Sunday Reads: Pythons, Pooches and Dump-Blossoms
Posted: February 10, 2013 Filed under: 2014 elections, Accommodation and Compromise, Affordable Care Act (ACA), Barack Obama, birth control, Bobby Jindal, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, History, morning reads, Religious Conscience, Republican politics, science, the GOP, Women's Healthcare, Women's Rights, worker rights | Tags: Ashley Judd, Big Deal on Madonna Street, carnival, Clumsy Thieves, Karl Rove 17 Comments »
Good Morning
This past week I was watching TCM, and realized just how whacked out this world has become. Well, not this world, more specifically our world…here in the US.
Here is what I mean…while watching Anna and the King of Siam, the one with Irene Dunn and Rex Harrison, one particular scene got me thinking.
Remember when the King summons Anna one late night, because he has a question to ask her about the Bible and Moses claim of how long it took God to make the world ?
Anna and the King of Siam (1946)
King: Mem, I think your Moses shall have been a fool.
Anna: Moses?
King: Moses, Moses, Moses. I think he shall have been a fool. Here it stands, written by him: ‘The world was created in six days. ‘
[...]
King: Then what is your opinion of this thing as stated by Moses?
Anna: Your Majesty…the Bible was not written by men of science. It was written by men of faith. It was their explanation of the miracle of creation… which is just as great a miracle… whether it took six days or many centuries. I think science does not contradict the Bible. It has only made us more aware of how great the miracle was.
King: Well, I still think your Moses shall have been a fool. You may go.
I think the King would thing our current day GOP representatives are fools. What do you think?
Transvaginal Ultrasound: Rape Is Not A Medical Procedure
Judges split over birth control coverage and religious liberty
Birth control rules: The Catholic bishops are not impressed
Creationism Advocate Bobby Jindal Warns GOP Against Becoming ‘the Stupid Party’
Dennis Kruse, Indiana State GOP Senator, Pushes Creationism In Schools Via ‘Truth In Education’ Bill
“Intelligent design” bill in Missouri | NCSE- Local Story
Republican Bill That Would Allow Creationism To Be Taught In Colorado Schools Called ‘DOA’
A stealth antiscience bill in Indiana | NCSE
Leonard Pitts: Can GOP end the ‘carnival of the crazy’?
Howard Kurtz: GOP Swears It’s Not Stupid
I have to say, the GOP is not only “stupid” it is “crazy!”
Anyway, here are your links for today, the GOP has started blaming the Sequester on Obama…
From the Maddow Blog: The 2011 ransom note and the GOP’s sequester
A Republican National Committee spokesperson, echoing his party’s favorite new talking point, insists this is all President Obama’s fault.
Tim Miller obviously isn’t the only one making this argument. On the contrary, every speech, interview, and press release I’ve seen from GOP officials in recent weeks includes an obligatory reference to Obama having come up with the sequester.
This next link makes me thing that perhaps the GOP are not completely “stupid” by showing they are a little frightened of Ashley Judd making a run on Mitch McConnell. From Vanity Fair: Karl Rove, Apparently Not a Fan of Kiss the Girls, Launches Aggressive Anti–Ashley Judd Campaign
As evidenced by his embarrassing Election Night temper tantrum last fall, Karl Rove is not one to concede easily. Not when it comes to presidential elections; caloric restrictions, we guess; and completely speculative political runs by Hollywood figures. Proving the latter point, the Republican strategist’s American Crossroads Super PAC unveiled a digital ad against Ashley Judd on Wednesday. It has previously been reported that Judd is considering a senatorial run against Kentucky’s Mitch McConnell, the considerably less photogenic Senate minority leader who was voted the nation’s least popular senator late last year.
Emptywheel takes a look at a new law per Homeland Security: Every Laptop and Cell Phone in Detroit (and Dearborn) Can Be Searched at Will
I’m not really sure how Detroit is supposed to pursue an arts-based resurgence if the Department of Homeland Security maintains that it can seize any electronics along the nation’s borders — which extend 100 miles and therefore include the bulk of the population of Michigan.
