Saturday Open Thread [3.30.13]
It is a gorgeous Saturday and I hope that all of you are spending quality time out in this sunshine. In this thread, we don’t care who you had breakfast with.
Adam Gopnik writes a Must Read article on the endless deflections of the people who refuse to consider any form of gun safety laws. This is in response to the breathless dismissal of a recent Journal of the American Medical Association paper demonstrating a pretty clear state by state correlation between strong gun laws and less gun violence and the latest news about the arsenal found in Adam Lanza’s home. There’s alot here, but this:
Finding a correlation, eliminating a correlation, proposing a correlation—these are not inconclusive fitful stabs at truth: they are meaningful acts. And when you put them together with many other similar, even stronger correlations, a cause stares you in the face and asks you to sit down and take it seriously. To believe that gun laws don’t work, you have to believe that each of the many studies showing that gun laws limit gun violence—all of them, every single one, from Canada to Australia and back home—are not just flawed at the margins or somewhat inconclusive but that they are fundamentally, entirely, completely, round-the-block wrong. And that isn’t a plausible claim.
In their endless quest to make sure that Americans are fully employed, Rep. Steve King and Senator Inhofe have introduced a bill in Congress to outlaw the use of any language but English on Federal government paperwork:
One major impact King’s bill could have is to stop the decades-long practice of printing non-English ballots in areas where there’s a significant non-English language group. Indeed, Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 currently requires local jurisdictions with a substantial number of non-English speakers to allow them to vote in other languages.
Sheesh. Two Democrats are also sponsoring this mess. But still, I have to say that the GOP effort to reach out to other minorities is going swimmingly.
Ryan Lizza was in Philly for a writer’s seminar where he was interviewed by Dick Polman from Newsworks. Lizza notes that it is increasingly difficult to do long-form journalism in a world where the short form stuff gets all of the attention:
“The price (politicians) pay now for a ‘gaffe’ is so high – the way Twitter and cable jump on stray comments – it’s just insane. So the campaigns are closed off in ways that weren’t even true in 2008….It’s really hard to cover campaigns now – especially with a magazine like The New Yorker, which wants depth, in-depth interviews….You can go to a politician and say, ‘I’ll give you lots of time, 10 (magazine) pages about your whole life, long quotes – but sometimes it doesn’t matter, because (after publication) a quote can get cherry-picked and spun out on Twitter. It happens all the time. It’s happened to me.”
Polman goes on to discuss how an quote from a Lizza article “leading from behind” became a conservative critique only because they took that bit out of context. Which just demonstrates to me what is missing from so-called objective journalism — context and fact-checking. Politicians and pundits can say the President is leading from behind ONLY because they face journalists who won’t hold them accountable for misuse of the phrase.
So what interests you today?
Dick Morris, the guy who gets everything wrong… The Democrat’s secret weapon.. Is going to get paid to do Latino outreach for the RNC
http://mediamatters.org/video/2013/03/29/msnbcs-rachel-maddow-reports-dick-morris-to-hel/193375
Think he is consulting with Don Young on that outreach?
😆
And as long as the RNC keeps hiring the guys who get it all wrong, I guess we can keep laughing.
I hadn’t heard this anywhere this week — there is apparently a large number of Guantanamo Bay prisoners on a hunger strike and this may have been going on for awhile.
No one is saying what Adam Lanza did is okay,to even imply such a thing is beyond disturbing. Making a comparison between a young man who was mentally ill and most likely on psychotropic drugs to 400,000 + owners of the same style sport rifle is ludicrous. What’s even more messed up is you leaving out the fact Adam Lanza violated more than 5 gun laws by stealing legally registered guns to carry out his heinous crime. I get it you’re opposed to gun ownership that’s fine. be responsible don’t make assumptions that the actions of a mentally ill criminal is representative of the behavior or intent of all other gun owners.
What a great collegiate career. Where does Elena Delle Donne go from here? Coaching? WNBA? US national team? Pursuit of higher education in her field of study? professional beach volley ball?
Her options are many, It’s a good day to be Elena Delle Donne right now.
Her dad used to date my baby sitter back in the day. After school we used to watch him play goalie for the Tower Hill soccer team. Really tall skinny long haired dude.
Courtesy of ExxonMobil — a tar sands pipeline ruptures in Arkansas, resulting in evacuation of this neighborhood and a rush to contain the spill.
How A Straw Purchaser Allegedly Enabled The Colorado Prison Chief’s Murder
Since our nation has never made English the official national language it seems the proposed bill might have little effect on the way things have been done for years.
This is a good read about the Pope. Apparently he is already pissing off Ratzinger’s conservative apparatchiks:
Wow. That’s a big leap. Having a female jeuvenile detainee participate in a liturgical rite as a passive participant
To have women ordained a priests.
But then, it is the CONSERVATIVES we are talking about.
Thanks for the article Puck
Something wrong with the link to the Pope article. Here’s the right link:
http://news.yahoo.com/popes-foot-wash-final-straw-traditionalists-004235548.html
That one works- thanks
I don’t get Francis. If you know anything about the ministry of Jesus, you know it is all about setting up a Church hierarch to interced between you and god complete with ranks of living and dead intermidiearies and loads of pomp and ceremony.
Reminds me of the Pharisees grumbling and plotting against Jesus for healing people on the Sabbath against religious law.
He’s is a Jesuit, they are the elite special forces of the Catholic and he will brook no intolerance to what he want and the changes he would like to see.
He will not ask for consensus, he will lead and won’t spend time looking over his shoulder to see if the troops are following him up the hill either.
Trained to be leaders, very intelligent and usually physically strong they were the scientists, writers, philosopher / warriors of the church. This effect on Vatican politics is going to be Very Very interesting.
Some famous Jesuits……
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jesuits
Pope Francis’ Easter vigil homily also focused on women and change. Interesting. But it is early days, right? For now we have a lot of hopeful optics. But what he directs the rest of the Church to do is something else all together.
Absolutely right Cassandra, it is very early. And the Church is very slow to change.