Open thread. Have at it!
From Overnight to the Outer Limits: Space X Launch Coming UpPost + Comments (28)
by Adam L Silverman| 28 Comments
This post is in: Because of wow., Open Threads
Open thread. Have at it!
From Overnight to the Outer Limits: Space X Launch Coming UpPost + Comments (28)
This post is in: Hail to the Hairpiece, Open Threads, Republican Stupidity, Assholes, Our Failed Media Experiment
Because nothing says 'man of the people, fighter for the little guy' than sitting on your golden throne. #TrumpPence pic.twitter.com/RWFC6lXiIH
— The Baxter Bean (@TheBaxterBean) July 17, 2016
Personally, I think Michael Douglas and Matt Damon did this better in the first version. pic.twitter.com/HB2zSkqVdR
— Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) July 17, 2016
The eagerness to accept a complete overhaul of *who Trump is* as long as it’s savvy-fied as a “pivot” is a sickness. pic.twitter.com/cfhzvDMw7x
— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) July 17, 2016
“Authenticity is everything! Flip-flops are sins!”
“Our racist demagogue might start pretending to be sane. It’s a ‘pivot.’”
“Oooh! Savvy!”— Jamison Foser (@jamisonfoser) July 17, 2016
Open Thread: Not All Is Gold That GlistersPost + Comments (221)
by Hillary Rettig| 59 Comments
This post is in: Climate Change, Faunasphere
I thought we were at the end of all the dreadfulness for one week, but apparently not. For a change of pace, perhaps this news from New Zealand—lovely home of hobbits and Na’vi, not to mention the Notorious RBG’s chosen anti-Trumpian refuge—will interest and delight:
A former national park has been granted personhood, and a river system is expected to receive the same soon. The unusual designations, something like the legal status that corporations possess, came out of agreements between New Zealand’s government and Maori groups. The two sides have argued for years over guardianship of the country’s natural features….
The park is Te Urewera, and the river, Whanganui (NZ’s third largest). The proximate goal is, “that lawsuits to protect the land can be brought on behalf of the land itself, with no need to show harm to a particular human.” More broadly, the hope is that the legal concepts of nonhuman rights and personhood will be strong tools in the fights against climate change, mass extinction, and other forms of ecocide.
The idea that ecological features merit consideration in the legal and social sphere is both cutting-edge and incredibly ancient:
The unusual designations, something like the legal status that corporations possess, came out of agreements between New Zealand’s government and Maori groups. The two sides have argued for years over guardianship of the country’s natural features.
Chris Finlayson, New Zealand’s attorney general, said the issue was resolved by taking the Maori mind-set into account. “In their worldview, ‘I am the river and the river is me,’” he said. “Their geographic region is part and parcel of who they are.”…
“The settlement is a profound alternative to the human presumption of sovereignty over the natural world,” said Pita Sharples, who was the minister of Maori affairs when the law was passed.
In her brilliant book This Changes Everything, Naomi Klein focuses on indigenous communities as key players in the fight against climate change: “What is changing is that many non-Native people are starting to realize that indigenous rights—if aggressively backed by court challenges, direct action, and mass movements demanding that they be respected—may now represent the most powerful barriers protecting all of us from a future of climate chaos.” (Also, check out the schedule for 2016 Bioneers—lots of events focusing on indigenous cultures and strategies.)
New Zealand isn’t even the first! Bolivia and Ecuador have already granted rights to nature (called “wild law”). These laws lack specifics, though, and it’s not clear whether they have any teeth. (Bolivia’s law, for instance, hasn’t stopped oil company depredations.) Still, even if a “wild law” is just a symbol, it’s a powerful and potentially game-changing one.
NZ’s laws are honest-to-gosh enforceable laws-with-teeth. (And the article reports that NZ is in discussion with Canada, which is considering similar ones.)
Meanwhile, there are also multiple legal efforts to grant personhood status to select nonhumans, especially great apes. The most famous effort here in the U.S. is the Nonhuman Rights Project, of which I’m a proud long-time supporter. A new film about their work, Unlocking the Cage, has just been released by celebrated filmmakers D A Pennebaker (Don’t Look Back) and Chris Hegedus (The War Room). Check it out!
Other countries, including Argentina, Balearic Islands, Germany, New Zealand, Spain, and Switzerland, have passed strong animal-welfare legislation guaranteeing great apes and other species life, liberty, a decent standard of care, and/or the freedom to use one’s natural capacities. These are not, strictly speaking, “rights” laws, but they do provide a strong foundation for them.
