Category Archives: Culture

The War on Reality

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The near total control of American life by the Left is so thorough it goes unnoticed. We just accept it, like background noise. Every once in a while their slip shows like in this column by Jonah Goldberg.

About the second point reasonable people can quibble. The terrorist army that calls itself the Islamic State is certainly trying to build a state — and not just a state but a super state, or caliphate. They’re not there yet; their delivery of social services seems spotty at best, though they do collect taxes and uphold the law (in a fashion).

More relevant, it doesn’t really matter if it’s a state. Morally, this weed stinks just as much whether you call it a state or a soccer league that rapes, tortures, and murders people on the side. And legally, statehood would matter — and not very much — only if the U.N. and other bodies agreed to recognize the fledgling caliphate’s legitimacy. That’s not going to happen even if the Islamic State opens up post offices and DMVs on every corner.

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The president’s first assertion is trickier. Is the Islamic State “not Islamic”? Moreover, is it really “clear” that it’s not Islamic?

Not even a little? Is it Islamic-ish?

If we’re talking clarity, I’d say the Islamic State is clearly not Mormon. Or Lutheran. Or Buddhist. It most certainly is not the most extreme example of Quakers gone bad ever recorded.

As for its not being Islamic, that’s at best unclear, if not just clearly wrong. And the fact that the majority of its victims are Muslim is irrelevant. Lenin and Stalin killed thousands of Communists and socialists; that doesn’t mean Lenin and Stalin weren’t Communists and socialists. If such terrorists who kill Muslims aren’t Muslims, why do we give them Korans when we imprison them?

The president faces the same dilemma that bedeviled George W. Bush, and I sympathize with him. It is not in our interest for the Muslim world to think we are at war with Islam, not just because it is untrue but more specifically because we desperately need the cooperation of Muslim nations. That’s why Bush constantly proclaimed “Islam means peace.”

That last paragraph is a strange bit of self-delusion or perhaps a necessary lie. Jonah makes his money as a TV pundit. His role is to be the nerdish conservative, like a part time character on Big Bang Theory. His character is allowed to say bad things about politicians and some of the fads popular with the Left, but he must always be careful to bite the hand that feeds him. Fumble a line about a touchy subject and his struggle session is his next TV appearance.

There’s also some chance he believes it. Take someone off the street, drop them into Utah and there’s a good chance they eventually become a Mormon. Jonah Goldberg is more than a toady for the Left. He is a creation of the Left. He could very well believe we should not be at war with Islam and that it is important Muslims not think we are waging war on them, notwithstanding the 100,000 tons of ordinance we have dropped on the Muslim world.

Reality, the thing that does not go away when you stop believing in it, is nothing like Jonah imagines. Muslims have thought we were at war with them for decades now, maybe even centuries. That’s why they’re pissed, by the way. They are not fooled by the religion of peace nonsense. Further, the only people who fear this truth are Americans, particularly members of the Cult. Just as they cannot face their war on black people, they cannot face this war on Islam. So, they pretend to care about and respect a religion they personally detest.

Reality be damned.

Unitary Cult Theory

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Steve Sailer has been wondering why the Left is obsessing over Ferguson. We keep seeing non-stories getting more coverage than stories one would assume have greater public interest. The increasingly dangerous situation in Ukraine, for example, generates little coverage, for example, despite the ugly showdown with Russia. The domestic economy, staggering along in ways not seen in a generation, generates no news coverage, because Obama, of course.

Then we have this berserk obsession with some football player who hit his old lady. Everyone knew when the story first hit the wires that the player punched his old lady in the elevator. Unless you’re missing a chromosome, you could figure out how the women ended up unconscious. That and the player’s confession solved that mystery months ago. Now, a video comes out showing the incident, as the normally inert US Senate is moved to get involved in what the state prosecutor thought was a nothing incident.

The lunatic sporting press has been treating this like Watergate for two weeks now. Meanwhile, real scandals like the IRS systematically harassing citizen on behalf of the White House goes unmentioned. The White House attempt to declare Obama dictator so he rewrite laws as he sees fit is treated like a zoning board hearing in Poughkeepsie. Whenever this is pointed out, the lunatic press claims they merely chase the stories of interest to the public.

But, public reaction to the Rice story looks more like mockery of the lunatics than real interest. Last night the Ravens played Pittsburgh and the Baltimore fans were wearing Ray Rice jerseys. It seems clear they were not doing this to support wide beating. Most of the people wearing the jerseys were women. They were doing it to protest the lunacy they see from the Cult on this issue.

