Prairie Weather

I prefer to remain a problem

Preferred: people of advanced age, old people*

Problematic/Outdated: older people, elders, seniors, senior citizen

*Old people has been reclaimed by some older activists who believe the standard wording of old people lacks the stigma of the term “advanced age”. Old people also halts the euphemizing of age. Euphemizing automatically positions age as a negative.

*

Preferred: person living at or below the poverty line, people experiencing poverty

Problematic/Outdated: poor person, poverty-stricken person

*

Preferred:  person of material wealth

Problematic: rich

Being rich gets conflated with a sort of omnipotence; hence, immunity from customs and the law. People without material wealth could be wealthy or rich of spirit, kindness, etc.

*

Preferred: people of size

Problematic/Outdated: obese*, overweight people

*

Preferred: person who is blind/visually impaired

Problematic: blind person, “dumb”

*

Preferred:  U.S. citizen or Resident of the U.S.

Problematic: American

*

Preferred: White people, European-American individuals

Problematic: Caucasian people

*

Preferred: Folks, People, You All, Y’all

Problematic/Outdated: Guys (when referring to people overall)

*

Preferred: Other Sex

Problematic/Outdated: Opposite Sex

*

Preferred: Children who are gender non-conforming, Children who are gender variant

Problematic/Outdated: Girlie or Tomboy

That whole damn list is about conformity and in my book conformity is a no-no.   Puzzling:  the list comes out of New Hampshire.  Isn't that the state where the license plate reads "Live Free or Die"?

What videos are revealing about the police

... Body camera advocates and skeptics alike say they do not know how much that reflects a real decline in police misconduct, and how much was a drop in spurious civilian complaints; it may be that both groups behave better when they are on camera. ...NYT

We're learning much, much more about the behaviors of the police, about their "collars," and -- maybe most notably and shockingly -- the extent to which past accounts of cruelty and injustice towards minority groups and particularly blacks have been true, not "exaggerations." 

The New York Times report emphasizes that the videos only show police violence now.  Looking back beyond the existence of videos, in times when there were no moving images to back up our impression of, say, Bull Connors' behaviors, we can understand how easy it's been for supporters of Southern "justice" to maintain a system of wanton cruelty right into the new millennium. 

Even now, the Times reports today, "there is, however, no precise accounting of the number of people killed by police officers each year."

The behaviors of our law officers are now coming to light in random recordings not only in a park in Cleveland or along the waterfront on Staten Island, but in day-to-day traffic stops in Anywhere, America.  And a reminder:  we have yet to confront -- to record and show -- the treatment of prospective immigrants by officials along our southern border.

Behind all this is the reminder that "bad apples" remain in our system in large part thanks to elected officials -- people we have elected.  So it's as well to point out that, through all this, we've maintained a relatively sunny, laissez-faire view of Americans voting even as we continue to find evidence that there are irregularities in every step of the way in our voting procedures and vote counting.  If we only had the equivalent of video vigilantes monitoring every aspect of our elections -- from whose money and how much to whose access to voters' lists and with what precise results -- "equality" in America might yet be revealed as another shocking "suicide" at the hands of "the authorities" and our "elected" officials.

Another costly war lost

We found out only the other day that Afghan/Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, died about two year ago.  We may take a good deal more time admitting to ourselves (if we ever really do) that -- in Afghanistan -- we have lost yet another war.  The Taliban have won.

The international conflict that Mullah Omar helped to start in 2001 is still going on, having cost, thus far, the lives of an estimated ninety-one thousand Afghans, twenty-six thousand of them civilians. Three thousand three hundred and ninety-three soldiers from twenty-nine different countries died, too, the majority of them—two thousand three hundred and sixteen—Americans. The financial cost to U.S. taxpayers alone has been around a trillion dollars, with billions more to come, in the years ahead, in medical bills and other long-term costs for Afghan-war veterans. Although the American combat role in the Afghan war officially ended last December, about ten thousand troops have stayed on as advisers and as a counterterrorism quick-reaction force within a reconstituted NATO mission, and will remain at least through the end of 2016.

Mullah Omar’s Taliban survived NATO’s extended presence in Afghanistan. In some ways, it can be argued that it defeated it. After being dislodged from power by the initial U.S. military assault launched in 2001, the Taliban eventually revived and now has an increasingly robust presence in many parts of the country, leaving Afghanistan in a chronically precarious state. ...JonLeeAnderson,NewYorker

Sometimes someone on the right pops up -- Lindsey Graham among others, at least this time, along with "bomb,bomb, bomb" McCain -- advocating for a whole new war. 

This time it may well be Iran.  We begin to understand that Republicans (who also love war for its ability to generate even more campaign support from the defense establishment) want each successive war to somehow erase or justify or drown out our memorites of the most recent debacle.

Both Iraq and Afghanistan are have been clear and costly failures and both have been the exclusive property of the American right and its donors -- with the American people, as fall guys, paying heavily for both wars.  An Iraq war was a gift from Bush#2 and meant (somehow) to make President Bush#1 feel better after a snub.  Action in Afghanistan would re-erect the World Trade Center as well as some Republican leaders who had been feeling impotent.  As the truth of all this trickles down to the rest of us -- we pay the bills -- Republicans will try to find another war to fight that we'll pay for later.  In the meantime, they'd like us to forget that the Taliban have won and ISIS is close behind.  We're stuck with the consequences:  Taliban and ISIS damage, photos of the family members we lost, and our post-war financial situations.

