Just in time for all the bullshitty douchebaggery coming out of Washington, here's a great way to let your favorite Congress Critters know just how much you appreciate all their hard-workin'-kick-ass attempts to fuck us all with our pants on.
Apr 18, 2013
Today In Good Government (updated)
And now, a message from the US Senate for the 90% of Americans who want sensible and reasonable regulations for gun ownership:
There is no soul and no honor in American politics anymore - not when the senate can't even scrape together enough courage to vote in favor of voting on the matter of some pretty simple rules about selling guns.
And way too many Press Poodles keep telling us "the measure failed". The measure didn't fail; the measure was never voted on.
I'll have to take a day or two off, as I try to get the stench of this latest sorry episode out of my nostrils.
It occurs to me though, that some of these Coin-Operated Politicians pull this kinda shit on purpose. If enough of us are disgusted enough by the way these assholes behave, then maybe enough of us will just throw up our hands and walk away - leaving them to do their shitty little deals without being seen by the people they're supposed to represent. If I stay too close to this junk, I start feeling like I should be throwing furniture at people's heads.
I'll be back - and I'll be watching.
There is no soul and no honor in American politics anymore - not when the senate can't even scrape together enough courage to vote in favor of voting on the matter of some pretty simple rules about selling guns.
And way too many Press Poodles keep telling us "the measure failed". The measure didn't fail; the measure was never voted on.
I'll have to take a day or two off, as I try to get the stench of this latest sorry episode out of my nostrils.
It occurs to me though, that some of these Coin-Operated Politicians pull this kinda shit on purpose. If enough of us are disgusted enough by the way these assholes behave, then maybe enough of us will just throw up our hands and walk away - leaving them to do their shitty little deals without being seen by the people they're supposed to represent. If I stay too close to this junk, I start feeling like I should be throwing furniture at people's heads.
I'll be back - and I'll be watching.
Apr 17, 2013
How We React
...to the event is what's important now.
From Bruce Schneier at The Atlantic:
Note to the terrorists/nutballs/wingnuts/whatever:
You're not going to make me close myself off from the world. I won't be cowering in a Safe Room behind doors and windows sealed up with plastic sheets and duct tape.
I sure as hell don't get everything right every time, but I claim the right to keep trying; to go on stumbling forward; and you're not going get me to strangle myself in a security blanket just because you don't have enough hair on your sack to look me in the eye and call me out on the shit you don't agree with.
I live my life, and I do my little FreedomThing out in the open where everybody can see it. You don't like it? Well here I am, asshole. Come and get me.
And oh yeah - almost forgot - there's 300 million of me, so fuck you.
From Bruce Schneier at The Atlantic:
As the details about the bombings in Boston unfold, it'd be easy to be scared. It'd be easy to feel powerless and demand that our elected leaders do something -- anything -- to keep us safe.
It'd be easy, but it'd be wrong. We need to be angry and empathize with the victims without being scared. Our fears would play right into the perpetrators' hands -- and magnify the power of their victory for whichever goals whatever group behind this, still to be uncovered, has. We don't have to be scared, and we're not powerless. We actually have all the power here, and there's one thing we can do to render terrorism ineffective: Refuse to be terrorized.
It's hard to do, because terrorism is designed precisely to scare people -- far out of proportion to its actual danger. A huge amount of research on fear and the brain teaches us that we exaggerate threats that are rare, spectacular, immediate, random -- in this case involving an innocent child -- senseless, horrific and graphic. Terrorism pushes all of our fear buttons, really hard, and we overreact.
Note to the terrorists/nutballs/wingnuts/whatever:
You're not going to make me close myself off from the world. I won't be cowering in a Safe Room behind doors and windows sealed up with plastic sheets and duct tape.
I sure as hell don't get everything right every time, but I claim the right to keep trying; to go on stumbling forward; and you're not going get me to strangle myself in a security blanket just because you don't have enough hair on your sack to look me in the eye and call me out on the shit you don't agree with.
I live my life, and I do my little FreedomThing out in the open where everybody can see it. You don't like it? Well here I am, asshole. Come and get me.
And oh yeah - almost forgot - there's 300 million of me, so fuck you.
The Kooch Fails Again
Virginia AG / Repub candidate for Gov, Ken (Kenny The Kooch) Cuccinelli has crashed and burned once again - this time in his attempt to get the Federal Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit to consider his petition to affirm and reinstate Virginia's Crimes Against Nature laws.
The Fourth Circuit panel rejected Cuccinelli's petition unanimously.