Music blared from the purple bus, and Baltimore Ravens fan Racquel Bailey stood with drink in hand amid her usual tailgate buddies while making a bold fashion statement: a black, rhinestone-decorated jersey with the white No. 27.

A Ray Rice jersey.

“There’s two sides to every story,” said the 23-year-old waitress from Baltimore. “I saw the video. That’s their personal business, and it shouldn’t have affected his career. I don’t agree with domestic violence, but she’s still with him, so obviously it wasn’t that big of a deal. Everyone should just drop it.”

Ravens fans male and female, young and old, arrived for Thursday night’s game against the Pittsburgh Steelers debating the events that have affected their team over the last few days. Their once beloved running back has been kicked off the team and banned by the NFL after a video surfaced that showed him punching his then-fiancee — and now wife — inside an Atlantic City hotel elevator.

All condemned Rice’s actions, but there was little consensus as to what his punishment should be. The NFL did the right thing by suspending him, some said, but the Ravens shouldn’t have terminated his contract as well. Or maybe the suspension should have remained at two games, where it stood before the punch video became public.

The question is why does the Cult become obsessed on nothing stories like this or hoax stories like the Ferguson riots?

My offering is the Unitary Cult Theory. This is when members of a mass movement, always jostling with one another for status within the movement, close the information loop, excluding information from people outside the movement regarding a topic. The result is a piety contest where members of the movement stand up and commit increasingly extreme acts of public piety.  As more and more members jump into the ring, the contest quickly spirals out of control resulting in these absurd public displays.

Because the country is run by the Cult of Modern Liberalism, these piety wheels get maximum attention. The public is often sucked into the the false drama in the same way people get caught up in a TV serial. That’s gasoline on the fire. With Ferguson, the public has seen that drama too many times to stay interested for very long. The Gay Gayington story is too disgusting. This Ray Rice story gets more interest because the NFL is so popular and everyone can relate the story at the center of it.

The other piece of this, of course, is why the focus on trivia and hoaxes? We’ve had so many race hoaxes, the default assumption now is the next one will be a hoax as well. Part of it is how the mind of the fanatic operates. They see only that which confirms their fanaticism. When a white cop shoots a black giant, the fanatics in the Cult process that as yet another bit of data confirming the narrative. When a black cop shoots a white guy, it is filtered out and ignored.

At the macro level, the Cult, like any mass movement, will collectively focus away from dis-confirmation. The Cult has been in charge of American cities for 70 years. The problems of the black ghetto are the responsibility of the Cult. They cannot admit it or even acknowledge it, so they look to places like Ferguson. Given the times, the Cult is desperate to focus on news stories that have nothing to do with politics because then they have to face up to the failings of their idol, Barry Obama.

Finally, this story has something extra for the Cult. They love to destroy that which is popular with normal people. The NFL is very popular with typical white people. It is the typical white person sport. That means the Cult must hate it with all their worth. The Ray Rice story gives them a chance to land some blows on what is for the Cult, a proxy for middle America.

Legalized Soma

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Anyone who has any familiarity with the drug game knows that the libertarian claims about drugs are mostly nonsense. Drugs certainly play a role in the degeneracy of the lower classes, but they are not a cause.  Poor people make bad choices, have high time preference and a below average IQ. There are exceptions, but that’s always the case with general rules. Drug use is a symptom of other problems, like the unwillingness oft he ruling class to do their duty.

That’s not to say the war on drugs is a good thing or even a necessary thing. In a time of low cultural confidence, aggressive policing of vice is never going to work. In fact, it just adds to the social pathologies that blossom during times of cultural decay. The cops are not hassling drug dealers in the ghetto out of righteous anger. They are doing it for money and the right to push people around in public.

That’s why the tide seems to be turning on the drug war. All of the most glamorous people are now proud of their hookahs and dank tanks.  The cultural elite are squarely behind legalization and the political elites are coming around now too.

A 21-member international panel urged a global overhaul of drug policies on Tuesday, calling for some drugs such as marijuana to be regulated, an end to incarceration for drug use and possession, and greater emphasis on protecting public health.

The Global Commission on Drug Policy said traditional measures in the “war on drugs” such as eradicating acres of illicit crops, seizing large quantities of illegal drugs, and arresting and jailing violators of drug laws have failed.

The commission’s 45-page report pointed to rising drug production and use, citing the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime’s estimate that the number of users rose from 203 million in 2008 to 243 million in 2012.

