More shooting… lone gun nut or anti-liberal bias?

(CNN) — One person was shot Wednesday at the Little Rock headquarters of the Arkansas Democratic Party, police said.

The suspect was shot by police after a chase and later died, police said.

Police would not identify the victim, who is in critical condition at a hospital.

However, a witness told CNN affiliate KTHV that Arkansas Democratic Party Chairman Bill Gwatney had been shot, and the Democratic National Committee issued a statement indicating that Gwatney was the victim.

Police chased the unidentified white male for about 20 miles.

Police said man got out of his vehicle and began shooting at officers, who returned fire.

The suspect had walked into the downtown headquarters, near the state Capitol building, about 11:50 a.m. and started firing, Little Rock police Lt. Terry Hastings said, injuring “one of the people working in the office.”

Asked about a possible motive, Hastings said, “right now, we don’t know.” The investigation is ongoing, he said.

A woman in a nearby business told KTHV that Gwatney’s assistant came in and asked her to call police.

“I thought maybe someone had gotten hit by a car,” said Sarah Lee, who works at a florist’s shop. “She was just shaking really bad.” But then the woman said that Gwatney had been shot and that three shots had been fired, Lee said.

“She said she was waiting on the gentleman. He wanted to see the chairman. She tried to give him Democratic party stuff,” Lee said. “He took a sticker” but still wanted to speak to Gwatney, she said. “Evidently, he walked on around her and went in the office and started shooting.”

A vehicle description was provided to police, Hastings said, and officers found it it. After a chase into Grant County, about 20 miles south of Little Rock, the suspect was shot and taken into custody, he said.

The chase involved Little Rock police, Arkansas State Police and the county sheriff’s office, he said.

Former President Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton said in a statement that they are are “stunned and shaken by today’s shooting at the Arkansas Democratic Party where our good friend and fellow Democrat Bill Gwatney was critically wounded. Bill is not only a strong chairman of Arkansas’ Democratic Party, but he is also a cherished friend and confidante. Our thoughts and prayers are with Bill and his family today and we wish him a quick recovery.”

In Sheridan, Arkansas, where the chase ended, a crowd gathered near the suspect’s blue pickup as police cordoned off the area with yellow crime-scene tape. What appeared to be bullet holes could be seen in the truck’s windshield.

People at the nearby Arkansas Baptist State Convention said that just after the shooting, a man with a gun walked into their building.

The man was “white as a sheet,” convention official Dan Jordan said.

“I’ve heard he said something do to about losing a job. … He didn’t threaten anyone.” The man left through the front door shortly afterward, he said.

Police have not said whether the two incidents are linked, according to CNN affiliate KARK.

Samizdat and Collapse?

I’m aware that a lot of folks that I respect and like as poets, artists and writers are feeling crunched these days on an emotional/performative/creative front; articulated his sense of it in himself pretty well in today’s entry. (Others are doing fine: ‘s poem about Sunday’s shooting at the UU church in Tennessee rocked my socks off).

One of the tags I’ve been using on my LJ account these days is “annihilation anxiety”, which is my own sense of how difficult and hard this all can be. Gas prices have fallen slightly in the last few days and weeks, but there’s no sense that they’re going to fall enough to really affect many people’s budgets. The economy is tanking, and many families are having to tighten their belts on things like food as well as gas; eventually the trifecta here in the Northeast will be food, heating fuel and travel fuel. Global warming seems to be a continuing issue for everyone, but no one feels empowered to do much about it yet.

These choices are personal, but they start to become community-wide. I debate monthly on whether or not to stop using a cleaning lady, but I’m aware that Chris and her family will start to fall through the cracks if she doesn’t have enough work. Her husband has chronic illness, and the medicine bills and hospital fees continue to pile up. Traveling to see him in his specialty hospital continues to eat away at their lives and their wealth and their health.

A few months ago, when I began to read Club Orlov and other writings by folks interested in problems like Peak Oil and Climate Change as political-economic phenomena, I was struck by something that Dimitriy Orlov said about art. He said that in the days of Andropov and the early days of Gorbachev, there was an underground literature called samizdat. There were newspapers, blogs, zines, poetry journals, and other publications, usually produced on mimeograph machines or handwritten, and circulated hand-to-hand among interested parties. They were sharply critical of government — and in the Soviet system, that meant you were also criticizing the economic levers as well as the political ones. Satire and sarcasm were the principal weapons of these publications, first gently and then fiercely mocking the systems of authority.

Authority, of course, cracked down on them, hard. And got nowhere. The mimeograph machines were portable. There was a black market, and usable ones disappeared from official use to reappear in the unofficial economy. Alternately, the machines stayed right where they were, and the underground — who were all really part of the overground, too — simply used them while they were at work. And the writings were funny. They were pointed, bitter, hilarious, bleak, dark, humorous, and all the rest.

