The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    barefooted's picture

    State Of Emergency In Ferguson

    No shit.

    I have never been one to engage in conspiracy theories, and it is not my intent to start now. But I am starting to feel like we're in a dangerous time warp.

    This. Is. Wrong.

    ,

    Orion's picture

    Why War? The Military Industrial Complex Doesn't Care About You

    In a recent speech, Pope Francis said bluntly that "our economic system leads to war." In an interview with Michael Maiello that I did for this website, Maiello said in response to one of my questions that "capitalism isn't designed to care and no amount of socially conscious corporate governance or philanthro-capitalism can change that.  We picked a system that makes it possible to manage materials but that doesn't meet human emotional needs at all."

    Richard Day's picture

    MORT & GEORGE & ROBIN

    WHAT IS COMEDY?

    Dionysos Louvre Ma87 n2.jpg

    MORT SAHL

    I have written before about Mort Sahl and his comedy.

    http://dagblog.com/reader-blogs/mort-sahl-and-david-cross-17207

    Orion's picture

    Q&A With Michael Maiello On Robin Williams, Capitalism And Life

    Michael Maiello is probably at the top of my list of internet and writing/publishing friends. He is a regular contributor at Dagblog and the author of several books and a comical play about the Iraq war. I have known him for three years now and he has helped me a bit - gotten me published and helped me through some traumatic life events such as my rehabilitation from SSRI antidepressant use and the loss of my fiancé Jennifer Reimer. He did all of this online too! Maiello, like me, is a deep thinker, and through our talks we don't really seek to avoid but rather to inform. This one is short but filled with some very weighty topics that I know are on many minds. Here goes.

    Richard Day's picture

    OLD MEMORIES

     

    I spent the weekend with my son again.

    I swore (to myself) that I would not discuss this subject again.

    But it will not go away; no matter how I try.

    So here goes:

    About Human Shields

    I lost a longer version of this and that is probably for the best. Here is the shorter version in which I don't try to cover every possible nuance but just hit the high points to make my point.

    The phrase “human shield" has, IMO, become Orwellian in its use in relation to the ongoing conflict between Israel and either Hamas or the Palestinian people as a whole. One aspect of actually using humans as shields is emphasized while another equally important aspect is ignored. The complete, true, and honest implications of the phrase itself, regardless of whether Hamas actually does use humans as shields, is intentionally obscured. A narrow and less than complete understanding of the implications of the charge is intended to be mentally embedded while the full implications are distorted or, hopefully, un-noticed.

    jollyroger's picture

    Chokehold Cop-Felony Murderer? Cops standing by as well?

    Among the quaint vestiges of medieval criminal law that persist in modern jurisprudence, is the doctrine of "Felony Murder"

     

    It creates liability for murder whenever a death occurs in the course of the commission of an unlawful act (curiously, even when the deceased is an accomplice of the charged individual)

     

    Richard Day's picture

    PEGGY NOONAN & THE TWIST!

     

    Thanks, man. I was actually in a kind down mode and this put a smile on my face, esp the part with the Beaver doing the twist.

    GOP Border Campaign Plan on Cruz Control

    The Republicans don't have the aspiration, motivation or experience to meet challenges facing the nation. What they do have experience at is campaign plans. Republicans particularly love issues that never go away, that will always be there to exploit forever, election after election. If they can make the problem worse so much the better, the TV/media anyway will never call them on it, blaming all failures on 'both sides'. For instance, there will always be women who seek abortions. The way to reduce abortions is to reduce unwanted pregnancies with family planning.

    Ebola

    Two Ebola victims are scheduled to arrive in Atlanta today at Dobbins AFB. From there they will be transferred across town to Emory Hospital near the CDC. 

    That was an unsettling news story to read with my morning coffee. Both sites are less than an hour away. Scenes from The Walking Dead fill my brain as it screams WHY?

    Why transport anyone with a contagious, lethal disease with no known cure and very few survivors away from an infected zone to an uninfected one especially considering that past outbreaks were contained by quarantine? What are these people thinking?

    trkingmomoe's picture

    Black Forest Cheese Cake

    Black Forest Cheese Cake will impress your family and friends.  Only don’t tell them how easy it is to make.  When ever you want a wonderful cake for a special occasion, you can go wrong with this one.

    Richard Day's picture

    RACHEL MADDOW IN NEW COP SHOW!

    The source of the single funniest line of 2014 (so far!) is beyond my grasp, except I am sure it came from a pundit panelist on MSNBC or CNN!

    The panelist was speaking about this Bundy feller down in Texas and he posited that:

    If I could go down there and ask this fellow one question it would be:

    Besides your opinions on Negroes, do you have any comments or opinions concerning THE Jews?

    hahahahahaha

    Beetlejuice's picture

    Bill Moving Through Congress Would Make Streaming a Felony

    A Senate committee this week approved a bill that would make it a felony to stream pirated content.

