There's no change of subject going on here. Everything in this exchange has been about Aldean's song and how it reads in cultural context.
You 1) affirmatively contend that "the song and the video are about urban criminality and disrespectfulness," and 2) you also affirmatively contend that there is a particular association between the black urban population and urban criminality, 3) have by adoptive admission agreed that there is also a particular problem with black urban disrespectfulness, but 4) insist that the song lacks any subtext associating the things that you admit the song is about with black people.
And that's because other people commenting on the video, which you have not seen, have failed to mention racial imbalance in its portrayal of criminal activities.
If you won't see the connection yourself that your own words make obvious, can you at least understand why other people are making that connection?
Yes we are. Someone said "There is a problem with black urban criminality. The video and the song are about urban criminality and disrespectfulness." As between you and me, the person who said that wasn't me.
So I asked a question about whether disrepectfulness (particularly to police, as called out explicitly in the lyrics of the song) was something that also was associated with black people in urban settings.
It does not escape my notice that you dodged answering the question.
I think it's pretty well-understood that Aldean himself is a bro-country dude, the type of city boy with an immaculate hat and a fancy pickup truck with the dually rear axle whose flatbed has never held anything dirtier or heavier than a large-screen TV still in its box from the Sam's Club warehouse.
One such society was the United States of America, in particular the southeastern United States where the Aldean song is depicted in its video. We remember this most prominently during an era known as "Jim Crow," which took its name from a racially-stereotyped entertainment, but the era that came before that, the era of slavery, was even worse. And the laws and norms of that racial segregation were enforced with violence, not unlike the way Aldean threatens to enforce the social norms he associates with his [Southeastern American] small town.
Yes, as those kinds of crimes are associated in popular imagination with the kind of behavior black people, particularly young black men in cities, engage in but white people typically don't get associated with. You may recall a phenomenon called "wilding" associated with young black men in urban settings; this bears a startling resemblance to "sucker-punching somebody on the sidewalk." Indeed, I recall at least one prominent resident of a major U.S. city calling for the death penalty to be imposed upon five young black men for "wilding" and refusing to retract those remarks even after they were proven innocent, and then pretending to wonder why black people didn't vote for him when he ran for public office. Carjacking is statistically associated with race, with DOJ statistics demonstrating that young black men identified as perpetrators by victims at least four times disproportionate to their demographic percentage of population in society. Similar cultural perceptions apply to armed robbery of liquor stores. Not for nothing did the original version of the video include clips of BLM protests descending into violence. And shooting the video at the site of repeated lynchings was also a signal that was heard loud and clear.
I'll grant that the particular cultural offense of burning a U.S. flag is not directly associated with race itself, but other forms of failing to demonstrate traditional respect for patriotic iconography are. Most recently, kneeling during the national anthem.
And while cussing out a cop is not illegal, and stomping on or burning a flag is not only legal but Constitutionally-protected, it is an offense to cultural values held by the same sort of people who resented Colin Kaepernick and other black NFL players for kneeling during the anthem so much they burned their expensive sneakers and even-more-expensive season tickets and otherwise wet their pants to demonstrate how mad this failure to conform to their vision of patriotism made them. All of this occurred within recent living memory.
But I won't convince you of this. Doesn't matter what I write, cite, or refer to. Because it requires acknowledging that there is such a thing as "subtext," "innuendo," "implication," "historical context," or "nuance." And I'm sure that you'd tell a black person who reported being told to not be in certain places at certain times of day, or that they had fallen under heightened suspicion of criminality by authority figures, was surely just imagining it all. That Aldean's song touches those same cultural nerves along with its overt threat of group-on-individual violence for transgressing cultural norms is entirely a coincidence and not at all related in any way.
After all, the text doesn't mention race at all, and as we've established, there is no such thing as "subtext."
