Gotta Go

Too much cookin' for me right now.

I gotta walk away for a while and try to decompress; get some shit done for myself and - uhm - whatever it is I think I'm trying to do in general.

Sorry.  I'll try to do some pix and some music once in a while, but really, I just gotta get outa here.

You Only Fool Yourself

hat tip = Democratic Underground (AngryDem001)

NPR Tiny Desk Concert et al

New one for me - Phox

Evil --Phox

Noble Heart --Phox

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Look At Yerself

Here's a bit from Scabrous Joe and Mika The Attack Bunny - along with other MSNBC Meat Puppets - saying how can we expect these fine innocent teenagers not to behave like racist assholes when it's so obvious that all those rotten hip-hopsters are putting out all those horrible rap songs that use the n-word and kill this muthuhfuckuh and bang that bitch and blah blah blah.

Aside from the standard bullshit trying to make this all about Respectability Politics (tell it, Brother Jay - from way back when)...

...and aside from more of the standard bullshit trying to make some stoopid point about 'reverse racism', maybe we could look at why all the white folk gettin' all bent outa shape.

I think I hear something along the lines of "well, if black people can call each other nigger, then why can't we call 'em niggers?"

That's a question that comes from way down deep in the bottomless well of White Privilege.

Look, guys - I'm not likely to be brutalized and/or murdered by the cops just because I was driving at night in a nice neighborhood.  I'm not gonna get Red-Lined by the mortgage companies; I'm not gonna be the suspect in a string of crimes because my facial features and my skin tone fit some artificial profile manufactured by a "justice system" that's become cynical and corrupt.  And there's a shitload more examples of built-in prejudice once you start thinking about it.

Secondly, the use of any of the words available to us has to be subject to scrutiny from a standpoint of what relationship we have with the people we're trying to communicate with.  If you sidle up beside your wife, and you give her a little squeeze on the buns and a peck on the cheek, and you say, "Hey babe - wanna get laid tonite?", you're just trying to be playful or romantic or provocative or whatever.  If you do that with somebody's teenaged daughter, you don't get to be all huffy and indignant when they take exception to it and start pounding you down into a greasy spot with a piano leg.

So after all that; knowing what Privilege allows for The Privileged, and what it does not allow for those Un-Privileged, can't we let up on the idiot notion of being so fucking privileged that we insist on "What's mine is mine and what's yours is mine too"?

Can't we give black folk one lousy word that they get to own and the rest of us just get to stay the fuck away from it?

Say What Now?

Megyn Kelly:

“There are very few companies in America, whether they’re public or private, in which if you sic 40 FBI agents on the company and review every email and every document and every communication between employees, you won’t find any racist emails."

So practically every company in America 1) employs a buncha racist assholes, and 2) has no particular policy against sending racist asshole emails &/or chooses to do nothing about the racist assholes who work for them.

And that proves the cops and the courts in Ferguson MO can't possibly be racist?  Can you say "Tu Quoque"?  How 'bout "Bandwagon"?

One other little thingie, Ms Kelly - the DoJ report did not "completely clear Darren Willson".  The conclusion was that they didn't find enough to go after a Federal Indictment against him. There's quite a difference there - and you know it.

Just Stop Being Poor

The Daily Show
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The Week (re: King v Burwell):

Americans are a woefully ignorant people. A third of us can't name even one of three branches of the U.S. government. Two-fifths don't even know which party controls the House or Senate. Millions even think that after the Supreme Court rules on a case, it's sent to Congress for lawmakers' consideration. And so it goes.

If we don't even know these very basics, just imagine how confusing King v. Burwell — a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act (aka ObamaCare) — must be. But why let ignorance get in the way of opinion? Supporters and haters of the law simply see it — as they do just about everything — through their prisms of pre-conceived beliefs. This has led to misunderstandings and myths about what the case is all about and ObamaCare in general.

Obamacare doesn't fix a lot of what's wrong about Healthcare in USAmerica Inc.  What it does fix (partly) is the accessibility problem.  At least now, we all have a shot at getting covered by an insurance plan that we can actually afford, which was kinda the whole fucking point of The Affordable Care Act.

ahem

And from FactCheck in 2013:

Claim: 8.2 million Americans can’t find full-time work partly due to Obamacare.

FactCheck.org says: False.

Claim: The law is a job-killer.
FactCheck.org says: Overblown.

Claim: Premiums are going up because of the law. Premiums are going down because of the law.
FactCheck.org says: It depends.

Claim: All of the uninsured will pay less on the exchanges than they could now on the individual market, even without federal subsidies.
FactCheck.org says: False.

Claim: 8.5 million Americans will receive rebates this year averaging about $100 each because of the health care law.
FactCheck.org says: Misleading.

Claim: You won’t be able to choose your own doctor.
Claim: The government will be between you and your doctor.
FactCheck.org says: False.

Claim: If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.
FactCheck.org: Misleading.

Claim: Those applying for federal subsidies can lie about their income without facing verification.
FactCheck.org says: False.

Claim: Congress is exempt from the law.
FactCheck.org says: False.

And we don't really need to talk about Death Panels do we?

The Big Bamboozle

Everybody loves to hate Wal-Mart.

I think ya gotta be careful with the whole 2-Minute Daily Hate thing, but there's something pretty satisfying about it once in a while. Especially when you can point it in the right direction.

I Miss This Guy

Richard Jeni 04/14/1957 - 03/10-2007

They Ain't My Guys

Just in case anybody was wondering what it takes to make a buncha theocratic Iranian shit-sniffers look like the 'good guys' - ladies & germs, I give you a buncha theocratic American shit-sniffers 47 Republican Senators who're working really hard to raise the level of partisan fuck-uppery to new heights.

How is it that Iran's Foreign Minister knows more about how the US Gov't is supposed to work than the propeller-heads we hired to run the US Senate?

"The authors may not fully understand that in international law, governments represent the entirety of their respective states, are responsible for the conduct of foreign affairs, are required to fulfil the obligations they undertake with other states and may not invoke their internal law as justification for failure to perform their international obligations."

But wait - "conservatives" need Iran to be the enemy.  They need some bullshit reason to keep the rubes riled up.  And does anyone need convincing that some of these "public servants" need their stock portfolios to get another nice fat injection of War Bucks?  What could be worse for them politically than having to make nice with an Islamic government after they've spent so much time and energy and Koch Family Money© demonizing it?

And what're they supposed to do with all that silly rhetoric about Obama being a secret Muslim and all the Libtards loving all things Islam?  They can't let all that go to waste, so it naturally fits for them to say they're just being tough on Iran - cuz "Obama can't be", or whatever - in order to keep the bad ol' Mullahs from getting the bomb; with the main point being they can't let anything Obama tries to do go unchallenged.  

That's what all this Party Purity crapola is really good for BTW.  No matter how stoopid your idea is on its own merits, anything you wanna do is OK as long as it hurts Obama and/or makes the Libruls mad.

But guess what, kids - Iran is going to get the bomb no matter what anybody says or does.  It's gonna happen sooner or later.  So why do you send a threatening letter to Mr Fariz?  Maybe it's because you wanna speed things along a little.  Maybe you want Iran to get the bomb ASAP so you have justification for war - which you can blame on Obama's "policy of appeasement"(?), and get back to the good old days of Us vs Them; of enemies within and enemies without.

History doesn't actually repeat itself, but it sure as fuck rhymes.

And The Question Remains

Why is it that we're not getting any decent reporting from anywhere but HBO and Comedy Central?