What's In The Desert?

Sunshine.  There's lots and lots of it in the desert.  So instead of doing incredibly stoopid things like irrigating the sand in an attempt to magically transform it into a totally unsustainable garden; or poking holes in the ground to reach all that smelly goo that ends up choking us as we burn it - maybe we could try doing something with what the desert has to offer us - which doesn't require us to deny what the desert actually is, and doesn't make it necessary to rationalize blowing shit up and shooting people down.

Just a tho't.

Logical Fallacy #17 - No True Scotsman

No true Scotsman is an informal fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim ("no Scotsman would do such a thing"), rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule ("no true Scotsman would do such a thing"),[2] creating an implied tautology. It can also be used to create unnecessary requirements.

A simple rendition of the fallacy:[3]

Person A: "No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

Person B: "I am Scottish, and I put sugar on my porridge."

"Person A: "Well, no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge."

A cited example of a political application of the fallacy was asserting that "no democracy starts a war", then distinguishing between mature or "true" democracies, which never start wars, and "emerging democracies", which may start them.[4]

Today's Eternal Sadness

Via The Raw Story:

An Illinois man reportedly fatally shot his ex-wife and her new boyfriend at a high school reunion in East Peoria over the weekend before being killed by an off-duty FBI officer.

WEEK reported that 33-year-old Lori A. Moore and her boyfriend, 36-year-old Lance E. Griffel, (pictured, above) were at The Fifth Quarter Sports Bar and Pizzeria on Saturday, when 40-year-old Jason A. Moore walked in and shot them both in the head at pointblank range.

Lori Moore was there to attend her reunion for East Peoria Community High School Class of 1999. More than 100 attendees witnessed the shooting.

According to the New York Daily News, an off-duty FBI officer shot and killed Jason Moore.

--and--

“It’s very difficult to say. You can play the ‘what if’ game over and over again, but I think it’s pretty clear in his case the presence of this officer and his ability to take very quick and very decisive action prevented a further tragedy,” East Peoria Police Chief Ganschow explained.

Exactly - it's hard to say what else would've happened, but we're speculating wildly, so here's one thing: if others had been armed, maybe that FBI agent would be dead as well.  Cuz, y'know sometimes, a good guy with a gun fucks up and stops another good guy with a gun.

And here's a coupla others:

First, isn't it just a tiny bit possible - given the climate of Self-Defense in the Extreme - that Jason Moore had absolutely every right to claim he was just 'standing his ground' against a guy he believed was threatening his right of "pursuit of happiness"?

And second, if you walk into a bar with a gun, looking for all the world that you intend to do somebody harm, how do Lori and Lance not react in an aggressively defensive way, thereby representing a legitimate threat to Jason's safety?  And so, shouldn't he have the absolute right to shoot 'em down?

That's what your "logic" sounds like to me, Ammosexuals.  Work on it.

Ghost Bear Walks By Night

Haven't seen him in a while, but we know he's out there somewhere.  Today's evidence is paw prints on the driveway:

How It Works

Ya gotta look after the people who're looking after the business, Meg.  The only thing your bonus gets you is a little extra insulation; an added layer of "security" against the inevitability of a vengeful mob coming to take whatever they want once they realize they have nothing more to lose.



Doing it right is important, but doing it right for the right reasons is everything.

Saturday Tunes

Beyond The Sea --Bobby Darin




Ain't That A Kick In The Head --Dean Martin




Jump Jive And Wail --Brian Setzer




Bump Bounce Boogie --Asleep At The Wheel




Teach Me Tonight --Dinah Washington

Today In Cloying Sentimentality

Yes - yay for this kid.  He pushed thru and he might just make it.