This next link was very interesting, a quick look at the Dawes Act in relation to Labor Laws: This Day in Labor History: February 8, 1887 – Lawyers, Guns & Money
On February 8, 1887, President Grover Cleveland signed the Dawes Severalty Act into law. The Dawes Act created a process to split up Indian reservations in order to create individual parcels of land and then sell the remainder off to white settlers. One of the worst laws in American history, the Dawes Act is not only a stark reminder of Euro-American colonialism and the dispossession of indigenous peoples, but also of the role dominant ideas of work on the land have in promoting racist and imperialist ends.
We might not think of the Dawes Act as labor history. But I want to make the beginning of a case that it is absolutely central to American labor history, a point I will expand upon in the future. Labor history is not just unionism. It is histories and traditions of work. The Dawes Act was absolutely about destroying traditions of Native American labor and replacing it with European notions of rural work. That it did so while opening more land to white people was a central benefit.
Read the rest at the link.
Looks like that python hunt in the Everglades isn’t doing so hot: Florida Python Challenge Unsuccessful – Everglades Burmese Python Hunt Not Going Well
The idea for the competition — which ends on Sunday, the first day of the unloved Year of the Snake — was partially brain-fathered by Gov. Rick “I’ve ridden elephants — I’ve never tried to shoot one” Scott. The hope was to at least partially rid the land of the invasive Burmese pythons that have set up their own stronghold. The guy or team that grabs the most wins $1,500. The one who snags the longest, gets $1,000. Over 1,500 people from across the nation have waded into the park so far, and some, like the two dehydrated men, who are from Tennessee, have slept in their cars during the hunt. It costs them $25 to participate.
But even before the rescue, the competition hasn’t been going too well. As of Tuesday, only 50 had been captured. Not that it would’ve really mattered. As U.S. Geological Survey python expert Robert Reed told us a few weeks ago, “You won’t find any fewer than 10,000. But between 10,000 and 100,000? That’s anyone’s guess.”
Okay, from nasty snakes to cute puppies, Pooches on parade: man’s best dressed friend at carnivals across the world
Here’s a selection of dogs that are making a statement in dog parade sections of carnivals around the world.
Click here to view the gallery
Last night on Discovery, they had their show on The Giant Squid. This next article is also about squid, the flying kind…Revealed: the secret that makes flying squid faster than Usain Bolt
Scientists in Japan have calculated that squid can fly through the air faster than Usain Bolt can run, in a study that confirms the extraordinary aerial prowess of the edible mollusc.
A study based on photographs of flying squid in the Pacific Ocean estimates that they can reach a speed of up to 11.2 metres per second, which is significantly faster than the 10.31 metres per second that Bolt averaged in the 100 metre final at the London Olympics.
Over the past few years, a number of anecdotal accounts have emerged of squid streaking through the air above the sea for several metres and now a team of Japanese marine biologists have photographed them doing it en masse.
Be sure to take a look at that link, there are some images and diagrams that are so interesting…not only from the nature perspective, but also on aerodynamic and hydrodynamic levels as well.
We started this post talking about stupidity and now we end it with a few links about stupidity. The first one is real, Thieves jailed after losing £2m loot
Two inept thieves who stole Chinese artefacts worth £2m from a museum but then could not find where they had stashed them were handed lengthy jail sentences.
These guys couldn’t remember where they stashed the loot. Guess in real life there are crooks that are too dumb and stupid to become successful crooks.
Earlier this week TCM also had another great film, Big Deal on Madonna Street, which if anyone has a chance to see it…needs to see it. It is hilarious. An Italian film from back in the late 50′s, in fact this link below is from the New York Times original review of the film, published in November 23, 1960. Movie Review – Big Deal on Madonna Street – The Screen: Italian Parody of ‘Rififi’:'Big Deal on Madonna Street’ in Premiere Toto Among Bungling Burglars at the Paris –
A LONGTIME popular subject for vaudeville and music-hall farce, the butter-fingered burglar who thoroughly goofs while trying to rob a safe, is given a full-scale treatment and knocked out by a top name cast in the new Italian comedy, “The Big Deal on Madonna Street.” Directed by Mario Monicelli, one of the bright new directors on the Italian scene, this eventually explosive kit of cut-ups opened at the Fine Arts yesterday.
