Today's Fuck This Shit

I'm not completely down with everything he said, but Joe LaPointe gets it mostly right in an OpEd at Detroit Free Press.

hat tip = TPM

Today's Keith

I was going to say at least this one got pushed off the front page by the murders at Mother Emmanual, but really it's part and parcel of the same problem.  Which will stay a problem and which will continue to give rise to a variety of manifestations of that problem until we find the courage to look at it straight-on and deal with our shit.

Today's Eternal Sadness

9 dead church-goers in Charleston SC.

Nine people were shot to death by a white man at a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina, on Wednesday night, the Charleston Police Department confirmed at a news conference early Thursday.

Calling it "the worst night of my career," Charleston Police Chief Greg Mullen said the gunman entered the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church during a prayer meeting and opened fire. Eight people were found dead at the scene. Two others were transported to a hospital, where one later died.

None of the victims has been named by police. However, State House Minority leader Todd Rutherford said the church's pastor, state Sen. Clementa Pinckney, was among those killed, according to the Associated Press.

-and-
Can you say, "tone-deaf, Guv"?

South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (R) also issued a statement, and urged people to pray for the victims and their families.

“While we do not yet know all of the details, we do know that we’ll never understand what motivates anyone to enter one of our places of worship and take the life of another,” she said. “Please join us in lifting up the victims and their families with our love and prayers.”

I'll now indulge myself in a little speculation while insisting on calling it an attempt to think a little more generally: We don't know what moved this one asshole to do this one incredibly shitty thing, but I'm thinking maybe part of that motivation has something to do with "conservatives" almost constantly setting Americans against one another by promoting policies that require Us-vs-Them choices (ie: "We don't have the money to take care of all those veterans because your Democrat neighbor is giving it all to The Welfare Moochers".  -or-  "Teachers are just a bunch of elitist union thugs with college diplomas, and they're teaching the children of hard-working patriotic Americans to hate Jesus."), and then shrugging it all off when something bad happens because of all that, saying, "Whoa - who coulda knowed?"

And then this:

A new study attempts to debunk the claim that gun owners rely on their firearms for self-defense.

The left-leaning Violence Policy Center released a study Wednesday that finds people are much more likely to use a gun to kill someone without cause than to protect themselves.

According to the study, gun owners committed 259 justifiable homicides compared to 8,342 criminal homicides in 2012, the most recent year data was available.

That means gun owners are 32 times more likely to kill someone without cause than to act in self-defense, the study reasoned.

First, I really don't know why this comes as any kinda news to anybody at this point.

But anyway, secondly, the American Civil War didn't end in 1865 - partly because it started a long time before 1861.  We just take breaks once in a while.  The shit is never very far below the surface, and it bubbles up in an amazing variety of ways.

And third - as kind of a recap - I just have to wonder about a certain brand of politics that  advocates violence (in a subtle plausibly deniable way of course) while refusing to limit the principle means of violence, and then pretends to be confused as to the connections that seem so obvious between the two.

Chicken Fried Humor

This is the one guy from that Redneck Tour thing who could bring it without needing any victim other than himself.

Plane Crash --Ron White

Today's Maher

He starts it off right, but then it gets a little side-tracked with the standard malarkey about "bad apples" - there was one bad cop, but what about the 11 other cops who didn't do anything wrong?  Yeah OK, except for the fact that when one of the cops is the problem, you gotta be able to count on the other cops to deal with that problem cop.  Those other 11 cops did everything wrong when they failed to address the real problem in that situation.

So no, Mr Dahmer - I'm sorry, but you don't get any credit for the teenaged boys you didn't murder.

A little less gauzy obfuscation and a lot more harsh reality please.

Up-Chuck Todd

Driftglass and BlueGal take this guy apart on a fairly regular basis, but here's my short take on what I think is the fundamental problem with Chuck and Press The Meat:

He says he knows that sometimes his guests are straight-up pandering; that they don't believe what they're saying; and that "off the record", they admit as much, cuz hey - it's just politics, y'know.  But he "can't" really ask the tough questions because it's a commercial network and if he gets too snarky-barky, he loses access and his big-deal mover-shaker guests won't come back.

So there it is.  Chuck Todd says the business model at NBC requires him to provide a national broadcast platform so crooked politicians can lie to us repeatedly with near-total impunity.  That's his job.  And if he ever questions them too closely, they'll stop coming on his show, which means they wouldn't have the chance to continue telling us all those lies - and that would be - bad(?)

