Our Choice of Fathers

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Happy Father’s Day to all the fathers in our community, to the fathers-by-proxy who’ve stood in place of missing fathers, to the mothers and others who’ve had to take on more than one parenting role.

Happy Father’s Day to my friends who aren’t parents at all – may you enjoy the convenient gender-biased hardware marketing blitz aimed at the do-it-yourself dads among us.

(I’m really going to enjoy my new power rotary multi-tool, must say. Been needing one for years and this summer I’ve got a lot of projects a certain father here won’t touch – it’s on me.)

This day offers us not only a chance to thank fathers but to think about fatherhood. It’s hard to escape fathers and fathering in a patriarchal society, but perhaps this is a best reason to consider the nature of fathers.

Especially when this year’s presidential election once again comes down to a choice of fathers.

~ ~ ~

The Los Angeles Times has an excellent piece on its front page below the fold today – Biden, Trump and 2 Very Different Dads – comparing and contrasting fathers Joe Biden and Donald Trump, and their progenitors Joe Biden Sr. and Fred Trump. (Sorry – I want to share a link but LAT makes it impossible for subscribers to do so this soon after publication. As I wrote this it wasn’t available on the LAT website. Article now available at LAT but the headline has changed to Biden brings up ‘Dad’ a lot. Trump, not so much.)

In essence the article describes a father who values dignity and a father who values transactions.

What a distillation.

While we’ve already made comparisons between these two candidates at the polls in 2020, the essentials of these two men have only become more stark over the last four years.

They exemplify neatly George Lakoff’s Moral Politics model of the nurturant parent and strict father which Lakoff first laid out in 1996, again in 2001 and 2016 editions, and discussed further in his 2010 text, Thinking Politics in Chapter 4, The Nation as Family. (Thinking Politics is available for free online for download as a PDF.)

It’s telling that Lakoff categorizes a bifurcated diametric model as nurturant parent and strict father – patriarchy is autocratic, rejects departures from black-and-white, wrong-or-right, my-way-or-the-highway binary thinking. Do as your father orders you to do.

The nurturant parent model is inclusive, in contrast. Any gender can identify as and model nurturing. Nurturing is adaptive, because needs change with conditions though fundamental values affirming the dignity of humanity remain set.

Which parent of this nation should we choose at the polls?

I can’t help think of a particular story about Trump as father, in the wake of Hunter Biden’s conviction and Joe Biden’s loving response.

Before the 2016 election, a classmate of Donnie Jr. recounted an episode of physical abuse they felt necessary to share with the public before voters went to the polls.

I was hanging out in a freshman dorm with some friends, next door to Donald Jr.’s room. I walked out of the room to find Donald Trump at his son’s door, there to pick him up for a baseball game. There were quite a few students standing around watching, trying to catch a glimpse of the famed real estate magnate. Don Jr. opened the door, wearing a Yankee jersey. Without saying a word, his father slapped him across the face, knocking him to the floor in front of all of his classmates. He simply said “put on a suit and meet me outside,” and closed the door.

A father willing to do this to his own namesake in front of witnesses, a father who apparently failed to assist his son whose classmate called him a “drunk,” isn’t the kind of person Americans needed in 2016 or in 2024 in the White House.

Reports surfacing only now that Trump while in the White House talked about executing persons including those who leaked information is extremely troubling. What if it had been his own family members leaking information?

If we are a nation as family, whoever the prospective leaker might be is family – and Trump has expressed a willingness to kill them.

Trump has already displayed openly a bent toward violence. The extrajudicial assassination of Iran’s Major General Qasem Soleimani was a demonstration of Trump using violence at the furthest reaches and beyond of his presidential powers. We have heard and read numerous examples of his incitement to violence including the attack on the capitol on January 6. What would he do to Americans at home and abroad if he was elected again?

And of course Trump has already promised retribution against his perceived enemies if he should be re-elected.

Which parent should we choose, indeed.

At least this election we still have this choice. Choose wisely.

Washington Post’s Sunday Night Editorial Massacre

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This morning’s Washington Post newsletter – The 7 – offered a peek into the outlet’s ideological bent.

The seven topics offered to subscribers before 7:00 a.m. to help them catch up, in order presented:

1 — Mexico elected its first female president yesterday.

2 — Hunter Biden’s trial on criminal gun charges begins in Delaware today.

3 — President Biden announced a new cease-fire plan for Gaza.

4 — Anthony Fauci is set to testify in Congress today.

5 — Billions in U.S. taxpayer dollars are being used for tuition at religious schools.

6 — Simone Biles won her ninth national all-around title.

7 — A Chinese spacecraft landed on the “dark” side of the moon yesterday.

That’s right: the U.S.’s fourth largest newspaper by number of subscribers feels that Hunter Biden’s trial is more important than the Biden administration’s efforts to stop the genocide in Gaza.

Never mind the protests across the country over the last six months which have spurred numerous horserace polling articles as well as coverage of conflicts on U.S. campuses.

The trial isn’t even being held in D.C. which the Washington Post calls home.

At the very bottom of the newsletter is this news blurb:

Before you go … some news from The Post: Sally Buzbee, our executive editor since 2021, has stepped down.

How benign that sounds. Happy trails, Ms. Buzbee, good luck on your future endeavors.

