Boston Bombing

[JohnRoberts]

Andy,

Do I think he is guilty, yes. But what i think and feel is irrelevant. Allowing the gov or anyone else the right to skip, remove, ignore, etc anything related to charging any person with a crime sets a bad precedent. We are a country of laws and due process is just part of it.  I seriously doubt he will plead out and I doubt they will be talking with him anytime soon as he was shot in the throat.  As horrific as the events that happened in Boston are,  he is innocent until proven guilty, something I am sure will happen with ease.  But innocent until guilty is one of the many corner stones that make this country what it is.

It is so great that we can have open discussions about rights and freedom. Indeed rule of law is one of the things that any civilization needs to prosper. Our bill of rights seems useful indeed.

It is interesting to see the lawmakers response to all the negative energy unleashed by this very public event, and fanned by the talking heads. Several different interesting themes. The older brother spent months outside the country perhaps being influenced by some outside group. He was noticed by some US security agency but dismissed as harmless. Perhaps he was back then. Another theme is monitoring internet activity, you know that many other governments already do, or try. 

The talking heads on cable and network news get paid for stirring up fear and uncertainty around events like this so, If I see one more "live" news clip repeated like some greatest hits show to get ratings, I'll unplug my TV set. For days I turned off the "news" and I use that term loosely.  I generally watch business news, but they were taken over by wall to wall real reality TV.

I continue to be amazed by how many young men and women are willing to let older men and women, talk them into dying for some  cause. They are just grist for the mill, and not smarter than a second grader.

it is also interesting to see how people respond to this event. One fraction is dominated by a compelling need to punish the miscreant (they are probably already preparing a room for him in the high security prison in CO.). The other fraction focusses instead on how did we screw up to allow this to happen? 

It is the price we pay for having an open society that we will always be exposed to such attacks. They will probably evolve over time as we adjust to different threats.

Does anybody not have mixed feeling about more video cameras? In hindsight it now seems stupid to think they could get away with such a public attack. More cameras and certainty that future public attackers will be identified and caught should have some deterrent effect, while one must wonder, how long they expected to get away with their bad behavior. If one has already decided to invest their life for some cause, being caught is not much deterrent at all, at least for the pawns.   

The elephant in the room that government is treating so gingerly, is what cause were these guys acting for? This appears to be shaping up to be yet another religious extremist. Interesting how a boxer, drinker, and partier, cleaned up his act for religion and stopped his decadent ways, so he could do what he did. We do not want to offend such a populous religion that in the mainstream isn't so hateful, but they need to forcibly reject these bad elements from within. While many religious leaders openly reject them, there are apparently enough that can be readily found on the WWW that openly support such beliefs and behavior.

It is also part of our heritage that speech is protected and generally deemed harmless, while there is an accumulation of examples where hateful speech has led to hateful actions.  While not exactly new, some interesting old questions.   

JR

 

[DaveP]

I spoke to an American visitor back in the days when the UK only had 4 channels.  He was full of praise for our TV programmes and said that back in the States, they had 300 channels and none of them worth watching.

There is a lot to be said for our BBC even if it costs us $20/month
best
DaveP

 

[JohnRoberts]

    The people of Boston deserve a huge round of applause for the way they handled this whole affair. I'm sorry it had to happen to anyone in the first place, but I'm very impressed with the way they dealt with this difficult situation from beginning to end. Marathon participants, government officials, regular citizens, and everyone else seem to have reacted in a conscious effort of single-minded resolve.

+1

    It's the kind of response that would make anyone considering such an attack wonder if the effort was worthwhile.

Not so sure. A cold calculation might consider the attack a roaring success. Shutting down the entire region for as long as they did had a huge financial impact. Keep in mind these actual actors may have already planned on dying, so getting caught afterwards was not part of the calculus. While it appears they planned more attacks that were thwarted.

    The media once again showed that they really have nothing to add and will cycle the same crap over and over again because they are afraid that going on to report any other news after they give the known information will lose them viewers. Nothing new there...but a lot of other important news went unreported while reporters blabbed on about nothing, or just plain got the facts wrong.

+2...  Several notable elections. Only half the qualified voters in Iraq turned out to vote because they are losing faith in the system. In South America the other nations have rubber stamped the 50.7% win by Chavez's hand picked successor in Venezuela. and more. 

    The nut-job media attention-whores have shown they will do anything to sell survivalist supplies, and ramp up the paranoia in the believing faithful. Free speech has it's pitfalls, and this kind of propaganda is only believable when the mainstream media does such a poor job.

Some might argue that media participates in the propaganda but I guess opinions vary.