The commission includes former U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan; the former presidents of Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Poland, Portugal and Switzerland; British tycoon Richard Branson and former U.S. Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker. It was established in 2010 with a stated purpose of promoting “science-based discussion about humane and effective ways to reduce the harm caused by drugs to people and societies.”

The commission’s first report in 2011 condemned the drug war as a failure and recommended major reforms of the global drug prohibition regime. This report goes further, encouraging experiments in legally regulating markets in currently illicit drugs “beginning with but not limited to cannabis, coca leaf and certain novel psychoactive substances.”

It called for “equitable access to essential medicines, in particular opiate-based medications for pain,” noting that more than 80 percent of the world’s population has little or no access to such medications. It also called for an end to criminalizing people for drug use and possession, a halt to “compulsory treatment” for such people, and alternatives to incarceration for non-violent, low-level participants such as farmers, couriers and others involved in producing, transporting and selling illegal drugs.

“The facts speak for themselves,” said Annan, who is also the convener of the West Africa Commission on Drugs. “It is time to change course.”

The facts clearly show the war on drugs to be a failure. Compared to the past, drugs are cheaper, more diverse, more potent, more evenly distributed and more sophisticated than at anytime in history. If prohibition was having any impact on supply, all the metrics would point in the other direction. The best you can argue is it could be worse, but that’s a gratuitous assertion. When you add up the costs, the war on drugs looks like an epic failure and probably a deliberate failure.

Legalization will not be a panacea. In fact, there may be an even higher cost to legalization. Drugs like weed have been proscribed for generations now. No one alive recalls a time when heroin, cocaine and cannabis were legal. More modern drugs like hallucinogens and dissociatives were broadly banned decades ago. That means generations have adjusted to the current arrangements. There will be a cost to breaking up those arrangements.

No one considers that because it is hard and not very cool. Libertarians, like Liberals, see only one side of the ledger. Basking in their new hipness, the drug legalizers are in no mood to think about the other side of the ledger. But, the first time a “dispensary” blows up or the owner is gunned down, everyone will suddenly remember that the drug dealers did not pack up and go away just because weed is legal.

Not that it will matter. The rulers have concluded that it is too much fuss to defend western civilization. The easy choice is to give the mob free drugs so they can sleep through the rest of the collapse. The Romans gave away free grain. The new Rome gives away free weed. I’m sure it will turn out just fine.

The Season of Struggle

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One of the more bizarre rituals on the Left is the self-criticism session. The Chinese called them Struggle Sessions. The difference is probably cultural. Oriental societies have always maintained a dense wall between the public life of a person and the interior life of a person. We have the word inscrutable for a reason.

Western culture has often, but not always, sought a strong link between the public man and his private thoughts. In the West, “what you see is what you get” makes a lot of sense for this reason. In China, such a concept is hilariously alien. Still, the idea of confession as a cleanser is a universal.

The NBA is going through that now. Donald Sterling’s threat to dish dirt on the league has frightened them into a careful re-examination of their private musings. Given how modern management works, the league office probably instructed each team to scour their networks for any communications that could be upsetting to blacks. Now we have a GM subjected to a struggle session. His crime was the same one tripping up everyone these days. That would be noticing.

It was Charles Murray who documented that regulations tend to come along after the threat had dissipated. In other words, once people became aware of some danger they adjusted their behavior. It was only after that government came along with rules intended to mitigate the danger. Something similar is afoot here. It seems that most people are looking at the public hysteria over these thought crimes and wondering if the rulers have lost their minds.

Maybe these latent struggle sessions are a response to the public’s dwindling interest in race or maybe it a foreshadowing of what lies ahead for all of us. Unless you have brain damage, you can’t help but notice that life for black Americans is pretty good. If you avoid crime, drugs and mayhem, you will have a good life. You may not get rich, but you can have a decent middle-class life. Most of the nation’s celebrities are black. All of the athletes are black. They live like royalty. Evidence of real discrimination is impossible to find without a lot of digging and imagination.

The Breakdown of Order

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Way back in the olden thymes, bankers went crazy and we ended up with the S&L Crisis. Bank fraud, bubbles, busts and system collapse are regular features of banking. The reason is simple. Banks attract bank robbers. The role of government is to police the banks, arrest the robbers when they find them and then make examples of those bank robbers by putting them in cages for long periods. It is not perfect, but it keeps the banking system of a nation working in an orderly fashion.

In the Clinton years, that all changed. We stopped putting bankers in jail. In fact, we stopped arresting them entirely. Instead, it is a free-for-all in finance. Here’s yet another story of systematic bank fraud that will result in no action by the government.

