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Showing posts with label omnium and gatherum. Show all posts
Showing posts with label omnium and gatherum. Show all posts

Monday, March 21, 2016

Omnium And Gatherum March 21 2016

Quicken Arena, Cleveland




1)
The Hypocrisy of Gun Carry Laws, etc.

It seems that most politicians that support open-carry laws in theory oppose those laws when it comes to venues and meetings where they themselves are going to be in a crowd of just good old folks.
I believe this phenomenon is what Aunt Sally was referring to when she said that the "proof is in the pudding".

Down With Tyranny
Gun Fight At Cleveland's Quicken Loans Arena In July? Maybe Not
Wednesday, February 03, 2016
http://downwithtyranny.blogspot.com/2016/02/gun-fight-at-clevelands-quicken-loans.html
...Sure, sure, we all know the NRA-shilling GOP claims everyone is safer if people carry guns everywhere (except in Congress). But... apparently, despite Ohio's concealed carry law-- yes you can brings guns into a bar-- Republican delegates will not be allowed to bring guns into the July convention...


2)
The Brainwashing of America
...GOP continues to unravel, in both its Presidential nomination process and its increasingly untenable stand against even holding a hearing for Obama's US Supreme Court nominee.
Brad Friedman 18:38 18.03.2016
http://sputniknews.com/radio_the_bradcast/20160318/1036514584/america-brainwashing.html
... I'm joined by documentary filmmaker Jen Senko to discuss her new film, The Brainwashing of My Dad. The documentary details both the rise of the Rightwing media in the US over the past several decades and her own father's disturbing transition from a peaceful, loving Democrat into a hostile, angry 'conservative' after becoming addicted and, yes, brainwashed by Rush Limbaugh, Fox "News" and the rest of the "vast Rightwing conspiracy" machine that has torn apart so many families like her own.

While the film's tagline is "The truth behind the right-wing media machine that changed a father…and divided the nation," an alternative version for so many who will recognize, within their own families, the story of what happened to Senko's father, might have been: "You are not alone!" "When I started the Kickstarter campaign" for the film, she tells me, "people just started writing me every day, with these heartbreaking stories about so-and-so in their family wouldn't speak to them anymore, or they couldn't talk about anything without them getting angry. It was really shocking. That's when I realized what a phenomenon it was." ...

Interesting.
Again a reference to a "house divided", just as in the first item above.
Interesting.

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Tuesday, March 15, 2016

Omnium and Gatherum March 15 2016

Sheriff Earl "Moose" Butler



1)
The Independent
Donald Trump almost faced charges over North Carolina campaign violence
The Republican said of his supporters targeting protesters: 'They started punching back. It was a beautiful thing.'
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-elections/donald-trump-almost-faced-charges-over-north-carolina-campaign-violence-a6931661.html
Authorities in North Carolina say there is not enough evidence to press charges against Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump for his behaviour in connection with a violent altercation at one of his rallies last week.
Cumberland County Sheriff's Office said legal counsel advised and Sheriff Earl “Moose” Butler agreed that the evidence did not meet the requirements of North Carolina law to support a conviction for inciting a riot...

I get the impression that people look at these protesters as somehow living out a scenario of opposing evil lest it get a foothold, and the whole thing is based on a certain understanding of Pastor Martin Niemöller's famous quote;
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist ...... and there was no one left to speak for me."

and there is a dim impression that somehow people did not do enough Nazi bashing back in the Weimar Republic times, otherwise Hitler never would have come to power.

Actually, there was a great deal of head-bashing between the Nazis and Communists and Socialists; there was a lot of street fighting, and such fighting led to each party having a security arm to protect against violence to their own rallies and also possibly to disrupt opponent's rallies (a parallel recently surfacing in Mr. Trump accusing Mr. Sanders of provocation and threatening that his followers would go to Mr. Sanders' rallies to show 'em what for.)


2)
See above...
The Cumberland County Sheriff's nickname is "Moose".
Cool.


