The amazing Jay Smooth:
Sep 6, 2014
Sep 5, 2014
One "Simple" Step
The New York Daily News has announced that it won't use the word "Redskins" anymore in its coverage of the NFL's Washington franchise.
Good on 'em. And just in case you need some convincing, let's run this test: You and I will take a little trip to some tribe-owned resort and/or casino and/or anywhere else that might have Native American clients or employees - maybe we could drop in on a cop shop or a sheriff's department in northwestern New Mexico or southern Montana. Anyway, once we're inside, you go ahead and find some folks with dark hair and darkish skin and "that Indian look"; you stand face to face and you address them thusly: " Hey, Redskin - how ya doin'?" --or-- "Yo, Redskin, can we get a coupla beers over here?" --or-- "Wow, I didn't know so many Redskins were working for the police department."
You look 'em square in the eye and you say it loud and with all your usual bullshit I'm-no-racist conviction. You try that a good half dozen times with half a dozen people, and if nobody either verbally slaps you down or literally kicks you in the nuts, then I'm with you and I'll fight your fight against your Political Correctness Phantom Demons.
But if it turns out otherwise (and if we manage to survive the encounters), then you get to drag your dumbfuck attitudes a little closer to this end of last century and stop using that stoopid shitty word.
The Daily News publishes its annual, best-in-the-city National Football League preview on Thursday with one deliberate omission — the Washington franchise appears without the name Redskins.
Similarly, its logo depicting a feathered Native American has been replaced with an image that uses the team’s burgundy and gold colors to key readers to stories, columns and statistics relating to Washington.
Henceforth, in The News’ sports coverage, the team that has been known as the Redskins since 1933 will simply be called Washington.
Enormously popular and deeply ingrained in sporting culture, the Redskins name is a throwback to a vanished era of perniciously casual racial attitudes. No new franchise would consider adopting a name based on pigmentation — Whiteskins, Blackskins, Yellowskins or Redskins — today. The time has come to leave the word behind.
Good on 'em. And just in case you need some convincing, let's run this test: You and I will take a little trip to some tribe-owned resort and/or casino and/or anywhere else that might have Native American clients or employees - maybe we could drop in on a cop shop or a sheriff's department in northwestern New Mexico or southern Montana. Anyway, once we're inside, you go ahead and find some folks with dark hair and darkish skin and "that Indian look"; you stand face to face and you address them thusly: " Hey, Redskin - how ya doin'?" --or-- "Yo, Redskin, can we get a coupla beers over here?" --or-- "Wow, I didn't know so many Redskins were working for the police department."
You look 'em square in the eye and you say it loud and with all your usual bullshit I'm-no-racist conviction. You try that a good half dozen times with half a dozen people, and if nobody either verbally slaps you down or literally kicks you in the nuts, then I'm with you and I'll fight your fight against your Political Correctness Phantom Demons.
But if it turns out otherwise (and if we manage to survive the encounters), then you get to drag your dumbfuck attitudes a little closer to this end of last century and stop using that stoopid shitty word.
A 2-Fer Update
I'm just kinda still following the Ferguson thing, so I'm really glad somebody's keeping an eye on the shit-flingers.
First, this is NOT a picture of Darren Wilson:
It's a picture of a moto-x-er named Jim McNeil who crashed his bike in 2006:
OK - 2nd, again via Little Green Footballs:
First, this is NOT a picture of Darren Wilson:
It's a picture of a moto-x-er named Jim McNeil who crashed his bike in 2006:
OK - 2nd, again via Little Green Footballs:
CLAYTON • As a child, Michael Brown was never found delinquent of the juvenile equivalents of Missouri’s most serious felony charges and was not facing any at the time he died, a court official said Wednesday.Mike Brown is dead for some pretty fucked up reasons. And now we know we can't just comfortably rationalize it away by swallowing the bullshit smear that he was a thug so he prob'ly had it comin' sooner or later anyway, and then pretending we're not racist assholes for thinking that way.
The Post-Dispatch filed a petition Aug. 22 asking a judge in the St. Louis County Family Court to open any juvenile records on Brown, the unarmed 18-year-old shot to death last month by a Ferguson police officer. A conservative blogger from California had separately requested the records be opened.
Police had said earlier that Brown had no adult criminal record.
The petitions went to a hearing Tuesday with St. Louis County Family Court Judge Ellen Levy Siwak, who took the case under advisement.
But disclosures during and after the hearing on Tuesday put to rest claims by blogger Charles C. Johnson and others that Brown was facing a murder charge at the time he was shot to death.
Cynthia Harcourt, a lawyer for St. Louis County Juvenile Officer Kip Seely, noted that some juvenile records and proceedings are open to the public: those that concern crimes that would be Class A or B felonies if a juvenile had been charged as an adult. But there were none for Brown.
Sep 4, 2014
Piling On
The all new Meet The Press - the "news" show formerly known as Dancin' Dave Takes It Hard And Deep From Both Ends Sides - is kinda set to debut pretty soon, and they're announcing the additions of Luke (you-knew-my-dad-so-you-owe-me-something) Russert and Scabrous Joe (The Schmo From That Morning Show) to a production that prob'ly won't be called "UpChuck The Toadie Is Not Here To Tell You The Facts".
Meet The Press hasn't been a news show for quite a while - and that includes the Tim Russert era. To wit:
When your show's big advertisers are Boeing and General Dynamics and Raytheon; and your guest list is always dominated by "The Right", then you're not a news show - you're a soft porn infomercial pimping for an oligarchy. And your little puppet parade has nothing to do with your responsibilities as The 4th Estate in maintaining a healthy democracy.
