the holster." My Bible says "sheath," but Jesus wasn't speaking English.)
At 2:07, you see a sign that says "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun. Mao," held next to a second, matching sign that says — in between 2 peace signs — "Support and Defend the Constitution."
At 2:15, I'm talking to this man about his nice-looking but hard-to-stop-and-read sign:
He asks me if I recognize the face and (despite knowing I'm wrong) I guess Michael J. Fox. He lets me know it's Ayn Rand and I say I'll read it later (knowing I've got the still). It says: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."
At 2:35, I talk to a counter-protester with a sign that says "Ban High Capacity Magazine Clips" and ask "What's a magazine clip?" She knew there was some question about that term, but she'd researched it on the internet and decided that was the term she wanted to use. Perhaps saying "magazine clip" is a way to signal which side you're on. A shibboleth.
ADDED: Other stills from the rally here.
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In the middle there is a prayer, and at the end is the national anthem. Once you get to the national anthem, it's all national anthem from there on. I decided not to edit that part down because you get a good view of the people who attended the rally and their attitude.
The prayer is quite interesting, including some discussion of what Jesus said to Peter after he cut off a man's ear. (Jesus didn't tell Peter to surrender his sword. He told him to "put it back in the holster." My Bible says "sheath," but Jesus wasn't speaking English.)
At 2:07, you see a sign that says "Political Power Grows Out of the Barrel of a Gun. Mao," held next to a second, matching sign that says — in between 2 peace signs — "Support and Defend the Constitution."
At 2:15, I'm talking to this man about his nice-looking but hard-to-stop-and-read sign:
He asks me if I recognize the face and (despite knowing I'm wrong) I guess Michael J. Fox. He lets me know it's Ayn Rand and I say I'll read it later (knowing I've got the still). It says: "The uncontested absurdities of today are the accepted slogans of tomorrow. They come to be accepted by degrees, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other - until one day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology."
At 2:35, I talk to a counter-protester with a sign that says "Ban High Capacity Magazine Clips" and ask "What's a magazine clip?" She knew there was some question about that term, but she'd researched it on the internet and decided that was the term she wanted to use. Perhaps saying "magazine clip" is a way to signal which side you're on. A shibboleth.
ADDED: Other stills from the rally here.
Meade drove me up to the Capitol Square to catch the "Guns Across America" rally.
I jumped out of the car almost before it stopped moving to catch up with this sign: "The Experts Agree/Gun Control Works":
"Rights Don't END Where Feelings Begin" — note the rifle-handle for the sign:
Not sure whether the Anonymous crowd is for gun rights, but the masked man's sign, not fully visible in the photo, said "The Only Criminals That Care About the Gun Laws Are the Ones in Office":
A gun-shaped staff for the the American flag along with a dramatic "Come And Take IT" flag:
These two are focusing on the mental illness problem:
This sign had 2 sides. Side 1:
Side 2:
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it" is a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but according to the Monticello website, there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote that (or the variation ""The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late").
Out in front of the Hans Christian Heg statue, there were a couple of anti-gun-rights sign-holders. "Keep Your Guns AWAY From Our Children":
This last photo is by Meade, with me posing:
ADDED: Here's the "Wisconsin Guns Across America" Facebook page.
AND: Here's some video I did.
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"Rights Don't END Where Feelings Begin" — note the rifle-handle for the sign:
Not sure whether the Anonymous crowd is for gun rights, but the masked man's sign, not fully visible in the photo, said "The Only Criminals That Care About the Gun Laws Are the Ones in Office":
A gun-shaped staff for the the American flag along with a dramatic "Come And Take IT" flag:
These two are focusing on the mental illness problem:
This sign had 2 sides. Side 1:
Side 2:
"The beauty of the Second Amendment is that it will not be needed until they try to take it" is a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, but according to the Monticello website, there is no evidence that he ever said or wrote that (or the variation ""The people will not understand the importance of the Second Amendment until it is too late").
Out in front of the Hans Christian Heg statue, there were a couple of anti-gun-rights sign-holders. "Keep Your Guns AWAY From Our Children":
This last photo is by Meade, with me posing:
ADDED: Here's the "Wisconsin Guns Across America" Facebook page.
AND: Here's some video I did.
Friday, 18 January 2013
Purchase(s) of the day.
Through the Althouse Amazon Associates portal: "Up in the Old Hotel" by Joseph Mitchell. "Glock: The Rise of America's Gun" [Kindle Edition] by Paul M. Barrett. Travel Blue Secret Sliding Wallet. Associate earnings to the Althouse blog: $0.98, $0.96, and $0.96 respectively. Respectfully, thanks!
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Thursday, 17 January 2013
"In this bill we will nullify anything the president does that smacks of legislation."
"And there are several of the executive orders that appear as if he’s writing new law. That cannot happen.... I’m afraid that President Obama may have this 'king complex' sort of developing, and we’re going to make sure it doesn’t happen."
ADDED: "If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.' We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers."
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ADDED: "If not good law, there was worldly wisdom in the maxim attributed to Napoleon that 'The tools belong to the man who can use them.' We may say that power to legislate for emergencies belongs in the hands of Congress, but only Congress itself can prevent power from slipping through its fingers."
"Democrats hailed Mr. Cuomo's aggressive gun-control push..."