Everybody has everything nice to say about how wonderful he is; and how generous his girlfriend's parents are; and how FSU's gonna step up and help; and how amazing it is that people raised a fuckload of bucks to help him out.  All excellent.  Very very excellent indeed.  (I mean it - good for that kid; way to go)

Except for the part where his dad is practically invisible.  I guess it's because dads really don't count for much anymore.  Or is it because a guy with a coupla kids and a dead wife just gets dumped on the side of the road, and nobody gives a fuck about it (this is Florida, y'know)?  And hey - if he can't manage to get back on his feet all by himself, well then he's nuthin'; he's morally deficient.  Why didn't he borrow some money from his parents and start a business?  Fuckin' loser.

If America is so fucking strong, how come we can't lift that kid's dad (and his brother) outa that hole they're in?  How is it we can only manage to help 33% of that family?

And don't get me started on the extreme Press Poodling, as they epically fail at a decent opportunity to tell a real story about real people and instead turn it into this Heapin' Helpin' of Feel Good Pablum Bullshit.

Follow The Money

Eric Cantor never knew what hit him - and since the Press Poodles haven't figured out anything about anything in a solid dozen years or more, we needn't burden them with any expectation of hearing much from them about it (maybe because half of them get paid to push this shit, while the other half gets paid to ignore this shit).

Salon has an interesting take:

Back in 2008 during America’s financial collapse, BB&T Bank was one of the many big banks that crashed. In order to stay afloat, that bank took a $3.1 billion bailout from the Bush administration.

At the helm of the bank at that time was John Allison, an Ayn Rand-loving CEO.

According to The Street, during his time as CEO of BB&T, Allison regularly used the BB&T Charitable Foundation, “to provide grants to schools that agree to create courses on capitalism that feature the study of ‘Atlas Shrugged.’”

Meanwhile, according to New York Magazine, Allison gave $500,000 to Randolph-Macon College to hire Dave Brat, so that he too could teach the Ayn Rand libertarian philosophy as an economics professor.

Shortly after BB&T accepted $3.1 billion government bailout from the Bush Administration, Allison resigned as CEO, and was picked up by Charles Koch, to become the new president of the Cato Institute, formerly known as the Charles Koch Foundation, and to keep spreading the work of Rand.

--and--

So, Dave Brat is far more than just a college professor who beat Eric Cantor in a fluke of a primary.

He is a complete shill for Ayn Rand-loving libertarians and the Koch Brothers.

And he is apparently a graduate of the Kochtopus’ “Teach Ayn Rand in College, Do Well, and We’ll Send You to Washington” program.

Besides saying that Brat’s win was just a fluke and that he’s just a college professor, pundits have also been saying that Cantor lost to Brat because of his stances on immigration, and because he ran a poor campaign.

Again, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

So I guess the theory is, "We don't need a traditional campaign organization when all we really have to do is pay Laura Ingraham and Sean Hannity to pimp our guy directly to the rubes".

Works pretty good in a Primary - makes me wonder what they have in store for us in the General.

It's Not Harmless

Check this one out:

Below are the topics in which we have found stories of harm. We encourage you to explore the stories within, especially any topic that is part of your own life or the lives of your loved ones.

Medical Acupuncture Alphabiotics Alternative dentistry Alternative medicine Applied kinesiology Autism denial Ayurvedic medicine Chelation therapy Chiropractic Colloidal silver Colon cleansing Cranio-sacral therapy Cupping Detoxification Ear candling Energy medicine Escharotics Folk remedies Herbal remedies HIV/AIDS denial Holistic medicine Home childbirth Homeopathy Iridology Naturopathy Osteopathy Ozone therapy Psychic surgery Vaccine denial Vitamin megadoses

Supernatural & Paranormal Astral projection Curses Exorcisms Faith healing Ghosts Magick Psychics Vampires Voodoo Witchcraft Religion Breatharianism Christian Science Cults Jehovah's Witnesses Religious fundamentalism Scientology Transcendental Meditation Fears Apocalypse fear Metal toxicity fear Satanic ritual abuse Terrorism fear