But the well of samizdat dried up, Orlov said. People stopped producing these writings, these cartoons, and this material, because they were working so hard on keeping themselves and their family afloat. The money system went first — no one put much trust in the rouble, because it didn’t matter how many roubles you had. You needed favors and contacts and friends to get inside the shop before all the toilet paper got sold. You needed to spend your time waiting in line to get the food. You needed creative energy for other things than ‘working’ at an official job in order to use an official mimeograph to wring out a dozen copies of your latest well-thought-out and funny anti-Communist screed.

My family genuinely believes in annihilation anxiety. Ask , but we laugh about it at dinners even as we think about how the latest bad news spells the end of the world. So you should take this next bit with a grain of salt, perhaps even a whole box of it. But my father — and I — both see the makings of another Great Depression here. And the commentators cloak it by saying, “oh, it’s not as bad as it was in ’35 or ’36, really.”

Well, maybe it’s not. But the rest of the world is losing its trust in the dollar, and shifting to other sources of value. Many of the best and most easily reached pockets of oil in the world are empty or nearly so, and the remaining ones are smaller, more difficult to get to, and involve releasing even more toxic waste than usual.

So I wonder. Are we having artistic difficulties because that’s just where we are in our careers? Or are we having artistic difficulties because our creative energies are being turned increasingly to ‘getting by’ instead of to getting out and getting noticed? And how bad is this likely to get?

Maybe it’s just annihilation anxiety. But I don’t see things getting great any time soon.

Shooting at UU Church in Tennessee

ganked from :

Bill O’Reilly, Michael Savage, Sean Hannity on accused shooter’s reading list

Police found right-wing political books, brass knuckles, empty shotgun shell boxes and a handgun in the Powell home of a man who said he attacked a church in order to kill liberals “who are ruining the country,” court records show. Knoxville police Sunday evening searched the Levy Drive home of Jim David Adkisson after he allegedly entered the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church and killed two people and wounded six others during the presentation of a children’s musical. Knoxville Police Department Officer Steve Still requested the search warrant after interviewing Adkisson. who was subdued by several church members after firing three rounds from a 12-gauge shotgun into the congregation.

Freddie and Fannie may be broke

Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, which are GSEs or government-sponsored enterprises, may be technically insolvent. They have about $5.5 trillion in outstanding mortgages between them and only $80 billion in equity. Technically, the US government guarantees these loans but only implicitly. If Congress decides to guarantee them explicitly, the government will have debts equal to our GDP, give or take a few hundred million. If Congress decides NOT to back these mortgages, they may render 4-10 million families homeless as their homes are foreclosed.

Standard&Poor’s, Moody’s, and other rating agencies have been saying since Reagan was president that they would downgrade the creditworthiness of the US government if the US ever explicitly guaranteed Freddie and Fannie mortgages. Guess what, folks. That reckoning may be about to come due/true.

I would *strongly* advise anyone against major purchases at this time, or locking yourself into purchase plans or layaways of any sort for the next few months. Even frivolous stuff would be inadvisable- it is reasonable to ask “would I buy this if there were two more zeroes just in front of the decimal point?”

This condition is likely to persist until after the election at the earliest, and more likely to continue into the new President’s next term. Hang onto your hats, everyone. And your wallets.

NSFW: New pics from Abu Ghraib

These photos may not be safe for work…. or kids

Philip Zimbardo, who did the famous 1971 prison experiment at Stanford University, was asked to testify as an expert witness in the court-martial of some of the American soldiers involved in the Abu Ghraib Prison scandal. He had access to the photographs, and published them in a video he showed at this years TED Conference. Then Wired Magazine made Zimbardo’s story available on their website, along with his presentation. The experiment in 1971 was about how prisoners and guards in a simulated prison behave. After only five days, Zimbardo was forced to stop the experiment, because the ‘guards’ in the scenario began torturing and abusing their prisoners, and forced them to strip naked and commit simulated sex acts.

The article explores ways that Abu Ghraib Prison parallels the Stanford University prison experiments of 1971. Interesting and freaky.

Mitt Romney abandons GOP Bid

Mitt Romney has dropped out of the race. With Mike Huckabee trailing a considerable number of delegates behind John McCain, it’s likely that John McCain is now, essentially, the Republican nominee for president.

So… we have a staunchly pro-war candidate in the Republican slot, in all likelihood. Now the Democratic contest becomes a little more interesting, because we know who that candidate is likely going to face.

Voting for Barack Obama

Tomorrow, on Super Tuesday, I am voting for Barack Obama in the Democratic Primary here in Connecticut. glassbooth.org says that we’re pretty similar in most areas; I have an 82% concurrence with him.