Obviously the film was calculated as an out-and-out parody of the French melodrama, “Rififi,” which was a bit in Italy. For the “big deal” referred to in that title (which was not the Italian title, by the way) is the contemplated burglary of a smalltime jeweler’s safe, and the fellows who conspire to do it try to lay out their plans in the same “scientific” fashion as did the robbers in that serious French film.
But, of course, they are not successful. In the first place, they have a terrible time getting all of their elements together and headed the same way. There’s that nice fellow (Marcello Mastroianni) who has a wife temporarily in jail and so has to mind the baby, which takes a lot of would-be burglar’s time. Then there’s the former prizefighter (Vittorio Gassman) who finds himself much more interested in the maid in the apartment through which the burglars will have to travel than he is in the burglary itself.
There’s the youngster (Renato Salvatori) who falls hopelessly and helplessly in love with the guarded sister of another of the conspirators (Tiberio Murgia), a Sicilian of hot and vengeful moods. There’s the little shrimp (Carlo Pisacane) who is forever concentrating on food. And finally there is the “expert,” a role that the wonderful Toto plays.
This “expert” acknowledged as a genius in the business of blowing safes, knows all the techniques, all the laws, all the loopholes and all the slang words for the chisels and drills. He gives an exquisite lecture (which nobody quite understands). But he gracefully takes a powder when it comes time to the job.
And when that time comes, everybody—everybody who is left—becomes all thumbs. They sneeze, drop their tools with a horrible clatter, they drill holes into water pipes that jet cold streams and they set up a monstrous apparatus with which they laboriously punch through a wall—into an easily accessible adjoining room. At that point, in the cold, gray morning, they all give up and go home.
It was sooooo damn good, see a few clips at the TCM link below, you will not be disappointed.
Videos for Big Deal On Madonna Street
Well, I know this was a major link dump, but please enjoy these morning’s reads and try to stay warm. What are you reading and thinking about today?
Wednesday Morning Reads: Egypt, Lego and 1.6 Trillion Suns
Posted: December 5, 2012 Filed under: Bailout Blues, Banksters, Big Pharma, Corporate Crime, corporate greed, Department of Homeland Security, Domestic Policy, Egypt, FBI raids, Foreign Affairs, Gaza, home foreclosure fraud, Israel, morning reads, science, Violence against women | Tags: Bank of America, Bryan Moynihan, domestic violence, Jovan Belcher, Kasandra Perkins, Merck, Milky Way, Voyager 1 33 Comments »
Morning Y’all!
After spending last night watching Lost in America...it made me think about Skippy, the manager at the Der Wienerschnitzel and those frozen fries, you know, the importance of details that make you great at your job. (If you forgot the scene I am talking about, the manager of the hot dog joint tells Albert Brooks just how wonderful his wife, Julie Hagerty, is…because of her attention to details, she noticed he had served “frozen” fries…with bits of ice inside of them.)
I wonder if Bank of America’s Bryan Moynihan, had such an attention to detail, but according to this article by Matt Taibbi, it looks like attention to detail is obviously not essential to a CEO…snark. Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan Apparently Can’t Remember Anything | Matt Taibbi | Rolling Stone
Thank God for Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan. If you’re a court junkie, or have the misfortune (as some of us poor reporters do) of being forced professionally to spend a lot of time reading legal documents, the just-released Moynihan deposition in MBIA v. Bank of America, Countrywide, and a Buttload of Other Shameless Mortgage Fraudsters will go down as one of the great Nixonian-stonewalling efforts ever, and one of the more entertaining reads of the year.
In this long-awaited interrogation – Bank of America has been fighting to keep Moynihan from being deposed in this case for some time – Moynihan does a full Star Trek special, boldly going where no deponent has ever gone before, breaking out the “I don’t recall” line more often and perhaps more ridiculously than was previously thought possible. Moynihan seems to remember his own name, and perhaps his current job title, but beyond that, he’ll have to get back to you.
Egyptian police battled thousands of protesters outside President Mohamed Mursi’s palace in Cairo on Tuesday, prompting the Islamist leader to leave the building, presidency sources said.
