By Lambert Strether of Corrente.
Patient readers, I am finishing up a post on Myanmar, where it appears there’s a slim chance that the good guys may actually win. Who knew? So I must ask you to talk amongst yourselves. Sorry! –lambert
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It must be nap time.
GQ thanks for the picture;-)
I haven’t been there in years. I really should visit again. It would be something different from all the gloom.
Agreed, a beautiful picture it is.
Jan 6th tapes released so far.
https://cha.house.gov/cha-subcommittee-reading-room-fe781e74-d577-4f64-93cc-fc3a8dd8df18
Absolutely terrifying. These are absolutely unsuitable for viewing by Rachel Maddow fans.
I thought that Rachel Maddow did not have ‘fans,’ but acolytes.
> These are absolutely unsuitable for viewing by Rachel Maddow fans
No doubt, but why exactly?
Should have used a /sarc
Very boring footage, strictly tour group stuff. Exact opposite of insurrection, I kept expecting the cops to hand out flyers to the tourists.
Can’t watch with Safari. Anyone have a browser that allows access?
Firefox works OK. The link goes to a page to download individual videos from named security cameras.
Thank you, GF.
Sadly, I cannot find a map of Capitol building CCTV cameras.
It may be time to revisit J6 as a story (see here and here for my initial takes, which IMNSHO have stood the test of time).
Still as a pylon
The python wove round her nylons
A furtive hand wave
The only signal she gave
Burma Slave
An audio antidote for wolf fans: Raised by Wolf (22 minutes). From Radiolab.
A tale told by wolf expert Rick McIntyre about an unexpected outcome during what would more typically be a deadly confrontation between two Yellowstone wolf packs lead into battle by a father and stepson respectively.
Not included in this story is the fate of the alpha female dubbed “the psychopath”. She was subsequently killed by blood related pack members because, one might safely assume, she was just too damned mean to other pack members.
I’ve been thinking a bit about “Gun Violence”, it seems that Gun Violence has exploded in the USA over the last few decades as the result of the proliferation of Assault type weapons such as the Glock and particularly the AR-15.
These weapons are designed to kill and are being held responsible for the slaughter of hundreds of American Schoolchildren.
Every schoolchild in America lives in fear of being brutally murdered in the classroom, which might be a relief during a math final.
WE MUST PROTECT THE CHILDREN!
The response has been metal detectors, “Active shooter Drills” in every elementary school, signs reminding potential insane murderers that the schools are “Gun Free Zones” and FFS bulletproof backpacks for the kids.
The problem is simple, assault type weapons, and the answer is simple, ban them.
Let me unpack that.
1) Guns do not have agency, yet.
Several companies are working on networked robot dogs with AI, facial recognition and a variety of armaments, including machine guns.
2) Violent crime has been steadily declining in the USA over the last 3 decades for three major reasons.
No more leaded Gas.
An aging population.
The substitution of Fentanyl and Weed for Booze by the more desperate segments of the population.
Booze…bring up a map of domestic violence incidents by State and a similar map of per capita alcohol consumption.
Boozers are violent, potheads and junkies not so much.
3) “Assault type Weapons”.
A Glock 17 can be turned into a machine pistol by replacing one part, which takes no tools and less than 5 minutes.
You can make that part out of a wire coat hanger using two pair of pliers and a wirecutter.
The notorious Ar-15?
the last time I looked at the DOJ statistics a total of 394 murders had been committed in the prior year by criminals using any type of rifle.
If I round that up to 400 and assume that every one of those murderers used an AR-15 it means that one out of every 50,000 AR -15’s was used to commit those crimes.
There are @ 20,000,000 AR-15’s in the US at present, with more built every day both in Factories and in Garages.
“Sensible Laws” restricting the possession and carrying arms are always about class and always have been, in prior times the better sort of people made no bones about this.
These days it’s about “Protecting the Children” just like SESTA and FOSTA have dome.
Is there a missing sarcasm warning?
“Every schoolchild in America lives in fear of being brutally murdered in the classroom” Hyperbole much?
Violent crime has been steadily declining in the USA over the last 3 decades…On average, but in ghettos and drug dealing areas, it is increasing.
The same mentality that excuses organized shoplifting and hatred against the system promotes black people shooting each other over meaningless insults, drug territories and affects assorted victims.
I take it that you live in a mostly white rural area with little crime? I would respect the opinions of people of color who live in big cities more.
I can remember when the Panthers did armed “security patrols” of poor high crime neighbourhoods. I know not what the outcome was, but to this aging white dude, the idea had and still has merit.
However, the police did not like the competition.
I can remember an interview with Frank Herbert just after the “original” film version of “Dune” came out. In it he let slip that the Federal Police were the biggest criminal gang in the District of Mexico, (Mexico City.) that sounded like Third world funnies back then. Now, it applies equally to all of America.
Parenthetically, since the Narco Cartels are private business organizations, with armed wings attached, they fit perfectly into the definition of Neo-liberal Institutions.