Not to mention the kind of "security" we have given the people of Afghanistan. 

Here is the enemy we didn't defeat -- remember?  Before Bush and Cheney rushed in to, um, get rid of the bad guys? 

In one of their very first acts in Kabul, Taliban fighters stormed the United Nations compound in Kabul and seized the former Afghan President, Mohammad Najibullah, who had taken refuge there since his overthrow, in 1992. The Taliban beat him, castrated him, dragged him behind a jeep, shot him, and then hanged him. This act set the tone for the Taliban’s subsequent rule: they massacred members of the Hazara minority for being Shiites, banned women from working in hospitals or any public offices, and kept girls out of schools; they banned public music, the sale of CDs, and kite flying. Kabul’s sports stadium became an execution ground. In March, 2001, Mullah Omar’s men blew up the two giant stone Buddhas of Bamiyan, archaeological treasures that were fifteen hundred years old. ...JonLeeAnderson,NewYorker

Well, Bush and Cheney didn't succeed in making them go away.  They're still there.

The mysterious deaths of 5 black women

The death of Sandra Bland in jail was just the other day, right? 

Five black women have died in jail including Bland's "suicide."  (I think suicide, when it refers to death incustody, deserves the quotes.)

Raynetta Turner in upstate New York.  Kindra Chapman, a teenager in Alabama.  Joyce Curnell in Charleston.  Ralkina Jones in Cleveland.  And, of course, Bland herself in East Texas.

There are open questions about all of them -- including why they were jailed for minor offenses.

Hillary's campaign less effective now than in 2008?

It's beginning to look like Hillary thinks she should be president because, well, she's Hillary.  Also looks like it ain't workin'.

"... She dodged a question on Tuesday over whether she supports or opposes building the Keystone XL Pipeline," according to a front page report in The Hill today. “'If it’s undecided when I become president, I will answer your question,'” she said during a New Hampshire campaign stop.

So it's all those peanut butter sandwiches at midnight she's after when she's campaigning?  Addressing actual issues tends to get iffy and gets you into trouble.  Hillary is in a tight spot.  As Tad Devine, an adviser to Bernie Sanders, concedes:

Clinton faced a unique dilemma as a former secretary of State who served in that office during some of the time the pipeline was being evaluated. Complicating matters further for Clinton, the president she served remains in office. President Obama’s rhetoric on Keystone has been negative in recent months, even as he has avoided sounding a definitive death knell for the project.

But, referring to the Clinton campaign, Devine asserted, “I don’t think they have really figured out the formulation about how to stay close to the president while separating herself at the same time.

“It’s not an easy thing to do. But if she is going to be unwilling to answer a fundamental question about the environment, which Keystone XL is, she’s going to have to explain that in a way that is much more understandable to voters.” ...TheHill

Her numbers don't look great.

Last week, a Quinnipiac poll showed Coloradans asserting by an almost 2-1 margin that Clinton was not honest or trustworthy: 62 percent said she was not, whereas only 34 percent she was. Respondents in Iowa distrusted Clinton 59 percent to 33 percent, and those in Virginia distrusted her 55 percent to 39 percent.

Keystone is far from the only issue on which Clinton has bobbed and weaved. ...TheHill

You want a really good piece of engineering and construction?

 ... A rough-edged opening, about twenty inches square, had been cut into the floor. According to Mexico’s national-security commissioner, Guzmán climbed into the hole and down a ladder, entering a 4,921-foot-long tunnel. Fluorescent lights hung from a ceiling-mounted PVC pipe, which also brought fresh air into the passageway. Metal tracks had been bolted to the ground, allowing an ad-hoc vehicle—a railcar rigged to the frame of a small motorcycle—to be driven from one end of the tunnel to the other. The gray stone walls, about thirty inches apart, were scored with jagged marks made by electric spades; Guzmán’s shoulders probably brushed the walls as he passed.

The tunnel ended beneath a small cinder-block house in an open field. As Guzmán climbed a wooden ladder toward ground level, he passed the evidence of what seemed to be a months-long engineering project: a generator, which had powered the tools that workmen used to build the tunnel; a heavy-duty electric winch, to lower machinery into the pit; gallons of hydraulic fluid; coils of steel mesh.

Guzmán’s method of escape should have surprised no one. Last year, in Culiacán, he evaded Mexican marines by disappearing into a network of subterranean passageways connecting seven houses. He did not invent smuggling tunnels—bank robbers, rumrunners, and guerrillas had used them for decades—but his criminal enterprise, the Sinaloa drug cartel, built the first cross-border narcotúnel, in 1989. Since then, Sinaloa has refined the art of underground construction and has used tunnels more effectively than any criminal group in history. ...MonteReel,NewYorker

Or perhaps you just want your stuff?  Everything but the most costly service from LLBean or Amazon takes about ten days. Sheesh!  You can get your drogas pretty much overnight from Sinaloa, thanks to the demand on this side of the border.

Whether it's coke or Koch, the US robber barons can make both part of your life --by tunnel and by vote.