Officers fired teargas at up to 10,000 demonstrators angered by Mursi’s drive to hold a referendum on a new constitution on December 15. Some broke through police lines around his palace and protested next to the perimeter wall.
The crowds had gathered nearby in what organizers had dubbed “last warning” protests against Mursi, who infuriated opponents with a November 22 decree that expanded his powers. “The people want the downfall of the regime,” the demonstrators chanted.
“The president left the palace,” a presidential source, who declined to be named, told Reuters. A security source at the presidency also said the president had departed.
Building Lego towers is a competitive business – this one in Prague, at 32.5m, may be the tallest to dateIt’s not just children who like to build towers with Lego – the internet is alive with discussion on how many Lego bricks, stacked one on top of the other, it would take to destroy the bottom brick. So what’s the answer?
There has been a burning debate on the social news website Reddit.
It’s a trivial question you might think, but one the Open University’s engineering department has – at the request of the BBC’s More or Less programme – fired up its labs to try to answer.
“It’s an exciting thing to do because it’s an entirely new question and new questions are always interesting,” says Dr Ian Johnston, an applied mathematician and lecturer in engineering.
The average maximum force the bricks can stand is 4,240N. That’s equivalent to a mass of 432kg (950lbs). If you divide that by the mass of a single brick, which is 1.152g, then you get the grand total of bricks a single piece of Lego could support: 375,000.
So, 375,000 bricks towering 3.5km (2.17 miles) high is what it would take to break a Lego brick.
NASA’s Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a “magnetic highway” at the edge of the solar system, a surprising discovery 35 years after its launch, the experts behind the pioneering craft said Monday.
Earlier this year a surge in a key indicator fueled hopes that the craft was nearing the so-called heliopause, which marks the boundary between our solar system and outer space.
But instead of slipping away from the bubble of charged particles the Sun blows around itself, Voyager encountered something completely unexpected.
This is amazing…think about how far Voyager has gone.
The craft’s daily radio reports sent back evidence that the Sun’s magnetic field lines was connected to interstellar magnetic fields. Lower-energy charged particles were zooming out and higher-energy particles from outside were streaming in.
They called it a magnetic highway because charged particles outside this region bounced around in all directions, as if trapped on local roads inside the bubble, or heliosphere.
“Although Voyager 1 still is inside the Sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway,” said Edward Stone, a Voyager project scientist based at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.
We got ourselves all excited for NASA’s Mars press conference today, even though we already knew it wasn’t about life on the red planet, but what we should have been paying attention to was happening nearly 11.5 billion miles away in the heliosphere. The Voyager 1 spacecraft has encountered a new region of our solar system. What’s even more exciting is that NASA scientists believe this region is the final barrier between Voyager and interstellar space. That’s so much more impressive than chlorine on Mars.
The Voyager 1 spacecraft is now so far out into space that light from the Sun takes over 34 hours to reach it. NASA debated whether this new region should still be considered part of our solar system, but project scientist Edward Stone makes the call by saying, “Although Voyager 1 still is inside the sun’s environment, we now can taste what it’s like on the outside because the particles are zipping in and out on this magnetic highway.”
The scientists believe that Voyager will pass out of the solar system within the next two months or so. I’ve got one more space link for you this morning, it is about our Galaxy the Milky Way, New estimate suggests Milky Way mass of 1.6 trillion suns
Panorama of Milky Way from the inside: a mosaic of multiple shots on large-format film, comprising all 360 degrees of the galaxy from our vantage point. More about this image here. Image Credit: Digital Sky LLC via Wikimedia Commons
Our home galaxy the Milky Way is thought to be approximately 100,000 light-years wide and about 1,000 light-years thick. You often hear the estimate that the mass of our galaxy is equal to several billion suns, but some estimates have ranged up to twice that high, or even higher. Now some astronomers are suggesting a mass for the Milky Way of 1.6 trillion suns. The estimate isn’t just for stars but also includes the mass of our Milky Way’s invisible dark halo. It’s based on the first-ever measurement of the proper motion, or sideways motion along our line of sight, of a small galaxy satellite galaxy to our Milky Way. Ken Croswell reported on the role of this small galaxy – called Leo I – yesterday (December 3, 2012) in Scientific American.