Derivatives regulators told the U.S. Justice Department they’ve found evidence of criminal behavior following an investigation into banks’ alleged manipulation of ISDAfix, a benchmark used to set rates for trillions of dollars of financial products.

The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which first sent subpoenas to the world’s largest banks in November 2012 to determine whether ISDAfix was rigged, has flagged its findings to prosecutors, according to a person familiar with the matter. The CFTC’s enforcement powers are confined to bringing civil, not criminal, cases. It isn’t clear who the CFTC suspects broke the law.

Benchmarks like ISDAfix, which is used to track prices on interest-rate swaps, serve as the foundation of global finance, helping pension funds determine their future obligations and lenders decide how much to charge borrowers. Regulators around the world are probing allegations that measures used to set prices in gold, oil, interest rates and currencies were rigged by banks and brokers wanting to pad their profits while cheating their clients and other investors.

Last week, the Alaska Electrical Pension Fund accused 13 banks including Barclays Plc (BARC), Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc. (C) as well as broker ICAP Plc (IAP) of conspiring to manipulate ISDAfix. The U.K. Financial Conduct Authority is also looking into allegations of wrongdoing involving the benchmark.

Representatives of the Justice Department, CFTC, Barclays, Bank of America, Citigroup and ICAP declined to comment.

This is not just a few guys stealing. This is systematic theft of public monies by the world’s largest banks. This does not happen without the top level managers knowing and directing it. None of these people can plead ignorance or say that this is an unexpected and un intend consequence. It’s done on purpose.

Bloomberg News, citing a person with knowledge of the matter, was the first to report last year that the CFTC found evidence traders at Wall Street banks instructed ICAP brokers to buy or sell as many interest-rate swaps as necessary to rig ISDAfix by moving it to a predetermined level. Doing so helped banks reap millions of dollars in trading profits, costing companies and pension funds, the person said at the time.

Brokers on the ICAP desk, nicknamed “Treasure Island” because of the large salaries and bonuses they were paid, negotiate swaps trades on behalf of banks. Until this year, the dollar-denominated version of the ISDAfix rate was set daily by ICAP based on data submissions from banks. Amid the CFTC investigation, ICAP lost that central role. The International Swaps & Derivatives Association Inc., or ISDA, picked Thomson Reuters Corp. to take over that job this year.

Deferred prosecution settlements between regulators and banks including UBS AG and Barclays related to London interbank offered rate rigging have compelled firms to hand over information in the ISDAfix and currency probes to avoid criminal prosecution in the Libor case.

The term “deferred prosecution” is a neologism that means no prosecution. If you are a young gun working your way up in finance, you see no risk to this behavior. If you get caught, your bosses cover it up, you keep the money and maybe you have to change firms as a “punishment.” Start putting these guys on The Farm and we suddenly get a new respect not only for the law, but the spirit of the law.

That Guy Again

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The interesting thing about the creationists and Intelligent Design advocates is they are not very Christian. They use Christian rhetoric from time time and make explicit religious appeals to people, but they are not in line with Scripture. In fact, they are almost pagan in their beliefs. This story that has been kicking around the neo-Christian sites is a pretty good example. The first sentence is a good starting point.

LANDMARK Adelaide research showing that sperm and eggs appear to carry genetic memories of events well before conception, may force a rethink of the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin, scientists say.

Creationists and ID’ers look at evolution as a cult. They assume Darwin holds the same place in the hearts of “evolutionists” as Jesus or the Bible holds for them. If Darwin is proven to be wrong in some way, then everything he said is false and the whole religion of evolution comes crashing down. After all, if the prophet is proved false his religion is proved false. The result of this thinking is an obsession on the part of ID’ers with Darwin and trying to discredit him.

The trouble is science does not work like religion. Darwin was wrong about a lot of things and he guessed about a lot of other things. He was also not the only guy working on these ideas. Genetics and the cracking open of the human genome have added more to evolutionary biology than Darwin. Newton was wrong about plenty of things, but that does not mean math is a false god. Science is the process of trial and error, with error leading to new discoveries.

But, the ID’ers can’t think that way. Their interest in the subject is not to gain a better understanding of the natural world. it is to defend their faith. That’s where the paganism creeps into the story. Traditional Christianity contains two key elements. One is that God is rational and the other is God is unknowable. God created the laws of nature and enforces them. They don’t change. God could change those laws, but he doesn’t because he keeps his word, literally and figuratively.