Except this is what happened, reported last night:

Steve Herman @[email protected]

Washington Post – Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal, will replace Sally Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/pr/2024/06/02/sally-buzbee-steps-down-executive-editor-washington-post-matt-murray-rob-winnett-take-editorial-leadership-roles-new-newsroom-structure/

Jun 02, 2024, 10:58 PM

Did Buzbee leave willingly? WaPo’s certainly not telling us. It’s as if Buzbee accidentally fell out a window leaving a vacancy.

Here’s the first two paragraphs from the WaPo’s own report on the shakeup:

The Washington Post today announced Sally Buzbee has stepped down as Executive Editor. Buzbee has been with The Washington Post since 2021, leading the newsroom through the turbulence of the pandemic and expanding its service journalism, including Climate and Well+Being. Under her leadership, The Washington Post has won significant awards, including the recent Pulitzer Prize for National Reporting.

Matt Murray, former Editor in Chief of The Wall Street Journal (WSJ), will replace Buzbee as Executive Editor until the 2024 U.S presidential election, after which Robert Winnett, Deputy Editor of The Telegraph Media Group, will take on the new role of Editor at The Washington Post, responsible for overseeing our core coverage areas, including politics, investigations, business, technology, sports and features.

Why would WaPo allow an Executive Editor who oversaw award-winning work to “step down”? Why would they promptly replace that EE with a temporary placeholder, and one who operated in a very different news organization?

It seems incredibly convenient that former Murdoch-News Corp editor Matt Murray will run WaPo just until the election.

Then WaPo will be helmed by an editor from a British conservative right-wing news organization, because we don’t have enough of our own Tories in media here. We need to rescue from Brexit import a Tory from a flailing media outlet overseas.

Not to mention Robert Winnett leaves a British paper with a subscriber base one-third the size of WaPo and with far less domestic and international impact.

When WaPo announced their slogan in 2017 – Democracy Dies in Darkness – one month after Trump was inaugurated, most observers scratched their heads. Would WaPo truly shine a light on that which is intent on killing our democracy? Would the paper be up to what has proven to be a monumental task?

But in hindsight we didn’t see that slogan for what it was. WaPo warned us it was going to turn off the lights. This abrupt change in editorial executives moving the paper further to the right is an indicator of yet more dimming of a truly free press.

Breathing Room: What Are You Growing?

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It feels like we’ve been running a marathon since jury selection began for the Trump hush money fraud trial, even though this site hasn’t concentrated as much effort on this prosecution. Bravo to the folks who have kept us up to date with their daily reporting from the court room and aggregation of reports from outside the courtroom. They’re definitely recovering from a marathon.

All of which is a way of saying we could use a little breathing room before the next big thing comes along and occupies our energy.

~ ~ ~

Because it’s what I’m working on this weekend, I want to ask what it is you’re growing. It’s nearly summer, gardens are being planted if they aren’t already well established. What’s in yours this season?

If you don’t have a garden are you growing other plants indoors?

I harvested a crop of sprouts recently, started before my garden beds were ready for vegetable seedlings. I’ve had a hankering for spicy sukju namul, a salad-like dish made with mung bean sprouts. The local grocery stores have been out of bean sprouts and I really haven’t felt like going to the local Asian grocery because I end up buying far too many additional items besides what I need.

Left: mixed salad microgreens; right: mung bean sprouts. Sprouts are four days old grown in quart-sized large-mouth canning jars equipped with a stainless steel mesh lid beneath a screw-on jar ring.

Left: mixed salad microgreens; right: mung bean sprouts. Sprouts are four days old grown in quart-sized large-mouth canning jars equipped with a stainless steel mesh lid beneath a screw-on jar ring.

It saves me a lot of time and money to simply grow my own sprouts. A couple tablespoons of seeds in a canning jar yields a tightly-packed quart of sprouts inside five days. They’re fresh and crunchy, have a slightly sweet taste missing in store-bought sprouts which have been stressed by packaging and shipment.

Ditto for microgreen sprouts – in fact two tablespoons of mixed salad seeds in a quart jar is a little too much, the jar is packed too tightly. I have enough for a week for myself and enough to give to a friend in just one jar.

Not gonna’ lie, you have to care for these several times a day. Each jar of sprout seeds must be rinsed with fresh cold water three times a day. It doesn’t take long but it’s more work than feeding a goldfish once a day (not that I raise goldfish to eat!).

At harvest time you’ll also need plenty of water to rinse away seed hulls. They won’t hurt you if you miss some, providing a little extra fiber and crunch if hulls remain in the harvested sprouts.

Bean sprouts are definitely more work depending on how fastidious you are about their appearance. To ensure a consistent pale appearance, the jar must be covered to prevent exposure to light which induces greening in the sprouts. The hulls are larger; many need to be picked off by hand. Many people also prefer to remove the long, thin root from the sprout.

Right: Jar of mung bean sprouts encased in a sleeve made of recycled navy blue jersey fabric scraps stitched into a tube. The

Right: Jar of mung bean sprouts encased in a sleeve made of recycled navy blue jersey fabric scraps stitched into a tube. The “sock” blocks light from reaching the sprouts, maintaining their light to white color.

But bean sprouts being larger also don’t need the same kind of equipment microgreen salad sprouts need. You can grow them easily in recycled milk cartons.

Since my last harvest I’ve had sprouts in just about every dish I’ve prepared for myself, from salads to sandwiches and stir-fry. I’ve also enjoyed my sukju namul though I think it’s time to start the next batch of bean sprouts so I can have that spicy dish again next week.