There is a lot of information in that article, be sure to go and read the whole thing.
The rest of today’s post will be in link dump fashion…
An Amazing New Use for Ecstasy- Helping women deal with PTSD after rape.
Big Pharma Company Mocked Patients Who Got “Jawbone Death” from Drug: “Ma Toot Hurts So Bad” – Merck couldn’t care less about the patients…as long as they could make more money.
Noam Chomsky: What the American Media Won’t Tell You About Israel -Decades of hell in Gaza.
New research shows corrosion may accelerate failures at Fukushima Daiichi- Great…and guess what? There is nothing that can be done about it.
Be sure you read these couple of links on the NFL murder suicide this past weekend:
Jovan Belcher: Murder is Domestic Violence [by @QuadCityPat] | Angry Black Lady Chronicles
If you only read one thing about the Kasandra Perkins murder- Feministe
Regarding privacy in America…Laptop seizures by US government highlight 9/11-era climate of fear | Glenn Greenwald
And lastly, a bit of history…. Disability history month: Was Tamerlane disabled?
Tamerlane – derived from his nickname Timur the Lame – rose from obscurity to become a 14th Century conqueror of nations, who piled high the skulls of his enemies. It was quite a feat at a time when physical prowess was prized, writes Justin Marozzi.
Think of the greatest conquerors of all time and chances are you’ll quickly list Genghis Khan and Alexander the Great. It is rather less likely, unless you come from Central Asia or the Muslim world more widely, that you’d spare a thought for Tamerlane.
Yet in many ways this Tartar warlord, born near Samarkand in 1336 in what is now Uzbekistan, outshone both the Macedonian king and the Mongol warlord.
Lots of links, I know…but it is a busy time of the year, and if you can’t take it all in one shot…come back during the day when you have the time. And be sure to share the things you are reading about today…
Evening Round-Up: BS and WTF?
Posted: December 3, 2012 Filed under: Austerity, Barack Obama, birth control, black women's reproductive health, court rulings, Crime, Department of Homeland Security, Federal Budget and Budget deficit, indefinite detention, jobs, open thread, SDB Evening News Reads, the internet, U.S. Politics, Wikileaks | Tags: Boehner, fourth amendment, hispanics 14 Comments »Good 
Evening…
My father is going off the deep end. I don’t know, he has become obsessed with the end of the world, the CDC’s stash of plastic coffins and Agenda 21. So tonight’s links will be a quick dose of reality…meaning, shit we should be concerned with.
Privacy…The Volokh Conspiracy » District Court Grants Motion to Suppress After Government Uses “The Shadow” to Locate Laptop Using Unsecured Wireless Network (Fourth Amendment? Drawing the line or crossing it?)
Austerity…What Austerity Brings (It sure doesn’t bring about anything good.)
Indefinite detention, and “unlawful pretrial punishment”…The Prosecution’s Argument for Why It Didn’t ‘Unlawfully Punish’ Bradley Manning (And why is it that FDL’s coverage of the Manning trial uses images from Beavis and Butthead?)
Minorities…Black, Hispanic Teens Most Disconnected, New Report Says (Nothing new here, carry on…)
Boehners…Obama Rejects Boehner Fiscal Cliff Plan (Boehner = The tangerine ass clown.)
Boneheads…Rush Limbaugh: Planned Parenthood “Is All About The Elimination Of Black Families” (My girlfriend who lives among the corn was going on about this a couple weeks ago.)
Protection of our precious bodily fluids…Tracy Bloom: GOP’s Doomsday Fiscal Cliff Plan, Cory Booker’s Food Stamp Challenge, and More (Okay, that last one is an attempt to joke about Dr. Strangelove…we certainly don’t want a mineshaft gap!)
This is an open thread…
Evening News Round-up: Informants, Conspiracies, and 500 Rumbles
Posted: October 8, 2012 Filed under: Corporate Crime, corporate greed, corruption, Department of Homeland Security, Domestic Policy, domestic surveillance drones, Domestic terrorism, Drone Warfare, Fox News, George W. Bush, Gitmo, SDB Evening News Reads | Tags: 500 Days, Danny DeVito, Kurt Eichenwald, Rhea Perlman, terrorism, The Informant 32 Comments »
Good Evening!