Obviously, as forests, rivers, and nonhumans gain real rights, others lose the right to exploit them. And some good people, including veterinarians, dog groomers, and pet sitters, will have to proceed more carefully since, if they screw up, we’re no longer just talking about property damage, but actual pain and suffering incurred by individuals. (Ten years ago, a groomer told me that this was already a big concern in her industry.)
On the other hand, nonhuman personhood will make things MUCH tougher for animal abusers, as a ruling last month in Oregon demonstrated. (Again, we’re not yet talking about rights but a strong move in that direction.)
In a blurb for Unlocking the Cage, Jon Stewart (yeah, that one—he now runs a farmed animal sanctuary) says the movie makes him, “proud to be a primate.” Me, too! We humans do an awful lot of bad things to each other and other species, but I hope you agree that there are times we shine. We can be repositories not just of order in an entropically accelerating universe, but of compassion and generosity in an often heartless one.
The issue of rights for nonhuman entities is obviously profound, with vast implications. So what say you, Juicers? How would it affect you or those you know personally? When you answer, please consider the way we discuss our animal friends on this site. Do we discuss Steve, Rosie, Thurston, Lovey, Max, etc.–not to mention, the late, great (in every sense of the word!) Tunch–as if they were “things” or “people?”
Looking forward to your ideas…
Rights for Forests, Rivers, and NonhumansPost + Comments (59)
This post is in: Excellent Links, Hail to the Hairpiece, Post-racial America, Republican Stupidity, Republican Venality, Nobody could have predicted
The Rodney King beating, the OJ trial and "Friends" were "racially divisive." The Trump campaign is just plain old racist!
— Jamelle Bouie (@jbouie) July 17, 2016
The Grey Lady goes… as close to there as its recurrent fulminating BothSides fever will permit (and no sooner than time):
… [A]mid gloom about Republican prospects in November, Mr. Trump may have endangered the party in a more lasting way: by forging a coalition of white voters driven primarily by themes of hard-right nationalism and cultural identity.
Republicans have wrestled for years with the push and pull of seeking to win over new groups of voters while tending to their overwhelmingly white and conservative base. Now, Mr. Trump’s candidacy may force them into making a fateful choice: whether to fully embrace the Trump model and become, effectively, a party of white identity politics, or to pursue a broader political coalition by repudiating Mr. Trump’s ideas — and many of the voters he has gathered behind his campaign.…
In order to build a winning party again, some Republican leaders say, the party will have to disavow Mr. Trump’s exclusionary message, even at the price of driving away voters at the core of the Republican base — perhaps a third or more of the party.
This approach would amount to a highly risky lurch away from the faction that made Mr. Trump the Republican nominee, and toward a community of female, Latino and Asian voters who have never been reliable Republicans. Should the effort falter, and Republicans fail to win a second look from these Democratic-leaning groups, they could find themselves stranded with virtually no base at all.
If they are divided over the proper course forward, Republican leaders agree that a wrenching struggle is coming.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan predicted that the aftermath of the election would bring “a fight for the soul of our party,” and said Republicans would have to reject the politics of racial resentment, which he called “a loser.”
“Our job is not to preach to a shrinking choir; it’s to win converts,” said Mr. Ryan, who has endorsed Mr. Trump but criticizes his pronouncements with regularity…
The appeal of a Trump-like message may go beyond even the share of primary voters that Mr. Trump captured: Exit polls found solid majorities of Republican primary voters supportive of his pledge to block Muslims from entering the country. In the general election, polls show most voters oppose that plan…
Mr. Trump’s approach is an alluring path to prominence on the right: Already, a handful of up-and-coming Republicans from the party’s conservative wing have moved to court his core voters. Some have argued his message could be more potent in the hands of a less flawed messenger.
Mr. Pence, who sharply criticized some of Mr. Trump’s proposals in the Republican primary race, campaigned hard to join his ticket in the general election.
Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas, a first-term lawmaker who has taken steps toward a future presidential race, argued that the party should be prepared to go further than Mr. Trump and propose new restrictions on even legal immigration…
Speaking of Speaker Ryan:
There's something about this photo, I can't quite place it… pic.twitter.com/ZahcIHHTva
— Igor Bobic (@igorbobic) July 17, 2016
Donald “Racially Divisive” Trump: Oh Look There Is An Elephant in the Room!Post + Comments (152)
by Adam L Silverman| 120 Comments
This post is in: Open Threads
Joy Ann Reid of MSNBC/NBC, via her twitter, as well as CBS News, is reporting that the shooter has been identified as Gavin Eugene Long, 29 years old (today was his birthday), from Kansas City, MO. Reid is reporting that he may have ties to the sovereign citizens movement.