Egg and tofu salad on a bed of mixed lettuces, topped with mixed salad microgreen sprouts and a sprinkle of sriracha seasoning.

Egg and tofu salad on a bed of mixed lettuces, topped with mixed salad microgreen sprouts and a sprinkle of sriracha seasoning.

I really wish I’d grown sprouts when my kids were younger. I think they would have enjoyed both the growing and harvesting process as much as eating them. It’s a great way to ensure the family is getting enough vitamins and minerals from fresh vegetables.

~ ~ ~

If you’re not gardening outdoors or indoors, where are you getting your vegetables and fruits? At a local farmers’ market? Ordered from a farm co-op? Or from the grocery store?

Are you experiencing problems getting the vegetables and fruits you want? Bean sprouts aren’t the only vegetable I have difficulty buying at the store here in the Midwest – some of the largest grocery chains here don’t carry Napa cabbage reliably. The pandemic caused disruption but then the weather in California two winters running has also disrupted supply. I may have to try growing this vegetable hydroponically using the Kratky method.

Share your experience in comments below.

Treat this thread as open EXCEPT FOR ALL THINGS TRUMP. No Trump-related anything in this thread because this is a Breathing Room and we could use a change in topics.

“Not Your Mother’s Ireland Anymore”

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Forty years ago today, I arrived in Ireland for the first time.

My family was taking one of those pilgrimages that Irish-American families take, or took at the time. Along with so many Irish people, over the course of 60 years in the 19th Century, my great-grandfather and all known ancestors of six other of my great-grandparents had left Ireland for the United States. My father grew up in a working class city outside of Philly that had an Irish Church, an Italian Church, and a Polish Church — as my relatives tell it, everyone was Catholic — with social halls and other civil society to match. It remained, even in my teenage years, the kind of place where Irish-Americans got jobs as cops. So he was raised and so we were raised investing a lot in that Irish-American identity.

We arrived in Ireland, with the names of distant cousins in hand, to see what this place called Ireland was really like.

I remember three things about that pilgrimage most vividly.

First, the night before we left, we went to the Medieval banquet at the Bunratty Castle, a totally schlocky tourist show, now just 20 minutes up the road from where I live. They’ve been doing the banquets ever since, and have expanded into Victorian culture tourism. I recall they gave you just a knife with which to eat your steak. Maybe I was permitted to drink mead.

My family did visit one of those distant cousins, in a 4-room house where a bunch of kids had been raised. The cousin of the same generation as my parents wanted to get out of the too-small house, so we walked down the street to the local pub at a bend in the road. The pub had a thatched roof. There was a fox hunt going on, so there were horses tied up outside the pub. I once believed, but was probably wrong, that that pub was just a half hour from where my now-spouse had lived all his life. My spouse and I have spent decades looking for that thatched roof pub, with no success. It provides a nice excuse to keep looking, anyway.

My family departed from Shannon, but we arrived in Dublin and so were in the Capitol on St. Patrick’s Day. It was quiet and much was closed on account of the bank holiday. One after another person asked us, with puzzlement, why anyone would come from New York to Dublin for St. Patrick’s Day, because New York and Chicago were where it was at on St. Patrick’s Day.

It’s a bigger deal in Ireland now than it was when my family wandered the famous heart of Dublin on a bank holiday so many years ago (but then, so is Halloween, to my spouse’s chagrin). We’ve got parades and everything is lit up green and oh by the way the Irish team won the Six Nations Championship in rugby, again, yesterday.

But so much of what we know as St. Patrick’s Day is about celebrating an American identity, the descendants of the Irish diaspora living in big cities with Irish-American political machines. And so much of that — a white, urban, working class identity — was consciously part of constructing race in America. So much of that was constructed as a way to reinforce conflict between freed slaves and cheap immigrant labor, starting in the 19th century, but still very real today.

I’m thinking of that manufactured conflict this year, as Trump tries to ride it back to the White House.

I’m thinking of that manufactured conflict this year, as outsiders seek to stoke the same conflict within Ireland. In the last year, the American far right had close ties to those stoking arson attacks and the Dublin riot, targeting migrants.

Since my spouse and I have moved back, we have a saying, “It’s not your mother’s Ireland.” For example, I used that line the first time I came back from a local Dunnes store location, the big Irish-owned grocery and department store chain. On one of my earliest visits to my in-laws, years ago, my mother-in-law and I went to the town center to the Dunnes store. I remember thinking it was slightly dingy with very little selection. Since then, Dunnes built a new location on the outside of that town, and Tesco built an even bigger store. Still, for over a year after I moved to Ireland, I avoided Dunnes because of my memory of that dingy, poorly-stocked store I visited with my mother-in-law years ago. So when I came back from the location on the outskirts of Limerick, I couldn’t wait to tell my spouse. This was like a Wegmans. Along with a reasonably stocked normal supermarket, it had a health food outlet, a Sheridan’s cheese counter, a high end bakery, a high end butcher counter, and a passable fishmonger. To this day, we call that supermarket “Not your mother’s Dunnes.”

Then there are the freeways, built with EU investment. We routinely drive on the freeway that didn’t exist when my father-in-law first took me to his home town outside of Galway and the freeway that didn’t exist when my spouse’s parents picked us up from Shannon on our first trip after we married, the one that now features a Barack Obama rest stop. Many of the roads in Ireland still suck — narrow lanes that require pull-offs for passing traffic. There aren’t a lot of roads I’m comfortable cycling on. But those freeways are totally new since my spouse and I got married, to say nothing of that pilgrimage 40 years ago.

