The Oregon Commentator is privy to the police feed from the EPD. This one seemed particularly worrisome. Stay safe out there.
Man Set on Fire During Assault
Case No. 09-17789
Eugene Police are looking for information regarding an incident early Saturday morning, in which a man was lit on fire by an unknown assailant.
At about 3:00 Saturday morning, an adult male reported that he was walking on the sidewalk near E. Broadway and High when he heard footsteps and was bumped from behind. As he turned around, there was the sound of fire quickly igniting and he was on fire. He said he stopped, dropped and rolled. After the fire was out, he walked to the Campus Inn, 390 E. Broadway, and called out for help from an employee. He was taken to a local hospital with what appear to be non-lifethreatening but painful burns on his hands and face.
When mainstream commentators treat a small group of unconnected crimes as a grand, malevolent movement, they unwittingly echo the very conspiracy theories they denounce. Both brands of connect-the-dots fantasy reflect the tellers’ anxieties much more than any order actually emerging in the world. When such a story is directed at those who oppose the politicians in power, it has an additional effect. The list of dangerous forces that need to be marginalized inevitably expands to include peaceful, legitimate critics.
[…]
The killers, they acknowledge, aren’t taking their marching orders directly from Fox News and AM radio. But by giving serious attention to theories associated with the fringe right—that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is preparing concentration camps, that Barack Obama is not a natural-born U.S. citizen—Glenn Beck and other broadcasters are validating the grievances of potential killers, giving them the impression that they aren’t alone.
[…]
The first is that it ignores the autonomy of people on the fringe. Not just the radicals who commit the crimes, but the radicals who don’t commit crimes. There’s a complex ecology at work here.. Words have influence, but they influence different people in different ways; you can’t reduce media effects to simple push-pull reactions. Accusing Glenn Beck or Bill O’Reilly of validating right-wing violence isn’t so different from accusing pornography of validating rape, Ozzy Osbourne of validating teen suicide, or Marilyn Manson of validating school massacres.
Think about that. Then go back and read Blue Oregon’s Carla Axtman’s comments on this blog attempting to link mainstream Republicans (and conservatives in general) with “wildly fringe conservative organizations” listening to “eliminationist rhetoric” “within [the] context of guns and stoked-up town halls.”
Axtman (among others) is engaging in the Team-Red vs. Team blue equivalent of blaming Marilyn Manson for Columbine.
Today marks the anniversary of the day that Germany invaded Poland in 1939, setting off the Second World War in Europe.
The leading light of the “paleo-conservative” movement, Pat Buchanan, evidently saw fit to commemorate this day by writing an article entitled “Did Hitler Want War?” [Updated link below]
The thing’s barely worth reading, and relies on a… novel understanding of history, to say the least, blaming the war on a “junta” of Polish generals and a Western plot to “punish” Hitler for Munich. Oh, and Hitler “let the British go” at Dunkirk, demonstrating his ultimately peaceful intentions. In short, this is the diary of an insane person.
Of course, jaw-dropping World War Two revisionism is nothingnew for Buchanan, who’s been pimping the “Hitler was misunderstood!” line for a few years now. Who knows? Maybe Pacifica Forum will invite him and David Irving to campus for a joint lecture about the Second World War one of these days. Hell, get the “Nakba = genocide” crowd out there for support and the UO can have itself a nice little orgy of Jew-hating historical revisionism.
[UPDATE] Realclearpolitics has evidently deleted Buchanan’s article from their site. If, for whatever bizarre reason, you wish to subject yourself to “Did Hitler Want War?”, you can now find it at Antiwar.com (along with, fittingly, Stormfront, etc. — which should tell you a lot about both Pat Buchanan and the people who run “Antiwar.com”).
In a list about something or other (to be honest I didn’t read the blog post, I was just skimming. He’s lucky he got that) former ODE opinion columnist Truman Capps tried to sneak in a little rabbit punch.
While I wholeheartedly agree that both the Democrats and Republicans are full of shit, I’ve noticed that some Libertarians can be awfully self-righteous about how they and they alone recognize the truth and beauty of the free market and individual liberties.
