For nearly three decades, an earnest man named Narendra Dabholkar traveled from village to village in India, waging a personal war against the spirit world.
If a holy man had electrified the public with his miracles, Dr. Dabholkar, a former physician, would duplicate the miracles and explain, step by step, how they were performed. If a sorcerer had amassed a fortune treating infertility, he would arrange a sting operation to unmask the man as a fraud. His goal was to drive a scientist’s skepticism into the heart of India, a country still teeming with gurus, babas, astrologers, godmen and other mystical entrepreneurs.
That mission ended Tuesday, when two men ran up behind Dr. Dabholkar, 67, as he crossed a bridge, shot him at point-blank range, then jumped onto a motorbike and disappeared into the traffic coursing through this city.
Dr. Dabholkar’s killing is the latest episode in a millenniums-old wrestling match between traditionalists and reformers in India. When detectives began putting together a list of Dr. Dabholkar’s enemies, they found that it was long. He had received threats from Hindu far-right groups, been beaten by followers of angry gurus and challenged by councils upholding archaic caste laws. His home state, Maharashtra, was considering legislation he had promoted for 14 years, banning a list of practices like animal sacrifice, the magical treatment of snake bites and the sale of magic stones.
“Instead of dying of old age, or by surgery, which causes a lot of suffering, the death Mr. Dabholkar got today was a blessing from God,” the leader, a former hypnotherapist now known as His Holiness Dr. Jayant Athavale, wrote in an editorial in the organization’s publication, Sanatan Prabhat.
This is what racism looks like.
Racism is the utter lack of compassion it takes to see a mother grieving for a boy and afraid for her own sons, and think, “Wow, that would be really easy to tweak in Photoshop to make her look stupid. Wouldn’t that be funny?”
Racism is dehumanizing. Racism robs this woman of her individuality, her humanity, and her gender. “And ain’t I a woman?” This mother ain’t a woman to “The Patriot Nation.” She’s an object to be ridiculed for mistakes she never made; mistakes, in fact, that someone intentionally added to a photo of her for the purpose of mocking her grief and fear.
Racism is someone in front of his computer whose face twists into the same mask of disgust we see in grainy old black and white films of the KKK burning schoolhouses and churches, and instead of a racial slur spilling from his curled-back lips, he sneers, “Sheeple,” or “Socialists,” or “Obamanation,” and he clicks “like” and “share” on this photo because there’s no little switch in his brain to say: “Is this right to do to a human being?” No. The filter turns off when his hate is triggered by this image. And the really scary thing is, that missing filter means he’s also missing the ability to honestly ask himself, “Am I responding this way because of this woman’s race?”
This is also what courage looks like, over there on the left.
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| Looking west towards Mojave Outpost |
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| Ranger Station Charlie |
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| East Las Vegas looks a little sad these days |
On a larger scale, this case provokes reflection on what this nation is all about, its promise of fairness, liberty, equality of opportunity, and justice. At its heart, this case teaches that at some point in our lives all of us must compromise, if only a little, to accommodate the contrasting values of others. A multicultural, pluralistic society, one of our nation’s strengths, demands no less. The Huguenins are free to think, to say, to believe, as they wish; they may pray to the God of their choice and follow those commandments in their personal lives wherever they lead. The Constitution protects the Huguenins in that respect and much more. But there is a price, one that we all have to pay somewhere in our civic life.
In the smaller, more focused world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world. In short, I would say to the Huguenins, with the utmost respect: it is the price of citizenship. I therefore concur.
In the smaller, more focused world of the marketplace, of commerce, of public accommodation, the Huguenins have to channel their conduct, not their beliefs, so as to leave space for other Americans who believe something different. That compromise is part of the glue that holds us together as a nation, the tolerance that lubricates the varied moving parts of us as a people. That sense of respect we owe others, whether or not we believe as they do, illuminates this country, setting it apart from the discord that afflicts much of the rest of the world.
A significant chunk of Louisiana Republicans evidently believe that President Barack Obama is to blame for the poor response to the hurricane that ravaged their state more than three years before he took office.
The latest survey from Democratic-leaning Public Policy Polling, provided exclusively to TPM, showed an eye-popping divide among Republicans in the Bayou State when it comes to accountability for the government's post-Katrina blunders.
Twenty-eight percent said they think former President George W. Bush, who was in office at the time, was more responsible for the poor federal response while 29 percent said Obama, who was still a freshman U.S. Senator when the storm battered the Gulf Coast in 2005, was more responsible. Nearly half of Louisiana Republicans — 44 percent — said they aren't sure who to blame.