But it’s the diversity that has really changed Ireland. Partly that’s being part of Europe. I joke, even still, that if I adopted a Czech or Spanish accent I might be recognized as an immigrant rather than perceived as a tourist, since so many recent arrivals came from Spain or Poland; people aren’t used to Americans coming to stay. In the last two years, there have been places in Clare County where I couldn’t figure out whether local colors were a Clare flag, or a Ukrainian one. Ireland remains more accessible to outsiders than some other parts of Europe; I hear a lot of Brazilian Portuguese on the streets, often students taking advantage of favorable student visas to learn English. There are immigrants from all over the world working in jobs at tech companies, many of the American multinationals. Most notably, though, are the number of migrants Ireland has welcomed, many (though not all) refugees from one or another war America has fought. Most families in Ireland have family members who’ve been welcomed in America, whether for a few years to work or, like my family, for six plus generations. It is only natural that Ireland return the favor.

And so, this year, rather than use Ireland’s privileged face time with the American President in advance of St. Patricks Day to discuss peace in Ireland or the fate of Ireland’s children in America, the Taoiseach pushed proud Irish-American Joe Biden to do something about his Gaza policy. Even the Irish, who take great pleasure in the long line of American Presidents it can claim, is peeved by America’s failures to do more about the Gaza crisis.

This time, Ireland is trying to teach America, not vice versa.

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day.

It’s not your mother’s Ireland anymore.

But if the American far right had its way — those who’ve fought to exacerbate centuries-old manufactured racism and with it fear — they would return Ireland to what it used to be.

After Kansas City, Who is Next?

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A KC Chiefs-branded AR-15 from Guns.com.

I knew yesterday was going to be weird. I just didn’t know how weird.

Yesterday, the Hallmark holiday of Valentine’s Day fell on the Christian observation of Ash Wednesday — two very different kinds of days — and then the Kansas City Chiefs went and won the Super Bowl, which added the Chief’s parade and celebration rally to collide with the other two holidays. As the players were boarding the observation deck buses to start the parade, I noticed Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, who had a cross of ashes on his forehead – a sign he had been to an early morning mass. Behind him was Taylor Swift’s boyfriend and future NFL hall of famer Travis Kelce. Ash Wednesday and Valentine’s Day, right at the heart of the Super Bowl victory celebration.

All around the metro area, schools were closed, in large part because a sizable number of teachers, custodians, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers informed their supervisors that they would be taking the day off, and nowhere near enough substitutes could be found even if the schools wanted to try to hold classes. Similarly, many businesses found the same dynamic with their people wanting to take the day off. Some closed completely, while others tried to make due with a skeleton staff. Estimates of the crowd size went as high as a million people, and traffic around the area certainly made that seem about right.

I was not at the event, but know many who were. I was watching the wall-to-wall coverage on KSHB television, the “home of the Chiefs”. They had reporters all along the parade route, all throughout the crowd, and sitting in midst of the crowd at the rally on an elevated open-air temporary broadcast booth.

The parade rolled out, and many of the players who started on the rooftops of the observation buses got out and walked the route, engaging with the crowd. They signed jerseys, took selfies, and high-fived with what felt like everyone in the front row of the street. They danced and shouted, tossed footballs back and forth with folks in the crowd, and did impromptu interviews with KSHB reporters along the route. And while the parade proceeded, musicians and DJs were amping up the crowd at Union Station who were waiting for them to arrive.

Union Station is a grand old railroad building that sits at the bottom of a massive bowl. To the south is a huge grassy area, which goes uphill to the US National World War I memorial that sits on one of the high spots of the whole city. In that bowl, hundreds of thousands of people had gathered to party. There were old folks, who remember Len Dawson and the first Super Bowl which the Chiefs lost and Super Bowl IV, which they won. There were young folks, who were there in 2020 for the parade and party right before everything shut down for COVID, they were there last year, and they were back again yesterday. There were also the folks in between, who missed the Len Dawson era, but lived through the fifty year drought between Super Bowl wins. There were rich folks and poor folks, lifelong Chiefs fans and newcomer Swifties, there were folks from all parts of Kansas City, from the majority African-American folks south of the Missouri River to the white folks north of the river to the Hispanic community on the west side. Folks from the suburbs were there, from both Missouri and Kansas. Folks from the Ozarks and the Flint Hills, folks from Nebraska, Iowa, Arkansas, and all across the country were there. They brought blankets and lawn chairs and coolers, filled with beverages and food to last the day. It was a joyful sea of red.

The MC for the rally was longtime KC Chiefs radio announcer Mitch Hulthus. He cast the day as a massive history lesson, which other speakers who followed picked up on. KC Mayor Quinton Lucas and Chiefs owner Clark Hunt both spoke of how the Chiefs had changed KC’s image with the world, noting how the Chiefs brought the NFL draft to KC last year and were instrumental in bringing the World Cup to KC in 2026. Missouri’s republican Governor Mike Parson was greeted with loud boos that pretty much battled with the volume on the PA system throughout his speech (boos from Kansas folks because he’s the Missouri governor and boos from the KC folks because he deserves it for his long history of disrespecting Kansas City). When the players took the stage, the crowd went nuts. Every player was grinning from ear to ear, and as the microphone was passed around, the word “Three-peat” echoed louder and louder, and their praise for the Chiefs fans grew ever stronger. Some players were eloquent, some had had one too many adult beverages along the parade route, and quarterback Patrick Mahomes and Mitch Hulthus seemed to be working to keep the rally going while at the same time trying to keep the folks who had overconsumed from falling off the front of the stage. Finally it came to an end, the music came up, and the crowd cheered and shouted and danced.

