August 2010 archive

The conservative talk show host and author, Laura Ingraham, has penned a new book, The Obama Diaries, based on on President Obama’s fictional private thoughts. Steven Colbert exposed the racial stereotyping calling the book “hideous, “hackneyed” and ‘terrible writing”.

On this day in 1964, the remains of three civil rights workers whose disappearance on June 21 garnered national attention are found buried in an earthen dam near Philadelphia, Mississippi. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, both white New Yorkers, had traveled to heavily segregated Mississippi in 1964 to help organize civil rights efforts on behalf of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). The third man, James Chaney, was a local African American man who had joined CORE in 1963. The disappearance of the three young men led to a massive FBI investigation that was code-named MIBURN, for “Mississippi Burning.”

On Junr 20, Schwerner returned from a civil rights training session in Ohio with 21-year-old James Chaney and 20-year-old Andrew Goodman, a new recruit to CORE. The next day–June 21–the three went to investigate the burning of the church in Neshoba. While attempting to drive back to Meridian, they were stopped by Neshoba County Deputy Sheriff Cecil Price just inside the city limits of Philadelphia, the county seat. Price, a member of the KKK who had been looking out for Schwerner or other civil rights workers, threw them in the Neshoba County jail, allegedly under suspicion for church arson.

After seven hours in jail, during which the men were not allowed to make a phone call, Price released them on bail. After escorting them out of town, the deputy returned to Philadelphia to drop off an accompanying Philadelphia police officer. As soon as he was alone, he raced down the highway in pursuit of the three civil rights workers. He caught the men just inside county limits and loaded them into his car. Two other cars pulled up filled with Klansmen who had been alerted by Price of the capture of the CORE workers, and the three cars drove down an unmarked dirt road called Rock Cut Road. Schwerner, Goodman, and Chaney were shot to death and their bodies buried in an earthen dam a few miles from the Mt. Zion Methodist Church.

Crossposted at Daily Kos and Docudharma

Note:

Due to the unusually high number of editorial cartoons published over the past week or so (I literally have another 300+ cartoons saved), I’m going to try and post another edition of this diary by Friday, August 6th.  It something I’ve never done before.

Guys, you just have to face it.  Your ‘Y’ Chromosome is a damaged ‘X’ and you’re a deformed cripple in the genetic scheme of things.

Look at Ants or Honeybees.

Or around you.  The every day misogyny of our society is appalling.  My brother’s girlfriend (who is much younger than I, but I’m 120 years old) was watching a Doris Day movie and said “Wow!”

Indeed.

My experience with women as friends is that they are in almost every respect superior to my male friends.  Brighter, more sympathetic, more loyal, more tolerant.

And yet as a society we inculturate them from birth to be submissive.

Men are intimidated by women (as they should be) and motivated by vagina envy and desire seek to suppress and control them, especially their sexuality.

Thus the slut penalty.  If you’re a woman and you like sex (and I have no idea, but speaking as a man it’s pretty good for me) you’re supposed to face the 9 months and 18 years of child bearing or at least the tut-tutting of your neighbors shaking their shame fingers at you.

Well fuck that.

When I look at women I look them in the eyes and not their breasts (to the extent I can, I am a guy), and I never ever delude myself that they’re not smarter than me.

Update: Amanda Marcotte  

I own it as a badge of honor.  Freemasonry celebrates the Enlightenment ideal that the Universe is knowable and it’s our duty to understand it the best we can.

You can learn every ‘secret’ of Masonry on the internet, including the silly walks, but that does not in itself enable you to work and act as a Mason.

As master of my lodge I wore a dead man’s hat and a single rap from my gavel commanded the attention of all, but at the end of every meeting I descended from my dias and took off my hat because-

• We Meet on the Level
• Act on the Plumb
• And Part upon the Square

I haven’t been to my lodge in years but I expect at my funeral to be buried with my apron and a sprig of evergreen (most likely cut from the shrubs outside at the last minute) as is customary.

That’s the sort of thing we do.

As Atrios pointed out, there was not one word about foreclosures or housing in Geithner’s Op-Ed in today’s NYT..

