Today's Homework Assignment

Nuthin' but spectacular.

Don't Get Pushed Around

We Need To Get Up

...and get mad.  And figure out what exactly we're gonna be mad about.



Great bit near the end about Tea Partiers and Occupiers needing to understand that they have something important in common (something I need to work a little harder at recognizing).

Today's Cartoon

Fugelsang

About the Pope Emeritus:

Today's Pix

Today's Wingnut

...just happens to be Chief Justice of SCOTUS.  And I'm thinking I may hafta consider changing my name.

From Charlie Pierce:

One of the more signifying moments in Wednesday's oral arguments at the Supreme Court regarding the Voting Rights Act came when Chuef Justice John Roberts asked Solicitor General Ralph Verrilli:

"Do you know which state has the worst ratio of white voter turnout to African-American voter turnout?" "I do not know that," Verrilli answered.

"Massachusetts," Roberts responded, adding that even Mississippi has a narrower gap.

--snip--

The problem is, Roberts is woefully wrong on those points, according to Massachusetts Secretary of State William F. Galvin, who on Thursday branded Roberts's assertion a slur and made a declaration of his own. "I'm calling him out," Galvin said. Galvin was not alone in his view. Academics and Massachusetts politicians said that Roberts appeared to be misguided. A Supreme Court spokeswoman declined to offer supporting evidence of ­Roberts's view, referring a ­reporter to the court transcript. On Thursday, Galvin tried to set the record straight. "We have one of the highest voter registrations in the country," he said, "so this whole effort to make a cheap-shot point at Massachusetts is deceptive...In the November 2012 election, there was little difference in voter turnout in Boston neighborhoods with high concentrations of white or black voters. In Charlestown, where 80 percent of residents are white, 68 percent of voters cast ballots in November. In Roxbury, the traditional heart of Boston's African-American community, about 64 percent of voters came out to the polls. Galvin and political scientists speculated that Roberts drew his conclusions using US Census Bureau data known as "The Current Population Survey," which collects information on voting and registration every other year. Political scientists say this is one of the few national databases, if not the only one, providing state-by-state voting information.

Read the whole thing and then tell me they're not trying to fuck us with our pants on.

Today's Gun Nut

Welcome to the new normal, courtesy Wayne LaPierre.

Via Addicting Info, from WKMG in Orlando:

ORANGE CITY, Fla. - A man arrested for opening fire in a busy Walmart parking lot said he was trying to stop a shoplifter and is now defending his actions.
Orange City police arrested Jose Martinez, 35, after they said he unleashed at least five bullets in the parking lot of the Walmart on Veterans Memorial Parkway.

Martinez told Local 6, he was defending himself from a shoplifter who nearly ran him over and injured him.

Except that Martinez pulled his gun and opened fire well after the time the bad guy's car posed any kind of "threat" to him.  This was not defense - this was retribution - at best, just some dumbass rube playing out his Wyatt Earp fantasies.

Put something in place that the cops can use to charge Martinez with a low-end felony, get a conviction, and then put him on the list of People Too Fuckin' Stoopid To Own A Gun.

God, I'm sicka this shit.

Something's Wrong

...with one of our political parties.

From DecodeDC:



Seabrooke doesn't come straight out and say it, but it's there. Republicans - or at least a very powerful subset of the Repubs - are at the root of our problems right now.

And the best take-away for me is what Ornstein says at the end about how it's really up to  us as individuals to stop bunkering ourselves, and start figuring out how to reach compromise with each other - one citizen to another - and try to pass that on up to our Reps in Congress (wtf - self-government?  now there's a thought).  Easier said than done of course; especially when your 'debate partner' says practically nothing but the crap he hears on Beck or Limbaugh every day, but Ornstein's a Senior Fellow at AEI, which makes him pretty seriously Republican; and he's been saying for a while now that the GOP's kinda fucked up.

So I guess we just keep pluggin' away; trying to isolate the more radical ones, and give the system a chance to work a little self-correction magic.  Here's hoping.

What's Real?

hat tip = The Rude Pundit

Back in that time, the "bad guys" were often foreign; be it your mad Sheik or your Toru Tanaka, you were always encouraged to boo at the non-white dude while men in cowboy boots stomped them.

Why bring this up? Because it's encouraging to find out that the current WWE champion is a Mexican character, Alberto del Rio, who is a widely loved "good guy." And the bad guys gunning for him are two redneck Tea Party members, Zeb Colter and Jack Swagger, whose rhetoric is just like anything you'd hear at a teabagger rally. 

Why bring this up? Because internet radio host Glenn Beck got all upset at the portrayal of his beloved nutzoid Tea Party as racist jerk-offs who spout meaningless, jingoistic bullshit. He called the WWE's fans "stupid" and wondered, "I just don't see a bunch of progressives going and buying their tickets to the WWE." That's right. Glenn Beck turned against a Republican-led company and its customers.