And then the shots rang out.

Some folks did not hear them at all. Others heard them as they echoed off the surrounding buildings, and wondered where they were coming from. But the folks near Union Station itself heard them, and knew where they came from. Older folks looked around, many wondering what to do, but all the kids didn’t hesitate. Instead of “duck and cover” drills at school that their elders grew up on, they have been living with “active shooter” drills at school for their whole lives, and they took charge and told their elders what to do. Everyone started running.

They jumped barricades and ran into Union Station, which had been blocked off as a staging area for the players, their families, and folks on stage. They jumped barricades on the edge of the bowl, and ran for the side streets. The reporters anchoring the coverage for KSHB threw the broadcast back to the folks at the station, and dropped to the floor of their elevated broadcast area which suddenly felt very exposed and dangerous. At past rallies, it took hours for the area to clear, but yesterday it felt like it emptied out in ten minutes. Left behind were strollers, backpacks, blankets, coolers, and tents. Cell phones were dropped, and there were random empty shoes.

I won’t say more about the deaths and injuries, as the numbers still seem to be shifting. I won’t say much about the shooters, save to say that three people have been taken into custody, no motive has been announced or is obvious from the context, and no description of the specific weapons used has been released.

At the now-routine press conferences afterwards, the familiar words were said. “We stand with the victims . . . We thank the first responders . . .  We pray for those in the hospitals . . . Here’s what we know about the status of the investigation . . .” Just as one press conference was ending, though, the police chief stopped walking away, and turned back to the microphone to make one more statement: “This is *not* Kansas City.” (start at the 11:40 mark)

Those five words touched a nerve.

Social media exploded in Kansas City, with many chiming in to say “this is *exactly* who we are.” Kansas City set a record last year for homicide deaths, largely involving guns. There is huge distrust in the police within the African American community, because of a pattern of racist (and deadly) police interactions with that part of Kansas City that finally forced the resignation of the previous police chief. Similarly, a non-trivial part of the white community thinks the police are being too lenient with “those people” and that is why violent crime is so bad. In one of the more racist parts of Kansas City, a young black youth named Ralph Yarl rang a doorbell, mistakenly coming to the wrong house to pick up his siblings (he had the right house number, but should have been one street over), and the elderly white homeowner shot him through his door. Kansas City has a pattern of using guns to settle beefs, to “stand your ground” when threatened by innocent folks, and to a non-trivial degree, don’t trust the police to help.

For all the talk that “the Chiefs bring people together” (or, more generally, “sports” or “the Super Bowl”, as Biden said in his post-shooting statement yesterday), this is not the first time gun violence has touched the Chiefs in a very personal way. Back in December 2012, well before the Patrick Mahomes/Andy Reid era, 3rd year linebacker Jovan Belcher came to the Chiefs facilities on a Saturday morning, got out of his car, and pointed a gun at his head. He told then-general manager Scott Pioli and other coaches that he had killed his girlfriend/mother of his child, Kassandra Perkins. They tried to talk him into putting the gun down, but Belcher pulled the trigger and killed himself. Police soon discovered that he had been drinking, and had been having relationship issues with Perkins. When the police went to her home, they found her dead – shot and killed by a different gun legally belonging to Belcher. Maybe I’m the only one who connected yesterday with Belcher and Perkins. I listened to the news coverage, and heard nothing. I ran an online search for mention of Belcher in the last 24 hours, and came up with *crickets*.

Despite KCPD Chief Graves’ words, guns and gun violence have become an ordinary part of ordinary life, and not just in Kansas City. We use them to end our own lives, when we feel things are so out of control in our lives that ending it all seems like the only solution. We use them to settle beefs in our homes, either by using them to threaten or using them to kill. We use them to settle beefs in our communities. We use them to settle beefs in our nation.

And all that world-wide coverage of the Chiefs that Clark Hunt and Mayor Lucas talked about is now going to come back to bite Kansas City. In Europe, every major shooting in the US makes folks wary about traveling here. Now, even as Kansas City worked hard to win the right to host several games in the 2026 World Cup, this shooting will make hosting those games that much more difficult — and not just in Kansas City. Who wants to risk their lives for a sporting event?

This was not the first shooting involving the Chiefs. It wasn’t the first shooting of the year in Kansas City, or even the first shooting of the day in Kansas City. As one local sports talk-radio host said yesterday, Kansas City has joined the list of cities where you say the name and everyone thinks about guns and violence and death, like Uvalde or Sandy Hook. When folks say “Super Bowl rally”, it will evoke the same memories as Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (which happened on Valentine’s Day six years ago!), the Pulse Nightclub, and Columbine High School. This is who we are, now.

I’ll say it again: no, Chief Graves, this *is* who we are. It’s who we are, in Kansas City and across the country. The gun in that photo above lists for the low, low price of $2999.99 at Guns.com. It is, however, out of stock. Why doesn’t that surprise me?

Until we learn to argue with one another without leaping to violence, the question is not if there will be another shooting like this, but where it will be. I’m not one of those folks who were asking “how could this happen here?” yesterday. My question is simply “Who is next?”