    Congress gets the Hall of Shame award for not even considering making it harder for terrorists to get weapons, barely days before this whole affair began.

Our legislative process was designed by our founder to be thoughtful and deliberative. Not to be driven by passionate, emotional, public responses to events in the news. Gun control is an old agenda, dusted off and repositioned as somehow related to the horrible grade school attack. If anyone was serious about mitigating that problem, open up mental health records, currently closed by law. The vast majority of gun killings occur in inner city areas, where borderline unconstitutional stop and search police practices reduces the number of criminals willing to carry their guns in public.

  Boston Strong!

I lived there for several years back in the '70s and they did themselves proud.

JR

 

[JohnRoberts]

I spoke to an American visitor back in the days when the UK only had 4 channels.  He was full of praise for our TV programmes and said that back in the States, they had 300 channels and none of them worth watching.

For many years the US TV market was a small handful of networks, NBC, CBS, ABC, and PBS, so similar number of options.

Now while the number of choices goes up, the quality has indeed gone down. The free market will sort it out.

There is a lot to be said for our BBC even if it costs us $20/month
best
DaveP

I recall the Beeb from my early days as SWL (short wave listener) listening to international broadcasts targeting the US back in the '60s. Besides the BBC, there was CBC (canada) Radio Moscow, Radio Havana Cuba, radio stations in Africa and South America, all conveniently broadcasting in english.  ;D

I find the BBC commentary a little condescending sometimes IMO, but maybe that is a personal problem of mine.  8) They are popular enough to have US based programming, and their own news programs to tell the sheeple how to interpret current events. 

JR

PS: The several times I visited GB I found the TV selection uninspiring, while generally the best of it, finds it way over here, either intact or copied using american actors. Many here don't realize how many old American TV "classics" were rip-offs of successful british series. 

 

[dmp]

Now while the number of choices goes up, the quality has indeed gone down. The free market will sort it out.

The free market has pretty clearly led to this state of things. Consumers have a big appetite for sensationalist, instant gratification news (even if it is wrong or exaggerated)
Serious journalism is going out of business, because people aren't paying for it.
The more the deregulation / selling the air waves / decreasing the cost of entry - the more crap masquerading as news.
There was an interesting story on how the media isn't even being held accountable for erroneous reporting when major outlets were saying the police had suspect early in the aftermath etc etc.
Just a few years ago erroneous reporting would have been a huge story.

Interesting to me how 'the free market can do no wrong' is believed. It seems it is a religious belief for some. It optimizes for one thing: money.
It doesn't optimize for the greatest good, for long term improvement in quality, for the betterment of society.
Nothing else. It optimizes money in someone's pocket.

And looking at the recent votes on gun legislation - when something that has ~90% public approval fails in congress, I think we are seeing the free market applied to our democratic leadership.
Not working too well there either - for the greater good or the long term betterment of society.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Now while the number of choices goes up, the quality has indeed gone down. The free market will sort it out.

The free market has pretty clearly led to this state of things. Consumers have a big appetite for sensationalist, instant gratification news (even if it is wrong or exaggerated)
Serious journalism is going out of business, because people aren't paying for it.
The more the deregulation / selling the air waves / decreasing the cost of entry - the more crap masquerading as news.
There was an interesting story on how the media isn't even being held accountable for erroneous reporting when major outlets were saying the police had suspect early in the aftermath etc etc.
Just a few years ago erroneous reporting would have been a huge story.

It depends on who makes a mistake... they all do. While some are inspected more closely than others, often accused of intent. 

Just look up near the beginning of this thread for posts repeating erroneous news. I even repeated the premature report that the Transit cop who was shot and bled out was dead. He may have actually "died" but he was resuscitated, had his blood supply replenished, and is recovering. So mea cupla. 

Interesting to me how 'the free market can do no wrong' is believed. It seems it is a religious belief for some. It optimizes for one thing: money.

Nobody said that (certainly I didn't)... free markets cause bubbles and any number of unpleasant things. What the free market does well is efficiently allocate resources. If the public wants to watch crap, they gat all the crap they can swallow and are willing to pay for.

It doesn't optimize for the greatest good, for long term improvement in quality, for the betterment of society.
Nothing else. It optimizes money in someone's pocket.

The free press is supposed to serve as an honest observer to watch guard on the government to keep them honest. When major fractions actively promote the same agenda as the government, they are not serving their intended purpose.

The internet seems to be stepping up to take the place of an outlet for public criticism, another reason we need to keep the internet free.

The government and central planners can't optimize their way out of a wet paper bag. The government's idea of management is so perverse that they are intentionally mismanaging the sequester to inflict maximum pain on the public, so the sheeple will give them more money to mismanage. And the press mostly sits by nodding approval.

