Sunday, November 30, 2008
Saturday, November 29, 2008
Friday, November 28, 2008
The LA Times Article
Shots Fired at Toys R Us, 2 Dead; Due to Black Friday
Oh my... When shopping turns vicious!
The article for those too lazy to click:
Shots fired at Toys R Us in Palm Desert; 2 dead
1:45 PM, November 28, 2008
Shots rang out today inside a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, killing two and causing shoppers at the busy store to scramble for cover.
Palm Desert Councilman Bob Spiegel told The Times that based on early reports, two rival groups shopping at the store had some kind of argument and then shots were fired. Two men were killed in the exchange of gunfire, he said.
Sara Frahm, 25, of La Quinta was shopping for electronic toys at the time of the shooting. She told The Times she heard two women fighting and swearing in an aisle next to her. She said employees went to break up the fight and that all of the sudden a number of people yelled, "He has a gun!" She said she heard six or seven shots.
Mike Stitt of Yucca Valley was shopping with his wife and two children when he saw two women fighting and calling each other names. Both were with men. One of the men pulled out a gun and shot it in the air, then shot the other man in the back, Stitt told The Times.
In a statement, Toys R Us stressed that the shooting appeared to stem from a "personal dispute."
"We are outraged by the act of violence that occurred this afternoon in Palm Desert, CA, and by the fact that anyone would compromise the safety and security of our customers and employees," the statement said. "Our understanding is that this act seems to have been the result of a personal dispute between the individuals involved. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to associate the events of today with Black Friday."
Riverside County sheriff and fire officials responded to a report of the shooting at 11:32 a.m. at the toy store in the Desert Crossing Shopping Center at 72314 Highway 111, said Cheri Patterson, information officer for the Riverside County Fire Department and Cal Fire, based in Perris.
Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department confirmed the fatalities but said detectives were still trying to figure out what happened. He said no arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered.
"This was an incident between these two individuals," he said.
Details about the shooting were still spotty, but witnesses said the scene at the store and nearby businesses was chaotic.
"We had a bunch of people who came in around noon," Jeff Valare, manager at the World Gym across the street from the Toys R Us, told The Times. "They looked distressed. One woman had an infant in her arms and was crying. They were telling us they heard five or six gunshots. They were inside the Toys R Us and fled out the back."
Glenn Splain, another worker at the gym, told the Associated Press that some Toys R Us customers "were crying, tearing and shaking. ... Some people got into a fight. ... One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots."
Saul Diaz, who works as an assistant manager at the Jiffy Lube next door to the Toys R Us, said he was speaking with a customer when a stampede of 45 people ran in. Some looked distraught, some were crying.
"They were running fast, straight into the car bays. There was a couple of ladies with little kids, about 3 years [old]. They were all pale. The kids were shouting, 'Mom, I'm scared.' We immediately closed the store," Diaz told The Times. His staff locked the front doors and closed the car bays. "We took everyone into a basement bay, where we keep inventory," he said.
The Desert Sun quoted a Palm Desert city official as saying the shooting might have been caused by bad blood between two groups of shoppers. "There were two groups inside that had issue with each other," said Assistant City Manager Sheila Gilligan. "And the two men inside pulled their weapons and shot each other."
Daniel Watson told KPSP-TV that his wife was shopping at the store and called him on her cellphone about the time the shooting began. "She was scared, you know, and she told me to tell the kids that she loved them," Watson said. He told the station that his wife hid under a clothes rack.
-- Michelle Maltais, Richard Winton, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Andrew Blankstein
Oh my... When shopping turns vicious!
The article for those too lazy to click:
Shots fired at Toys R Us in Palm Desert; 2 dead
1:45 PM, November 28, 2008
Shots rang out today inside a Toys R Us store in Palm Desert, killing two and causing shoppers at the busy store to scramble for cover.
Palm Desert Councilman Bob Spiegel told The Times that based on early reports, two rival groups shopping at the store had some kind of argument and then shots were fired. Two men were killed in the exchange of gunfire, he said.
Sara Frahm, 25, of La Quinta was shopping for electronic toys at the time of the shooting. She told The Times she heard two women fighting and swearing in an aisle next to her. She said employees went to break up the fight and that all of the sudden a number of people yelled, "He has a gun!" She said she heard six or seven shots.
Mike Stitt of Yucca Valley was shopping with his wife and two children when he saw two women fighting and calling each other names. Both were with men. One of the men pulled out a gun and shot it in the air, then shot the other man in the back, Stitt told The Times.