________

Corrected to note that Ralph Yarl survived being shot. I inadvertently mixed up that shooting with another event.

Trash Talk: Today’s Blowout Game

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The score of today’s game was mind-blowing. One could reasonably expect last year’s champion to do well again this year but holy smokes.

Ireland kicked Italy’s behind so hard Italy has no dignity left, final score 36-0.

There’s more than one ball game scheduled today. The other one was part of the Guinness Six Nations‘ rugby series, the second round of six to be played by teams representing England, France, Ireland, Italy, Scotland and Wales.

Side note: I’m a bit uncomfortable referring to this series as “Six Nations” because it has been the nickname of the First Nations’ Iroquois confederacy of which Cayuga, Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Seneca, and Tuscarora were members.

Same also for another marginalized group of Celtic nations, the Celtic League: Brittany, Cornwall, Isle of Man Ireland, Scotland, and Wales.

Anyhow, the Six Nations’ series began with Round 1’s first match on February 2, and will run through the last match on March 16.

I bet there was a fair amount of revelry in Ireland today after the blowout smashing Italy.

Because it was rugby, here’s a haka performed by New Zealand’s All Blacks for last year’s World Cup:

Perfect way to prepare for the kickoff in San Francisco in a couple minutes when the Kansas City Chiefs meet their hosts the San Francisco 49ers.

This is an open thread.

Trash Talk: Embracing Your Bi as in Coastal

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“Snacks are ready,” a text message read, including a photo of a decadent oozy appetizer overflowing with calories.

Ordinarily this kind of American excess arrives with the Super Bowl, but this year in Michigan it’s arrived with the rare NFL Conference Championship game in which the Detroit Lions meet the San Francisco 49rs at 6:30 p.m. ET in San Francisco.

I’m not understating the amount of energy the Lions’ success has spread over its home town and the state. I have a nibling who works for one of the Big Three automakers, has season tickets to the Lions, who said that their latest trip to Meijer grocery store was crazy.

Everyone was dressed in Lions’ paraphernalia and chanting “Go Lions!” at each other in greeting as they worked their way down the aisles.

My digital copy of the Detroit Free Press today is nothing but Honolulu Blue and Lions. Every beat must have a story with a Lions angle today.

Is this what it’s like when a city like Detroit, buffeted for decades by economic head winds, saddled with a football team which mirrors the economic battering, finally makes it out of the basement and wins its division?

I had to look at local newspapers for the host cities and their competitors’ home towns:

 

Here’s the match-up which started at 3:00 p.m. ET today in Kansas City MO. Sure looks like the Chiefs’ hometown takes today’s game in stride, as if it was just another day. Baltimore Sun devotes just over half the front page to the game with two stories — by the way, you have my sympathies, Baltimore, upon the launch of that right-wing moron Armstrong Williams’ opinion column in your paper.

Now compare and contrast the coverage in hometown papers for the Lions and the 49rs who meet at 6:30 p.m. ET today in San Francisco.

It be like that everywhere in Detroit and Michigan today, so much Honolulu Blue. SF’s paper is more excited about hosting the game for their team’s slot in the conference championship than KC is, but less so than the Freep is about the Lions appearing in SF.

There was a drone light show last night in Detroit; the Michigan Central Station was decked out in blue lights cheering on the Lions.

The biggest sign of excitement, though, is Ford Field today, where four massive screens have been set up for a watch party at which 34,000 attendees are expected.

Yes, like half the capacity of the stadium. Fox2Detroit reported,

“Tickets sold out unbelievably fast. We made an offer to our Lions Loyal Members, our season ticket holders, and then opened it up to the public,” she said. “After just a few hours, 34,000 tickets sold.”

Tickets were offered at half price or $10 each to season ticket holders. My nibling bought 10 tickets for themselves and friends, naturally.

I can’t even begin to imagine how much beer Ford Field concessions will sell today in the Power Hour before kickoff.

Damn — I just realized I screwed up thinking this was about bi-coastal championships with Baltimore on the east coast and San Francisco on the west coast.

It’s a tri-coastal day with Detroit on the northern fresh water coast. Let’s see which coasts get knocked out today.

This is an open thread.

On the Skewering of Self-Promoters Who are Filled with Misplaced Self-Importance

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Note, please, the face on the 10 pound note.

I have long loved satirists who skewer those who are filled with themselves and endeavor to look better to the world than they are. It’s not enough for these folks to be themselves, but they must appear to be better than those around them. And happily for me and for the world, there are other folks who are not content to notice them, but who are quite good at holding up a mirror to them, to the delight of the world. Folks like . . .

  • Carl Reiner and Mel Brooks.
  • Lily Tomlin.
  • Ben Franklin.
  • Amy Poehler and Tina Fay.
  • Michael Che and Colin Jost.
  • Tom Lehrer.
  • Gracie Allen.
  • Dick Gregory (who consciously chose as the one-word title of his autobiography a word that cannot be spoken these days!)
  • Puck and a host of political cartoonists who followed.
  • Jonathan Swift.
  • Art Buchwald.
  • Mark Twain.
  • The anonymous author of the biblical book of Jonah.
  • Theodore Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.
  • Heinrich Hoffmann.
  • Geoffrey Chaucer.

All wonderful folks, and obviously this is a very partial, very personal list. But one more name must be added, a name to whom millions will raise a wee dram tonight (or perhaps tomorrow night, if they intend more than a single wee dram and worry about getting to work on Friday): Robert Burns.