3)
Most commercially available garlic are the softneck variety. The more interesting types are the hardneck variety...
Interesting in the sense that you may prefer them if you tend to eat garlic raw...

I eat a bit of raw garlic.
Of course, I have to do it furtively, and then use lots of mouthwash so no one will know my addiction. I usually have a big slice of cheese with it, making sort of a cheese-garlic sandwich.
The hardneck types can be very different from the garlic we are used to.
They often are much less biting while remaining aromatic. Much easier to eat raw.

Now you know my secret life. I think Thomas de Quincey wrote Confessions of an English Garlick-Eater in 1840.


4)
The Independent
Hundreds of refugees hunt for new route into Europe as three drown on Greece-Macedonia border
Macedonian police say they are taking steps to send back ‘several hundred’ refugees believed to have crossed into country
Loulla-Mae Eleftheriou-Smith
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/refugees-drown-greece-macedonia-hundreds-hunt-for-new-route-into-europe-a6930541.html
Three refugees have drowned while attempting to cross a river from Greece into Macedonia, according to police, as refugees attempt to find a new route to cross into the country.

Macedonian police said the bodies of two men and a woman had been found in the Suva Reka river near the border town of Gevgelija on Monday morning, which had swelled due to heavy rain.



I have a sneaky suspicion this used to happen a lot in Ancient Roman when barbarians wanted to get over the Rhine or the Danube or the Orontes to where the streets were paved with gold.

The comments to the story are, as one may expect, quite rich:
Google "muslim protests to allow non muslims to go to Mecca" and you will find nothing. Google, how many refugees have Saudi taken in and you will find it is nil. Why are we Europeans, the Kaffur, supposed to pick up after Muslim inter sect wars when they don't care about us. I am happy that if there are now no borders than Hindus, Jews, Christians etc etc should be able to pour in Mecca and if the Muslims try to stop them then the UN should intervene and bomb them if necessary.

All the hubbub has led to a new "Refugee Look":


Fashion editors across the board are heralding a ‘real-refugee revolution’ and a return to an authentic look. Where fashion goes, interiors follow:

Refugee Chair; "Less is indeed less."


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Sunday, March 13, 2016

Omnium And Gatherum March 13 2016




What do we have "on tap" (as they say on the 6:00 PM news) today?

First, we have the Ominous and Gatherous number #1 topic:


1) Political Violence



'We Aren't Nazis' Says Husband Of Woman Who Gave Nazi Salute At Trump Rally
"If you're gonna bastardize history, at least know the history you're bastardizing."
Sebastian Murdock 03/12/2016 07:11 pm ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/trump-rally-nazi-salute-husband_us_56e49dcde4b065e2e3d63576?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
... "They did their version of the Nazi salute and called us Nazis," Peterson said. He and his wife responded to the protesters: "'If you’re gonna do it, do it right, here’s the right way to do the Nazi salute.'"

And that's when Birgitt Peterson raised her arm, captured in a now viral image by Chicago Tribune photographer E. Jason Wambsgans.

"My wife was responding to them and making this a teaching moment," Mr. Peterson said. "I'm all for their right and support them for protesting, but you don’t call people Nazis, or say Trump or people who support him are the equivalent of Nazis -- that is asinine. That is ridiculousness."

"If they're going to make the comparison, they ought to at least know what the Nazi salute was and what it meant," he went on. "If you're gonna bastardize history, at least know the history you're bastardizing." ...

Then there is the informal salute, too:


and

Breitbart Spokesman Resigns Over Trump Aide Assault: 'This S**t Just Sucks'
He pointed to an "escalating pattern of behavior" at Trump rallies that is "incredibly dangerous."
Ryan Grim 03/11/2016 04:44 pm ET
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/breitbart-spokesman-resigns-over-trump-aide-assault-this-shit-just-sucks_us_56e33acfe4b065e2e3d607b7?utm_hp_ref=mostpopular
...In Bardella's [Breitbart's spokeman] view, the violence on the campaign trail is getting out of hand and needs to be called out. "There is this escalating pattern of behavior that's only happening at Donald Trump events. It's incredibly dangerous. His rhetoric is unmistakable and it is calculated and it is intentional," Bardella said.