That’s not why I’m voting for him.

He’s opposed the war in Iraq for a good long while, and he’s stuck by that conviction.

That’s not why I’m voting for him.

I am voting for Barack Obama for the preservation of the republic. We have had twenty years with the presidency in the hands of two families — four years of Bush 41, eight years of Clinton 42, eight years of Bush 43. In thanks for this legacy we have a house divided: economically, socially, militarily, politically, legally. The former President Clinton is an impeached president (no matter that it was a Republican hatchet job, no matter that Bush and Cheney deserved not simply impeachment but conviction). It sets bad precedent for our Constitution and our republic to allow this family to occupy the White House a second time. They need to be thanked for their service to the nation, and sent packing.

So yes, I’ll vote for Barack Obama. Not just because he represents hope — although he does. Not just because he represents change — although he does. Not just because he plans to find a new way of doing things in Washington — although he does.

I am voting for Barack Obama because I believe that the Republic is under assault, and I believe the Constitution is at grave risk, and I believe the survival of our nation is at stake — not from outside enemies who wish us ill, although they do — but from our own ambitious former leaders who cannot bear to see others hold the reins of power.

But we are a nation of many strengths, and many are called to positions of authority and leadership. I believe the time is right for Barack Obama.

Malki & the Screwy Election

http://wondermark.com/index.html

David Malki today may be on to something. Part of the reason that this election may be so screwy is that the writers’ strike has hampered the ability of Hollywood to comment on the primaries to the same degree that they usually did. Consequently, instead of watching people make jokes about Obama, Huckabee, Clinton et al., they’re actually having to go out and read about them and find out who these people are. It makes for an interesting election.

George McGovern: Impeach Bush AND Cheney

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/04/AR2008010404308_pf.html

George McGovern, defeated presidential hopeful in the 1972 election, comes out in favor of impeachment for both the president and vice-president. Too little, too late, but a sign of how the winds are blowing for our current commander-in-chief.

Book Review: The Nine

As part of my effort to be a better writer, I’m writing a book review of each book I read in 2008. I just finished this one in late December 2007, but I’m still counting it as first of 2008.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court, by Jeffrey Toobin, examines the history and politics of the Supreme Court from the age of Reagan to the present day, concluding with the ominous decisions in the 2006 term. Toobin’s point of view challenges the age-old wisdom that joining the court tends to change the men and women who serve there, flip-flopping liberals to conservatives and conservatives to liberals. Instead, he argues that the nature and structure of the court reflects the make-up of Congress and the Presidency at the time of the nomination. In the 1980s and early 1990s, a Supreme Court justice who wished to overturn Roe v. Wade couldn’t pass the Senate; by the early 2000s and the presidency of George W. Bush (43), even a Senator who supported Roe v. Wade was being subjected to a litmus test to see whether he could remain in charge of the Senate Judiciary Committee. No way could a nominee pass the process who didn’t wish to overturn the initial abortion case.

Toobin explains in quick sketches the personality and point of view of each of the Justices, from the firey and bombastic Antonin Scalia, whose Originalist arguments rarely swayed his colleagues, to Sandra Day O’Connor, whose politicking in Arizona helped make her the Court’s swing vote for nearly twenty years. Rhenquist’s weakness and deteriorating health explain some of her power; Ginsburg’s outer meekness conceals granite within. Clarence Thomas largely remains a cipher in the book, in part because of his reluctance to engage in the public business of the court. He is the only Justice to have sat through an entire term — 104 cases — without once asking a single question.

Toobin’s prose is gripping. His chapters end on cliffhangers, even though a quick visit to Wikipedia or your own memory can answer the questions soon enough. It reads well, and he divides the story into enough chapters that it’s possible to read cleanly, ending each chapter and setting it aside for a time. Even so, I found myself staying up late in the last days of December, trying to finish.

His conclusions are dismaying. The Court portrays itself as above the fray of politics, but its intervention in Bush vs. Gore is portrayed in the most damning light — a court of conservatives eager to put their man in the White House, only to discover that at least two of the Justices found the man appalling in action as President. Meanwhile, the Court’s march to the right, under Roberts and Alito, reveals a politically-minded gang of five eager to subvert the liberal gains of the last twenty-five years. Roberts, Alito and Scalia have all indicated a willingness to revisit Miranda warnings by police, and Roe vs. Wade and Casey vs. Planned Parenthood are clearly destined for the chopping block. The book never descends into Democratic politicking, but it presents a view of a Court increasingly out-of-step with mainstream America and not caring. It fires me up for the idea of having a Democratic president for another eight years; I hope we get one.

Short version: 3.5 stars out of 5. I’m not likely to read it again, or buy it (borrowed book), but for those who love politics and want background on our third branch of government, I’d recommend it highly.