“Some libertarians” Truman? Maybe it’s time to sack up and just call us by name, hmm?
You’ve fully committed to that Craig Sager haircut of yours, you’ve told everyone on campus that “guns are yucky”–you might as well complete the trifecta of manliness and call us out. Or maybe you’ve learned a lesson by watching Kai Davis get his ass handed to him?
On second thought, good move not calling us out by name. You shouldn’t fuck with people who buy their ink by the barrel.
It’s been awhile since I’ve regularly checked Blue Oregon. Once Obama moved into the Oval Office, got rid of some dusty old bust of Winston Churchill, and made himself comfortable, the wind kind of left their sails. The zeal for victory that had seemingly been the trademark of all Democrats before January 20th faded and what replaced it was so much sore-winner chest-pounding and a sudden disdain for that “highest form of patriotism” which they’d long championed through those long, dark years of incipient fascism between 2000 and 2008.
Racism. It’s at the heart of every disagreement with “progressive” policy reforms. Meet Diane DeVillers of Eugene, who lays it all out in today’s issue of the Eugene Weekly:
There is not as much confusion about the health care issue as we are led to believe. Much of the resistance is all about not wanting President Obama to succeed. The town hall haters, gun-toting radical right wingers, have been steaming since our President was elected. It has taken them this long to finally have the nerve to tell America how much they hate the fact that a black man won the election. It is all about being racist.
While the sane people in America try to get health care reform, the minority is trying to mislead and ruin any attempt for this bill to pass. This includes the whole Republican party… Their loyalties are only to themselves. The majority of people elected this president, so they need to get used to it.
…
The majority of Americans want health care reform, so the Democrats should just do it, any way they can…
Everyone in the room should yell back for them to be silent and let the discussion continue.
It’s been forty years. No one cares. The world does not — and never did — revolve around you. So please scurry off and die already, and take your self-serving myth-making right along with you.
It has come to my attention that our numerous trolls, illiterates, and Palin-bangers are upset about Dane’s trashing of the nation’s most prominently vapid GILF*. Their incohate bleating, weeping, and gnashing of teeth have inspired me to write a post I was going to write anyway, only on the clock instead of this afternoon. Way to go, chums.
Yesterday the LA Times ran a pretty good piece on Washington’s latest completely wasteful boondoggle: Cash for Clunkers. Unless you’ve been living under a rock or a bridge like the commenters a post down, you’re undoubtedly aware that the government is offering a $4,500 rebate on “clunkers” toward the purchase of a new car. Aside from effectively establishing a price floor on the used market and maybe pricing a bunch of people out, the program does not apply to any car manufactured before 1984. Why? Good old regulatory capture and political economy.
The restrictions were pushed by lobbyists for the Specialty Equipment Market Assn., a Diamond Bar group that represents companies that sell parts and services to classic and antique car collectors. The group, as well as classic car enthusiasts, have opposed cash for clunkers because they don’t want older vehicles to be destroyed.
When the proposals for a clunker buyback program surfaced early this year, the specialty equipment association opposed the entire concept because such a program could shrink the size of the market for aftermarket parts. The association eventually got lawmakers to adopt the age limit.
“We are very pleased that Congress was able to include that in the program,” said Stuart Gosswein, director of regulatory affairs at the association.
The association represents more than 7,000 companies that make all manner of auto-related products, including reproduction Model T tires and AMC Gremlin upholstery. The powerful interest group has won legislative battles nationwide to protect owners of classic cars and hot rods from laws covering vehicle noise, emissions tests and much else.
Word on the street (and not just from anonymous blog comments) is that erstwhile ASUO presidential candidate Michelle Haley filed yet another grievance against ASUO executive Emma Kallaway today. I lost count a while ago; what’s the ’09 grievance count up to?
A man on the street today also told me that McDonald’s new Angus burgers actually use longhorn beef. According to said man, he sent a sample to a lab where his friend worked, which confirmed the non-Angus properties. This man may have been lying/insane.
