Cheney.me: A mess of stuff

'No-Knock' Searches Get People Killed

Fri, 27 Nov 2009 10:29:22 -0500

From the site:

“Meantime, a black man named Cory Maye was still sitting on death row in Mississippi, the last I heard, because he heard men trying to break into his Prentiss, Miss. home late at night in December of 2001, where he was alone with his 18-month-old baby daughter.

Mr. Maye, who had no criminal record, got the child down onto the floor and lay down beside her to protect her. When one of the men finally broke into the bedroom, Cory Maye shot and killed him.

The man was hit in the abdomen, just below his bulletproof vest, and died a short time later. It turns out the man who had failed to knock and identify himself before breaking in was a cop, who was really after suspects in the other half of the duplex where Cory Maye lived. Turns out the cop was the white son of the white chief of police. An all-white jury sentenced Cory Maye, who is black, to death for exercising his right to defend his locked home and family against violent invasion by an unknown intruder. The all-white jury took only a few hours to do so, at least one juror explaining he wanted to get home for supper.”

robot-heart-politics: azspot: Jeff Parker

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:48:08 -0500

robot-heart-politics:

azspot:

Jeff Parker

savingpaper: November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is...

Sun, 22 Nov 2009 21:19:52 -0500

savingpaper:

November 22, 1963: President John F. Kennedy is killed in Dallas.

savingpaper: November 19, 1863: President Abraham Lincoln...

Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:00:31 -0500

savingpaper:

November 19, 1863: President Abraham Lincoln delivers the Gettysburg Address at the dedication of Soldiers’ National Cemetery.

The president’s two-minute speech, consistently entirely of 272 words, followed a two-hour oration by Edward Everett, then the governor of Pennsylvania and widely accepted to be one of the great public speakers of his time. According to those who attended the event, the brevity of Lincoln’s remarks so surprised the crowd that reportedly no one applauded when he finished because they didn’t think he was done. When they did applaud, it was said to be scarce yet polite.

But the next day, Everett wrote a letter to Lincoln that read in part: “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

savingpaper: If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax...

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:32:58 -0500

savingpaper:

If Marijuana Production Were Legal: Projected Tax Revenues, by State

…this graphic illustrates the popularity of marijuana consumption, the federal tax dollars spent to keep marijuana illegal, and the possible tax revenues that could be generated if marijuana production were legalized and taxed like any other agricultural product.

(via brooklynmutt)

merlin: systems: ilovediagrams: theoriginaljoefisher: I...

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:54:19 -0500

merlin:

systems:

ilovediagrams:

theoriginaljoefisher:

I thirst!

"We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because..."

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 10:24:54 -0500

“We are going to die, and that makes us the lucky ones. Most people are never going to die because they are never going to be born. The potential people who could have been here in my place but who will in fact never see the light of day outnumber the sand grains of Sahara. Certainly those unborn ghosts include greater poets than Keats, scientists greater than Newton. We know this because the set of possible people allowed by our DNA so massively outnumbers the set of actual people…. In the teeth of these stupefying odds it is you and I, in our ordinariness, that are here.”

- Richard Dawkins (via piscesinpurple)

I guess I just fail to see how trying people according to American laws and principles is "un-American."

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:48:10 -0500

robot-heart-politics:

For the last several years, the way we’ve treated these prisoners has been illegal. According to American law. According to international law. According to the very ideals espoused by our founding fathers.

I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man by which a government can be held to the priciples of its Constitution.

- Thomas Jefferson

Representative government and trial by jury are the heart and lungs of liberty. Without them we have no other fortification against being ridden like horses, fleeced like sheep, worked like cattle and fed and clothed like swine and hounds.

- Thomas Jefferson

I am fully aware that the prisoners in question are not American citizens (do you want a pat on the back for that brilliant observation) and therefore not entitled according to the Constitution to be treated as citizens, but it does not stand to reason that the founders believed these principles should be ignored when not applied to American citizens.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

- The Declaration of Independence

The Supreme Court recently ruled in favor of the notion that all men—even the worst of men, even men who are not Americans—deserve a fair trial and are entitled to be treated with the same dignity and modicum of respect that would be afforded anyone else. If we argued that criminals in general do not deserve such kindness, being lower human beings, then there would be no need for the 6th amendment at all. Why not just throw it out? Because our founders understood, perhaps more clearly than we do now, that to do otherwise is to commit an injustice to humanity. Now, at the very least, we must respect that to do otherwise is illegal.