"... citing it as an example of a muscular brand of politics that the governor has made his signature in two years in office. He has bent a Legislature partially controlled by Republicans to his will on other liberal issues, such as legalizing gay marriage and solidifying higher tax rates for the wealthy."
Hail! Governor Cuomo, O muscular leader, you of the aggressive push! Yea, even as Superman to a bar of steel, you have bent a Legislature!
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Hail! Governor Cuomo, O muscular leader, you of the aggressive push! Yea, even as Superman to a bar of steel, you have bent a Legislature!
Wednesday, 16 January 2013
Obama resorts to the "if there’s even one life that can be saved" rhetoric.
"If there is even one thing we can do to reduce this violence, if there’s even one life that can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to try."
These are his gun control proposals, including those executive actions that don't require any of that troublesome interaction with Congress.
I loathe the absurd argument that if there is only one life to be saved then we must do something. Obviously, we do not follow that logic generally. For good reason!
IN THE COMMENTS: elkh1 said:
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These are his gun control proposals, including those executive actions that don't require any of that troublesome interaction with Congress.
I loathe the absurd argument that if there is only one life to be saved then we must do something. Obviously, we do not follow that logic generally. For good reason!
IN THE COMMENTS: elkh1 said:
The mother saved three lives, hers and her twin sons' by firing five shots at an intruder.
"if there’s even one life that can be saved, we’ve got an obligation to try." We must require every citizen 18 and up to own a gun for protection.
Tuesday, 15 January 2013
Why are gun-death statistics inflated with gun-suicide numbers?
"I thought we had a right to die...."
Obviously, one reason is: to get bigger numbers. But I think the people that lump gun deaths together believe (or want others to believe) that guns are really dangerous. When it comes to suicide, there are 2 ways to think about the deadly effectiveness of guns: 1. For those who really want to kill themselves, guns are a sensible choice, or 2. The scary deadliness of a gun tempts weak/impulsive persons to go ahead and do something that wouldn't happen otherwise.
You can easily see that those 2 ways to think represent the mindsets that lead to libertarian or authoritarian answers to all sorts of questions. #1 would allow the individual to make his own decisions and to take care of himself, and #2 thinks the individual — call her Julia — needs to be helped and protected (even from herself).
Sorry to go all gender-y, but I'm interested in talking about suicide and attitudes about guns in the context of gender difference, because 4x as many men as women commit suicide and 56% of male suicides use firearms compared to only 30% of female suicides. Those statistics are skewed by the fact that guns are an effective method. It might be that the gender disproportion is because men choose the method that leaves fewer survivors of attempts at suicide. I note that 40% of female suicides use "poisoning" (presumably, that includes drug overdosing). What's the proportion of females attempting suicide by poisoning to females succeeding in killing themselves with poison?
If you have a fantasy of rescuing those who are in the process of committing suicide, you might think taking guns away will give you a better shot.
ADDED: It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind.
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Obviously, one reason is: to get bigger numbers. But I think the people that lump gun deaths together believe (or want others to believe) that guns are really dangerous. When it comes to suicide, there are 2 ways to think about the deadly effectiveness of guns: 1. For those who really want to kill themselves, guns are a sensible choice, or 2. The scary deadliness of a gun tempts weak/impulsive persons to go ahead and do something that wouldn't happen otherwise.
You can easily see that those 2 ways to think represent the mindsets that lead to libertarian or authoritarian answers to all sorts of questions. #1 would allow the individual to make his own decisions and to take care of himself, and #2 thinks the individual — call her Julia — needs to be helped and protected (even from herself).
Sorry to go all gender-y, but I'm interested in talking about suicide and attitudes about guns in the context of gender difference, because 4x as many men as women commit suicide and 56% of male suicides use firearms compared to only 30% of female suicides. Those statistics are skewed by the fact that guns are an effective method. It might be that the gender disproportion is because men choose the method that leaves fewer survivors of attempts at suicide. I note that 40% of female suicides use "poisoning" (presumably, that includes drug overdosing). What's the proportion of females attempting suicide by poisoning to females succeeding in killing themselves with poison?
If you have a fantasy of rescuing those who are in the process of committing suicide, you might think taking guns away will give you a better shot.
ADDED: It occurred to me, after the Sandy Hook murders, that blaming guns is a secular substitute for blaming the devil. People find it too challenging to figure out why a human being would do this terrible thing and they latch on to the idea that the gun made it happen. Suicide presents a similar challenge, and one way to fathom it is to say: It was the gun. Isn't it like saying the devil made him do it? The gun/the devil is a great go-to answer, freeing you from wracking your brain about the workings of the human mind.
Crazy NRA approach to school violence...
... is supported by 55% of Americans.
By "crazy," I mean that the elite media went all out to portray the suggestion as insane:
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By "crazy," I mean that the elite media went all out to portray the suggestion as insane:
Here's the NYT editorial, which is entitled "The N.R.A. Crawls From Its Hidey Hole."I wonder what the support for LaPierre's proposal would be if he'd been given a respectful hearing in the press?[W]e were stunned by Mr. LaPierre’s mendacious, delusional, almost deranged rant.
Mr. LaPierre looked wild-eyed at times....
We cannot imagine trying to turn the principals and teachers who care for our children every day into an armed mob....
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