I’ve read that many of the gun laws were passed because the gun toting Black Panthers were too scary.
Well, my daughter is 16 and she and her cohort are in fact quite anxious about the risk of being shot to death in homeroom. We had a mass shooting at a high school graduation in June. Only a couple killed and many injured so it barely made headlines.
They watched the 90s era Romeo + Juliet but had to skip the big gun battle scenes because it turns out that watching young people gun each other down over petty arguments is a little too much on the nose for our kids.
So yeah, in my (albeit limited) experience, the kids are indeed not okay where it comes to guns.
To my mind, entire generations were traumatized with school nuclear drills to remind kids constantly about death by nuclear fire. I do not know if anybody really studied the effects of this on all those kids but it must have had some effect. Perhaps how rebellious kids were in the 60s was a result of this for all we know. So are they studying what the effect of all these active shooter drills on little kids as well? It has to have some effect and one that would be consequential.
I was in junior high in the south-center of the US during the Red Scare. We had drills, going into the central hallways, kneeling against inner walls and covering our heads. We didn’t think it would happen, grownups making a big deal out of it. It was a nice break if class was borijanieng, which it usually was.
> “Every schoolchild in America lives in fear of being brutally murdered in the classroom” Hyperbole much?
I don’t think it’s hyperbole at all, what with fortress architecture, metal detectors, active shooter drills, cops in the hallways, and constant media coverage. Any schoolchild who isn’t isn’t afraid isn’t paying attention. (Of course, this isn’t true for some suburban enclaves, and those wealthy enough to send their children to Choate, or wherever.)
We have optimized our entire K-12 public educational system so gun humpers can hump their guns. Who could have known that would be a problem for children?
The guns in their various guises of being semi-ejaculating Steely Dans spitting out high velocity pointy metal things are wholly innocent, its the index fingers that do all the carnage, and for which not 1 digit has ever done time!
Oh, apply the Yakuza “atonement” ceremony for failure. Those fingers will learn quick!
Yeah, okay, but what about all the hype over “assault style rifles” or other slogans when it handguns that does all killing?
The police are increasingly abusive and corrupt, with an unofficial mandate of suppressing the poor and minorities. If you are both, it’s bad news for you. Don’t forget that many communities are over policed and underserved, which helps to explain why they are considered the enemies of the community, not its protectors. If the police and by extension the courts are considered the enemy, just how does one handle problems? The more violent and corrupt the police are, the greater the crime, which often includes people getting their own private justice often with a gun or baseball bat.
Spreading poverty, lack of housing or affordable food, an increasing lack of healthcare, increasing mental illness, government that does not care about anyone unless they have money. Dysfunctional everything. Oh, tens of thousands of dead due to suicides, drug overdoses, Covid, medical accidents, and IIRC lack of healthcare for each of individual causes I just listened. Let’s not mention the illnesses and early deaths caused by over 170 thousand homeless Californian.
And yet, it is semi automatic rifles that gets all the attention. It is like cleaning up San Francisco or shoving the homeless into some hidden place after decades of neglect because of some fancy conference. The Powers That Be do not care to spend the money on us peons because to them, we don’t matter. However, they are ready to hype up gun deaths especially the guns least used, which are a real problem, but will not spend the money needed to prevent those hundreds of thousands of deaths. It is a distraction and donation getter. Newsom will blather on about LGBTQ+ rights and the guns, getting those promo shots, but he will not solve the misery that I have seen with my own eyes (and smelled) because reasons.
That is why I get angry when some smug “liberal” Democrat goes on about the guns.
I agree with you. There are many neighborhoods in many American cities where guns are necessary for a person’s safety and security. If someone comes at you with a baseball bat or a tire iron a firearm is a great equalizer and may well save your life. The United States is not Western Europe. It is not Japan. It is a whole other place. A violent place. Guns are necessary in vast areas of this nation.
> There are many neighborhoods
Numbers, please, along with how it all nets out (given that parents, predictably, tend to leave their guns lying about, and a six-year-old, predictably, picks one up, with predictable results).
Perhaps for instance Rancho High School in Las Vegas …
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/mugshots-released-of-four-teens-arrested-for-rancho-high-school-students-death/ar-AA1kfwLq
Not sure what specific facts and problems set you on this path, but your analysis and assessment aren’t going to get you very far. We have five related, simultaneous, problems:
(1) we have way too many guns and bullets in the US.
(2) a large group of people consider owning and using guns essential to protect their freedoms and their property from criminals.
(3) a large group of people consider freedom from gun owners and criminals essential for their protection.
(4) we have a large group of men who could decide to use guns as a public way to commit suicide.
(5) no one trusts the government to act in the best interests of anyone. See the latest Chicago budget plan for a great example of why that is…
What you’ve said about restricting AR-15s amounts to dancing about architecture. I’m sure it feels like you’re doing something but it’s irrelevant to the topic at hand. And with 3D printing, and maker options for ghost guns, what does it even mean to ban a type of fire arm anymore? Proposals to arm kids and teachers are ridiculous on their face. Proposals to ban fire arms have been repeatedly found to be unconstitutional. We could maybe restrict bullets like they do in Japan. But we have a large maker culture for producing your own bullets too, so I don’t know how well that would hold up.
