Today's Wingnut

Steve Swanson via RightWing Watch, via Addicting Info:



Almost right from the start, Mr Swanson tries to bring the warning home; basically saying, "If I were the devil I'd buy Disney..." to make that standard leap-of-stoopid: Gay is bad; Disney is Gay; and so Disney must be bad.

BTW - it wasn't all that long ago that Disney was one of the mainstays of the Christianists' version of USAmerica.  But then, of course, Disney went all shove-the-gay-down-our-throats by recognizing that gay money spends really good too, and there's a lot of it, so let's try not to treat the customers like shit - and that's what ruined it for everybody.

BTW #2 - with all the Princess Fantasies and the show tunes and the pixie dust, aren't Disney and Teh Gay just kinda the perfect fit?  Seems like the classic no-brainer if you know anything about bidness.

Anyway, how do we know Swanson isn't the devil?  Satan's supposed be all wily and sly, and really good at fooling us into thinking he's the good guy so he can get us to do all those horrible things that Swanson says Disney's doing - seems maybe Swanson's actually implying we should do something to gay people and then blame Disney for it(?)  Gets a little complicated.

Just wonderin'.

Saying Good-Bye

Say Something --A Great Big World w/ Christina Aguilera

We Lost A Good One

...when Richard Jeni killed himself - 7 years ago today.

Music For Monday

The Last Of The Mohicans --Luca Stricagnoli

One CPAC Thing Only

Attendees at the annual "conservative" fap-fest they call CPAC (Corporatized Panderers And Clowns) had a fine time over the weekend.

Two things:

First, the word is that the Casual Encounters section of Craiglist (for hookups and one-night stands) went crazy with traffic in and around the beltway, and the big hits were of the m4m variety.  To wit (via Addicting Info):

CPAC looking for discrete fun – m4m – 26 (Prince George’s County)

Staying in town for the conference. Looking to get my rocks off. discretion assured. Versatile looking for a masc man in his 20s or 30s.

--and--

CPAC 24 m4m NSA – m4m (CPAC)

It is that time again and I want to have some NSA fun after the speechesI want to fuck your mouth while I sign you up on the health care market place.I want you to be the gipper and go down on my jelly beans. I want to be discrete

The author at AI does note that some of these could easily be jokes, but even if they are, ya gotta know that some closet case at CPAC will likely take some of them perfectly seriously, which points up the ridiculousness of the anti-people policy positions of "the conservatives".

Second, here's a picture tweeted by a guy named John Hudak (Brookings Inst - so, a grain of salt on this one as well) that he says shows the "crowd" at the "Minority Outreach" panel discussion at CPAC, about 10 minutes into the session:

There is simply nothing of substance in anything the GOP has to say about how people-friendly they are or want to be.  You may have noticed they don't talk much about the big tent anymore.  It seems an awful lot of them don't feel they even have to pretend that's what they want.  And it's getting harder not to believe that their positions on issues like Immigration and Voter ID are all about an effort to establish minority-party rule.

Stand Up And Scream

Things Goin' On --Lynyrd Skynyrd



Have you ever lived down in the ghetto?
Have you ever felt the cold wind blow?
If you don't know what I mean,
Won't you stand up and scream?
'Cause there's things goin' on that you don't know.

Too many lives they've spent across the ocean.
Too much money been spent upon the moon.
Well, until they make it right
I hope they never sleep at night
They better make some changes
And do it soon.

They're goin ruin the air we breathe
Lord have mercy.
They're gonna ruin us all, by and by.
I'm telling all you beware
I don't think they really care
I think they just sit up there
And just get high.

It's Gotta Stop

How stupid do we have to be?  How bad does it have to get before we know that it has to stop, and it can only stop when we stand up and make it stop?

If you have the stomach for it, look at these pictures closely, and then tell me you don't understand how men and women in uniform are all fucked up in the head when we finally let them come home.  Why can't they just chill out and relax?  Why do so many of them look away - sometimes they seem embarrassed or even ashamed - while we're falling all over ourselves trying to convince them how grateful we are when all we can do is recite a few meaningless cliches about service and sacrifice that we heard on TV or we saw on a Facebook post?

There's no such thing as a Non-Combatant, and there sure as hell ain't no Un-Wounded Warriors.  What we've been doing for the last 15 years; the damage we're doing - purposefully - to an entire generation of American kids, as well as populations around the world - I guess all I can say is that every one of these asswipe TheoCons better hope there's no god after all, cuz he's gonna be pretty fuckin' pissed at all this shit.

Thinly Veiled

They don't call it influence-peddling, and they sure as hell don't call it bribery - they don't even call it lobbying any more - and before too much longer, they won't have to call it anything because we won't be able to see it.  The whole rotten thing will be scrubbed and sanitized to the point where not even the people participating in the scam will be able to recognize the stench of their own corruption.  Remember, we have great capacity for rationalization; bordering closely on self-delusion.



BTW - it's Russia TV.  So grains of salt are in order.  That said, sometimes the most honest criticism comes from your fiercest rival.

Here's the Link to Republic Report

Today's Pix

Logical Fallacy # 4: The Fallacy Fallacy

From Wikipedia:

Argument from fallacy is the formal fallacy of analyzing an argument and inferring that, since it contains a fallacy, its conclusion must be false.[1] It is also called argument to logic (argumentum ad logicam), fallacy fallacy,[2] fallacist's fallacy,[3] and bad reasons fallacy.[4]
Fallacious arguments can arrive at true conclusions, so this is an informal fallacy of relevance.[5]

Form[edit]:

It has the general argument form:

If P, then Q.

P is a fallacious argument.

Therefore, Q is false.[6]

Thus, it is a special case of denying the antecedent where the antecedent, rather than being a proposition that is false, is an entire argument that is fallacious. A fallacious argument, just as with a false antecedent, can still have a consequent that happens to be true. The fallacy is in concluding the consequent of a fallacious argument has to be false.

That the argument is fallacious only means that the argument cannot succeed in proving its consequent.[7] But showing how one argument in a complex thesis is fallaciously reasoned does not necessarily invalidate the proof; the complete proof could still logically imply its conclusion if that conclusion is not dependent on the fallacy:

All great historical and philosophical arguments have probably been fallacious in some respect... If the argument is a single chain, and one link fails, the chain itself fails with it. But most historians' arguments are not single chains. They are rather like a kind of chain mail which can fail in some part and still retain its shape and function.  --David Hackett Fischer, Historians' fallacies[3]