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I'd say the cover is 100 times more influential than the article. The reason we tell people not to judge a book by it's cover is because people judge the book by it's cover all the time.
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There, fixed.
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I'd say Obama is slightly less evil. In many ways his Presidency turned out to be a 3rd Bush term. At the end of the day I'll still stand by the choice of Obama over McCain.
As for race relations: Metalman said what minority youth hasn't experienced people locking cars when they walk by. I'd agree. It's sad it took Obama this long to open up about race. I'd say the harm he's done is by not really addressing these things until now.
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except that Obama is damned if he talks about racism and damned if he doesn't
that's one of the problems with racism. the racists hate you no matter what you do. No matter what you say.
Even Michael Steele (a republican) talked about the racism directed at himself. In fact many people recounted their own personal stories this past week.
The racists will ALWAYS twist such talk because they have a mental illness. They will NEVER Get It.
they only thing you can do is talk to the non-racists and figure out how to get laws which don't allow the racists to abuse the rest of us.
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They were identified and their pictures were out there and the whole country was looking for them. There's not much likelihood of getting away. The operation was overwrought and over the top. If anything it was more an exercise is mass civilian control and shutting down a city than it was a manhunt. Masses of warrantless house searches with heavily armoured, heavily armed men, it's lucky no-one was killed.
Still, if you like the idea that the police can terrorize you in your home when someone else commits a crime that, unfortunately, is not just your choice. Those who acquiesce to such things are choosing it for everyone else.
And if you think it's just an exceptional circumstance then you have missed all the exceptional circumstances leading up to now. You think that it only applies to terrorism? Well, even if that were true (and it isn't) have you not noticed how often the word "terrorism" is used to describe all sorts of crimes these days like protesting and whistle blowing. Three planes hit buildings twelve years ago so George Bush et al dismantled the constitution thus doing what the terrorists were not able to do themselves, dismantle the legal foundation of the USA. Then two guys with pressure cookers allowed the police state to unveil itself in Boston.
The true danger of terrorism is not what the terrorists do but how our elites react to them, and it seems that the trend is when terrorists strike, treat everyone as if they were a terrorist. That is how free societies descend into feudalism and that ultimately costs more lives than terrorism does.
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Because Obama isn't Dick Cheney. Generally what you want in a Vice President is someone who is jovial, not too bright and not overly ambitious. You want someone who you can send out to entertain the crowds but who discourages your own assassination because no-one wants them to be president and who, themselves, won't be gunning for your job. You don't want an LBJ, for example.
Sarah Palin was two out of three (but she is ambitious), and McCain was too old to pick someone like that for public comfort.
GHW Bush was ambitious and competent and Reagan almost ended up dead, but when GHWB became Bush41 he had Dan Quayle by his side.
However, when Dick Cheney decided to be run for President of the US he chose to let Dubya wear the president hat while he ruled from behind. Dubya was not a good guy, per se. He was willing to do a lot of nasty things to keep up his lifestyle, but the force behind the throne was Dick "Wormtongue" Cheney.
With Bush it was easy to see that Cheney and his neo-con buddies were running the show. It's a little more opaque as to who Obama serves. The financial elite certainly have his ear, and the industrial elite, but that's just normal politics.
What's harder to fathom is what's behind his support of spying and the security state. Is he afraid for his personal safety? If he is looking to use the apparatus to seek out political enemies then he is working in vane because he is going to have to hand on this system to the next president in a few years. Whoever this apparatus is to benefit is some one or something that holds power regardless of presidents.
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I'm not convinced of the slippery slope so much here. Have you forgotten what Trudeau did during the FLQ crisis in 1970? Not only did he invoke the war measures act, which on it's own is far more severe than what we saw in Boston, but he also deployed actual military units into the streets. They arrested hundreds without warrant and ultimately only charged around 60 of those. It was a gross violation of rights and was highly criticized by some but overall had the support of most Canadians. It also helped put an end to the FLQ and their terror campaign. It also didn't lead to a militarized authoritarian state. Nor did the Oka crisis in 1990 where the army was also mobilized to clean up a mess the Quebec government, Sûreté du Québec and RCMP badly mishandled.