Pseudo-Science Astrology Attachment therapy Dowsing Dream interpretation Evolution denial Expert witnesses Facilitated communication Feng shui Hypnosis Numerology Reparative therapy Repressed memory therapy Misinformation GPS navigation systems Internet misinformation Miscellaneous Child vegetarianism Conspiracy theories Holocaust denial IRS denial Moon landing denial Multi-level marketing Nigerian emails Rituals UFOs

Ruby

Ruby --Dion and the Belmonts




Ruby on Tupac

Ruby Dee, 10-27-1922 - 06-11-2014

American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and activist. She is perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and the film American Gangster (2007) for which she was nominated for anAcademy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She was the recipient of Grammy, Emmy, Obie, Drama Desk, Screen Actors Guild Award, andScreen Actors Guild Lifetime Achievement Awards as well as the National Medal of Arts and the Kennedy Center Honors. She was married to actor Ossie Davis until his death in 2005. On June 11, 2014, Dee died at her home in New Rochelle, New York.

Dee was born Ruby Ann Wallace in Cleveland, Ohio in 1922,[1] to Gladys Hightower and Marshall Edward Nathaniel Wallace, a cook, waiter and porter. After her mother left the family, Dee's father remarried, to Emma Amelia Benson, a school teacher. [2][3][4][5]

Dee was raised in Harlem, New York.[6] She attended Hunter College High School and went on to graduate from Hunter College with a degree in romance languages in 1945. [7] She was a member of Delta Sigma Theta.[8]

Today's Pix

Who'da Thunk It?

So Iraq's all fucked up.  I was going to hang the word "again" on the end of that sentence, but when I look at almost any reporting from that part of the world in the last year or 30, it gets pretty clear that the joint is practically never un-fucked up.

Somebody please tell me how we managed to ignore every warning about how something like this was bound to happen if we went in there and started knocking shit down - warnings that came from all those damned dirty hippie libruls, going all the way back to about 1990.

And it's not that it wouldn't have happened anyway - guys like Saddam always end up stepping on their own dicks eventually - it's just that we wouldn't be standing here holding an empty bag.

We didn't get the oil, we didn't put any holes in al-Qaeda (cuz al-Qaeda wasn't fucking there until we showed up - duh), and we didn't get any strategic positioning worth a good goddamn.  But we did get 4500 dead uniforms and we got 15,000 maimed to the point of being cripplingly dependent on dope or a stoopidly inadequate VA healthcare system or both, and we got maybe millions more with varying degrees of PTSD and assorted other Invisible Wounds which means we could have thousands of human time-bombs walkin' around here in USAmerica Inc just waiting for something to set 'em off.

From WaPo:

IRBIL, Iraq — Insurgents inspired by al-Qaeda rapidly pressed toward Baghdad on Wednesday, confronting little resistance from Iraq’s collapsing security forces and expanding an arc of control that now includes a wide swath of the country.

By nightfall, the militants had reached the flash-point city of Samarra, just 70 miles outside Baghdad, after having first seized Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, and other cities while pressing southward from Mosul.

The stunning speed with which the rout has unfolded in northern Iraq has raised deep doubts about the capacity of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces, and it has also kindled fears about the government’s grip on the capital.

In a country already fraught with sectarian tension, with parts of western Iraq already in Sunni militant hands, the latest gains by insurgents from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria prompted cries of alarm from leaders of Iraq’s Shiite Muslim majority.

Bush, Condi, Cheney, Hillary, Wolfowitz, Kerry, Kristol, Rummy, Perle, Biden, Powell, Reid, etc etc etc - all you guys own this shit.  And the only thing's that's more tragic than the colossal cluster fuck itself is the simple fact that there will never be any reckoning for it - because if everybody's responsible then nobody can be held accountable.

And as usual, if you wanna know the real deal, ask Juan Cole:

The fall of Mosul to the radical, extremist Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is a set of historical indictments. Mosul is Iraq’s second largest city, population roughly 2 million (think Houston) until today, when much of the population was fleeing. While this would-be al-Qaeda affiliate took part of Falluja and Ramadi last winter, those are smaller, less consequential places and in Falluja tribal elders persuaded the prime minister not to commit the national army to reducing the city.

