I Blame Paris Hilton

It's a critter for fuck's sake - one of God's critters if you prefer.  And not to get too PETA all over the place, but you don't get to make this implied tacit claim of "dominion" to provide cover for doing whatever the fuck you want.

Sunday Funnies

Today's Pix

That Clock Kid

"...that's not a wall of explosives..."

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Uh-Oh (re-try)

2nd attempt.  And I'll try to quell that shitty feeling I always get in my gut when I try to post something about this kinda stuff and it fails due to "tech problems" at Google or whatever.

Anyway, via Charlie Pierce:

The mathematician wanted to examine the voting tapes after something didn't add up. Clarkson explained, "I don't understand why those patterns are there, the patterns are very definitely real. But we don't know what's causing them or why they're there. They do fit what would be expected if election fraud is occurring, and that's very concerning." In Sedgwick County, the voting tapes record every stroke a voter makes on the machine. The Election Commissioner there said the tapes are 385 feet long and are stored in 42 boxes. However, in Johnson County, voting is done primarily on electronic machines where there is no automatic paper trail. They're machines which Clarkson said can be easily hacked.

Smoke doesn't always mean fire - sometimes it looks like smoke when it's actually just a little ground fog after a rain or some bugbrain trying to prove something with his new Vape thingie or whatever.  This looks a whole lot like a whole lotta smoke.

Today's Best Garphic

From tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors

Mellow Morning

Morning Aire --Tommy Emmanuel

Waiting --Calum Graham & Don Ross

Dawgmatism --David Grisman

Jesus, Joy Of Man's Desiring --Leo Kotkke

Today's Quote 2

"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours."​ --Yogi Berra

You don't have to be a baseball fan to love a guy like Yogi. 

Today's Quote

"Let nature do the freezing and frightening and isolating in this world. Let men work and love and fight it off." --Jack Kerouac, Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954

Call It A Win

She's headed for a jail cell, at least temporarily, but the fact she survived the initial encounter - plus the simple fact there was a good buncha witnesses - just might combine to make it more likely she'll stay alive thru the rest of her ordeal.  

And that could mean that whoever's next stands a tiny bit better chance of being treated a tiny bit better as well.

Watchfulness and locks help honest people stay honest.  Transparency and citizen oversight help good cops stay good.

hat tip = AlterNet

Today's Tweet

Da Donald's social media squad decided to try a Twitter Interview, and (as happens pretty much every fucking time) they got some questions that were prob'ly not quite what they were looking for.  This one's the best I've seen so far:

Is it true that if you say Donald Trump 3 times in the bathroom mirror, the hair in the drain will rise up to shout racial slurs? #AskTrump

— P a t r i c k (@ruinedbyreality) September 21, 2015

I'm gonna make a radical assumption here, and say there's prob'ly a coupla job openings at the Trump campaign right about now.

Wherefore, Repubs?

There's no Republican Party anymore.  There's just a string of independent contract franchisees, looking for the opportunity to make a tidy commission on helping their billionaire sugar daddies take their pound of flesh.

These guys know a coupla important things about USAmerica Inc.

First, they know this joint's net worth is something like $124 Trillion.

One Hundred-Twenty-Four. Trillion. Dollars

Second, they know the hard part is done; we're convinced we have the requisite imaginary disease(s)...

• Immigrants-Gone-Wild
• FEMA Camps and Gun-Grabbers
• Muslims hiding under our beds waiting for a chance to kill us and rape our house pets
• Scary Black People
• Foreign Competition
• etc etc etc

...so all they have to do is look for a chance to sell us the miracle cure; the make-believe crutches - and some snake oil to take the edge off tomorrow morning when we get that nagging feeling that this is the same old shit - zealotry dressed up to look like common sense - and that we fall for it every fuckin' time.

This isn't an election - it's not even a hostile takeover - it's a leveraged buyout to be staged during the run-up to the Stockholders' Meeting next November.  And guess who's gonna end up holding the bag when it's done?

These people have no soul and no honor.

Is We Learnin'?

Some of us just never get tired of being played for suckers.

Police charged 45-year-old Scott Lattin with making a false report after arresting him at his home in Whitney, Texas. While the suspect denied the accusation during a brief on-camera interview, his arrest warrant stated that he admitted to damaging the truck for “insurance reasons.”

Lattin organized the fundraiser after claiming last week that vandals spray-painted “Black Lives Matter” across his truck as well as “F*ck the police” because he had decorated the vehicle with the phrase “Police Lives Matter” in support of Harris County Deputy Darren Goforth, who was shot and killed at a gas station last month. Both authorities and conservatives have attempted to connect Goforth’s death with the movement, seemingly without any evidence.

Hey - It's Sunday

Beats goin' to church.

Go, Bernie

Try to look past the very simple and very obvious fact that Mark Halperin is an Authoritarian Corporate Propagandist trying to pass himself off as a Political Journalist.

We didn't just get into this mess yesterday, so we're prob'ly not gonna be able to fix it all by tomorrow.

But more specifically - on the usual crap that "conservatives" are always tossing around about "Balanced Budget From Day One", here's your line, Bernie:  "While you can definitely spend your way to oblivion, you can't save your way back to prosperity."  

But while we're working on getting The System back up and running, we have to get a coupla things thru our thick skulls.

First and foremost - stop giving these guys the benefit of the doubt. 

--It's not like Halperin doesn't know what makes the economy work.  

--And it's not like Jeb isn't aware of the fact that Supply Side is bullshit.  

--We have to stop thinking Ted Cruz is trying to practice some good old fashioned democratic self-governance, but he's just not very good at it; or that we simply disagree on the questions of how we should go about moving towards that more perfect union.

I look at what the GOP has been doing for 30+ years, and I get a very bad feeling very deep in my gut.

hat tip = Democratic Underground

Is Our Voters Learnin'?

hat tip = FB buddy DCR

Today's Pix

Today's Connection

Like the man said - follow the money.

I wonder if nice fat campaign contributions from the Healthcare Sector to (largely) Repub politicians...

...together with this little info-nugget...

...might have anything at all to do with the drive to kill Planned Parenthood.

And like Molly said - ya gotta have the balls to drink their liquor and bed their women and take their money, and then vote against them anyway.

Here ya go guys - take two of these and call your pollsters in the morning.

Today's FB Looney

I could be reading this wrong (yeah, that happens), but this looks a whole lot like "We need to create a society of superior victimizers instead."(?)

"An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." - Mahatma Gandhi

But leaving the jaw-dropping defeatism aside for just a moment, maybe they're onto something - just not something they're aware of - maybe what we need to do is teach kids how to resist buying into this kinda bullshit, peddled by jagoffs who think in terms of, "Fuck your hippy Jesus - peacemakers are fags."

The Real News

The best TV is not on TV.