    The Commercial Felony Streaming Act, S. 978, was approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and now heads to the full Senate for a vote. It would clarify that whether you stream that pirated episode of "True Blood," or download it, it's still illegal. But the bill would only target those serving up the illegal content, not those who watch it online.

    jollyroger's picture

    Persisting in obtusely addressing as Indians witnesses from US government agencies, Priceless

    It's hard out here for a voter in Florida's 19th Congressional District (Tampa/Ft. Meyers)

     

    First they awoke one morning last year to learn that their landslide elected (62%) first term representative, Trey Radel (late of talk radio--are you listening, Rush?) had been caught buying coke from a snitch in a Washington D.C. sting operation.

     

    Then they had to put up with months of bullshit, including a month of residential rehab for alcoholism (wtf?) while he squirmed to avoid resigning.

     

    barefooted's picture

    Optical Illusions

    They say a picture paints a thousand words. There's a reason that phrase has been used in song and prose, spanning the years and provoking our imagination. We believe those six words to be true because they speak to the very core of who we are, what we innately desire communication to be. A pure, unadulterated description without motive or hidden agenda -- we see in a picture an innocence lost in words. Yet we rarely consider that pictures can lie.

    Perhaps it would be more succinct to say that pictures can manipulate, by virtue of the fact that they can be easily manipulated. No, I'm not referring to Photoshop or the like, although it would be the easiest example. What I am suggesting is a far more insidious method of alteration, one that carries the heft of a new word: Optics. Ah, therein lies the rub.

    Doctor Cleveland's picture

    Snobs vs. The Ivy League (or, The Question of Bill Deresiewicz's Character)

    There is nothing a snobbish Ivy Leaguer likes better than putting down the Ivy League. It's an easy way to signal that you are above your own Ivy League school and the privilege it confers -- all a big humbug that your superior perspective sees right through -- while holding on to every last scrap of that privilege. It allows you to position yourself as not only 1. better than people who didn't get into Harvard, Princeton, or Yale, but 2. the benevolent champion of those little people who didn't get in and also 3.

    trkingmomoe's picture

    Florida's Amendment 2 Medical Marijauna

    This November the voters in Florida will be voting on Amendment to legalize medical marijuana. In order for it to pass 60% of the voters have to vote yes on it. This will amend the state constitution to allow it's use.  A group called United for Care was the force behind getting bill on the ballot. Florida will be the first state in the deep South to legalize medical marijuana if it passes.  

    Beetlejuice's picture

    Are we Manufacturing Consent on Flight 17

     Manufacturing Consent: Noam Chomsky and the Media (1992) is a documentary film  with a point of view corporate media is a profit-driven institution which tends to serve and further the agendas of the interests of dominant, elite groups in the society.

    jollyroger's picture

    Mexican kids, world's luckiest!

    Mexican children, unlike their unfortunate neighbors from slightly to the south, are apparently to be envied for the secure and loving bosom  in which their enlightened country envelops them.

    Notwithstanding the depravity of Mexican narco traffickers, who will not hesitate to decorate the public square with the heads of those who discomfort them, no Mexican children are forcibly recruited as drug couriers, sellers, or lookouts, unlike those unfortunates in Honduras, El Salvador, or Guatemala.

    Elusive Trope's picture

    Footing the Bill for Assisted Suicide

    One of issue that will become increasingly debated over coming ten years, in part due to the aging baby boomers, will be the legalization of assisted suicide

    It is already legal in places like Oregon and upheld (surprisingly) by the US Supreme Court.

    trkingmomoe's picture

    Ed Shultz Interviews Annette Taddeo Chair of Miami Florida Democratic Party On Raw Story

    On Tuesday Ed Shultz interviewed Annette Taddeo Chair of Miami Florida Democrats and also a member of the DNC Executive Committee.  

     

    Taddeo at LS lobby

     

    Annette Taddeo

    Beetlejuice's picture

    The Ultimate Bio-fuel we all can Enjoy !

    Turns out, the dregs left over from the distilling process, pot ale,  for scotch has quite a kick as the drink itself.

     

    So if you want to support a move away from carbon-based fuels, drink more scotch !!!

     

    http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/11/15/2946641/whisky-biofuel/

    barefooted's picture

    A Thank You Note

    Dear Dagblog,

    Just a quick note to say "thanks" for all your efforts to make us happy! You even went so far as to disappear for over a day, which must have been hard for someone who loves to be seen as much as you do. But you did it for us. Your facelift is amazing! Just enough change to enhance your natural qualities while staying true to the Dagblog we've grown to love.

    jollyroger's picture

    Hobby Lobby-A huge gift to the left. Who's your Daddy?

    It has become a commonplace observation amongst historians of the interface between politics and jurisprudence that the enunciation of Roe v Wade, as much as it brought immediate relief from unwanted pregnancy to hundreds of thousands of women, had the perverse effect of truncating the slow but inexorable progress of democratic reform of patriarchal anti-choice law.

     

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