And looking at the recent votes on gun legislation - when something that has ~90% public approval fails in congress, I think we are seeing the free market applied to our democratic leadership.
Not working too well there either - for the greater good or the long term betterment of society.

Representative republic, not a simple democracy. A lynch mob is a simple democracy. Our form of government is designed to resist emotional re-action, preferring to use the rational part of our brains.

Leadership is not about following the crowd, but doing what is right. The proposed gun legislation is not related to the CT tragedy, just an attempt to take advantage of the emotional energy from the crisis du jour. If they want to seriously impact gun crimes, there are more effective way to directly address that. Recall that previous gun legislation was passed after the very popular president Reagan was shot.

Unfortunately such groundswells of public opinion are often used to overcome the friction engineered into our system to prevent legislative excess. 

JR

PS Look for even more erroneous news reports as social media gets used more and more. The AP twitter feed was hacked today sending out erroneous reports for a few minutes... long enough to affect flash trading in the stock market before it was corrected.

 

[dmp]

Good points. Especially:

Representative republic, not a simple democracy. A lynch mob is a simple democracy. Our form of government is designed to resist emotional re-action, preferring to use the rational part of our brains.

Another way of saying it - the form of government protects minority rights from the majority opinion.

In this case, the people who want to buy guns without having a paper trail.  ;D
It may be shocking, but I favor gun rights and own 3 guns. I just think the gun lobby is ridiculous.
I think they might have actually hurt gun rights in the long term with this short term win, by defeating the background check exemptions. Either no background checks or background checks. Seems pretty simple. Fighting to keep that exemption is silly. And the arguments used, that there hasn't been prosecution of applications with false statements is silly.
A good analogy I heard was for kids buying alcohol. Say the law was that kids had to pass an age requirement at liquor stores and grocery stores, but not gas stations. And people wanted to eliminate the gas station exemption. Gas station owners fought that by saying the government has not effectively prosecuted the kids who were caught showing fake IDs at liquor stores. Even though those kids were not allowed to buy alcohol at the liquor store.

 

[JohnRoberts]

Good points. Especially:

Representative republic, not a simple democracy. A lynch mob is a simple democracy. Our form of government is designed to resist emotional re-action, preferring to use the rational part of our brains.

Another way of saying it - the form of government protects minority rights from the majority opinion.

well said...

In this case, the people who want to buy guns without having a paper trail.  ;D
It may be shocking, but I favor gun rights and own 3 guns. I just think the gun lobby is ridiculous.
I think they might have actually hurt gun rights in the long term with this short term win, by defeating the background check exemptions. Either no background checks or background checks. Seems pretty simple. Fighting to keep that exemption is silly. And the arguments used, that there hasn't been prosecution of applications with false statements is silly.
A good analogy I heard was for kids buying alcohol. Say the law was that kids had to pass an age requirement at liquor stores and grocery stores, but not gas stations. And people wanted to eliminate the gas station exemption. Gas station owners fought that by saying the government has not effectively prosecuted the kids who were caught showing fake IDs at liquor stores. Even though those kids were not allowed to buy alcohol at the liquor store.

The second amendment and increased regulation of private ownership of weapons is a complex and very conflicted topic that has been debated for a very long time. Using some recent crisis to promote an old agenda is pretty common in politics. 

In politics and government it increasingly becomes about unverbalized arguments surrounding some future end game where some legislation today, provides a vehicle for some future action. For example full registration of guns sounds harmless enough, unless some future administration decides to unilaterally take them away.

Note: I am not making this argument just trying to explain the mental calculus. One recent example showing that some governments can not be trusted with such information was the newspaper publication in a county in NY state of legal law abiding gun owners.

Similar arguments surround internet security, some intrusion on our privacy that seems harmless and perhaps useful in the context of recent events may open the door for more invasive future encroachments.

A similar example of this nonlinear relationship is discussions of some new internet sales taxation that seems harmless enough if we trust the government to be good shepherds of our wealth and any revenue raised, but they repeatedly demonstrate that they are not responsible, by spending more money than they raise with tax revenue as it is. So reflexive push back against any new tax is not always about the tax, but their expected untrustworthy behavior handling the new revenues.

The public discourse is rarely linear but often couched in coded contexts. This can be painted as very ugly hidden motives depending on your POV and level of understanding.

I think there's a Japanese saying for "the apparent truth" vs. "the actual or real truth". I have listened to many public speeches that sounded reasonable, but learned from playing basketball to ignore the head fakes and watch their feet. What they do does not always agree with the public messaging to build public opinion.

JR