Friday Nite Tune

Perfidia --Laura Fygi

Today's Lee Camp

If you own the past, you're a big step closer to owning the present.

Or if you prefer the real thing:

“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” --George Orwell, 1984

Lee Camp's Moment of Clarity:

Today's Poem

We don't need miracles or miracle workers.
We are the miracles, and we can do the work.

5th Philosopher's Song --Aldous Huxley

A million million spermatozoa
All of them alive;
Out of their cataclysm but one poor Noah
Dare hope to survive.

And among that billion minus one
Might have chanced to be
Shakespeare, another Newton, a new Donne--
But the One was Me.

Shame to have ousted your betters thus,
Taking ark while the others remained outside!
Better for all of us, forward Homunculus,
If you'd quietly died!

Best be makin' the best of your miraculous little self.

The Con Academy

Try to keep this in mind the next time you're tempted to get into it with somebody you just know is full o' shit.

And just in case you were wondering about what Mama Rand tho't about all this:

"Reason is not automatic. Those who deny it cannot be conquered by it. Do not count on them. Leave them alone. --Ayn Rand

Ownership Society

Or more accurately: The owners of our society.

The last item on the To-Do List of Capital in the US is to purchase the government, which is all but complete now.



I don't advocate blowing shit up.  I don't condone it; I don't approve of it; I see nothing but rationalized stupidity in a term like Creative Destruction, and it doesn't matter if you apply it to wrecking our manufacturing sector or you try to use it to justify revolution.   I've spent my life trying to learn how to build things up and make them work, so I don't want anybody thinking I see anything noble or heroic in the actions of some jag-off who decides to set fire to something just to watch it burn.

But that's not to say I don't understand the impulse.

Logical Fallacy #2 - False Cause

There's a good number of sub-headings under False Cause (aka: Questionable Cause).
I grabbed this one from Wikipedia just cuz it's my fave:

Post hoc ergo propter hoc (Latin: "after this, therefore because of this") is a logical fallacy (of the questionable cause variety) that states "Since event Y followed event X, event Y must have been caused by event X." It is often shortened to simply post hoc. It is subtly different from the fallacy cum hoc ergo propter hoc (correlation does not imply causation), in which two things or events occur simultaneously or the chronological ordering is insignificant or unknown. Post hoc is a particularly tempting error because temporal sequence appears to be integral to causality. The fallacy lies in coming to a conclusion based solely on the order of events, rather than taking into account other factors that might rule out the connection.

Today's Pix

Where's The Outrage?

From RTD:

RICHMOND -- A felon and admitted longtime gunrunner caught on Interstate 95 headed to Boston with handguns in the trunk of his car is set to be sentenced Tuesday in federal court.

Anthony T. Champion, 33, of Columbus, Ga. who pleaded guilty in November to possession of a stolen firearm, faces up to 10 years in prison when sentenced by U.S. District Judge James R. Spencer.

According to court documents, Champion was stopped by a state trooper near Doswell on Jan. 31, 2013, and nine handguns in a cloth bag were discovered in the trunk of his Toyota Camry -- two were stolen and one had the serial number obliterated.

Gun freaks and Libertarians oughta be teamed up and jumpin' all over this one.

Doesn't a US citizen have the right to take his guns with him on a trip up north?

Doesn't he have the right to make a living selling guns (the ones he owns anyway) to whoever he wants to sell 'em to?

And why do we care if the serial number on one of those guns was obliterated?  It's his gun - he can do what he wants with it.

Since when is it OK for the lawdogs to search a guy's car just because he gets a little nervous and decides to stop by the side of the road and take a short walk to clear his head?

What's this country comin' to?

Interesting Tidbit:  In 2010 and 2011, 825 guns that were used in crimes in New York were traced back to Virginia (eg).  It stands to reason that some number of people were arrested here in The Old Dominion for some kind of illegal-ness connected with those guns in New York.  I wonder if any of the cops (here or there) who made arrests in any of those capers were adherents to some bullshit outfit like the Oath Keepers.  Cuz, y'know - 2nd Amendment is a holy sacrament and if we don't hold it inviolable, Jesus won't love us anymore and then we're really in trouble and ... and actually, as you widen it all out, it just gets weirder and weirder.

God, Guns, and Goons In Uniform - what could possibly go wrong?

Record Intact

The Polk Awards were announced this week, (kinda kicking off Awards Season) which means we've passed another solid year of outstandingness in world journalism, during which DumFux News extended its unblemished record of perfection having received a grand total of ZERO awards for reporting of any kind.  Again.

Brooklyn, N.Y. - Four reporters who revealed the extent of secret surveillance and massive data collected by the National Security Agency are winners of the 65th annual George Polk Awards in Journalism announced today by Long Island University. The four – from the British newspaper The Guardian and The Washington Post – were among 30 recipients from 15 news organizations who were recognized in 13 categories for work in 2013.

Reporting by those honored also triggered probes of statehouse corruption in Virginia and political payback in New Jersey, explored the gap between rich and poor in urban and rural locales, produced telling accounts of mass death in Bangladesh and civilian killings by U.S. forces in Afghanistan, exposed dark sides of pro football and major league baseball and examined community responses to mental illness that ranged from ineffective to absurd.

DumFux News has been around since 1996, and they've never won anything for anything.

No awards. Ever. No Peabody. No DuPont-Columbia. No Loeb. No Murrow. Not even an Emmy. Nada.

Today's WTF

Of all the douche nozzles on the air in whatever capacity - Joe Scarborough, David Gregory, Rush Limbaugh, Dan Marino, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Howie Long, Alex Jones etc etc et-fucking-cetera - how is it this guy has just recently managed to scrap his way back - to a thoroughly stupid time slot on a barely findable sub-heading of a sports channel that's not even available on an awful lot of basic cable packages; and one that can't quite figure out when the show might or might not run?  WTF!?!



The guy quotes Eddie Izzard for fuck's sake - on a sports show.  You honestly think that doesn't take some doing?  And do you think some of us don't know this is one of the guys (if not the guy) who made a 24-hour sports channel worth watching in the first place?)

Olbermann
ESPN2
Mon-Thu
11pm (usually - sometimes ya just hafta guess)