Support The Troops

Gosh - when you send people to fight 2 wars over 10 or 12 years, and they have to go thru 2 or 3 or 5 or 8 deployments of 15 - 30 months at a time, some of them will need healthcare for a very long time after they get back, and some of them will need an ever-increasing level of care because their injuries turn out to be progressive or occult or degenerative in nature.

USA Today - A staggering 45% of the 1.6 million veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are now seeking compensation for injuries they say are service-related. That is more than double the estimate of 21% who filed such claims after the Gulf War in the early 1990s, top government officials told the Associated Press.

What's more, these new veterans are claiming eight to nine ailments on average, and the most recent ones over the last year are claiming 11 to 14. By comparison, Vietnam veterans are currently receiving compensation for fewer than four, on average, and those from World War II and Korea just two.

This seems to come as no big surprise to lot of us - you know, the ones who actually think about shit.

But one of the things I probably should've seen coming and didn't was that now the Anti-Entitlements crowd is pissin' and moanin' about "veterans gaming the system".  Well, I'm gonna go with my first reaction on this one: Fuck you. OK, so yeah - some of that's gonna happen.  Big fuckin' deal.  You're the bunch of posturing chickenhawks who wanted all this war shit in the first place; you guys are always screechin' about fallen heroes; and you're the pricks who're always posting all that maudlin shit about what we all owe to the soldiers - well now it's time to pony up, cupcake.  And where are you?  You're nowhere.  You're hiding behind the cutesy little magnetic ribbons on your SUV.  You're pretending to care about what happens to these men and women by spending a good 15 seconds every few days posting some stupidly drippy bumper-sticker sentiment on your facebook page.  But you're out now - it's just too obvious that by balking at the real cost of your war-mongering, you reveal for all to see that you care more about your ideology than you do about the people you claim make this country great.

I'll say it again in case you missed it:  fuck you.

Rightspeak

A good short piece from Krugman at NYT - lifted in its entirety.

May 26, 2012, 12:11 PMThe New Political Correctness

Remember the furor over liberal political correctness? Yes, some of it was over the top — but it was mainly silly, not something that actually warped our national discussion.

Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.

Thus, even talking about “the wealthy” brings angry denunciations; we’re supposed to call them “job creators”. Even talking about inequality is “class warfare”.

And then there’s the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about “immigration and ethnicity” or “environmental history” becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, he’ll name his new course “US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans.” That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.
Actually, this reminds me of an essay I read a long time ago about Soviet science fiction. The author — if anyone remembers where this came from — noted that most science fiction is about one of two thoughts: “if only”, or “if this goes on”. Both were subversive, from the Soviet point of view: the first implied that things could be better, the second that there was something wrong with the way things are. So stories had to be written about “if only this goes on”, extolling the wonders of being wonderful Soviets.

And now that’s happening in America.

A Cost Of Freedom

The rubes love chanting "freedom ain't free".  It's one of those useful and catchy phrases that can make it sound like they have the high ground - that they have some deeper understanding of a complex issue, when in fact simply by uttering the words and then claiming to win the argument because it takes the other side a lot longer to articulate a coherent position shows a level of ignorance that depresses the shit outa me.

That kind of opening paragraph is usually instigated by something having to do with National Security, but this time it's all about a little kid in Ohio.

Ohio boy, 3, shoots self in head
Tuesday May 29, 2012 12:30 AM

MOUNT VERNON, Ohio (AP) — A 3-year-old boy is in critical condition after shooting himself in the head.

WBNS-TV reports (http://bit.ly/KBZKiC ) that the shooting happened shortly before 6:30 p.m. Monday at a house northwest of Mount Vernon. The boy's grandfather, parents and two younger siblings were at home when it happened.

The station says that family members say the gun was sitting on top of a television.

Knox County Sheriff's Capt. David Shaffer says a firearm was recovered from the house. He says the shooting is an "unfortunate accident."

The incident is being investigated.

Enjoy your little slice of freedom at the expense of your kids, you stupid fucking rednecks.

Maybe Someday

...they'll make something useful out of me.

(Father John Misty, with a hat tip to Balloon Juice)


I guess it's all part of what I see as our evolution.

Periods of transition are always dangerous and exciting and interesting and confusing and frightening and and and.

Parade Of Stoopid

The reason we get incredibly radical nonsense from our "leaders" is simply that we are willing constituents.



I am responsible for everything I think, say and do.  Me.  I'm not under the spell of some cosmic mesmerizer.  And I'm not going to follow blindly along behind anybody who claims to possess some kind of special magic;  or needs me to believe that his particular decoder ring is the only one that works when it comes to figuring out what Gondorff The Magnificent really meant by whatever it was that some half-literate guy wearing a goat skin singlet scratched into a clay tablet 1700 years ago.

I can be persuaded or inspired or cajoled and manipulated - but if I decide to act, the decision is mine.

Today's Pix

Today's Bumper Sticker

If you wanna live like a Republican

Vote like a Democrat

Well, I'm Shocked

Listening to smart people talking about shit that matters is one of the great joys in life.  And one of the truly great things about The Marketplace of Ideas is that when an outlet like MSNBC wises up and realizes it can let good stuff fill a partial content vacuum  - well, it don't get a lot better'n that.

This bit starts with Jamie Dimon and the giant fuck up that Wall Street continues to be.

Bias Confirmed

This is why I never call it anything but DumFux News.

It's a comparison of results on a basic factual-knowledge test for consumers of different news organizations.

hat tip = James Fallows

A Step At A Time

Just inching our way closer to Robocop II.



What could possibly go wrong?