Suffer The Children

I have some kids, and I've tried to teach them a whole boatload of life lessons.

From--
"please and thank you"
--to--
"no, your socks don't have to match - it just makes it easier when you do the laundry"
--to--
"learn to live your life without needing me or a cop or Jesus looking over your shoulder all the time".

As any parent knows, some of the lessons will stick, while others get thru but don't take hold right away, and the rest just kinda bounce off and may or may not come back around in a (hopefully) benign way later on.

But since my skin is not a particular shade of brown, it never even occurred to me that I should be teaching my kids this:

That's just pretty fucked up right there.

Today's PFU

Brilliantly entrepreneurial cuz nobody ever went broke underestimating the self-importance or the good sense of the Americans.

Refuge For The Scoundrel

These jackwads are always peddling this standard-issue bullshit as they try to inoculate themselves against the logical and obvious conclusion that they're the fucking problem in the first fucking place.

"...wrapped in the flag, waving a bible..."



--and--



Somebody needs to explain this one thing to me - I need to know what exactly the difference is between these guys:

...and these guys:

How do I differentiate between this guy

...and this guy?

"But he saw too that in America the struggle was befogged by the fact that the worst Fascists were they who disowned the word 'Fascism' and preached enslavement to Capitalism under the style of Constitutional and Traditional Native American Liberty." --Sinclair Lewis

With all the overblown hyperventilation, you'd think this is about something other than simply pulling down your idea of tyranny and replacing it with my idea of tyranny.

Rejecting the process of gaining power thru force of arms and arbitrary terrorism is supposed to be what it means when we talk about American Exceptionalism.

Buncha fuckin' jagoffs.

Today's Reality

I don't watch "reality TV" because it's anything but reality.  I guess I should say I don't watch much of it.  I do feel the need to check in on it once in a while - partly because I have teenagers who watch way too much of that shit, and partly because ya gotta take a peek at whatever passes for "the popular culture" once in a while.

So anyway, the Kardashians and the Robertsons and all these other over-privileged addicted-to-themselves attention whores have absolutely nothing to say and nothing to do unless they first go as far outa their way as possible to find something to piss and moan about; and once they find something to get bitchy about, they go even farther outa their way to make sure their friends and family members are the ones they scuffle with over it.  BTW: they keep it "in the family" because the writers and the producers (and most importantly, the marketeers) have told them that's what the rubes viewing public want to see.  Nobody's that dysfunctional without being Deliberately and Purposefully Dysfunctional.  So that's pretty fucked up right there, but knowing it's what we asked for is even more fucked up.

Anyway - take all that and go one tiny step farther, by overlaying it onto what we see in politics practically every day.

Why does Walt Putin need to fuck with Crimea?  And why do Huckleberry Fauxbutch and Grampy McDumfuck then have to work so hard trying to figure out how to take the caricature of Obama as the feckless dictator who rules by Executive Order whenever he calls the GOP on obstructionism, and turn him into a dithering stumblebum who couldn't lead ants to a sugar bowl because he won't immediately launch all the nukes when Putin decides to wiggle his dick at somebody in western Asia?

There's plenty that's both real and wrong about what's happening in and around Ukraine.  I just wanna see a lot less of the fake shit.  Show me more of John Kerry stepping on his dick with a track shoe scolding the Russians about not invading countries for bullshit reasons - that was real and fun - and really funny.

Today's Quote

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” --Upton Sinclair

That popped up in a piece at Bill Moyers, by Mike Lofgren:

Yes, there is another government concealed behind the one that is visible at either end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a hybrid entity of public and private institutions ruling the country according to consistent patterns in season and out, connected to, but only intermittently controlled by, the visible state whose leaders we choose. My analysis of this phenomenon is not an exposé of a secret, conspiratorial cabal; the state within a state is hiding mostly in plain sight, and its operators mainly act in the light of day. Nor can this other government be accurately termed an “establishment.” All complex societies have an establishment, a social network committed to its own enrichment and perpetuation. In terms of its scope, financial resources and sheer global reach, the American hybrid state, the Deep State, is in a class by itself. That said, it is neither omniscient nor invincible. The institution is not so much sinister (although it has highly sinister aspects) as it is relentlessly well entrenched. Far from being invincible, its failures, such as those in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, are routine enough that it is only the Deep State’s protectiveness towards its higher-ranking personnel that allows them to escape the consequences of their frequent ineptitude. [2]

