The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age

    "Here be humans"

    Orion's picture

    War

    Back in 2016, the Pulse nightclub in Florida was attacked by a gunman. I was staying with a gay roommate in Portland who became hysterical and verbally abusive. It wasn't fun but I took my lumps. I could understand and feel how he felt. He sat me down and asked me a few questions.

    "Michael, come here."

    "What is it, Gene?" I replied.

    "Do you think that we are in some kind of a social war?" He asked me.

    Woke & cancel culture gone wild

    I got "news" for Reuters that's not really news: at an "army war college", the faculty study and teach the techniques and strategies of military leaders of the past without regard for which "side" they were on,

    [Trump/Russia/GOPgate] sock puppet org busted

    Previous 5-month long thread here:

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/barr-trumps-soiled-reputations-35202

    New charges may signal a more expansive effort to weed out Russian sockpuppet orgs for influencing elections & public opinion, right and left. ["failure to register as a foreign agent"]

    13 Russians charged by Mueller in absentia 4 years ago, but this one seems to point higher up the RU food chain plus charges Americans as well.

    [Health Care] death watch in private nursing homes

    Orion's picture

    SSRIs, Once Again

    I'm going to start off with an old example from back in 2001: 

    MATTAWA, Wash. (AP) _ Apple orchards are blossoming just down the road. But there is one student in Michelle Hansen’s honors English class who is not there to see it.

    Orion's picture

    Remember Our Hearts

    I'm just .... going to start with this: 

    Uvalde student laid on top of dying classmate to avoid being shot by gunman, video shows cops preventing parents from entering school during shooting.

    It is okay to cry:

    Orion's picture

    Reassessing Violence

    During a conversation, Artappraiser took note of the fact that everything going on in Ukraine reinforces the need for people to have firearms in order to defend themselves or a community. I retorted by saying that the weapons there are only accessible by militia members, who get them after an application process.

    Orion's picture

    Full Circle on the Soviet Union

    I had to post about this.

    [Media] Tribute vs Obit - what's its role?

    Marketing by any other name?

    Partisan swag?

    A public service?

    Kinda depends who's holding.

    Orion's picture

    The Fall of Seattle

    Artappraiser inspired this with her post about "the fall of Seattle" and how the George Floyd protests made them especially harmful for the Pacific Northwest.

    Barr & Trump's soiled reputations

    Elie Honing leads with Barr's embarrassing, corrupt and revealing texts:

    https://cafe.com/elies-note/note-from-elie-bill-barrs-revisionist-bs/

    And then there's Barr's dishonest book promotion tour:

     

    First, as a warmup, here's a piece I wrote last week about Barr's image rehab effort. /2https://t.co/W9qgqMIcdf

    Orion's picture

    Foreboding In The Ukraine Crisis

    They say that history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure does rhyme. As I've seen Volodymir Zelensky be venerated by various liberals of the world for standing up against Russia, I kept thinking of another prominent Jewish Ukrainian who took a similar stand over a century ago:

    Orion's picture

    More Updates On The Trucking Industry

    I posted a while back about a push to get more people recruited in to the trucking industry. Here is some more about it. I didn't post it in "In The News" because it involves multiple links:

     

     

     

    Orion's picture

    If There Were No Guns

    I was reading through the devastating wave of gun violence that, once again, is ripping through American society. Guns are so part and parcel of American life that it's hard to imagine life without them. You end up having to go through gun channels if you work security, law enforcement or are a hunter, even if you yourself are not a gun owner.

    Orion's picture

    Trevor Noah On Inflation

    Trevor Noah is a much more effective communicator than Jon Stewart. Stewart assumed everyone already knew certain things and Noah brings them up to speed.

     

     

    barefooted's picture

    Question

    One man slaps another man on live television.

    One man slaps another man on the street corner.

    What's the difference?

    Tell me, if you can.

    Catching up

    I am trying to catch up on world events because ... Ukraine and will use this thread to stash some interesting (to me)  things I happen upon. There may be some duplication of things already posted here. Sorry about that but they will be easier for me to find again. I've never mastered navigating here. 

     

     

    [COVID & Vaccines] it ain't over til it's over

    Orion's picture

    Dagblog Question About Professional Wrestling

    When I first started at Dagblog, I was invited here by Michael Maiello.

    Maiello did a lot of blogging about professional wrestling. At the time, WWE was the only game in town and what was going on there wasn't all that interesting. WWE now has its own subset competition called NXT, along with a competitor called AEW (All Elite Wrestling).

    I have a lot to say about it, but I have to know if Dagblog readers are interested in such a thing first. Let me know!

    barefooted's picture

    Notice

    I'm hiccuping at the moment,  so don't mind me.  

     

    Okay, anyway ... fuck!  Holding breath.  WTH.  It's not working.  Breathe.  Almost there ... shit.

     

    Let's start again.

     

    Did you notice?

     

     

    Creating a narrative & promoting it for a political agenda, Part II

    Part I is here, starting with Omar Wasow's excellent quote from a NYTimes article 

    “Focus on conflict. Feed the algorithm. Make sure whatever you produce reinforces a narrative. Don’t worry if it is true.”

    with many excellent examples through Nov. 2021. This is for new ones!

    Orion's picture

    "A More Unified West"

    It is an understatement to say how divided this society is. The loneliness epidemic, in which people are terrified and unaware of who their own neighbors or even family members are, a polarizing identity politics that gave us a whole bunch of groups that didn't really believe in the core of society anymore - feminists, the Alt Right (which encompassed men's rights activists, white nationalists and others), gave us a more and more atomized and anxious society.

    Here's a potential rhetorical break from Joe Biden's SOTU speech:

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