Years ago as a teenager, I took a family trip to Great Britain. We saw castles, abbeys, cathedrals, and ordinary small churches. We viewed museums, monuments, and mausoleums, looking on treasures old and new. We visited Oxford bookshops (from whence I brought home a first edition of The Silmarillion) and sports gear shops (from whence I brought home a pair of Franz Beckenbauer Special football boots). We went to Stratford-upon-Avon and saw various Shakespeare sites.

And then we got to Scotland, and the home of Robert Burns. I brought back a souvenir from there, which gets a lot more use than the now-too-small Beckenbauer Specials and even the oft-read Silmarillion: a well-used leather bookmark, with a short little poem by Burns:

The Book-worms

Through and through th’ inspir’d leaves,
Ye maggots, make your windings;
But O respect his lordship’s taste,
And spare his golden bindings.

According to literary scholars, Burns wrote this epigram inside a fancy gold-embossed, leather-bound volume of Shakespeare in a noble’s library. He had pulled the impressive looking book down from the shelf, only to find much of the insides eaten away. Taking out his poet’s pen,  he inscribed the verse above. Four simple lines, neatly skewering “his lordship’s taste” which is clearly of much more importance to his lordship than the inspir’d words of the Bard himself. As Billy Crystal’s Fernando was fond of saying, “It is better to look good than to feel good, and you look mah-vel-ous.” The book may be ruined, but the appearance of the book is what matters.

Makes me think of overly-though out Zoom setups, skewered by Room Rater on the Site Formerly Known as Twitter. There are folks whose Zoom backgrounds fit themselves like a glove (see Michael Beschloss and Claire McCaskill, to name just two well-known examples), and there are . . . others. These are the folks that sit and pontificate in front of shelves lined with impressive looking books, but after hearing what they have to say, you have to wonder whether these folks had actually read those impressive-looking books, or even knew what the basic points of those books are.

Right now, my Book-worm bookmark sits about halfway through my copy of The 1619 Project, which seems appropriate on this Robert Burns Day. Nikole Hannah-Jones and those with whom she worked on this mammoth project have taken upon themselves the task of tumbling the mighty who oversold themselves and their stories while lifting up the lowly whose lives and stories had been shoved to the margins.

So tonight (or tomorrow), let us raise a glass of Scotch Drink to Robert Burns and those like him who use their literary superpowers for good.

Feel free to add your favorite satirical poets and authors to the comments, and if you feel truly inspired, raise your glass/mug/sippy cup, and offer a toast. But as it’s a Thursday, please toast responsibly.

Photo used under CC by 2.0 deed, from the flikr account of summonedbyfells, who also includes a delightful story behind the photo. I’ll be raising a glass to summonedbyfells, too!

Boeing 737 MAX 9: The Comment Heard Around The World

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[NB: check the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

If I had any doubts this last week whether I should post about Boeing’s quality problems, a comment posted in Leeham News on January 16 convinced me the topic needs more attention. I had goosebumps several times as I read it.

Kudos to Leeham News for maintaining a comment section; it’s not easy but it’s clearly needed.

I’m not screenshotting the entire comment, only enough to convince you this is something worth reading and understanding amid a sea of layoffs and a surge of AI implementation across nearly every industry. Imagine as you read it how this could be made worse by fewer well-educated personnel and less communication between humans.

Before you scroll further, read the article which spawned the comment:

“Unplanned” removal, installation inspection procedure at Boeing
https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing

This story was published ten days after Alaska Air’s flight 1282  departed Portland OR’s PDX airport for California only to lose a door minutes later. The Boeing 737 MAX 9 safely returned to PDX roughly 20 minutes after takeoff.

The original comment both parts 1 and 2 can be found directly below the article — use keyword “throwawayboeing” to find them using Ctrl-F in your browser as many more comments have appeared since the article was first published.

If Leeham News should crash from high traffic volume or a possible attack, you can find parts 1 and 2 along with the article at the Internet Archive (keep in mind the earliest archived versions of the article may not have the comments beneath them):

https://web.archive.org/web/20240122193511/https://leehamnews.com/2024/01/15/unplanned-removal-installation-inspection-procedure-at-boeing/

An observer in my social media feed whose name I didn’t record noted that every little problem Boeing planes experience is now news. United Airlines discovering loose bolts on Boeing 737 aircraft reported only days after the Alaska Air door failure would and should have made the news; Alaska Air has also found more problems with bolts since then.

Google Trends suggests there’s some truth to the claim every Boeing problem is now news:

How many of the increased mentions are well-deserved snark is hard to say:

Well-deserved if dark. So dark. Mentions of new resources like Is My Plane A 737 MAX may also magnify Boeing’s problems in the media, but if there wasn’t a safety problem tools like this wouldn’t be seen as necessary.

Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Subcommittee on International Trade, Customs, and Global Competitiveness member Mark Warner (D-VA), and Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz (R-TX) are scheduled to meet today with Boeing’s CEO Dave Calhoun about the aerospace manufacturer’s ongoing quality crisis.

Calhoun already met last week with the heads of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). Seems rather late after the crazy stones Boeing manifested by asking on January 5 for its 737 MAX 7 to be exempted from safety rules to allow the aircraft to fly.

Let’s hope the FAA and NTSB are focused on the quality problems at Boeing and not on the source of the comment above until the comment’s veracity is called into question. The First Amendment should protect just this kind of speech from corporate suppression given the absolute risk all passengers take when boarding a Boeing aircraft.