In a statement, Toys R Us stressed that the shooting appeared to stem from a "personal dispute."
"We are outraged by the act of violence that occurred this afternoon in Palm Desert, CA, and by the fact that anyone would compromise the safety and security of our customers and employees," the statement said. "Our understanding is that this act seems to have been the result of a personal dispute between the individuals involved. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to associate the events of today with Black Friday."
Riverside County sheriff and fire officials responded to a report of the shooting at 11:32 a.m. at the toy store in the Desert Crossing Shopping Center at 72314 Highway 111, said Cheri Patterson, information officer for the Riverside County Fire Department and Cal Fire, based in Perris.
Dennis Gutierrez of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department confirmed the fatalities but said detectives were still trying to figure out what happened. He said no arrests have been made and no weapons have been recovered.
"This was an incident between these two individuals," he said.
Details about the shooting were still spotty, but witnesses said the scene at the store and nearby businesses was chaotic.
"We had a bunch of people who came in around noon," Jeff Valare, manager at the World Gym across the street from the Toys R Us, told The Times. "They looked distressed. One woman had an infant in her arms and was crying. They were telling us they heard five or six gunshots. They were inside the Toys R Us and fled out the back."
Glenn Splain, another worker at the gym, told the Associated Press that some Toys R Us customers "were crying, tearing and shaking. ... Some people got into a fight. ... One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots."
Saul Diaz, who works as an assistant manager at the Jiffy Lube next door to the Toys R Us, said he was speaking with a customer when a stampede of 45 people ran in. Some looked distraught, some were crying.
"They were running fast, straight into the car bays. There was a couple of ladies with little kids, about 3 years [old]. They were all pale. The kids were shouting, 'Mom, I'm scared.' We immediately closed the store," Diaz told The Times. His staff locked the front doors and closed the car bays. "We took everyone into a basement bay, where we keep inventory," he said.
The Desert Sun quoted a Palm Desert city official as saying the shooting might have been caused by bad blood between two groups of shoppers. "There were two groups inside that had issue with each other," said Assistant City Manager Sheila Gilligan. "And the two men inside pulled their weapons and shot each other."
Daniel Watson told KPSP-TV that his wife was shopping at the store and called him on her cellphone about the time the shooting began. "She was scared, you know, and she told me to tell the kids that she loved them," Watson said. He told the station that his wife hid under a clothes rack.
-- Michelle Maltais, Richard Winton, Molly Hennessy-Fiske and Andrew Blankstein
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Tom Friedman
An article by Tom Friedman, posted by Josh Falk.
Click here for the original article: Finishing Our Work
Or, if you're lazy or don't have a NYTimes account:
Finishing Our Work
And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.
This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.
That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.
How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.
But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.
Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.
And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.
Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.
“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.
“F.D.R. did not run on the New Deal in 1932,” said Sandel. “He ran on balancing the budget. Like Obama, he did not take office with a clearly articulated governing philosophy. He arrived with a confident, activist spirit and experimented. Not until 1936 did we have a presidential campaign about the New Deal. What Obama’s equivalent will be, even he doesn’t know. It will emerge as he grapples with the economy, energy and America’s role in the world. These challenges are so great that he will only succeed if he is able to articulate a new politics of the common good.”
Bush & Co. did not believe that government could be an instrument of the common good. They neutered their cabinet secretaries and appointed hacks to big jobs. For them, pursuit of the common good was all about pursuit of individual self-interest. Voters rebelled against that. But there was also a rebellion against a traditional Democratic version of the common good — that it is simply the sum of all interest groups clamoring for their share.
“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”
But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”
None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.
Maureen Dowd will appear on Thursday.
Click here for the original article: Finishing Our Work
Or, if you're lazy or don't have a NYTimes account:
Finishing Our Work
And so it came to pass that on Nov. 4, 2008, shortly after 11 p.m. Eastern time, the American Civil War ended, as a black man — Barack Hussein Obama — won enough electoral votes to become president of the United States.
A civil war that, in many ways, began at Bull Run, Virginia, on July 21, 1861, ended 147 years later via a ballot box in the very same state. For nothing more symbolically illustrated the final chapter of America’s Civil War than the fact that the Commonwealth of Virginia — the state that once exalted slavery and whose secession from the Union in 1861 gave the Confederacy both strategic weight and its commanding general — voted Democratic, thus assuring that Barack Obama would become the 44th president of the United States.