The latter, the unknowable part is where the new breed of Christian wanders off the reservation. They think they are having a personal relationship with Jesus. Traditional Christianity does not view Jesus as divine in the same way Greeks viewed Zeus as divine. Jesus was the word, God’s word, made flesh. If God were so inclined, he could have used a stick or a rock as his covenant with man. Jesus is the symbol through which God communicated his new covenant with mankind.

The neo-Christians into the Intelligent Design cause hold a different view. They see Jesus as their personal God in the same way a Roman would have a personal relationship with Apollo. Like the pagan gods, Jesus can and does intercede on man’s behalf when asked. This is why the wide receiver looks up and thanks Jesus after he scores a touchdown. The result is an occasionalist view of nature. If Jesus were so inclined, he could make the sky green and the grass purple.

In this regard, creationists are more honest that ID’ers. The creationist simply says the world is as described in their version of Genesis. They are not interested in knowing anything about their version of Genesis or the science of evolution. ID’ers on the other hand are only interested in evolution in order to come up with the right ritual to persuade their god to smite the evolutionist. They dream of a time when Jesus will defeat Darwin at the end times. That’s not science and it it barely qualifies as Christianity.

Blowing It

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Deliberately lying for money is a strange thing.  Steve Sailer has a post up about a column by Charles Blow. The disgust in Steve’s commentary is obvious. Charles Blow is fairly emblematic of his class, which means he sings the old time religion whenever called upon. He also has to know his words are, at best, nonsense. In reality they are intended to deceive his readers or at least allow them to remain deluded. Judging from the comments, the readers want to believe what amounts to a global conspiracy and Mr. Blow is happy to feed them heaping piles of baloney for a fee.

Of course, Charles M. Blow could believe what he writes. That seems unlikley as the way he tells his lies suggests he knows he is lying. maybe he would like others to know he is lying too. Sociopaths often take pleasure is knowing that others know they are lying, running a scam or getting over on them. The general tone and structure of the column suggest he knows he’s full it. His final paragraph gives the game away.

There is no way in this country to discuss crime statistics without including in that discussion the myriad ways in which those statistics are informed and influenced by the systemic effects of racial distortion.

Individual behavior is not the only component of the numbers; bias is the other.

The previous 735 words, a bunch of assertions and dubious statistics, are intended to dispute the obvious picture one must draw from the FBI crime reports. Yet at the very end, when his intended audience is nodding so enthusiastically they cannot keep up, he admits that those statistics in the crime reports are true. He would just prefer it if his coreligionists remain convinced otherwise.

Again, maybe he is just as deluded as his readers. Maybe that’s just how people cope with disconformation. When the facts of the world are unacceptable, people find ways to wrap them in magical thinking and lots of hooting and hollering. It’s the lawyer who defines his work in moral terms, when he is just a guy who lies on behalf of criminals. It’s the politician who thinks he is doing the Lord’s work as he lines his pockets with the people’s money.

It’s is hard to know. Magical thinking is a part of the human condition, probably a necessary part. Wishing for things to be a certain way is the seed of inventiveness. It is also the genesis of all sorts of crackpot ideas intended to avoid facing reality. Maybe that’s all that it takes for a guy like Charles Blow to write these columns every week for his employer. Like an aging minister delivering yet another version of the same old sermon, it’s not that he believes what he is saying, it’s that he has nothing else.

Denzel Washington: Pitiful Liar

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A few years back when Hoopi Goldberg was telling whoppers about lynchings in Chicago, she kept saying she “remembered” reading about them in the news when she was a kid. Five minutes of research revealed that it was an impossibility. Not only were lynchings rare in American history, none occurred in her childhood. Presumably someone got to her and told her to stop it because she has not talked about it since.

Bill Clinton suffered the same memory problem with church burnings. Confusing Hollywood’s version of reality with his own, he claimed to remember black church burnings in his youth. In one of life’s ironies, no churches of any color were torched in his youth. There had been a bunch of church arsons at the time he made the claim and the press tried to make it into a race thing, but it turned out that many, even most, of the churches were white, not black.

Anyway, Denzel Washington is recalling memories that never occurred. The locals would have fainted if anyone used such language. Unless he and his old lady were dressed as pimps for a role, no one was mistaking him for anyone other than the star of the most popular show in town at the time. St. Elsewhere was a huge hit and based in Boston. The stars of that show could have robbed banks in the city and no one would have thought ill of them.

