Use this thread for talking about whatever you want to talk about. Meanwhile, here’s four more or less arbitrarily chosen items:
“Only one in seven Americans (15 percent) can correctly name John Roberts as Chief Justice of the United States while two-thirds of Americans (66 percent) know at least one of the judges on the Fox television show American Idol.”
In more interesting survey news, a survey of Iraqis shows that the majority of Iraqis not only want the US out of Iraq, but thinks that violent attacks on US troops are acceptable. Gee, wonder why they hate us? Oh, wait, yet another new survey of Iraqis finds that over a million Iraqis have died due to the US occupation. I guess that’s a good reason to hate us.
Meanwhile, in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, a waiter left his post to tackle a knife-wielding carjacker who was attacking a woman outside the restaurant. The waiter wrestled the carjacker to the ground and, with help from some passerbys, held him until the police arrived. He talked to the cops and the media, returned to the restaurant, and was fired for having left his post.
Finally, my friend Heron61 argues, I think persuasively, that the threat of overpopulation is solving itself.
No offense to the Chief Justice, but John Roberts is a pretty forgettable name, and he hasn’t been on the job as long as Simon has.
How about this: hygiene products are dangerous to our health
I’m particularly concerned about deodorant with aluminum, since it seems to be linked to cancer and so many of us use it. My mom always told me that she was worried about aluminum in deodorant, but couldn’t give me a better reason than “it’s bad for you”. I guess she was right…
I don’t know, on the one hand, I think Juan (who got fired) should not have lost his job- look at how he helped someone out! On the other hand, he also could have gotten himself killed. There was a story recently about a guy somewhere (I have forgotten the details) who got fired from his retail job for attacking a shoplifter, which, duh, any good retail location would rather you let the shoplifter escape than put yourself, your fellow employees, your customers, and the shoplifter in danger of getting hurt and suing. This case isn’t exactly the same, but I wonder if he would have found a way to sue had he gotten hurt? Hard to say.
Honestly, I am little shocked only 2/3rds of Americans can name the AI judges!
Oh, wait, yet another new survey of Iraqis finds that over a million Iraqis have died due to the US occupation
Actually, that’s just the number that died from violence. And it’s an undercount because they did it by surveying families and asking if anyone under their roof had died through violence since 2003. So that leaves out situations like when whole families are massacred and they didn’t look at Iraqi refugees at all, who probably have a higher than average rate of having relatives who died through violence. Apart from that, it doesn’t count people who died of cholera because the US destroyed the water purification system or treatable illnesses from appendicitis to childhood ALL because the US destroyed the hospitals and something like 80% of doctors have left or been killed, people who starved, etc. On the plus side, it’s still less than died due to American intervention in Viet Nam, on the minus, that was a longer war in a larger country. Give it a few years…
And, on a different subject, what the heck is American Idol? If it’s on Fox it must be terrible, whatever it is.
Simon Cowell? Is that his name? And I think Paula Abdul, or is she not there any more? I’ve seen the tail end of AI a couple of times, only because it was right before House, and I know Simon because everyone talks about how nasty he is and Paula because she’s an actual rock star. I couldn’t name you, much less sing you, anything she ever sang, though.
Without looking it up (you’ll have to take my word for it), roughly from right to left: Thomas, Scalia, Alito, Roberts, Kennedy, Souter, Breyer, Ginsburg, Stevens. (I almost forgot Thomas. Wishful thinking.)
Businesses that fire good Samaritans should know they’re just asking for trouble.
Also, as the Washington Post reports,
“Nearly half of all Iraqis now want coalition forces out of the country immediately, a 12-point increase from March, but there were sharp sectarian and ethnic divisions on this subject. Nearly three-quarters of Sunnis want the troops to leave now, as do 44 percent of Shiites. Only about one in 10 Kurds want an immediate withdrawal.”
Sure enough, US troops occupying the post-Civil War South were not popular either. White people wanted to get back to oppressing blacks, but those darned troops kept getting in the way. Once the rest of the nation abandoned reconstruction, we could get Jim Crow and the Klan going in earnest!
Similarly, it would hardly be surprising to learn that the majority Shiite can’t wait to take revenge upon the Sunni that had lorded it over them during the Saddam regime, if only those pesky US troops would butt out.
As the war drags on and people grow more frustrated, I expect ever more people will look for scapegoats. I expect to hear ever more calls for change, and for ever more radical change. That, by itself, does not persuade me of the merits of that change.
Sure enough, US troops occupying the post-Civil War South were not popular either. White people wanted to get back to oppressing blacks, but those darned troops kept getting in the way. Once the rest of the nation abandoned reconstruction, we could get Jim Crow and the Klan going in earnest!
To be fair to the ex-Confederacy, there were other reasons that the US troops were unpopular. Little things like burning down Atlanta and every other city, town, and farm they could get their hands on, a tendency to rape and pillage which continued after the war ended, unfriendly behavior in bars*, that sort of thing. And I’m pretty sure the KKK was going already during the Reconstruction, whether it was in “ernest” or not, I suppose is debatable. I’m not sure how much the US troops really got in the way of that behavior either. They probably thought that they ought to let the ex-confeds have some sort of fun, after all.
*There’s a claim in my family that one of the ancestors had to move from Georgia to Texas during the Reconstruction, even though he’d spent the Civil War dodging the draft and therefore wasn’t any sort of ex-enemy of the US because he got in a fight with a US soldier who was making himself obnoxious in a bar and may or may not have killed him. I’ve no idea whether it is true or even vaguely fact-based, but I can easily imagine that the US troops were behaving in ways that made them annoying to the locals, whether or not they had the slightest interest in the recent war.
I know this thread is a few days old, but I’d love to have people weigh in on the queston I just posed on my blog: Is there any such thing as a conservative artist?
“I’m pretty sure the KKK was going already during the Reconstruction”
The original KKK (as opposed to its 1915 incarnation) was formed to resist Reconstruction, particularly through direct confrontation with Carpetbaggers. The intimidation of ex-slaves immediately after the war was so pervasive that it cannot be tied to any one group, however as Freedmen and Scalawags joined the Carpetbaggers in a strengthening southern Republican party, the KKK expanded its terrorism to suit.