On the Daily Beast a while back, can't be bothered to look it up now, there was an article about how NYC police deal with terrorism. The author wrote that the police can't treat terrorism like any other crime because deterrents don't work with terrorists. Capturing a terrorist after their crime is still a victory for them and their cause and is a powerful motivator for other terrorists. The only way to combat terrorism is to prevent it outright. The author admitted that he was uncomfortable with the NYC tactics, but also offered that he could not think of a better way. My opinion is that the law & order that governs us only works under "normal" conditions but falls apart in more extreme cases. The tricky part is defining what is normal and what is extreme and where the line is drawn. It's not easy and yes it's ripe for abuse, but treating everything as "normal" is, in my opinion, ripe for disaster.
Yes, changing the scope and meaning of the word terrorism is a scary problem, but so is terrorism. Forcing police to treat terrorism as a mere crime along with all the restrictions that entails, and limiting how the government can monitor terrorists either domestically or elsewhere, or removing the security checks at airports and other public events can easily turn the nation into a war zone as well. We've seen that done in various other nations who simply don't have the resources to police as effectively as any Western nation. If Western nations choose not to police the way they do, there's little reason to believe they won't descend into the same level of mayhem and chaos we see elsewhere.
On the Daily Beast a while back, can't be bothered to look it up now, there was an article about how NYC police deal with terrorism. The author wrote that the police can't treat terrorism like any other crime because deterrents don't work with terrorists. Capturing a terrorist after their crime is still a victory for them and their cause and is a powerful motivator for other terrorists. The only way to combat terrorism is to prevent it outright. The author admitted that he was uncomfortable with the NYC tactics, but also offered that he could not think of a better way. My opinion is that the law & order that governs us only works under "normal" conditions but falls apart in more extreme cases. The tricky part is defining what is normal and what is extreme and where the line is drawn. It's not easy and yes it's ripe for abuse, but treating everything as "normal" is, in my opinion, ripe for disaster.
Yes, changing the scope and meaning of the word terrorism is a scary problem, but so is terrorism. Forcing police to treat terrorism as a mere crime along with all the restrictions that entails, and limiting how the government can monitor terrorists either domestically or elsewhere, or removing the security checks at airports and other public events can easily turn the nation into a war zone as well. We've seen that done in various other nations who simply don't have the resources to police as effectively as any Western nation. If Western nations choose not to police the way they do, there's little reason to believe they won't descend into the same level of mayhem and chaos we see elsewhere.
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uhm... it wasn't until they let the people go back out that someone found him. it wasn't LEO either, but a civilian. somehow the bomber was a block or two outside of the perimeter established by 8000 cops... guess they dont walk em with dogs.. amateurs...
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Ya, but what about his brother? Did you forget the big shoot out?
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well yeah but didnt he run his brother over supposedly... the martial law portion of this exercise really didn't amount to anything that "helped" to end this, or prevent more tragedy...
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I really can't figure these people out. They are either true doofusses or mentaly ill or PsyOps to discredit anyone who thinks that the government is anything other than a font of goodness and light.
The idea that the government would go to the trouble of "faking" a terrorist attack using actors and special effects is intrinsically ridiculous. To think that there is some secret government so bent on controlling the population of the US and yet that it would balk at the idea of killing a few of them to achieve those ends, that it is evil but that it somehow draws the line at being slightly less evil than terrorists is a bizarre postulate.
If the plot were from a couple of amateur terrorists it would probably look the way it does - primitive basically ballistic weapon improperly placed, looks like something a small number of competent guys could pull off. I haven't heard anything on what testing they might have done to make sure their weapons worked (perhaps they we're provided by a third party) - but they put them in a bad place if they were trying to kill a lot of people - high explosives would probably have been more effective in a dense crowd than a black powder based fragmentation device which would not penetrate the crowd very deeply.
However, if it was something that had been arranged by an intelligence agency (either foreign or domestic) it would probably look exactly the same - with some cut outs that need to be silenced, or with the watchful eyes of authority turned away from a group of known terrorists until they did something.
You could spend your whole life going over the pictures of the victims at the scene and not be able to tell the difference between any of those scenarios. Looking there is just a distraction.
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I think Matt Taibbi is perhaps a little willfully naive in this piece. I'm pretty sure that "controversy = sales" was a big part of the decision to approve this cover and run with it. I also suspect that the "there's already a proven market for the dreamy guy" might have played a small role. They may or may not have mis-guessed the public reaction but "Rolling Stone" has a hip, edgy, youth oriented, rebel kind of image and this likely plays well to their target demographic.
However, I have a strong feeling that the initial impetus came from the art department. When the photo editor first saw that picture their first reaction was probably something like : "Holy Sh!t! That's a natural Rolling Stones cover" - and it is. If you didn't know who that was a picture of, that's probably what you would say too.