Update at 5:00 PM EDT
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Gavin Eugene Long is affiliated with an anti-government group. I’m withholding the name being reported as every hit I get on a key word search for it simply brings up Alcoholics Anonymous organizations.
President Obama is expected to address the Nation momentarily:
President’s Remarks on Baton Rouge Police ShootingPost + Comments (120)
This post is in: Ammosexuals, Assholes
Not sure how complete the overlap would be on this one, but if we took a solar eclipse as our diagram generator, I’m pretty sure you’d see a corona around this guy:*
The shooting in Baton Rouge took place as protesters and Republicans were arriving in Cleveland for the party’s national convention. Steve Thacker, 57, of Westlake, Ohio, stood in Cleveland’s Public Square on Sunday holding a semiautomatic AR-15-style assault rifle as news broke that several officers had been killed in Baton Rouge.
After the shooting in Dallas, Stephen Loomis, the president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen’s Association, urged people not to take their guns anywhere near Cleveland’s downtown during the convention because officers were already in a “heightened state.”
When asked about Mr. Loomis’s comments and the Baton Rouge shooting, Mr. Thacker said despite the shooting, he wanted to make a statement and show that people can continue to openly carry their weapons.
“I pose no threat to anyone. I’m an American citizen. I’ve never been in trouble for anything,” Mr. Thacker, an information technology engineer, said. “This is my time to come out and put my two cents worth in, albeit that it is a very strong statement.”
Dear Mr. Thacker,
Let me see if I can explain this in words which even an information technology engineer can understand.
Just because you say you are not a threat doesn’t make it so. To everyone but you, you are a guy with a tool for mass murder standing in the street for no apparent reason…which makes you, as seen from outside the eternal sunshine of the inside of your head, a threat to every person in your line of sight. That you think you are a good person puts you alongside just about every self-justifiying shooter.
We do know that the best possible gloss on your actions is that you’re a bully. Guns are tools of intimidation as well as physical violence. That you would show up heavily armed in public spaces suggests you think it’s part of civic life to scare your neighbors. There’s a word for people like that, or rather many, of which the most mild is “asshole.”
And, forgive me for being so blunt, but you’re not just an asshole. You’re an imbecile too. Guns are, of course, both weapons and target designators. Anything goes wrong during the convention — anything — and you’re a man with a gun in a chaotic situation. How is the federal sniper on the rooftop to know who you might be aiming at? Dumb is as dumb does.
Here’s the kindest advice I can muster: go home. Put your freedom-wand penis-extension away. With rights come responsibilities, and one of the most often ignored is the duty not to be a putz.
Try it.
*Yeah, that’s a ridiculously tortured metaphor, but it’s that kind of day.
Image: Ferdinand Bol, Archer Unit, militia led by Colonel Govert Suys, 1653
by Adam L Silverman| 52 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Open Threads, Our Failed Media Experiment
As valued commenter CMM has reminded us in comments to the previous thread, most law enforcement officers are good people that do a lot of good things that don’t get a lot of press attention. I saw this story earlier this week and had meant to put it up as a late night/early morning feel good open thread, but the events of the past three or four days have overtaken things a bit. So here’s the story:
Police in Barnesville, GA responded to a report of someone sleeping in a tent outside of Barnesville Gordon State College. They found 19 year old Fred Barley who’d come to school early before the start of his sophomore year on his younger brother’s bicycle. From Conyers, GA – a six hour bike ride! He was homeless as the dorms don’t open for another month or so and he was camping out at night while bicycling around looking for a job. While the responding officers couldn’t let him continue to camp out, each of them paid for him to have a night at a local motel. One of the responding officers, Dicky Carreker’s wife posted about Fred on her Facebook post. Donations immediately poured in totaling $70,000 so far, as well as a new, adult sized bike, clothes, shoes, and food. A local restaurant owner created a job for Fred, which he has accepted, and the motel owner is providing lodging for free until Barnesville Gordon State College can get him into the dorms, which they’ve indicated they will do early.
Maybe you heard or saw this story, maybe you didn’t. But given all the negative things we’ve been exposed to over the past two weeks in the news, its important to remember that despite the “it bleeds, it leads” and “controversy creates cash” models of the news media in their pursuit of profit and the fact that with 24/7 news and social media everything negative is amplified and constantly coming at us, that good things, done by good people still happen. Here’s the link to video of Fred Barley thanking everyone in Barnesville for their support.
And Now for the Other Side of Policing: What You Don’t Hear Much AboutPost + Comments (52)