Sorry about dropping that one on you for the weekend, but you know - somebody's gotta look at this shit and it can't just be me and coupla other dweebs who never get anything else done.

Then there's this tasty little morsel:  The number of terrorist organizations we're fighting is a secret.  We also don't get to know who they are, and we don't get to know where they are - but the kicker?  We certainly do get to know that we get to pay for it, but we don't get to know how much it's costing.  Is that the perfect gig or what?

We are so fucked.

Watch this:

Back Pedal

Let the pearl clutching begin!

(hat tip = Facebook buddy KH)

He started way before 1996, but Roger Ailes has been working really hard towards this day for a very long time; his efforts thru DumFux news have been instrumental in the Rise of the Ruling Rubes.

And those Nutty Old Lefties have been trying to warn us about it forever.  So yeah - The Left is right about how The Right is wrong.

What's happening in Arizona and on K Street (and Uganda, btw), is exactly what happens when you unleash the Monsters of the Id* - ie: when you tell the rubes it's OK to be an ignorant superstitious mob, try not to be surprised when the rubes turn out to be an ignorant superstitious mob.

(*watch Forbidden Planet sometime)

A Woman's Work

We're 5 years post-Ledbetter, and it's kinda like it never happened.  I just really don't get what people have against what I was always taught were basic American concepts like equality and fairness and treating regular human beings like regular human beings.  When did the idea of lookin' out for each other become all "girly" and weak, or a political liability, or nice and warm and fuzzy, but something we simply can't afford anymore?  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From The Institute for Women's Policy Research:

Nearly 60 percent (59.3 percent) of women would earn more if working women were paid the same as men of the same age with similar education and hours of work.

The poverty rate for women would be cut in half, falling to 3.9 percent from 8.1 percent among working women. The very high poverty rate for working single mothers would fall by nearly half, from 28.7 percent to 15.0 percent.
The total increase in women’s earnings with pay equity represents more than 14 times what the Federal and state governments spent in fiscal year 2012 on Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF).

Excerpts from The Shriver Report, A Woman’s Nation Pushes Back from the Brink, and additional information are available at ShriverReport.org and AmericanProgress.org.

C'mon all you hardcore pragmatic capitalists - pay a little out, take a shitload back in.  Isn't that what you guys are always saying it's all about?  Or are you just too meat-headed to do the right thing until it jumps up and kicks you in the nuts?

(hat tip = FB friend MM)

What Comfort Can Be Found

Of all the aspects of religiousness that make my skin crawl, that's kinda the big'un - the fact that a "Christian" like Erick Erickson is comforted by the thought of other people suffering because they don't believe in his imaginary friends.

That's pretty fucked up right there.

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Today's PFU

Today's PFU

Our Culture of Gun Violence costs us a lot in a lot of ways we're generally not even aware of.

Today's PFU

Today's PFU

Today's PFU

PFU, as in thats' Pretty Fucked Up right there.

Hipster Urban Yuppie Types.

I'm a Boomer, and a good number of subsets of not-so-pleasant people (with some not-so-great fetishes and/or agendas and/or hangups) have sprouted from The Baby Boom Generation over the years - shit, we invented Yuppies; along with "quality time", and the 8-dollar cup of coffee that takes 10 minutes to make just right for ya.  So I think I can safely say I really never thought a group would come along that everybody could hate on more than The Boomers, but there it is - Hipster Urban Yuppie Types.

And so now what - are gonna see some kinda new trend that's all about Rescue Chickens?  Can't wait for that Facebook page.