Asked why Breitbart seems to be siding with the Trump campaign over its reporter Michelle Fields, Bardella said he wasn't sure. "I think there certainly appears to be conflicting agendas at play here. Your guess is as good as mine," he said.

[...]

UPDATE: 11:40 p.m. -- Bardella told CNN's Don Lemon on Friday night that he disagrees with Brietbart's coverage of the incident with Fields and "how they have treated Michelle."

"I think they have been looking for a reason to disprove something," Bardella said.

"Are you saying they are lying?" Lemon asked.

"Yes, I am," Bardella answered.

Three things stand out here. The first is the fact that our Media is grotesquely taking up sides and is rapidly losing all pretense at being "fair and balanced", as previously noted about FOX's campaign against Donald Trump.
It is one thing to voice one's opinion. It is quite another to become enmeshed in the political campaign as a participant.

Second, Political Violence is a mortal Tango which requires two damned souls to pull it off.

Even though a campaign may be courting violence, those who are opposed and protest should not be sucked into the vortex of violence, for by doing so, they only provide the justification for the formation of para-military organizations to provide security at political rallies.
If these para-militaries were to wear Brown Shirts, the rest of us dimwits may begin to understand.

Third, although it does not deal with violence, the Supreme Court blockade is unprecedented and radical in nature.
That's right; it is not a conservative action; it is a radical action.
Thus, it undermines the Constitution in the same manner that violence does.

**

2) Lucius Beebe



Wikipedia entry: Lucius Beebe
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Beebe
...Beebe wrote a syndicated column for the New York Herald Tribune from the 1930s through 1944 called This New York. The column chronicled the doings of fashionable society at such storied restaurants and nightclubs as El Morocco, the 21 Club, the Stork Club, and The Colony. Mr. Beebe is credited with popularizing the term "cafe society" which was used to describe the people mentioned in his column...

...Beebe was a noted gourmand. He had his own column "Along the Boulevard," in Gourmet, and wrote extensively for Holiday and Playboy about restaurants and dining experiences around the world. Some of the restaurants he covered include The Colony, The Stork Club,[6] The Pump Room, the 21 Club, Simpson's-in-the-Strand, and Chasen's. A noted wine aficionado, he was a member of the Confrérie des Chevaliers du Tastevin...
I have always been interested in New York night life from the 1920s through the 1950s. Names like "The Mocambo" or "The Tropicana" - Ricky Ricardo's club - just sort of reverberate through my head.
What really got my attention was the last word in the quote above, "Tastevin" meaning "wine-tasting cup" ... you know, that little thing that Niles Crain tastes wine from and then expectorates it out into the silver wine-tasting spittoon... which I suppose is foppishly called the Crachevin!

I was surprised I guess because I had never used the word before. What I saw was that although French had many occasions of "vowel+s+t" -  such as beste meaning "beast, animal" - becoming "vowel+circumflex+t  - such as beste -> bête , and the word for "to taste", which is now tâter, used to have that s between the "a" and the "t".

However, the S remained in certain not very commonly used words, such as Tastevin.
I learned something today.


**

3) Daylight Savings
I have just learned that it is one hour later than I thought. I hate Daylight Savings.