It is an indictment of the George W. Bush administration, which falsely said it was going into Iraq because of a connection between al-Qaeda and Baghdad. There was none. Ironically, by invading, occupying, weakening and looting Iraq, Bush and Cheney brought al-Qaeda into the country and so weakened it as to allow it actually to take and hold territory in our own time. They put nothing in place of the system they tore down. They destroyed the socialist economy without succeeding in building private firms or commerce. They put in place an electoral system that emphasizes religious and ethnic divisions. They helped provoke a civil war in 2006-2007, and took credit for its subsiding in 2007-2008, attributing it to a troop escalation of 30,000 men (not very plausible). In fact, the Shiite militias won the civil war on the ground, turning Baghdad into a largely Shiite city and expelling many Sunnis to places like Mosul. There are resentments.

Logical Fallacy #16 - Composition and Division

The fallacy of composition arises when one infers that something is true of the whole from the fact that it is true of some part of the whole (or even of every proper part). For example: "This fragment of metal cannot be fractured with a hammer, therefore the machine of which it is a part cannot be fractured with a hammer." This is clearly fallacious, because many machines can be broken apart, without any of those parts being able to be fractured.

This fallacy is often confused with the fallacy of hasty generalization, in which an unwarranted inference is made from a statement about a sample to a statement about the population from which it is drawn.

The fallacy of composition is the converse of the fallacy of division.

A fallacy of division occurs when one reasons logically that something true for the whole must also be true of all or some of its parts.

An example:
A Boeing 747 can fly unaided across the ocean.
A Boeing 747 has jet engines.
Therefore, one of its jet engines can fly unaided across the ocean.

Happy Loving Day, Everybody

On the 12th of June in 1967 (after a fight that started in 1958), SCOTUS managed to get America's head a little farther out of its ass.

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967),[1] was a landmark civil rights decision of the United States Supreme Court which invalidated laws prohibiting interracial marriage.

The case was brought by Mildred Loving, a black woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, who had been sentenced to a year in prison in Virginia for marrying each other. Their marriage violated the state's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, which prohibited marriage between people classified as "white" and people classified as "colored." The Supreme Court's unanimous decision held this prohibition was unconstitutional, overturning Pace v. Alabama (1883) and ending all race-based legal restrictions on marriage in the United States.

The decision was followed by an increase in interracial marriages in the U.S., and is remembered annually on Loving Day, June 12. It has been the subject of two movies as well as songs. In the 2010s, it again became relevant in the context of the debate about same-sex marriage in the United States.

Near the end of the video, the reporter mentions there were still 16 states with Anti-Miscegenation laws on the books in 1967 - can you  guess which ones?

“Not a day goes by that I don’t think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the ’wrong kind of person’ for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over others, especially if it denies people’s civil rights.”  -– the late Mildred Loving, speaking out for marriage equality on June 12, 2007, the 40th anniversary of the Loving v. Virginia announcement.

About The Cantor Thing

Eric Cantor lost his primary against a nobody yesterday - and I imagine you've prob'ly heard all about it already, so I don't need to rehash it.

But there's not a lot of celebrating going on at VA-GOP HQ today, cuz here's the thing most Teabaggers just don't get:

Because of Eric Cantor's position as House Majority Leader, Virginia's 7th District has been the 2nd most powerful Congressional District in all of USAmerica Inc.  Out of 435 voting districts, only John Boehner's (OH-08) has more clout and influence than VA-07.

Guess what happens now?  Almost 600,000 Virginia voters are about to get shuffled to the bottom of the deck.

I think that's not necessarily a bad thing - if power doesn't change hands once in a while, we get some pretty shitty results (kinda like what we've been seeing for the last 20 years or so).  Just keep in mind that in politics, even when you get what you want, you don't always get what you want.

hat tip = Balloon Juice