Yesterday, I started to read Kurt Eichenwald’s latest book, 500 Days Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars. I got up to page 137 before I called it a night and went to bed. It is heartbreaking to read about all the lost opportunities to intervene and possibly stop the attack, but the Bush administration just did not pay attention, or blatantly and cockishly refused to even hear the warnings from CSC…Counterterrorist Center.
Since I am only in the first part of the book, I will link to a review from the New York Times Book Review: ‘500 Days,’ by Kurt Eichenwald
Doug Mills/Associated PressPresident Jacques Chirac of France and President George W. Bush, November 2001.
This book is misleadingly titled. “500 Days: Secrets and Lies in the Terror Wars” seeks to provide a global account of the period after 9/11, leaping from a prison cell in Syria to the nightclub bombing in Bali, but it’s best and most informative when depicting how the Bush administration, and especially its lawyers, suffered a protracted nervous breakdown during that time. In that respect, it is an ambitious undertaking and a valuable resource.
[...]
With each piece of evidence, it becomes clearer that in late 2001 and in 2002, President Bush and Vice President Cheney had begun panicking. Mistaking rumors and lies fabricated by victims of torture as actionable information and elbowing aside skeptics, they gave rein to their fears that the worst was yet to come — and their hysteria spread to and infected parts of the national security establishment.
Give that review a quick read. I will give you two quotes from the book, that so far has struck me as very telling.
In discussing John Ashcroft and his “priorities,” of which terrorism was not even part of, Eichenwald writes about Tom Picard, the acting director of the FBI and Dale Watson, head FBI in charge of counterterrorism:
Despite Ashcroft’s apparent indifference, Pickard tried to hammer home the magnitude of the terrorist threat almost every time they met. But at this latest briefing, Pickard told Watson, the attorney general had gone off the rails.
“I was telling him about the high level of chatter and how it suggested something big was about to happen,” Picard told Watson. “And then he interrupted me and said, ‘I don’t want to hear about that anymore.”
This was two months prior to the attacks. And, one of many warnings about bin Laden and his big plans within the last 12 months…since Bush became the Republican nominee and received his first intelligence briefing.
The other quote is shortly after the attacks, when one of Ashcroft’s top aides is caught reading a book in his office:
The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Islam. Omigod. That is not a good sign.
Again, I am only at the beginning but wow…and that is just a couple of examples from the Department of Justice. We are not even mentioning Cheney and his crew.
I just finished reading Eichenwald’s earlier book, The Informant, and if you are up for some real unbelievably f’d up cooperating witnesses, involved in price fixing and embezzlement, then please read the book. (The movie with Matt Damon does not really touch the surface…)
Here are a couple of reviews for the book:
BOOKS OF THE TIMES; A Crime Story of the White-Collar Kind – New York Times
Fox in the Henhouse – New York Times
And a two-hour interview with Eichenwald: Booknotes :: Watch The Informant Part One and Booknotes :: Watch The Informant Part Two.
Anyway, I also sat through the entire Bill O’Reilly and Jon Stewart Debate. It was awesome…if you have not seen it, you need to.
Bill O’Reilly, Jon Stewart Debate In ‘Rumble In The Air-Conditioned Auditorium’
Jon Stewart and Bill O’Reilly: The Rumble : The New Yorker
Just one more link for you tonight, this is sad…Danny DeVito, Rhea Perlman split after 30 years
Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlmanare breaking up.
A spokesman for DeVito says the couple is separating after 30 years of marriage. Publicist Stan Rosenfield offered no other details.
DeVito and Perlman married in 1982 and have three adult children. The couple worked together on TV’s “Taxi” from 1978 to 1982.
Together, the couple established the production company Jersey Films, which counts “Pulp Fiction,” ”Erin Brockovich” and “Out of Sight” among its credits.
Danny DeVito-Rhea Perlman split catches Hollywood off guard
‘Stunned,” “shocked,” “totally surprised” and “so sorry to hear it” — just a few of the comments veteran Hollywood insiders were using Monday as news broke Danny DeVito and Rhea Perlman had separated after 30 years of marriage.
