To me, this is the everyday bravery required of police officers. It is the opposite of the trash-talking, confrontational, violent methods employed by some.
Background: watch the Sean Groubert video for insight into the Wilson/Brown confrontation. [Groubert is the officer who shot the guy reaching into his van for his licence/registration.] In Groubert, you see it in front of your eyes: action driven by fear. (And maybe some institutionalized racism as well, but others have covered that so I won’t go into it here.)
2. It is an example of (gasp!) a confrontation that was NOT escalated and resolved with gunfire.The people in the video get hot under the collar, shout even, but despite frustration and anger on both sides, neither party jumps to the unreasonable conclusion he is in danger of extreme bodily harm.
A couple (the Flemmings) was driving to pick up their kids from school when they were allegedly cut off by a guy in a pickup truck (Martin Edward Zale.) When they all stopped at a stoplight, Flemming, age 43, approached the truck, presumably to yell at Zale, whereupon Zale, age 69, rolled down the window and shot Flemming dead.
In an earlier comment I referred to Julian Assange as an unfortunate choice of prom date for Ed Snowden.
Now, Snowden's choice of Moscow as a transit point has cast him into an odious threesome including Vladimir Putin of Russia. There are quite a few possibilites for what could happen now. So I have to alter my prediction of a drawn-out flurry of diplomacy ending in a quiet life in Iceland which does not feature a career in technology. The new possibilities are as follows:
Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson have had reason to think long and deeply about privacy, surveillance and power issues in the wake of 2001. Here's their take on the Snowden story.
What the heck, I don't care if I'm wrong. So fwiw, here's my prediction of what will happen in the Snowden case. (As long as Greenwald/Poitras don't release further information without Snowden's permission, in which case all bets are off.)
"All in all, a very successful weekend with the delegation telephony plot."
Apparently this surveillance involved the setup of fake internet cafes. Spied-upon delegates are now realizing why the British coffee seemed even worse than usual.
All I can say is, if James Van Der Beek and Krysten Ritter's (of don't trust the B in apartment 23) agents are not shopping them as possiblities to play Edward Snowden and Laura Poitras in the eventual movie to be made about this NSA story, then James Van Der Beek and Krysten Ritter have the dumbest agents in the history of Hollywood.
Now, if I put on my conspiracy glasses, I’d say that the idea of military, defense and national security contractors building a network of “special” energy grids separate from our ordinary, plebian grid smacks hard of creepy. Especially when you realize that one scenario involves the ability to voluntarily disconnect from the regular power grid for weeks or months at a time. Gotta keep those drones in the air, even if conditions at home aren’t so good.
Hopefully this video will attach--I came up with a visual to support freedom to marry in all 50 states and am looking for feedback. Also maybe shares...I haven't done anything to get it out there yet.
I had been trying to decide how D. Tsarnaev would describe his activities in his discussions with authorities and the press. I thought he'd be quiet for a few days but apparently he's already begun to talk with authorities. I'll post a link as soon as I find a good rundown.
Stories. They've been around for a long time, and sometimes they help us figure out trends and events that seem mysterious.
In the days after Sandy Hook, I thought a lot about the story of the Pied Piper, in which citizens thought they had found a permanent solution to their rat problem, only to discover that the price of that solution was...their kids. (Uh-oh, it turns out that preparing our children for some sort of theoretical disaster by teaching them to ride and shoot and hate America might have its drawbacks.)
Now, thinking of two 19-year olds (so impossibly, foolishly young) whose lives have been effectively sacrificed on twin altars of extreme thinking, I keep coming around to the last scene of Romeo and Juliet, with the two kids from families who had a lot in common but chose to hate each other, laid out on funeral biers and the prince (a dull guy but you know, he was right) trying to connect the dots for them.
I’ve been following the story of Colin Small, a young Republican who was seen throwing out completed voter registration forms in Harrisonburg, VA, and got arrested for it. Turns out Small was employed by the oft-renamed firm sometimes and formerly known as Strategic Allied Consultants, sometimes and formerly run by disgraced Republican consultant Nathan Sproul.
Allegations have been made, predictably, that Small’s act was part of a larger Strategic Allied conspiracy, but no solid proof has emerged. Small’s bosses fired him and offered the usual “bad apple” explanation.
In addition, a rather weak explanation for Small’s behavior was offered up by an “unnamed source close to the story” who said Small panicked because he couldn't file the forms by the deadline, and solved his problem by ditching them.
Ok, this question has been burbling around in my mind for awhile, especially now with actual Senators coming out in favor of same sex marriage.
Are LGBTs and their supporters the new senior citizens? And by that, I mean a block of people who will reliably vote as predicted, and moreover work for their candidates of choice, encouraging their many friends to come out and do the same?
The stuff you find when you're out lurking on the Internets.
On the other hand, the antidepressant Buproprion (Wellbutrin for brand purposes) which is not an SSRI, does NOT seem to speed up bone loss and may even support bone density increases. It also may send Crohn's disease into remission and have some positive effect on ankylosing spondylitis.
It has always seemed to me that we weren't getting (duh!) the full story on 9/11. But so many of the smooth, pat, party-line conspiracy theories about it just seem wrong.
Personally, I like my conspiracy theories like I like my men--smart, funny, a little rough around the edges, and just unpredictable enough to keep me interested. (Fortunately I finally found a lovely guy who fits the bill.) But enough about me.
One freakishly admirable thing about the NeoCon thinking that dominated the Bush administration is that those NeoCons didn't sweat the small stuff. They had a big PNAC plan to transform the world and make the US its sole superpower--but they were willing to be somewhat flexible about how that sausage got made and adjust to whatever inconveniences reality would throw at them. In their Strauss--influenced worldview, truth, logic and right action took a backseat to the greater "good" of how much of a difference you could make. (It's fundamentally unlike Liberal/Democratic thinking, in which stuff actually matters.)