In order to buy here, you need to sit on this second-hand sofa next to this pleasant gentleman with teardrop tattoos and watch not less than twenty minutes of "Faces of Death" before announcing your intention to purchase our products. When he announces that he trusts you, an associate will assist you further. Please be aware that he does not respond well to the nickname "Tiny."
There have been only a handful of celebrity deaths that have really struck me emotionally. Sinéad O’Connor's is now one of them.
Maybe it's that she is nearly my age. And a very pretty Irish lass, a type of person for whom I admit I've a bit of a weakness. So I feel some affinity.
Maybe it's that she was such a lightning rod for emotions and controversies and even though she was vindicated, she never ever got an apology. So I feel an injustice will never be remedied.
Maybe it's that she wore her own emotions and angers and hopes and morality so prominently on her sleeve. And her mental health struggles in the last act of her life were so visibly profound and painful. So the rush of biography inspires a powerful empathy.
Maybe it's all of these. It's for damn sure that she was what an artist ought to be. Honest. Provocative. Uncompromising. Talented. A life filled with such pain, such achievement, such a fall, such power. Ended now, gone. There will be more artists in our future, but there will never again be that moment of pure artistic power as when she tore up that photograph of the pope.
Aldean has repeatedly denied that the song was racist or “pro lynching,” and during a concert over the weekend he fired back at the critics.
“I love our country,” he said. “I want to see it restored to what it once was before all of this (expletive) started happening to us. I love my country, I love my family and I will do anything to protect that, I can tell you that right now.”
The crowd ate it up and broke into a “USA” chant.
To which I have to ask (referencing the bolded portion of Aldean's comment): "What exactly is the (expletive) that started happening to us that you're upset about?" I'm willing to bet that Aldean would pause a good long moment to choose his words very carefully if he were put on the spot to answer that question.
Whatever that (expletive) is Aldean was talking about, can we legitimately and fairly separate said (expletive) from race?
Echoing Ken. What I wrote responding to Dark Matter above was from memory based on numerous reports, many from various bar associations and legal societies, providing apologia for the "McDonald's Hot Coffee Case." If there's evidence that the plaintiff's lawyer fabricated this evidence I'd be very interested in learning of that. But I also am skeptical -- the same folks who pushed the "litigation madness" urban myth would have an obvious interest in making it known that the plaintiff's lawyer had Just Made It All Up. And this isn't a usual part of the myth.
Respectfully although admittedly pedantically, coffee is neither made with actually-boiling water nor served at the boiling point of water.
Water's boiling point is 212 degrees. At this point, small bubbles of the liquid vaporize as steam into the solution and rise as bubbles. Actually boiling water causes second degree burns with only a few seconds' contact with skin, and prolonged contact can cause third degree burns (the difference between second and third degree burns is that the necrotization of tissue penetrates through the skin into muscles beneath).
A lot of coffee snobs and trade associations advise against using actually boiling (212 degree) water for a typical drip-through-the-grounds coffee maker because doing so releases too much tannic acid into the coffee and creates a stronger-than-desirable (for most people) bitter flavor. Many describe this flavor as "metallic."
So most modern coffee makers heat water to 192 degrees, 20 degrees shy of boiling. Still plenty hot; drinking it will painfully damage the more delicate and less covered tissues of your gums, cheeks, and soft palate. But a carafe of coffee sitting on an activated heating element in a Mr. Coffee maker or something similar is not typically observed to be actually boiling -- there are no bubbles of vapor percolating to the surface of the liquid.
As we learned in the Liebeck case, McDonald's used large commercial coffee makers, which had been set by the manufacturer for 192 degrees. But McDonald's sent out instructions to its restaurants to take the machines apart and use small screwdrivers to re-set the heating element controls to raise that temperature to 202 degrees -- 7 degrees shy of actually boiling. They did this for purely mercenary reasons: to sell more coffee and more Egg McMuffins along with the coffee.
And as we learned, Stella Liebeck was not the first person to report being badly burned by coffee from these altered-from-manufacturer-spec machines: she was more like the sixth hundredth person to report such burns. The process of receiving this many reports of this many people being hurt by the unusually hot coffee took months.
