Whiskey Fire

"What you think is the point is not the point at all but only the beginning of the sharpness"

Oh God Bless the New York Post. 

It’s not a slowdown — it’s a virtual work stoppage.

NYPD traffic tickets and summonses for minor offenses have dropped off by a staggering 94 percent following the execution of two cops — as officers feel betrayed by the mayor and fear for their safety, The Post has learned.

Considering that this whole shit started because an NYPD cop strangled a guy over loose cigarettes, well, keep not doing that.

And "we refuse to give you dumb traffic tickets" is a very, very weird threat.

Huzzah.

 

Sullicks

I am able to contemplate the inanity of Andrew Sullivan for no longer than the length of a limerick.

Andy Sully gives no apology

For studies of Brain Inequality:

"Please now! Come Come!

Are black folks born dumb?

That's just Civil Debate in our polity!"

There would be more, but I got bored thinking of rhymes for "pompous douchebag."

Treason of Your Truth

Michael Tomasky is basically right, but there's more!

I covered New York politics for 15 years, and I saw some awfully tense moments between the police and Democratic politicians. But there has never been anything remotely like the war the cops are waging right now against Mayor Bill de Blasio for the thought crime of saying something that was completely unremarkable and so obviously true that in other contexts we don’t even bat an eye when someone says it. And for that, the mayor has blood on his hands, as Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association head Pat Lynch said Saturday evening after the hideous assassinations of two NYPD officers?....

Right around the time de Blasio spoke, Marist was in the field with a poll asking people whether they think police treat whites and blacks differently. Here are some answers. In each case, the “yes, differently” number comes first.

Overall: 47-44
Whites: 39-51
Blacks: 82-14
Latinos: 53-38
Democrats: 64-29
Independents: 44-48
Republicans: 26-64

So two decades’ worth of statistics tell us that black men are killed by police at 21 times the rate white men are, and yet half the public has persuaded itself that police treat blacks and whites no differently. And it’s controversial for a mayor with a black 16-year-old son to say something so obvious—indeed, what every parent of a black son has to say.

Sure, that's fucked up, right there.

But it's even more fucked up right below the surface.

What black people are being denied here is not simply justice for certain victims of police violence in specific cases, but the right to publicly describe their own lived experience.

What was DeBlasio's great sin? He told his kid to be extremely careful around the police -- in other words, basically, to not give the police any reason whatsoever to overreact. If, say, he were stopped while walking down the middle of street at night or something, or if he were in the process of being arrested for an extremely trivial misdemeanor, he should immediately comply with all police orders, lest he be shot or strangled.

Are there any black Americans who wouldn't give similar advice to their sons? Sure! By the poll numbers above, a whole frickin' 14% of them wouldn't.

This is really the source of the white hysteria over these protests. Only black comedians and rappers are allowed to say to a mass audience that they distrust the police, and that consent is always deeply qualified -- laughed off, ignored, sometimes denounced, never taken seriously.

You can tell a lot about a society and culture by what kinds of speech it most desperately wants to suppress. In the case of 21st century America, the hypocritical and frankly lunatic attempts to tell an entire ethnic group that they are deluded traitors for talking about their experience of government law enforcement officials, as they see it, tells us that right here, right now, too many white folks want to watch the world fall back asleep into 19th century history.

Fuck that shit. Wake up, motherfuckers, democracy's knocking.

MAS. This Politico thing is revolting, even for Politico. It's pretty damn close to "Martin Luther King Jr. should have had more political savvy if he really wanted his favorite candidates to win this season's 1965 Alabama by-elections." Fuck off.

Expertise

It is always salutary to hear Rudy Giuliani opine about the best ways to reduce racial tensions.

Just Saying

You know why I think lots of white NYC police officers are racists?

Because I've been out drinking with them, and they've said, "yeah, I'm racist."

It's kind of fucked up sure, but yeah, there are lots of white NYC cops who will happily tell other white folks that they're racists.

So there is that.

'Tis The Season!

Not actually for another 24 hrs., but who's counting? Numb yourselves responsibly!

Fingers crossed the new season & New Yr. are better for all, especially all who visit here. (Redundant but sincere.)

Or at least no worse from an arbitrary universe.

— Jolly Xmas Elf M. Bouffant

Shocker in Gloomtown

The New York Times is not exactly the paper of upstate New York. Good Grief.

Shock in Southern Tier of New York as Hopes of Gambling and Fracking Both Die

We were also devastated by the failure of Albany to give us tax breaks, Business Incubator Status, and Enterprise Zones for our burgeoning Hooker and Meth Lab industrial initiatives.