There is also the matter of the international law that we have agreed to follow and obey, that we have been at times the enforcers of. If we see international law as important when it comes to everyone else, why should we be exempt from following it ourselves? Are we a special case? Are we somehow a higher class of human being, who are not required to follow the laws we hold others to?

It reminds me of the right’s defense of the Patriot Act, despite the fact that it violates the 4th amendment’s provisions regarding illegal search and seizure. The argument here being that only those who deserve it will be illegal searched. Nevermind that once you violate one person’s rights, you pave the way to violate another’s. Particularly when your justification for the rights violation is that the person whose rights are being taken away is of a race, class, or religious affiliation that you don’t particularly care for (whether there is a good reason for your distaste or not.)

When they came for the Jews, I did nothing, for I am not a Jew. When they came for the Socialists, I did nothing, for I am not a Socialist. When they came for the labor leaders, the homosexuals, the gypsies, I did nothing, for I am none of these, and when they came for me, I was alone, there was no one to stand up for me.

- Martin Niemoller, a Lutheran pastor from Nazi Germany

The truth is, there is always some point when you could become the person that the government or that Americans at large do not like. Hence conservative fears regarding “death panels,” having one’s guns taken away, being forced to give up their religion. However, rather than viewing these fears as further motivation to defend the rights of all people, the right remains firmly committing to denying the rights of those they dislike or with whom they take issue, real or imagined. And then they take their un-Constitutional beliefs one step further and argue anyone who thinks differently, anyone who goes against their ideas is “un-American.”

Nevermind that the very arguments that they put forward—that some people are less deserving of fair trials than others, that some people are less deserving of basic human rights than others—violate the very foundation upon which this country was built…which notably wasn’t that being white and Protestant gives you special privileges, but rather was the idea that all people are equal.

Please Read: Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:01:37 -0500

Please Read: Pfizer to Leave City That Won Land-Use Case:

I am taking the opportunity to post this link and bring attention to what is happening in my town. I live less than a mile from the New London Pfizer complex that is talked about in this article.

Eminent domain is something that is happening in my town, that might be happening in my parents town, on my parents road, if the state of Connecticut ever decides to finish Route 11. Eminent domain is wrong, it is sad, and in my opinion, it is unconstitutional. The Supreme Court doesn’t think so, though, and people in my town lost their homes and their property to make way for a development that was never built next to an almost $3 million complex that is going to be emptied out and left sitting unused.

This new development - the fact that Pfizer is pulling out of New London and moving these employees across the river to the Groton complex - has been the talk of the town around here this past week. This should be the talk of the nation, in my opinion. Why does America let the rights of these monstrous money-making corporations mean more than the rights of its citizens who work hard to own property?

Your thoughts?

The New Dust Bowl

Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:06:46 -0500

The New Dust Bowl:

Great article about the drought in California that is putting thousands of people out of work and into “dire straights.” Here is a quote from the article:

“These people are hurting big time,” says Terry Ince, an unemployed forklift operator who lives in a mobile home across the street from the old sugar-beet plant, which shut down in January. He and his girlfriend have been making ends meet by selling off their furniture and eating wild boar shot by a neighbor. “What do we have to do, put an Ethiopian baby out there with a distended tummy?” he asks. “We are in dire straits.”

It scares me, that people are living like this in America. It scares me to think that if I lose my job I might be one of these people, and I don’t know how to hunt.

"You think abortion is wrong? Don’t have one. I think killing people is wrong, so I’m not in the..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:17:13 -0500

“You think abortion is wrong? Don’t have one. I think killing people is wrong, so I’m not in the army. My tax dollars still go to fund it, though (in fact about 21 cents of each of my tax dollars). My tax dollars also go to keep prisoners on death row even though I think the death penalty is morally wrong. My tax dollars fund Guantanamo and Bagram, extraordinary rendition, and Jim DeMint’s salary, all of which I find disgusting. So why is abortion, a legal medical procedure, so remarkably different that we have to go overboard making sure tax dollars don’t fund it?”

- GlobalComment » Hey Stupak, women’s bodies are not bargaining chips, by the kickassed Sarah Jaffe (via pcquotes) (via allthingsalishan) (via robot-heart-politics)

"Most conservatives also believe that the United States has more to teach than to learn from the rest..."

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 11:09:33 -0500

“Most conservatives also believe that the United States has more to teach than to learn from the rest of the world, especially in regard to freedom and human rights. But perhaps a little humility is in order. Perhaps the fact that most other advanced democracies have evolved to the point of recognizing their citizens’ rights to adequate and affordable health care, as proclaimed in ICESCR, should lead us to ask why we have not.”