What’s Missing

What’s missing from Timmeh’s NYT op-ed?

The words “foreclosure” or “housing.”

Obviously HAMP isn’t in there either.

Pending housing sales for June dropped another 2.6%.

The number of contracts to purchase previously owned houses unexpectedly fell in June, indicating demand kept unraveling after the expiration of a homebuyer tax credit.

The index of pending home resales dropped 2.6 percent from the prior month, figures from the National Association of Realtors showed today in Washington. Economists projected a 4 percent gain, according to the median forecast in a Bloomberg News survey. The expiration of a government tax credit on April 30 caused the gauge to slump 30 percent in May, the most since data began in 2001.

To add to the economic quagmire Bloomberg reports to day that Consumer spending and Income is expected to “stagnate” for June, as well.

Consumer spending and personal incomes in the U.S. unexpectedly stagnated in June, showing a lack of jobs is hurting the biggest part of the economy.

Purchases were unchanged after a 0.1 percent gain the prior month that was smaller than previously estimated, Commerce Department figures showed today in Washington. Incomes didn’t increase for the first time since September and the savings rate increased to the highest level in a year.

At least it isn’t dropping. Perhaps that’s the reason for Geithner’s optimism. Just clap louder. I can’t my hands are bleeding

Keith.  Rachel may not be back from her taping with Dave.  The Boys.

Shark Week mostly reminds me of Gary Condit and Hair on Fire Presidential Daily Briefings after which I started to get all radicalized and unfit for polite company.

• Turner Classic– The Magnificent Seven.

Back in Junior High School my English teacher was obsessed by this film, thought it was the best movie ever made and we spent about 3 weeks analyzing the script in independent study groups where I had the good fortune to be in the same one as my bespectacled and brilliant object of desire.

Needless to say I don’t remember much about it but as I recall we hardly talked about Kurosawa at all.

• ESPN– World Series of Poker x 2!
• SciFi– Warehouse 13 (last week’s and premier).  This week’s premier is a Eureka crossover episode.
• Toon– Unnatural History (last week’s and premier)
• Disney– Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Johnny Depp)
• Turner Classic– Bullitt, perhaps the greatest car chase ever filmed.

Later-

Dave has Michael Cera, Rachel Maddow, and Herbie Hancock.  Jon has Will Ferrell, Stephen Laura Ingraham.  Alton does punch.  Viva Los Muertos!

Evening Edition is an Open Thread

1 BP begins crucial well ‘kill’ in Gulf of Mexico

by Matt Davis, AFP

25 mins ago

Glen Greenwald

Kudos to Eva Rodriguez for explaining what a deranged extremist Marc Thiessen is – and doing it in the WashPost

Eva Rodriguez Drone strike for the WikiLeaks founder?

Did my colleague, Marc Thiessen, just call for a drone strike in Iceland? Thiessen is obviously incensed by WikiLeaks’s dissemination of tens of thousands of pages of government documents relating to the Afghan war. And he wants WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, to pay. Here’s how Thiessen put it.

 

Assange is a non-U.S. person operating outside the territory of the United States. This means the government has a wide range of options for dealing with him. It can employ not only law enforcement, but also intelligence and military assets, to bring Assange to justice and put his criminal syndicate out of business.

“Military assests”? Does Thiessen think we’re going to send in Special Ops to pluck Assange from Iceland, Belgium or Sweden, where he’s known to hang out? Or is he thinking that a drone strike might be more effective or efficient?

(emphasis mine)

If all else fails to stop him, wipe out a city or two. What’s a few innocent people getting killed if the goal is achieved.

Up Date: Theissen is Keith’s Runner Up

in the effort to create machines that accurately simulate human behavior, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University said Monday they had built the first robot with the capacity to suppress its emotions. “This is the holy grail of artificial intelligence,” said project director Kate Tillman […] “We felt we were on the right track when we brought up a personal shortcoming and it paced around the lab muttering, but when it started breaking eye contact and changing the subject, we knew we had accomplished something revolutionary.”

Any bets that it will clap, cheer, vote for the lesser of two evils in a hearbeat, and believe that democrats have emptied the swamp of congressional corruption, without using any cpu cycles at all?