This moment was necessary, for despite a century of civil rights legislation, judicial interventions and social activism — despite Brown v. Board of Education, Martin Luther King’s I-have-a-dream crusade and the 1964 Civil Rights Act — the Civil War could never truly be said to have ended until America’s white majority actually elected an African-American as president.
That is what happened Tuesday night and that is why we awake this morning to a different country. The struggle for equal rights is far from over, but we start afresh now from a whole new baseline. Let every child and every citizen and every new immigrant know that from this day forward everything really is possible in America.
How did Obama pull it off? To be sure, it probably took a once-in-a-century economic crisis to get enough white people to vote for a black man. And to be sure, Obama’s better organization, calm manner, mellifluous speaking style and unthreatening message of “change” all served him well.
But there also may have been something of a “Buffett effect” that countered the supposed “Bradley effect” — white voters telling pollsters they’d vote for Obama but then voting for the white guy. The Buffett effect was just the opposite. It was white conservatives telling the guys in the men’s grill at the country club that they were voting for John McCain, but then quietly going into the booth and voting for Obama, even though they knew it would mean higher taxes.
Why? Some did it because they sensed how inspired and hopeful their kids were about an Obama presidency, and they not only didn’t want to dash those hopes, they secretly wanted to share them. Others intuitively embraced Warren Buffett’s view that if you are rich and successful today, it is first and foremost because you were lucky enough to be born in America at this time — and never forget that. So, we need to get back to fixing our country — we need a president who can unify us for nation-building at home.
And somewhere they also knew that after the abysmal performance of the Bush team, there had to be consequences for the Republican Party. Electing McCain now would have, in some way, meant rewarding incompetence. It would have made a mockery of accountability in government and unleashed a wave of cynicism in America that would have been deeply corrosive.
Obama will always be our first black president. But can he be one of our few great presidents? He is going to have his chance because our greatest presidents are those who assumed the office at some of our darkest hours and at the bottom of some of our deepest holes.
“Taking office at a time of crisis doesn’t guarantee greatness, but it can be an occasion for it,” argued the Harvard University political philosopher Michael Sandel. “That was certainly the case with Lincoln, F.D.R. and Truman.” Part of F.D.R.’s greatness, though, “was that he gradually wove a new governing political philosophy — the New Deal — out of the rubble and political disarray of the economic depression he inherited.” Obama will need to do the same, but these things take time.
“F.D.R. did not run on the New Deal in 1932,” said Sandel. “He ran on balancing the budget. Like Obama, he did not take office with a clearly articulated governing philosophy. He arrived with a confident, activist spirit and experimented. Not until 1936 did we have a presidential campaign about the New Deal. What Obama’s equivalent will be, even he doesn’t know. It will emerge as he grapples with the economy, energy and America’s role in the world. These challenges are so great that he will only succeed if he is able to articulate a new politics of the common good.”
Bush & Co. did not believe that government could be an instrument of the common good. They neutered their cabinet secretaries and appointed hacks to big jobs. For them, pursuit of the common good was all about pursuit of individual self-interest. Voters rebelled against that. But there was also a rebellion against a traditional Democratic version of the common good — that it is simply the sum of all interest groups clamoring for their share.
“In this election, the American public rejected these narrow notions of the common good,” argued Sandel. “Most people now accept that unfettered markets don’t serve the public good. Markets generate abundance, but they can also breed excessive insecurity and risk. Even before the financial meltdown, we’ve seen a massive shift of risk from corporations to the individual. Obama will have to reinvent government as an instrument of the common good — to regulate markets, to protect citizens against the risks of unemployment and ill health, to invest in energy independence.”
But a new politics of the common good can’t be only about government and markets. “It must also be about a new patriotism — about what it means to be a citizen,” said Sandel. “This is the deepest chord Obama’s campaign evoked. The biggest applause line in his stump speech was the one that said every American will have a chance to go to college provided he or she performs a period of national service — in the military, in the Peace Corps or in the community. Obama’s campaign tapped a dormant civic idealism, a hunger among Americans to serve a cause greater than themselves, a yearning to be citizens again.”
None of this will be easy. But my gut tells me that of all the changes that will be ushered in by an Obama presidency, breaking with our racial past may turn out to be the least of them. There is just so much work to be done. The Civil War is over. Let reconstruction begin.
Maureen Dowd will appear on Thursday.
Sunday, November 2, 2008
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