Category: Society

That’s Why They are Called Unidentified

The UFO Phenomenon — Seeing Is Believing – ABC News:

“But as one of the world’s leading theoretical physicists says in the program, ‘You simply cannot dismiss the possibility that some of these UFO sightings are actually sightings from some object created by … a civilization perhaps millions of years ahead of us in technology.'”

(Via ABC News.)

Saw this on NatGeo instead of the original airing, but I’m convinced UFO’s are real. (What they actually are is another matter) I’m not convinced all sightings are of UFO’s, but there are simply too many eyewitness accounts where the seer, conscious of public ridicule, is hesitant to go all X-Files but claim emphatically that they were not witness to weather balloons, swamp gas, stars on horizon, blimps, flares, helicopters, etc. These are pilots, police officers, and of course the general public. What was a clincher for me is when a police officer responding to a call he asks is a jokes sees the same object the caller claims he’s seeing. Skeptics are not given to hysteria or conspiracy.

Going Cheney on Moats

Dallas police chief apologizes for conduct of officer who drew gun on NFL player outside hospital |
News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News
| Latest News:

“Kunkle said Officer Robert Powell had been placed on paid administrative leave in connection with the incident last week, in which he stopped a family rushing to visit a dying mother, keeping them for 13 minutes to write a traffic ticket. The woman died before two of the family members were able to see her.”

(Via Dallas News.)

Wow. I guess thugs don’t make good police officers either.

Thugs aren’t Revolutionaries

On the other hand… – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“Beyond that, my Pops published a book a few years back looking at the legacy of the Black Panther Party. He was really proud, given that he’d been a Panther. Though largely sympathetic, and maybe slightly nostalgic, the book is not a piece of hagiography. In one of the more trenchant essays, the author points out the folly of equating thugs with revolutionaries, of essentially criminalizing the vanguard.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

This is what you get when you do.

Why Black Folk Mistrust the Justice System

Conservatives For Criminal Justice Reform – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“I’m less certain that the ‘tough on crime’ approach has been ‘largely vindicated’ by events–mostly because I think a large part of the events include the moral costs, and the real costs to communities where alarming numbers of men are under the watch of the state. One should consider the numbers here–blacks make up a third of all drug arrests, and black men are 12 times as likely to be imprisoned on a drug conviction. Four in Five of these arrests were for possession, not sale. Perhaps this is because the drug epidemic has run rampant through black communities, but probably not. The difference in illicit drug usage is slight (9.5 percent of blacks have used illicit substances, 8.2% of whites).  Those are the sort of numbers that feed an intense distrust of the justice system in many black communities. I think Ross (though I can’t be sure) sees the ends justifying the means. But the means are disproportionately born by people who live far away from those ‘Nixon to China’ conservatives.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

Which is why many of us merely call it The System. I hope our white brothers and sisters see this too and understand our burden. I hope that once the economic crisis dies down, this will happen sooner rather than later. We can all start to move forward on how drugs is killing us, esp. black people, on all sides.

Team Comparison

Why Do Black Immigrants Do Better Than Native Blacks? – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“This argument pops up from time to time, but it’s been coming up a lot lately. It always seemed to me that the question answers itself–an immigrant is someone who’s specifically come to this country to capitalize and exploit opportunity. Comparing any immigrant group to virtually any native-born group is like comparing the most ambitious members of one team with the entirety of another team. “

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

Great piece on this trope of an argument.

The Death Penalty – Ta-Nehisi Coates

The Death Penalty – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

” This is all a long way of saying that some conservatives don’t hate big government, they simply want big government to work strictly for them.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

A better way to say it might be, “Big Government to conservatives is any part of government that doesn’t work strictly for them.” How else do you justify a yearly, as in ongoing, DoD budget of $800B while decrying a temporary stimulus package of the same size? Utter discredit.

Road to the Riches

Highway robbery? Texas police seize black motorists’ cash, cars — chicagotribune.com:

“TENAHA, Texas— You can drive into this dusty fleck of a town near the Texas-Louisiana border if you’re African-American, but you might not be able to drive out of it—at least not with your car, your cash, your jewelry or other valuables.
That’s because the police here allegedly have found a way to strip motorists, many of them black, of their property without ever charging them with a crime. Instead they offer out-of-towners a grim choice: voluntarily sign over your belongings to the town, or face felony charges of money laundering or other serious crimes.”

(Via Chicago Tribure.)

Institutional racism at it’s startingly most blatant. This in the age of Obama is a good cautionary tale. You are responsible for Change, for Hope, not the President.

Black People, Culture And Poverty – Ta-Nehisi Coates

Black People, Culture And Poverty – Ta-Nehisi Coates:

“Culture attracts such protest from many blacks not because we think that the culture of poverty is a myth, but because the mass of us who, in the space of about 40 years, have made more progress than any group of blacks before us, don’t deserve to be told that our culture is making people poor. Seriously. Fried catfish and Outkast ain’t never disenfranchised nobody.”

(Via Ta-Nehisi Coates.)

True dat.

Pulling Your Card

Stewart seen as winner in showdown with Cramer – CNN.com:

“‘People want to see a lot of the financial gurus on a shish kabob, being skewered,’ Seaman said. ‘It’s really important to hold people accountable, and as we saw last night, Jon Stewart is a bit of a wild card, so if you aren’t living up to expectations, he may call you out.'”

(Via CNN.)

Which is exactly why I watch the show. I need that “powerful tool of illumination.”

Total Sideshow

YouTube – Bill Maher’s Real Time | March 6, 2009 | Cory Booker and Erin Burnett 4:

(Via YouTube.)

Skip to 5:02. Preach, Cory, preach!

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