“For Hollywood — hell, for anywhere in America — breaking up after 30 years is practically unheard of,” said one of the biggest producers in the entertainment business, who has worked with both DeVito and Perlman. “I am devastated to hear about this. They are both good friends and will remain so. I’m just sorry they apparently were unable to overcome whatever issues they had.”A second Tinseltown source who recently worked with DeVito speculated the couple’s work has kept them apart, “as often is the case out here.” Beyond confirming the split, DeVito’s spokesman,
I’ve read rumors of a possible connection to DiVito’s alcoholism, but I guess we will find out later on…
This is an open thread.
Updates on Wisconsin Hate Crime: White Power
Posted: August 6, 2012 Filed under: American Gun Fetish, Breaking News, Crime, Department of Homeland Security, fundamentalist Christians, Gun Control, religious extremists, right wing hate grouups, The Right Wing | Tags: Hate Crime, Neo-Nazis, Sikh Temple Shooting, skin heads, Wade Michael Page, white power bands 21 Comments »White Power. White Supremacy. Or whatever you may want to refer to it as, is hate. And that word hate can be applied to all sorts of people and religious organizations and political movements. There is no doubt in my mind that this mass murder against a group of people purely targeted because of the color of their skin, and the turbans on their heads, will happen again and again…
Here are some updates on the neo-nazi who killed six men, with dark complexions, wearing turbans.
Wade Michael Page Neo Nazi Photos | Neo Nazi Photos Sikh Temple Shooter | Mediaite
After authorities confirmed that Wade Michael Page, 40, was the lone gunman in Sunday’s tragic Sikh temple shooting in Oak Creek, Wisc., details began to leak about the shooter’s past. One particularly interesting story is that he was the member of a white supremacist “skinhead” punk group End Apathy, whose Myspace page confirms Page’s involvement in the band (with pictures).
A 2006 posting by Page on BandMix.com — a site used by aspiring musicians seeking other artists to join them — seems to detail when he recruited a bassist and drummer for End Apathy. On the site, he reveals that he is also a member of bands Definite Hate and 13 Knots. The posting is based out of “South Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” which neighbors the city of Oak Creek where the shootings took place.
There are a series of pictures at the link, but here is one that stands out to me at least:
Another heavily-discolored photo shows a Confederate flag in the practice space. While not necessarily an indicator of neo-Nazism, in this case the flag makes sense given many white supremacists’ infatuation with antebellum slavery.
A 2010 interview Page gave to Label 56, a white supremacist music site, further reveals his dabbling with neo-Nazism. Page indicated he went to the Hammerfest 2000 in Georgia, which was an annual “hate rock” festival organized by a skinhead group.
“That’s when I joined Youngland,” he said. Slate‘s Dave Weigel reports that was a white power band with lyrics like: “Stand one stand all, stand up, stand proud/and raise the white man’s flag.”
I have no doubt that Page would have supported this religious right prayer rally. Religious Right Groups Organize Nationwide September 11 Prayer Rallies | rightwingwatch.org
The group Awakening America is hoping that people on September 11 will head to their county courthouse to gather for Cry Out America. Organizations partnering with Cry Out America 2012 include the Family Research Council, the Christian Broadcasting Network, The Call, Intercessors for America, Teen Mania and 40 Days to Save America. They hope that the prayer rally will bring about a revival that will lead to a “decrease in divorce rates, co-habitation [and] same-sex relations,” along with “the restoration of Christ’s influence in the arts, media, and communications.”
Hmmmm, seems like those bands mentioned in the Mediaite link would fit in with that twisted sense of Christ influencing the arts.
Okay, maybe I am taking that a bit further than I should, but these people believe that they are part of a supreme white race, and right-wing extremism is connected with right wing Christianity.
Just a few other opinions and links regarding the shooting, hate and Page.
Dissent Of The Day – The Dish | By Andrew Sullivan – The Daily Beast
A reader writes:
I am appalled with your choice for Face of the Day. I realize that the words you used to accompany the picture were not designed to whip up anti-Sikhism in the same way the picture was, but the picture, with its violent, retributive elements, is stronger than the text.