So it's not surprising that a jury not only felt sorry for Stella Liebeck, who as you point out had second- and third-degree burns on her genitals from it, but it seems very likely that the jury also felt righteous moral outrage at McDonald's. Her medical bills and pain and suffering were valued by the jury at $200,000, and the jury awarded 20% comparative negligence on Ms. Liebeck for putting the coffee between her legs in the first place, so her compensatory damages were $160,000.
The remaining $2.7 million was punitive damages and those were reduced to $480,000 on McDonald's successful motion for remittitur. Punitive damages are not supposed to have anything to do with compensating the plaintiff, they are to punish the defendant's bad behavior and deter the defendant and others similarly situated from engaging in similar conduct in the future.
McDonald's does not still serve coffee at the same temperature as it did before the Liebeck case. McDonald's coffee is [supposed to be] 192 degrees, just like what your coffee maker at home will give you. Do individual operators still tinker with temperature? I'd not doubt it, but if so, it's at their own peril. Corporate won't be held responsible for a franchisee defying corporate's instructions and the franchisee is required to indemnify corporate in such an instance.
These seem like pretty standard sorts of post-conviction release terms to me. (As suggested by the fact that they're all on a preprinted standardized form.)
My biggest worry about Oppenheimer was that it would apothoeize the man. I'm okay with showing up a few good facets of his character and I'm very okay with highlighting the moral debate about using atomic weaponry at all. I just feared walking out of the theater with some rosy picture of the man who did more than anyone else to transform the postwar years into decades of nuclear terror.
Several previews of the movie suggested that Ken is the butt of various jokes, and hinted that we'd eventually come to feel sorry for him for being left out of all the cool things Barbie does with her Barbie friends. I thought he'd turn into an antagonist because of that and Barbie would Learn A Valuable Lesson About Inclusiveness because Ken deserves to be treated well too even though Girls Do All The Things, thus all the fragile male egos exhibiting butthurt. But, this may be a more clever move by the writers, and if Ken winds up being the one who Learns A Valuable Lesson after his Import-the-Patriarchy move, that explains the degree of Fragile Male Ego Butthurt that's been on display.
Hey, I kind of dig Obama's playlist! You all may know Michael Kiwanuka's song from Big Little Lies (which is really good) but all his stuff is soulful like that. And if you haven't heart The War and Treaty before, now is a good time to start. Great voices. Saw 'em last year at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival and was blown away. Tremendous.
I also think that he's getting a lot of pushback from the police and old-school lifers at the DA's office, because he's a "progressive prosecutor." Which means in practice that he directs his staff attorneys to search for non-carcereal sentences for "morals" crimes or offenses that aren't violent or property crimes. He also directs his staff attorneys to take defendants' rights seriously while going about their jobs. How well those instructions are followed is kind of an open question about which my criminal defense colleagues are skeptical.
For instance, the defendant in this case was previously charged wit assault on a different man, but those charges were dismissed. They were originally filed as misdemeanors. But in the indictment for the assault on Consul General Yushioka, they're back, and this time as felonies. (Turns out there's a separate criminal charge for strangulation, which is something I first learned out when I was Today Years Old.)
And lest I throw gasoline onto fires burning elsewhere, the defendant here is listed on official records as female, but the arrest report contains a line "Dresses like a boy, identifies as a male, slim build, short hair style." So in addition to being African-American in the clutches of the Portland Police Bureau, there's that too. Delightful.
Because it is the party of shamelessness, I don't see BSDI as a problem for the GOP at all. (Not really for the Dems, either, although perhaps just a bit more of a problem there, because some Democrats still possess the gene that enables the human limbic system to produce the brain hormones responsible for the "shame" emotion.)