More updates to come if I can find the energy to give a rat’s ass.
As improbable as it may sound, the PIRG system is actually slimier and more corrupt than previously believed. From the Daily Beast:
The nation’s largest fundraiser for progressive causes issued checks to thousands of former workers in the last several weeks after settling a $2.15 million class-action suit alleging it subjected workers to grueling hours without overtime pay.
The nonprofit Fund for Public Interest Inc. was set up in 1982 as the fundraising arm of the network of Public Interest Research Groups, which was founded by Ralph Nader. It deploys legions of door-to-door and street canvassers—and once counted a young Barack Obama as one of its New York City organizers—to solicit contributions for the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, Environment America, and other groups that together spend millions of dollars each year lobbying Congress.
[…]
Managers pushed employees to work long hours by repeatedly stressing that they were taking part in a campaign to better the world, not a traditional job. Federal and state labor laws do not recognize the distinction. Some said their experiences led them to give up on activism altogether, which troubled those behind the lawsuit. “I was getting tired of seeing people leave the movement,” Miller said.
In the summer of 2005, the activists tried to unionize their Los Angeles office. The canvassers voted to organize with the Teamsters, Miller said.
“Management basically started changing office policies to try to systematically fire all union employees, while stalling the contract,” he added. Eventually, Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif.), now Labor secretary, wrote the Fund pressing it to negotiate with workers, to no avail.
Then suddenly, Miller said, “they changed the locks on the doors and they were gone. We were shut down overnight.”
In a separate case in 2006, the office of the Labor Commissioner of the State of California determined that the Fund had denied rest breaks to a worker, awarding a cash payment. The Fund subsequently changed its policies to provide overtime pay. In 2009, it agreed to settle the class-action suit.
But remember: It’s all about “student voice” and “empowering people.” These criticisms are just a vast, right-wing conspiracy to silence progressive voices on campus. Just keep telling yourself that. Seriously, though, this is the group that we so desperately need on campus? The group that is so vital to student activism? Remember this when the OSPIRG neophytes come crawling back to the ASUO next year, begging to be reinstated as a student group.
Well, tonight saw President Obama’s “health care forum”. The ABC network has come under a great deal of criticism for its perceived kowtowing to the Obama Administration and refusing to sell ad time to the dissenting Republicans (can you imagine the outrage had the players instead been Fox News and President Bush, circa 2004?). The Republicans are calling the whole thing an “infomercial“. Media Matters is calling Fox News a bunch of hyporites (I guess whether “turnabout is fair play” or “he who fights with monsters should be careful lest he thereby become a monster” is a more appropriate slogan for the left’s sudden enthusiasm for uncomfortably close ties between the government and the media depends on which side of the aisle one hails from…). Meanwhile, reports indicate that ABC employees donated to the Obama campaign by a factor of roughly 80:1 ($124,421 to Obama, $1,550 to McCain) and Michelle Malkin is howling about “astroturfing“. Other statistics (“damned lies…” and all that…) indicate that 89% of Americans are more or less satisfied with their health care, raising the question of why exactly it’s so urgent to push through health care reform right now — as others have mentioned, maybe fixing Medicare first would provide an encouraging example of Obama’s brilliant ideas on health care — or is Walter Reed a harbinger of state-run health care (actually Walter Reed is state-run health care…)?
But never mind all that. The masthead says “a conservative journal of opinion” and, since we’re not getting any of that sweet, sweet, free stimulus money (and since we find the idea of the government bailing out newspapers utterly repugnant– sorry journalism majors), I thought I’d call attention to Cato’s crucial coverage of what’s poised to be a total health-care debacle — one of positively federal proportions. In any case, you can find an informative live-blogged response to the President’s err… “highly adversarial” appearance on ABC here.
And in case you don’t give two squirts of piss about the de facto socialization of health care in this country, I invite you to instead discuss this article, which seeks to establish whether or not the “FreeCreditReport.com band” is “legit” or not. But I’ll never respect you again.