Considering the fact that the SCOTUS decision in Lawrence vs Texas knocked all the stuffing out of every "anti-sodomy" law in every state, nobody but the uber-est of the uber-zealots thought he had any chance at all. But there he was - our intrepid Culture Warrior King - flailing away; fighting to hold back the tides of change of the mid-20th-fucking-century.
Taxpayers put a fair bit of money in your pocket every month, Ken. So we're gonna need you to do a little something more than runnin' in circles or just standin' there leanin' on your shovel.
The Fourth Circuit panel rejected Cuccinelli's petition unanimously.
Considering the fact that the SCOTUS decision in Lawrence vs Texas knocked all the stuffing out of every "anti-sodomy" law in every state, nobody but the uber-est of the uber-zealots thought he had any chance at all. But there he was - our intrepid Culture Warrior King - flailing away; fighting to hold back the tides of change of the mid-20th-fucking-century.
Taxpayers put a fair bit of money in your pocket every month, Ken. So we're gonna need you to do a little something more than runnin' in circles or just standin' there leanin' on your shovel.
Apr 16, 2013
One Way to Look At It
Yeah - OK. So maybe this is just too over the top.
Maybe the system's not really rigged in favor of a few very high-level-mover-shaker-hyper-motivated entrepreneurs with lucrative book deals extolling their highly effective habits who just happen to be so well-connected that they get special deals and federal protection, plus they get to name practically anything they want after themselves.
And maybe you really aren't a low-life loser who can't quite figure out how to get out of his own way; somebody who'd be a lot better off if he just went to church like he's supposed to; somebody who needs to learn his lesson about how to act like a proper citizen of the empire...
...but y'know what? I could sell it that way - I'm pretty fucking good at sellin' shit.
What're you buyin'?
Music
From her "break out" album - back when she wasn't hung up writing semi-crappy tunes for the suits to put in their mostly-crappy movies.
Today's Music
Soundtrack for a Tuesday. This has a kind of 70s vibe to it in some ways, but the poetry and the jazz tinges are right tasty.
Today's Plucky American
Anne Laurie at Balloon Juice has about the best angle I've seen regarding the bombing at the Boston Marathon yesterday, talking about the old guy (Bill Iffrig) in the video who got knocked down by the first blast; was helped up; and then not only did he finish his race, but he walked the half mile back to his hotel:
Here's the thing: Americans are as far from perfect as anybody gets. And some of us seem hellbent on doing all the things really bad guys do - things that make other really bad guys believe they have perfect justification to respond by killing and maiming hundreds of innocent people who're just trying to get by, same as them and everybody else.
The point is kinda what Patton Oswalt posted on facebook:
hat tip = Addicting Info
I kid you not: Every local Boston channel showed at least one interview with Mr. Iffrig, pleading for a 'how bad was it? how traumatized are you? do you think you can ever recover from the horror of that life-changing moment?' sound bite, and he just would not take the bait. He got knocked down, scraped his knee, it was pretty scary. Then he got up, and a nice young volunteer made sure he could cross the finish line. Of course he finished the [unspoken expletive] race, he’d just run 26 miles and there was no point in quitting within yards of the goal. When one interviewer pushed him, he added that he’d run last year’s Marathon in the record-breaking heat, “and that was pretty bad, but today I was having a good run, right up until that bit at the end.”We prob'ly won't know what the deal is on this bombing for a while. If it follows the pattern, and it turns out to be something from the standard playbook of some asshole terrorist, then we need to focus on guys like Mr Iffrig, and not on some show-horse-congress-critter like Peter King; and definitely not on any of the Press Poodles who seem to believe this is their Great-American-Tragedy moment - their chance to show America what a superb Walter Cronkite impression they can do.
Here's the thing: Americans are as far from perfect as anybody gets. And some of us seem hellbent on doing all the things really bad guys do - things that make other really bad guys believe they have perfect justification to respond by killing and maiming hundreds of innocent people who're just trying to get by, same as them and everybody else.
The point is kinda what Patton Oswalt posted on facebook:
I remember, when 9/11 went down, my reaction was, "Well, I've had it with humanity."
But I was wrong. I don't know what's going to be revealed to be behind all of this mayhem. One human insect or a poisonous mass of broken sociopaths.The bad guys among us are not us, and they don't represent us.
But here's what I DO know. If it's one person or a HUNDRED people, that number is not even a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the population on this planet. You watch the videos of the carnage and there are people running TOWARDS the destruction to help out. (Thanks FAKE Gallery founder and owner Paul Kozlowski for pointing this out to me). This is a giant planet and we're lucky to live on it but there are prices and penalties incurred for the daily miracle of existence. One of them is, every once in awhile, the wiring of a tiny sliver of the species gets snarled and they're pointed towards darkness.
hat tip = Addicting Info
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