Nor have I noticed the criminal status of anything Hunter Biden has done slow the GOP and the appurtenant media machine down one bit. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of low-information conservatives who have been quite convinced by what they see and hear repeated every day on FOX News that Hunter Biden is the greatest criminal to roam the nation since Al Capone, and maybe worse because he's personally his father's agent and authorized bagman. There is zero evidence for it and the GOP's star (and in fact only) witness for this purported link between President Biden and his ne'er-do-well son turned out to have been a thoroughly corrupted Chinese spy, but again, this needn't slow down application of the tar brush at all.
But I basically agree with you on #1 and #3. And #3 is not a salable pitch outside of the unpersuadably Trumpy segment of the conservabubble.
The Consul General was attacked at Park Avenue and Oak Street. This is only a few blocks from my office. There are two notable things right at that corner.
On the southwest corner of that block is the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Center, which was only recently built and opened* to provide mental health services for the unhoused. As a result, this building attracts the people who have some of the hardest mental illness in the region; these are the people I sometimes comment about "shouting at lampposts." These folks are the ones who really do shout at lampposts, no joke.
On the northwest corner of that intersection is a very small park that backs up to an alley which was a well-known spot for purchasing recreational narcotics from an unregulated street dealer. They'd hang out in the alley next to this bodega which in turn was next to the oldest strip club in the city. The City convinced the strip club to relocate a few blocks away, sent in the cops to chase out all the dealers, and cleaned the plaza up. Now there are about eight food carts and the park is suitable for regular folks to find a picnic table and enjoy their lunches there. Once in a while a busker shows up and plays music. A converted London double-decker bus offers beer, wine, and canned cocktails if you're so inclined. It's become quite pleasant there since the City cleaned up "Bodega Alley."
I often go to this cluster of food carts for lunch. I'm willing to bet the Consul General was doing exactly that too; it's the likeliest reason a visiting dignitary would be in that exact spot. And I have a moment's pause considering that -- because were any of you to come to visit Portland, I'd have not hesitated to recommend that you go to this, my local lunch spot, patronize whichever one of the carts looked best to you, and enjoy a lunch in the park. Never mind the odd houseless folks, they're mostly harmless.
As it turns out, I may need to put a bit more emphasis on the "mostly" in that statement.
Oh, and per the article, the suspect was arrested in the nearby "U.S. Bancorp Building." No one calls it that. Everyone calls it "Big Pink." Yes, we know. That's part of the joke.
* ... And then closed and re-opened but that's a WHOLE different story.
Sometimes I think the idea that there will be two tracks of education -- one of them unremittingly critical, one of them bowdlerized by the privileged -- is the worst thing about what the culture wars are doing to our country, by sowing the seeds of a complete intellectual disconnect between the people of our futures. We simply aren't going to be able to talk to each other if half of us grew up thinking that slavery was the equivalent of working some unpaid hours to gain experience, skills, and networking opportunities.
Other times I think that no, the worst thing is how DYSTOPIAN the bowdlerized education track is. The critical educational track at least is based on verifiable historical facts and contains an implication that we should try to do better, and really can only be faulted for its unambiguity about the violent, exploitative behavior of Our Awful Ancestors.
In any event, this latest bit from Florida? Naught save tears will result from it.
On “No, I Will Not Try That or Even Go to Your Small Town”
There's no change of subject going on here. Everything in this exchange has been about Aldean's song and how it reads in cultural context.
You 1) affirmatively contend that "the song and the video are about urban criminality and disrespectfulness," and 2) you also affirmatively contend that there is a particular association between the black urban population and urban criminality, 3) have by adoptive admission agreed that there is also a particular problem with black urban disrespectfulness, but 4) insist that the song lacks any subtext associating the things that you admit the song is about with black people.
And that's because other people commenting on the video, which you have not seen, have failed to mention racial imbalance in its portrayal of criminal activities.
If you won't see the connection yourself that your own words make obvious, can you at least understand why other people are making that connection?
