Today's Eternal Sadness

15-year-old Saylor Slone Martine died this weekend after an accidental shooting in her home. 5NewsOnline reports that the Leflore County, Oklahoma teen and her 12-year-old sister, Savannah, had been “handling a .380-caliber semi-automatic handgun,” and then “put it down on the counter.” When Martine reached for her cell phone, which had also been placed on the counter, the gun fired. LeFlore County Sheriff Rob Seale told reporters that the girl had “sustained life-threatening injuries” and was flown by helicopter to a hospital in Tulsa, where she died. He added that the girls’ mother was outside when the shooting occurred and that it “looks pretty clear-cut accidental.” Neither sister was holding the gun when it unexpectedly fired. Seale suspects that the gun had a “manufacturing defect.”

hat tip = Addicting Info


And let's not forget - we need Tort Reform to make sure the family of this teenager can't possibly go suckin' around for a big fat payday at the expense of that poor defenseless Gun Maker.

3,820 Americans killed with guns - so far this year - and just according to Slate's DIY database.  The official number is likely to be higher.

This is a partial screen capture from Slate - which doesn't even show all of May:

Project Much?

Reporting on a study out of Geo Mason Univ (not exactly El Centro dela Librulisimo), from Addicting Info:

The study reveals that 32% of Republican statements have been rated ‘false’ or ‘pants on fire’ by Politifact, an organization that fact checks claims made by politicians and others. In stark contrast, only 11% of statements made by Democrats received the same ratings.

According to CMPA President Dr. Robert Lichter, “While Republicans see a credibility gap in the Obama administration, PolitiFact rates Republicans as the less credible party.”

Fat Bottom Girls

...you make the rockin' world go 'round.

Add Now - Mrs Betty Bowers

Today's Market Opportunity

...with a large side of What The Fuck.  From Cleveland Plain Dealer:

Guns weren't the only thing people raced to buy after 20 students and six adults were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Some parents bought school gear that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago: bulletproof backpacks.

Impact Armor Technologies in Cleveland is among a small but growing number of U.S. companies marketing backpack shields and other bulletproof school products.

The movement to steel children against the extremely rare chance they'll encounter a school shooter is controversial. Opponents say bulletproof backpacks feed children's fear and suspicion of their peers, adults and the world at large.

So basically, we've got Wayne LaPierre pissin' on our heads, and Impact Armor sellin' us umbrellas.  That's pretty fucked up right there.

From Around The Intertubes

Some things just never change.  The sun's gonna come up somewhere east of here tomorrow.  The mockingbird that nests in my crabapple tree is gonna shit all over my windshield every spring.  And the bacchanal at UVa is pretty much 24/7, slowing only occasionally when a legitimate distraction comes along.

Congratulations.  I'm glad you finally made it.  Now go home so I can experience the joy of finding a decent parking space for a coupla months.

And God Said

The Big Bamboozle

...part ∞

Seems like politicians never stop campaigning.  Well, guess what - it seems that way because it is that way.  People get riled up during a political campaign, so campaigning is a good way to keep 'em riled up enough to get 'em to send you lots and lotsa money.  The more riled up they are, the bigger the fuckloads of money they send in, and you have practically no obligation to account to them for any of it.  You can fail over and over again, and they'll still pony up the next time you ask.

It's an astounding racket - and it's one of the big objections most people have when it comes to griping about "the system", but we've become almost completely conditioned to hate The Gubmint, so even when the IRS (eg) tries to get to some simple truth about who's buying our elections this time around, we lose our shit and start screaming about tyranny.

(yes, Dub, I know - using the IRS as an attack dog against your political opponents is a rotten thing to do.  I don't think that's exactly what happened in Cincinnati, but if there really was an element of intimidation to it, then it was low-level and weak.  Remember now, these are The Democrats we're talkin' about; the very same Librul Bureaucrats that you claim can't find their own asses with GPS and a bloodhound at noon on a clear day.  If you can't bring yourself to read any history, at least try to remember some of the shit that fell outa your own gob yesterday - you deliberately ignorant puke)

But take a peek here:

I haven't done much research on it, so please, can somebody point me to a "growth industry" in America that's done a lot better than this?

And if you took this graph and added the growth curves of the campaign contributions of Big Corp, along with the growth curves of the profitabilities of Big Corp - what do you think that might look like?

Cutting to the chase - this stinks of Government-as-Private-Enterprise.  We make a lot of noise about what a great thing The American Revolution was; and about the great sacrifice our uniformed services continue to make to ensure the life and health of our little experiment in democratic self-governance - especially on Memorial Day.  So, in addition to planting flags and going to parades and bowing our heads between the 3rd and 4th Budweisers at the neighbors' BBQ, and generally trying to "Out-Patriotic" each other the whole fucking day, maybe we could best honor those heroes by pushing back against the small minds with the big ambitions of returning us to the glories of the 18th century.

Just sayin'.

hat tip = MoJo

Economic Climate Change

There are more hints every day that s storm of a slightly different variety is headed our way, but this one is something we can actually do something about - not that we will, but we could.

From truthout, a glimpse of things to come:

The incomes of 100 people out of the seven billion on the planet could fix that, and then fix it again, and then fix it again, and then fix it again. The exact total of the wealth of these individuals is actually something of a mystery, thanks to the tax havens they use to hide their fortunes. There are trillions of dollars squirrelled away in those havens - no one knows quite how much - and the subtraction of that money from the global economy has a direct and debilitating effect on the people not fortunate enough to be part of that elite 100.

In America alone, some $150 billion in tax revenue is lost each year because of these havens, money that could be used for education, food assistance programs, infrastructure repair and health care. Instead, Americans are told the country is going broke, and are force-fed austerity measures by the same politicians who passed the laws allowing the wealthy and corporations to wallow in treasure like Tolkien's dwarves hiding under their mountain.

Call it whatever ya wanna call it - I'll call it a storm because I think it's a very natural thing, and pretty much the standard scenario that's been replayed somewhere in the world every few generations since forever.

More and more power and wealth gets concentrated into fewer and fewer hands; while more and more people get pushed down towards the bottom, having less and less.  At some point, so many people have been left with nothing more to lose, all it takes to start some real shit is for some eloquent ambitious bastard to stir their resentment, and "suddenly" the mob rises up; they smash your gated community, and they take what they want.  And then of course, the whole thing starts over.

We have to do something to get some kind of balance back into the system, and the first thing we have to do is to learn (re-learn?) how to have a calm conversation about things like Economic Justice, and how we go about trying to fix the disparity problems, without all the knee-jerk reactions and overheated partisan rhetoric.*

So maybe we could tap into some of that American Exceptionalism we hear so much about.

*ed note: if you bring the standard crap that passes for "conservative" ideology these days, and I slam you for it - that's not what qualifies as overheated rhetoric.  That's just callin' it what it is.  Some people are stubborn, and really - about all you can do is hit 'em with a shovel til they loosen their grip on The Stoopid.

For Memorial Day

Anticipating that special feeling of sappy desperation from all the Facebookers and emailers who get really geared up to send and/or post all that drippy maudlin crap that often takes honest-to-god people in uniform and turns them into fetishized plastic effigies that resemble real human beings in practically no way at all:



And just as a reminder:  Way too many of us are way too fond of saying something like this:

"The warriors are not to blame for the war".  

Bullshit.

The ultimate responsibility for every war is borne by the individual soldier.

You don't have much of a war 

if nobody shows up to fight.