Close Encounters

...of the ironic kind - from KPTV in Gresham OR:

GRESHAM, OR (KPTV) - A man openly carrying his new handgun was robbed on a Gresham street by a man with a gun of his own.

Police were called out to the area of 172nd and Glisan Street at 2:10 a.m. Saturday.

Investigators said the 21-year-old victim bought a handgun earlier in the day and was openly carrying it while talking to his cousin.

They said a man approached them and asked for a cigarette. Talk eventually turned to the victim's new purchase, before the robber pulled his own gun from his waistband and said, "I like your gun, give it to me," according to police.

The victim handed over his gun and the suspect ran away.

The suspect is described as a light-skinned black man, 19 to 23 years old, 6'1" with a skinny build. He had black, wavy hair and was clean cut, except for a small patch of facial hair on his chin. The man was wearing gray sweatpants, a white T-shirt and flip-flops.

The weapon he used in the robbery was described as a black gun, possibly semi-automatic. The stolen gun is a black Walther brand, model P22. It is semi-automatic and .22LR-caliber.

There's a rube born every minute - and 2 to steal the gun he thinks he needs to feel good about himself.

Bye, Felicia

Huckabee loves to whine about how Repubs are losing their "moral edge", and so he throws the usual fits and tantrums, but he's not about to give up his power.  He intends to do what losers always do - he's going to go sulk.  I'm pretty sure he has a decent enough organization in place by now - mailing lists and phone bank volunteers and operatives and ad makers et al - that he'll never want for money, and that he'll be a thorn in everybody's side for as long as he cares to draw breath.  That's how it works.  Money & Power - once you've got one, you can get the other.

And always remember that these guys want lotsa things, but the only reason "democracy" is  on the list is because it sounds good to the rubes who're constantly being duped into voting against it.

hat tip = Crooks and Liars

Happy Birthday, Mr Lennon

Whatever Gets You Thru The Night --John Lennon (w/ Elton John)

Small Wonder

I really don't get a lot of what Rush Limbaugh has to say.  And I'd like to think it's mostly because I'm just not that dumb.  But sometimes, it's even harder than usual for me to understand, unless I stop and remind myself that it's a show.  Like most of the wingnut junk out there, it's just a show.  The fact that millions of rubes gobble it up and then make voting decisions based on this bullshit is a disaster worthy of George Carlin's fondest imaginings, but that's a different puddle of puke waiting for us at a different subway station.

Today's wonderment is:  Limbaugh is always on some kind of rant about Political Correctness, but if he's so dead set against it, then why does he so often use the terminologies of Political Correctness?  In this clip, he even goes so far as to manufacture a phrase like "British African-Americans".

The guy is an obvious phony, but when I remember that he's been at it for 25 years - and that he's amassed a personal fortune of $400M doing it - I have to stand in awe of that level of hucksterism.

hat tip = Mock Paper Scissors

Some Day

...maybe we'll all have something to look forward to besides more of the basic "same shit, new day".

And if you've got kids in college - well, just make sure they know how to change a tire and work a cash register.

Gettin' It

From MMA via Crooks & Liars:

Get HBO Right Now

...if for no better reason that to catch John Oliver (most) every Sunday at 11pm.



And again - how come it seems like the "comedy" shows are the only ones on TV where you can get some real news about some of the real shit going on up in this joint?

hat tip = Wonkette

Results Matter

We're constantly being bitched at about how the results of what we're trying to accomplish are always a lot more important than just trying to do whatever it is we're trying to do.

OK - so this...

...has been going on for quite a while, and since abortion is still a major bugaboo for you Xianists, I'm just wondering - if prayer works, how come it ain't working for you guys?  Are you doing it wrong?

BTW - this seems like a reasonable response:

And actually, any response that isn't just automatically caving in and blindly ceding the "moral high ground" would be OK with me.  Cuz, y'know what - if the Rubes are always praying for Jesus to end abortion, and abortion just keeps rollin' on, don't we have to stop and at least consider that maybe Jesus is Pro Choice?

Hunting Season

The hacking cough and the stinging eyes of an allergic reaction to leaf mold; the clogged and overflowing rain gutters due to 3 days of drizzle; the joy of being awakened just before dawn by the dulcet tones of gunfire in the woods behind my house.  Ah yes - these are but a few of the glories of Autumn in central Virginia.

Let's be careful out there.

Listen To Charlie

Logical fallacy is the bread-n-butter of American Media.  Almost everything that goes out on TV & Radio, or into what's left of the Dead Tree Publications business is going to include some level of "Yeah but the Democrats" and "Both sides do it" and "It has to be all and only this way or all and only that other way".  

Wanna know where all that False Equivalence and False Dichotomy shit gets us?

Here's Charlie Pierce to 'splain some of it to us:

What we had in the AIDS epidemic was political opportunism married to what became obvious ignorance. What we are seeing now, promulgated by a conservative bubble machine that has built a self-sustaining universe around itself, is political opportunism married to an active campaign of disinformation. This is a terrible thing. The people making a profit out of it are people who are too lazy to mug old ladies or swindle the blind. The people making a profit out of it are people without consciences, people who are as free of patriotism as they are free of the inconveniences of having a soul. These are dangerous people, and it's far past time for the honorable people in my profession to stop treating them like the worthless hacks they are. They are no longer cute. They are no longer funny. They are no longer the respectable "other side" of some fanciful imaginary political debate. They are dangerous propagandists. They are peddling poisonous lies and putting people's lives at risk. Every journalist who treats them as anything else, and every politician who treats them as anything else, are actively abetting evil.

Take, for example, Laura Ingraham, who cashes a very nice check from ABC News in addition to her day job as a radio flamethrower. Ingraham has begun to traffic in "alternative" theories about Ebola, treating a virus as though it were another vote to suppress or immigrant to bash, and lending her microphone to fringe nitwits because panic is profitable, and because almost everything, even a rare disease, is worth throwing at a president you don't like.

Like the man said - the earth is a roughly spherical body that turns on its axis about once per day and orbits the local mid-sized star about once every 365 days, and while you're entitled to believe otherwise, your opinions to the contrary don't mean diddly-shit.

--and--

The country simply cannot go on this way, with one of our two political parties completely insane, and with a counter-cultural universe that claims the right to promulgate its own science as equal to the science produced by actual scientists, and with this dangerous lunacy treated as legitimate by powerful people who ought to know better. As I once wrote, it doesn't matter how many people vote for the anti-gravity party, you still can't flap your arms and fly to the moon. A dangerous disease is not a matter of debate. Your profitable fantasy and the reality of the disease do not deserve an equal place in the discussion of what we as a society will do about the disease. The response is going to have to be precise and empirical. It is going to have to be impatient with cant, and immune to the delusions on which demented ideology feeds.

It's kinda important to believe as many true things as possible, and to not believe as many false things as possible; and so it's really really really important to be able to tell the difference.

Listen to driftglass and BlueGal every Friday, and almost every time, you'll get a decent reminder on how to spot the "both sides" crap.