I mean, Jesus fuck, nice splash picture. And what a story:

BINGHAMTON, N.Y. — To get a sense of the deep disappointment felt by many here at the twin killings of two potentially lucrative dreams, hydraulic fracturing and a new luxury casino, one needed to look no further than the front-page headline of Thursday’s edition of The Press & Sun-Bulletin.

It was two letters, in red type: “NO!”

That cry could seemingly be heard all along New York State’s Southern Tier, which borders Pennsylvania and has long been one of the state’s most stubborn economic laggards. In recent years, both hydraulic fracturing — known as fracking — and casinos had been posited as potential economic saviors here, where residents and leaders have watched with envy as neighboring Pennsylvanians dived into both industries.

Yeah, well, bite me.

Fracking has a lot of local support, sure, but saying that, the statement has to be deeply qualified. Roughly nobody here wants fracking done as it has happened in PA.

This is anecdata, but whatever. MollyI's family has roots in this area going back to the 1800s. The family has burial rights in a small, very rustic Catholic cemetary in far northern PA, about 5 miles south of the NY border. We had the sad occasion to bury MollyI's dad last year.

And -- to the point of this post -- this incredibly beautiful, remote, pristine cemetary -- was made totally horrific because of all the goddamn trucks.

For the Benefit of New Readers, my wife MollyI is a Country Mouse, and I am a City Mouse. We live in the country, near Binghamton. My mom is buried in a cemetary in the Bronx. That cemetary has things like fences and interior roadways, stuff that enables, like, quiet reflection.

While MollyI's dad was being buried, there was a lot of truck traffic, including a tanker that stopped on the side road with its engine running, very loudly.

Nobody in the family liked that. Everyone hated it.

So, yes, Broome County would be in favor of fracking. No, Broome County would not want the crazy shit that is easily observable a few miles south. The quality of life degradation issues are clear, and everyone here knows someone in PA who got screwed.

Also nobody here was dumb enough to think there were hordes of rich suckers wanting to come to Binghamton to go to casinos. Well, maybe one or two idiots. But those are always with us.

But it sure was nice for the NYT to send a reporter up here to talk to our dingaling fratboy meathead mayor and some random barflies. That at least was Authentic.

Strictly Comedy

Assmissile provides a fascinating specimen for the bell-jar.

I have never seen Stephen Colbert’s show on Comedy Central, but I take it that it consists of an endless series of anti-Republican “jokes.”

This is a perfect, priceless sentence.

This sentence... is Wingnuttia.

 

Statistics for Real Life

It is a shame that the field of statistics offers us great insight into professional sports, when what we really need are statistics for real life.

For example, a statistic that would be immensely useful in any given workplace, and perhaps even in academia, would be a TPA score, with TPA meaning "Time Past Adjournment."

It would work sort of like WAR in baseball. The TPA would measure the average amount of time an individual makes a meeting last beyond when it really should end, that is to say, when anyone sane would know that the work the meeting is meant to accomplish has been accomplished.

Thus, an individual with a +5 TPA would mean "he or she will add about 5 minutes to any given meeting."

Anyone with a TPA of +10 should be summarily shot, or else traded to the Cubs.

These Grand Aul Times

Libertarian Fascism.

No one was hurt and no stores were looted. Between 1,000 and 3,000 lawful gun owners showed up openly armed at the state capitol in Olympia, Wash., on Saturday to defy the newly passed gun control law, I-594.

Organizer Gavin Seim made the extraordinary nature of the rally very clear, "This isn’t just a protest. We are here to openly violate the law." Attendees publicly transferred their guns to each other in violation of I-591’s background check provisions, and some even bought and sold guns just a few feet away from law enforcement. A fire pit blazed throughout the rally, and at the conclusion, gun owners lined up to burn their concealed weapons permits. A petition was circulated affirming gun owners’ refusal to follow I-594, which ended with, “We pledge our blood. We will not comply.”

Good for them! Refusing to comply with the law, a contempt for democratic norms, the "blood" thing -- gosh.

Compare, contrast.

Point is, you don't have to like this white dude to note that he had hammers wrapped in plastic in a closed backpack, and these Olympia white dudes were brandishing weapons and openly flouting the law.

Oh, what the hell:

Despite the fact that the participants in the putsch had shot dead four policemen and staged an armed (and in any reasonable terms) treasonable revolt against a legitimately constituted state government, the court sentenced Hitler to a mere five years in prison for high treason.

There are predictable consequences for nations determined to hate their own laws and governments, nations that make a majority fetish of the gun, nations whose minority citizens are deliberately kept simmering at a seething desire for vengeance.

Sell, sell to white folks that savory, deep-felt benign bigotry that always does so swell at the hustings in places like fucking Staten Island. Tell, tell the cops, hey, it's all cool.

Seems an easy enough prognostication: either we have a genuine democracy, or we have spilled blood. I advocate nothing here; it's just how it goes.