The Professional Left Podcast:

And here's the interview they mentioned (The Moment with Brian Koppelman):

A Tommy Tune

Questions --Tommy Emmanual

hat tip = Little Green Footballs

Learning Curves Are For Pussies

hat tip = TPM

Today In Woo

(paraphrasing):

"Teaching one religion to children is called indoctrination.  Teaching all religions to children is call inoculation." --Matt Dillahunty

Here's what bugs me about the religiousness of a certain brand of TheoPolitics in USAmerica Inc right now:

Kids go off to school and they learn about Evolution, which eventually and necessarily requires them to question their religious training, especially if it's been all about Gardens and talking snakes and Jesus walking his pet velociraptor in the park etc.  Well, sometimes that leads to trouble because their parents have been so busy trying to make sure those kids are securely bubble-wrapped in dogma, they're gonna make sure the next school board meeting turns into Night Of The Living Dead.

And yes, you have the right to know what's going on in the classroom, and yes, you have the right to be heard when the curriculum decisions are made.  But let's not get off into the weeds, cuz here's the point: 

Let's say I've taught my kid that the world is a flat disc under a crystal dome, and it's being carried thru the ether on the back of giant turtle.  Then one day the kid comes home from school and he tells me his teacher has come up with this thing called "math" and he says the numbers lead him to believe the world is a sphere.  As a living thinking human possessed of a living thinking brain, do I conclude there must be something wrong with that stupid teacher and you can bet that stupid school's gonna hear from my lawyers?  Or am I honor-bound to consider that maybe there're things I don't know about - things I may find useful - and need to learn?

Science starts with a hypothesis, tests it against what's already been reasonably proven to be true, and then draws a conclusion as to what's now most likely to be true given this new information at this point in time.

Religion starts with an arbitrary conclusion, and then has to manufacture evidence (ie: make shit up) to support it.  The kicker: You don't really think it was simple coincidence that GW Bush made way too many of his disastrous policy decisions based on that model of "thinking" didya?

Ya'll knew all that already - but it bears repeating.

Openly Secular

Iraq-mire

NYT:

WASHINGTON — In a major shift of focus in the battle against the Islamic State, the Obama administration is planning to establish a new military base in Anbar Province, Iraq, and to send 400 American military trainers to help Iraqi forces retake the city of Ramadi.

The White House on Wednesday is expected to announce a plan that follows months of behind-the-scenes debate about how prominently plans to retake Mosul, another Iraqi city that fell to the Islamic State last year, should figure in the early phase of the military campaign against the group.

The fall of Ramadi last month effectively settled the administration debate, at least for the time being. American officials said Ramadi was now expected to become the focus of a lengthy campaign to regain Mosul at a later stage, possibly not until 2016.

The additional American troops will arrive as early as this summer, a United States official said, and will focus on training Sunni fighters with the Iraqi Army. The official called the coming announcement “an adjustment to try to get the right training to the right folks.”

--and today's Understatement-That-Makes-It-Sound-Like-Ya-Really-Don't-Give-A-Fuck award goes to:

The United States Central Command’s emphasis on retaking Mosul depended critically on efforts to retrain the Iraqi Army, which appear to have gotten off to a slow start. Some Iraqi officials also thought the schedule for taking Mosul was unrealistic, and some bridled when an official from the Central Command told reporters in February that an assault to capture the city was planned for this spring.

A slow start - from 2003.  12 years.  That's not a slow start.  That's not a start of any kind.  That's an ending, and it's called "petrification"; or "putrefaction"; or some other term we use to indicate that it's over.

Iraq has no army, and Iraq has nothing out of which anybody can hope to build an army; because there is no Iraq.  Iraq exists only as the memory of a few arbitrary lines the British drew on a piece of paper 90-some years ago.  It's Done. It's Kaput. It's Finished. It's Dead Dead and Fucking Dead.  Give it up already.

And gee - it's almost as if somebody put the whole thing in motion on purpose; like they figured on it being one big unfixable FUBAR; and they'd leave it for the Dems to waste time and resources trying to tidy up for a while; and when enough Rubes are ready for the Etch-A-Sketch move, they amp up the rhetoric with, "well - it's Obama's problem now - been Obama's problem for a while - he can't just blame it all on Cheney forever - looks like leadership trouble to me - y'know the Bush Doctrine is good policy, but Obama's incompetence blah blah blah..."

This is a very standard play. 

• Fuck something up
• Point at it and say, "Hey look - it's all fucked up"
• "I have a plan..."

But let's be sure not to talk about any of that.  And let's definitely not concentrate on how our mighty military will once again be showing us their Selflessly Courageous Awesomeness by going back to some desert shithole to fight and to bleed an to die so Halliburton and Royal Dutch Shell and Northrup Grumman can add a coupla nickels to their Quarterly Earnings Reports, and then turn around and use a good buncha those hard-earned Blood Dollars to create an even more reliable generation of Coin-Operated Politicians.

Let's just keep blabbin' about what a wonderment it is that there can be so many voters in the big squishy middle who can't quite make up their minds about all this.

Fuck me silly, Bubba - I just can't stand this shit sometimes.