"
Yes we are. Someone said "There is a problem with black urban criminality. The video and the song are about urban criminality and disrespectfulness." As between you and me, the person who said that wasn't me.
So I asked a question about whether disrepectfulness (particularly to police, as called out explicitly in the lyrics of the song) was something that also was associated with black people in urban settings.
It does not escape my notice that you dodged answering the question.
On “An Unforced Error in a Small Town”
I think it's pretty well-understood that Aldean himself is a bro-country dude, the type of city boy with an immaculate hat and a fancy pickup truck with the dually rear axle whose flatbed has never held anything dirtier or heavier than a large-screen TV still in its box from the Sam's Club warehouse.
On “No, I Will Not Try That or Even Go to Your Small Town”
Is there a problem with black urban disrespectfulness? Particularly towards law enforcement?
"
One such society was the United States of America, in particular the southeastern United States where the Aldean song is depicted in its video. We remember this most prominently during an era known as "Jim Crow," which took its name from a racially-stereotyped entertainment, but the era that came before that, the era of slavery, was even worse. And the laws and norms of that racial segregation were enforced with violence, not unlike the way Aldean threatens to enforce the social norms he associates with his [Southeastern American] small town.
"
Yes, as those kinds of crimes are associated in popular imagination with the kind of behavior black people, particularly young black men in cities, engage in but white people typically don't get associated with. You may recall a phenomenon called "wilding" associated with young black men in urban settings; this bears a startling resemblance to "sucker-punching somebody on the sidewalk." Indeed, I recall at least one prominent resident of a major U.S. city calling for the death penalty to be imposed upon five young black men for "wilding" and refusing to retract those remarks even after they were proven innocent, and then pretending to wonder why black people didn't vote for him when he ran for public office. Carjacking is statistically associated with race, with DOJ statistics demonstrating that young black men identified as perpetrators by victims at least four times disproportionate to their demographic percentage of population in society. Similar cultural perceptions apply to armed robbery of liquor stores. Not for nothing did the original version of the video include clips of BLM protests descending into violence. And shooting the video at the site of repeated lynchings was also a signal that was heard loud and clear.
I'll grant that the particular cultural offense of burning a U.S. flag is not directly associated with race itself, but other forms of failing to demonstrate traditional respect for patriotic iconography are. Most recently, kneeling during the national anthem.
And while cussing out a cop is not illegal, and stomping on or burning a flag is not only legal but Constitutionally-protected, it is an offense to cultural values held by the same sort of people who resented Colin Kaepernick and other black NFL players for kneeling during the anthem so much they burned their expensive sneakers and even-more-expensive season tickets and otherwise wet their pants to demonstrate how mad this failure to conform to their vision of patriotism made them. All of this occurred within recent living memory.
But I won't convince you of this. Doesn't matter what I write, cite, or refer to. Because it requires acknowledging that there is such a thing as "subtext," "innuendo," "implication," "historical context," or "nuance." And I'm sure that you'd tell a black person who reported being told to not be in certain places at certain times of day, or that they had fallen under heightened suspicion of criminality by authority figures, was surely just imagining it all. That Aldean's song touches those same cultural nerves along with its overt threat of group-on-individual violence for transgressing cultural norms is entirely a coincidence and not at all related in any way.
After all, the text doesn't mention race at all, and as we've established, there is no such thing as "subtext."
On “From Reuters: Mastercard moves to ban cannabis purchases on its debit cards”
In order to buy here, you need to sit on this second-hand sofa next to this pleasant gentleman with teardrop tattoos and watch not less than twenty minutes of "Faces of Death" before announcing your intention to purchase our products. When he announces that he trusts you, an associate will assist you further. Please be aware that he does not respond well to the nickname "Tiny."
On “This Ain’t The Sinéad O’Connor Obituary The World Wants To Read”
There have been only a handful of celebrity deaths that have really struck me emotionally. Sinéad O’Connor's is now one of them.
