Category: Issues of the Day

Hey, wait a minute

An individual who I’ve known for some years — and whose opinions I regard highly — posted something today that troubled me. He said he “just wants to point out that Cambridge cops have a seriously bad reputation when it comes to race.”

That statement may very well be true. The problem with it is, the “Cambridge cops” did not go to Professor Gates’s home. Sgt. James Crowley did.

Do we assume then that if the “Cambridge cops” have a race problem, that Sgt. Crowley has a race problem?

That sounds like profiling to me.

Perception vs. Reality

Scot Key writes about how this boy —

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) – An Albuquerque woman faces a criminal charge after her 13-year-old son was dropped off at a hospital unconscious and extremely drunk.

Crystal Deleon, 31, faces a charge of child abuse resulting in great bodily harm.

The boy told police he was drinking with his mom and others on Wednesday.

— and those like him undermine the reality of standardized testing and No Child Left Behind.

And Annette links to an article that says that the war on drugs in Mexico doesn’t exist. It’s really a war for drugs.

Knowing when to yield

I’m probably the only driver who was taught how to merge at gunpoint.

Forty years ago I was driving my VW Bug in the right lane of the Southfield Freeway in Detroit. A car coming down an entrance ramp attempted to merge in front of me, but — in a fit of rudeness and stupidity — I sped up so that he had to slow down.

The Oldsmobile entered the freeway behind me, then came along side in the middle lane and honked. I gave a friendly gesture (it wasn’t the peace sign). The other driver honked again. This time when I looked over he was waving a revolver pointed at me (holding it in front of his passenger). He gestured to pull over.

This didn’t seem like a good idea, but the Bug couldn’t out run his Olds. I attempted to lose him in rush hour congestion at the next exit, but he caught up to me when I got to a stop light.

The driver came up to my car, identified himself as an off-duty Detroit police officer (he was partially in uniform), and — at gun point — and despite the fact that he himself was profane — made me apologize to his woman passenger for my obscene gesture. He seemed as rattled from anger as I was from fear — his badge was upside-down when he showed it to me — but he did have his service revolver pointed in the right direction. I did what he said.

In the process he lectured me about the difference between “merge” (give and take) and “yield” (right-of-way).

The point of telling this story again today is to offer commentary on the controversy in Cambridge, Mass. Police officers earn and deserve our respect. They are under-paid, too frequently under-trained, and routinely under-supported in their community. That said, some police have anger management problems — just like the rest of us. And police officers, unlike most of the rest of us, have at hand the ability to really mess you up.

It appears to me that in Cambridge, while race was no doubt underlying the incident, the real issue was the officer felt disrespected and largely over reacted.

It happens.

It shouldn’t.

In Afghanistan

Awesome sets of photos.

Today, nearly eight years after the initial invasion of Afghanistan, the country remains unstable at best, and the U.S. is now pouring thousands of new troops into the country, joining the international coalition to combat the Taliban insurgency. This year, bomb attacks on coalition troops have reached an all-time high – at least 46 American troops killed by IEDs this year, part of the larger figure of 1,249 coalition deaths to date. On June 25th, U.S. officials announced the launch of Operation Khanjar – 4,000 U.S. Marines and hundreds of NATO and Afghan forces pushing into various parts of Helmand province attempting to secure the area ahead of Afghanistan’s presidential election next month. Consider this entry a double-issue – there has been so much powerful photography coming out of Afghanistan the past few months, I had a very hard time editing down to just these, recent photographs from Afghanistan.

Part One (32 photos total) – The Big Picture – Boston.com

Part Two (32 photos total – The Big Picture – Boston.com

What she said

There were lines of people waiting patiently to get into these hearings, even if just for a few moments, and what was striking about it is that so many of them were very young, so many were women, and so many were of different races and colors. America’s future was waiting in line to get a glimpse of a hearing at which the woman who will become this country’s first Hispanic justice was repeatedly called out as someone with a race problem.

Dahlia Lithwick

Government Motors

On Facebook a friend (a relative actually) noted that “work is being done now to transfer ownership of General Motors to the government. ‘Government Motors’, the new GM. scary.”

Why scary?

It’s not as if General Motors has been well managed before now.

The Federal Government will own a majority of GM, it’s true, but the Canadian Government, the United Auto Workers and current bondholders will also have shares. Those organizations may not make it seem any better, but multiple owners makes me feel better. The intent is to sell the stock once it has value.

Uncle Sam will own the majority of the stock, but it will not manage the company day-to-day. Government workers won’t be on the assembly lines or designing the cars.

If, as most of our political leaders determined, we need to sustain GM (and Chrysler) for economic and national security reasons, than it’s better, I think, that we actually get stock for our money and not just loan IOUs.

Is it also scary that the Federal Government manages air traffic control? I’ve not seen any planes falling out of the skies.

Is it also scary that the Federal Government sends checks to more than 100 million people who depend on Social Security every month? I’ve heard complaints of red tape but none that people don’t get their money timely.

Is it also scary that the the Federal Government runs prisons? I haven’t heard of federal prisoners running loose across the land?

And so on. I’m not saying that the Federal Government is perfect — I had 30 years experience within it to learn differently. I am not saying that taking over auto manufacturers is something that we should be pleased was necessary.

I am saying that taking a temporary majority ownership in General Motors isn’t cause for particular alarm.