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Friday, March 11, 2016

Omnium and Gatherum: March 11 2016

People hold up photos of slain Honduran indigenous leader and environmentalist Berta Cáceres outside the coroner’s office in Tegucigalpa. (AP Photo / Fernando Antonio)


1)
The Nation
Before Her Murder, Berta Cáceres Singled Out Hillary Clinton for Criticism
The presidential candidate has ignored criticism of her role in enabling the consolidation of the Honduran coup.
By Greg Grandin Yesterday 1:31 pm
http://www.thenation.com/article/chronicle-of-a-honduran-assassination-foretold/
...In a video interview, given in Buenos Aires in 2014, Cáceres says it was Clinton who helped legitimate and institutionalize the [Honduran] coup. In response to a question about the exhaustion of the opposition movement (to restore democracy), Cáceres says (around 6:10): “The same Hillary Clinton, in her book Hard Choices, practically said what was going to happen in Honduras. This demonstrates the bad legacy of North American influence in our country. The return of Mel Zelaya to the presidency (that is, to his constitutionally elected position) was turned into a secondary concern. There were going to be elections.” Clinton, in her position as secretary of state, pressured (as her emails show) other countries to agree to sideline the demands of Cáceres and others that Zelaya be returned to power. Instead, Clinton pushed for the election of what she calls in Hard Choices a “unity government.” But Cáceres says: “We warned that this would be very dangerous.… The elections took place under intense militarism, and enormous fraud.”

The Clinton-brokered election did indeed install and legitimate a militarized regime based on repression. In the interview, Cáceres says that Clinton’s coup-government, under pressure from Washington, passed terrorist and intelligence laws that criminalized political protest. Cáceres called it “counterinsurgency,” carried out on behalf of “international capital”—mostly resource extractors—that has terrorized the population, murdering political activists by the high hundreds. “Every day,” Cáceres said elsewhere, “people are killed.”

Interestingly, Hillary Clinton removed the most damning sentences regarding her role in legitimating the Honduran coup from the paperback edition of Hard Choices...

Hillary Clinton was the Mini-Dick Cheney of the Obama Administration, and had events been different, she would have turned out as baneful as Cheney. Has she learned anything? I have no idea.
And she is not going there.



Runners        Carlo Allegri/Reuters
2)
The Atlantic
Retracing Our Steps
A familiar running trail can be a time machine.
Paul Bisceglio Mar 10, 2016
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2016/03/running-and-involuntary-memories/472374/
...Many of running’s psychological benefits already are well-known. It releases dopamine and increases blood flow in the brain, which not only makes people feel better than if they’d stayed on the couch, but helps them think sharper and more creatively, too. In a study published this month in the Journal of Psychology, a group of Finnish and American researchers found that—in lab rats, at least—distance running actually generates more new brain cells in adults than other types of exercise. And earlier studies have shown that running especially increases neurons in mice’s hippocampus, the area of the brain that plays a key role in learning and memory...
I knew there had to be an explanation why I am so brainy.

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Monday, March 07, 2016

Omnium And Gatherum: March 7 2016

The Duke Of Omnium and Gatherum (Roland Culver) from The Pallisers (1974)


I seem to remember talking about "omnium and gatherum", or "omnium et gatherum", elsewhere. Briefly, it is a macaroni phrase (I don't seem to recall whether I talked about macaroni things, but I surely must have) combining Latin and English, meaning - in a macaroni sense - "of all things here gathered (in myriad number by far!)"

If I have used"macaroni" wrongly.... I doubt it.

To save time for my book writing, yet to maintain blog contact, I shall post some tid-bits omnium et gatherum from time to tempus, thus keeping a foot in both worlds - as it were- a type of promiscuous usage writing (promiscui usuo) where I sort of... keep a hand (previously "foot"!) in... both worlds...

So, The Omnia Et Gathera of March 7, 2016  (using the Latin neuter plurals ending in -a):

1)
Portland Press Herald
Automatic voter registration takes hold on West Coast
"There's no other fundamental right we have as citizens that requires you to register or fill out a form," said Alex Padilla, California's Democratic secretary of state.
By JONATHAN J. COOPER and KRISTENA HANSEN  The Associated Press
http://www.pressherald.com/2016/03/07/automatic-voter-registration-takes-hold-on-west-coast/
... Voter registration laws in the U.S. have only been around for about 150 years, said Paul Gronke, a political science professor at Reed College in Portland who specializes in voter behavior.