You’ll note the image used on the front page for this post is a Boeing 737 — but it’s a military craft. Boeing is a federal contractor. If workers can’t safely blow the whistle on manufacturing quality problems with aircraft our defense personnel and our elected officials rely on, purchased with our taxpayer dollars, what good is the First Amendment?

~ ~ ~

What all of this has to do with labor is fairly clear in the original article published in Leeham News. I can’t add more to what’s been written.

But all of this could be worse in time depending on how Boeing addresses solutions in concert with cost controls.

One thing the public should know more about is the impact AI will have in manufacturing environments, especially ones in which both adherence to specifications and safety are tightly linked.

Four days after the Alaska Air Boeing 737 Max 9 lost its door mid-air, there was a report about a vulnerability found in Bosch brand cordless, handheld pneumatic torque wrenches which are used in the automotive industry. The wrenches are programmed to ensure nuts are tightened to specification and operate using Wi-Fi.

What are the chances that similar vulnerabilities may exist or be introduced into aerospace manufacturing, compounded by the increasing amounts of AI used in automation?

Let’s say a certain aerospace manufacturer gets its shit together and fixes its corporate culture and procedures so that all parts are tracked and all actions and omissions are likewise accounted for and documented as it builds aircraft.

What could happen if the no-longer-missing bolts are over- or under-tightened because of a vulnerability like the one in Bosch’s Rexroth’s NXA015S-36V-B wrenches?

It’s not enough to analyze and remedy existing quality and safety problems; future problems must be anticipated at the same time.

~ ~ ~

Since I began drafting this post this morning, The Seattle Times has reported on Boeing’s door problem, mentioning the comment left at Leeham News. You’ll want to follow up with this story as aerospace manufacturing is journalist Dominic Gates beat; he’s covered other similar stories like the ongoing Boeing 737 challenge.

In fact, if you read the comments at Leeham News you’ll see Gates as well.

Yet another example of why well-moderated news sites’ comments can be important.

This is NOT an open post. Please stay on topic in comments.

Trash Talk: Hot January in the D

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[NB: note the byline, thanks. /~Rayne]

Though 25F and cloudy in the D, it’s hot today where Detroit Lions’ fans are stoked out of their gourds because their beloved Kitties won their first NFL’s playoff game last week and are scheduled to play their second at 3:00 p.m. this afternoon on their own turf.

Michigan newspapers are loaded with helpful pointers about where to eat and drink with one paper in particular offering the recipe for a Honolulu Blue Kool-Aid cocktail, matching the color of the Lions’ uniform. Absolut Citron and blue curacao? I’m game, I’d try it.

Of course there’s the usual bad mouthing about Detroit. Can’t let the Motor City and the Arsenal of Democracy have anything good without a healthy slap, right, WaPo? Let’s not allow Detroiters to have a rare moment of unbridled happiness without picking at all the wounds.

At least WaPo had to get a lot closer to ensure there was a forced both-sides. Ruin porn on which major newspapers have feasted for the last 10-20 years is a lot more difficult to come by these days in the D. One only needs to look at the Michigan Central Station as an example of restoration and innovation replacing one of media’s favorite ruins.

Tampa Bay Buccaneers meet the Detroit Lions at 3:00 p.m. in the D.

Kansas City Chiefs meet the Bills at 6:30 p.m. in Buffalo.

Yesterday the San Francisco 49ers won at home over the Green Bay Packers 24-21.

The Baltimore Ravens likewise won at home over the Texas Longhorns, 34-10.

Let’s see if home field advantage likewise helps the Kitties today.

~ ~ ~

Speaking of the KC Chiefs, some stalkery dude tried to break into Taylor Swift’s place in TriBeca; he’d been skulking around her place for weeks trying to see her. Swift is still dating the Chief’s tight end Travis Kelce which should make the Chiefs’ game in Buffalo more amusing due to the extra star power in the audience.

~ ~ ~

In football – the other football – racist fans have gotten completely out of hand. FIFA’s president Gianni Infantino wants to crack down on the abusive behavior asking teams to forfeit if their fans are disruptively racist.

“The events that took place in Udine and Sheffield on Saturday are totally abhorrent and completely unacceptable,” Infantino added. “The players affected by Saturday’s events have my undivided support. Fifa and football shows full solidarity to victims of racism and any form of discrimination.

“Once and for all: No to racism! No to any form of discrimination!” the head of world football’s governing body added. “We need ALL the relevant stakeholders to take action, starting with education in schools so that future generations understand that this is not part of football or society.”

Yeah. That. Ditto.

Infantino’s demand comes after racist incidents during Coventry City FC at Sheffield FC on January 17 and AC Milan FC at Udinese FC on January 20. Both incidents were aimed at Black players – Coventry’s midfielder Kasey Palmer and AC Milan’s goalkeeper Mike Maignan – with the latter walking off the pitch at one point in protest.

It’s not a good look for FIFA when these incidents happened within days of each other and in different countries in and out of the EU.

~ ~ ~

Damn it. I just realized I made a mistake. My spouse and I agreed I’d cook dinner yesterday and he’d bring home fried chicken for dinner today.

Betting with the Lions’ game he’s ensconced at his favorite watering hole with his friends right now after a couple hours in the office, and getting fried chicken tonight will be a nightmare since so many Michiganders will be ordering takeout to watch the game.

Looks like it’s leftovers tonight.

Treat this like an open thread.