Last night, I watched CNN as Don Lemon interviewed the president of an American Sikh organization. I also saw an interview with the nephew of the Wisconsin’s temple’s president. The nephew’s uncle was seriously injured and the nephew had spoken directly with eyewitnesses. Both men impressed me with their kindness, their calmness, and their clear commitment to retaining the values of their religion as they spoke. They also were clearly not anti-American. They reminded me most of those Amish who were magnanimous after a madman killed many of their children.
Are Sikhs saints? No more than members of any other religion. I am aware that Sikh extremists murdered Indira Gandhi and almost certainly were responsible for bringing down Air India Flight 182, out of Vancouver. But on the day after American Sikhs were murdered for no good reason, and quite possibly because someone saw them in exactly the threatening terms that you chose to accentuate by using that image, why focus on that image?
I saw the image the reader is talking about, click the link to see it if you like. It bothered me as well…Please read the rest of this post because there is another interesting link made to a documentary commentary:
Ebert highlights a clip from Dastaar: Defending Sikh Identity, a documentary that “presents the struggle of the Sikh American community against discrimination and violence caused by ignorance of an essential symbol of the Sikh faith — the dastaar , or turban.”
Here are a few recent postings that you may not have seen yet:
The Certainty of Even More Shootings – James Fallows – The Atlantic
The mass shooting at the Sikh temple seems even more horrifying than most. Of course victims are just as dead no matter what a killer’s motive. But here the “best” case interpretation would be that the gunman was merely one more psychopath who decided to take out his madness by shooting into a mass of innocents — like those in Aurora or Tucson, at Virginia Tech, and so on — rather than someone attempting to launch flat-out racial or religious war.
Is it time to talk about guns yet?
The suspect in the horrific shooting at the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin has now been identified. He is Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old army vet and described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a “frustrated neo-Nazi who had been the leader of a racist white power band.” He’d also washed out of the army after a reduction in rank for being drunk on the job and was ineligible for enlistment. He may also have just broken up with his girlfriend. Tell me again why we don’t worry about violent white men or their sense of entitlement?
He also had a 9/11 tattoo and an apparent inability to tell brown people apart. An inability he shared with a lot of dumbshits in this country…
I will end with Charlie Pierce:
Wisconsin Shooting: Is It Time to Talk About Gun Control Yet? – Esquire
The Sikh temple outside Milwaukee that this Sunday became the location of the most recent mass murder by firearm in this freedom-loving country is one of those strange, wonderful huge things that pop up along the side of the road when you least expect to see something like a Sikh temple. It’s one of those things that can make you smile and, on a glorious summer’s day like this Sunday, contemplate what a diverse and fascinating place this country really can be, so long as we keep a grip on the dark and terrible impulses that too many people have become too rich and too powerful enabling at this time in history.
The law is calling this an act of “domestic terrorism,” which at least is a start, if not nearly the beginning. The guy who shot up the temple — an Army veteran with an arsenal at his disposal so sufficient that they’ve cordoned off an entire block in downtown Cudahy — behaved in every particular the way that a terrorist would. He killed his first victims, and then he opened up on the cops that came to help them. That’s the kind of murderous calculation that a terrorist makes. Call in a bomb threat to a building and then set the bomb outside on the sidewalk. People have done that overseas. We have our terms straight on this one, at least.
(And can we spare a minute and recall the howls of the various flying monkeys a couple of years ago when the Department of Homeland Security came to the unremarkable conclusion that rightwing domestic terrorist groups might be recruiting people who were being mustered out of the military? To its disgrace, DHS ducked and covered on its findings. I think this case might at least prompt further research. You can scroll down here to see the defensive whinging in embryo.)
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This is the second mass murder by gunfire here in a month. Is it time to talk about gun control yet? We are an armed and dangerous society at a perilous and uncertain time, and there are far too many people who look at that combustible combination of circumstances and see, not a national problem, but a financial and political opportunity. It is time to stop listening to them. It is time to deafen ourselves to the professional paranoids and the people who enrich themselves while stepping through the blood of their fellow citizens. (I am, by the way, not optimisticthat this will happen.)
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