“Voter registration was put in place in the U.S. in the 1870s and the 1880s – and the historical record is very clear – first to hold out Catholics, southern European immigrants and to push African Americans off the rolls,” he said...

Noble causes all.

Please consider Michigan also as a very special instance of disdain for the voters.
The Flint Water Crisis was midwifed and doctored into being by a special Emergency Manager, a post with powers that override the local governments where they hold power. A law establishing such Emergency Managers was passed by the Republican legislature back in 2011 and signed by Governor Snyder. However, the people of the State held a special refendum and soundly defeated the measure.

Therefore, the anti-democracy Republicans passed a bill almost exactly the same, but attached at the last moment and small budget funding measure... and budget-funding measures are not liable to referendums!

Pro Publica
The Referendum That Might Have Headed Off Flint’s Water Crisis
Michigan’s voters decided to scrap the kind of super-empowered emergency managers who made questionable decisions in Flint – but state lawmakers found a way to revive the program.
by Alec MacGillis
ProPublica, March 4, 2016, 12 a.m.
https://www.propublica.org/article/the-referendum-that-might-have-headed-off-flints-water-crisis
... The replacement differed in some particulars — it gave local elected officials the right to propose alternatives to an emergency manager’s cuts, if they saved as much money, and to vote to remove him or her by a two-thirds vote (though only after 18 months.) But it retained the main elements of the rejected law, such as the power to modify union contracts and sell off local assets. The tweaks would only apply to future emergency managers, not the ones already governing cities and school systems. And the legislature attached a small budget appropriation to the new law, which made it impervious to referendum...
In essence, the Republican lawmakers in their legendary disdain and lack of comprehension of "scientifickal stuff" saw no difference between the Arithmetic of cutting costs and advanced Chemistry.

It is all well and good to ignore democracy. If the people of Flint had been guilty of their own poisoning, they would have themselves to blame. However, it is the Republican legislature and Governor Snyder who are to blame, being the first cause from which these evils flowed.

Let us hold them accountable.


2)
Foreign Policy
What Would a Realist World Have Looked Like?
From Iraq and WMDs to Israel and Palestine to Syria and Russia, how the United States could’ve avoided some of its biggest mistakes.
By Stephen M. Walt January 8, 2016
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/01/08/what-would-a-realist-world-have-looked-like-iraq-syria-iran-obama-bush-clinton/
... When the Cold War ended, the United States was on good terms with all of the world’s major powers, al Qaeda was a minor nuisance, a genuine peace process was underway in the Middle East, and America was enjoying its “unipolar moment.” Power politics was supposedly becoming a thing of the past, and humankind was going to get busy getting rich in a globalized world where concerns about prosperity, democracy, and human rights would increasingly dominate the international political agenda. Liberal values were destined to spread to every corner of the globe, and if that process didn’t move fast enough, American power would help push it along.

Fast forward to today. Relations with Russia and China are increasingly confrontational; democracy is in retreat in Eastern Europe and Turkey; and the entire Middle East is going from bad to worse. The United States has spent hundreds of billions of dollars fighting in Afghanistan for 14 years, and the Taliban are holding their own and may even be winning. Two decades of U.S. mediation have left the Israeli-Palestinian “peace process” in tatters. Even the European Union — perhaps the clearest embodiment of liberal ideals on the planet — is facing unprecedented strains for which there is no easy remedy...

When you look at who is running for president, it seems that one knows nothing about policy, one has an ante-diluvian view of policy, and one is an architect of some of the most baleful policies.


3)
PBase.com
Ruth Rosenthal
http://www.pbase.com/roothy123/root

Copyright Ruth and Howard Rosenthal October 2015

At first I thought it was Photo-shopped, but it is a cafe in Valparaiso, Chile as seen from a cog-rail train ascending an urban cliff.
 
Lovely photos.



4)
Book Abacus
http://www.bookabacus.com/

Where on may find anything from Nancy Reagan (may God rest her soul):


to Thomas Aquinas:


 This Book Abacus by far alright!
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