It's shameful. We deserve better.
hat tip = Crooks and Liars
Meet The Press hasn't been a news show for quite a while - and that includes the Tim Russert era. To wit:
When your show's big advertisers are Boeing and General Dynamics and Raytheon; and your guest list is always dominated by "The Right", then you're not a news show - you're a soft porn infomercial pimping for an oligarchy. And your little puppet parade has nothing to do with your responsibilities as The 4th Estate in maintaining a healthy democracy.
It's shameful. We deserve better.
hat tip = Crooks and Liars
Today's Marketing Genius
From the 70s - of course. Look for them wherever fine novelties and Pet Rocks are sold.
hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors
hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors
Logical Fallacy Recap
I've posted one of these per week (more or less) for about 6 months. Here's the whole banana:
Sep 3, 2014
Sep 2, 2014
Today's Groaner
Let me say, I just want ya'll to know that I've started and then deleted this post at least 7 or 8 times, and that I'm sorry. I feel bad for doing this, but I have to go thru with it now because I need you to help ease the crushing burden of shame that I feel for dumping this on you.
As you may know, Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which made for some pretty impressively tough soles on his feet. Also, he ate very little, which caused him to be rather frail, and because of his inadequate diet, he suffered from bad breath.
This means that he was - a super calloused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis.
Again - I am deeply and most sincerely sorry. I am a bad bad man.
As you may know, Mahatma Gandhi walked barefoot most of the time, which made for some pretty impressively tough soles on his feet. Also, he ate very little, which caused him to be rather frail, and because of his inadequate diet, he suffered from bad breath.
This means that he was - a super calloused fragile mystic vexed by halitosis.
Again - I am deeply and most sincerely sorry. I am a bad bad man.
Sep 1, 2014
Labor Day
Enjoying that extra day off? Be sure to thank some of the people DumFux News keeps trying to convince you are to blame for all your problems.
1. Unions Gave Us The Weekend: Even the ultra-conservative Mises Institute notes that the relatively labor-free 1870, the average workweek for most Americans was 61 hours — almost double what most Americans work now. Yet in the late nineteenth century and the twentieth century, labor unions engaged in massive strikes in order to demand shorter workweeks so that Americans could be home with their loved ones instead of constantly toiling for their employers with no leisure time. By 1937, these labor actions created enough political momentum to pass the Fair Labor Standards Act, which helped create a federal framework for a shorter workweek that included room for leisure time.
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage:“The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”
2. Unions Gave Us Fair Wages And Relative Income Equality: As ThinkProgress reported earlier in the week, the relative decline of unions over the past 35 years has mirrored a decline in the middle class’s share of national income. It is also true that at the time when most Americans belonged to a union — a period of time between the 1940′s and 1950′s — income inequality in the U.S. was at its lowest point in the history of the country.
3. Unions Helped End Child Labor: “Union organizing and child labor reform were often intertwined” in U.S. history, with organization’s like the “National Consumers’ League” and the National Child Labor Committee” working together in the early 20th century to ban child labor. The very first American Federation of Labor (AFL) national convention passed “a resolution calling on states to ban children under 14 from all gainful employment” in 1881, and soon after states across the country adopted similar recommendations, leading up to the 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act which regulated child labor on the federal level for the first time.
4. Unions Won Widespread Employer-Based Health Coverage:“The rise of unions in the 1930′s and 1940′s led to the first great expansion of health care” for all Americans, as labor unions banded workers together to negotiate for health coverage plans from employers. In 1942, “the US set up a National War Labor Board. It had the power to set a cap on all wage increases. But it let employers circumvent the cap by offering “fringe benefits” – notably, health insurance.” By 1950, “half of all companies with fewer than 250 workers and two-thirds of all companies with more than 250 workers offered health insurance of one kind or another.”
5. Unions Spearheaded The Fight For The Family And Medical Leave Act: Labor unions like the AFL-CIO federation led the fight for this 1993 law, which “requires state agencies and private employers with more than 50 employees to provide up to 12 weeks of job-protected unpaid leave annually for workers to care for a newborn, newly adopted child, seriously ill family member or for the worker’s own illness.”
Somebody's Gotta Do It
It's gotta be a joyless and thoroughly mind-numbing task trying to keep tabs on the wingnuts.
May I at least say thanks to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his tireless endeavors to make sure we know what a total waste of protoplasm this Jim Hoft guy really is.
Say “cheese” 
Charles JohnsonWingnuts• Views: 5,677
May I at least say thanks to Charles Johnson at Little Green Footballs for his tireless endeavors to make sure we know what a total waste of protoplasm this Jim Hoft guy really is.
Jim Hoft, Dumbest Man on the Internet, Also Most Hypocritical
Charles Johnson
Remember when Jim Hoft, fabled Dumbest Man on the Internet, freaked out about a photograph of President Obama taking a “selfie” at Nelson Mandela’s memorial event, labeling Obama the “Narcissist-in-Chief?” And remember how this Obama-bashing meme instantly spread throughout the right wing blogs and made it all the way to Fox News?
Well, first of all, this was not a “funeral;” it was a memorial service that included lots of performers and tributes from dignitaries. And it was not a solemn event in a church; it was more like a party, a joyous celebration of Mandela’s life. And for that matter, Jim Hoft was incredibly vicious and mean-spirited toward Nelson Mandela when he died, posting several rants like this one and this one.
But the point of this post: today the DMOTI tweeted this, demonstrating once again that boorish self-absorbed right wing hypocrisy for which he’s infamous — a lovely selfie that he took with a friend at a real funeral, in a church, wearing a polo shirt and a big un-self-conscious grin.
Say “cheese,” Jim.
(I’m posting a screenshot linked to his tweet instead of embedding it, because Hoft has a long-standing habit of trying to delete stuff like this when it gets noticed.)
(h/t: @lawhawk.)
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