But can they do the Moonwalk?

On Sunday, July 5th in Urumqi, the capital of China’s western Xinjiang region, thousands of minority ethnic Uighur residents marched, demanding a government investigation into an earlier incident – a brawl between Han Chinese and Uighurs in a toy factory in Shaoguan that ended with at least two Uighur deaths. Sometime during the July 5th protest the situation became very violent, Uighurs clashing with police and attacking local Han Chinese. Urumqi citizens woke the next morning to learn that over 1,000 people had been injured and 156 killed in their city. Government forces worked to quell the violence and to separate the newly-formed Han vigilante groups and the Uighurs still in the streets. Communications were shut off, streets closed, curfews imposed, hundreds arrested, and thousands of troops poured into Urumqi, which remains tense – several clashes reported even today. (36 photos total)

The Big Picture – Boston.com

Brown

Reposted from two years ago today:

NewMexiKen attended a talk Saturday evening by Richard Rodriguez. His presentation was sponsored by The Chicano, Hispano, Latino Program (CHIPOTLE) of the University Libraries at the University of New Mexico. He was excellent.

Rodriguez is an author and journalist, his most recent book being Brown: The Last Discovery of America (2002). He appears on The NewsHour on PBS.

Rodriguez’s 75-minute talk was on the browning of the world. It was an anecdotal, amusing, entertaining and provocative presentation. My notes are fleeting but include:

  • The Senate voted to designate English the only language. Won’t they have to stop selling burritos in the Senate cafeteria? How could you even describe a burrito — tortilla, no, guacamole, no, chile, no.
  • We don’t speak English, we speak American. (German words, Spanish words, French words, American Indian words.)
  • Outside the U.S. there is no such thing as Hispanics. It’s a number of cultures not a race.
  • HBO did a documentary on white culture. It was 15 minutes.
  • The Census suggests there will be no racial distinctions by the 2020 census. The races are becoming too intermingled.
  • One of his aunts, like Rodriguez part Spanish and part Indian, married an East Indian. Their daughter, his cousin, is an Indian Indian. (And she married an American Indian so their child is Indian Indian Indian.)
  • Why is Barack Obama considered an African-American (i.e., black)? His mother was white.
  • He’d gotten a letter from a woman who’s father was Muslim and mother was Jewish. She didn’t know what she was but Americans think of her as the frugal terrorist.

These one-liners, of course, do not do the talk justice. Underlying it all was the theme that individuals everywhere are crossing racial lines — as they have for centuries in some cultures. It’s the browning of the world. And now people are crossing religious lines, too. Reacting to it all are the extremists, doing all that they can to stop the mingling.

A tale of two borders

WASHINGTON – At a recent meeting of the Senate Judiciary Committee, lawmakers implored Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano to make sure new passport requirements don’t get in the way of French-Canadian grandparents crossing the U.S.-Canadian border to visit their grandchildren.

There was no mention of how those new rules might hurt Mexican grandparents trying to cross the U.S.-Mexican border to visit their grandkids in Arizona, California, New Mexico or Texas.

The Arizona Republic elaborates.

Crazy is as crazy does

[Rep. Michelle] Bachmann [R-Looney Bin] talked to Sean Hannity on Fox News last night about her anti-census crusade, and returned to one of her favorite arguments: “Sean, you know the one question they don’t ask? They [don’t] ask, ‘are you an American citizen?’ … [T]hey could at least ask if we’re an American citizen? They don’t bother to ask for that. That’s why I think people need to read this census for themselves. If you go to my website, michelebachmann, you can read it.”

Good idea. If you take Bachmann’s advice, visit her website, and read the census, you find the American Community Survey put together by the Census Bureau. Question #7 reads: “Where was this person born?” Question #8 reads, “Is this person a citizen of the United States?”

The Washington Monthly

I can’t watch this video all the way through

A young Iranian woman is shot watching the protests with her father.

I post it because … I don’t even know. It’s too important to ignore and too horrifying to watch.

The Iranian government must understand that the world is watching. We mourn each and every innocent life that is lost. We call on the Iranian government to stop all violent and unjust actions against its own people. The universal rights to assembly and free speech must be respected, and the United States stands with all who seek to exercise those rights.

As I said in Cairo, suppressing ideas never succeeds in making them go away. The Iranian people will ultimately judge the actions of their own government. If the Iranian government seeks the respect of the international community, it must respect the dignity of its own people and govern through consent, not coercion.

Martin Luther King once said – “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” I believe that. The international community believes that. And right now, we are bearing witness to the Iranian peoples’ belief in that truth, and we will continue to bear witness.

President Obama

Best paragraphs of the day

The recent haggling over Guantanamo Bay is such classic Democratic Party politics, it almost makes you want to laugh. Almost, except that it’s, you know, revolting. Eight years of Clintonian squirming was bad enough, but now we have Barack Obama, smoking Habeas Corpus and not inhaling it.

Why is the Gitmo decision classic Democratic Party thinking? Because when certain of us said we wanted Gitmo closed, we sort of meant a change in policy – we didn’t mean just physically closing the plant, moving the prisoners elsewhere, and leaving the policies essentially unchanged. This is what this generation of Democrats does every time: every time they come to a fork in the road, they try to take it.

Matt Taibbi has more on “The End of the Obama Honeymoon, Part II”