Tag: Culture

America is Awash in Guns — And Fear of Them

Trish
whitecop
Guns aren’t making us safe, they’re just scaring us.

What if we’re missing a bigger issue in our musings about Ferguson and race and unarmed black men being shot by white guys, often police officers? Yes, systemic racism and a breakdown in our ability to trust police are serious problems. But are we overlooking something more basic?

It’s a rare day without a story like this one:

A white cop observes a black man cut through a parking lot to avoid a red light. He follows the car and when it starts to pull into an apartment complex, he turns on his cruiser’s lights to pull it over. The black man, 29-year-old Brian Dennison, drives further into the complex and parks in a parking space. When he gets out of the car, the cop shoots at him. Luckily, the shot missed. It was lucky because Dennison had his 6-year-old daughter in the car. And she was having an asthma attack. And her inhaler was inside their home, where Dennison was rushing when he drove around the red light.

So why did Officer J.C. Garcia get it so wrong?

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It’s Amazon’s World and We Just Live in It

Trish

I wanted to buy a book a few months ago for a relative who was hospitalized in a city about 40 miles north and who wasn’t a TV watcher. I figured I’d stop off at the mall or a shopping center as I drove up and pick up some books and magazines.

Except there were no bookstores. While I had been floating along, ordering books from Amazon because they were cheap or putting them on my Amazon wish list and waiting for the prices to come down, book shops all around me were going out of business. Instead of finding some cool books and artsy, interesting magazines, I had to stop at a grocery store to buy a lame edition of O Magazine by Oprah. I believe it went unread.

Your reading choices will someday be either 50 Shades of Gray or The Hunger Games…or a copy of O Magazine

If you watch the Colbert Report, you know that the responsible thing to do right now is to boycott Amazon. The massive “Don’t Be Evil” online seller is engaged in a very evil battle with traditional publishers to control pricing and set off a dumbing down process that will likely promote self-publishing as an Amazon work-around.

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Why Bill de Blasio Doesn’t Care, Is Driving Cadillacs in His Dreams

Trish

Much is being made of Bill de Blasio’s recent mayoral win in New York City, with the Washington Post even calling it “historic,” since he will be the first Democrat to serve in that office since David Dinkins won in 1989.

It’s not just worth nothing that de Blasio won, but how. De Blasio focused on income inequality in NYC, or what he called “two cities,” one rich and one poor, much the way the ultimately disappointing Sen. John Edwards talked about two Americas.

As Marketplace’s Sabri Ben-Achour noted:

According to the Census Bureau, income inequality in the New York City region is higher than any other major metropolitan region in the country. So taking the whole city, Brooklyn to the Bronx, if you are in the bottom 20 percent in New York your income, on average, is about $9,000 a year. If you’re in the top 20 percent you make, on average, $223,000 a year. So otherwise, put [that] the top 20 percent of the population makes about 25 times what the bottom 20 percent makes.

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It Never Seems to Be the Right Time to Discuss Gun Policy

Trish
Here we go again (CNN photo)

White House spokesperson Jay Carney on the shooting in Connecticut:

“I think it’s important on a day like today to view this as I know the president, as a father does and I as a father and others who are parents certainly do, which is to feel enormous sympathy for families that are affected and to do everything we can to support state and local law enforcement and support those who are enduring what appears to be a very tragic event. There is, I’m sure, will be, rather, a day for discussion of the usual Washington policy debates but I don’t think today is that day. [Emphasis added]

In what universe is entertaining the idea of limiting the public’s exposure to guns, “the usual Washington policy debates?” When was the last time Washington debated this topic? When Jimmy freaking Carter was president? Like 80 or 90 or several hundred mass shootings ago?

We never think today is the right day to stand up to the National Rifle Association and the Gun Owners of America, but it’s always a fine day for multiple funerals.

And the first person who says, “If those little kids or the teachers had their own guns, this never would have happened,” is going to get blasted — verbally — by me. The answer to too many guns is not more guns.

Many Welcome Romney’s Victory as President of Amercia

Trish

amerciaStorify is among those chronicling the memes popping up after Mitt Romney’s new iPhone app misspelled the name of the country which Romney wants to run. And while we all wish him well on attaining the presidency of Amercia, we fervently hope he will never be the president of America.

Playing off the Obama campaign, which Romney just keeps doing, his team came up with a new tagline. You know how Obama asks, “Are you in?” Well Romney wants you to say you’re “With Mitt.” That this rhymes so closely with “nitwit” seems to have escaped Romney’s strategists.

You’re supposed to use the app to upload a picture of yourself and, choosing one of 14 pro-Mitt slogans provided, post it on Facebook or Pinterest or someplace else that people you know would enjoy seeing it.

That saying you’re “With Mitt” rhymes so closely with “nitwit” seems to have escaped Romney’s strategists

Romney’s folks are learning what is meant by the loss of control that goes with social media, as people are using the hashtag #Amercia on Twitter to provide such bon mots as:

  • If you’re applying for a job, and you misspell the name of the company you want to work for, you won’t get that job. #Amercia
  • Mitt Romney: wrong for wemon, wrong for minotiries, wrong for #Amercia.
  • Mitt’s gonna be holding an app designer down and cutting his hair today. #amercia

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Even (Neo) Conservatives are Tired of Low-Information Republicans

Trish

Conservative columnist and neocon Bush II speechwriter David Frum wrote recently that he is tired of being surrounded by dumb people. At least, that was basically the point of his article, “When Did the GOP Lose Touch with Reality?” in the November New York magazine.

On a recent CNN appearance, Frum tried to expand on the harmful affect of FOX News on American discourse although CNN’s Howard Kurtz seemed determine to err on the side of championing FOX.

Note: We wrote last year about the example Frum cites, a story that first surfaced broadly on the Drudge Report web site and was then taken up with fervor by FOX.