- Is Health Care a Human Right? (via azspot)

I am SO tired of hearing and reading about people who don’t believe that affordable healthcare is a right.

And, also, I love History News Network. Just sayin.

tamburina: Well, do you?

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 21:52:21 -0500

tamburina:

Well, do you?

The 50 States Project

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 11:46:18 -0500

The 50 States Project:

Great photography.

Writing and Rejection.

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:33:26 -0400

merlin:

[First. Second. Then…]

steampoweredmedia:

Also, you want a great high? Get a great rejection letter from a place like Esquire. I did and do and I save them all.

Somewhere, deep in our garage, I think I still have my first rejection from The Atlantic (ca. 1990). Blue embossed type on heavy card stock, if memory serves. Classy. Distinguished. Albeit, not signed.

And, I can’t begin to explain the emotional complexity of finding that modest little piece of cardboard in the mailbox of my $275/month garage apartment in Sarasota, Florida. To be dead honest?

Sure, I was superficially bummed that the joyless purple knob to which I’d subjected my favorite magazine had not been greeted with an offer for a regular column. What talentless 22-year-old with a Cultural Studies degree from a public college wouldn’t be?

But, that disappointment was quickly displaced by a more pure awe and terror at what the card had really meant; it meant that an adult human at The Atlantic had read something I’d written. Read it. Seen my name. Seen the Palatino 12 letters from my ImageWriter at “High Quality.” Felt each page’s rough edges where I’d torn off the tractor feed guides. Noticed my overuse of semicolons, suffered through my superfluous adverbs, and rolled their eyes at my fondness for hypothetical questions.

This was scary to me then. But, it’s horrifying to me now. Because, it’s one thing to sit around thinking you’re clever and gifted, and quite another to realize your dreck is sitting around in the same office as the manuscripts of your heroes. That’s some grown-up stuff.

I realize I sounded harsh yesterday in talking about rejection slips, but I stand by what I said (or maybe should have said more clearly):

Readers and editors are not your Mom. And they’re not your Junior Comp. teacher. And they’re not your fairy godmother.

They’re ruthless curators with a thankless and exhausting job. They get paid (or intern for free) to sift through garbage bins looking for diamonds. It’s a crappy job where you say “no” to thousands of strangers who’ll hate you and “yes” to a handful of people who (after their own multiple years of hearing “no”) don’t have any particular feeling about you one way or the other.

Those writers don’t lack emotion because they’re mean, callous, or dead inside; it’s because they’re pros. And they know it’s just part of the game.

So, pro writers don’t over-sweat rejection any more than a good salesman yells at you for not buying the ill-fitting and out-of-style shoes he’s got to sell. It’s just business. You evolve.

I understand that it’s really natural to be discouraged and a little sad by rejection, but that emotion is instructive. Learn from it. It either means you’re doing it wrong (sending to the wrong places, not sending to enough places, not doing your research on who’s buying what), or it means you’re simply not ready yet (your work’s not there yet, or you lack the distance to see it as a product people buy).

The part of you that creates and sweats and toils has to get really okay with the different part of you who manages the business and publishing stuff. Especially at first. Until you have relationships and a portfolio, get ready for lots of rejection and zero explanation. Like: lots. But try to learn from it where you can and then totally ignore it where you can’t. It’s. just. business.

Seriously, don’t let the part of you that reads rejection letters have too much negative influence on the part of you that wanted to write in the first place. If you concentrate on helping that original, more artistic person to learn, improve, and mature as a writer, you’ll notice that he and the business guy start getting along a lot better. And start thinking differently about where things should go, who might buy it, and how things might be tweaked for different audiences.

And, if you’re a talentless 22-year-old with a Cultural Studies degree, living in a garage apartment in Florida? Maybe don’t start with The Atlantic. Hit the batting cages and pick-up games for a couple years before trying to walk-on with the Majors.

Finally? Yes. Keep writing. No matter what.

Fuck the business side of it. Especially if it gets in your way or drags you down. Find a way to pay the bills that doesn’t hurt your Good Thing, and stop playing when the game’s not fun.

Writing is hard and it’s lonely and no one will feel an iota of sympathy for you one way or another. Keep it lively and fresh, and keep pouring glue on that chair. The offer for that column might be out there. Somewhere. But, it doesn’t matter one way or another.

Write for yourself, get good, and be a grownup. That’s step zero.

soupsoup: Happy Birthday Internet : The Internet Turns 40...

Thu, 29 Oct 2009 10:56:22 -0400

soupsoup:

Happy Birthday Internet : The Internet Turns 40 Today

On October 29, 1969„ the first two nodes of ARPANET were interconnected between UCLA’s School of Engineering and Applied Science and SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California.

inothernews: grace-notes: sleepless-eyes: khallelalaine: live...

Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:24:05 -0400

inothernews:

grace-notes:

sleepless-eyes:

khallelalaine:

livetoinfinity:

mcgrizzly62:

Imogen Heap- Thriller (Michael Jackson Cover)

This is absolutely amazing.

Too cool to not reblog!

Wow. Imogen Heap could take any song, or EVERY song, and make it something totally new and beautiful.

"I have trouble listening to what [Cheney] says sometimes because of the blood that drips from his..."

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:59:46 -0400

“I have trouble listening to what [Cheney] says sometimes because of the blood that drips from his teeth while he’s talking.”

- ALAN GRAYSON, Democratic Representative of Florida, likening former Vice President Dick Cheney to a vampire for his recent criticism of the Obama Administration’s handling of the war in Afghanistan.

Heh.

(via Time Magazine)

(via inothernews)

This Alan Grayson has really been cracking me the hell up lately. How does he get away with being this awesome?

The 100 Most Interesting Articles on Wikipedia

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 19:55:00 -0400

The 100 Most Interesting Articles on Wikipedia:

axinomancy:

(via copybot)

1. Marree Man
2. War Plan Red
3. Vela Incident
4. Tybee Bomb
5. United States Numbered Highways
6. Wow! Signal
7. Tube Bar Prank Calls
8. Kola Superdeep Borehole
9. Back to the Future Timeline
10. Year Without a Summer
11. K Foundation Burn a Million Quid
12. Sokal Affair
13. Blue Peacock
14. Veerappan
15. Person From Porlock
16. Eternal Flame
17. U.S. Color-Coded War Plans
18. The Wedge (Border)
19. Mohave Phone Booth
20. Stanislav Petrov
21. Valery Sablin
22. The Man on the Clapham Omnibus
23. Special Atomic Demolition Munition
24. Piracy in the Strait of Malacca
25. Prometheus (tree)
26. Zone of Alienation
27. Fan Death
28. Outlawries Bill
29. Raymond Robinson (Green Man)
30. Scoville Scale
31. Kardashev Scale
32. Larry Walters
33. Joshua A. Norton
34. Fabergé egg
35. Issei Sagawa
36. Joseph Jagger
37. Traumatic Insemination
38. James Joseph Dresnok
39. Ivy League Nude Posture Photos
40. Jim Corbett (Hunter)
41. Just-World Phenomenon
42. Nicholas Bourbaki
43. Humanzee
44. Old Man of the Lake
45. Alexamenos Graffito
46. Fairy Chess Piece
47. Michael Fagan Incident
48. ETAOIN SHRDLU
49. Palomares Hydrogen Bomb Incident
50. As Slow as Possible

and

1. Anthropodermic bibliopegy
2. Elm Farm Ollie
3. EURion constellation
4. (the) Demon core
5. Pole of inaccessibility
6. Globster
7. Hoba meteorite
8. Seattle Windshield Pitting Epidemic
9. GRB 971214
10. “Resolute” desk
11. Candace Newmaker
12. Cryptomnesia
13. Hans Island
14. Harrowing of Hell
15. Semantic satiation
16. Dempster Highway
17. Dalton Highway
18. Paul Felix Armand-Delille
19. Herschel Island
20. Stone spheres of Costa Rica
21. Paternoster
22. Self-immolation
23. Narco submarine
24. Louis Slotin
25. Language deprivation experiments
26. London Stone
27. Cité Soleil
28. Blood chit
29. Parsley Massacre
30. Ribbon Creek Incident
31. Art intervention
32. Impostor
33. Bata LoBagola
34. Cheating at the Paralympic Games
35. David Hempleman-Adams
36. The Kafka Machine
37. Park Young Seok
38. Houston Riot (1917)
39. Albert Pierrepoint
40. Discoveries of human feet on British Columbia beaches, 2007–2008
41. Taman Shud Case
42. Who put Bella in the Wych Elm?
43. First flying machine
44. Defeat in Detail
45. Peppered moth evolution
46. Resource holding potential
47. Saint Dismas
48. Target girl
49. Longevity myths
50. SL-1

Saving this for when I’m reaaaally bored. Hmmm, like now!

Elise and I were waiting for my friend Brian to finish his...

Mon, 26 Oct 2009 15:24:28 -0400

Elise and I were waiting for my friend Brian to finish his shopping this weekend, so we tried on hats.

My daughter is so cute, sometimes I can’t believe she is mine.