Maybe it's that she is nearly my age. And a very pretty Irish lass, a type of person for whom I admit I've a bit of a weakness. So I feel some affinity.
Maybe it's that she was such a lightning rod for emotions and controversies and even though she was vindicated, she never ever got an apology. So I feel an injustice will never be remedied.
Maybe it's that she wore her own emotions and angers and hopes and morality so prominently on her sleeve. And her mental health struggles in the last act of her life were so visibly profound and painful. So the rush of biography inspires a powerful empathy.
Maybe it's all of these. It's for damn sure that she was what an artist ought to be. Honest. Provocative. Uncompromising. Talented. A life filled with such pain, such achievement, such a fall, such power. Ended now, gone. There will be more artists in our future, but there will never again be that moment of pure artistic power as when she tore up that photograph of the pope.
On “No, I Will Not Try That or Even Go to Your Small Town”
From the linked article (boldface added):
To which I have to ask (referencing the bolded portion of Aldean's comment): "What exactly is the (expletive) that started happening to us that you're upset about?" I'm willing to bet that Aldean would pause a good long moment to choose his words very carefully if he were put on the spot to answer that question.
Whatever that (expletive) is Aldean was talking about, can we legitimately and fairly separate said (expletive) from race?
On “The $800K McNugget: A Legal Discussion”
Echoing Ken. What I wrote responding to Dark Matter above was from memory based on numerous reports, many from various bar associations and legal societies, providing apologia for the "McDonald's Hot Coffee Case." If there's evidence that the plaintiff's lawyer fabricated this evidence I'd be very interested in learning of that. But I also am skeptical -- the same folks who pushed the "litigation madness" urban myth would have an obvious interest in making it known that the plaintiff's lawyer had Just Made It All Up. And this isn't a usual part of the myth.
"
Respectfully although admittedly pedantically, coffee is neither made with actually-boiling water nor served at the boiling point of water.
Water's boiling point is 212 degrees. At this point, small bubbles of the liquid vaporize as steam into the solution and rise as bubbles. Actually boiling water causes second degree burns with only a few seconds' contact with skin, and prolonged contact can cause third degree burns (the difference between second and third degree burns is that the necrotization of tissue penetrates through the skin into muscles beneath).
A lot of coffee snobs and trade associations advise against using actually boiling (212 degree) water for a typical drip-through-the-grounds coffee maker because doing so releases too much tannic acid into the coffee and creates a stronger-than-desirable (for most people) bitter flavor. Many describe this flavor as "metallic."
So most modern coffee makers heat water to 192 degrees, 20 degrees shy of boiling. Still plenty hot; drinking it will painfully damage the more delicate and less covered tissues of your gums, cheeks, and soft palate. But a carafe of coffee sitting on an activated heating element in a Mr. Coffee maker or something similar is not typically observed to be actually boiling -- there are no bubbles of vapor percolating to the surface of the liquid.
As we learned in the Liebeck case, McDonald's used large commercial coffee makers, which had been set by the manufacturer for 192 degrees. But McDonald's sent out instructions to its restaurants to take the machines apart and use small screwdrivers to re-set the heating element controls to raise that temperature to 202 degrees -- 7 degrees shy of actually boiling. They did this for purely mercenary reasons: to sell more coffee and more Egg McMuffins along with the coffee.
And as we learned, Stella Liebeck was not the first person to report being badly burned by coffee from these altered-from-manufacturer-spec machines: she was more like the sixth hundredth person to report such burns. The process of receiving this many reports of this many people being hurt by the unusually hot coffee took months.
So it's not surprising that a jury not only felt sorry for Stella Liebeck, who as you point out had second- and third-degree burns on her genitals from it, but it seems very likely that the jury also felt righteous moral outrage at McDonald's. Her medical bills and pain and suffering were valued by the jury at $200,000, and the jury awarded 20% comparative negligence on Ms. Liebeck for putting the coffee between her legs in the first place, so her compensatory damages were $160,000.
