Combat! - Page 111 of 406 - A blog by Dan Brooks

Friday links! What must be done edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links July 17, 2015 0 Comment

The author in his wasp suit

A few weeks ago, I noticed yellow jackets flying in and out of the gap between my stair and the siding. “I don’t need to do anything about this,” I thought, and went inside to vomit. Then this week, as I was chaining up my bicycle, one of the greatly increased number of yellow jackets stung me on the calf. “That’s it,” I said. “I’m going to do something if this happens again.” Yesterday they got me twice, on that one big vein that runs over the top of the ankle. I could feel the venom going up my leg. Generally, it is against my ethics to kill living things; I’m the guy who catches spiders in a rocks glass and turns them loose outside. My personal code also forbids doing chores around the house. But wasp appeasement had clearly failed, so I went to the hardware store and bought toxic spray and foaming sealant. Today is Friday, and we all must do what must be done. Won’t you poison whole societies with me?

Mall developers ask for $13M in city funds

By Dan Brooks in Uncategorized July 16, 2015 0 Comment

The old movie theater that went out of business, about a mile from the new theater everyone will love

Last week, developers presented the Missoula Redevelopment Agency with a plan to expand Southgate Mall using $13 million in public funds. Included in that total was a $5.2 million right-of-way fee the city might pay to build a new road connecting Brooks and Reserve Streets through mall property. You read that right: the owners of Southgate designed a street to funnel traffic to their business, and they want the city of Missoula to pay $5 million for the privilege of building it. It’s a gutsy ask, but what is more surprising is that it will probably work.

The MRA has acknowledged that the mall’s proposal asks for more money than it usually spends and significantly exceeds the public-to-private funding ratio in the agency’s guidelines, but they lean toward doing it. I quote the Missoulian:

[MRA staff] also noted the risk of not taking action, saying that other malls across the country are failing. In the event that Southgate Mall did fail—it’s financially strong currently—the empty building would spread blight and cost much more to raze for another use.

I’m not sure that makes sense. The city should invest $13 million in Southgate because malls across the country are failing? And our privately-owned mall deserves millions of taxpayer dollars even though it’s doing well? That sounds less like a plan for urban renewal than an award to real estate developers for maximally influencing city government. You can read my scurrilous remarks in this week’s column for the Missoula Independent.

I imagine some of you did not wake up this morning wondering what’s to become of Urban Renewal District III in Missoula, Montana, but I submit that there’s no machination like municipal government machinations, and the cogs of Missoula’s government are particularly exposed. Even if you don’t plan on visiting Southgate Mall, the mechanisms by which real-estate developers secure $13 million in public funding for a perfectly healthy private enterprise are worth considering. If you want to understand how corporatocracy works in the United States of America, consider how it operates in small-town Montana. We’ll be back tomorrow with Friday links.

New Harper Lee novel is bad news for kids named Atticus, good news for dicks

By Dan Brooks in Existential Dilemmas July 15, 2015 2 Comments

Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch in To Kill a Mockingbird

Yesterday, Harper Collins released Go Set a Watchman, the newly-discovered sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Set 20 years after the events of Harper Lee’s Pulitzer Prize-winning original, Go Set a Watchman finds Scout a grown woman, returning from New York to visit her father Atticus Finch, who has become an aging racist. I repeat: Atticus Finch is racist in the new book. That’s an unfortunate turn of events for people who named their children Atticus, as the New York Times reports. I should definitely feel bad for those literary-minded parents and their Atticuses, too, but schadenfreude persists.

Citing “strategic bulk purchases,” Times will not put Cruz book on bestseller list

By Dan Brooks in Republican Candidates July 14, 2015 3 Comments

Book game

Ted Cruz’s memoir, A Time for Truth: Reigniting the Promise of America, sold 11,854 copies in its first week—more than 18 of the 20 titles on the New York Times nonfiction bestseller list. But the Times has declined to include A Time for Truth in its list, citing evidence of “strategic bulk purchases” intended to manipulate sales. Apparently the gray lady has an algorithm for that, and they’re standing by it, even as the Cruz campaign cries foul. Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal and Publisher’s Weekly have included the book on their own lists—the latter, as the Washington Post notes, “in fourth place between books from former Playboy bunny Holly Madison and enthusiastic facial-expression-maker Aziz Ansari.”

Adventure Combat Ops lets Vegas tourists tactically assault zombies

By Dan Brooks in Ethical Dilemmas July 13, 2015 1 Comment

Las Vegas Review-Journal entertainment columnist Doug Elfman wins Lead of the Day for this emotional rollercoaster right here:

Las Vegas is about to get a new military attraction made for civilian entertainment — a hardcore, two-hour “Call of Duty”-esque immersion being built by some top forces who were part of the raids that killed Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein’s kids.

Tactical combat sounded so fun right up until we got to the part about killing kids. But don’t worry: Uday and Qusay Hussein were fully grown when we killed them. By “we,” of course, I mean the ~~people~~ heroes of US special forces operations like Seal Team Six, Delta Force, and the Green Berets. By pretty much universal assent, they are the coolest people in American society. It is extremely awesome to burst into a building and surprise hell out of everybody while shooting their center masses. Now you can do that, too, but with pellets instead of bullets and zombies instead of people.