Our culture is sick. Our society has rotted. Until we fix that, we can’t fix anything else. Because you won’t accept what I want and I don’t want what you’ll accept as reasonable. And so it goes…
>>>Our culture is sick. Our society has rotted. Until we fix that, we can’t fix anything else. Because you won’t accept what I want and I don’t want what you’ll accept as reasonable. And so it goes…
I don’t know about that. On my list of things that kill tens of thousands each year, I bet most Americans would agree on many of the solutions or at least on the need to deal with them. Fix those problems and the much of the deaths by guns goes away. Not all because we have always been a violent nation, but a well fed, well house, population getting good medical care is far less likely to kill either themselves or others. Deal with the massive nationwide corruption especially with the police and courts as well and likely we would not be talking much about the guns or at least not disagreeing as much.
Do not look at the issues that divide us. Look at the goals that unite us, instead.
I think making progress in those areas would get us started to curing the rot in our culture. It would certainly decrease the number of men looking to commit suicide via mass murder.
> Proposals to ban fire arms have been repeatedly found to be unconstitutional
Because textualists, assuming good faith, haven’t mastered the gerund.
I don’t particularly care whether the failure is due to proponents of weapons bans being inept or captured or grossly naive. The fact remains they’ve failed multiple times and have now created precedents that mark firearm bans as unconstitutional. So people who constantly assert that we could have bans instated in the US to help solve the problems we’re discussing have a lot to prove and little evidence to rely on.
Just revert to the version of the Constitution we had before Scalia selected his future colleagues in Bush v. Gore (after which there are IMNSHO no legitimate Court decisions whatever). Easy.
Has anyone kept a score of the number of movie posters that feature gunz in the last half century?
The cynic in me suspects that there might be a link between the arms industry and movies of that ilk; any “smoking gun”?
Pip-pip.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/4-free-covid-tests-household-ahead-holidays/story?id=104989775%5D
4 more free COVID tests will be available to each household ahead of the holidays
What a stupid, stupid timeline.
And stupid tests. I’m advised to check with the FDA to determine that the tests I’ve received marked with an August 2023 expiration date are not *really* expired.
Why should I trust my government?
And this hove into view this evening.
> rapid test
So awesome. False negatives in time for the Holidays! Give the gift of Covid!
NOTE This says the causality is failure to swab the throat, and I may need to revisit the path to infection.
If confirmed — not on web site yet — Project N95 is shutting down:
https://twitter.com/GaloresCircus/status/1726722988714963360
Biden chose not to support a domestic PPE industry, and hospital GPOs (group purchasing organizations) want the cheapest thing from China, and as we’ve seen, choose not to even use PPE anymore, because hospital infection control and infectious disease as a speciality is a joke. For more on GPOs, see Stoller: The Corrupt System Behind Covid Medical Shortages
For more on Biden, check your local grocery prices.
Walgreens this week: Up 0.5% through 11/19.
The highest trough level positivity ever, except for October 2022.
I was gonna ask the other day if anyone else noticed that most of the trend lines for the crests are definitely upward sloping.
So much for endemicity.
> anyone else noticed that most of the trend lines for the crests are definitely upward sloping
I have been muttering about this for some time.
wrong thread, strange. sorry. :-(
i agree, i expect there will be resentment fuelled terrorism perpetrated by fascists with the aim of exacting revenge on those they feel betrayed their country. -a.v.
> resentment fuelled
Yes, I fully expect everybody who has been wrong about Covid, Ukraine, and Israel to be showered with honors and make bank, and everybody who was right to be ostracized as a back-stabbing traitor (Dolchstoßlegende, in the original German). By liberals, I might add, who have totally not ever dined at the All-You-Can-Eat fascist smorgasboard, despite the Censorship Industrial Complex, a policy of stochastic eugenicism based on “social determinants of health,” and two wars involving nuclear powers.
But what, you say, about conservatives. I agree the two are not the same (different party structures, ideologies, above all class bases). Operationally, however, my view can best be expressed pictorially:
#1b1b1b really is “not the same as” #000000. In fact, to a professional, like a painter or a designer, they appear different, and different colors would be paired with them. But one must squint hard (as, in fact, I do).
Yes, all are different, but the key word is “black.”
Intellectually, I understand the need to identify all the factions, cliques, allies, and alliances that infest the country. How else is one going to get some understanding of what is happening in the United States?
Emotionally, I just wonder if it would matter if it was the Christian Nationalists-Air Force or the Koch Brothers acolytes’ factions in the Republican Party instead of the PMC-Old School Republican-Financial-CIA faction, or even the California Democratic Party-Highway Patrol that hauled me off to solitary at Pelican Bay or Florence supermax prison because reasons?
They are all bad and they use their positions to enrich themselves and impoverish everyone else. They also all work together to keep their positions.