Bush was criticized heavily when he did not immediately return to Washington from his vacation in Texas after the storm had reached landfall. The government was also slow to provide relief aid and Michael Brown, then-director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), admitted in a televised interview that he learned that many of the storm's victims at the New Orleans Convention Center were without food and water well after the situation had been reported in the press.
Brown's handling of the response ultimately led to his resignation, but Bush offered an infamous endorsement of the FEMA chief only days before he stepped down.
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job," Bush said.
According to Frank if you evacuate one of the families from a block, all the others will want to know why they weren't evacuated, too. But if you go and evacuate everyone as a precaution, then a good quarter will refuse to leave their flats on principle. Plus, if you evacuate them you become responsible for finding them a safe haven and keeping them fed and watered. (Page 127)
I often forget how good a driver Nightingale is, especially in the Jag. He insinuates himself through traffic like a tiger padding through a jungle, or at least how I imagine a tiger pads through a jungle. For all I know the damned things swagger through the forest like rottweilers at a poodle show. (Page 172)
This seems a bit far afield, even in the Kremlinology business: A conservative group is bitterly complaining that Fox News shifting generic Fox word-sayer Megyn Kelly to a more prominent timeslot is a Fox News plot to advance their pro-homosexual agenda.
But America's Survival, Inc. (ASI), which bills itself as a "public policy organization," said that replacing Hannity with Kelly would be a jump-the-shark moment for the conservative cable news channel. "Pushing Sean Hannity out of the 9:00 p.m. slot, to make way for pro-homosexual advocate Megyn Kelly, is another sign of the channel's left-ward drift and decline," ASI President Cliff Kincaid said in a press release, according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
These people are yours, Fox News. You broke em, you bought em. Good luck with that.
For the record, I bill myself as a "public policy organization" as well. My public policy is that America should perhaps be hearing a bit less from the dumb people, and a bit more from the smarter people. I realize this has roughly the same chances of success as attempting to revive one of the stuffed birds in a natural history museum, but there you go.
Colorado Secretary of State Scott Gessler (R), currently seen as a serious challenger to Gov. Hickenlooper, has been on a crusade to end the plague of fraudulent voting by noncitizens.
Today's Denver Post reports that Gessler had given Boulder County DA Stan Garnett a list of 17 noncitizens voting in Boulder County. But yesterday,
... Garnett's office found that all 17 people were citizens and were able to easily verify their status ...
So. Final results of Gessler's investigation for Boulder county? That would be ... ZERO.
The fastest thing in the universe has come to a complete stop for a record-breaking minute. At full pelt, light would travel about 18 million kilometres in that time – that's more than 20 round trips to the moon.
"One minute is extremely, extremely long," says Thomas Krauss at the University of St Andrews, UK. "This is indeed a major milestone." ...
While light normally travels at just under 300 million metres per second in a vacuum, physicists managed to slow it down to just 17 metres per second in 1999 and then halt it completely two years later, though only for a fraction of a second. Earlier this year, researchers kept it still for 16 seconds using cold atoms.
The rightwing echo chamber reverberates with the sound of outrage:
FreedomWorks: Obama Bars College Republicans from Speech, Labels Them Security Threat
Town Hall: College Republicans Deemed Security Threat at Obama Speech
The Blaze: College Republicans Say They Weren't Allowed Into Obama's Speech Because They Were Deemed a Security Threat
OK, anyone want to guess what happens next? Yep.
The National Review rehashed the story today in the form of an interview with one of the "victims": Courtney Scott, Treasurer of the Missouri College Republicans. In the course of doing so they accidentally blundered into a bit of reporting.
Bad move.
At about 3:40 p.m., an individual, whom Scott believes to have been a police officer because of his clothing, which included a hat emblazoned with the letters "PD," stopped the group short of the gymnasium where Obama was scheduled to speak. He told them that they would not be able to proceed further. The group showed him their tickets, but the man said the doors had already closed and that they could not be let in. The tickets stated that the doors opened at 1:45 p.m. and did not state when the doors were scheduled to close. President Obama was scheduled to begin speaking at 4:00.
Emphasis mine. I realize that if you are a College Republican you are hoping to matriculate into a world where the rules do not apply to you - but strolling to the vicinity of the entrance with less than 20 minutes to go and then whining because the Secret Service won't unlock the doors for you? Surely some things are simply beyond the bounds of reason, even for conservatives.
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