With black lives and white audience in Seattle

By Dan Brooks in Protest 3 Comments
Protestors Marissa Johnson and Mara Jacqueline Willaford take the podium at a Sanders rally Saturday.

Protestors Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford take the podium at a Sanders rally Saturday.

On Saturday, protestors aligned with the Black Lives Matter movement shut down a Bernie Sanders rally in Seattle. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I think police violence against black people is a huge problem that the United States is, for the most part, still ignoring. I think activism—particularly activism by protest—is by definition disruptive and unpopular. You know what reduced institutional racism in Ferguson? Rioting in the streets. So you cannot criticize an act of protest for being inappropriate, because that’s the point. You can, however, criticize a protest for being ineffective, and I question whether Marissa Johnson and Mara Willaford achieved what they wanted on Saturday.

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Sarah Palin delivers incoherent speech at Iowa Freedom Summit

By Dan Brooks in Politics versus Government 5 Comments

At some point on Saturday, the snake that operates Sarah Palin fell in love with a licorice whip and ran away, leaving her host body to deliver a half-hour nonsense speech at the Iowa Freedom summit. Lest you think I am indulging a liberal trope, I want to make it clear that this was not the usual folksy assault on syntax. It was bona fide word salad. I quote from the 26-minute mark:

Things like that: it must change. Things must change for our government. Look at it. It isn’t too big to fail. It’s too big to succeed. It’s too big to succeed, so we can afford no retreads, or nothing will change. With the same people and same policies that got us into the status quo—another that word, status quo, and it stands for man, the middle-class everyday Americans are really getting taken for a ride. That’s status quo. And GOP leaders, by the way—you know, the man can only ride you when your back is bent.

That’s 23 seconds of a speech that lasted a half hour. I urge you to watch as much of the video as you can tolerate, if only for the reaction shots. That is as publicly surly as Iowans get.

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Deputy finds $800,000 in undeposited checks at Ravalli treasurer’s office

By Dan Brooks in Ravalli County Treasurer 2 Comments
Suspended Ravalli County treasurer Valerie Stamey, photographed by Alex Sakariassen of the Independent

Suspended Ravalli County treasurer Valerie Stamey, photographed by Alex Sakariassen

The Montana Department of Revenue has threatened to fine Ravalli County $37,000 if it does not file delinquent property tax reports soon. The good news is that the interim heads of the county treasury, Clerk and Recorder Regina Plettenberg and the pleasingly-named deputy Dan Whitesitt, found $800,000 worth of undeposited checks dating back to November. Valerie Stamey, the treasurer who claimed to have uncovered a criminal conspiracy among county commissioners when they accused her of doing nothing since she was appointed, turns out to have done pretty much nothing since she was appointed.

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Friday links! And dot-com the wolves edition

By Dan Brooks in Friday Links 0 Comment
A federal contractor performs a routine stop to listen to your voicemails.

A federal contractor performs a routine stop to listen to your voicemails.

Let us say, just for a second, that someone invented technology that allowed everyone on Earth to communicate with one another almost instantaneously. People could use this marvelous machine to say anything they wanted, and they could say it to just one person or broadcast their ideas all over the world. You couldn’t use it to exert force or shoot lasers or anything; the machine could only convey speech and the written word, plus pictures. Approximately 20 years after this machine is invented, a government announces it has the right to record and read, at its leisure, everything everyone uses the machine to say. It must do so to protect freedom. Does this government sound democratic to you? Today is Friday, and the wolves have come out. Won’t you shiver in the vast field of prey with me?

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Rand Paul: “Haters” accusing me of plagiarism

By Dan Brooks in Plagiarism 4 Comments
Rand Paul (R-KY) plagiarizes a speech from Rick Flair.

Rand Paul (R-KY) plagiarizes a speech from Rick Flair.

In case you hadn’t heard, Rand Paul is currently embroiled in the most tepid plagiarism scandal imaginable. Speaking at Liberty University last week, the senator and self-certified ophthalmologist warned against the dangers of genetic testing by talking about what college kids can understand: Ethan Hawke movies from the nineties. Quote:

In the movie Gattaca, in the not too distant future, eugenics is common. And DNA plays a primary role in determining your social class.

Compare that to the Wikipedia summary of the film, which reads, “In ‘the not-too-distant future,’ eugenics is common and DNA plays the primary role in determining social class.” More middles school-level shirking from the senator’s office after the jump.

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