Everyone is tired of famous clowns and jugglers pissing and moaning about how tough they had it. In this age, no one has it that tough, unless they did something incredibly stupid like commit a crime. Denzel Washington was raised by prosperous, middle-class parents. He went to private schools as a kid. Maybe he encountered a bad word here and there, but the guy has otherwise lived a charmed life. Instead of pissing and moaning, he should be thanking white people.

Cop Land

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Suburban white people tend to think criticisms of cops are either suicidal liberalism or libertarian idealism. The reason is suburban white people tend to have a vastly different experience with the cops than downscale whites and minorities. That’s a changing reality as more and more suburbanites have their dogs shot by storm troopers raiding the wrong house, but there’s always a lag in these things.

The Conventional Right tends to side with the cops, but the libertarian insurgency may be changing that a little. The Ferguson shooting was remarkable not in how the Left cynically tried to exploit it, but in how many on the Right jumped to criticize the warrior cop stuff. The thing is, the Right really should not be so quick to side with the cops, as  cops and their unions are constantly agitating for more money, less work, more benefits, more protections, etc.

The worst aspect of it is the cops work hard to avoid accountability. This story in 538 is a good example of how the cops undermine their credibility.

Efforts to keep track of “justifiable police homicides” are beset by systemic problems. “Nobody that knows anything about the SHR puts credence in the numbers that they call ‘justifiable homicides,’” when used as a proxy for police killings, said David Klinger, an associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Missouri who specializes in policing and the use of deadly force. And there’s no governmental effort at all to record the number of unjustifiable homicides by police. If Brown’s homicide is found to be unjustifiable, it won’t show up in these statistics.

Not counting how often cops shoot people is inexcusable. Forty years ago every round fired from a state issued firearm was logged. It was standard operating procedure for police departments to have cops check their firearms in at the station when their shift was over each day. A cop discharging his firearm could expect to fill out a lot of reports and answer a lot of questions. Today, when we have much better tools for documenting this stuff, we do less of it. The ATF, of all people, routinely lose their own service weapons.

Like so much of what haunts our age, the cop problem is not staying in the ghetto. The news has a stories every day about cops doing something nuts in the suburbs. Whether or not that will change the politics of the issue is a mystery to me. My sense is it will not as the suburbs are now littered with traffic cameras and soon will have drones buzzing around. Having a fat mental defect pushing around soccer moms in the burbs is probably going to face little resistance.

Death By Noticing

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Another Jewish guy is being run out of the NBA for noticing stuff. Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is selling his team after his private thought s about the black people he owns were made public.

Atlanta Hawks owner Bruce Levenson is selling his controlling interest in the team, NBA commissioner Adam Silver announced Sunday.

In July, Levenson self-reported an email he wrote to the team’s co-owners and general manager Danny Ferry in August 2012 that he called “inappropriate and offensive.” The league commenced an independent investigation after being made aware of the comments.

Levenson writes in a statement that the racially offensive comments came as he pondered ways to bridge Atlanta’s racial sports divide and increase fan attendance at Hawks’ games.

“In trying to address those issues, I wrote an e-mail two years ago that was inappropriate and offensive,” he said. “I trivialized our fans by making clichéd assumptions about their interests (i.e. hip hop vs. country, white vs. black cheerleaders, etc.) and by stereotyping their perceptions of one another (i.e. that white fans might be afraid of our black fans). By focusing on race, I also sent the unintentional and hurtful message that our white fans are more valuable than our black fans.”

“If you’re angry about what I wrote, you should be,” Levenson continued in the statement. “I’m angry at myself, too. It was inflammatory nonsense. We all may have subtle biases and preconceptions when it comes to race, but my role as a leader is to challenge them, not to validate or accommodate those who might hold them.”

Levenson notified Silver on Saturday night of his intentions to sell.

“I commend Mr. Levenson for self-reporting to the league office, for being fully cooperative with the league and its independent investigator, and for putting the best interests of the Hawks, the Atlanta community, and the NBA first,” Silver said in a statement.

Levenson had presided over the Hawks’ ownership group since 2004. Over the past decade, the team has never ranked higher than 18th in attendance and is largely overlooked in a market that also has the NFL, Major League Baseball and a passion for college football.

Atlanta CEO Steve Koonin will now oversee all team operations.

The Hawks become the second NBA team to hit the market this year. The Los Angeles Clippers were sold for an unprecedented $2 billion earlier this summer to former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer after former owner Donald Sterling was banned for life by the league after his racist rant to a woman became public.

It should be noted that one NBA owner is a Russian mobster and one of his partners got rich convincing young black males to slaughter one another. But at least they don’t notice stuff, which is about the worst thing a person can do these days.