July 29, 2009
- BNet Technology’s Erik Sherman (”Is AP Run By Idiots?”) — “Sometimes you see a business move so stupid, so clearly self-damaging that you have to wonder whether someone inside the corporation is trying to torpedo it.” Sherman is referring to this AP press release (”Associated Press to build news registry to protect content”) and this follow-up New York Times interview of AP CEO Tom Curley (”A.P. Cracks Down on Unpaid Use of Articles on Web”). I’ll have a lot more to say about this in an already-submitted column on either Thursday or Friday at Pajamas Media.
- This collection of Twitters (HT Voting Catholic/Lead Us Not Into Temptation) highlights many of the intrusive, privacy-invasive, care-rationing, discriminatory provisions of the health care bill. It’s probably nowhere near all-inclusive.
- Moral Hazard Ahead Here (HT to dscott in an e-mail) — “Those on the front lines of the debt industry say there is a small but increasingly noticeable group of strapped consumers who …. are deciding they will simply stop paying.”
- IBD cartoonist Michael Ramirez via Hot Air — “Meet the Uninsured.”
- Andrew McCarthy at National Review, from earlier this month — “Obama Frees Iranian Terror Masters” (HT America’s Right via The Oxpecker).
- For perspective, go back to the Henry Louis Gates arrest report that went up at the Smoking Gun last week. The only teachable point I see is that if you don’t act like a loud-mouth, self-important, whiny jerk, you won’t get arrested. It had nothing to do with race until Henry Gates made it about race. Crowley didn’t “act stupidly,” but this country’s president did, and compounded his stupidity by not apologizing for it.
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I hope someone *is* torpedoing it, AP is a dilapidated biased clunky operation and good riddance.
Comment by zf — July 29, 2009 @ 6:40 am
That police report is a bit suspect:
http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/07/27/911-caller-didnt-mention-Gates-race/UPI-32501248723655/
And according to a FOX News legal analyst, the police may have acted illegally, which some might call stupidly:
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/07/29/fox-gates/
Comment by Al on Main — July 29, 2009 @ 3:36 pm
#2, tell that to Crowley’s comrades:
http://www.bizzyblog.com/2009/07/29/9442/
I’ll trust them, if you don’t mind.
Obama objectively acted stupidly by opining about something he admitted he didn’t have the facts on. Even if he ends up being right (doubtful), that only makes him lucky, and doesn’t change the fact that he spoke stupidly. He’s supposed to be the Supreme Adult, but instead he’s a whiny baby ignorantly crying racism.
Comment by TBlumer — July 29, 2009 @ 10:37 pm
This is not to say the police don’t act stupidly at times. Here’s one case where it seems the police didn’t use common sense: http://www.outsidethebeltway.com/archives/police_taser_deaf_retarded_man/
The mentally handicapped deaf man was tazed and pepper sprayed in a restroom stall. I saw the interview on Fox and Friends, the deaf man was known by the store employees because he and his mother shopped there frequently. He was sick in the restroom for an hour. Yet for some reason the store employees either didn’t pass on that information to the police OR they did and the police got stuck on stupid and didn’t use the information to resolve the situation. The local magistrate refused to charge the deaf man after the police brought him in and then they dropped him off in the parking lot outside his house with no explanation. Is this how a mentally handicapped person is supposed to be treated? Now maybe I don’t have all the information and I’m rushing to judgment, but something doesn’t add up here.
Here’s the question for the general public to consider, do you treat people differently when specific known information would lead to a non violent resolution of the situation?
Note: the umbrella in his possession laying on the floor of the restroom stall was a compact type, not the standard fold open type with the metal point on the end.
Bottom line, there are times when the police do a less than exemplary job, however, I’m not ready to say it’s endemic based on isolated incidents. Especially when officers like Crowley exist.
Comment by dscott — July 30, 2009 @ 9:12 am
When you’re a former constitutional law professor, I’m not sure luck enters into it.
Comment by Al on Main — July 30, 2009 @ 3:12 pm
#5, when you don’t know the facts, of course it’s only luck — at least on this planet.
Comment by TBlumer — July 30, 2009 @ 3:16 pm
He knew the one fact that mattered. He knew that Gates was arrested for disorderly conduct in his home. Listen to the FOX Legal Analyst again.
Comment by Al on Main — July 30, 2009 @ 7:00 pm