The remaining $2.7 million was punitive damages and those were reduced to $480,000 on McDonald's successful motion for remittitur. Punitive damages are not supposed to have anything to do with compensating the plaintiff, they are to punish the defendant's bad behavior and deter the defendant and others similarly situated from engaging in similar conduct in the future.
McDonald's does not still serve coffee at the same temperature as it did before the Liebeck case. McDonald's coffee is [supposed to be] 192 degrees, just like what your coffee maker at home will give you. Do individual operators still tinker with temperature? I'd not doubt it, but if so, it's at their own peril. Corporate won't be held responsible for a franchisee defying corporate's instructions and the franchisee is required to indemnify corporate in such an instance.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/24/2023”
Do we know that for sure?
"
These seem like pretty standard sorts of post-conviction release terms to me. (As suggested by the fact that they're all on a preprinted standardized form.)
"
A gorgeous voice, a beautiful soul, and one of the bravest people to grace the public scene in our lifetimes.
This is another celebrity death that kind of shakes me.
On “Ten Things I Think After Watching Oppenheimer”
My biggest worry about Oppenheimer was that it would apothoeize the man. I'm okay with showing up a few good facets of his character and I'm very okay with highlighting the moral debate about using atomic weaponry at all. I just feared walking out of the theater with some rosy picture of the man who did more than anyone else to transform the postwar years into decades of nuclear terror.
On “It’s Barbie’s World!”
Several previews of the movie suggested that Ken is the butt of various jokes, and hinted that we'd eventually come to feel sorry for him for being left out of all the cool things Barbie does with her Barbie friends. I thought he'd turn into an antagonist because of that and Barbie would Learn A Valuable Lesson About Inclusiveness because Ken deserves to be treated well too even though Girls Do All The Things, thus all the fragile male egos exhibiting butthurt. But, this may be a more clever move by the writers, and if Ken winds up being the one who Learns A Valuable Lesson after his Import-the-Patriarchy move, that explains the degree of Fragile Male Ego Butthurt that's been on display.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/17/2023”
Hey, I kind of dig Obama's playlist! You all may know Michael Kiwanuka's song from Big Little Lies (which is really good) but all his stuff is soulful like that. And if you haven't heart The War and Treaty before, now is a good time to start. Great voices. Saw 'em last year at the Portland Waterfront Blues Festival and was blown away. Tremendous.
"
I think he's good at his job.
I also think that he's getting a lot of pushback from the police and old-school lifers at the DA's office, because he's a "progressive prosecutor." Which means in practice that he directs his staff attorneys to search for non-carcereal sentences for "morals" crimes or offenses that aren't violent or property crimes. He also directs his staff attorneys to take defendants' rights seriously while going about their jobs. How well those instructions are followed is kind of an open question about which my criminal defense colleagues are skeptical.
For instance, the defendant in this case was previously charged wit assault on a different man, but those charges were dismissed. They were originally filed as misdemeanors. But in the indictment for the assault on Consul General Yushioka, they're back, and this time as felonies. (Turns out there's a separate criminal charge for strangulation, which is something I first learned out when I was Today Years Old.)
And lest I throw gasoline onto fires burning elsewhere, the defendant here is listed on official records as female, but the arrest report contains a line "Dresses like a boy, identifies as a male, slim build, short hair style." So in addition to being African-American in the clutches of the Portland Police Bureau, there's that too. Delightful.
On “Whether Hunter, Wither Biden, Wether GOP Theories”
Because it is the party of shamelessness, I don't see BSDI as a problem for the GOP at all. (Not really for the Dems, either, although perhaps just a bit more of a problem there, because some Democrats still possess the gene that enables the human limbic system to produce the brain hormones responsible for the "shame" emotion.)
Nor have I noticed the criminal status of anything Hunter Biden has done slow the GOP and the appurtenant media machine down one bit. There are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of low-information conservatives who have been quite convinced by what they see and hear repeated every day on FOX News that Hunter Biden is the greatest criminal to roam the nation since Al Capone, and maybe worse because he's personally his father's agent and authorized bagman. There is zero evidence for it and the GOP's star (and in fact only) witness for this purported link between President Biden and his ne'er-do-well son turned out to have been a thoroughly corrupted Chinese spy, but again, this needn't slow down application of the tar brush at all.
But I basically agree with you on #1 and #3. And #3 is not a salable pitch outside of the unpersuadably Trumpy segment of the conservabubble.
On “Open Mic for the week of 7/17/2023”
Some on the ground local context:
The Consul General was attacked at Park Avenue and Oak Street. This is only a few blocks from my office. There are two notable things right at that corner.
On the southwest corner of that block is the Multnomah County Behavioral Health Center, which was only recently built and opened* to provide mental health services for the unhoused. As a result, this building attracts the people who have some of the hardest mental illness in the region; these are the people I sometimes comment about "shouting at lampposts." These folks are the ones who really do shout at lampposts, no joke.
On the northwest corner of that intersection is a very small park that backs up to an alley which was a well-known spot for purchasing recreational narcotics from an unregulated street dealer. They'd hang out in the alley next to this bodega which in turn was next to the oldest strip club in the city. The City convinced the strip club to relocate a few blocks away, sent in the cops to chase out all the dealers, and cleaned the plaza up. Now there are about eight food carts and the park is suitable for regular folks to find a picnic table and enjoy their lunches there. Once in a while a busker shows up and plays music. A converted London double-decker bus offers beer, wine, and canned cocktails if you're so inclined. It's become quite pleasant there since the City cleaned up "Bodega Alley."
I often go to this cluster of food carts for lunch. I'm willing to bet the Consul General was doing exactly that too; it's the likeliest reason a visiting dignitary would be in that exact spot. And I have a moment's pause considering that -- because were any of you to come to visit Portland, I'd have not hesitated to recommend that you go to this, my local lunch spot, patronize whichever one of the carts looked best to you, and enjoy a lunch in the park. Never mind the odd houseless folks, they're mostly harmless.
As it turns out, I may need to put a bit more emphasis on the "mostly" in that statement.
Oh, and per the article, the suspect was arrested in the nearby "U.S. Bancorp Building." No one calls it that. Everyone calls it "Big Pink." Yes, we know. That's part of the joke.
* ... And then closed and re-opened but that's a WHOLE different story.
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Sometimes I think the idea that there will be two tracks of education -- one of them unremittingly critical, one of them bowdlerized by the privileged -- is the worst thing about what the culture wars are doing to our country, by sowing the seeds of a complete intellectual disconnect between the people of our futures. We simply aren't going to be able to talk to each other if half of us grew up thinking that slavery was the equivalent of working some unpaid hours to gain experience, skills, and networking opportunities.
Other times I think that no, the worst thing is how DYSTOPIAN the bowdlerized education track is. The critical educational track at least is based on verifiable historical facts and contains an implication that we should try to do better, and really can only be faulted for its unambiguity about the violent, exploitative behavior of Our Awful Ancestors.
In any event, this latest bit from Florida? Naught save tears will result from it.
On “Rule of Tod Video Playback: Campaign Silly Season Edition”
I'm old enough to remember the Fleeting Celebrity of Marcia Clark.
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[Rot6 and Rot 7] These people have lost their goddamned minds.
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[Rot2] This is simply brilliant.
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[Rot1] I hope most people here do not need to be convinced that RFKjr is not someone to be taken seriously, at least on an intellectual or factual level. But just in case, you might want to check out RFK Jr. Announces Bold Plan to Back Dollar With Bitcoin, End Bitcoin Taxes and Robert Kennedy Jr’s racist, antisemitic and xenophobic views go back decades and if that's not enough then as always, you should follow the money because it will tell you who and what his candidacy is intended to benefit.